This unassuming Action RPG stole my heart back in 2010. It's rich characters, melancholic tone, and breathtaking music make for an experience that few games can achieve. It contains one of the greatest stories ever told in a video game (I'm a sucker for the whole Do Androids Dream? trope, even if it isn't literally androids in this case.) The concept of beating the same game over and over again to experience the full story is one that this game introduced me to, and now I love it. Any game that can pull off something like that should be commended. The gameplay is a little rough around the edges in that it's pretty basic. There are a lot of optional side-quests that are also very fetch-questy. But no minor complaint can dampen this tremendous game.

One of the best games of all time for me. The music is some of the most beautiful I've ever heard in a game. The story was extremely heart-wrenching and superbly presented and, above all, the themes dealt with here are very mature and really profound. The fact that you have to play through the game several times and that the playthroughs only differ minimally is a little annoying. The combat system was also ok at best and the graphics rather mediocre, but I don't give a damn :D A top 10 game for me at the moment.

One of the most special and unique games I've ever played.
The story is masterfully crafted with some very interesting characters, and the writing is genius, the constant fourth wall break is spot on! I don't want to spoil it for you, but I can safely say that this is one of the best stories I've ever experienced, I haven't played a game that tells a tragic story in such a special way ever before.

Once you finish the first playthrough, you'll need to load from your save data to play the second playthrough and then the third playthrough to experience the whole game, and the payoff is definitely worth it.

The gameplay mechanics are incredible too, it constantly switches genres on-the-go, and it's full of surprises. My only complain is the hacking minigame, it's a slog and sometimes you are forced to do it.

Last but not least, the music is absolutely phenomenal, one of the best soundtracks ever, absolutely perfect for the game.

This game is an unforgettable masterpiece, a true gem within the videogame industry that sticks with you forever.

Final Rating: "Masterpiece" ~ 10/10.

Featuring suped-up visuals and superior optimization, the PS5-era re-release of Final Fantasy VII Remake is a great game.

I always considered this entry to be the start of FF's complete revitalization in the modern era. Following this game, we also had the post-patch content rollout for Shadowbringers in FF14 (greatest era for this game), FF16 (a fantastic narrative experience), the Endwalker expansion for FF14, and most recently, this game's sequel, FF7Rebirth. It wasn't a flawless beginning to this recent stream of high-quality releases, though. While I love this game for how it re-presents the amazing city of Midgar, there are a lot of things that are... frustrating to say the least.

I will start with the successes of this game first, though. The most obvious one that comes to mind immediately is this game's artstyle. While Intergrade on the PS5 still has some questionable areas of low-textures and frequent blurriness on performance mode, FF7R is a stunning video game from an art direction standpoint. Arguably the best in the series.

How this game takes the original 1997 classic and translates it into a 3D space is jaw-droppingly awe-inspiring. FF7Remake is a testament to what diligent adherence to art direction can do for video games, and as such, it is one of the most visually memorable games of its generation, and arguably of all time.

The game also did a superb job at its alternate story. While it can be a bit of a head-scratcher near its conclusion, I heavily appreciate the writing team's decision to NOT make this series of remakes carbon-copy replicas of the OG's story. With the twist this series is spinning on its classic story, we can be ensured that every new game in this series will have new twists and turns to experience. For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I will say nothing about what actually occurs in this game. But for what its worth, this game's balancing act between retaining classic elements of its story (base character themes, memorable characters from the original, trace elements of the original story) and new elements is carried out very well.

The one area I have in disagreement with a lot of players, however, is this game's combat. Call me an old-timer, but I truly do think that OG FF7's ATB combat system in junction with its materia system was the most fun FF has ever been. The semi-realtime combat focus of this title, while rewarding in some areas, can lead to a very quickly fatiguing gameplay loop.

Since Remake takes place solely in Midgar, concessions to pacing had to be made to ensure that this game was long enough to justify its asking price of a full-retail experience. The game averages around 35-40 hours, which is nearly as much as the original, but unfortunately a lot of those hours involves incredibly padded-out stretches of combat that are absolutely egregious. If you know, you know. Instead of making Remake an open experience where Cloud and company can explore the vast world of Midgar, the bulk of this game lies in combat encounters taking forever because enemies either have too much health, or they can stagger you way too easily.

The amount of times I had to deal with enemies who stunlock you into canceling your moves with little to no telegraphing aside from a red hovering text (that lasts too short) was very, very disheartening to experience in a video game whose presentation I absolutely fell in love with.

But the translation of the materia system into this game was masterful. Even with an action-combat focus, the customizability of this game's characters is still a thing of beauty. With the right know-how, you can turn barret from a DPS-dealing tank to the healer of the group. And as surface-level as these RPG elements can be, they're still satisfying to mess with. In a lot of JRPGs, your stats are decided for you (cough cough, Persona...). But in FF7Remake, you get to choose which party member is good at what.

But yeah, overall, FF7 Remake is a great game that could have been better had certain aspects of its design been tweaked. While containing one of gaming's very best world design, interesting materia mechanics, and a fresh spin on a classic narrative, the choices made to frequency of combat encounters, enemy health, enemy attacks, and quest design make FF7 Remake frustrating at key points.

I highly recommend you play or watch a playthrough of FF7 OG before playing this. There's so much to enjoy with this game with intense prior knowledge of its original counterpart.

8/10

A real shame that on PS5, this game is completely broken. It's just a choppy mess. The game has immaculate vibes, a great visual, themes that seemed really interesting, inspiration from Breath of the Wild... But I just had to drop it because of how choppy it is. The frame rate is just terrible. I don't know if that's the case on PS4 (if anyone could tell me if that's the case or not I'd be grateful), but yeah, right now I don't see myself pushing through a game which is just not pleasant at all, it just ruins the whole vibe of the game. Plus I really think it blows that the devs confirmed that the game would not receive a patch even with it being added to PS Plus. Real shame

After playing Baldur's Gate 3 last year, I remember telling one of my mates: "I have no idea where this came from? Larian just showed up and was like, I'm the greatest RPG developer ever, here's a certified godlike banger, goodbye." Having now rolled credits on Divinity 2, it turns out I'm just stupid. Larian's been cooking for years but my debilitating fear of top-down cameras and ability hotbars as long as Route 66 meant I completely avoided it. Divinity 2: Original Sin is essentially Baldur's Gate 3's older, slightly nerdier brother, and by extension, it's another boundary-breaking master class in how to make ginormous, sprawling experiences that are still somehow rewarding, reactive and quality-rich. And when I say quality-rich, I mean unfathomably quality-rich.

This game is like 80 hours long. It's just filled to the brim with stuff. It's one of those games that I have to dig deep, speak mystical incantations and summon my relentless 13-year-old, gremlin-brained self to have the patience, stamina and sheer lack of self-preservation to get through in a timely manner. And somehow, while offering such a vast spread of stuff to engage with, nothing in here ever really feels like it's scraping the bottom of the barrel. It's never just serving you up content. It's mission after mission of main event, must-play stuff, largely because everything from the side quests and the companion missions to the core story sections and even random NPC encounters are intertwined. Every quest somehow links into the larger story, every character has something relevant to say and every corner is filled with something worth investigating.

Having played this and Baldur's Gate 3 only a few months apart, it's wild to me how good Larian is at spinning these kinds of stories. They're unparalleled at setting up a huge world that you can explore freely while still somehow making every element you interact with feel like it's part of one, seamlessly unified narrative. Their games are labours of love, and Divinity 2 is no exception. It's just a really saucy, well-made, video-game-ass video game.

And that extends far beyond the story. The way it doesn't establish arbitrary rules regarding how you play or solve a situation. The way combat is a puzzle that challenges you to think outside the box. The way it never holds your hand or tells you what to do but slyly always somehow guides you back to your objective.

And yes, I don't think it's quite as good as BG3. It's more tedious to play, the inventory management is hellish, and act 4 is filled with bullshit gimmick fights and puzzles that are more annoying than fun. The difficulty spikes are also ROUGH at points. The tutorial area's my personal favourite, because it's like, oh here's some slugs to fight. Really learn the game and all that. Then it randomly just decides it's tired of all the loser baby shit now, and spawns in giant alligators with teleporting magic who will absolutely push your shit in for no reason at all.

And don't even get me started on the many, many sections where you get a potato-brained AI teammate you have to protect. Every single one of these goofy lil bastards will single-handedly pull off the most elaborately stupid manoeuvres you've ever seen, to the point where you wonder if they're throwing on purpose and you're gonna pop up in a YouTube prank video in two months' time. They'll actively cancel out every big-damage-set-up you're currently putting together, and then after they inevitably die, every NPC you meet will just chat mad shit about what a terrible person you are for not reloading every turn 9 times to protect them from their own stupidity.

But this is still an absolute banger from a studio that I'm slowly learning is incapable of dropping the ball. Considering the talks before Baldur's Gate 3 were that Divinity 3 could be the next big project on the docket for Larian, I'm pretty gassed to see what these dudes could do with the IP now they've managed to launch arguably one of the best RPGs ever made. Gonna hazard a guess that it'll feature way more horny vampire dudes and shapeshifting grizzly bear sex...