Final Fantasy 7 Remake was a game that I played at Pax East in 2020, and really loved the demo of. The demo was visually impressive, and the boss fight felt extremely fresh.

Skip to a month later, and I find myself in a situation where I am stuck. 5 hours in, and the combat is the most grueling experience I have ever had in an action game. Honestly, it's some of the worst I have played. The experience of the combat can be described as punching enough times, to then unlock the ability to kick. The ATB system where you stop time to do spells, use items, and other actions that aren't pressing the square button is cool in concept. In reality, it feels so annoying when you have to use a bar which could be used for an attack, to heal yourself. Healing items should have costed half a bar, but using a full bar makes it so the fights take longer and thats where we get to another issue I had. The main combat mechanics are so boring its wild. Cloud has 2 buttons, sword, and harder hitting but slower sword. Barret has 2 buttons, gun, and big gun blast. Tifa has 2 buttons, punch, and big punch. Seeing a pattern? The main combat mechanics are the exact same combos over and over and over again, which after 5 hours, make the game feel really repetetive. I understand that there are special moves you can use which use ATB, but they don't feel satisfying to use in a combo because you stop time, and scroll through a menu. I know there is a shortcuts option, but it still didn't feel satisfying to hit these attacks.

And then there's the story, which to me, was very boring. I didn't care about the characters by the ending of the game really at all, which makes me sad, because the story of Final Fantasy 7 is so acclaimed.

My final complaint has to be the level deisgn. Oh boy, it sucks. Hallway after hallway after puzzle after puzzle after "platforming". It really feels so repetetive and sluggish to play.

I really wish I just played the original game, because this game is one of my least favorites that I have ever played.

For my English class, I was tasked to write an opinion piece on whatever I wanted. This is the resuslt:

Throughout my entire life, ever since around age 7, I have loved Pokemon. The franchise has been a constant throughout my life, and overall, I really enjoyed my time when playing the games. However, there is one game in particular that I honestly despise. A game where almost everything disappoints me. That game is called, Pokemon Sword.

For a bit of context, Pokemon Sword is the 5th Pokemon game I had played. In the past, I have played Pokemon Black 2, Pokemon X, Pokemon Omega Ruby, and Pokemon Sun.


Lets begin with some backstory. The Pokemon franchise had always been on handheld systems. It started on the Gameboy, and continued all the way until the Nintendo Switch, which is a mix between a console and a handheld. A lot of people were excited to hear that a new entry in the franchise would be on a console, which bought lots of speculation on how the game would look and play. One thing a lot of people wanted from a new game is having the gameplay become “open world”. An open world game is a type of game where exploration is the main purpose. An open world game is extremely loose with it’s gameplay, meaning you don’t always at every moment have to be doing the main objective. The world could be ending, and I could be walking on top of mountains and riding horses. Ever since the beginning, Pokemon has been about the adventure. Leaving home to become a Pokemon trainer. If you look at the cartoons opening, the song starts with “I want to be, the very best, like no one ever was”. However, this did not really translate to the gameplay of the actual Pokemon games. In the Pokemon games, you go down set routes, and there are no ways to get around it if you want to progress the story, which is very linear game design. This is opposed to an open world game, which is very non-linear.


With the added power of the Nintendo Switch, fans wanted this open world gameplay, and what they got was a slap in the face. Imagine you were just dropped off an airplane into a rainforest. Your task is to explore as much as possible. You feel empowered, knowing that what lies ahead is this adventure that nobody has ever been on before. You start running in one direction, and theres a wall, and you realize you are trapped in a cube. This is what in Pokemon Sword is called the “Wild Area”. The Wild Area is an “open world” cube, where there is no sense of exploration due to the fact you can see everywhere with one turn of the in game camera. There is no high heights, or deep lows of terrain. The Wild Area is a block of land is visually uninteresting, and once you’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it 100 times. The developers of the game took a concept fans have wanted for years, and dumbed it down to such an extent that it made the concept boring.


Now, if you ignored the Wild Area, as if you took it out of the game entirely and just had the rest of the game, you still would get a boring experience. Lets take the main gameplay for example, which is turn based battles with the Pokemon. The main problem with this is that the gameplay has not changed since 1998. So many generations of children, so many childhoods, and it has stayed the same. Ever since 2013, when Pokemon X released, they have added mechanics that are specific to that game. When the game first releases, this is a cool idea, but when they immediately remove them in the next iteration, and then go onto something new, it creates a cycle of throwing away ideas, which is bad because they need to spice up the gameplay somehow. Pokemon Sword is also extremely easy. I understand the claim that “Pokemon is for children”, which to be fair, the main demographic is children, but Pokemon is the highest earning media franchise of all time, and should be able to appeal to everyone. The competitive Pokemon tournaments that Nintendo holds have a junior, and senior division, which is based on age. The games are meant for everyone, but the developers act like children are stupid, and cant play a game that could be hard. If anything, the developers should add difficulty options to make the game harder if players choose, but they don't provide such a choice.





In my opinion, Pokemon Sword is the worst game in the franchise in 20 years. It’s bland to look at, too easy, doesn’t have anything for old players to enjoy, and a slap in the face to the fans. Pokemon Sword is the worst game I have ever played, and I am sad to say that this game is in the same franchise as other games I have loved for years.