That is a hard pill to swallow, this could be one of the greatest game of all time, and it is for so many people thankfully. But some things I cannot ignore. No it's not the game being woke because they have blue skin and no pronouns. The quintessential space experience is discovery, the game opting to offer most of it in the form of text archives. Now, I understand the limited ressources of the team, but none of the in-game people writing these texts nor the content itself were anything to write home about. I just wanted a space bunny I guess. I love bunnos. Unrelated. The lack of wildlife hits you like a stinky pussay, but there's really no problem with a different scope. Kicking down on indies for their lack of budget and manpower would just be stating the obvious, while at the same time admitting being showered in creativity under limitations stops being enough and you want the paws of capitalism on a product to fully realize... mechanics, at the cost of the vision. Nah we ain't fuckin with that.

The planets were dope, they're small yet you're not allowed to view much, so you have to walk around, jump around, whatever burn some calories man (you're gonna need it in space, bucko!). After landing on a few surfaces, you realize they are surface level LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER NOISE ignore my lame joke BUT still, the scope means the planets have to be small and there is some cool spectacle discovered once you land on a given planet. Nothing as daunting in other media as the storms on Giant's End and the sand pillar on Twin Peaks (idr the name). But das what im sayinnn the wonders cease early on and the rest is grabbing enchantment table ahh texts like they're collectibles. You'd lose some of the disorientation if you made planets bigger, would anyone actually want not to jump a little too high and leave orbit like a child being dropped on his first day of school? No! They tried atleast.

The realistic space movement is genuinely amazing. It really propels up the joy of exploration. Before you even get the hang of it, it just feels cool, that's how I control in my dreams and so do you. Lemme SWOOOSH and THUMP--THUMP--THUMP and YIPPEEEE and demolish my ship, as I deserve for my travesty of a flight. It's a roguelite that's self-aware of being one, just like Hades. But this really isn't a roguelite at all, moreso... slow burn Die & Retry feat walking simulator? We get too caught up in labelling things. It's an arena fighter now. You're fighting the physics and raycasts. A guide to the qintessential indie experience once said "indie games are famous for their lack of set gender" as they mistranslated the french "genre" which both means "genre" (shocker) and gender. The marketing team should go to the MARKET to see which bitches are up for sale, the localization industry is fucked as fuck

The ending's impact landed better on some other people, I do think other scenarists have found less clumsy ways to reach that conclusion. But these people probably did drugs, so you go Outer Wilds!

Outer Wilds made me less convinced of Games' potential as an art form. Im being provocative on purpose but How many goddamned times is the message of a game that is praised for its artistic merit be, to one degree or another "Memento Mori"? Spiritfarer, What Remains of Edith Finch, Persona 3, Pentiment, now Outer Wilds. I like all of these games to varying degrees but it just makes me hopeless if time and time again thats seemingly the only subject games are praised for tackling. "Your life is limited and you will eventually die" Yeah thanks game, I already knew that, I literally think about it every single goddamned day, to a degree that actively makes me miserable. I know its stupid but I cannot help it and no amount of whimsical space banjos is going to change that!

In fairness my main issues with Outer Wilds are personal. When you make a game such as this its going to be loved by some and utterly alienate others and that is fine. Outer Wilds is a game that requires patience, and I have none. Fuck it, this is already way too personal of a review : I'm 80% sure I have ADHD and am in the process of getting diagnosed. All of my academic pursuits thus far have been failures because I physically cannot pay attention to anything for more than a few minutes at a time and get extremely frustrated when things don't go my way. When I am forced to queue at the Supermarket I grit my teeth and subequently fantasize about bludgeoning the customers in front of me with my shopping so I can cut in line.

So whilst it was a valiant effort on the part of Outer Wilds fans to tell me to never look anything up because this is a game of information, it was never going to happen. I tried, believe me. I figured some things out and especially in the first few hours or so I had a great time just leisurely exploring stuff and reading text and trying to puzzle it all together. Unfortunately Outer Wilds is a game that is 90% failure and 10% victory/discovery. As much as there is no consequence for failure other than time, figuring out how to get to a place and having to redo the loop twice cause the autopilot killed you or a tiny mistake on your part is demoralising. And that is the word I would use to describe Outer Wilds, it demoralised me in almost every aspect.

Now, I did keep playing the game and finished it, which still puts it better than most games and for sure there is SOMETHING here I enjoyed. Once you get used to the slighltly clunky controls and learn to never use the stupid autopilot unless the planet is literally in a straight line from you with only empty space between its pretty fun to fly around and discover stuff. The couple of "Aha" moments I did have were gratifying but sometimes I had figured out what I had to do but hadnt quite figured out exactly what the game meant me to do (the detective game problem). The artstyle is quite good and the music is great.

The high points of Outer Wilds are high, but to me its low points are so low It just left me cold. The amount of times I left a play session after failing to do something and just feeling shitty for the rest of the day, I just dont play games for that man. I would still recommend Outer Wilds. It is better than Outer Worlds, but I would only recommend it to people who have a lot of patience.

SPOILERS
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On a last note, I can see why people like the ending but I didnt. I was already just wanting the game to be over after the nightmare that was the Dark Bramble which I left for the end, and the dumb item gather quest I found irritating and after all that the ending is just a downer. Yes I know its on purpose blah blah dont struggle against the end etc but it just makes the quest seem kind of pointless to me. I think the Nomai writings about the Eye wherein one of the scholars wonders if the Eye of the universe actually didnt call the Nomai at all, they just ascribed it that significance and in fact the eye may not give any amount of shit about them was supposed to be metaphorical about religion and the indifference of the Universe towards us, as well as mirroring the player's own realization that the timeloop was just a coincidence. You were not on some supernatural quest to stop a supernova, you were coincidentally roped in to a system no longer manned or overseen by anyone. And I get it, but again I just don't like it, it bums me out. Idk, I have no better way to end this unhinged essay so heres a song I like : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzfoSLP_w1I

While mechanically and linguistically they're far apart, FF9 and FF12 have a shared lineage in starting off being overlooked releases on their respective systems. It's an exaggeration to say both sold poorly cause they still sold well within the millions, but compare that to the releases made prior to them, and it's not hard to see the disparity of sales figures. Not helping is that unlike 9, 12 had a rocky cycle just getting made; it's rather well-known amongst the fanbase, but originally this was lead by well-known, politic-driven auteur Yasumi Matsuno and series veteran Hiroyuki Ito, but when Matsuno faced health issues, his role was transferred over to his partner, Hiroshi Minagawa, with SaGa creator Akitoshi Kawazu taking up the producer role. This even led to Hironobu Sakaguchi outright say that he didn't even play past the beginning due to Matsuno's departure, which given that the two worked extensively and closely on Vagrant Story, along becoming increasingly bitter towards Square Enix soon after leaving the studio, it makes sense. I'm not sure if it's an exaggeration to say this given there's now far worse instances, but it was one of the rougher cycles in an FF title, which is rather mindblowing considering how intrinsically and tightly this is to becoming one of the series' all time best.

It's been playfully and cheekily said that there's strong allusions to Star Wars, and while the lineage of Square employees have long since made it obvious these two franchises are intertwined with one another, alongside two specific details within the narrative being lifted straight from the global space opera phenomenon - no major spoilers here, but players or people who wikidive should know what I'm referring to - I imagine that tonally and structurally it's instead much similar to the film that inspired that one: Akira Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress. I say imagine because at the time of writing this, I have yet to see it for myself, but given how politically charged this is comparatively, as well as Vaan and Penelo not becoming Big Superstar Heroes whisked off from their penurious origins, and instead humbled off into becoming their (well, really Vaan's) dreams of being sky-flying pirates, and containing a far cry of Leia and Han's predicaments by doubling down and centering much more on the interpersonal and dramatic detailing of high class echelons royalty Princess Ashe and Stoic Knight Basch, I'm inclined to believe this. Rounding out the party are well-off pirate duo Balthier and Fran, both harboring a deep scar within their past that they're not keen on opening up until well into the story which is a bit distant from the relationship Han and Chewbacca have with one another. Though there were changes made in giving a "proper" MC role during development, as well as Ashe being given the brunt of the grandoise power plays typically obligated to such an archetype, the overall scattershot approach of focus and centering on this sextuple, ironically, gives the game its biggest strength, which is on how playing them like chess pieces in order pushes forward the revelations of the thematic ties of redemption and sorrowful reconciliation. Sure, this approach might not work for everyone, but it worked for me. While I'd struggle to detail what makes Penelo and Fran stand out, I'm enamored with how the tribulations of Ashe and Basch are covered, Balthier's one of my favorite hotshot rogues in any RPG, and, hot take, Vaan's one of the finest examples of what an audience surrogate leader should be. Even disregarding all that, the crew's budding kinship of closed off personal to a tight-knitted team ready to fend off the worst of the Archadian Empire is very well-done, orchestrating segmented growth and charm of the group, even in hilarious ways.

Least to say of the majestic world that is this entry's iteration of Ivalice. It's steeped strongly in culture outside of Japan, from as obvious as Ancient Rome and the Mediterranean, to more moderate patterns such as Arabic, Turkish, Indian, and American. It's been about two years since I last had a session, but memories of Rabanastre, Jahara, Mt. Bur-Omisace, and the Imperial City resonate deep within my gray matter. It also helps there's such a wide array of activities to do here thanks to the Hunts, various side quests, filling out the Sky Pirate Den which is essentially the in-game achievement tracker, slews of side areas, and others to boot. In fact, the only reason I didn't go out of my way to obtain a 100% Completion on Steam is cause a couple of them, such as the Bestiary and Trial Mode, were well after I reached my burnout state, and I'm annoyed by how Concurrence is calculated (more on that in a bit), which also meant I couldn't get this game's designated achievement on... getting all the achievements. As linked before, I also hold this game's OST dearly, like we're talkin S-Tier category here and irregardless of Zodiac Age's exquisite and dearly appreciated decision to incorporate three options of either the CD, OG PS2, or - my personal choice and the one I've been leaning on for this review - Reorchestrated sound. Best Prologue iteration, top three Battle On The Big Bridge arrangement, Respite's elegant beauty surrounding you, the Esper battle's daunting force, just a whole lot of hits packed onto a monstrous array of songs, fitting Hitoshi Sakimoto's familiar repertoire to a T. On that note, this game's Espers are hands down the coolest set of summons in the franchise with how they're played into the mythos of this game, as well as just being great bouts of strength in general. Particular favorites are Mateus, Zodiark, Cúchulainn, and Zeromus.

As mentioned in my (albeit spoiler-adjacent) review of FF9, one of the immense appeals and another pillar of strength in FF12 is its battle system. One say this "plays itself", I say this is the closest I'll ever get to both fully understanding how min-max strats work, as well as truly getting the appeal of the NFL tactics and play, an aspect Ito has openly shared on interviews. Though I don't have any experience with the initial PS2 version, I'm nonetheless eager to say the fine-tuning and careful concoctions that can spark from the dual-role job picks a la License Board can concoct wild ideas and inspirations. Want to make a tank-support? Available thanks to Shikari-White Mage or Knight-Time Mage. Wanna double-down on ranged opportunities in both the physical and spiritual fields? Use the Archer or Machinist job with any of the Mages and you're set. What about pure magic? Red Mage-Black Mage has you covered. Yearn for the days when FF games dabbled with DPS-style niches? Foebreaker-Shikari's right there waiting for you to fuck enemies up. So many builds to pick from, not to mention the ability to double dip into one or more, gives you free reign to go buck wild, and along with the ability to respec any of them for free, and it becomes the most diverse and experimental set of mechanics in the series, opening the flood gates for as broad as challenge runs or as simple as "this job matches this character's personality". Pro tip, though: designate which trio is gonna be the Main Group for generally the crux of the campaign, and which will be the Side/Backup one to generally play catch/clean up duty with the side activities, it's the best way to balance XP gain thanks to the License Points always being distributed amongst everyone as long as they live. This is also where Gambits shine, as being able to set which conditional tactic are carried out once met can make-or-break certain encounters, or just coast you through the fields. Being able to pick up a variety of different subjects, objects, and utility cases and organize them within these set is therapeutic, as is when they're set off just right and pull yourself out of a rut with ease, or help to circumvent an action first before relaying back to finishing the battle at hand. I'd also say that dungeons are typically on the right side of the scale, there's enough distinction and unique mechanics at play to stand them apart from each one, and also do a fantastic job on delving deeper into this already expansive world.

If there's anything I'd say that holds back FF12 from being a bonafide classic, it's that the aforementioned development woes crop up big time here. Not nearly as much as footage of FF15 can show, but you can feel its fluctuating pulse as you hit certain beats. Whether it's the abruptness of the Resistance's final assault near the end, the lethargic beginning of limited potential even by the series' standard, a couple of dungeons overstaying their welcome such as Great Crystal, and specific plot details coming in and out of the picture such as those pertaining to Vayne Solidor, it's hard to not at least feel like something was missing from the board. The mechanics of battles are also uneasy, due to Gambits not having quite the specificity as you'd think, which not only ties back to the problem that the early beginning up to I wanna say the arrival to Bhujerba being quite slow, it also means that your actions and strategy plans are only in close approximation as to what you're setting out to achieve, which is annoying. My biggest gripe with combat is easily with the aforementioned Concurrence system, which is activated by utilizing this game's equivalent to Limit Breaks, Quickening, to their fullest. You are able to unlock up to three bars of charge as you progress in the story, and activating one, two, or all of them will allow you to do the respective stage of an LB attack, with the ability to gain back a charge to follow up on more. Do this enough times, and you'll be treated to a powerful, non-elemental attack capable of damaging everything, including bosses and the higher-tiered Hunts. Of course, with a grand ability such as that, it has to be balanced, and the way they utilized this is by... making it completely luck based. It's not like you're reliant on these working in order to take care of something, but it's the nature of being subjugated to dice rolls as to whether you can get a charge or even do a gauge-specific attack, along with there being multiple variants available that you have to do to get that achievement that frustrates me to no end, and combine that with the fact these are unskippable animations that play on loop frequently, and I only used them when it was needed. Other FF games, including ones I've yet to touch, had elements of RNG to these sorts of systems sure, but I'd yet to experience one that was as reliant on the draw of cards as this one has. There's also Espers, again even by the series' standards, not having any real use in combat due to the other mechanics far outstripping and outranking them for maintenance, but even then that's more of a nitpick than a legitimate issue.

All said and done, however, FF12 has been one of the most unforgettable games in the franchise - nay, one of the most unforgettable games in the genre - I've gone through in recent years. Its appeal might be more limited, especially in a series where individualistic aspects of these entries are always apparent and displayed, but that's also what gives it a gargantuan pulse and treasure to uncover. Definitely give this a shot, even if you're on the fence about it, I'm positive at least something about it will stick with you in one way or another.

My "comfort" game. This is the one game I can keep coming back to consistently no matter how many hours I've put into it.

This game perfectly blends 2 of my favourite gaming elements (Proper Stealth & Sandbox with emergent gameplay) and does it really well.
There are so many ways you can replay the missions in this game it almost feels unlimited, and now with the addition of freelancer (a new rogue lite mode) this feeling is even more true.

This game perfectly encapsulates that James Bond/John Wick modern high society espionage feeling that very few games do capture.
My only 1 wish with this game is that IOI release an offline patch so you can have progression and freelancer without needing to connect to the internet

Stop me if you've heard this one before

We're gonna make an rpg. It's gonna be made in rpg maker. It's gonna be needlessly quirky and random, there's gonna be a jarring about face turn with attempts at drama that fall flat, Non characters will populate the story, and its climax will rip off a much better game that you'd rather be playing

Sound familiar? Welcome to indie rpgs of the last decade

“Really sorry about your ass.”

(some spoilers for OG FF7’s first ten hours, no spoilers for FF7R)

I started this review series by listing my absolute favorite games; both because being positive feels good, but also to provide a kind of baseline for what to expect here, I suppose. In that same vein, I feel it’s also important to show contrast: if my favorites are all about pure mechanical expression and smooth, organic interactions, then FF7R, conversely, represents everything that holds games back to me. This thing is so rigid and limited that it somehow manages to feel more outdated than the turn-based 90s RPG it’s remaking. While FF7’s original design-ethos was built on detailed one-off environments, contextual storytelling and intuitive yet flexible battle mechanics, FF7R completely tears down all of these pillars, leaving in their place the kind of nightmare-hyperbole-parody that weebs are describing when they talk about the latest Call of Duty or Uncharted.

Action-adjacent Square RPGs like Dissidia or Crisis Core can have this tendency to not ground your actions in the game world very much — it’s the difference between button presses triggering canned interactions between actors, or throwing out an actual hitbox that I need to connect with the enemy. FF7R feels like the final form of this in the worst possible way: for as gnarly as the impact of Cloud’s flashy sword combos on enemy grunts may look on the surface, there isn’t actually any real physicality to how your attacks throw them around, nor does the addition of square-mashing add anything meaningful mechanically when compared to FF7. You quickly realize that your standard attacks don’t actually do appreciable damage and solely exist to pad out the time between ATB moves, a process that previously moved along on its own. No amount of alibi-action disguises the fact that this is, at its heart, still a turn-based RPG, where enemies weak to fire need to be hit with the fire spell and damage can’t be reliably avoided. You get about five hundred different ways to “parry” attacks, none of which actually require any careful timing on your end, but interact with enemies in ways that are completely arbitrary. The final boss in particular is a hilarious display of just how bad this game wants to look like a Devil May Cry, while still working under NES JRPG rules and refusing to adopt things like consistent telegraphing or hit reactions. In those instances, it’s some of the most shallow and repetitive action-gameplay imaginable.

Countless FF7R skill videos do show how much this new combat system can pop off, since it gives you control over when and how to queue up party attacks and provides some unique states for active positioning on the battlefield. What those videos all have in common though is that they're exclusively shot in the game’s VR challenge missions with precise Materia setups; ideal conditions for the system to shine that flat-out don’t exist in the rest of the game. Campaign mob fights run the gamut from boring to soul-crushingly tedious (those goddamn sewer fish guys,) while any fun you could be having with bosses is knee-capped by absurd damage gating and forced cutscene transitions that will eat any excess damage you put out that moment. This aspect should’ve been a top priority with the boss design considering how much combat revolves around slowly building up this Stagger bar, where the majority of the fight is spent purely setting up the boss for when you can finally lay the smack down (which, just like for FFXIII, already does a lot to make individual actions feel linear and meaningless.) The way all that damage will regularly evaporate into nothing due to factors completely outside your control feels like having a bag of Tetsuya Nomura-shaped bricks dropped right on your nutsack just as you’re about to cum.

Under that light, the proposition of digging into the Materia system and trying to get the most out of it is absolutely laughable. I can’t even begin to tell you how many boss fights I went into only to realize halfway through (after some kind of form-change or mechanical switch-up) that my setup wasn’t optimal, forcing me to either slog and fumble through the rest of the battle, or back out and start from scratch with this new knowledge. All that’s on top of the godforsaken menus you’re forced to work with that hit this abominable sweetspot between clunky stone-age level interface design and the suffocating swathe of meaningless skill trees you’ve come to expect from modern AAA games. How is it possible that healing outside of battle literally takes longer in this game than it did in Final Fantasy (just Final Fantasy. 1. the first one.) on the NES?

FF7R’s final Shinra HQ invasion has to be one of the worst isolated parts of any game I’ve ever played and represents a microcosm for how little it respects your time. Every issue I’ve discussed so far is amplified now that your party is split in half, with no way to quickly transfer setups between the two teams. Fights are now sandwiched between “””platforming””” sections that have Tifa monkey bar-ing by transitioning from one excruciatingly slow canned animation into the next. To get back to what I was saying in that second paragraph: for as much as Uncharted’s climbing for example is brain-dead easy, it at least provides some vague sense that I’m in control of a character in a physical setting, instead of giving commands to a robot on the fucking moon. The least you could say about Uncharted, also, is that it gives you shit to look at. What is the point of remaking the most popular JRPG of all time as this PS4 mega-game when that entails turning all of its handcrafted backgrounds into featureless copy-paste tunnels and compressed-to-shit JPEG skyboxes, all of which now necessitate what feels like hours upon hours of squeeze-through loading?

All that begs the question: what exactly did I push through this trash heap for in the end? I categorically reject the notion that a game this mechanically regressive can still come together purely as a vehicle for cutscenes or something, but even entertaining that idea for a minute has me confused over what the big deal is. My impression is that FF7R managing, against all expectations, to not be some Advent Children-level train wreck sapping any and all life out of these characters, is enough for it to come across as this masterful reexamination of the original story to many players (also that the whole cast is hot.) The reality is that, while some of the dialogue and character interactions does hit, this game is 40 hours long and naturally a lot of that extra time is padded out by your party members giving each other directions to hopefully not get lost in this FFXIII-ass level design. It’s pure filler and adds little of value to the existing story.

FF7R’s most crucial mistake, and why I’ve now realized this remake-series was an awful idea to begin with, is to think that just knowing wider information about a character will automatically make us care about them more. I first played the original in 2015, and back then, the deaths of Biggs, Wedge and Jessie legitimately shocked me. And it’s not because I was particularly attached to those characters — instead, it was all in the execution: sudden, unceremonious, unfair and way too soon. That’s the whole reason it worked, and it was a way to make you hate the faceless corporation that was Shinra that actually felt earned. FF7R not only tries to endear us to Avalanche by giving us exponentially more time with them, it bone-headedly draws out their deaths in a way that’s so corny and obvious it borders on parody. You’d think giving the villains more screen-time would be a harmless at-worst change, but presenting them as these hot badasses only makes this feel even more like some generic Shounen anime and less like the systemic fight against capitalism that was the original.

I’d be lying if I said the way they contextualize this remake within FF7’s overall story wasn’t kind of clever, but my gut tells me this twist is only gonna feel more lame as time passes. It’s already at the point where it derails any and all discussion about the game; where somehow being a little bit meta means all the shit about it that makes me want to off myself is actually intentional and smart. The literal first numero uno side-quest I did in FF7R involved crawling into some back-alley, killing a pack of rats, going back to the quest giver to be told I “didn’t kill the right rats,” heading to the same spot again and finally killing the new rats that just spawned there. The starting area this quest takes place in has to be one of the ugliest sections I’ve seen in any AAA game, with hazy washed out lighting and NPC animation that hasn’t evolved a bit from FFX on the PS2.

The most poignant experience I had in my time playing FF7R was in Wall Market. It's easily the most gassed-up part of the game online, mostly to do with the fact that it’s a vehicle for wacky anime cutscene shenanigans and how the characters ramp up the horny to the max of what a Square Enix game is comfortable with (that Don Corneo confrontation is cringeworthy with all the awkward pauses between lines.) In Wall Market, you can enter this bar. The barkeeper will ask you to sit down and have a drink. You can’t do either of those things; you just stand there as the NPCs around you gaze into the void.

FF7R is not the fully-realized mega budget dream version of Midgar we've all been salivating at the thought of, and it’s not some clever meta commentary either. No, I’m pretty sure it just sucks.