Pokémon Omega Ruby is the game I spent the most hours in. Not only is this a great remake of my favorite region, it also expands on it a lot. And yes, I know, the Battle Frontier is missing. I missed it, as well. But that’s about the only major thing I dislike about OR/AS.

I invested over a thousand hours into completing the entire Pokédex, breeding perfect Pokémon for competitive battles and tournaments, I hunted and bred shiny Pokémon, also for competitive battles or just for casual possession. And yes, I participated in hundreds of competitive battles and dozens of tournaments. I wasn’t the best trainer, but I was good. I loved it so, so, so much. This game literally changed my life. I made so many friends IRL and online due to this game. I also spent hours into trading, especially Wonder Trade in hope to get one of these totally legit shiny competitive monsters from Sakati and others.

As I said, Hoenn is my favorite region and it contains most of my absolute favorite monsters, such as Linoone, Sableye, Blaziken, Manectric, Gardevoir, Salamence, Metagross and its legendaries Groudon, Kyogre and Rayquaza, especially its shiny version.

I know this region isn’t the most varied one, there’s a lot people wouldn’t love the most, too much water and whatnot, but this game is just very special to me and I think it’s a genuinely great game. It’s also the last Pokémon main title I enjoyed on very high levels. I hold this game dear and I stand by it.

Boy oh boy, my expectations for this game were exorbitantly high and yet, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth exceeded almost all of them.

It took me a few years to appreciate what Remake is and what it was doing and I still do have a few major problems with it. Some of them lie within the nature of Midgar itself. Rebirth on the other hand is a near perfect game.

I only have a few minor issues with it, such as the resolution in performance mode or the framerate in graphics mode. The game struggled to load some textures during in-game cutscenes, such things. But I’m not petty, that doesn’t drag down the game that much. I’m not a fan of a few mini games, as well. I think this game does have amazing mini games, most of them are very well integrated into the story and the quality is top notch, but I wish the piano mini game had some accessibility options. It’s literally impossible for my brain to focus on two sticks for the piano. It just says no, even if it’s the easiest song with the slowest rhythm. So I wish there was a way for people like me to clear the songs some other way. The other mini game that infuriated me was the chocobo gliding. Not that it’s hard or impossible for me to clear, but I don’t know why they thought it’d be a great idea to not be able to move the camera in order to spot the rings? I heard they fixed it in the latest patch already, but I didn’t try it and I already had to suffer anyway.

I also didn’t enjoy the Cait Sith part in Shinra’s Villa, but that’s about it.

There’s nothing else I could complain about. As I mentioned, a nearly perfect game.

This game took everything that was great in Remake and refined it on so, so, so many levels. Be it the materia system, the easy to learn but hard to master combat system, the mechanics, the exploration in the open world or during linear sections or the RPG elements. You need to know, I’m a bit conservative when it comes to the definition of “RPG” or “JRPG”, so I rarely (not never) consider action RPGs “JRPGs”, sometimes not even truly “RPG”, but the RPG elements in Rebirth are so well thought-out and deep that I’m calling this one a full-fledged JRPG. I consider the Tales series JRPG, as well, just as another example, but I do not consider NieR: Automata a JRPG, even though it’s one of my absolute favorite games of all time. And I do not consider Final Fantasy XVI a JRPG or RPG in any way.

Rebirth really puts XVI into perspective, huh? Better story, dynamic party members that interact with you and with each other, each character is beautifully written, meaningful or silly side quests, Cloud can actually run fast, there’s much more to explore, the soundtrack is a lot better, you can catch chocobos, high quality mini games, great mechanics, actual RPG elements, accessories and equipments do more than giving you 0.1 second less of a cooldown for just one skill. Final Fantasy XVII really needs to be more like Rebirth, because Rebirth is unironically as good as the golden era Final Fantasy games that are VI to X. It’s full of heart and soul. It’s a love letter not only to Final Fantasy VII, but to the best era this series ever had. Final Fantasy VII is my favorite game of all time and Rebirth made me love it even more, while knowing the original (and Crisis Core) makes me love Rebirth even more, as well.

As to the story, I don’t want to leave spoilers in here, but I loved every second of it. Even the “ending” that is controversial to some of players.

And I got Tifa as my date. You KNOW why this scene is GREAT.

The people on the rotten pizza want you to believe there are two timelines in Final Fantasy VII, the original and the Remake timeline.

But let me tell you there are three timelines:
• the original
• the one in which Remake begins
• the one in which Remake ends

At first, I hated the direction Remake takes, then I liked it and now I love it. It took a few years for me to appreciate the fact that this is not a classic remake, but a sequel, as well.

I’m still not a fan of how restrictive the exploration is and the direction of some scenes or chapters are not as great as in the original. But the restrictions are in the nature of Midgar itself, so I hope Rebirth fixes some of the issues I have with Remake. And apparently, it does.

I love the creativity, the lively animations, the fresh ideas and the general level design in this game. That’s how a 2D Mario should be. And yet…

I don’t have fun with it anymore.

And the main reason are the Wonder Effects. At first, they’re absolutely spectacular, mind-blowing, even. But after a while, you notice how some of them “repeat” or “take” some of the levels. Some make you invincible, some make enemies use attacks that won’t damage you. Each level has a Wonder Effect that is either fun or boring. And the spectacle becomes unspectacular. Imagine every single Rayman Legends level would have been a music stage, or every Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze level would have been like level 3:1 (like a musical).

And I know, I should love Wonder, but it currently feels like one of the worst and best 2D Mario titles at the same time.

And another reason is — typically for 2D Mario — that it is very easy. I know, I haven’t finished the game and it gets harder, but the overall difficulty is laughable. And while Wonder definitely is much more creative than the NSMB titles, its creativity doesn’t reach the levels of DKCTF or Rayman Legends.

I might come back to SMBW, but for now, I shelve it.

Chained Echoes has a lot more Xeno essence than the Xeno series. And I’m not kidding when I say this game > Gears, Saga and Blade.

This game is on its own level. Rating is one of the greatest no brainers.

Matthias Linda should be hired for future Xeno projects.

Final Fantasy XVI had potential, but not a single one of them was properly executed.

I really wanted to like this game, but it made it so hard for me. So, so hard. The pacing in this game is probably one of the worst things I have ever experienced. After the 5 year time skip, it gets SO formulaic. After each big event, everything gets downhill, because you have to talk to Otto and do a shitload of mandatory side quests, fetch quests disguised as main quests.

I played on action-focus and the game was easy from the very beginning to the very end. There was one little exception, that was an S rank hunt where I died once. Other than that, way too easy. And even dying once doesn’t mean it was hard, unexpectedly strong would be more fitting.

I don’t mind simple combat systems as long as they’re fun, but I used to get burnt out from FFXVI’s combat system after gaining either Ramuh or Titan, because it had no interesting mechanics whatsoever. For example, the materia system in FFVII made the combat and gameplay and VII so much more interesting. The quartz system in Trails, the Monado or Blade system in Xenoblade, all of them are interesting mechanics within the combat or gameplay, but there’s nothing like that in XVI. But I guess the Eikon battles are highlights, they’re fun.

The characters are as flat as they are boring, with Cid and Mid (how ironic) as the only exceptions. Clive is one of the most boring protagonists I’ve ever seen, Jill is FF’s most boring love interest, I hate how one-dimensional she is, she deserved so much more (at least her beautiful design makes up for it a smidge), Barnabas aka Fake Malos just wants to f his mother, Kupka just wants to f Benedikta, Ultima is just a very poor version of Zanza, Joshua seems to be a huge Kingdom Hearts fan, returning from the “dead”, running around with a hood and acting all mysteriously and all the other side characters in the hideout aren’t even worth mentioning. There are also no character dynamics. You always talk to the characters alone. For example, you go to Vivian, she explains you the current state of the world, then you go to the in-game loremaster to ask things, instead of gathering the characters in one place, so they all talk to you and with each other. No party, no dynamic. It feels so lifeless.

The side quests are absolutely horrendous, optional or mandatory. There are about three side quests with an interesting or a surprising plot, but all the others are just MMO fetch quests, which is not surprising with Yoshi-P as the supervising producer. Please don’t let him touch another FF game ever again (except for MMOs).

The soundtrack… is a bit more complicated. The songs are fantastic. They’re of high production value, they sound great. But they also sound so similar. You will never recognize a song by the first tunes like you do with One-Winged Angel, Cosmo Canyon, Prelude, Aerith’s or Tifa’s theme, Zanarkand, Otherworld, Auron’s theme, Waltz for the Moon and so on. They’re all just loud and pompous orchestrated songs with choirs.

I also hate how there’s no run button. Give us a dedicated run button for this slow fuck, god fucking damnit. This is absolute hell with all these fetch quests (and yes, I completed all quests and hunts). And there are way too few quick travel spots as well! It made me furious.

There’s lots of world building and lore in this game, which is appreciated, but also worthless if you’re doing nothing with it in the game. The world has nothing to offer. You can’t even VISIT the capital cities of each country, they only let you visit some uninteresting and unimportant rural village near the capital with more uninteresting but influential characters that give you a seal every time, so the locals know that these characters trust you. It happens in each of these rural villages. Formulaic, I told you. Imagine being able to visit the capitals, exploring specific districts, finding secrets, some shops, some cool quests, mini games like Chocobo racings, arenas, card games and whatnot, nice places with beautiful views. But nope. Nothing. The world of Valisthea has nothing to offer at all. At best some treasures with new accessories that give you half a second less cooldown for one specific skill (what the actual fuck).

The story is alright. It’s not a disaster, it’s between mediocre and good, I can live with that. Haven’t expected much more anyway. The ending kinda sucked, but I didn’t care anymore at that point anyway.

The visuals are great most of the time, but the animations in side quests, mandatory or optional, are pretty stiff, but oh well.

This rating is a bit generous, but I can’t say I regret playing this game, so I will stick with this rating. Thanks to Mid, she’s awesome and one of the better Final Fantasy characters overall, although not an S tier character, maybe A tier. Cid is an S tier character and probably one of the best Cids this series has to offer. So this game does have some redeeming qualities that justify my generous rating. I’m glad I’m done with this game, though, so I won’t be getting the platinum.

To this day, Final Fantasy VII remains being a blueprint for a brilliant plot, an excellently written protagonist, antagonist and even sidekicks and minor antagonists. I would love to give examples of how great the character development is for each party member, even the optional ones, but I don’t want to spoil it for people who still have or want to play this game someday.

Every time I replay FF7, I realize even more how many fantastic games and franchises it influenced. Literally one of my favorite game series, Trails/Kiseki, is inspired by it. Its Quartz system is without a doubt a deviating and further developed Materia system.

Not to mention its memorable soundtrack. The Prelude, Jenova’s theme, Aerith’s theme, Tifa’s theme and of course, Cosmo Canyon and One-Winged Angel. Many of them are so good, even people who never played this game immediately recognize Sephiroth’s unique theme within the first three tunes (Sephiroth for Smash reactions prove that very well).

All in all, a lot better than I remembered and now, one of my all time favorite games, especially because I took my time to learn all the mechanics and because I almost platinumed the game. Almost, because there’s that superboss, Ruby Weapon. This superboss has a really annoying glitch. Defeating it took me about 40 minutes, but I couldn’t leave the fight into the victory screen and as I’ve learned, it’s a very common glitch. That was very frustrating, so I delay getting the platinum to another time.

Other than that, I had a perfect experience. And with that, Final Fantasy VII became my favorite entry in the series.