"terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow."

It truly honors the "survival" part. It's also absolutely flawless in its level design and atmosphere.

The biggest draw, though, is literally everything else. The cryptic story, the interesting characters, the setting and abstract world-building, the excellent art and sound design, the intense and haunting soundtrack, the claustrophobic atmosphere, and the very cinematic and surrealistic presentation are all supremely crafted, sucking you into its cold world and making for a wholly unique and unforgettable experience.

Easily one of my favorite games of all time. It's simultaneously so fun and hellish to play at the same time and I'm still thinking about it.

The textbook definition of a flawed masterpiece.

It's no secret that the original Final Fantasy VII is a legendary game that changed the gaming landscape forever - would a remake ever be able to live up to it? Well, I'd say it depends on what you're looking for. I've only played the original FF7 up until the Shinra Building, so I can't really answer this question more in detail, but I can tell you the remake (and possibly the rest of the trilogy) is an exceptional experience, IF you're willing to accept something different. This might sound weird, so let me explain.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is not an 1:1 remake of the iconic original game. Without spoiling anything, it's trying something new in the already established world of Midgar in the hope of pleasing both fans of the original game and newcomers entirely new to the franchise or Final Fantasy VII in general. I'm not trying to give too much away, but basically, there are those new mysterious entities, and a common complaint is them being too involved in the plot. I wasn't a fan of those either for a long time, but after finishing the game and understanding their purpose, I reflected on their inclusion for a bit and then thought they were integrated fairly well actually. To sum things up, FF7R doesn't replace FF7 at all; they both have the same major plot beats, characters and everything, but are heading into different directions. This way there are new surprises in store for returning players, but it also brought out frustrations in others, since now will never be a "true" remake of the original game - and I can totally understand that sentiment.

The identity of 7R however wasn't the reason why I called it a flawed masterpiece in the opening sentence, instead it's some things that still could have been better. Even though I had a fantastic time with the game as a whole, I feel the need to still address those problems, as I'm not only writing those reviews for myself, but also to help others. With that out of the way, the most apparent flaw is the amount of filler content every now and then. A good example of this is near the end of the game, where the party backtracks to a previous dungeon as part of the story to retrieve an important item for another character. The issue at hand: a monster has stolen this key item! This results in a 30-minute segment of tracking down the monster by backtracking through the exact same segments of this dungeon used previously in the game. At least you get a sweet resolution for that character at the end, so it's not all for naught. But coming back to the dungeon/level design, that's a point I have mixed thoughts on. On one hand, Midgar in the original game was incredibly linear and the world only really opened up later, on the other hand, the remake could have fixed this - but this is where they decided to stay faithful! The Hallway Simulator™ complaints are entirely justified, however it never was that much of a problem for me, since those dungeons look pretty atleast and you get many fun conversations with your party members along the way, so it doesn't feel like the game is trying to waste your time.

Generally the setpieces are more lively than ever before, the little details everywhere and the new third-person camera make for a so much more immersive experience than the top-down view of the original game. My favorite example is the Wall Market chapter in the remake, the lighting and bustling streets really sold me on the festive vibe the devs were going for. The entire segment was a real joy to play through and it is a prime example of extending the overall playtime in a meaningful way. This also applies for the Collapsed Expressway and Train Graveyard in the remake for me, for fans of the original game those areas might be too long (as they were only one to two screens long in the original game), but I loved how the devs expanded on those already established locations, it adds to the sense of scale in the massive dystopian city of Midgar. In general, I believe this "sense of scale" is exceptionally well done throughout the game, there are several occasions where you can just gaze in awe upon the towering buildings of the city from below or some other parts where you can look from a high point into the far distance and see all the detailed infrastructure on the horizon, it's genuinely impressive how they handled it.

You know what else is genuinely impressive? The combat in 7R. It still follows the same rules as the original ATB system, but with more player agency. Instead of just waiting for some bar to fill, you can block and dodge enemy attacks (ironically, blocking is better 90% of the time, as the dodge has no i-frames!) or deal some physical damage by yourself. All of this is accompanied by intuitive switching between characters in the middle of a fight in order to exploit enemy weakness with certain Materia or gain access to different skills and movesets. With the return of the Materia system, every party member can be individually built to one's likings - you may turn someone into an Electric AoE damage dealer or give everyone in the group an Ice Materia for some reason, there's a lot of different combinations! Summons are also back and they look just as cool here as you would expect. Unfortunately they're not available too often, but on the flip side this means their appearances against hard bosses are even more satisfying.

Now, I don't think anything has to be said about the soundtrack. It's a Final Fantasy game, so obviously it's near perfection. Uematsu and the crew put a lot of heart into the new songs and remixes and it shows. There are so many good tracks and it's hard to choose favorites, but one overworld song that particularly stands out to me for being surprisingly captivating is the theme of the Collapsed Expressway. In terms of battle themes, the Ghoul fight is an incredible new composition and if we're talking about remixed songs, [this video contains spoilers!] the iconic One-Winged Angel got an utterly fantastic orchestral rendition in the remake. They really went all out in remaking an already superb soundtrack and certainly didn't miss.

So yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to playing Rebirth eventually, but I'll probably play through the original FF7 first (hopefully in the near future). I love those characters and this world so much and I can't wait to see where their adventure is going next!

I've recently gone back to play all the Layton games again in anticipation to the announcement of the 2025 one.

I had tried playing Curious Village before but never finished it properly as I had some of the later ones and I think this one being the first ever game just made it feel a bit of a less polished experience to go through as a kid, but revisiting it now, I'm very glad I did so.
The story of this game is properly enticing and never drags out or pretends you're stupid by either overly explaining or pretending something obvious isn't happening, that mixed with the story beats and twists being actually very original and unique makes it enjoyable in a way where you're curious what else can take place in this world.
The puzzles however I don't feel quite as excited about, I don't imagine it's easy to come up with 120+ puzzles and make them all bangers, but while this game does start off with a lot of them being either clever logic tricks, or puzzles where you have to catch the "flaw" in how the question is presented to you, towards the last quarter or so of the game, the puzzles can be very hit or miss, with some being outright math equations, move the block puzzles (I do enjoy these, but there's a lot of them), or questions that aren't worded as clearly as they need to be for you to understand what the game's logic is on something, like how you might consider the ground floor of a building to be 1st floor or "Ground" and the one after to be the 1st, which can lead to you getting the wrong answer based off that.

Altogether though, how much I enjoyed cracking the story massively overshines the last stretch of puzzles. As I go forward through the series I do imagine both story writing and puzzle quality to get more clever, all in all, a very good start to a classic series.

"Water is the memory of the world. Water finds its way."

--

"Now, when the monster comes, I turn it into art. My nightmares caught on film"

Was originally planning on getting a PS5 when Death Stranding 2 eventually gets released in another year or two. That was until seeing Herald of Darkness performed at The Game Awards. Was already very interested in this game (without any knowledge of the song/section) and then saw that performance, said "fuck" to myself upon realizing that fucker Geoff Keighley got me exactly where he wanted me to be, and went to Best Buy two days later. Herald of Darkness section definitely lived up to my expectations of how they could possibly implement that song into the game but the rest of it is extremely neat too!

Finland Twin Peaks (overused, I know, but there's no better compliment!) that truly knows it's a videogame! What really brings this up to a 5/5 is the use of projections and the darkness. Walking in the woods at night with a flashlight barely getting light through the pitch blackness with Taken wandering all around is so unbelievably unnerving even while playing the game with the sun out. Horrifying atmosphere that just sucks you right into this Silent Hill type hell. The use of projections, fades, and mixture of graphics and real life footage here provide some of the most beautiful images I've ever seen. Kind of joins the Metal Gear Solid series for me where I didn't particularly enjoy engaging in the core combat but love the games for how they utilize this medium to tell their stories. Less for MGS given all the neat variety in it's combat but especially for Alan Wake II for the combat here (more or less, a simple point & shoot with the occasional Alan Wake pimp slap) ranges from a 1/5 to a 3/5 (sometimes a 4/5 on a good day). While certainly not the point/main focus of the game, with this coming from Remedy and with how good the combat is in Max Payne and Control it's kind of shocking how it was never not clunky here and I have yet to read any of the narrative that could suggest that this was on purpose (maybe? Even if...). Of course, comparing it to MGS in this regard is just about the highest praise I can give anything and I wouldn't be giving this a 5/5 if the combat TRULY bothered me (when it hits that 4/5 it's a WILD time). Everything else from the narrative, structure, visuals, sound, and exploration is so unbelievably inspiring that there's no way I can't give this anything less than a 5/5.

Sometime down the line I'll play through the Final Draft/New Game+ mode given from what I've read it sounds completely next-level when compared to the standard NG+ mode, but that's for another time for I've been playing this for too long now. Besides, the spirit of Alan Wake will still be with me for a long, long time anyways as Herald of Darkness [Radio Edit] continues to secure its position as my most listened to song on Spotify this year and I am very, very happy about that.

Alone in the Dark is the grandfather of all survival horror games. As a huge fan of the genre and the Resident Evil series, playing this game was long overdue, luckily I finished it just in time for the remake. While we're at it, a remake is definitely needed. Not just because of the technical aspects like the bad resolution, awful controls, dozens of useless items which gets annoying 'cause it was combined with limited inventory and the combat is also pretty bad. Once an enemy manages to land a hit, you will be staggered and most of the time you can't do anything against it until you are dead. The steam version also has a few problems for example the window shrinking when you minimize it and the visuals are very pixelated when you maximize the game on a modern monitor. But I always had to laugh when Edward punched a zombies with the loudest SMACK sound effect. I was also pleasantly surprised by the the voice acting. I didn't expect the game have voice acting and it was very well-done. I really appreciated the voice acting because the information in the notes was often necessary to defeat certain monsters and I just hate it when I have to read so much in games. Overall I enjoyed my time with the game, it has a great atmosphere, cool monster design and I see much potential for the remake. But it was really short, at max you probably need around 4-5. I'm glad I finally beat this game because of its historical value and importance to my favorite gaming genre, survival horror.


Games I finished in 2024 ranked

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is everything I wanted and then some.

Well, to clarify, 95% of it is everything I wanted and then some. That 5% isn't nearly enough to kibosh the entire experience for me but the fact that the vast majority of it was truly stellar is a triumph, honestly.

Rebirth needed to do a lot following up from Remake, and it does pretty much all of it to such a high level that it's baffling that a game of this magnitude could even be possible in such a short development time. Of course, I'm referring to both playtime and scale, but also to how lovingly crafted and relentlessly charming it is in all 60+ hours of the journey it takes you on, with only a handful of missteps along the way.

The overarching narrative and, most of all, the character writing in Rebirth are the strongest they've ever been. Characters that were presented well in the original are somehow made even better here, with backstory and banter that's consistently such a treat to listen to. If you manage to even make Cait Sith compelling, then you've got a real winner on your hands. The story beats and their wider implications differ from the original, as with Remake, and not all of them hit. However, again, the vast majority of them I found to be much more compelling than ever before, thanks to the greatly expanded scenes and dialogue present throughout.

The ending is indeed as divisive as you might have heard and while I won't go into it here, I did enjoy what it presented; however, I can absolutely see where and why people would dislike it, as the execution feels very slapdash. I totally get what they were going for and it went the way I figured it would but it's indicative of an ending that's spinning too many plates at once, both narratively and thematically.

But as I said, that falls under the 5% that wasn't as stellar as the rest of the package.

Gameplay-wise, there's not really much to add that hasn't already been pointed out by everyone else—it's just Remake but better, with tighter controls for each of the characters and much more mobility with air combos and team attacks now entering into the mix to make battles feel far more dynamic than they were before. When you get into a flow state with it, particularly during the game's many boss battles, it feels great and is a natural extension of the formula they crafted in the previous game.

As for Rebirth's open world, ultimately, I found it to be the poster child for the phrase 'too much of a good thing'. It's filled with the usual Ubisoft open-world guff of towers and challenging enemy encounters that seem to mostly exist simply to pad out the exploration some more, but there are also some truly excellent side quests and artifact hunts that feed into the game's larger narrative and world-building that are almost always worth seeing through.

And then there's Queen's Blood. I'm not even a fan of card games at all and QB just dominated my playthrough. Honestly, if Square releases it as a standalone game on the level of Hearthstone, I'm going to be even more unemployed than I already am.

All of this extra stuff is really great; however, it's an absolute overabundance. By chapter 12, you basically get given another 10+ hours of new side content to do and at that point, I just wanted to see the story through to the end.

Regardless, FF7 Rebirth is a real 'above and beyond' type sequel. It's by no means perfect and it has its faults here and there, but those highs are so high that the third entry will have to do a lot to supersede it.

9.5/10

GAMEPLAY: 10/10
STORY: 10/10
VOICE ACTING: 10/10
VISUALS: 9/10
MUSIC: 10/10
TECHNICAL PERFORMANCE: 10/10

An incredible game that improves upon every single aspect of Remake. The combat is similar but updated with new mechanics, a very satisfying blend between real time action and pausing the game for a more tactical overview of the battle, reminiscent of a turn based style combat.

The story is just as well done, with high quality cutscenes, great characters, top notch voice acting, incredible emotional moments and new twists. I wasn't expecting for this game to be so funny though. I had quite a few laugh out loud moments throughout and also have to admit I shed a few tears on two separate occasions.

The biggest changes from Remake though, are probably the much improved side quests and the expansive open world that you get to explore. Not all the side content in the game reaches the same level of quality, with the ubisoft syle towers being probably some of the most boring thing you can do. But I would say that a good part of it is actually very much worth doing. All side quests have great moments involving your companions and a lot of the open world icons on the map might actually surprise you.

After spending almost 100 hours with it, I can safely say this is my game of the year.