Pretty good all around, nothing mind-blowing but nothing that ruins the game, very solid and succinct experience. Man do I fucking hate Hugo though. Also I wish the craft upgrades wasn’t in the game, kind of unnecessary and distracting, by the halfway point of the game all I was focused on was trying to find materials and I stopped paying attention to the environments. Still a good game worth playing though, excited to try the next one.

Also the horror elements never really spooked me at all, but I also live in Koreatown Los Angeles, so I’m kind of used to being surrounded by rats at all times lol

Great game, but easily my least favorite yakuza game. Story is all over the place, and comes together in the end (like yakuza games do), but damn, it took me a full year to finish this game and it was only like 40 hours. Maybe it’s from me trying to get through them, like fatigue? I loved the way it came together in the final chapter, but jesus christ, the pop idol bits, the jail bits, the baseball???? I’d personally rather have some meaty cutscenes than play 10 hours of a game like “why am i doing this.” Great game though, can’t make that clear enough.

Gonna keep it short, I enjoy this game, it is probably the most “Final Fantasy” Final Fantasy, almost to the point of parody at points, which is great. Combat is vastly improved from XV and VIIR, story is great and lush, pacing is good (act 3 kinda chugs along a bit but no one’s perfect), and I like a lot of the characters and they’re given enough depth for me, especially if you get into reading the lore resources they give you. Major major major problem with this game that makes it impossible to recommend to people, has a pretty on-the-nose SA scene that does essentially nothing to the plot other than to be like “dang rough world out there!” which is just not enough for me to justify it being in there, and it left a bad taste in my mouth for a while. Couldn’t imagine telling someone to play this game with a huge scene so artistically embarrassing, and this is coming from a guy who is a complete moron. Really disappointing because I liked this game a lot, but them’s the breaks I guess.

A really frustrating review for me, i desperately wanted to like this and really did for the initial exploration bit, honestly thought it was a goty for me and wouldn’t stop talking about it to people, even with the combat problems. For me personally, the later part of the game completely upended that feeling for me and the sense of progression i was feeling to the point of souring the whole game for me. I think it’s a me problem, idk. The last boss is waaay too long compared to the rest of the game too imo.

ALSO ffs the “end game puzzles” (if that’s what you want to call them no spoilers no spoilers) is some of the most obtuse, arcane stuff i have ever seen in a video game, i literally tried finishing one of the puzzles for like half an hour and ended up looking it up and literally said out loud, by myself, “man you gotta be fuckin kidding me,” and studied the solution! Like i still don’t know how the solution fits the puzzle!! I may be an idiot but jeez hoo buddy if you want a true ending i hope you have like at least a master’s in puzzles lmao

i feel obligated to give this game a higher score than i think it actually deserves in case nintendo looks at the average scores online and decides no more metroid for 20 years again.

it’s good but it feels squirrelly with the analog aiming, and also the sound design is the worst in the whole series. also the game feels like it railroads you more than the other metroids which i don’t like, but maybe i’m misremembering how these go when they’re fresh.

the biggest complaint that i have is that there are literally zero consequences when you die, there were points i brute forced parries through an emmi room literally only because i knew i would spawn outside the room and lose nothing. like who tf cares if the emmis one shot you if you just respawn lmao it’s like temple run.

overall, coming from a big metroid guy, it’s aight, not disappointed with this game, but trepidatious of the future of these games.

this game was pretty good, but really frustrating and janky at times. is that the genre? if it's a soulslike it's gotta have some broken movement and inconsistent button buffering? idk.

i famously hate games without maps, one of my friends said it would be "literally impossible" to put a map in dark souls. i said "what about metroid prime" and he said "that would never work." he’s never gonna believe this shit.

one more thing, lead guy is a dumbass and the darth maul girl is a honey

(just gonna hop back into this review, the credits have been going for i think TWENTY minutes and i cannot skip them, do not finish this game im warning you)

Full disclosure:
I played and finished XI before i touched this game, the only exposure i ever had was watching my cousins play it when i was younger.

This game is super fun, but man, it’s hard to find motivation to get through it. I’ve heard the story with the earlier games is better than this one, i don’t think it’s a spoiler to say the majority of the thrust of this game is what amounts to giving some weird dude a glow up, and also your character wants to fuck the horse. Obviously there’s some stuff here and there that’s really nice! I don’t know if i’m so used to the apocalyptica setting of other rpgs i’ve played, or if it’s honestly the game, it just didn’t grab me the way other games like this do. I believe i started this about a year and a half ago, took a long break, and bucked up for the past two months.

Gameplay is cool, a little dated even at the time, but like that’s kind of the appeal. I can get into the pedantic complaints, like “the map is so shitty” and “what do you mean i can’t undo my skill points” and “i’m sorry, i have to find orbs now?” but i won’t.

I really don’t know how to give this a fair review since i’ve played XI and it’s so monumentally a better game. Maybe if i had played this like 15 years ago i’d have given it a perfect score. Maybe this was what i was looking for when i complain about post-X final fantasy games. All i have of worth to say is that i had a really good time playing this, but you really ought to play XI if you’ve played zero dragon quest games. I really don’t see any value playing this today other than historical completionism.