Kurogawa
A good RPG that has aged remarkably well. There are a few hiccups I had, with some quests being failed because I talked to the wrong person or entered the wrong room. Also, sometimes you're separated from your group for a bit and those areas can be really punishing depending on the class you picked.
Combat was really fun, especially against the large monsters, and I really liked each class I played. There were times where combat took an absurd difficulty spike. There was a group of bandits right outside a wooded area that drove me insane with how they just seemed to ignore damage at times. I liked most of the NPCs. I did find it frustrating that there were times I had to look up in a wiki where to continue certain NPC quests, but that wasn't too bad.
This was a solid game and I'm excited to see what changes they've added for the sequel.
Combat was really fun, especially against the large monsters, and I really liked each class I played. There were times where combat took an absurd difficulty spike. There was a group of bandits right outside a wooded area that drove me insane with how they just seemed to ignore damage at times. I liked most of the NPCs. I did find it frustrating that there were times I had to look up in a wiki where to continue certain NPC quests, but that wasn't too bad.
This was a solid game and I'm excited to see what changes they've added for the sequel.
2022
$100,000. $100,000. That is how much you can expect to pay if you don't want to spend countless hours grinding to get your character maxed out. $100,000. That is insane. There is no justification for that. None. Don't give me the garbage excuse that devs deserve to be paid for their work. Not a penny of that is going to devs. It is all going to bonuses and vacations for the C-suite as they tout their bottom line to investors. If you're willing to put up with this kind of crap, then you are what's wrong with modern gaming.
The Blizzard we all loved growing up is long dead.
The Blizzard we all loved growing up is long dead.
Full disclosure: I played this on the Switch emulator with rewind function.
I really enjoyed this game. If I had played it back when the game had first come out, I think I would have loved it. That said, it is weird even for a Mario game. The unusual choice in enemy sprites and locations makes me believe that the game was either once intended to be a completely different game, or that they reused assets from another project to cut down on development costs and time.
That said, it was fun to play and I feel it holds up relatively well.
I really enjoyed this game. If I had played it back when the game had first come out, I think I would have loved it. That said, it is weird even for a Mario game. The unusual choice in enemy sprites and locations makes me believe that the game was either once intended to be a completely different game, or that they reused assets from another project to cut down on development costs and time.
That said, it was fun to play and I feel it holds up relatively well.
2018
This review contains spoilers
This is a great love letter to the 8bit and 16bit eras of platforming. Exploring and movement feels great. Imagine playing Ninja Gaiden on the NES, only the controls aren't horrible. To add to it, there is a twist halfway through that helps keep the game feeling fresh. That said, there are a few parts that they should have spent some more time on.
The bosses feel horribly unbalanced. The Demon General was so frustratingly hard that I nearly dropped the game right then and there. But after pushing through him, the rest of the bosses took me at most three attempts, many of them one. Clockwork Concierge and the Demon King were far too easy and only took me one attempt on each. It was harder getting to the Demon King than it was killing him. Having the hardest boss in the middle of the game was a poor decision. That said, I still love this game and am looking forward to playing the DLC in the near future.
The bosses feel horribly unbalanced. The Demon General was so frustratingly hard that I nearly dropped the game right then and there. But after pushing through him, the rest of the bosses took me at most three attempts, many of them one. Clockwork Concierge and the Demon King were far too easy and only took me one attempt on each. It was harder getting to the Demon King than it was killing him. Having the hardest boss in the middle of the game was a poor decision. That said, I still love this game and am looking forward to playing the DLC in the near future.
2023
A fantastic remake of one of my favorite games. It's a fun return to a simpler time when RPGs didn't bloat themselves out with a pointlessly large map and needless side quests to slow down your progress in order to justify their existence. This is not a long game, I beat it in less than 15 hours and did plenty of the optional side quests. This game is endlessly charming and absolutely worth a revisit if you had played the original, or if you missed out on the original, then this is a great opportunity to play a classic game for the first time.
Been sitting on this one for years, but finally played it. I'm glad I did, because while I don't have fond memories of the original, I really enjoyed my time with Zodiac Age. The secret to enjoying this game is removing Vaan from your party and pretending that nearly anyone else is the main character.
Joking aside, this game has a strong cast of characters, both heroes and villains. Sometimes the story falls a little flat and does a disservice to these characters, but overall it's a solid piece of storytelling.
The music is incredible with a good number of memorable themes. I feel the imperial theme is one of the strongest reasons people compare this game to Star Wars.
Combat is excellent and you're rewarded for how much work you put in. You can completely ignore the gambit system if you want, but I found it fun tweaking the system to get the best performance out of it. I did have a problem with the sheer amount of status effects the enemies loved to throw at the party, and the final area was more frustrating than enjoyable, but they made some great improvements over the original and this is well worth playing.
Joking aside, this game has a strong cast of characters, both heroes and villains. Sometimes the story falls a little flat and does a disservice to these characters, but overall it's a solid piece of storytelling.
The music is incredible with a good number of memorable themes. I feel the imperial theme is one of the strongest reasons people compare this game to Star Wars.
Combat is excellent and you're rewarded for how much work you put in. You can completely ignore the gambit system if you want, but I found it fun tweaking the system to get the best performance out of it. I did have a problem with the sheer amount of status effects the enemies loved to throw at the party, and the final area was more frustrating than enjoyable, but they made some great improvements over the original and this is well worth playing.
2022
This game is a mess of glitches and unfinished quests. 1.0 came out recently, but it really should have been labeled 0.7. I have heard that the devs were forced to keep the 11/17 release date due to the publisher, Humble Games, going through rough financial times, but that doesn't excuse the radio silence they have gone on and multiple ways they have screwed over their original backers by doing things like changing the PS4 version of the game to the PS5 and refusing to let people change the version they picked over 2 years ago. There are numerous quests with "TBD" on them and won't let you finish them. The NPC dialog is repetitious and doesn't change regardless of how far you progress your relationships. When the game crashes, and it will crash often, the Unreal crash reporter will also crash forcing you to restart your computer. I really wanted to like this game, and it still has a lot of potential. I plan on picking it back up in about half a year or so to see if the devs bothered to fix anything.
This game is a let down. There is a lot to like about it, but the game feels all over the place. Some levels are fun, others are a chore. A lot of the wonder flower parts were genuinely a delight and put a big smile on my face, but the rest of the game felt so painfully average for a Mario game. The difficulty is also randomized. The hardest levels were in the earliest parts of the game and the final levels felt like a breeze. The final level, Bowser's Castle, had a 5-star difficulty rating, and it was by far one of the easiest levels. I had higher hopes for this one and just didn't care for it. I don't hate it, but I have no desire to replay it. I have never not wanted to go back and get all the things I missed in a Mario game, until now.
This game was my introduction to Western RPGS. I played a lot of JRPGs on home console, but this was my first WRPG and is the benchmark that I hold all other WRPGs to.
The shear scale of the world and the scope of what you could to in it blew my 10 year old mind. Want to rob the mint and then sell their gold bars back to them? Go ahead. Want to start a bar fight? Can do. Want to stack up some crates and walk along the roofs? Why not?
I have sunk hundreds, if not thousands of hours, into this game and I'm sure I'll play it again in the future.
The shear scale of the world and the scope of what you could to in it blew my 10 year old mind. Want to rob the mint and then sell their gold bars back to them? Go ahead. Want to start a bar fight? Can do. Want to stack up some crates and walk along the roofs? Why not?
I have sunk hundreds, if not thousands of hours, into this game and I'm sure I'll play it again in the future.
This review contains spoilers
Edit: I removed my previous review.
The longer I sit on this game, the more I realized just how much I hated this game. I hated the long, drawn out damage sponge bosses and can't think of a single one that was actually fun to fight. I hated the changes to the story that only served to bloat out the game and turned a streamlined story into a disgusting cash grab where instead of selling you a full game for $60+, they'll sell it to you in parts at full price 3 times over. I hated how they overplayed Sephiroth and ruined his reveal for players new to FF7. I hated the tacked on side quests that only served to further pad out the bloat they already added. I hate the English voice acting where they all sound like they're desperately impersonating the characters instead of just being them. And above all, I despised the fact that the in-game representation of the people who wanted a remake faithful to the original (you know, an actual remake and not this crap where they gaslit people into changing the definition of a remake) are the villains of the game. I am so tired of FF7 at this point that I've decided to ignore everything beyond the original game and write them all off as bad fanfiction. The music was great, and that's it.
The longer I sit on this game, the more I realized just how much I hated this game. I hated the long, drawn out damage sponge bosses and can't think of a single one that was actually fun to fight. I hated the changes to the story that only served to bloat out the game and turned a streamlined story into a disgusting cash grab where instead of selling you a full game for $60+, they'll sell it to you in parts at full price 3 times over. I hated how they overplayed Sephiroth and ruined his reveal for players new to FF7. I hated the tacked on side quests that only served to further pad out the bloat they already added. I hate the English voice acting where they all sound like they're desperately impersonating the characters instead of just being them. And above all, I despised the fact that the in-game representation of the people who wanted a remake faithful to the original (you know, an actual remake and not this crap where they gaslit people into changing the definition of a remake) are the villains of the game. I am so tired of FF7 at this point that I've decided to ignore everything beyond the original game and write them all off as bad fanfiction. The music was great, and that's it.
2019
It's a shame the game is in the state that it's in. If they had polished it some more, it would be one of my favorite games. Excluding the bugs, there's just so many parts left feeling unfinished. For starters, there is a part where two of the characters get married. After you help them get together, you see a short cutscene of her saying yes and then kissing him, but after that, there is nothing at all. There is no wedding, no change in their dialog, no change in where they live. Nothing. That unfinished part expands to a lot of the rest of the game as well. The town you build by the desert and the port you help build are more examples. The characters keep talking about how lively those places are, but they feels so empty each time I go through them. It's like a ghost town. There is a lot to like about this game. The laidback atmosphere is great and for once a lot of the potential spouses seem like adults instead of children. I'm excited to see what they do with Sandrock now that they have a much larger team. I just feel that Portia wasn't finished and they abandoned it.
In short, a masterpiece. This game is a fantastic remake of one of the greatest games of all time. Each colossi serves as not only a boss fight, but a puzzle that can kill you while you try to solve it. As wonderful as the graphics are, I honestly can't say if I prefer this more to the PS2 version. The original pushed the PS2 to its limits and made use of a harrowing, bleak atmosphere that honestly isn't present in the PS4 version. Oh, sure, the world is barren and void of life, but it feels more alive and rich than the bleak PS2 version. That's just me nitpicking though. The game itself is still a masterpiece and Bluepoint outdid themselves. It couldn't have been easy taking a game as beloved as this and remaking it.
2016
I played through this when it first came out, but never played any of the improvements they made or the DLC, even though I had purchased it at the time. While waiting on FF16's price to come down, I decided to finally replay this and it's safe to say that I now adore this game. Is it perfect? No. It is flawed and at times frustrating, but I love it anyway.
It's a weird contradiction of a game where different ideas that are all great on their own never really come together. The idea of going on a chill road trip with your friends, going camping, fishing, hunting, exploring, all of that is so great and it works so well in this game, if you ignore the fact that the world is ending and Noctus is in a rush to find and save his childhood friend turned fiancé Luna.
The improvements and changes to the game are vast. I love being able to swap to different characters during combat now and really enjoy the fact that they all played differently. The DLC for each of the retainers was a lot of fun, and changed the retainers from a group of guys into people with depth and character. In particular, I loved Ignis's DLC. He went from being the pretty boy chef/driver to my favorite character in the game. They also expanded on some of the shorter endgame chapters. Instead of rushing to the palace in chapter 14, you now have the option to explore the city and do side quests, as well as a new optional hard boss. They showed this game a lot of love post launch and it made my second playthrough a very enjoyable experience.
That said, there are still some quirks. For some reason they mapped the jump button to the same button as the command prompt. I can't tell you how many times Noctus would jump when I was trying to pick up an item or interact with an NPC because it happened nearly every single time. Also, they didn't expand the final chapters enough. Right after the time skip, you run into an old friend and he tells you all about your old allies and what they're up to. You never see them though. That is a huge disappointment to me. I want to see an interact with these people, not just hear about them.
All in all, I really enjoyed this game and am glad I got to sit down to play it again.
It's a weird contradiction of a game where different ideas that are all great on their own never really come together. The idea of going on a chill road trip with your friends, going camping, fishing, hunting, exploring, all of that is so great and it works so well in this game, if you ignore the fact that the world is ending and Noctus is in a rush to find and save his childhood friend turned fiancé Luna.
The improvements and changes to the game are vast. I love being able to swap to different characters during combat now and really enjoy the fact that they all played differently. The DLC for each of the retainers was a lot of fun, and changed the retainers from a group of guys into people with depth and character. In particular, I loved Ignis's DLC. He went from being the pretty boy chef/driver to my favorite character in the game. They also expanded on some of the shorter endgame chapters. Instead of rushing to the palace in chapter 14, you now have the option to explore the city and do side quests, as well as a new optional hard boss. They showed this game a lot of love post launch and it made my second playthrough a very enjoyable experience.
That said, there are still some quirks. For some reason they mapped the jump button to the same button as the command prompt. I can't tell you how many times Noctus would jump when I was trying to pick up an item or interact with an NPC because it happened nearly every single time. Also, they didn't expand the final chapters enough. Right after the time skip, you run into an old friend and he tells you all about your old allies and what they're up to. You never see them though. That is a huge disappointment to me. I want to see an interact with these people, not just hear about them.
All in all, I really enjoyed this game and am glad I got to sit down to play it again.
2020
Very impressive for a small team, but the combat is slow, clunky, and just not fun. Dark Souls was slow, but it also gave you a shield so you could get used to the mechanics. This game has a one time block that has a cooldown. It looks cool, but taking away the shield and replacing it with this mechanic weakens combat and makes it unintersting.
2021
This game had so much potential. The developers only needed a few more months to polish things and tighten up the net code. It could have been something great. Unfortunately, I cannot review what does not exist. As is, they have done a lot to fix it and it's fun to play with friends, but it's still a buggy mess with hard enemies = bullet sponges. I don't think I could stomach playing it alone though.