It really feels like they made this neat tech for hordes of characters onscreen and recreated that zombie ladder scene from the movie, THEN decided to make a game around that rather than the other way around. Outside of those two things, the game has very little personality outside of maybe a single "lol weed" joke. I somewhat liked the RPG-y progression/perk system, but the builds feel a bit ...off and (at times) unsuited for the scenarios you use them in. In general, the level design and setpieces are a noticeable step down from most of its contemporaries.

The game has moments of fun, but I'm fairly disappointed considering how much people around me talked up the Aftermath version. It's not bad per say, but overall a pretty unremarkable and mediocre take on the Left 4 Dead formula. I might have even liked Back 4 Blood a bit more...

Up to the first ending the game is absolutely remarkable, a clever, fun, simple, and straight to the point Metroidvania that I could easily recommend to anyone. I love how you naturally end up experimenting with your upgrades and it opens new doors. Maybe a couple questionable checkpoint placements, but extremely well put together on the whole.

Everything past that I respect and totally see the appeal for a certain type of player... but it just kinda got worse for me the more you have to scrape the corners for tiny bits of progression. Just not really my thing. I'm sure it'll make someone an interesting Youtube video down the line.

this game has a couple interesting ideas and i was a little endeared to the gunplay in a "it's weirdly punchy and awful" kind of way, but all in all it's boring and really just gets worse the more time you put into it. lots of empty expanses riding on slow janky vehicles between points of interest fighting the same enemies with the occasional kinda-cool bigger enemy inbetween

i read a passionate review about this game saying how the devs really stuck with it over the years and turned this into something special which really sold me on it, and man... glad they enjoyed it at least lol

I appreciate Obsidian trying something vastly different than their normal wheelhouse here, but... this is like maybe the most bog-standard survival crafting game out there. I wouldn't say much about it is actively "bad", but you'd probably be better off and more fulfilled playing... really any other game in the genre.

The biggest positive here is the atmosphere. If you remember one thing about this game, it'll be that. The concept of being shrunk down and living amongst huge bugs is really well-realized, looks great, and is admittedly pretty darn cool. I also really have to praise the game's quality of life, it's easily best-in-class for games of this type and eliminates a lot of tedium... given I also think the game would be just flat-out insufferable to play without being this way.

I also like the mutation system and I think it's the one area where the gameplay has a bit of an interesting identity of its own, but I also feel like most of your options with said system are like 70-30 straight stat upgrades to interesting abilities. You get some later-game options that add a couple dimensions to the combat outside of this, but by the time I was there I was a bit over it already.

Really I should be docking points here solely for the fact that the act of picking up items, the main thing you'll be doing in this game, frequently glitches out and doesn't work. In general, the game is a little glitchier than you'd expect from a genre that is known to be glitchy, and especially for a game that was in early access for so long (on top of getting a huge recent update apparently?).

The story isn't anything special either, which is a bit disappointing coming from Obsidian. I appreciated some of the moments where they throw in a bit of a dark edge to throw you off, but they quickly add a lot of levity to those moments that makes you wonder why they did it in the first place. Hell, in general most of the story is delivered through half-serious quippy goofy dialogue that makes it extremely hard to be interested or invested. I'm shocked this isn't more talked about since people seem really sensitive to quippy dialogue these days. I know it's probably to catch the younger audience, I just wish they could let a moment sit occasionally.

There are a breadth of survival and tower defense aspects to the game, which start moderately cool and over the course of the game will just grate on you rather than add any sort of interesting dimension to the gameplay. Hunger and thirst are really the only aspects that I think are tuned appropriately enough; fixing equipment, repairing your base, everything else only feels like it's there so they can call it "survival" and add a layer of tedium to your playthrough. Maybe this is appreciable to someone out there, but I recommend tweaking some values personally.

Other than that... it's generally just kind of plain? It does exactly what you expect it to and nothing more or less with very few interesting or unique ideas. I think if it was a short sweet experience I wouldn't be feeling these criticisms quite as harshly, but what I perceived to be the last few areas really dragged... and then it went on for a couple more afterward. Alas.

I've had a great time with this up to the current end, should it stick the landing it could very well be one of the top dogs of the survival-crafting genre in my opinion. What is currently there feels very polished, unique, and enjoyable so far.

I like how the game handles general area progression, but I do think it might be nice to make it ever so slightly less linear. Maybe make one point where you branch off into two areas or something along those lines? I also think that even for an early access title, it ends rather abruptly. That said, the atmosphere is really awesome and the level variety is top-tier.

While I like the crafting ideas system and think it gives something unique to the game, I think the recipes could stand to be be spread out a bit more instead of coming in batches like they do currently. Not a huge thing, but I think it would make that side of the progression feel a little more even.

My biggest issue (aside from various technical issues that I have to imagine will be fixed over time) is that it could use a combat update. A complete rework would be great, but what's already there isn't the worst, so even just adding to and polishing the feel of that would probably be okay. That's really the only core element of the game that feels specifically "early", so I'm interested to see what they do with this in the future.

I also feel like while the later chapters have some cool ideas, they are ultimately weaker than the top half of the current content. There are also some strange little things here and there, like a lot of the recipes requiring potatoes, but I guess they took potato farming out because it was causing issues? So you have like, maybe 10 potatoes across the whole game to work with as of writing. Will surely be fixed, but like... maybe make them a higher fridge spawn until then?

If you're on the fence, it's probably worth giving a go! Seems really promising, I had plenty of fun and I can't wait to see how it shapes up over time.

(Last updated as of 5/20/2024)

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is confidently enormous and ambitious, a crazy leap from Remake, and shows a clear love for its source material pouring out of nearly every aspect.

I think the gameplay has seen the most improvement here, and I have to imagine going back to remake is gonna be difficult after this. It’s so much faster and more responsive, and gives you an impressive amount of options to play with. The loop of ATB into synergy attacks into better and better limits is absolutely excellent, and the increased tools to deal with distanced and flying enemies are highly appreciated. I still don’t quite understand how “Dynamic” difficulty works, aside from what I am left to assume from some strangely-placed difficulty spikes, but when it all clicks together it feels fantastic. I can’t wait to see what they do with this already excellent system next.

The story is quite good as well, it more directly follows the events of FF7 proper than its predecessor and continues to embellish and expand on those events quite well (perhaps better, even) with a clear understanding of why certain things worked. Its divergences are much more sectioned off which I think helps the game at large, give or take a couple weird placements of certain events, and I found said divergences to be much more interesting on their own merit. If I had to single out anything, I think the beginning is a bit rough as the game throws you straight into the action with next to zero effort to ease the player back into the universe, but that was my only real point of friction with it and I actually liked the ending of this one a bit more.

One of the most impressive things about it is how deeply they seem to have taken the criticisms of the first game’s side content, because almost everything here feels fun, substantial, and worth doing. Hell, in general I find it impressive that Remake’s formula worked so well in an open world format. Sure, you can rag on it for an “Ubisoft Open World” as has become the go-to (and to be fair, I think you could cut a couple lesser minigames and a good chunk of the small “World Intel” tasks and the game wouldn’t be much different for it), but most of it is content worth seeing at best and something you can probably do in 2 minutes and/or easily ignore while you’re traversing to the next objective anyway at worst. At times it can be a bit too much, I had to take a bit of a break around the middle because there the game is just A LOT, but much of the time it works, it’s smooth, and most importantly it’s good!

I don’t tend to drone on about visuals a whole lot, but this is the first game in awhile that has wowed me. There are scuffed textures here and there sure, but the game is extremely well-realized and a pleasure to look at, with a super indulgent and excellent soundtrack to match. It’s hard to describe, but some of these areas are a shockingly perfect translation of the graphics of the era into a modern style that somehow manages not to lose any of the original’s feel. However I do have to mention the graphics modes; there is clearly something really wrong with the performance mode here and hopefully it gets fixed eventually. Conversely, this is the first time I’ve used a resolution mode and it’s been consistent enough that I stuck with it, and I’m really glad I did. Also god have I missed big expensive CG cutscenes, we need to bring that back into vogue!

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth may have its issues, but rarely does a game come along that makes me feel like I’m a child on Christmas morning like this one did, and it’s hard to overstate the importance of that.

Feeling pretty conflicted on this since The Rising Tide was positioned as the more significant DLC package of the two in the season pass, but it ends up being more like two Echoes of the Fallens in a trenchcoat.

This DLC has almost exactly the same structure as its predecessor down to the same number of major bosses (I don't count the Egi since it's recurring and is more a glorified ability tutorial) but stretched out to maybe twice the runtime. It also includes a handful of new sidequests that really do nothing but pad out its length and unlock features you already have in the main game. Gameplay-wise the new options are a good enough time, but everything else around it I found pretty uninspired, aside from the yet again best-in-class difficult boss fights. Other than that... Tonberries were cool, I guess? I was also somewhat disappointed that the proportion of interesting gameplay-altering accessories seemed lesser than Echoes.

While the story here is a little better and more pertinent to the main plotline than its predecessor, I still found it mostly pretty uninteresting give or take a couple small high points, and the ending really feels like they ran out of budget or time as the characters basically turn to the camera and say "this is why we're not doing this obvious thing" and then you randomly get granted a new ability that feels meant for when you would have possibly done that thing. I dunno!

Just... Man. I really do wish I liked it more. My heart says go lower but at worst its about at the same level as Echoes so... There it is.

I'm left mixed on this one. It has some cool concepts and aesthetics, finally some interesting accessories, more much needed party banter, and is host to a couple of the better (maybe even best?) boss fights in the game, but everything inbetween is pretty tepid and forgettable. This DLC screams "bonus" rather than another proper paid chunk of FFXVI. The story is conceptually cool, but it feels so far removed from the rest of the game and bereft of any stakes I may as well have forgotten it immediately after playing.

Wildly exceeded my expectations, especially for a game that's been in development this long.
The gameplay is absolutely stellar, and the exciting story missions and excellent presentation raise the spectacle and strongly elevate this to a fantastic worthwhile action RPG. I loved the large selection of characters, each with unique traits and playstyles to change things up just when things start feeling a little stale. The story in itself is kinda average, it feels like it's missing a mission or two in the middle, characters get a bit overly-verbose explaining things near to the end, and... that's about the worst I can say about it, honestly!
I can see the meaty postgame keeping me coming back for a long time to come, and I sincerely hope they keep the game well-updated. Perhaps even do a "Rising"-adjacent version on top of that. I'll play as much as they put out for this game.

A faithful remake that's tweaked and added to just enough to make it feel fresh, snappy, modern, and approachable. I loved the improved Tartarus a lot, and it made struggling up its many blocks much more captivating in the moment to moment. Heck, the stellar new dub that covers much more of the game elevates the already great story and makes this version worth a look on its own.

The vibes are a bit different in a couple areas (mostly at the beginning and end) and your mileage may vary when it comes to those changes; I personally enjoyed them as a different take on familiar scenes. The rebalancing is also mostly a positive I feel, but it tends to lean a bit on the easy side, so I would recommend starting on a harder difficulty especially for veterans of the series.

I think they could have even been a bit more liberal with the tweaks even, maybe remix/rewrite/punch-up some of the weaker social links, perhaps alleviate the later months where they won't let you do a whole lot with more new events or more opportunities to do things. These aren't huge make-or-break things though, I respect that they wanted to go mostly as faithful as possible.

Good game, my new favorite version of Persona 3, and the one I would recommend to most people.

These are definitely the best one(s) of the DLC bunch, and really the only ones I feel are worth playing. They're still a bit short (Yakou's especially feels like something they just threw in as an extra to tie up his story better) and they're both short story visual novel segments with zero mystery or traditional gameplay, but the stories they chose to tell are actually quite good and build on their titular characters, honestly better than some parts of the main story. Solid note to end their season pass on.

I've inflated my score a tad, but all-in-all I think this DLC cycle kinda dinged my already middling/high-middling opinion on the game. Still, I think there's a solid enough foundation here and I hope that now with everything released they can move on and eventually build upon Rain Code with something much more ambitious and interesting.

It's... aggressively fine? Maybe a little under that? To the game's credit, I like that it's a little more involved and interesting than the pretty bland but also "fine" original game, and some of the subject matter they chose to touch does give it some flavor. But I find it difficult to muster any thoughts of substance about it because, well... it's just kinda boring. It's not aggressively bad, it's definitely not good, it just. Exists.

Really the thing that stands out most is that this game is SLOW. Dialogue drags, and most cutscenes have these awkward pauses that accentuate their mostly bland direction. If they tightened it up into a snappy, breezy experience I think that would have gone a long way, but over the course of the game that was definitely the thing that wore me down.

Just... man. I think the concept is great, so it bums me out to see it simply exist at best and kinda fumble (the movie sequel) at worst. Even the cute little short they released with Tim having a little bit of friction with Pikachu over stolen dessert is more interesting than a lot of what they do with it in these games... I dunno.

Yet another good game! Definitely enjoyed it a lot more having experienced Halo 1 and 2 now and I think it's about as solid as the others, but probably my least favorite of the original trilogy personally.

The biggest thing is that it just feels like a long finale for Halo 2, which isn't inherently bad, but it's not the best as a story on its own merit. Setpieces are constantly kicking in and things are always moving which has its own appeal, but it made me miss some of the slower moments and solid pacing of the originals. The gameplay is the best it's ever been at this point, but I felt it traded off for somewhat lacking enemy design and less balanced harder difficulties. I also really enjoyed that your AI companions have a lot more fun things to say and are generally more competent, and the shift back to more Halo 1-adjacent open levels was appreciated, even if there is still a bit of backtracking and design reuse.

And of course, the multiplayer is forever great. Wonderful memories doing custom games with buddies.