This review won't do justice to what this game means to me but to put it bluntly, I think this is the most a game has hit me with its themes since some of my other favourites. It certainly wasn't what I expected getting into the game.

It's perfect in all its technical and aesthetical aspects but that's also where its biggest flaw comes in, that stupid fucking filter during the last act of the game that made me want to gnaw my eyes out. I genuinely have few qualms without it.

I haven't seen self -acceptance presented with such grandeur while being nuanced. For that alone this is undoubtedly my game of the year. Props to all its other narrative strengths.

within a span of two months, from september to november of 2019, i lost an old friend and former lover to bone cancer at 23 years old, and my father revealed to me that he’d been diagnosed with stage 2 lung cancer. this would indicate a nearly three year journey to where i am now - a sequence of events which tested the limits of my perseverance, willpower, camaraderie, self-love, and actualization of community. my life underwent severe changes throughout this period; essentially revising my entire outlook on my relationships to patching up and mending my relationship with my dad which had resulted in some pretty catastrophic gaps gashed out pretty equally on both sides. some outside events completely reformed how i lived, the safety and love i had to provide myself for my own wellbeing, and fostering a lot of growth and evolution out of a patch where what i’d known and what i held onto were slipping through my fingers.

during this time, my father set an example of how he would choose to live. he combatted cancer and heartbreak with rudiment, structure, dedication and iron will. i watched him break on more than a few occasions. but it was through his search for that light where he found his own branch of buddhism, practice of meditation, and a new outlook on his life. he began to teach me the lessons he’d taken away - both of us being that type of person with loud, constantly-spewing minds. he instilled and internalized the idea that meditation and serenity are not about clearing the mind of thought, but finding a means to acknowledge the thought and move on from it. it was only along the lines of that practice that we both began to unbox our trauma - both conjoined and individual. it was only then when we could cultivate growth, hope, and those first rays of light.

i had no access to therapy or professional help at the time. i was between jobs when i wasn't crammed into ones that abused and berated me and my time. my greatest resources for self-love, as they are now, were my loved ones and my then-cracked-yet-unbroken devotion to art. traumatic attachments kept me apart from those things i loved most, but in the process of recovering from a sequence in time in which i felt like i’d lost myself, figured it took recessing back to those works which had so clearly defined attics of my life to that point to regain shards of who i’d been, and define who i would choose to be moving forward. over the next year, i would play final fantasy vii six times to completion, twice with friends, four times on my own. the hanging threads of grief, trauma, self-actualization v. dissociation, lack of direction - these things culminated in a story which more and more i felt whispered answers directly to me, for my consumption alone. it’s in those moments where a bond is made between art and audience where the attachment becomes not just inseparable, but near essential.

final fantasy vii doesn’t hand you answers for the questions you come to it with. there isn’t a resolution to the trauma, there isn’t a solution to the pain or the grief. it is an embrace, and a hold of the hand, and a gentle call; “here is how you live with yourself. here is how you learn to be alive again.” the sociopolitical conflicts, the internal struggles, the budding seeds of affection and fraternity don’t reach a natural apex - they hum in anticipation of a deciding factor which never comes. perpetually trapped within the question, but offering you the means to provide your own answer in life. the final shot of the game isn’t a conclusion meant to be expanded upon. it’s simply a closing of the cover, the final page turned before the index of note paper before being passed to you with the command - “apply yourself. turn this into something that matters.” so i chose to.

and i found myself in midgar again, with new friends and a new outlook.

you come back to the slums of wall market and sector 7 with a new worldview and appreciation each time. there’s a different purpose, when your relationship with this game is as intimate as mine, for coming back here. i know the smog, the street life, the feeling of inescapable, walled-in urban destitution well. you grow up in any city poor enough and you get to know midgar intimately. it’s a familiar setting with a familiar social agency. the seventh heaven crew, they’re all faces i’ve known, fires in bellies i once shared, and now understand in a different light. they’re old friends i knew in my activism years as a teenager, they’re people i looked up to and lost through the years. i’ve lost a lot of people and a lot of faith over time. it might seem like a quick moment to many but the sector 7 tower fight reminds me of people and things that exist only in memories now.

the moment the world opens up and the main theme plays, while unscripted, is one of the most powerful in the game to me. i retain that this title track might be my favorite piece of video game music and such a perfect encapsulation of the game’s philosophy and emotional core. stinging synth strings meet acoustic woodwind and orchestral drones. playful countermelodies give way to massive, bombastic chords in a rocking interplay that rarely fails to inspire, intrigue and invoke. uematsu-sensei, unquestionably at the apex of his mastery here, provides his most timeless score. i think about, am inspired by, and draw from his work here intensely. the artistry pours out from every nook of final fantasy vii - the models, the cutscenes, the background renders, the gameplay systems, the story, the use of diegetic sound, the pacing, the designs - everything came together in a way that somehow evokes equal feelings of nostalgia, futurism, dread, fear, warmth, love, hope, and utter timelessness. streaming and voice-acting this entire game with my close friends was one of the best experiences of my year. hitting each turn with a decently blind audience provided both knowing and loving perspective and the unmitigated rush of first experience - in tandem, a passing of the torch, an unspeakable gift of an unbroken chain shared between loved ones. if final fantasy vii saved my life once before, this was the run which restored its meaning and direction.

i’ve been cloud, i’ve been tifa, i’ve been barret, i’ve been nanaki. i’ve been zack, i’ve been aerith. there are lives lived in the confines of final fantasy vii which i hold as pieces of my own, countless repetitions of those stories with those resolutions my own to meet, different each time. there was something magic about the ability to, a year after that painful strike of all of that anguish, that death, that loss, that fear, sit on the end screen as the series’ endless “prelude” played amongst 32-bit starfields and openly sob for a half hour surrounded by the voices and words of my loved ones. that was the day i learned to live again. it’s more than a game when you know it this intimately. it’s more than an experience when you share these scars. it’s more than art when you hold onto so dearly. there isn’t a classifier for what final fantasy vii means to me other than, “a lot”. sometimes, less is more. i don’t have a conclusion beyond that for you. the experience recalls everyone and everything i've ever loved and lost, and all that i've come to gain and hold dear. goodbye to some, hello to all the rest. true, reading this, it may have been a waste of your time, but i’m glad i was able to share this with someone. i hope this reaches at least one of you on a level you needed today, or maybe it invokes something in you about something you love so dearly. i’m here to tell you - this is how i learned to live again. if you need someone to tell you, today, that you can too, here it is. you aren’t alone. go find those answers for yourself.

please don't step on the flowers on your way.

I actually despise this game so fucking much holy shit what a slog, its crazy how these TROGLODYTES will tell you this shitstain is somehow an improvement on the original and FES because they took inspiration from Persona 4's garbage ass mechanics because they can't deal with the ai you can remove with a pnach file, literally all of the atmosphere and cinematic flare is drained from a game in which those aspects are some of its greatest strengths because all of the ways in which P3 achieved those highs such as its wonderfully moody cutscenes are reduced to blurry images and descriptions; all that's being done is the story being communicated, and that's where it ends. The emotional moments don't hit at all because they're replaced with these ugly fucking sprites and the gravitas is erased, the gameplay is actively less fun than FES, the point and click overworld fucking sucks and drastically worsens the experience, don't get me fucking started on the female protagonist who gets a "SHE'S BETTER THAN THE MALE ROUTE!" because again they tried to steamroll the game with persona fucking 4's ideas, her party links don't add shit and the fact that you can revive a dead character, removing the impact of their death and ruining multiple others arcs is a disgrace, actively ruins any reference to the event after the fact and any impact it could have - this is what i consider one of the biggest issues with Portable, it has no respect for the identity or themes of Persona 3. All of the ""improvements"" to make it more like P4 just make the game worse, it just blindly adds things like social links for the party because ooo P4 did it without considering it properly, they don't even work with the fucking story - Junpei feels far more emotionally mature far earlier than he should for example. Akihiko's adds nothing, Ken's is centred around pedophilia for some reason, why does Koromaru have a social link. Also the remaster is bad, the backgrounds look smeared in Vaseline and the fact that some of the basic UI is very clearly AI upscaled to smudge detail is funny as fuck. This game being the most accessible way to play Persona 3 pisses me off to no end and i hope we get a remake to make it truly irrelevant. Any points I will give it are because it has some of P3's good elements like the characters and the music, but make no mistake FES is the only way you should be playing Persona 3

Whenever you think about an open world in terms of a game, you generally have to call back to Breath of the Wild; its massive world, with its bigger focus on atmosphere than delivering a story, while still having its cake and eat it too. It's no wonder such a game paved the way to creating what would become the de facto version of open world games, having countless games take notes from it, creating their own versions of it in ways that work, and ways that don't. But Breath of the Wild is not perfect; it's an empty game, with a lot of repeating content that becomes stale when your focus is a 100% completion. Sure, it is a very open game where you can go straight to Ganon, but there's not much of an unique experience to be found. At the end of the day, it's good, but it's not what open world games can be. Elden Ring is that absolute zenith of an open world experience that Breath of the Wild couldn't, and can't be, although the reasons why are not exactly fully about the design of the open world.

Coming from MIyasaki, a man who has already made games that embrace freedom, such as Dark Souls 1 and its continuously convoluted labyrinth of a world, and George R R Martin, which while I do not have experience with his works, I have heard countless praise, and their conjoined efforts makes an amazing world, and a game to accompany that world. The lore of Elden Ring is unique as it has a lot of things that scream Miyasaki; it's a world stuck in that transition point of death and rebirth, with someone needing to create a change. It's this kind of worldbuilding that brings the "Dark Souls IIII" joke around, but regardless of the similarities, I think the actual parallels end there, because while Dark Souls is closer to the end of an era, Elden Ring is focused on what comes after this.

Elden Ring is a triumphant story that's hidden behind its layers of depressive, character-specific plotlines. You are the one heading for change. Originally, just a graceless Tarnished, that ends up being able to kill a god and leads to the creation of what comes next, all with your power. Sure, slaying these demigods can become a sad ordeal at times, but more than anything, you are fueled to become a champion of The Lands Between, becoming stronger, taking down the remnants of the previous order, and taking back the land that was ripped from you. The music of Elden Ring fits this perfectly, with strong, triumphant tracks but with some that still display danger. You CAN be strong, but the enemies you face are still threatening.

Elden Ring's gameplay also demostrates this point well. I'll expand this a bit more after the open world part, but at the core of it, it's still Soulsborne. It's a tried and true method that despite it being similar, it's still pretty damn fun. I do have to respect it much more for how open-ended the game can become with the builds, something that's a lot more limited in other Souls games, as well as just the immense variety of weapons. I think it makes specific experiences much more unique in ways I love, and the structure of the open world especially helps, and is part of why I think it's such an amazing open world.

The variety of this open world also creates a way to have a pretty big variety of NPCs. There's a lot of standouts. I love Ranni, Blaidd, Alexander, and Rogier especially. Fia, while I never finished her questline, I think she was very good, and Hewg and Roderika's somewhat of a father daughter dynamic was absolutely stellar, although how they ended up depressed me in some ways, and made me glad in other ways. Things like Varre and the Three Thingers, and the Volcano Manor are also great factions, although, honestly? I miss Covenants. It's a bit nitpicky, and I do think some covenants are kind of useless and weird to get in Dark Souls, but so much of it screams as if it were to have Covenants originally, but were removed. It's a shame, since having a bit of a longer, permanent stay with the Volcano Manor residents would have been neat, and the Three Fingers stuff for me was more or less just a way for me to get through Moghwyn without dealing with the actual level lol.

The open world of Elden Ring has so much care and specialty crafted in it in ways that is absolutely amazing and a joy to see being in an actual game. Each location feels distinct and unique, with the usual From Software magic with all the locations being visual spectacles, but also having some great music to accompany it, and unique fights fitting with the location itself. I think the only location I'm not a fan of is Liurnia of the Lakes, with it being a bit of an empty, kind of a swamp? I liked the Academy, sure, but the things surrounding it were less than interesting to me, but outside of that? Limgrave, Caelid, Mountaintop of the Giants, the Atlas Plateau, Farim Azula, and especially Leyndell are all amazing, unique locations. The areas of the open world are vast, but not a slog to go through due to the horse, and has a lot of smart placement and world design to reward you for yout exploration and keeping an eye out, while the legacy dungeons are some of the best designed areas I've arguably seen in video games at all. I LOVE Leyndell, and Stormveil Castle, and the Academy, all these locations are amazingly huge and reward your exploration, but are still dangerous. The jump button especially allows for great world exploration, allowing for some tried and true platforming that isn't very hard to do, but still creates much more interesting world layouts. Leyndell, for example, allowing you to jump through roofs? Absolute genius. The catacombs are similar to Bloodborne Chalice Dungeons, but I think they work much better than the chalice dungeons, thanks to the general scarcity of them, as well as the rewards you gain from them.

Look back on Breath of the Wild; what did you get from completing a shrine? You'd get a Spirit Orb, maybe sometimes a weapon, right? The former's always a standard, and while it helps, it's a bit of a monotonous experience thanks to it, and you can't really keep using the latter thanks to the durability system (one of the worst concepts ever created, let's be real). What do you get from a catacomb in Elden Ring? You can get a talisman, or a weapon, or a rune arc, or some extra runes to help you level up. All of these things are ALWAYS useful, despite the fact that maybe your current build isn't made for it, a talisman always stays and depending on the boss, can be a huge help, and a weapon might be strong and good for a future build, rune arcs and runes are always useful as well. Everything you get from a catacomb will always be useful, which creates actual motivation to go through these small dungeons, but it's never the same reward, which leads to the question of "what will I get this time?", in a way that WORKS and INCENTIVIZES exploration much more than its contemporaries. It helps that the world is designed for this exploration, with a good eye being able to see these things with stronger ease.

Small side note, I know some people are using Elden Ring to shit on the handholding nature of Ubisoft Open World and I wanna say that I think both are completely valid ways of making a game. Fromsoft has always been one to be inherently cryptic, and while I think that this creates the same sense of wonder older games had with their exploration, think the original The Legend of Zelda, I can't be completely against a hand-holding philosophy when the story that is extracted from such an experience can, at times, be really good.

The bosses of Elden Ring I think are generally standouts. I'd say I loved most of them, really? Malenia, Mohg, Radahn, Rykard, Morgott, and Hoarah Loux are all standouts and I love all of these; the rest of the Remembrance bosses I also really liked. The issue with the bosses do come more from the optional Catacombs, where it can be extremely infested with unbalanced 1v2 fights, or flat out bad enemies like Crucible Knights. I... don't mind that TOO much? I think that sure, the unique fights are all generally pretty amazing, and the others can be hit or miss, but I can't be too mad about these when I think they're such a minor part of the experience. I hated the Gargoyles in Nokron, and the Misbegotten/Crucible fight in Caeld, but that's as far as pure hatred goes when the rest are generally either really good, or a kind of a non-issue.

The inclusion of a respec as clean as it is in Elden Ring is one of, if not, the best addition this game has. I know that Dark Souls 3 also has one. I have not played Dark Souls 3, and I do not think the addition of a respec goes far in such a game because what I applaud Elden Ring for here is NOT the addition of it purely, but the absolute creative freedom you have on your build thanks to it. Sorcery and Faith builds have finally become interesting, for once, with a lot of tools for hybrid builds. In one run, I respecc'd four times. My first build was a curved greatsword dex build; then it was dex/int with moonveil, then dex/arc with Rivers of Blood, and then finally, for postgame, a str/faith build. All of these? Extremely fun. I loved them all. So much work was put into making such an immensely huge variety of weapons, builds, all to incentivize immense flexibility in how you want to play, and how you want to represent yourself in the game. Coming from Bloodborne, which is a very homogenous experience in multiple ways, and Dark Souls 1, which does have some variety, but its lack of respec and unappealing sorcery creates a specific route for you to follow from the start without the ability to attempt to remove yourself from your original decisions, it makes for such a breath of fresh air and something I'm sure to play around with countless more times. In some ways, sure, boss design ends up taking a hit from this thanks to such a huge variety of builds meaning a boss can't be designed for everything, but the appeal in Elden Ring is no longer the same boss rush of Bloodborne and Dark Souls 1.

The appeal of Elden Ring is its world, and how you insert yourself into it. You can be absolutely anything you wish to do. With such a wide variety of endings, weapons, builds, armor, and NPC plotlines, immersing yourself in its world is easier than ever, and the amount of effort that must have been put to put yourself in the Tarnished's shoes must have been endless. This is what makes it a TRUE open world; the tools have always been in front of you, it's just a matter of how you use them to shape your own experience, and shape yourself, and I'm sure that this level of detail, love, and passion is to be enjoyed by everyone for the years to come, and whatever comes next for The Lands Between, I'm here for it.

you can also be a woman and marry Ranni lgbt rep for the win miyasaki the strongest ally very me and makcore