An enjoyable but flawed Final Fantasy experience. A classic story premise presented in a more grounded way rather than going full anime, for the most part.
For something that started out so strongly, the further into the game you get, the more it seemed to start dragging on rather than being enjoyable. This is both because of the pacing of the story and the core combat offering little options, a problem they created since they obviously wanted you to play around your Eikon abilities rather than going full DMC combo mode without them. Granted the abilities are fun to play around with, though even then encounters start to get more tedious as you go along. The way you can choose the abilities you want and work out how you want to combo them all together is probably the most satisfying part of this game's combat, and I enjoyed using the counter moves to parry the bigger enemies and tear through their will gauge, leading to quick staggers.
You do have some amazing fights too, the first two major boss fights are both great, and the fight against Titan is probably the highlight of the entire game for me. Pretty much every fight is good if it's a major character. Even the final boss is actually worthy of being one (unlike FF15, what was that).
Another highlight is the characters themselves, and the voice acting in particular stands out to me, there's a lot of good performances here. Let's not forget the best character in the game, the absolute hero Torgal who saves you multiple times, and you can pet him so it's a good game.
As for what I don't like, well first, there's the pacing issues I mentioned where sometimes it feels like you're just being sent somewhere do something for the sake of it. Then there's the side quests, which honestly, most of them are pretty bad. Literally fetch quests and talking to people to do errands, yeah so good. Hunt marks offer some variety though, and some unique encounters which are pretty fun.
Overall I did enjoy the story, and I had fun playing through the game too, but by the time I was at the final Eikon I started to wish the game would be over soon (this guy is a woody by the way, the worst character in the game).
One more thing, this game has performance issues, even on performance mode you won't be hitting 60 fps. Not really what you want to see on a next gen console exclusive.
For something that started out so strongly, the further into the game you get, the more it seemed to start dragging on rather than being enjoyable. This is both because of the pacing of the story and the core combat offering little options, a problem they created since they obviously wanted you to play around your Eikon abilities rather than going full DMC combo mode without them. Granted the abilities are fun to play around with, though even then encounters start to get more tedious as you go along. The way you can choose the abilities you want and work out how you want to combo them all together is probably the most satisfying part of this game's combat, and I enjoyed using the counter moves to parry the bigger enemies and tear through their will gauge, leading to quick staggers.
You do have some amazing fights too, the first two major boss fights are both great, and the fight against Titan is probably the highlight of the entire game for me. Pretty much every fight is good if it's a major character. Even the final boss is actually worthy of being one (unlike FF15, what was that).
Another highlight is the characters themselves, and the voice acting in particular stands out to me, there's a lot of good performances here. Let's not forget the best character in the game, the absolute hero Torgal who saves you multiple times, and you can pet him so it's a good game.
As for what I don't like, well first, there's the pacing issues I mentioned where sometimes it feels like you're just being sent somewhere do something for the sake of it. Then there's the side quests, which honestly, most of them are pretty bad. Literally fetch quests and talking to people to do errands, yeah so good. Hunt marks offer some variety though, and some unique encounters which are pretty fun.
Overall I did enjoy the story, and I had fun playing through the game too, but by the time I was at the final Eikon I started to wish the game would be over soon (this guy is a woody by the way, the worst character in the game).
One more thing, this game has performance issues, even on performance mode you won't be hitting 60 fps. Not really what you want to see on a next gen console exclusive.
SigleifTheRapper
10 months ago