If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. But in this case it's not because of the premise - the game really does let you spawn basically anything you can think of outside of swear words and other vulgar things. It's still a Nintendo DS game where you can make God fight Cthulu though which is kind of crazy.

There's a good amount of easter eggs between item interactions too. Plus references in level set-ups, like the one designed after Pac-Man, with moth balls in place of the usual dots, and generic ghosts to run from.

What's "too good to be true" in this case is the game built around the concept. The game is split into puzzle levels and action levels. The puzzle levels require you to spawn specific items or complete a task in order to spawn the starite. Action levels have the starite in the open and have to be navigated to somehow. Though there is some overlap - a lot of action levels are basically puzzles and vice versa.

The issue comes in how repetitive many of these stages can get. For example, one level had me saving a lamb and getting it to its mother, and between them was a wolf. In my case I used a helicopter, spawned some rope to attach the lamb to the helicopter and flew past the wolf. Then in the same "world" or whatever a set of levels is called, I had a mission to get a penguin to safety over a pool of water with a whale in it. I just used the literal exact same solution.

I get that the games whole schtick is that many levels can be completed in many ways, but it's way too easy in this game to fall back on tricks you know work due to how many times the devs seemed to put the same basic problems. So, so many of the action levels are just obstacle courses with things you need to kill, which sure can be done in so many ways, but eventually you get bored of experimenting and just spawn the same overpowered creature. You stop thinking of ways to fly and just spawn the same jetpack or pterodactyl. Thinking of spawning the sun to light up a pitch black level is pretty fun the first time - not so much the next 10 times. It got so repetitive that by the end for the action levels I was using a certain glitch involving a vending machine and handcuffs to skip most of the levels.

Way too many levels come down to "Kill thing" "Find a way to fly" and "Find a way to swim underwater".

The game doesn't really do much to encourage you to experiment either. Playing a level once beaten does have a challenge mode where you need to beat the level 3 times in a row using different words, but even this has issues. For one thing, the first of those 3 times can just be the exact same solution as the original completion of the level. Secondly, the game doesn't really care about using synonyms - you can use "cop", "police" and "policeman" as different words. And lastly, because of the repetitiveness of the missions, this method doesn't necessarily require you to think up lots of different solutions, but 3 solutions that will apply to a huge chunk of levels. Basically just falling in to the exact same trap as playing the levels once, but taking longer to do so.

Oh and the game also controls like poopy. It's purely stylus controls which means you're so often moving when you meant to click an object, accidently jumping off cliffs, accidently unequipping something and so on. Apparently there was a re-release that switched to button controls but I didn't play that one. Luckily it was also changed to button controls in all future games, so I definitely wanna try that out. Maybe if the game was more fun to control I wouldn't feel the need to rush through all the later levels.

I really give props to the devs for the huge amount of effort gone in to this, it's just that I don't find the game that fun to really complete. They could have cut down half of these levels easily and lost nothing.

As a day one player, I've truly enjoyed this game at various stages. Duoing with a friend when skull forts were the pinnacle of content, into tryharding a brig for the Reaper's Bones over a year later, into finally returning to a sweaty sloop PvP experience, it's been a long run. However, updates have slowed down with less and less meaningful content. Seasons that take months to produce fail to provide as much content as old monthly updates that brought game changing playstyles. The anniversary of this game might be the greatest update ever released by a live-service game, but I can't give the past years nearly as much commemoration.

I may be one of the few people who actually enjoys the Ubisoft formula (I actually LIKED Far Cry's towers!), but even this game can be a bit much. The gameplay itself emulates Far Cry but with enemies who are either 4 feet smaller than you or in mech suits, so it's of good quality. The world for this game is easily one of the best looking games I've ever seen, and the amount of imagination and love poured into both fern and fauna is astonishing. What really hurts this game is it's open world exploration loop. While you no longer need to climb towers or anything else to arbitrarily reveal nearby landmarks, anything that you CAN find in the world struggles to be interesting. No interesting quest lines, no secret easter eggs, and no major sense of variety.

The repetition cannot be overstated. You will find either a plant you tap to receive skill points, a plant you tap to give you a (very) small permanent health boost, or do a small twirl of your looking joystick to fix an object. While there are some exceptions, such as the memory painting activities and the totem scavenger hunts, these are absolutely overwhelmed by the sheer number of other repetitive functions.

The writing itself also struggles to be particularly interesting with very flat characters and unremarkable dialogue. Some credit has to be given to the player VOs, as they absolutely sell the joy, terror, and surprise you will put them through in the 30-60 hours it takes to beat this game. They'll even emit an audible "Ow!" when you bonk your head against an object above you! Unfortunately, almost nothing notable happens outside the already mostly ho-hum main campaign. My only other exception is the final level, which actually manages to live up to it's expectations and deliver a memorable conclusion to the game. If only it didn't take dozens upon dozens of hours doing boring fetch quests and touching plants to get there.

There's a point somewhere in the middle of this game's third act where I thought "wow, they're really about to deliver something incredible here, why is the good stuff buried so deep into this game?" Unfortunately, that feeling evaporated not long after, the writing once again failing to meet the mark.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is an absurdly beautiful game, featuring the flora and fauna of Pandora in all of their alien glory. Seriously, this is one of the best looking games I've had the pleasure of playing on my PS5. The game also delivers a movement system that feels far better than I expected it would, and a deep resource gathering and crafting system that rewards delicacy and planning in meaningful ways. Unfortunately, other than gather and play the main story missions, there's not a lot to do in the stunning world this game provides. The side content is largely boring and forgettable. Worse yet, that's also how I'd describe most of the plot. I really like both Avatar movies, so I was probably an easier get than most, but by the end of this game I was almost completely disinterested in the story's conclusion. I think with some more work this could have been a really solid RPG, with narrative decision making and good story-integrated side content. Alas, it's clear the effort here went into the game world, not the plot that takes place within it.

Though decent, most of the combat in this game didn't really capture me either. The bow feels good, but it's somewhat limited in its use, and the enemy variety isn't really there. It's mostly either foot soldiers or variously skinned mechs that generally act the same, and while I enjoyed clearing out the outposts I never went seeking combat for its own sake. I'm just a sucker for a game focused on reclaiming territory. At 99 hours (hey, I did say I loved Avatar), I can't say that I didn't enjoy my experience, at least a little. But it's not a game I think I'd recommend. With as many hours as I've sunk into it, I'll probably come back for the DLC. Maybe I'll find something more to enjoy here. But I'm not as excited as I'd hoped I would be.

All the parts that are faithfully re-created are incredible. I got teary-eyed during a bunch of different moments. However, the story changes (especially to a pivotal scene) and some really tedious gameplay elements sprinkled in at some parts make this far from perfect.

And yet, its still the best FF since FFX (2001). Yikes.

As I was playing this game, I kept a running note of thoughts I had about the game. I'm pasting them here:

Pros:
- Solid gameplay, has increasing depth as the game goes on. Combat is really fun and engaging throughout.
- Retains the spirit of the original: Its lighthearted and goofy, while still balancing the tone of the rest of the story.
- Most side quests are worth it for the character interactions or the reward (summon battles become easier, new materia).
- Music is fantastic. There’s so much effort put into making sure every character, every region, and every scenario has an accompanying soundtrack. Nobuo Uematsu still got it.
- Mini games are abundant and fun, once again staying true to the original
- The way they've recreated all the areas and their traversal options (buggy, bronco) is incredible and done exactly right. I am in awe of what the environments look like.
- There’s just generally so much love and care put into recreating this world and its characters, and it shows.

Cons:
- Some parts are REALLY tedious. There’s sections where you have to slowly move through corridors, or perform boring tasks to progress through the level. A glaring example of this is Chapter 11 that has a 2 hour section that is extremely boring and should not be mandatory.
- Writing for all new content is bad. There’s also generally a bunch of unnecessary exposition.
- Chadley is a really annoying character, and his Battle Simulator for summons is unnecessary (Summons should be fought in the wild)
- Ending is unnecessarily convoluted and antithetical to the ethos of the story. The emotional impact is lost and does an injustice to the most important character in the story. All the “multiverse” stuff hurts this game significantly. Ending aside, all the other multiverse content (Zack, all of Chapter 14) is incredibly stupid, and also just has no real impact on the core story beats.