For me, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a game of highs & lows. When this game is good, it is GREAT! But the lows have been very low… Lower than both FFVII Remake & FFXVI. The best way to summarize it is that I like the combat and… most of the story, but the open-world stuff & abundance of minigames kind of dragged the whole experience down for me and made this game feel longer than FFXVI, even though I actually finished Rebirth in less playtime than FFXVI (a few minutes shy of 40 hours for Rebirth vs almost 52 ½ hours for FFXVI).
Starting with the gameplay and… to its credit, Rebirth’s combat is a big improvement over its predecessor. The action side of this hybrid combat system feels more fluid and responsive than Remake, with cool new additions being made, like Cloud being given a gap-closer similar to FFXV’s Warp Strike or the ones in FFXVI, for example. I like FFXVI’s combat more, but Rebirth’s combat is close enough to FFXVI in quality that I won’t judge people for preferring it. Especially with Rebirth being much more difficult than FFXVI and having more extensive RPG elements.
But it’s when we get to the stuff around the open world that we start to reach the issues I have with this game. I can definitely see what they’re going for, but it just didn’t work for me. Rebirth’s approach to an open world is very much inspired by games like FFXV, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Xenoblade & [INSERT UBISOFT OPEN WORLD GAME HERE]. So you’ve got a lot of towers & side activities to do throughout the open world between main story segments. Except Rebirth has a lot more minigames. Personally, I found this stuff mostly tedious to do, but at least the majority of this stuff is optional. Although there are a lot of minigames in the main story, which will either be news to your ears or be a cause of dread depending on your preferences. Personally, I found that the number of minigames (especially in the first half) got grating after a while (especially the entire half-chapter dedicated to Queen’s Blood), but that seems to vary depending on the person as I’ve seen some who are happy about this. Queen’s Blood in particular is fun if you’re into that sort of thing, but I just wasn’t. Chocobo racing was fun too, but racing against real people in FFXIV is more fun. The sidequests are fine. The ones I played mostly just felt like standard open-world game stuff, with some good moments that flesh out the characters.
As for the story, my feelings on it can basically be boiled down to “great second half dragged down by a meandering first half that outstayed its welcome.” It got off to a good start with the prologue & Nibelheim flashback, but the section between Kalm & Gongaga felt very meandering and like it was padded to extend the runtime up to around 40 hours for a main story-only playthrough. The final dungeon (just like Remake’s) also felt like it could have been trimmed back a bit. Again, there are some great character moments here that made me laugh and/or cry. But there are some parts where not much really happens, or there’s some severe mood whiplash that takes away from some very emotional moments (ex: A goofy boss fight coming right after a big emotional scene)... As for my thoughts on the ending… without wishing to spoil much, the big emotional moment hit for me, but it nevertheless left me with a lot more questions than answers and speculating what might happen in the inevitable third & final part of this trilogy.
The music’s great, though. The entire team behind this game’s soundtrack did a great job. But the highlight, of course, was No Promises to Keep. This contribution by legendary Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu & Greatest Showman singer Loren Allred is a stellar & emotional song that encapsulates Aerith’s arc & beliefs perfectly while also providing for one of the most emotional scenes in the game. Overall, I’d rank FFXVI’s battle & especially boss themes, above Rebirth’s, but the field themes are a bit better. Gun to my head, I prefer FFXVI’s OST, though. But maybe I’m just a Soken fanboy…
On the topic of audio, let’s discuss the technical aspects of Rebirth. There were no problems with the audio overall. The sound design was great, and the English voice acting was better than Remake’s (albeit not quite reaching the heights of FFXIV (post-ARR) and FFXVI’s English VAs). But the graphics aren’t without fault. On one hand, the game mostly looks great thanks to a combination of great art direction and skillful use of Unreal Engine 4. But on the other, there are some big shortcomings to this game’s graphics. Like the blurry image quality in the performance mode or the way the lighting handles going from a dim interior to a bright exterior (the latter, in particular, got very distracting at times and made me yearn for some Ray Traced Global Illumination similar to games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Metro: Exodus (both the original PC port & the Enhanced Edition)). Overall, Rebirth is a good-looking game and feels current-gen in its presentation, but I’d personally sooner use FFXVI as a showcase of modern hardware than I would Rebirth (I also just generally prefer FFXVI’s art style).
Conclusion:
My time with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was one filled with peaks and valleys. At its best, Rebirth rivals FFXIV & FFXVI for some of the best moments of any FF I’ve played so far, with difficulty that makes use of its stellar combat system & incredible music. At its worst, Rebirth was just an utter slog infested with mini-games that are mostly tedious to play through, even when focusing on the main story. The open world was… fine, but didn’t do much that hasn’t been done in games like FFXV, Horizon: Zero Dawn & the Ubisoft Open World games aside from littering the world & main story with a shit-ton of mini-games… more of which were misses than hits.
I enjoyed Rebirth on the whole, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t less excited for Part 3 now than I was for Rebirth after finishing Remake. Or that I didn’t prefer FFXVI or even Lightning Returns to an extent over Rebirth.
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 7.5/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 8.5/10
Business Practices score: 8.5/10 (a time exclusivity deal for PS5 detracts from some great consumer-friendly decisions like shipping Rebirth on two discs to ensure it’s playable entirely without an internet connection, something that feels increasingly rare in this era of Day 1 patches & games like COD & Starfield shipping either incomplete on disc or with a disc that’s basically a license to download the game)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 8/10
Starting with the gameplay and… to its credit, Rebirth’s combat is a big improvement over its predecessor. The action side of this hybrid combat system feels more fluid and responsive than Remake, with cool new additions being made, like Cloud being given a gap-closer similar to FFXV’s Warp Strike or the ones in FFXVI, for example. I like FFXVI’s combat more, but Rebirth’s combat is close enough to FFXVI in quality that I won’t judge people for preferring it. Especially with Rebirth being much more difficult than FFXVI and having more extensive RPG elements.
But it’s when we get to the stuff around the open world that we start to reach the issues I have with this game. I can definitely see what they’re going for, but it just didn’t work for me. Rebirth’s approach to an open world is very much inspired by games like FFXV, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Xenoblade & [INSERT UBISOFT OPEN WORLD GAME HERE]. So you’ve got a lot of towers & side activities to do throughout the open world between main story segments. Except Rebirth has a lot more minigames. Personally, I found this stuff mostly tedious to do, but at least the majority of this stuff is optional. Although there are a lot of minigames in the main story, which will either be news to your ears or be a cause of dread depending on your preferences. Personally, I found that the number of minigames (especially in the first half) got grating after a while (especially the entire half-chapter dedicated to Queen’s Blood), but that seems to vary depending on the person as I’ve seen some who are happy about this. Queen’s Blood in particular is fun if you’re into that sort of thing, but I just wasn’t. Chocobo racing was fun too, but racing against real people in FFXIV is more fun. The sidequests are fine. The ones I played mostly just felt like standard open-world game stuff, with some good moments that flesh out the characters.
As for the story, my feelings on it can basically be boiled down to “great second half dragged down by a meandering first half that outstayed its welcome.” It got off to a good start with the prologue & Nibelheim flashback, but the section between Kalm & Gongaga felt very meandering and like it was padded to extend the runtime up to around 40 hours for a main story-only playthrough. The final dungeon (just like Remake’s) also felt like it could have been trimmed back a bit. Again, there are some great character moments here that made me laugh and/or cry. But there are some parts where not much really happens, or there’s some severe mood whiplash that takes away from some very emotional moments (ex: A goofy boss fight coming right after a big emotional scene)... As for my thoughts on the ending… without wishing to spoil much, the big emotional moment hit for me, but it nevertheless left me with a lot more questions than answers and speculating what might happen in the inevitable third & final part of this trilogy.
The music’s great, though. The entire team behind this game’s soundtrack did a great job. But the highlight, of course, was No Promises to Keep. This contribution by legendary Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu & Greatest Showman singer Loren Allred is a stellar & emotional song that encapsulates Aerith’s arc & beliefs perfectly while also providing for one of the most emotional scenes in the game. Overall, I’d rank FFXVI’s battle & especially boss themes, above Rebirth’s, but the field themes are a bit better. Gun to my head, I prefer FFXVI’s OST, though. But maybe I’m just a Soken fanboy…
On the topic of audio, let’s discuss the technical aspects of Rebirth. There were no problems with the audio overall. The sound design was great, and the English voice acting was better than Remake’s (albeit not quite reaching the heights of FFXIV (post-ARR) and FFXVI’s English VAs). But the graphics aren’t without fault. On one hand, the game mostly looks great thanks to a combination of great art direction and skillful use of Unreal Engine 4. But on the other, there are some big shortcomings to this game’s graphics. Like the blurry image quality in the performance mode or the way the lighting handles going from a dim interior to a bright exterior (the latter, in particular, got very distracting at times and made me yearn for some Ray Traced Global Illumination similar to games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Metro: Exodus (both the original PC port & the Enhanced Edition)). Overall, Rebirth is a good-looking game and feels current-gen in its presentation, but I’d personally sooner use FFXVI as a showcase of modern hardware than I would Rebirth (I also just generally prefer FFXVI’s art style).
Conclusion:
My time with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was one filled with peaks and valleys. At its best, Rebirth rivals FFXIV & FFXVI for some of the best moments of any FF I’ve played so far, with difficulty that makes use of its stellar combat system & incredible music. At its worst, Rebirth was just an utter slog infested with mini-games that are mostly tedious to play through, even when focusing on the main story. The open world was… fine, but didn’t do much that hasn’t been done in games like FFXV, Horizon: Zero Dawn & the Ubisoft Open World games aside from littering the world & main story with a shit-ton of mini-games… more of which were misses than hits.
I enjoyed Rebirth on the whole, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t less excited for Part 3 now than I was for Rebirth after finishing Remake. Or that I didn’t prefer FFXVI or even Lightning Returns to an extent over Rebirth.
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 7.5/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 8.5/10
Business Practices score: 8.5/10 (a time exclusivity deal for PS5 detracts from some great consumer-friendly decisions like shipping Rebirth on two discs to ensure it’s playable entirely without an internet connection, something that feels increasingly rare in this era of Day 1 patches & games like COD & Starfield shipping either incomplete on disc or with a disc that’s basically a license to download the game)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 8/10
2019
The first thing you should know about Persona 5 Royal is that it isn't a sequel or spin-off of Persona 5. It is, in fact, more of an expanded re-release of the original game (although it qualifies as a remaster on PC, PS5 & Xbox Series consoles) with quality-of-life improvements, new mechanics & various additions to the story. So Royal does supersede the original game both in canon and as the superior version of the game.
As for thoughts on the game itself, the story is solid. The opening arc does a great job of easing newcomers into the mechanics & world of this game while also getting them invested in the plot & characters fairly quickly. The rest of the story is consistently pretty engaging, with the new Royal content being pretty seamlessly integrated with the original Persona 5’s story (until it isn’t, but at that point, it’s clearly supposed to be jarring for story reasons I won’t get into here) & building off of the original’s themes, at least to someone like me who didn’t play much of the original/vanilla Persona 5. The villains, while generally hate sinks with little nuance, are enough to keep you invested in the narrative & there are a couple of more nuanced antagonists later on. The game even manages to have quite a few tear-jerking moments. There are some dry stretches though, with the section right before the Okumura arc being the worst part of the story, filled with Idiot Ball moments & generally less interesting events outside of maybe the Hawaii trip.
The Confidants, essentially a series of side-stories where Joker helps either his fellow Phantom Thieves or an eclectic set of his peers & down on their luck adults with their problems, are a mixed bag. Some have both an engaging arc & great gameplay benefits, some have one but not the other & then you have the ones that are completely useless and suck (LOOKING AT YOU OHYA). But this part of the game is definitely appreciated overall.
The combat is also a highly polished and smooth experience for a turn-based RPG. There is a certain flow & rhythm to the combat that makes even standard encounters engaging, something I can’t say about most turn-based RPGs. Although I will say that Mementos (a large, randomly-generated dungeon that you can access at almost any time) can get a little stale toward the end of the original game’s arc, but the new third semester added in Royal adds a new floor to Mementos that makes things a little more interesting again. Palaces on the other hand don’t get stale as there’s a lot more variety in what you’ll do in any given Palace & none of them outstay their welcome. My only real issue is that after the introductory Palace, none of the remaining ones (except maybe parts of the Okumura & Cruise Ship Palaces) really have much of a challenge when playing on Normal difficulty if you’re levelling certain Confidants (including ones you have to max out to advance to the third semester).
Outside of Palaces & Mementos, the life-sim gameplay sections are fun & interesting at first, but later on as you max out your social skills & Confidants, there really isn’t much to do. So that’s disappointing. Before that though it is a solid gameplay loop & I can see how it can become addictive.
As for the visuals, they really are as striking and distinctive as they are made out to be. It definitely has a sense of style & flashyness that sets it apart from other RPGs. And the music is also SO GOOD. Lots of bangers on this game’s soundtrack.
Conclusion Overall, Persona 5 Royal is a great JRPG that is an excellent entry point into the genre for newcomers & may go down in history as this generation’s Final Fantasy VII. But it’s not a perfect game. There are some balancing issues & a lack of things to do outside of dungeon crawling toward the end and the story has a couple rough patches, but this doesn’t stop it from being a phenomenal game that’s worth playing, especially now that it’s more accessible than ever.
Ratings
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 9/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 7/10
Business Practices score: 6/10 (Not the worst I’ve ever seen, but Atlus really do love milking Persona with lots of DLC costumes & Personas as well as spin-offs & crossover appearances in other games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate & Nier Reincarnation)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 9.5/10
As for thoughts on the game itself, the story is solid. The opening arc does a great job of easing newcomers into the mechanics & world of this game while also getting them invested in the plot & characters fairly quickly. The rest of the story is consistently pretty engaging, with the new Royal content being pretty seamlessly integrated with the original Persona 5’s story (until it isn’t, but at that point, it’s clearly supposed to be jarring for story reasons I won’t get into here) & building off of the original’s themes, at least to someone like me who didn’t play much of the original/vanilla Persona 5. The villains, while generally hate sinks with little nuance, are enough to keep you invested in the narrative & there are a couple of more nuanced antagonists later on. The game even manages to have quite a few tear-jerking moments. There are some dry stretches though, with the section right before the Okumura arc being the worst part of the story, filled with Idiot Ball moments & generally less interesting events outside of maybe the Hawaii trip.
The Confidants, essentially a series of side-stories where Joker helps either his fellow Phantom Thieves or an eclectic set of his peers & down on their luck adults with their problems, are a mixed bag. Some have both an engaging arc & great gameplay benefits, some have one but not the other & then you have the ones that are completely useless and suck (LOOKING AT YOU OHYA). But this part of the game is definitely appreciated overall.
The combat is also a highly polished and smooth experience for a turn-based RPG. There is a certain flow & rhythm to the combat that makes even standard encounters engaging, something I can’t say about most turn-based RPGs. Although I will say that Mementos (a large, randomly-generated dungeon that you can access at almost any time) can get a little stale toward the end of the original game’s arc, but the new third semester added in Royal adds a new floor to Mementos that makes things a little more interesting again. Palaces on the other hand don’t get stale as there’s a lot more variety in what you’ll do in any given Palace & none of them outstay their welcome. My only real issue is that after the introductory Palace, none of the remaining ones (except maybe parts of the Okumura & Cruise Ship Palaces) really have much of a challenge when playing on Normal difficulty if you’re levelling certain Confidants (including ones you have to max out to advance to the third semester).
Outside of Palaces & Mementos, the life-sim gameplay sections are fun & interesting at first, but later on as you max out your social skills & Confidants, there really isn’t much to do. So that’s disappointing. Before that though it is a solid gameplay loop & I can see how it can become addictive.
As for the visuals, they really are as striking and distinctive as they are made out to be. It definitely has a sense of style & flashyness that sets it apart from other RPGs. And the music is also SO GOOD. Lots of bangers on this game’s soundtrack.
Conclusion Overall, Persona 5 Royal is a great JRPG that is an excellent entry point into the genre for newcomers & may go down in history as this generation’s Final Fantasy VII. But it’s not a perfect game. There are some balancing issues & a lack of things to do outside of dungeon crawling toward the end and the story has a couple rough patches, but this doesn’t stop it from being a phenomenal game that’s worth playing, especially now that it’s more accessible than ever.
Ratings
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 9/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 7/10
Business Practices score: 6/10 (Not the worst I’ve ever seen, but Atlus really do love milking Persona with lots of DLC costumes & Personas as well as spin-offs & crossover appearances in other games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate & Nier Reincarnation)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 9.5/10
First off, the gameplay. The combat is a middle ground between traditional turn-based JRPGs & strategy RPGs like Fire Emblem. Like Fire Emblem, Trails in the Sky uses a grid system which controls where your characters can move. But like a traditional turn-based JRPG, you have an overworld and are teleported to a separate dimension for battles (at least that’s how it feels). I will say that, as someone who hasn’t played many turn-based JRPGs & didn’t enjoy a more traditional one like Dragon Quest XI, I actually did enjoy this battle system at times. I say at times because random encounters with standard monsters got old after a while.
The story on the other hand is pretty good & has plenty of charm. It starts out as a pretty low-stakes affair, with Estelle & Joshua travelling from one city to another, being contracted to deal with whatever local crisis the citizens are dealing with and getting the assistance of a colourful cast of characters along the way. But as they get closer & closer to their goal of becoming senior Bracers, the stakes get higher & higher, building towards a heart-breaking cliffhanger ending that will leave you eager to start Second Chapter (the game’s direct sequel) but nevertheless wraps up most of the game’s overarching plotlines.
The amazing thing is that, even though this game & Second Chapter were supposed to be a single game, but got split into two games to make its targeted release date, it feels like this story was always meant to be a two-parter! Either that’s a testament to how good of an idea the two-parter angle was or Falcom did an excellent job making the split work. Either way, multi-game arcs are seemingly the standard going forward, so it’ll be interesting to see if I feel the same way about the Crossbell & Cold Steel arcs. It’s definitely a very JRPG trope-heavy plot, but that’s not a bad thing so long as the plot itself is engaging, which this one is.
As for the technical aspects, the visuals hold up pretty well for an almost 20-year-old game (perhaps this is due to the 2D sprite art used for the characters just inherently aging better than 3D rendering), although the environments (which do seem to be rendered in 3D) haven’t aged as gracefully, but still fare better than most games from this time period that aimed for a more realistic art-style. And the music! Oh, boy is the music great! Created in-house by Falcom’s Sound Team jdk, the OST of Trails in the Sky is full of bangers & I’ve already added quite a few of them to my liked songs on Spotify!
Conclusion Despite it’s age, Trails in the Sky is a pretty good RPG with a fun & captivating story that balances telling a self-contained story & kicking off the ongoing narrative that defines the Trails series to this day, paired with gameplay that, while far from perfect, estabilshes a decent foundation to build on in future games. I just hope that the rest of the saga can at least live up to the standard this opening chapter has set in my mind…
Ratings
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 8/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 7.5/10
Business Practices score: 8/10 (Nothing egregiously bad, but Falcom’s hesitation regarding releasing the PC version in the West when it was clear that the PSP’s struggles here were a key contributor to the initial release failing commercially does knock off a few points, but I’ll save the details of that for when I finish & review Second Chapter)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 8.5/10
The story on the other hand is pretty good & has plenty of charm. It starts out as a pretty low-stakes affair, with Estelle & Joshua travelling from one city to another, being contracted to deal with whatever local crisis the citizens are dealing with and getting the assistance of a colourful cast of characters along the way. But as they get closer & closer to their goal of becoming senior Bracers, the stakes get higher & higher, building towards a heart-breaking cliffhanger ending that will leave you eager to start Second Chapter (the game’s direct sequel) but nevertheless wraps up most of the game’s overarching plotlines.
The amazing thing is that, even though this game & Second Chapter were supposed to be a single game, but got split into two games to make its targeted release date, it feels like this story was always meant to be a two-parter! Either that’s a testament to how good of an idea the two-parter angle was or Falcom did an excellent job making the split work. Either way, multi-game arcs are seemingly the standard going forward, so it’ll be interesting to see if I feel the same way about the Crossbell & Cold Steel arcs. It’s definitely a very JRPG trope-heavy plot, but that’s not a bad thing so long as the plot itself is engaging, which this one is.
As for the technical aspects, the visuals hold up pretty well for an almost 20-year-old game (perhaps this is due to the 2D sprite art used for the characters just inherently aging better than 3D rendering), although the environments (which do seem to be rendered in 3D) haven’t aged as gracefully, but still fare better than most games from this time period that aimed for a more realistic art-style. And the music! Oh, boy is the music great! Created in-house by Falcom’s Sound Team jdk, the OST of Trails in the Sky is full of bangers & I’ve already added quite a few of them to my liked songs on Spotify!
Conclusion Despite it’s age, Trails in the Sky is a pretty good RPG with a fun & captivating story that balances telling a self-contained story & kicking off the ongoing narrative that defines the Trails series to this day, paired with gameplay that, while far from perfect, estabilshes a decent foundation to build on in future games. I just hope that the rest of the saga can at least live up to the standard this opening chapter has set in my mind…
Ratings
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 8/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 7.5/10
Business Practices score: 8/10 (Nothing egregiously bad, but Falcom’s hesitation regarding releasing the PC version in the West when it was clear that the PSP’s struggles here were a key contributor to the initial release failing commercially does knock off a few points, but I’ll save the details of that for when I finish & review Second Chapter)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 8.5/10
Campaign is pretty good. Not the best COD campaign & not all of it's changes to the COD formula work (looking at you armoured enemies & tank boss fight), but it's a good time and tells an engaging enough story.
Multiplayer can be fun if you jive with the faster time to kill, relatively more restrictive movement & more tactical feel, but if you prefer a faster-paced, more arcadey shooter you're out of luck and would be better off buying MWIII instead (which is a pretty overt course-correction in this direction and whose existence flys in the face of the 2 years of post-launch support that were promised for this game).
Haven't played much of Spec Ops, but it's 100% much better than MW19 if you're into this sort of thing. Similar story with those Raids (although I haven't touched those at all).
The menu is also terrible BTW. Feels more like a streaming service than an actual game.
Overall, I recommend Modern Warfare II for the campaign, but not at $70 USD/$90 CAD. Wait for a sale. Multiplayer wise, unless what I described interests you I'd just skip this game and get MWIII instead. I kinda wish I didn't have to choose between recommending and not recommending, but considering most people buy COD for the multiplayer... I'm gonna have to go with No for this game in it's current state...
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 7/10 (would be an 8 or so if not for Infinity Ward's decisions with multiplayer & that terrible menu)
Technical score (graphics, audio, optimization): 8/10
Business Practices score: 4/10 (exclusive content on PlayStation, microtransactions & a FOMO-inducing Battle Pass, not to mention the broken promises of 2 years of post-launch support)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, doesn’t consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 7/10
Multiplayer can be fun if you jive with the faster time to kill, relatively more restrictive movement & more tactical feel, but if you prefer a faster-paced, more arcadey shooter you're out of luck and would be better off buying MWIII instead (which is a pretty overt course-correction in this direction and whose existence flys in the face of the 2 years of post-launch support that were promised for this game).
Haven't played much of Spec Ops, but it's 100% much better than MW19 if you're into this sort of thing. Similar story with those Raids (although I haven't touched those at all).
The menu is also terrible BTW. Feels more like a streaming service than an actual game.
Overall, I recommend Modern Warfare II for the campaign, but not at $70 USD/$90 CAD. Wait for a sale. Multiplayer wise, unless what I described interests you I'd just skip this game and get MWIII instead. I kinda wish I didn't have to choose between recommending and not recommending, but considering most people buy COD for the multiplayer... I'm gonna have to go with No for this game in it's current state...
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 7/10 (would be an 8 or so if not for Infinity Ward's decisions with multiplayer & that terrible menu)
Technical score (graphics, audio, optimization): 8/10
Business Practices score: 4/10 (exclusive content on PlayStation, microtransactions & a FOMO-inducing Battle Pass, not to mention the broken promises of 2 years of post-launch support)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, doesn’t consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 7/10
The story of Vanguard, whilst not the worst CoD campaign out there, is a fairly generic one that hits most of the expected highlights of World War II (ex: Normandy, Stalingrad, the Pacific) but does little to differentiate itself from other WWII shooters outside of its framing device, and even that isn’t all that interesting, especially when compared to the likes of Call of Duty: World at War. The setpieces are as enjoyable as ever though & the score (composed by Bear McCreary of God of War (2018), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. & AMC’s The Walking Dead fame) is grandiose & epic in a way that suits a WWII story like Vanguard’s. The acting is good, but with actors like Dominic Monaghan & Laura Bailey, it shouldn’t be surprising.
Overall, Vanguard’s campaign is enjoyable enough, but is nothing remarkable, especially when compared to Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War’s campaigns.
Multiplayer:
Much like the campaign, Vanguard’s multiplayer is very by-the-numbers by Call of Duty standards & is especially very similar to Modern Warfare (2019). You have all the standard modes like Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, Domination, & Search and Destroy, along with killstreaks and the same progression system seen in other recent CoD games like Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War.
Also carried over from Modern Warfare (2019) is the Gunsmith loadout system. This system allows players to customize their weapons with a set of attachments and see the changes to the gun in real-time. The problem with this system is that it necessitates a lot of attachments that didn’t exist during World War II and is ill-suited to an era where there was little in the way of personalization of an individual soldier’s gun like there is these days. Even in Black Ops: Cold War, it made some sense given that game’s focus was on elite soldiers & spies in a time when that kind of customization was already common amongst that group. But in a World War II game like Vanguard, it just makes no sense.
As for new stuff, there isn’t much here. The operator system from Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War has been expanded, with each operator having their own levels now. There are a couple of new modes, but none of them are that unique. Control is just Hardpoint but the Hardpoint moves & Arms Race (added post-launch) is just Sledgehammer’s take on Ground War or Combined Arms (from Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War, respectively).
Much like Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War, Vanguard integrates with Call of Duty: Warzone and with how consistently the guns from this game are powerful and amongst the best weapons in Warzone, people who are into that game and want to have all “meta” guns levelled will feel highly compelled to check out Vanguard.
Due to Vanguard’s connections to Warzone, it is monetized like a Free to Play game, with plenty of cosmetic bundles available for purchase via an in-game store (accessible in both Vanguard & Warzone, the latter of which also shows Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War cosmetics in its shop) that requires you to convert your real money into a virtual currency called CoD Points. The problem with this storefront is that there are a lot of cosmetics & even a couple of operators (ex: The Terminator, the T-1000 & Snoop Dogg are in the game due to limited-time events) that look and feel out of place in a WW2 shooter.
Another problem inherited from Modern Warfare (2019), Warzone & Black Ops: Cold War is matchmaking. The recent CoD games (Vanguard included) all use a system called Retention Based Matchmaking (RBMM), where the game looks at your last 10 matches & determines what kind of lobby you will be placed in, with skill & connection being minimal factors. Oh, and lobbies are disbanded after every match and you are put into new lobbies every time unless you just quit. This causes a situation where all it takes is a couple of matches of you performing well for the game’s matchmaking to place you into lobbies filled with tryhards who want to play in the Call of Duty League (yes, that’s a thing) someday. The community has complained for years about this, and yet it still persists, with no evidence to indicate anything will change in future games (although said community still calls this matchmaking system Skill Based Matchmaking (SBMM), which I don’t think is really an accurate term for how this system works).
The last noteworthy thing Vanguard borrows from Modern Warfare (2019) & Cold War is the telling of a post-campaign story in multiplayer cutscenes that coincide with the beginning (and end in the case of Cold War) of every Season, with Vanguard having 5 in total. Problem is that Vanguard’s multiplayer story is incomprehensible. The opening cutscene claims that this is about hunting down the remaining Nazis after the end of WW2, but there aren’t that many Nazi deaths actually shown & the last two seasons give up on this thread entirely. Season 4 makes the decision to have all of the game’s operators turn on each other and split into disparate mercenary groups fighting over Nazi gold & season 5 just goes for nostalgia dollars by focusing on the returns of classic CoD villains like Raul Menendez from Black Ops II & Khaled Al-Assad from CoD 4. Meanwhile, Modern Warfare had a serviceable enough plot for a first attempt that did enough to keep the game interesting between seasons & Cold War actually had a pretty good multiplayer story that built off stuff from Black Ops 1 & its own campaign to tell an interesting story that really solidified Russell Adler as one of the most iconic Black Ops characters.
Apologies for constantly bringing up the previous CoD games in this section, but it is almost impossible to talk about Vanguard without mentioning just how much it borrows from them, especially given how much time I’ve put into Modern Warfare (2019), Warzone & Cold War.
Overall, if you’re into CoD (especially Warzone Caldera given how powerful Vanguard’s guns are in that game), hate modern military shooters & love World War II and/or Sledgehammer’s other CoD games, then Vanguard will probably be a fun enough time for you. Otherwise, I’d suggest skipping it. Especially with Modern Warfare II now released.
Zombies:
This mode, developed by Treyarch, is bad. It is a barebones mode that lacked most of the CoD Zombies staples at launch (ex: round-based mode, easter eggs that advance the story) and even now it is a lacklustre experience that is a step back from Black Ops: Cold War in almost every way except maybe visuals (and that’s just due to the engine).
Miscellaneous
The graphics are pretty good but fall short of Modern Warfare (2019) in terms of detail & the noticeable lack of real-time ray tracing support on PC when Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War had it (although I’d say that on the whole Vanguard is a slightly better-looking game). The general audio for the guns is good, falling between Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War for me.
Conclusion:
Vanguard isn’t the worst COD game ever. But if you aren’t into COD already and/or a BIG fan of World War II shooters willing to swallow some out-of-place weapon variants and cosmetics, I’d suggest just buying Modern Warfare II instead of playing Vanguard at this point.
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 7.5 out of 10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 8.5 out of 10
Business Practices score: 4 out of 10 (respectable Battle Pass system, but out-of-place cosmetics & especially Activision-Blizzard’s general greediness and mistreatment of employees knocks this score all the way down here)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, doesn’t consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 7 out of 10
Overall, Vanguard’s campaign is enjoyable enough, but is nothing remarkable, especially when compared to Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War’s campaigns.
Multiplayer:
Much like the campaign, Vanguard’s multiplayer is very by-the-numbers by Call of Duty standards & is especially very similar to Modern Warfare (2019). You have all the standard modes like Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, Domination, & Search and Destroy, along with killstreaks and the same progression system seen in other recent CoD games like Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War.
Also carried over from Modern Warfare (2019) is the Gunsmith loadout system. This system allows players to customize their weapons with a set of attachments and see the changes to the gun in real-time. The problem with this system is that it necessitates a lot of attachments that didn’t exist during World War II and is ill-suited to an era where there was little in the way of personalization of an individual soldier’s gun like there is these days. Even in Black Ops: Cold War, it made some sense given that game’s focus was on elite soldiers & spies in a time when that kind of customization was already common amongst that group. But in a World War II game like Vanguard, it just makes no sense.
As for new stuff, there isn’t much here. The operator system from Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War has been expanded, with each operator having their own levels now. There are a couple of new modes, but none of them are that unique. Control is just Hardpoint but the Hardpoint moves & Arms Race (added post-launch) is just Sledgehammer’s take on Ground War or Combined Arms (from Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War, respectively).
Much like Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War, Vanguard integrates with Call of Duty: Warzone and with how consistently the guns from this game are powerful and amongst the best weapons in Warzone, people who are into that game and want to have all “meta” guns levelled will feel highly compelled to check out Vanguard.
Due to Vanguard’s connections to Warzone, it is monetized like a Free to Play game, with plenty of cosmetic bundles available for purchase via an in-game store (accessible in both Vanguard & Warzone, the latter of which also shows Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War cosmetics in its shop) that requires you to convert your real money into a virtual currency called CoD Points. The problem with this storefront is that there are a lot of cosmetics & even a couple of operators (ex: The Terminator, the T-1000 & Snoop Dogg are in the game due to limited-time events) that look and feel out of place in a WW2 shooter.
Another problem inherited from Modern Warfare (2019), Warzone & Black Ops: Cold War is matchmaking. The recent CoD games (Vanguard included) all use a system called Retention Based Matchmaking (RBMM), where the game looks at your last 10 matches & determines what kind of lobby you will be placed in, with skill & connection being minimal factors. Oh, and lobbies are disbanded after every match and you are put into new lobbies every time unless you just quit. This causes a situation where all it takes is a couple of matches of you performing well for the game’s matchmaking to place you into lobbies filled with tryhards who want to play in the Call of Duty League (yes, that’s a thing) someday. The community has complained for years about this, and yet it still persists, with no evidence to indicate anything will change in future games (although said community still calls this matchmaking system Skill Based Matchmaking (SBMM), which I don’t think is really an accurate term for how this system works).
The last noteworthy thing Vanguard borrows from Modern Warfare (2019) & Cold War is the telling of a post-campaign story in multiplayer cutscenes that coincide with the beginning (and end in the case of Cold War) of every Season, with Vanguard having 5 in total. Problem is that Vanguard’s multiplayer story is incomprehensible. The opening cutscene claims that this is about hunting down the remaining Nazis after the end of WW2, but there aren’t that many Nazi deaths actually shown & the last two seasons give up on this thread entirely. Season 4 makes the decision to have all of the game’s operators turn on each other and split into disparate mercenary groups fighting over Nazi gold & season 5 just goes for nostalgia dollars by focusing on the returns of classic CoD villains like Raul Menendez from Black Ops II & Khaled Al-Assad from CoD 4. Meanwhile, Modern Warfare had a serviceable enough plot for a first attempt that did enough to keep the game interesting between seasons & Cold War actually had a pretty good multiplayer story that built off stuff from Black Ops 1 & its own campaign to tell an interesting story that really solidified Russell Adler as one of the most iconic Black Ops characters.
Apologies for constantly bringing up the previous CoD games in this section, but it is almost impossible to talk about Vanguard without mentioning just how much it borrows from them, especially given how much time I’ve put into Modern Warfare (2019), Warzone & Cold War.
Overall, if you’re into CoD (especially Warzone Caldera given how powerful Vanguard’s guns are in that game), hate modern military shooters & love World War II and/or Sledgehammer’s other CoD games, then Vanguard will probably be a fun enough time for you. Otherwise, I’d suggest skipping it. Especially with Modern Warfare II now released.
Zombies:
This mode, developed by Treyarch, is bad. It is a barebones mode that lacked most of the CoD Zombies staples at launch (ex: round-based mode, easter eggs that advance the story) and even now it is a lacklustre experience that is a step back from Black Ops: Cold War in almost every way except maybe visuals (and that’s just due to the engine).
Miscellaneous
The graphics are pretty good but fall short of Modern Warfare (2019) in terms of detail & the noticeable lack of real-time ray tracing support on PC when Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War had it (although I’d say that on the whole Vanguard is a slightly better-looking game). The general audio for the guns is good, falling between Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War for me.
Conclusion:
Vanguard isn’t the worst COD game ever. But if you aren’t into COD already and/or a BIG fan of World War II shooters willing to swallow some out-of-place weapon variants and cosmetics, I’d suggest just buying Modern Warfare II instead of playing Vanguard at this point.
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 7.5 out of 10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 8.5 out of 10
Business Practices score: 4 out of 10 (respectable Battle Pass system, but out-of-place cosmetics & especially Activision-Blizzard’s general greediness and mistreatment of employees knocks this score all the way down here)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, doesn’t consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 7 out of 10
First thing’s first: Yes, this is the game that the “Chaosposting” memes, the “Bullshit” GIF & the image of the guy seemingly fist bumping the camera (that last one is just a mid-cutscene screenshot, although he does like fist bumping his allies) came from.
Before I get into the story, I would like to discuss this game’s biggest strength: the gameplay. Whilst I haven’t played the Nioh games, it is clear that Team Ninja did take a lot of cues from what they’d done in that series when designing this game. Subsequently, while Dark Souls & Elden Ring comparisons are inevitable, Stranger of Paradise is pretty different & much faster paced than those games. Instead of mostly dodging until you can attack enemies from behind, Stranger of Paradise mostly encourages you to either block attacks or use the game’s Soul Shield ability to parry them and gain additional MP slots for using abilities (with the occasional attack you have to dodge, but those are signposted clearly). Stranger of Paradise also emphasizes running down an enemy’s stagger gauge to perform instant takedown moves. The default controls are reminiscent of other Souls-Likes, but you can switch to a more Nioh/Devil May Cry-esque control scheme in the options menu. My biggest issue with the combat really is just that the game is so generous with weapons & armour that in the late-game you have to dismantle a bunch of old gear every couple of missions. It’s a time consuming process & in my experience the auto-dismantle feature Team Ninja added in a post-release patch doesn’t work.
Overall, unless you’re looking for a pure Souls-like experience, Stranger of Paradise offers a dynamic & fast-paced combat system that nevertheless takes inspiration from Dark Souls. And if you aren’t into the high difficulty of Souls-Likes (or are just here for the story and/or memes), the game does have lower difficulty settings to make the game more enjoyable for you.
As for the story (co-written by Final Fantasy VII, FFVIII & Kingdom Hearts 2 writer Kazuhige Nojima), it is an… interesting experience. At first, it feels like so bad, it’s good edgy throwback to the 2000s wherein the protagonist seemingly drops more curse words than every character in the rest of the Final Fantasy series combined. But as you get closer to the end the story starts to become actually good. The edgy exterior starts to give way to an unexpectedly emotional story about the folly of anger & the importance of memory. Similarly, the dialogue also goes from meme-worthy to good as the game goes on (ex: the “Bullshit” scene takes place in the first couple of hours). On a related note, the music (mainly composed by FFXIII-2 co-composer Naoshi Mizuta) is pretty good and calls back to previous Final Fantasy games in subtle, but appreciated ways.
Speaking of references to previous Final Fantasy games, Stranger of Paradise, being the game released to mark the 35th anniversary of the Final Fantasy franchise, has numerous references & callbacks to previous FF games. Most of them take the form of dungeons being inspired by (and implied in-universe to pulled from the worlds of) previous Final Fantasy games (ex: The Crystal Tower from FFIII (also a prominant location in FFXIV), Sunleth Waterscape from FFXIII, Sastasha from FFXIV & the Citadel from FFXV), but outside of that, there are plenty of classic Final Fantasy elements included (ex: Chaos, Warriors of Light & a Job system reminiscent of FFV & FFXIV). These references aren’t so all-consuming that they detract from the story being told, though.
Moving on to the technical & visual aspects, Stranger of Paradise is a mixed bag. On one hand, the art direction is as good as should be expected from a Square Enix game. Sure Jack looks like a generic video game protagonist from the late 2000s-early 2010s, but that feels intentional given the direction the story goes in & the rest of characters do have designs that fit their characters. The only one I can really question is Neon wearing a school-girl outfit. Is it meant to signify how she’s younger than the rest of the cast? Maybe, but she’s supposed to be 18 according to the Final Fantasy Wiki (or at least her physical appearance is). Most likely explanation is that someone at Team Ninja and/or Square Enix wanted one of the characters to wear a school girl outfit and didn’t care how little sense it made.
As for the technical side of things, this game is a mess. It’s been patched to improve performance, but the game’s visuals still aren’t up to par for a PS5 game. The anti-aliasing solution Team Ninja are using can’t keep up with this game’s environment design & causes the game to look like a shimmery, blurry mess at times (and this is with the game set to resolution mode!). And it’s not a case of Team Ninja not putting much effort into the PS5 version. The PS4, Xbox One & Series S versions are even worse in this regard & people found at launch that the PC version’s framerate tanks whenever there is fur or hair on screen. Yes, seriously. That issue has been fixed, but these issues & the fact conversations with Cornelian citizens is in a menu rather than an explorable area indicate that this game’s budget was slashed in development & was rushed out the door to kick off the anniversary (which given how greedy & questionably competent Square Enix’s management are wouldn’t be surprising).
Conclusion:
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is a game that balances engaging yet challenging Souls-meets-Devil May Cry combat & telling a surprisingly tragic & emotional story about the folly of anger and the importance of staying true to yourself & doing things on your own terms in a more proficient manner than I expected going in. If you’re a fan of games like Nioh or Dark Souls, but want something you can occasionally laugh at after Elden Ring that still has tragic undertones, I can’t recommend Stranger of Paradise enough. Just don’t expect a polished masterpiece from this game (it certainly didn’t seem to have the budget for it); embrace Jack’s wild ride, and you’ll be fine.
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 8.5/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 7/10
Business Practices score: 7/10 (Fine, aside from the limited time demos)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, doesn’t consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 8/10
Before I get into the story, I would like to discuss this game’s biggest strength: the gameplay. Whilst I haven’t played the Nioh games, it is clear that Team Ninja did take a lot of cues from what they’d done in that series when designing this game. Subsequently, while Dark Souls & Elden Ring comparisons are inevitable, Stranger of Paradise is pretty different & much faster paced than those games. Instead of mostly dodging until you can attack enemies from behind, Stranger of Paradise mostly encourages you to either block attacks or use the game’s Soul Shield ability to parry them and gain additional MP slots for using abilities (with the occasional attack you have to dodge, but those are signposted clearly). Stranger of Paradise also emphasizes running down an enemy’s stagger gauge to perform instant takedown moves. The default controls are reminiscent of other Souls-Likes, but you can switch to a more Nioh/Devil May Cry-esque control scheme in the options menu. My biggest issue with the combat really is just that the game is so generous with weapons & armour that in the late-game you have to dismantle a bunch of old gear every couple of missions. It’s a time consuming process & in my experience the auto-dismantle feature Team Ninja added in a post-release patch doesn’t work.
Overall, unless you’re looking for a pure Souls-like experience, Stranger of Paradise offers a dynamic & fast-paced combat system that nevertheless takes inspiration from Dark Souls. And if you aren’t into the high difficulty of Souls-Likes (or are just here for the story and/or memes), the game does have lower difficulty settings to make the game more enjoyable for you.
As for the story (co-written by Final Fantasy VII, FFVIII & Kingdom Hearts 2 writer Kazuhige Nojima), it is an… interesting experience. At first, it feels like so bad, it’s good edgy throwback to the 2000s wherein the protagonist seemingly drops more curse words than every character in the rest of the Final Fantasy series combined. But as you get closer to the end the story starts to become actually good. The edgy exterior starts to give way to an unexpectedly emotional story about the folly of anger & the importance of memory. Similarly, the dialogue also goes from meme-worthy to good as the game goes on (ex: the “Bullshit” scene takes place in the first couple of hours). On a related note, the music (mainly composed by FFXIII-2 co-composer Naoshi Mizuta) is pretty good and calls back to previous Final Fantasy games in subtle, but appreciated ways.
Speaking of references to previous Final Fantasy games, Stranger of Paradise, being the game released to mark the 35th anniversary of the Final Fantasy franchise, has numerous references & callbacks to previous FF games. Most of them take the form of dungeons being inspired by (and implied in-universe to pulled from the worlds of) previous Final Fantasy games (ex: The Crystal Tower from FFIII (also a prominant location in FFXIV), Sunleth Waterscape from FFXIII, Sastasha from FFXIV & the Citadel from FFXV), but outside of that, there are plenty of classic Final Fantasy elements included (ex: Chaos, Warriors of Light & a Job system reminiscent of FFV & FFXIV). These references aren’t so all-consuming that they detract from the story being told, though.
Moving on to the technical & visual aspects, Stranger of Paradise is a mixed bag. On one hand, the art direction is as good as should be expected from a Square Enix game. Sure Jack looks like a generic video game protagonist from the late 2000s-early 2010s, but that feels intentional given the direction the story goes in & the rest of characters do have designs that fit their characters. The only one I can really question is Neon wearing a school-girl outfit. Is it meant to signify how she’s younger than the rest of the cast? Maybe, but she’s supposed to be 18 according to the Final Fantasy Wiki (or at least her physical appearance is). Most likely explanation is that someone at Team Ninja and/or Square Enix wanted one of the characters to wear a school girl outfit and didn’t care how little sense it made.
As for the technical side of things, this game is a mess. It’s been patched to improve performance, but the game’s visuals still aren’t up to par for a PS5 game. The anti-aliasing solution Team Ninja are using can’t keep up with this game’s environment design & causes the game to look like a shimmery, blurry mess at times (and this is with the game set to resolution mode!). And it’s not a case of Team Ninja not putting much effort into the PS5 version. The PS4, Xbox One & Series S versions are even worse in this regard & people found at launch that the PC version’s framerate tanks whenever there is fur or hair on screen. Yes, seriously. That issue has been fixed, but these issues & the fact conversations with Cornelian citizens is in a menu rather than an explorable area indicate that this game’s budget was slashed in development & was rushed out the door to kick off the anniversary (which given how greedy & questionably competent Square Enix’s management are wouldn’t be surprising).
Conclusion:
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is a game that balances engaging yet challenging Souls-meets-Devil May Cry combat & telling a surprisingly tragic & emotional story about the folly of anger and the importance of staying true to yourself & doing things on your own terms in a more proficient manner than I expected going in. If you’re a fan of games like Nioh or Dark Souls, but want something you can occasionally laugh at after Elden Ring that still has tragic undertones, I can’t recommend Stranger of Paradise enough. Just don’t expect a polished masterpiece from this game (it certainly didn’t seem to have the budget for it); embrace Jack’s wild ride, and you’ll be fine.
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 8.5/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 7/10
Business Practices score: 7/10 (Fine, aside from the limited time demos)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, doesn’t consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 8/10
2020
Cyberpunk 2077 is a stunning game. Even 3 years after release it remains one of the most graphically advanced games you can buy. Especially on PC where CDPR makes great use of Ray Traced Global Illumination to significantly improve the realism of the game’s lighting (not to mention their integration of Path Tracing, but I don't have the hardware to render that in real-time). But even on PS5 the game still looks pretty good.
The story, while not necessarily what you’d expect from a cyberpunk story, is a more universal one about living life to the fullest that has its tearjerking moments & some fun ones too. The highlight has to be V & Johnny Silverhand’s dynamic. Keanu Reeves puts in a decent performance as Johnny, but the highlights in this department are the two actors they cast for V. Both Gavin Drea & Cherami Leigh put in solid performances as V. Which one you prefer is up to personal preference but for what it’s worth I prefer Cherami Leigh’s turn as female V. The side quests were actually pretty interesting too. Pretty much every one of them had some sort of story to it. Even the gigs have some if you do some reading.
As for the open-world, it is a pretty dense world with an emphasis on verticality to better create that feeling of this being an actual city. Even after finishing the main story I still play the game every once in a while just for that world.
The gameplay is solid, especially when you think of it as more a Deus Ex-esque Immersive Sim RPG than an FPS. Melee combat is about what you’d expect if you’ve played a game like Fallout though (as in: pretty simplistic)…
While the game was pretty buggy at launch, CDPR have put in the work to fix it and (unless you’re PS4 & Xbox One), there are more patches coming and they’ve even added some features that people were disappointed weren’t in the game at launch like Transmog (or the ability to change the appearance of what you’re wearing without impacting your stats).
Conclusion:
There is an amazing game in Cyberpunk 2077. The story is great, the gameplay is solid, the graphics are cutting edge and next-gen stuff that could possibly be the next Crysis (if Microsoft Flight Simulator doesn’t get that honour), and the characters are likable human beings. It’s just a shame that the game’s best qualities are held back by a rushed development cycle that was clearly in need of better management and both CDPR’s marketing department and the gaming community at large allowing the hype train to get out of control and failing to keep expectations realistic (I think I did a good job of managing expectations, but I don’t blame most people for getting caught up in the hype). At least the game is getting patched into a better state than it was at launch…
Ratings:
Creative Score (judges story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction, etc.): 9.0/10 (point knock-off for the underwhelming Lifepaths and lack of stuff to do in the open world)
Technical Score (judges graphics, polish, optimization, AI, etc.):
PC Version: 9.5/10
PS5 Version: 8.5/10
Business Practices score (judges how pro-consumer the company’s actions have been surrounding the game): 7/10 (pre-release, this would have been a 9 or even a 10, but I can’t overlook CDPR’s failure to manage the hype machine, the scummy handling of the console release, the way they conned Microsoft and Sony, and the utter mess the refund situation became. At least they've made things right with three years of patches to fix the game and make it closer to what was initially promised.
Overall score (mostly ignores business practices unless they are detrimental to the game experience):
PC score: 9.5/10
PS5 Score (also applicable to Xbox Series X): 9/10 (points docked for the choice to use RT Shadows instead of RT Global Illumination or RT Reflections)
The story, while not necessarily what you’d expect from a cyberpunk story, is a more universal one about living life to the fullest that has its tearjerking moments & some fun ones too. The highlight has to be V & Johnny Silverhand’s dynamic. Keanu Reeves puts in a decent performance as Johnny, but the highlights in this department are the two actors they cast for V. Both Gavin Drea & Cherami Leigh put in solid performances as V. Which one you prefer is up to personal preference but for what it’s worth I prefer Cherami Leigh’s turn as female V. The side quests were actually pretty interesting too. Pretty much every one of them had some sort of story to it. Even the gigs have some if you do some reading.
As for the open-world, it is a pretty dense world with an emphasis on verticality to better create that feeling of this being an actual city. Even after finishing the main story I still play the game every once in a while just for that world.
The gameplay is solid, especially when you think of it as more a Deus Ex-esque Immersive Sim RPG than an FPS. Melee combat is about what you’d expect if you’ve played a game like Fallout though (as in: pretty simplistic)…
While the game was pretty buggy at launch, CDPR have put in the work to fix it and (unless you’re PS4 & Xbox One), there are more patches coming and they’ve even added some features that people were disappointed weren’t in the game at launch like Transmog (or the ability to change the appearance of what you’re wearing without impacting your stats).
Conclusion:
There is an amazing game in Cyberpunk 2077. The story is great, the gameplay is solid, the graphics are cutting edge and next-gen stuff that could possibly be the next Crysis (if Microsoft Flight Simulator doesn’t get that honour), and the characters are likable human beings. It’s just a shame that the game’s best qualities are held back by a rushed development cycle that was clearly in need of better management and both CDPR’s marketing department and the gaming community at large allowing the hype train to get out of control and failing to keep expectations realistic (I think I did a good job of managing expectations, but I don’t blame most people for getting caught up in the hype). At least the game is getting patched into a better state than it was at launch…
Ratings:
Creative Score (judges story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction, etc.): 9.0/10 (point knock-off for the underwhelming Lifepaths and lack of stuff to do in the open world)
Technical Score (judges graphics, polish, optimization, AI, etc.):
PC Version: 9.5/10
PS5 Version: 8.5/10
Business Practices score (judges how pro-consumer the company’s actions have been surrounding the game): 7/10 (pre-release, this would have been a 9 or even a 10, but I can’t overlook CDPR’s failure to manage the hype machine, the scummy handling of the console release, the way they conned Microsoft and Sony, and the utter mess the refund situation became. At least they've made things right with three years of patches to fix the game and make it closer to what was initially promised.
Overall score (mostly ignores business practices unless they are detrimental to the game experience):
PC score: 9.5/10
PS5 Score (also applicable to Xbox Series X): 9/10 (points docked for the choice to use RT Shadows instead of RT Global Illumination or RT Reflections)
The first thing to mention regarding Crisis Core Reunion is that it is a remaster (arguably a remake considering the game was moved to Unreal Engine 4 & some details like the Buster Sword were changed to fit with Final Fantasy VII Remake) of a game that was made for the PSP (and was initially conceived as a pre-smartphones mobile game before being moved to PSP; also that’s PSP as in PlayStation Portable, not the PlayStation Portal). So there are certain things about this game’s design & structure that, while they make sense on a handheld like the PSP (or the Nintendo Switch & Steam Deck I imagine), are at least a little more questionable on a home console like the PlayStation 5 that I played this remaster on.
That structure is a bit of a sticking point for me. Crisis Core has a small selection of main story chapters (11 in total if you include the unnumbered prologue) & a lot of side missions. This leads to the game being pretty short if you rush the main story and only do a few side missions (it took me about 12 ½ hours to finish it). The game was released at a bit of a budget price, though, so that helps a bit.
On a related note, the gameplay. Crisis Core was originally controlled in a manner similar to the Kingdom Hearts games where the game is technically Action-Combat, but in reality, you still mash on options in a menu. Not so with Reunion. This is real action combat… although it’s still not great. There’s some stuff ported over from FFVII Remake, but the end result is still just decent. Especially in comparison to something like FFVII Remake or Final Fantasy XVI. Although the boss fights can still be pretty engaging, especially towards the end. Doesn’t stop standard encounters from getting old after a while though… Not a fan of the randomness of the Digital Mind Wave system & how it overrides Limit Breaks though.
Speaking of things changed for Reunion, let’s talk about the graphics. The game looks pretty decent on PS5, but it’s pretty obvious that the areas that look the most impressive (that being those set in Midgar) were mostly reused from FFVII Remake. Meanwhile, some of the new areas made for this remaster… don’t look too good for a game running in Unreal Engine 4…
Now, for some rapid-fire thoughts before I talk about the story:
The music, composed primarily by Takeharu Ishimoto, is pretty great. It mostly leans on guitars, but there’s some piano & orchestral music there too (plus a lyrical song in the form of Aya’s “Why” plays over the ending).
The CG cutscenes, which have been left untouched aside from changing the Buster Sword model to reflect the in-game model & some AI upscaling being applied, are fine… but you can definitely tell that they were not originally intended to be seen on a 4K television as (even with the AI upscaling) they look kind of low-res and… off. It’s not a deal breaker or experience ruining, but it can be distracting at times.
Much like FFVII Remake, Crisis Core Reunion recasts the entire English voice cast (some of which, like the VAs for Zack, Cloud & Sephiroth, are the same VAs that are voicing them in the FFVII Remake trilogy) while keeping pretty much the same Japanese cast as the original PSP game. Personally, I found the English voice acting to be decent, but it’s far from the gold standard set by other Japanese games like the Creative Business Unit III Final Fantasy games (XIV & XVI).
Now that all of that’s out of the way, let’s talk about what’s, in my opinion, the strongest aspect of Crisis Core: the story. While this game’s narrative isn’t perfect & the storytelling feels held back by the limitations of the hardware it was originally designed for, it’s still a pretty good prequel story to FFVII. Like any prequel, there are some retcons here (ex: Pretty much everything relating to Genesis), but Zack’s journey makes the whole affair worthwhile and I was a sobbing wreck by the time the end credits rolled thanks to the amazing ending.
Conclusion:
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion is a pretty solid remaster of an overall decent game. The story is good & makes the whole experience worthwhile, even if the combat outside of boss fights gets old rather quickly & the myriad of side missions reminds you this was originally intended as a handheld game. I’d recommend playing it if you like Final Fantasy VII and/or Final Fantasy VII Remake and want to learn more about the game’s story and world, but if you aren’t a fan of Final Fantasy VII… I’d suggest starting with the original or Remake first and then circling back to Crisis Core later.
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 7.5/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 7.5/10
Business Practices score: 6/10 (nothing downright offensive, but nothing special either)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 7.5/10
That structure is a bit of a sticking point for me. Crisis Core has a small selection of main story chapters (11 in total if you include the unnumbered prologue) & a lot of side missions. This leads to the game being pretty short if you rush the main story and only do a few side missions (it took me about 12 ½ hours to finish it). The game was released at a bit of a budget price, though, so that helps a bit.
On a related note, the gameplay. Crisis Core was originally controlled in a manner similar to the Kingdom Hearts games where the game is technically Action-Combat, but in reality, you still mash on options in a menu. Not so with Reunion. This is real action combat… although it’s still not great. There’s some stuff ported over from FFVII Remake, but the end result is still just decent. Especially in comparison to something like FFVII Remake or Final Fantasy XVI. Although the boss fights can still be pretty engaging, especially towards the end. Doesn’t stop standard encounters from getting old after a while though… Not a fan of the randomness of the Digital Mind Wave system & how it overrides Limit Breaks though.
Speaking of things changed for Reunion, let’s talk about the graphics. The game looks pretty decent on PS5, but it’s pretty obvious that the areas that look the most impressive (that being those set in Midgar) were mostly reused from FFVII Remake. Meanwhile, some of the new areas made for this remaster… don’t look too good for a game running in Unreal Engine 4…
Now, for some rapid-fire thoughts before I talk about the story:
The music, composed primarily by Takeharu Ishimoto, is pretty great. It mostly leans on guitars, but there’s some piano & orchestral music there too (plus a lyrical song in the form of Aya’s “Why” plays over the ending).
The CG cutscenes, which have been left untouched aside from changing the Buster Sword model to reflect the in-game model & some AI upscaling being applied, are fine… but you can definitely tell that they were not originally intended to be seen on a 4K television as (even with the AI upscaling) they look kind of low-res and… off. It’s not a deal breaker or experience ruining, but it can be distracting at times.
Much like FFVII Remake, Crisis Core Reunion recasts the entire English voice cast (some of which, like the VAs for Zack, Cloud & Sephiroth, are the same VAs that are voicing them in the FFVII Remake trilogy) while keeping pretty much the same Japanese cast as the original PSP game. Personally, I found the English voice acting to be decent, but it’s far from the gold standard set by other Japanese games like the Creative Business Unit III Final Fantasy games (XIV & XVI).
Now that all of that’s out of the way, let’s talk about what’s, in my opinion, the strongest aspect of Crisis Core: the story. While this game’s narrative isn’t perfect & the storytelling feels held back by the limitations of the hardware it was originally designed for, it’s still a pretty good prequel story to FFVII. Like any prequel, there are some retcons here (ex: Pretty much everything relating to Genesis), but Zack’s journey makes the whole affair worthwhile and I was a sobbing wreck by the time the end credits rolled thanks to the amazing ending.
Conclusion:
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion is a pretty solid remaster of an overall decent game. The story is good & makes the whole experience worthwhile, even if the combat outside of boss fights gets old rather quickly & the myriad of side missions reminds you this was originally intended as a handheld game. I’d recommend playing it if you like Final Fantasy VII and/or Final Fantasy VII Remake and want to learn more about the game’s story and world, but if you aren’t a fan of Final Fantasy VII… I’d suggest starting with the original or Remake first and then circling back to Crisis Core later.
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 7.5/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 7.5/10
Business Practices score: 6/10 (nothing downright offensive, but nothing special either)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 7.5/10
2023
A bare minimum "sequel" to CSGO that pulls an Overwatch 2 in replacing the original for no good reason.
I personally found CSGO to be too hardcore & esports-focused for my tastes and CS2 didn't change my mind.
Oh, and I hate the gambling mechanics in this game. It's somehow worse & more blatantly gambling than any Gacha game. Which is saying something. It legit makes me kinda hate Valve for being so happy to profit off this shit! Especially since Epic are publishing & funding high-quality experiences like Alan Wake II to get me to use their launcher.
If you enjoy Counter-Strike, you keep doing you & enjoy it. It's just not my thing...
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 6/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 7/10 (fine for what it is & does what it sets out to do, but not pushing boundaries)
Business Practices score: 2/10 (literal gambling, overwriting it's predecessor for no good reason & CSGO & TF2's marketplaces were what NFTs were trying to imitate and that's still here)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 4/10
I personally found CSGO to be too hardcore & esports-focused for my tastes and CS2 didn't change my mind.
Oh, and I hate the gambling mechanics in this game. It's somehow worse & more blatantly gambling than any Gacha game. Which is saying something. It legit makes me kinda hate Valve for being so happy to profit off this shit! Especially since Epic are publishing & funding high-quality experiences like Alan Wake II to get me to use their launcher.
If you enjoy Counter-Strike, you keep doing you & enjoy it. It's just not my thing...
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 6/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 7/10 (fine for what it is & does what it sets out to do, but not pushing boundaries)
Business Practices score: 2/10 (literal gambling, overwriting it's predecessor for no good reason & CSGO & TF2's marketplaces were what NFTs were trying to imitate and that's still here)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 4/10
First off, I should probably weigh in on the big debate surrounding this game: Does this feel like a $70 USD/$90 CAD DLC for last year’s Modern Warfare II? Or are there enough changes made & content present that Modern Warfare III feels like a sequel? Personally, I think it depends on the mode. While I think Multiplayer has enough differences & content to justify considering it a sequel (or at least about as many differences as something like MW19 to MWII)... the campaign very much feels like it was meant to be a short little interlude story to bridge the gap between MWII & Infinity Ward’s next game (which will presumably be MWIV now) that they scrambled to expand into something resembling a full campaign experience once this project was promoted from expansion to sequel. This is because that’s exactly what happened (although the campaign was originally going to be a side-story set entirely in Mexico (presumably about Alejandro from MWII’s campaign going after Valeria/El Sin Nombre after the events of that game) before the project got promoted to a globetrotting sequel about introducing Makarov).
Anyways, the main menu of MWIII (due to being part of the Call of Duty HQ front-end) is almost identical to last year’s MWII & you can even launch MWII (and Warzone) from MWIII. And it’s about as bad now as it was then. There have been some improvements, like how scrolling down from the top leads you to quick launch screens for each game in COD HQ (which as of now is MWII, MWIII & Warzone). But the core design is the same as last year, unfortunately…
As for the graphics, they’re a bit all over the place. In some places like the Campaign missions Operation 627 & Trojan Horse, the game looks better than last year’s MWII, although not up to par with current-generation-only games like Alan Wake II. But then in other places like some of the Open Combat Missions or most of the Multiplayer maps the game looks graphically worse than MW19 and pretty bad for a current-generation game (even one also made for last-generation consoles). This is presumably a byproduct of a rushed development cycle & still being bound by the limitations of now decade-old hardware. It makes one hope that the PS4 & Xbox One will be dropped for Treyarch’s game next year, but Microsoft is committed to bringing COD to Nintendo consoles now (presumably starting with the upcoming Switch successor), so we’ll see…
Campaign:
Upon first finishing the Modern Warfare III campaign, I was actually feeling pretty positive about the experience and was thinking, “Hey that wasn’t so bad!” But the more time that’s passed, the more I saw the holes in the experience & the more my opinion on it soured. As mentioned earlier, this campaign more than anything else in MWIII is where it is most evident that this was originally meant to be DLC for MWII before it got repurposed into a sequel. The campaign is short, even by COD standards and there aren’t that many of the usual scripted & cinematic missions, and the ones that are here are typically pretty short. To make up for this, the majority of the campaign’s runtime consists of “Open Combat Missions.” These seemed like interesting ideas in concept, but in execution, they just feel like DMZ matches with bots, which just makes them feel lazy and as if they mostly exist to pad out the runtime to something acceptable for a COD campaign. Oh, and the armoured enemies from MWII are back and only slightly less obnoxious than last time.
The shame is that the story & performances from the actors here are actually pretty good underneath the rush job the rest of the campaign is. Makarov feels like an appropriate adaptation of the character for the reboot Modern Warfare series’s grittier and more grounded tone & I’m looking forward to seeing more of him in the future… Unfortunately, he just wasn’t in this campaign much and the other Konni Group lieutenants we meet aren’t as interesting as Makarov himself. Oh, and there’s a major plot event at the end that, while it gets a good scene in the aftermath, feels undermined by how quickly & anticlimactically it happens (not to mention the random and cringe-worthy 21 Savage song that plays in the credits after the (admittedly quite decent) mid-credits scene)
Hell, the cinematic campaign missions that are here are as good as they always are in COD. It’s a shame that there are only 4 of them in this whole campaign…
So, in short, while Modern Warfare III’s campaign has moments of enjoyable content, it’s held back by a rushed and heavily micromanaged development cycle and the resulting very short length, undercooked story & heavy reliance on existing assets that entailed.
Multiplayer:
Contrary to my feelings about the campaign, I think Modern Warfare III’s multiplayer is actually very strong. While it definitely used Modern Warfare II as a starting point, MWIII feels about as similar to MWII as that game felt to Modern Warfare (2019). The similarities are amplified somewhat due to the gap between MW games being 12 ½ months this time rather than 36.
A big reason why MWIII feels so different from MWII is down to the movement, flow and Time to Kill (TTK) of the game. MWII tried to cater to as many people as possible… which in practice (or at least execution) resulted in it being a slower-paced game which incentivized not moving as much as in something like Cold War. While this definitely speaks to some people, did cause the game to get rather grating for a more aggressive player like me. Fortunately for me, though, MWIII drastically shifts the pacing of the game by slowing the TTK down (although not to the extent of Black Ops 4 & Cold War) and overhauling the perk system to make this game feel surprisingly different from its predecessor.
While there’s definitely some MWII DNA still here, MWIII feels much closer to Black Ops: Cold War than MWII. I feel much more empowered as an aggressive, more movement-centric player in this game than I did in MWII. The moment-to-moment gunplay is about as sublime as Black Ops: Cold War or Modern Warfare (2019), in my opinion. The maps, which as of launch are all remakes of Modern Warfare 2 (2009), are all great (except Derail, screw that map), but as they are all remakes this may feed into the feeling that this was rushed out the door.
Zombies:
Admittedly I’m mainly a solo player, so this new direction Treyarch’s opted to go in with Modern Warfare Zombies, essentially a fusion of Outbreak from Cold War Zombies & DMZ from Warzone 2, maybe isn’t made for me. But for what it is, it’s definitely alright, but very rough around the edges.
As that description implies, this is very different from what’s come to be expected from Treyarch Zombies. It’s more Escape from Tarkov with Zombies & no PvP than classic Treyarch Zombies. They even got rid of the Easter Eggs in favour of story missions that work similarly to Contracts in DMZ or the missions in Outbreak. But honestly, I think I liked DMZ more. I don’t know, Extraction Shooters and Zombies just didn’t create an enjoyable combination for me. Apparently, Treyarch’s working on… something that they think will appeal to Round-Based Zombies fans to add to MWIII later. We’ll see how that pans out, but for now, I think I’ll just stick to MWIII’s multiplayer and keep playing Black Ops 3 & 4 for my Zombies fix instead.
The story is whatever. It’s an interlude story set between the first two games in the reboot Modern Warfare series and feels like filler within the grand scheme of Treyarch’s Dark Aether storyline. Honestly, I haven’t felt motivated to really experience it myself.
Conclusion:
Modern Warfare III rings in the 20th anniversary of Call of Duty with a whimper rather than a bang. Sure, the multiplayer feels good to play, is some of the most fun I’ve had with COD MP in years, and Sledgehammer has been proactive in responding to community feedback... But it’s hard to argue that MWIII is as different from MWII as MWII was from MW19. The campaign feels like DLC for MWII and very much deserves the negative publicity it’s been getting, and Zombies just feels like Treyarch took DMZ and made some changes to make it a Zombies mode.
So, while I don’t regret getting this game for the MP, I can’t argue that this is one of the better COD games in recent memory if the whole package is considered… Hopefully Treyarch’s game next year is a banger.
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction, etc.):
Campaign: 6.5 out of 10
Multiplayer: 8 out of 10
Zombies: 6 out of 10
Whole Package: 7 out of 10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)):
Campaign: 7/10
Multiplayer: 7.5/10
Zombies: 7/10
Whole Package: 7/10
Business Practices score: 3/10 (All the business practice issues MWII had plus the fact that Activision took something intended to be an expansion for MWII, turned it into a sequel and forced Sledgehammer to rush it out the door to release in November 2023)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): Campaign: 5.5/10
Multiplayer: 7/10
Zombies: 6/10
Whole Package: 6/10
Anyways, the main menu of MWIII (due to being part of the Call of Duty HQ front-end) is almost identical to last year’s MWII & you can even launch MWII (and Warzone) from MWIII. And it’s about as bad now as it was then. There have been some improvements, like how scrolling down from the top leads you to quick launch screens for each game in COD HQ (which as of now is MWII, MWIII & Warzone). But the core design is the same as last year, unfortunately…
As for the graphics, they’re a bit all over the place. In some places like the Campaign missions Operation 627 & Trojan Horse, the game looks better than last year’s MWII, although not up to par with current-generation-only games like Alan Wake II. But then in other places like some of the Open Combat Missions or most of the Multiplayer maps the game looks graphically worse than MW19 and pretty bad for a current-generation game (even one also made for last-generation consoles). This is presumably a byproduct of a rushed development cycle & still being bound by the limitations of now decade-old hardware. It makes one hope that the PS4 & Xbox One will be dropped for Treyarch’s game next year, but Microsoft is committed to bringing COD to Nintendo consoles now (presumably starting with the upcoming Switch successor), so we’ll see…
Campaign:
Upon first finishing the Modern Warfare III campaign, I was actually feeling pretty positive about the experience and was thinking, “Hey that wasn’t so bad!” But the more time that’s passed, the more I saw the holes in the experience & the more my opinion on it soured. As mentioned earlier, this campaign more than anything else in MWIII is where it is most evident that this was originally meant to be DLC for MWII before it got repurposed into a sequel. The campaign is short, even by COD standards and there aren’t that many of the usual scripted & cinematic missions, and the ones that are here are typically pretty short. To make up for this, the majority of the campaign’s runtime consists of “Open Combat Missions.” These seemed like interesting ideas in concept, but in execution, they just feel like DMZ matches with bots, which just makes them feel lazy and as if they mostly exist to pad out the runtime to something acceptable for a COD campaign. Oh, and the armoured enemies from MWII are back and only slightly less obnoxious than last time.
The shame is that the story & performances from the actors here are actually pretty good underneath the rush job the rest of the campaign is. Makarov feels like an appropriate adaptation of the character for the reboot Modern Warfare series’s grittier and more grounded tone & I’m looking forward to seeing more of him in the future… Unfortunately, he just wasn’t in this campaign much and the other Konni Group lieutenants we meet aren’t as interesting as Makarov himself. Oh, and there’s a major plot event at the end that, while it gets a good scene in the aftermath, feels undermined by how quickly & anticlimactically it happens (not to mention the random and cringe-worthy 21 Savage song that plays in the credits after the (admittedly quite decent) mid-credits scene)
Hell, the cinematic campaign missions that are here are as good as they always are in COD. It’s a shame that there are only 4 of them in this whole campaign…
So, in short, while Modern Warfare III’s campaign has moments of enjoyable content, it’s held back by a rushed and heavily micromanaged development cycle and the resulting very short length, undercooked story & heavy reliance on existing assets that entailed.
Multiplayer:
Contrary to my feelings about the campaign, I think Modern Warfare III’s multiplayer is actually very strong. While it definitely used Modern Warfare II as a starting point, MWIII feels about as similar to MWII as that game felt to Modern Warfare (2019). The similarities are amplified somewhat due to the gap between MW games being 12 ½ months this time rather than 36.
A big reason why MWIII feels so different from MWII is down to the movement, flow and Time to Kill (TTK) of the game. MWII tried to cater to as many people as possible… which in practice (or at least execution) resulted in it being a slower-paced game which incentivized not moving as much as in something like Cold War. While this definitely speaks to some people, did cause the game to get rather grating for a more aggressive player like me. Fortunately for me, though, MWIII drastically shifts the pacing of the game by slowing the TTK down (although not to the extent of Black Ops 4 & Cold War) and overhauling the perk system to make this game feel surprisingly different from its predecessor.
While there’s definitely some MWII DNA still here, MWIII feels much closer to Black Ops: Cold War than MWII. I feel much more empowered as an aggressive, more movement-centric player in this game than I did in MWII. The moment-to-moment gunplay is about as sublime as Black Ops: Cold War or Modern Warfare (2019), in my opinion. The maps, which as of launch are all remakes of Modern Warfare 2 (2009), are all great (except Derail, screw that map), but as they are all remakes this may feed into the feeling that this was rushed out the door.
Zombies:
Admittedly I’m mainly a solo player, so this new direction Treyarch’s opted to go in with Modern Warfare Zombies, essentially a fusion of Outbreak from Cold War Zombies & DMZ from Warzone 2, maybe isn’t made for me. But for what it is, it’s definitely alright, but very rough around the edges.
As that description implies, this is very different from what’s come to be expected from Treyarch Zombies. It’s more Escape from Tarkov with Zombies & no PvP than classic Treyarch Zombies. They even got rid of the Easter Eggs in favour of story missions that work similarly to Contracts in DMZ or the missions in Outbreak. But honestly, I think I liked DMZ more. I don’t know, Extraction Shooters and Zombies just didn’t create an enjoyable combination for me. Apparently, Treyarch’s working on… something that they think will appeal to Round-Based Zombies fans to add to MWIII later. We’ll see how that pans out, but for now, I think I’ll just stick to MWIII’s multiplayer and keep playing Black Ops 3 & 4 for my Zombies fix instead.
The story is whatever. It’s an interlude story set between the first two games in the reboot Modern Warfare series and feels like filler within the grand scheme of Treyarch’s Dark Aether storyline. Honestly, I haven’t felt motivated to really experience it myself.
Conclusion:
Modern Warfare III rings in the 20th anniversary of Call of Duty with a whimper rather than a bang. Sure, the multiplayer feels good to play, is some of the most fun I’ve had with COD MP in years, and Sledgehammer has been proactive in responding to community feedback... But it’s hard to argue that MWIII is as different from MWII as MWII was from MW19. The campaign feels like DLC for MWII and very much deserves the negative publicity it’s been getting, and Zombies just feels like Treyarch took DMZ and made some changes to make it a Zombies mode.
So, while I don’t regret getting this game for the MP, I can’t argue that this is one of the better COD games in recent memory if the whole package is considered… Hopefully Treyarch’s game next year is a banger.
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction, etc.):
Campaign: 6.5 out of 10
Multiplayer: 8 out of 10
Zombies: 6 out of 10
Whole Package: 7 out of 10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)):
Campaign: 7/10
Multiplayer: 7.5/10
Zombies: 7/10
Whole Package: 7/10
Business Practices score: 3/10 (All the business practice issues MWII had plus the fact that Activision took something intended to be an expansion for MWII, turned it into a sequel and forced Sledgehammer to rush it out the door to release in November 2023)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): Campaign: 5.5/10
Multiplayer: 7/10
Zombies: 6/10
Whole Package: 6/10
2023
Going into Final Fantasy XVI, I was insanely excited. It was the first mainline entry to release since I’d become a fan of the franchise, the trailers and previews made the game look like something great and it was being made by some of the same people as Final Fantasy XIV, perhaps my favourite entry in the franchise so far. Now that I’ve reached the end of my first playthrough, I’m delighted to say that (for me at least, I’m aware that this game is quite divisive in some FF fan circles) Final Fantasy XVI absolutely lived up to the hype!
While Final Fantasy is a franchise that’s never been afraid of changing & reinventing itself, XVI is probably the most radical departure from prior entries since VII moved from Medieval Fantasy to Science Fantasy & 2D pixel art to 3D graphics. While XV was the mainline entry that completed the franchise’s transition from menu/turn-based combat to action-combat, XVI moves even further away from the franchise’s turn-based roots. Traditional RPG elements like the concept of party members, mini-games or any semblance of post-game beyond New Game + and harder difficulties (although to be fair VII Remake is guilty of that last one too) being downplayed, heavily streamlined or omitted entirely.
This has sparked much debate and controversy in the Final Fantasy fandom as to what even makes a game a Final Fantasy game and whether XVI has strayed too far from genre norms to be even considered an RPG anymore (the latter debate also extending to RPG fan circles as a whole). I personally think it still feels like both an RPG & a Final Fantasy game, but I also won’t deny that, in stark contrast to VII Remake & XV, XVI puts a lot of emphasis on the Action part of Action-RPG (whereas XV & especially VII Remake put more emphasis on the RPG part).
But I think the tradeoffs CBUIII have made with XVI are worth it in exchange for the highs it’s combat & boss fights deliver that rival some of the most iconic boss fights in other action games like Asura’s Wrath, God of War or Devil May Cry. Plus I don’t think the story CBUIII wanted to tell & the world they’ve created would be particularly well suited to a combat system similar to VII Remake, let alone older entries. It certainly helps that the ever changing nature of Final Fantasy as a franchise means that it’s highly likely XVII will go in a different direction. It could be quite literally be anything from a turn-based RPG inspired by the likes of Persona & Trails of Cold Steel to a first-person shooter inspired by Call of Duty or Titanfall.
As for XVI’s combat, it really is a tight, fluid & stellar action-combat system to engage with. Knowing their inexperience with creating action-combat systems, CBUIII assembled a veritable dream team to help them on this front. Not content with just poaching one of the combat designers of Devil May Cry 4 & 5 and Dragon’s Dogma (Ryota Suzuki) from Capcom to be this game’s Combat Director and having Kenji Sudo, the designer of some of XIV’s most challenging Ultimate Trials & Savage Raids as one of the lead combat designers, CBUIII also enlisted the assistance of the Kingdom Hearts team over at CBUI & a team at Platinum Games led by those who’d worked with Square Enix previously on Nier Automata.
And, in my opinion, that assistance paid off and has resulted in the best action-combat system in the entire franchise (although TBF I haven’t played Type-0 yet). Even the encounters with more basic enemies didn’t ever truly get old for me. Not to mention the amazing boss fights that may have ruined me on other games’ boss fights because of the sheer scale, spectacle & epic feeling this game’s boss fights have. Although I do agree that the game (at least on first playthrough) is at least a little too easy. I only really died once in the 52 1/2 hours it took me to finish the main story & all the side-quests. Even the Hunts I did do, while posing some challenge, never posed enough difficulty to kill me. But nevertheless, that didn’t impact my enjoyment of XVI enough to offset what this game does well. I’m very much looking forward to my second playthrough on Final Fantasy mode & attempting to make XVI my first Platinum trophy.
Speaking of things you need to do for the Platinum, let’s talk about those side quests. These side quests are something that XVI has gotten a lot of flak for. While I won’t argue that the design & what you do in them is all that special (really it’s not that great and does inherit almost all of the shortcomings of previous entries like XIV & VII Remake’s side quests), where XVI’s side quests shine is in the stories they tell and how they further flesh out the lore & world of Valisthea. Most of the later side quests in particular were tearjerkers for me. You do have to play the earlier side quests that aren’t so great though, so take that how you will…
While we’re on the topic of story, let’s talk about the main story. I personally loved it, although I understand that the darker & less colourful tone CBUIII went for isn’t for everyone. The game is also very much Clive’s story rather than an ensemble like most other FF games aside from Lightning Returns and spin-offs like Crisis Core. But other than those two sticking points this is very much a Final Fantasy story & bears many of the franchise’s recurring tropes (including some that XV forwent). Not that this is a bad thing. Instead, XVI is able to deftly weave them in with its own ideas & themes about slavery, clashing ideals, empathy & living on your own terms in ways that can & likely will bring you to tears at times. Sure, there are some pacing issues at times (although nothing that wouldn’t be expected if you’ve played a lot of XIV), some things aren’t conveyed well & the demonization of slavery could have been a bit more subtle, but this is overall a very well-written & told story set in a fascinating & fleshed-out world that I certainly wouldn’t mind revisiting in a sequel, prequel, DLC or spin-off of some sort. The game does certainly leave enough open-ended that such things are feasible…
That brings us to voice acting, where XVI is pretty different from the last couple of single-player FF games. Unlike most other Final Fantasy games, XVI’s English dub uses a London-based voice cast rather than the typical California-based voice actors most games use. Another deviation from the norm is XVI’s prioritization of said dub to the point where the facial capture was done with the English cast & the Japanese script was rewritten to incorporate stuff from the English script & better fit the lip sync from the aforementioned facial capture. And it definitely paid off! The majority of the English cast give solid performances, but special mention has to go to Ben Starr as Clive. With how much this story focuses on Clive, if he (or any of the other actors voicing him in the dubs) gave a bad performance, the whole game falls apart. And for a newcomer to voice acting, he gives one hell of a performance. He definitely deserves to be in consideration for some Best Performance nominations come awards season.
As for the technical side of things, they are superb, with some caveats. The audio side of things is great. The surround sound is really immersive & I’d imagine that translates well to the PS5’s 3D Audio capabilities. The DualSense is decently well utilized, although Astro’s Playroom, Gran Turismo 7 and Forspoken are better showcases in my opinion. The graphics, as is to be expected of a mainline Final Fantasy game, are superb and, combined with the boss fights, make the game feel like one of the first games to truly utilize the PS5 hardware.
Conclusion
Final Fantasy XVI is an an excellent character action-RPG with unforgettable boss fights, a tight & fluid action-combat system & an amazing story that quickly proves itself to be more than just Game of Thrones-lite & brings it’s own distinct feel separate from anything that came before it in the Final Fantasy franchise while still feeling like a Final Fantasy game (especially if you got into the franchise with XIV like I did). A true testament to the flexibility & ever-changing nature of the Final Fantasy franchise. Shame about the lacking difficulty & early side quests though…
Ratings
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 9.5/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 8.5/10
Business Practices score: 6/10 (points mainly detracted for the whole PS5 timed exclusive thing)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 9.5 out of 10
While Final Fantasy is a franchise that’s never been afraid of changing & reinventing itself, XVI is probably the most radical departure from prior entries since VII moved from Medieval Fantasy to Science Fantasy & 2D pixel art to 3D graphics. While XV was the mainline entry that completed the franchise’s transition from menu/turn-based combat to action-combat, XVI moves even further away from the franchise’s turn-based roots. Traditional RPG elements like the concept of party members, mini-games or any semblance of post-game beyond New Game + and harder difficulties (although to be fair VII Remake is guilty of that last one too) being downplayed, heavily streamlined or omitted entirely.
This has sparked much debate and controversy in the Final Fantasy fandom as to what even makes a game a Final Fantasy game and whether XVI has strayed too far from genre norms to be even considered an RPG anymore (the latter debate also extending to RPG fan circles as a whole). I personally think it still feels like both an RPG & a Final Fantasy game, but I also won’t deny that, in stark contrast to VII Remake & XV, XVI puts a lot of emphasis on the Action part of Action-RPG (whereas XV & especially VII Remake put more emphasis on the RPG part).
But I think the tradeoffs CBUIII have made with XVI are worth it in exchange for the highs it’s combat & boss fights deliver that rival some of the most iconic boss fights in other action games like Asura’s Wrath, God of War or Devil May Cry. Plus I don’t think the story CBUIII wanted to tell & the world they’ve created would be particularly well suited to a combat system similar to VII Remake, let alone older entries. It certainly helps that the ever changing nature of Final Fantasy as a franchise means that it’s highly likely XVII will go in a different direction. It could be quite literally be anything from a turn-based RPG inspired by the likes of Persona & Trails of Cold Steel to a first-person shooter inspired by Call of Duty or Titanfall.
As for XVI’s combat, it really is a tight, fluid & stellar action-combat system to engage with. Knowing their inexperience with creating action-combat systems, CBUIII assembled a veritable dream team to help them on this front. Not content with just poaching one of the combat designers of Devil May Cry 4 & 5 and Dragon’s Dogma (Ryota Suzuki) from Capcom to be this game’s Combat Director and having Kenji Sudo, the designer of some of XIV’s most challenging Ultimate Trials & Savage Raids as one of the lead combat designers, CBUIII also enlisted the assistance of the Kingdom Hearts team over at CBUI & a team at Platinum Games led by those who’d worked with Square Enix previously on Nier Automata.
And, in my opinion, that assistance paid off and has resulted in the best action-combat system in the entire franchise (although TBF I haven’t played Type-0 yet). Even the encounters with more basic enemies didn’t ever truly get old for me. Not to mention the amazing boss fights that may have ruined me on other games’ boss fights because of the sheer scale, spectacle & epic feeling this game’s boss fights have. Although I do agree that the game (at least on first playthrough) is at least a little too easy. I only really died once in the 52 1/2 hours it took me to finish the main story & all the side-quests. Even the Hunts I did do, while posing some challenge, never posed enough difficulty to kill me. But nevertheless, that didn’t impact my enjoyment of XVI enough to offset what this game does well. I’m very much looking forward to my second playthrough on Final Fantasy mode & attempting to make XVI my first Platinum trophy.
Speaking of things you need to do for the Platinum, let’s talk about those side quests. These side quests are something that XVI has gotten a lot of flak for. While I won’t argue that the design & what you do in them is all that special (really it’s not that great and does inherit almost all of the shortcomings of previous entries like XIV & VII Remake’s side quests), where XVI’s side quests shine is in the stories they tell and how they further flesh out the lore & world of Valisthea. Most of the later side quests in particular were tearjerkers for me. You do have to play the earlier side quests that aren’t so great though, so take that how you will…
While we’re on the topic of story, let’s talk about the main story. I personally loved it, although I understand that the darker & less colourful tone CBUIII went for isn’t for everyone. The game is also very much Clive’s story rather than an ensemble like most other FF games aside from Lightning Returns and spin-offs like Crisis Core. But other than those two sticking points this is very much a Final Fantasy story & bears many of the franchise’s recurring tropes (including some that XV forwent). Not that this is a bad thing. Instead, XVI is able to deftly weave them in with its own ideas & themes about slavery, clashing ideals, empathy & living on your own terms in ways that can & likely will bring you to tears at times. Sure, there are some pacing issues at times (although nothing that wouldn’t be expected if you’ve played a lot of XIV), some things aren’t conveyed well & the demonization of slavery could have been a bit more subtle, but this is overall a very well-written & told story set in a fascinating & fleshed-out world that I certainly wouldn’t mind revisiting in a sequel, prequel, DLC or spin-off of some sort. The game does certainly leave enough open-ended that such things are feasible…
That brings us to voice acting, where XVI is pretty different from the last couple of single-player FF games. Unlike most other Final Fantasy games, XVI’s English dub uses a London-based voice cast rather than the typical California-based voice actors most games use. Another deviation from the norm is XVI’s prioritization of said dub to the point where the facial capture was done with the English cast & the Japanese script was rewritten to incorporate stuff from the English script & better fit the lip sync from the aforementioned facial capture. And it definitely paid off! The majority of the English cast give solid performances, but special mention has to go to Ben Starr as Clive. With how much this story focuses on Clive, if he (or any of the other actors voicing him in the dubs) gave a bad performance, the whole game falls apart. And for a newcomer to voice acting, he gives one hell of a performance. He definitely deserves to be in consideration for some Best Performance nominations come awards season.
As for the technical side of things, they are superb, with some caveats. The audio side of things is great. The surround sound is really immersive & I’d imagine that translates well to the PS5’s 3D Audio capabilities. The DualSense is decently well utilized, although Astro’s Playroom, Gran Turismo 7 and Forspoken are better showcases in my opinion. The graphics, as is to be expected of a mainline Final Fantasy game, are superb and, combined with the boss fights, make the game feel like one of the first games to truly utilize the PS5 hardware.
Conclusion
Final Fantasy XVI is an an excellent character action-RPG with unforgettable boss fights, a tight & fluid action-combat system & an amazing story that quickly proves itself to be more than just Game of Thrones-lite & brings it’s own distinct feel separate from anything that came before it in the Final Fantasy franchise while still feeling like a Final Fantasy game (especially if you got into the franchise with XIV like I did). A true testament to the flexibility & ever-changing nature of the Final Fantasy franchise. Shame about the lacking difficulty & early side quests though…
Ratings
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 9.5/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 8.5/10
Business Practices score: 6/10 (points mainly detracted for the whole PS5 timed exclusive thing)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 9.5 out of 10
2023
First off, I feel I should explain my history with the games of Remedy Entertainment before going any further. My first experience with Remedy was Alan Wake 1. I was very much a PlayStation 3 kid during this time, but this game was one of the rare Xbox 360 games to make me jealous of Xbox owners (Forza being the only other one to really do so). So when I got an Xbox 360 for Christmas in 2012, I naturally went and bought a copy of Alan Wake the next day… and I loved it. The story was compelling, the gameplay felt unique & responsive and the presentation made it feel like a well-made TV show. So naturally (once I’d played the DLC & the Xbox Live Arcade spin-off Alan Wake’s American Nightmare), I was looking forward to a sequel… only to find out that Alan Wake 2 was (at that time) not happening. There had been a prototype shown & pitched to Microsoft, but it was rejected in favour of a new IP that leaned into Remedy’s historic blending of live-action video into their games and Remedy would repurpose most of the ideas seen in that prototype for American Nightmare instead.
This new IP would take the form of Quantum Break and would experiment with blending video games & TV to tell its story. And while Quantum Break was far from a bad game and had some interesting ideas in its story & especially its take on time travel, it failed to reach the heights of Alan Wake for me & many other Remedy fans. It would seem that it also failed to resonate with a broader audience & it definitely didn’t do as much to move the needle when it came to Xbox One console sales as Microsoft had hoped. So Remedy would part ways with Microsoft, reacquire the Alan Wake IP from them & (after resuming brainstorming on an Alan Wake sequel) their next project would be the smaller-scale Control, which, while also not reaching the heights of Alan Wake for me, was a solid game that hinted at possible ties to the Alan Wake universe, which culminated in a DLC that officially crossed over with it & confirmed the two games were in the same universe. This made me and many others very excited about what the future held.
And now, just over three years since that DLC’s release & almost thirteen and a half years after the original game’s release, Alan Wake II is finally here! So, what do I think of this game I’ve been waiting just over a decade for? IT WAS AMAZING!
First, let’s start with what is probably the most important part of a Remedy game: the story. And what a story it is! The game has you switch between Alan & Saga, with both only providing part of the whole story. Both stories are tense, gripping & filled with memorable moments and I do recommend alternating between the two to get the best experience (although I will note that the game only gives you free rein to switch between the two in the middle of the story). The way Remedy mixes gameplay, real-time cutscenes & live-action cutscenes throughout the game is ingenious & the best ratio of the three that Remedy has ever struck (said live-action scenes also look great and are clearly well-shot, but with more of a B-movie or arthouse feel than that of a big Hollywood blockbuster). The story Remedy weaves throughout these stories is engaging, creative & insane in a way that is so distinctly Remedy while feeling like a natural continuation of Alan Wake’s story. The writing is simply stellar, pulls you into the narrative, is filled with twists and turns that keep you guessing even after the credits roll and has no shortage of layered & complex characters to analyze and get invested in. The orchestrated music enhances the atmosphere while the lyrical music (almost all of which has been created specifically for this game) are all bangers that I would absolutely listen to on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube even long after my playthrough is done. It is simply crazy what Remedy have accomplished with this story & I’m glad Epic threw that Fortnite money at Remedy and gave them the space & resources to make this game what they wanted it to be.
Now, do you need to have played Alan Wake to understand Alan Wake II? I wouldn’t say it’s strictly necessary. The game itself is fairly self-contained & does explain most of what newcomers would need to know throughout. That being said, I’d still recommend playing or at least looking up recaps of Alan Wake and Control (which is confirmed to be set in the same universe as the Alan Wake series and introduces concepts & entities like the Federal Bureau of Control that factor into this game’s story) before starting Alan Wake II if you want to know everything you need to going in. I personally can recommend Hidden Machine’s recap on YouTube if you just want to go the recap route. But familiarity with not just the Alan Wake games and Control, but also Max Payne & Quantum Break is ideal to get the most out of this game as it is filled with nods to Remedy’s past work for their fans. But you can definitely enjoy the main story without familiarity with Remedy’s prior games (even if familiarity with Alan Wake & Control is recommended).
The gameplay, on the other hand, is mostly standard for a survival horror game. If you’ve played any of the recent Resident Evil remakes, you probably already have a good idea of what to expect from Alan Wake II’s gameplay. That’s not a bad thing though. Remedy’s sensibilities are surprisingly at home in a survival horror context considering they’ve never made a horror game before. Pretty much the only mechanic in this game that I can call out of place is the upgrade system. Not only does it feel at odds with the very atmospheric & cinematic story Remedy’s trying to tell, but it’s also just useless. I pretty much never interacted with it at all in my playthrough and never felt disadvantaged as a result. Not to mention how you really have to go out of your way to find the upgrade points to afford said upgrades. Even Control’s upgrade system had more reason to exist than this one does. And that game’s upgrade system isn’t all too good either.
While we’re on the topic of gameplay deficiencies, one area where Alan Wake II falls short compared to the Resident Evil games is replayability. Due to how exploration & puzzle-heavy Alan Wake II is, I don’t see this game holding up as well on repeat playthroughs as something more combat-heavy like the Resident Evil 3 & 4 remakes or Village (RE2’s remake is probably a bit more replayable too). Not that every game needs to be replayable, but I could see this hurting Alan Wake II’s value proposition for some people.
But it’s not all bland or bad news on the gameplay front. It’s interesting how Saga & Alan’s segments differ from each other gameplay-wise. While the combat mechanics between the two are the same, Saga’s segments are much closer to the aforementioned Resident Evil remakes with more of an action-horror feel to them with some LA Noire-esque detective gameplay mixed in. Alan’s segments on the other hand are much more puzzle-focused and often take on a more moody, almost Silent Hill feel with a focus on more psychological horror as Alan navigates through the Dark Place.
As for whether this game is scary… Yes it is. There were plenty of times that the game’s scares got me & the atmosphere Remedy build up got me scared of what was around the corner.
Also, while the mechanics are fairly typical, the levels you use them in can be anything but. In fact, some of the most creative, insane & boundary-pushing sequences I’ve experienced in a game in years are in this game! If you thought that Remedy couldn’t possibly top Control’s Ashtray Maze… hoo boy, you’re in for a treat as there are a couple of sequences that may actually be even better than that (won’t spoil anything though, but if you know, you know)! The ways the game has you changing reality in real-time in Alan’s sections are simply mind-blowing and feel like they are really taking advantage of the standardization of the presence of SSDs in modern gaming hardware to do things not possible previously. It’s truly awe-inspiring stuff.
Speaking of awe-inspiring, THOSE GRAPHICS THOUGH! While this really shouldn’t be surprising coming from Remedy, Alan Wake II is a stunning technical showcase that justifies its high system requirements on PC. Alan Wake II really does push modern graphics technology forward in a way that hasn’t been seen since Cyberpunk 2077 back in 2020. It makes heavy use of ray tracing to the point where even the lowest settings use some sort of software-accelerated RT tech with little to no rasterized fall backs & is one of the first games to implement Path Tracing on PC, which is impressive in and of itself (even if said Path Tracing is fairly limited & isn’t as game-changing as it is in Cyberpunk 2077’s RT Overdrive mode).
But it’s not all amazing with this game on the technical side of things. While the PC version (which is what I played) is an incredible technical showcase (as I just explained), it’s also (like quite a few other games released this year, even some of the greats like Baldur’s Gate 3) filled with bugs. In my playthrough, I ran into some audio desync issues in cutscenes, which ruined a couple of scenes, one instance of falling through the world due to some assets not loading in, more instances of safe rooms not loading in properly, a surprising amount of lighting pop-in (mostly surrounding those safe rooms) & a couple of A-Posing character models. While all of these bugs are disappointing to run into & I wish the game was released on PC in a better state, none of these issues derailed my experience entirely and prevented me from enjoying what Remedy has created and I wouldn’t suggest letting them stop you from playing this game either. There have been reports of some game-breaking bugs that prevent players from progressing the story and/or side activities, but I did not encounter any of them in my time playing at launch.
The game on PC also doesn’t have any form of Anti-Aliasing outside of DLSS & FSR 2. This, considering how bad the image quality of FSR 2 is at lower resolutions, could be problematic for those without Nvidia RTX GPUs, but I have an RTX 2070 and even DLSS Balanced at a target resolution of 1080p looked pretty good to me.
My last gripe with Alan Wake II is the lack of any kind of physical release. While it’s understandable for the PC version to be digital only (this has been the standard on PC for a long time now), I do lament that the console versions haven’t been given such a release, especially from a game preservation standpoint. It’s not a dealbreaker for me, but it’s still worth mentioning.
Conclusion:
When Quantum Break was announced a decade ago, Remedy promised that it would be “the ultimate Remedy experience”. While that game fell short of that lofty claim, Alan Wake II very much is the ultimate Remedy experience, their magnum opus so to speak. The story is probably their best, most idiosyncratic, meta & strange narrative to date. The characters are all layered and complex. The mix of gameplay, real-time cutscenes & live-action video feels just right. The survival-horror genre manages to fit Remedy’s sensibilities like a glove (even if the upgrade system feels as though it’s more present due to obligation to the genre than anything else). The graphics & technology are some of the best in the industry and (along with certain chapters of the story) feel like Remedy is truly pushing video games as an industry & art form forward. This is my Game of the Year for 2023 & it’s hard to see anything else topping it, not even fellow GOTY frontrunners Baldur’s Gate III & The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
It is truly incredible that Epic Games let Remedy truly go wild with this game & if this is representative of how they plan to get people to use the Epic Games Store going forward, I’m on board (as long as they also realize that they need to improve the user experience & feature set of the Epic Games Launcher too if this strategy is going to work). Especially since Valve seems content to profit off literal gambling with Counter-Strike 2, which is disgusting to me for reasons I went into in my review of that game…
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 10/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)):
9.5/10 (assuming the bugs eventually get fixed)
8/10 (as of now)
Business Practices score: 7/10 (Not much to complain about. Even the Epic Games Store exclusivity is not much of an issue this time considering Epic both published this game & funded its development. The lack of a physical release (even on console) blows though)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience):
9/10 (as of now)
10/10 (assuming the bugs are eventually fixed)
This new IP would take the form of Quantum Break and would experiment with blending video games & TV to tell its story. And while Quantum Break was far from a bad game and had some interesting ideas in its story & especially its take on time travel, it failed to reach the heights of Alan Wake for me & many other Remedy fans. It would seem that it also failed to resonate with a broader audience & it definitely didn’t do as much to move the needle when it came to Xbox One console sales as Microsoft had hoped. So Remedy would part ways with Microsoft, reacquire the Alan Wake IP from them & (after resuming brainstorming on an Alan Wake sequel) their next project would be the smaller-scale Control, which, while also not reaching the heights of Alan Wake for me, was a solid game that hinted at possible ties to the Alan Wake universe, which culminated in a DLC that officially crossed over with it & confirmed the two games were in the same universe. This made me and many others very excited about what the future held.
And now, just over three years since that DLC’s release & almost thirteen and a half years after the original game’s release, Alan Wake II is finally here! So, what do I think of this game I’ve been waiting just over a decade for? IT WAS AMAZING!
First, let’s start with what is probably the most important part of a Remedy game: the story. And what a story it is! The game has you switch between Alan & Saga, with both only providing part of the whole story. Both stories are tense, gripping & filled with memorable moments and I do recommend alternating between the two to get the best experience (although I will note that the game only gives you free rein to switch between the two in the middle of the story). The way Remedy mixes gameplay, real-time cutscenes & live-action cutscenes throughout the game is ingenious & the best ratio of the three that Remedy has ever struck (said live-action scenes also look great and are clearly well-shot, but with more of a B-movie or arthouse feel than that of a big Hollywood blockbuster). The story Remedy weaves throughout these stories is engaging, creative & insane in a way that is so distinctly Remedy while feeling like a natural continuation of Alan Wake’s story. The writing is simply stellar, pulls you into the narrative, is filled with twists and turns that keep you guessing even after the credits roll and has no shortage of layered & complex characters to analyze and get invested in. The orchestrated music enhances the atmosphere while the lyrical music (almost all of which has been created specifically for this game) are all bangers that I would absolutely listen to on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube even long after my playthrough is done. It is simply crazy what Remedy have accomplished with this story & I’m glad Epic threw that Fortnite money at Remedy and gave them the space & resources to make this game what they wanted it to be.
Now, do you need to have played Alan Wake to understand Alan Wake II? I wouldn’t say it’s strictly necessary. The game itself is fairly self-contained & does explain most of what newcomers would need to know throughout. That being said, I’d still recommend playing or at least looking up recaps of Alan Wake and Control (which is confirmed to be set in the same universe as the Alan Wake series and introduces concepts & entities like the Federal Bureau of Control that factor into this game’s story) before starting Alan Wake II if you want to know everything you need to going in. I personally can recommend Hidden Machine’s recap on YouTube if you just want to go the recap route. But familiarity with not just the Alan Wake games and Control, but also Max Payne & Quantum Break is ideal to get the most out of this game as it is filled with nods to Remedy’s past work for their fans. But you can definitely enjoy the main story without familiarity with Remedy’s prior games (even if familiarity with Alan Wake & Control is recommended).
The gameplay, on the other hand, is mostly standard for a survival horror game. If you’ve played any of the recent Resident Evil remakes, you probably already have a good idea of what to expect from Alan Wake II’s gameplay. That’s not a bad thing though. Remedy’s sensibilities are surprisingly at home in a survival horror context considering they’ve never made a horror game before. Pretty much the only mechanic in this game that I can call out of place is the upgrade system. Not only does it feel at odds with the very atmospheric & cinematic story Remedy’s trying to tell, but it’s also just useless. I pretty much never interacted with it at all in my playthrough and never felt disadvantaged as a result. Not to mention how you really have to go out of your way to find the upgrade points to afford said upgrades. Even Control’s upgrade system had more reason to exist than this one does. And that game’s upgrade system isn’t all too good either.
While we’re on the topic of gameplay deficiencies, one area where Alan Wake II falls short compared to the Resident Evil games is replayability. Due to how exploration & puzzle-heavy Alan Wake II is, I don’t see this game holding up as well on repeat playthroughs as something more combat-heavy like the Resident Evil 3 & 4 remakes or Village (RE2’s remake is probably a bit more replayable too). Not that every game needs to be replayable, but I could see this hurting Alan Wake II’s value proposition for some people.
But it’s not all bland or bad news on the gameplay front. It’s interesting how Saga & Alan’s segments differ from each other gameplay-wise. While the combat mechanics between the two are the same, Saga’s segments are much closer to the aforementioned Resident Evil remakes with more of an action-horror feel to them with some LA Noire-esque detective gameplay mixed in. Alan’s segments on the other hand are much more puzzle-focused and often take on a more moody, almost Silent Hill feel with a focus on more psychological horror as Alan navigates through the Dark Place.
As for whether this game is scary… Yes it is. There were plenty of times that the game’s scares got me & the atmosphere Remedy build up got me scared of what was around the corner.
Also, while the mechanics are fairly typical, the levels you use them in can be anything but. In fact, some of the most creative, insane & boundary-pushing sequences I’ve experienced in a game in years are in this game! If you thought that Remedy couldn’t possibly top Control’s Ashtray Maze… hoo boy, you’re in for a treat as there are a couple of sequences that may actually be even better than that (won’t spoil anything though, but if you know, you know)! The ways the game has you changing reality in real-time in Alan’s sections are simply mind-blowing and feel like they are really taking advantage of the standardization of the presence of SSDs in modern gaming hardware to do things not possible previously. It’s truly awe-inspiring stuff.
Speaking of awe-inspiring, THOSE GRAPHICS THOUGH! While this really shouldn’t be surprising coming from Remedy, Alan Wake II is a stunning technical showcase that justifies its high system requirements on PC. Alan Wake II really does push modern graphics technology forward in a way that hasn’t been seen since Cyberpunk 2077 back in 2020. It makes heavy use of ray tracing to the point where even the lowest settings use some sort of software-accelerated RT tech with little to no rasterized fall backs & is one of the first games to implement Path Tracing on PC, which is impressive in and of itself (even if said Path Tracing is fairly limited & isn’t as game-changing as it is in Cyberpunk 2077’s RT Overdrive mode).
But it’s not all amazing with this game on the technical side of things. While the PC version (which is what I played) is an incredible technical showcase (as I just explained), it’s also (like quite a few other games released this year, even some of the greats like Baldur’s Gate 3) filled with bugs. In my playthrough, I ran into some audio desync issues in cutscenes, which ruined a couple of scenes, one instance of falling through the world due to some assets not loading in, more instances of safe rooms not loading in properly, a surprising amount of lighting pop-in (mostly surrounding those safe rooms) & a couple of A-Posing character models. While all of these bugs are disappointing to run into & I wish the game was released on PC in a better state, none of these issues derailed my experience entirely and prevented me from enjoying what Remedy has created and I wouldn’t suggest letting them stop you from playing this game either. There have been reports of some game-breaking bugs that prevent players from progressing the story and/or side activities, but I did not encounter any of them in my time playing at launch.
The game on PC also doesn’t have any form of Anti-Aliasing outside of DLSS & FSR 2. This, considering how bad the image quality of FSR 2 is at lower resolutions, could be problematic for those without Nvidia RTX GPUs, but I have an RTX 2070 and even DLSS Balanced at a target resolution of 1080p looked pretty good to me.
My last gripe with Alan Wake II is the lack of any kind of physical release. While it’s understandable for the PC version to be digital only (this has been the standard on PC for a long time now), I do lament that the console versions haven’t been given such a release, especially from a game preservation standpoint. It’s not a dealbreaker for me, but it’s still worth mentioning.
Conclusion:
When Quantum Break was announced a decade ago, Remedy promised that it would be “the ultimate Remedy experience”. While that game fell short of that lofty claim, Alan Wake II very much is the ultimate Remedy experience, their magnum opus so to speak. The story is probably their best, most idiosyncratic, meta & strange narrative to date. The characters are all layered and complex. The mix of gameplay, real-time cutscenes & live-action video feels just right. The survival-horror genre manages to fit Remedy’s sensibilities like a glove (even if the upgrade system feels as though it’s more present due to obligation to the genre than anything else). The graphics & technology are some of the best in the industry and (along with certain chapters of the story) feel like Remedy is truly pushing video games as an industry & art form forward. This is my Game of the Year for 2023 & it’s hard to see anything else topping it, not even fellow GOTY frontrunners Baldur’s Gate III & The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
It is truly incredible that Epic Games let Remedy truly go wild with this game & if this is representative of how they plan to get people to use the Epic Games Store going forward, I’m on board (as long as they also realize that they need to improve the user experience & feature set of the Epic Games Launcher too if this strategy is going to work). Especially since Valve seems content to profit off literal gambling with Counter-Strike 2, which is disgusting to me for reasons I went into in my review of that game…
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 10/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)):
9.5/10 (assuming the bugs eventually get fixed)
8/10 (as of now)
Business Practices score: 7/10 (Not much to complain about. Even the Epic Games Store exclusivity is not much of an issue this time considering Epic both published this game & funded its development. The lack of a physical release (even on console) blows though)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience):
9/10 (as of now)
10/10 (assuming the bugs are eventually fixed)
Much like Final Fantasy XIII-2 before it, Lightning Returns is a product of Square Enix’s early 2010s financial struggles. An effort to bring in as much money as possible by reusing many assets from Final Fantasy XIII whilst fellow Fabula Nova Crystallis (referred to as FNC for the rest of this review) game Final Fantasy Versus XIII continued languishing in development hell & Final Fantasy XIV (completely unrelated to FNC outside of also being a Final Fantasy game that (in the pre-A Realm Reborn days) also ran on Crystal Tools & reusing some assets from XIII & Type-0 (even as recently as the Endwalker expansion’s first Level 90 dungeon)) was gearing up for its big relaunch as A Realm Reborn.
But by the time Lightning Returns launched, its whole reason for existing had started to fade away. A Realm Reborn would launch globally on both PC & PS3 3 months before Lightning Returns’ Japanese release in November 2013 (& 5 1/2 months before its Western release in February 2014) & would quickly become a huge hit, with XIV cementing itself as World of Warcraft’s main long-term competitor in due course, possibly even surpassing it in 2021 in the wake of a mass exodus from WoW. Versus XIII would be retitled Final Fantasy XV, move to the then next-generation consoles (the PS4 & Xbox One) and have its ties to FNC cut down to thematic & design overlap (the FNC mythology was replaced with a new mythology created specifically for XV). Even the consoles the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy was made for (the PS3 & Xbox 360) were on their way out and would be replaced mere weeks before Lightning Returns’ initial launch (although, to be fair, neither the PS4 nor Xbox One would launch in Japan until after Lightning Returns’ Western release). Combine that with XIII-2 selling significantly less than XIII and increasing fan disdain for the XIII trilogy (officially dubbed the “Lightning Saga”) & Lightning as a character and it’s easy to see how Lightning Returns was always going to be the end of the XIII era of Final Fantasy, whether Lightning & co. were ready for it or not (even before Lightning Returns came in below half of XIII-2’s already underwhelming sales figures).
The interesting thing about Lightning Returns is that, whereas XIII-2 felt like a game built around its accelerated development cycle, Lightning Returns is a game that feels too ambitious for its own good. Whilst XIII-2 reused as much from XIII as possible & used the time-travel premise as an excuse to reskin both old environments from XIII & most of the few new ones multiple times & made minimal changes to the gameplay; Lightning Returns completely overhauls the combat to more closely resemble an Action-RPG, mostly sets itself in new locations & has an ambitious & risky new mechanic that required a lot of balancing work to get right (more on that later).
Perhaps this is a byproduct of Motomu Toriyama, the director of the Lightning Saga, & his… passion… for Lightning (seriously, watch this video of him during the reveal of this game, this guy’s passion for Lightning borders on waifu territory) and a desire to give her story a happy ending & unforgettable sendoff. Maybe the XIII team as a whole wanted to stretch their legs & try some new things after XIII-2 mostly played things safe on the gameplay front so they could apply the lessons learned to future projects. Funnily enough, much of the team at Business Division 1 that made Lightning Returns would go on to develop Final Fantasy VII Remake & having played both games I can definitely say that FFVII Remake is much more of an evolution of this game’s combat than it is of FFXV’s combat. So you could call Lightning Returns’ combat a dry run for VII Remake (if it weren’t for VII Remake initially being planned to mostly be developed by CyberConnect 2 rather than by Business Division 1 themselves).
Regardless of the reasoning, the aforementioned overambition has a noticeable impact on the game’s graphics. The visuals noticeably take a step back from XIII & XIII-2, with the best-looking assets in the game being either reused from the previous two games or costumes for Lightning (probably due to the Schemata system (more on that in a bit)). The environments, in particular, look pretty bad for a game that was released for the PS3 & 360 in 2013 (for comparison, The Last of Us & Grand Theft Auto V were released for the PS3 (and 360 in GTA’s case) earlier that SAME YEAR and look a lot better than Lightning Returns on the same hardware). The more wide-open Wildlands & Dead Dunes fair the worst, but even the more closed-off, city-like areas of Luxerion & Yusnaan fail to meet the visual highs of XIII & XIII-2. If I had to guess, these hits to graphical fidelity were likely a combination of having to create so many new assets in less than a year and a half that fit in the memory pools of the aging hardware the game was made for & Crystal Tools being pushed to its limits to make this open-ended design happen. To think this trilogy started by raising the bar on this front… It’s also worth mentioning that, much like XIII-2, there are only three pre-rendered cinematics in the entire game (one at the beginning, one at the very end & an unlockable post-credits scene; no extensions of cinematics from previous games this time either, although there are a lot of flashbacks to previous games, which are presumably handled via FMV files).
Going back to the combat, it’s probably the best thing about this entire game to be honest! As mentioned before, Lightning Returns utilizes an action-combat system with some turn-based elements like an ATB bar that’s very similar to Final Fantasy VII Remake in it’s approach to mixing action-combat & ATB/turn-based combat (albeit LR is definitely leaning more toward action-combat than VII Remake). And for this team’s first attempt, there’s a surprisingly high skill ceiling involving timing, learning enemy attack patterns & maximizing the amount of stagger you dish out to an enemy. It’s a real joy to engage with & I’m glad that the dev team has evolved it into the system many people love in VII Remake.
But perhaps the most… unconventional element of combat is how you increase Lightning’s stats. Rather than doing so by gaining XP in combat and/or getting points to use in an upgrade menu, in Lightning Returns the only ways to get more powerful are through quests & the Canvas of Prayers (essentially a “Get X from loot drops in exchange for some power” system). While this is definitely a unique approach & I didn’t hate this (it’s especially great from a ludo-narrative synchronicity standpoint), I’m also glad that this concept hasn’t caught on in other RPGs (and that BD1 didn’t carry this over to VII Remake along with the elements they did import like the Stagger meter & the general approach to mixing ATB/Turn/Menu-based combat with action-combat)...
Anyways, I’ve talked around it enough. Let’s talk about this game’s time limit, by far the single biggest & most divisive change made to Lightning Returns compared to the previous two games & the mechanic everything else about this game revolves around. As mentioned in the story description earlier, Lightning only has 13 days to save as many souls as she can before the world ends, and the game imposes this deadline upon players as well. Each in-game day corresponds to around an hour of real-time (2-3 hours on Easy mode), meaning you have 13 hours (+ however much time you spend in cutscenes, conversations & combat, all of which pause the timer) to finish the game (26-39 hours on Easy mode). Oh, and at the start of the game, you only have 7 days and have to unlock the remaining 6 days by completing the main story quest chains. Unless you are playing on Easy mode, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to finish the game on your first attempt. This means you have two options:
- If you really want to complete the game in one playthrough, you’ll likely have to play the game on Easy difficulty. Easy, on top of extending the in-game days by 2-3 times the amount of real-world time, also removes the punishment for losing fights (which on Normal is losing an hour of in-game time), enables health regeneration outside of combat, reduces the amount of damage Lightning takes in combat & the amount of health enemies have, increases the amount of EP you gain from combat (EP, short for Eradia Points, is a resource that can be used to, among other things, freeze time temporarily & activate an Overdrive mode in combat that allows Lightning to ignore her ATB meters for a short time) & decreases the EP cost of most abilities, among other benefits. It does also decrease the amount of Gil (currency) you can gain from each battle, though.
- If you’re OK with taking multiple playthroughs to finish the game, then you can use New Game+. New Game+ carries over Lightning’s stats, non-quest items, most garbs, all adornments & accessories, All EP abilities obtained, all map information & markers (with the exception of icons), Datalog & Beastiary entries and game time from previous playthroughs. It also unlocks additional features like weapon & shield upgrades, an item which activates Lightning’s Limit Break, the ability to increase the amount of EP & item slots at any given time by replaying main quest chains, an hourglass that allows you to restart New Game+ at any time & even access to Hard difficulty (which makes enemies even stronger & reduces the amount of EP you gain from combat, but improves the potential quality of items you can gain from battle & triple the amount of Gil as well as unlocking access to Hard exclusive garbs & equipment from various merchants).
As for my personal opinion on it, at first, I found the whole idea very daunting. Not surprising given that I’ve scarcely touched games like Majora’s Mask that infamously have one. But eventually, as I played through the game (on Easy), I started to come around on the idea. Plus it turns out that said time limit is actually pretty generous (even on Normal), so it’s likely that an average player will be able to complete the game in one go once they have their head wrapped around the combat.
Fortunately, the PC version of Lightning Returns is the best of the Lightning Saga’s PC ports. There is a healthier amount of graphical options than XIII & XIII-2 & the game is much more stable, less crash-prone and generally works just fine right out of the box. No mod manager is needed. There are some performance issues in certain areas, but never quite as bad as XIII-2 is out of the box (or how bad this game’s performance is on PS3 & 360) & it’s clear that Crystal Tools was not designed for the kind of game Lightning Returns aspires to be.
Finally, let’s talk about the story. Going into this game, my expectations were tempered by the mostly negative reception to the story. But this is where Lightning Returns surprised me most. While the story isn’t perfect and the high degree of non-linearity can lead to things feeling disjointed, the overall story is pretty good, even if the identity of the main villain is pretty obvious after a few hours (said main villain is decent, but is no Caius, let alone up to the gold standard of FF villains that is Emet-Selch from FFXIV; the villain is better than Barthadelus from XIII at least). I’d say the story is at its best when it’s exploring Lightning’s flaws & worst tendencies as a character and at its worst when it devolves into a bunch of fetch quests (looking at you Sazh). I did play with the English voice acting & subtitles though & this game in particular was so heavily altered, butchered and made much more confusing in the localization process that there’s a fan-translation mod in the works (practically unheard of for a game released after the 90s that received an English release close to the original launch and not years down the line (cough cough Trails cough cough). Even the terminology didn’t make it unscathed by localization-induced confusion! So maybe I'd feel differently (for better or worse) if I played in Japanese. As a finale… It’s a good ending to the Lightning Saga, but it’s no Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker for sure. Just maybe wait until the fan retranslation mod is out or learn Japanese first before playing this one if you want a faithful experience to the creators’ intent…
Conclusion
Lightning Returns is a very experimental game, an interesting choice for the finale of a trilogy (even if the devs marketed this as a “new experience”, the story is very much written like a trilogy capper), but I suppose a highly experimental & ambitious game that tries out a bunch of new ideas is a very Final Fantasy way to cap off a trilogy. Not all of Lightning Returns’ experiments are successes & even some of the ones that do work are things I wouldn’t want to see in every Final Fantasy game going forward, but I applaud the ambition of this team, especially when, given the context of this game’s creation & their company’s financial troubles, they could have easily phoned it in with a safe & iterative finale. But they didn’t and that’s worthy of praise (even if their ambition did ultimately outstrip the time they had to ship this game).
It’s not a perfect game, at times it’s actually a pretty messy one. But it’s definitely my favourite of the Lightning Saga & I’ll likely do a New Game + run in the not-too-distant future…
Ratings
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 8/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 6/10 (not bad for the time, but the PC port has some issues out of the box (but is nevertheless better than the first two XIII games) & the visuals are a bit lacking for a PS3 & 360 game released in 2013/2014)
Business Practices score: 6/10 (fine, but there was a shit-ton of costume DLC, all of which have stat boosts due to the Schemata System & consumer outcry over XIII-2’s costumes lacking any (that feels weird to say given the push back against any form of Pay to Win these days), although these costumes are included in the PC port with some exceptions that can be re-added via mods)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, doesn’t consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 8/10
But by the time Lightning Returns launched, its whole reason for existing had started to fade away. A Realm Reborn would launch globally on both PC & PS3 3 months before Lightning Returns’ Japanese release in November 2013 (& 5 1/2 months before its Western release in February 2014) & would quickly become a huge hit, with XIV cementing itself as World of Warcraft’s main long-term competitor in due course, possibly even surpassing it in 2021 in the wake of a mass exodus from WoW. Versus XIII would be retitled Final Fantasy XV, move to the then next-generation consoles (the PS4 & Xbox One) and have its ties to FNC cut down to thematic & design overlap (the FNC mythology was replaced with a new mythology created specifically for XV). Even the consoles the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy was made for (the PS3 & Xbox 360) were on their way out and would be replaced mere weeks before Lightning Returns’ initial launch (although, to be fair, neither the PS4 nor Xbox One would launch in Japan until after Lightning Returns’ Western release). Combine that with XIII-2 selling significantly less than XIII and increasing fan disdain for the XIII trilogy (officially dubbed the “Lightning Saga”) & Lightning as a character and it’s easy to see how Lightning Returns was always going to be the end of the XIII era of Final Fantasy, whether Lightning & co. were ready for it or not (even before Lightning Returns came in below half of XIII-2’s already underwhelming sales figures).
The interesting thing about Lightning Returns is that, whereas XIII-2 felt like a game built around its accelerated development cycle, Lightning Returns is a game that feels too ambitious for its own good. Whilst XIII-2 reused as much from XIII as possible & used the time-travel premise as an excuse to reskin both old environments from XIII & most of the few new ones multiple times & made minimal changes to the gameplay; Lightning Returns completely overhauls the combat to more closely resemble an Action-RPG, mostly sets itself in new locations & has an ambitious & risky new mechanic that required a lot of balancing work to get right (more on that later).
Perhaps this is a byproduct of Motomu Toriyama, the director of the Lightning Saga, & his… passion… for Lightning (seriously, watch this video of him during the reveal of this game, this guy’s passion for Lightning borders on waifu territory) and a desire to give her story a happy ending & unforgettable sendoff. Maybe the XIII team as a whole wanted to stretch their legs & try some new things after XIII-2 mostly played things safe on the gameplay front so they could apply the lessons learned to future projects. Funnily enough, much of the team at Business Division 1 that made Lightning Returns would go on to develop Final Fantasy VII Remake & having played both games I can definitely say that FFVII Remake is much more of an evolution of this game’s combat than it is of FFXV’s combat. So you could call Lightning Returns’ combat a dry run for VII Remake (if it weren’t for VII Remake initially being planned to mostly be developed by CyberConnect 2 rather than by Business Division 1 themselves).
Regardless of the reasoning, the aforementioned overambition has a noticeable impact on the game’s graphics. The visuals noticeably take a step back from XIII & XIII-2, with the best-looking assets in the game being either reused from the previous two games or costumes for Lightning (probably due to the Schemata system (more on that in a bit)). The environments, in particular, look pretty bad for a game that was released for the PS3 & 360 in 2013 (for comparison, The Last of Us & Grand Theft Auto V were released for the PS3 (and 360 in GTA’s case) earlier that SAME YEAR and look a lot better than Lightning Returns on the same hardware). The more wide-open Wildlands & Dead Dunes fair the worst, but even the more closed-off, city-like areas of Luxerion & Yusnaan fail to meet the visual highs of XIII & XIII-2. If I had to guess, these hits to graphical fidelity were likely a combination of having to create so many new assets in less than a year and a half that fit in the memory pools of the aging hardware the game was made for & Crystal Tools being pushed to its limits to make this open-ended design happen. To think this trilogy started by raising the bar on this front… It’s also worth mentioning that, much like XIII-2, there are only three pre-rendered cinematics in the entire game (one at the beginning, one at the very end & an unlockable post-credits scene; no extensions of cinematics from previous games this time either, although there are a lot of flashbacks to previous games, which are presumably handled via FMV files).
Going back to the combat, it’s probably the best thing about this entire game to be honest! As mentioned before, Lightning Returns utilizes an action-combat system with some turn-based elements like an ATB bar that’s very similar to Final Fantasy VII Remake in it’s approach to mixing action-combat & ATB/turn-based combat (albeit LR is definitely leaning more toward action-combat than VII Remake). And for this team’s first attempt, there’s a surprisingly high skill ceiling involving timing, learning enemy attack patterns & maximizing the amount of stagger you dish out to an enemy. It’s a real joy to engage with & I’m glad that the dev team has evolved it into the system many people love in VII Remake.
But perhaps the most… unconventional element of combat is how you increase Lightning’s stats. Rather than doing so by gaining XP in combat and/or getting points to use in an upgrade menu, in Lightning Returns the only ways to get more powerful are through quests & the Canvas of Prayers (essentially a “Get X from loot drops in exchange for some power” system). While this is definitely a unique approach & I didn’t hate this (it’s especially great from a ludo-narrative synchronicity standpoint), I’m also glad that this concept hasn’t caught on in other RPGs (and that BD1 didn’t carry this over to VII Remake along with the elements they did import like the Stagger meter & the general approach to mixing ATB/Turn/Menu-based combat with action-combat)...
Anyways, I’ve talked around it enough. Let’s talk about this game’s time limit, by far the single biggest & most divisive change made to Lightning Returns compared to the previous two games & the mechanic everything else about this game revolves around. As mentioned in the story description earlier, Lightning only has 13 days to save as many souls as she can before the world ends, and the game imposes this deadline upon players as well. Each in-game day corresponds to around an hour of real-time (2-3 hours on Easy mode), meaning you have 13 hours (+ however much time you spend in cutscenes, conversations & combat, all of which pause the timer) to finish the game (26-39 hours on Easy mode). Oh, and at the start of the game, you only have 7 days and have to unlock the remaining 6 days by completing the main story quest chains. Unless you are playing on Easy mode, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to finish the game on your first attempt. This means you have two options:
- If you really want to complete the game in one playthrough, you’ll likely have to play the game on Easy difficulty. Easy, on top of extending the in-game days by 2-3 times the amount of real-world time, also removes the punishment for losing fights (which on Normal is losing an hour of in-game time), enables health regeneration outside of combat, reduces the amount of damage Lightning takes in combat & the amount of health enemies have, increases the amount of EP you gain from combat (EP, short for Eradia Points, is a resource that can be used to, among other things, freeze time temporarily & activate an Overdrive mode in combat that allows Lightning to ignore her ATB meters for a short time) & decreases the EP cost of most abilities, among other benefits. It does also decrease the amount of Gil (currency) you can gain from each battle, though.
- If you’re OK with taking multiple playthroughs to finish the game, then you can use New Game+. New Game+ carries over Lightning’s stats, non-quest items, most garbs, all adornments & accessories, All EP abilities obtained, all map information & markers (with the exception of icons), Datalog & Beastiary entries and game time from previous playthroughs. It also unlocks additional features like weapon & shield upgrades, an item which activates Lightning’s Limit Break, the ability to increase the amount of EP & item slots at any given time by replaying main quest chains, an hourglass that allows you to restart New Game+ at any time & even access to Hard difficulty (which makes enemies even stronger & reduces the amount of EP you gain from combat, but improves the potential quality of items you can gain from battle & triple the amount of Gil as well as unlocking access to Hard exclusive garbs & equipment from various merchants).
As for my personal opinion on it, at first, I found the whole idea very daunting. Not surprising given that I’ve scarcely touched games like Majora’s Mask that infamously have one. But eventually, as I played through the game (on Easy), I started to come around on the idea. Plus it turns out that said time limit is actually pretty generous (even on Normal), so it’s likely that an average player will be able to complete the game in one go once they have their head wrapped around the combat.
Fortunately, the PC version of Lightning Returns is the best of the Lightning Saga’s PC ports. There is a healthier amount of graphical options than XIII & XIII-2 & the game is much more stable, less crash-prone and generally works just fine right out of the box. No mod manager is needed. There are some performance issues in certain areas, but never quite as bad as XIII-2 is out of the box (or how bad this game’s performance is on PS3 & 360) & it’s clear that Crystal Tools was not designed for the kind of game Lightning Returns aspires to be.
Finally, let’s talk about the story. Going into this game, my expectations were tempered by the mostly negative reception to the story. But this is where Lightning Returns surprised me most. While the story isn’t perfect and the high degree of non-linearity can lead to things feeling disjointed, the overall story is pretty good, even if the identity of the main villain is pretty obvious after a few hours (said main villain is decent, but is no Caius, let alone up to the gold standard of FF villains that is Emet-Selch from FFXIV; the villain is better than Barthadelus from XIII at least). I’d say the story is at its best when it’s exploring Lightning’s flaws & worst tendencies as a character and at its worst when it devolves into a bunch of fetch quests (looking at you Sazh). I did play with the English voice acting & subtitles though & this game in particular was so heavily altered, butchered and made much more confusing in the localization process that there’s a fan-translation mod in the works (practically unheard of for a game released after the 90s that received an English release close to the original launch and not years down the line (cough cough Trails cough cough). Even the terminology didn’t make it unscathed by localization-induced confusion! So maybe I'd feel differently (for better or worse) if I played in Japanese. As a finale… It’s a good ending to the Lightning Saga, but it’s no Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker for sure. Just maybe wait until the fan retranslation mod is out or learn Japanese first before playing this one if you want a faithful experience to the creators’ intent…
Conclusion
Lightning Returns is a very experimental game, an interesting choice for the finale of a trilogy (even if the devs marketed this as a “new experience”, the story is very much written like a trilogy capper), but I suppose a highly experimental & ambitious game that tries out a bunch of new ideas is a very Final Fantasy way to cap off a trilogy. Not all of Lightning Returns’ experiments are successes & even some of the ones that do work are things I wouldn’t want to see in every Final Fantasy game going forward, but I applaud the ambition of this team, especially when, given the context of this game’s creation & their company’s financial troubles, they could have easily phoned it in with a safe & iterative finale. But they didn’t and that’s worthy of praise (even if their ambition did ultimately outstrip the time they had to ship this game).
It’s not a perfect game, at times it’s actually a pretty messy one. But it’s definitely my favourite of the Lightning Saga & I’ll likely do a New Game + run in the not-too-distant future…
Ratings
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 8/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 6/10 (not bad for the time, but the PC port has some issues out of the box (but is nevertheless better than the first two XIII games) & the visuals are a bit lacking for a PS3 & 360 game released in 2013/2014)
Business Practices score: 6/10 (fine, but there was a shit-ton of costume DLC, all of which have stat boosts due to the Schemata System & consumer outcry over XIII-2’s costumes lacking any (that feels weird to say given the push back against any form of Pay to Win these days), although these costumes are included in the PC port with some exceptions that can be re-added via mods)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, doesn’t consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 8/10
2016
First things first, Final Fantasy XV is a pretty well-made game from a technical point of view (impressive considering the tumultuous development cycle this game went through & the fact that the XV that shipped only had 3 years of development, more on that later). The graphics are pretty great for an open-world game released in 2016 thanks to a mix of powerful technology provided by Square Enix’s in-house Luminous Engine & great art direction), even holding their own against some more recent open-world games with the hair rendering tech being particularly impressive for the time (so much so that it was ported to Unreal Engine 4 for use in Final Fantasy VII Remake). The audio is also all-around excellent. The sword slash & gunshot sounds help make the simplistic combat more engaging & the voice acting (at least in the English dub, which is what I played with), ranges from fine to great (with the standouts being Ray Chase as Noctis & Darin De Paul as Ardyn).
But the strongest part of the audio has to be the music. Mainly composed by Yoko Shimomura of Street Fighter 2 & Kingdom Hearts fame, FFXV’s music lives up to that high pedigree. Shimomura mostly sticks to orchestras, but there are some guitars & choirs mixed in too. If you’ve played a Kingdom Hearts game before (or at least have listened to the OST of one), you’ll know what you’re in for with FFXV. It’s not my favourite Final Fantasy OST of the games I’ve played so far (that honour goes to Masayoshi Soken & his team’s work on Final Fantasy XIV), but this franchise has pretty high standards when it comes to music & Shimomura did a great job living up to them.
But perhaps the most notable contribution to the OST doesn’t come from Shimomura (not that she is completely overshadowed, Somnus, Dawn & Omnis Lacrima were composed by her and are some of my favourite pieces of music in the entire game). Rather it is a cover of Stand by Me by Florence & the Machine that is the standout, due to how it bookends the story & the heartbreaking recontextualization of this classic song’s lyrics to fit this game’s story & exploration of brotherhood. Florence also contributed two other songs: Too Much is Never Enough (also a great song with lyrics that’ll break your heart after finishing the main story) & I Will Be (which interestingly enough never actually plays in-game, maybe it would have played at the end of that second set of DLCs that never materialized with the exception of Episode Ardyn…).
The gameplay is where Final Fantasy XV starts to stumble, however. On one hand, XV saw the Final Fantasy franchise finally drop all pretenses of having turn/menu-based combat and just putting out an action-RPG instead. Problem is that the combat is simplistic & lacks the depth of other action-RPGs like Scarlet Nexus or Nioh. The latter is particularly worth mentioning as its gameplay would be altered & utilized in the recently released Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (which I have also reviewed here). Also problematic is XV’s implementation of magic as throwable & consumable grenades. While I understand that magic systems are difficult to implement into a hack & slash action game like XV, the way Business Division 2 implemented it just causes me to forget it’s even in the game and mostly stick to melee combat when I’m not using Noctis’s Warp Strike.
Said melee combat is also lacklustre though. The biggest issue is that all combat is done by holding a single button when most action games make you press it instead. This is a significant difference as it can lead to the impression that the game plays itself and that the player does not need to engage with the combat beyond a surface level, even though the combat does have some depth (ex: You can use the left analog to adjust the direction of Noctis’s sword slashes, with him doing a back-flip when you push the left stick backwards), although not enough to avoid feeling simplistic compared to other action games like Devil May Cry 5 (which will undoubtedly have an impact on Final Fantasy XVI’s combat given its combat director, Ryota Suzuki, worked on that game’s combat). As for gun combat, it is highly simplistic when playing as Noctis, mostly being executed by holding down a single button. There is more depth if you are playing as Prompto, but even then it is pretty barebones for a third-person shooter & Business Division 2 made the weird choice of mapping aiming & firing to the bumpers on a controller (L1 & R1 on PS4 & Google Stadia, Left Bumper & Right Bumper on Xbox One).
As for the open-world, it very much feels like a modern open-world game. All it needs are towers that you have to climb to see everything to do in a given area and then you’ll have all the hallmarks of the Ubisoft-inspired era of open-world game design that dominates the current era of open-world games, with only Breath of the Wild & Elden Ring acting as notable exceptions that forged their own paths.
As for the story, ever an important part of JRPGs, especially a series like Final Fantasy, this is where the game’s troubled development is most evident.
Firstly, some context as to why I call XV’s development troubled, as it is important if you are to understand my issues with XV’s story:
Final Fantasy XV was first announced in 2006 as Final Fantasy Versus XIII. It was to be part of the Fabula Nova Chrystallis: Final Fantasy sub-series (or FNC for short). FNC was to be a set of games that shared a core mythology that would be built upon and interpreted differently by each game’s director. Versus XIII was to be directed by Tetsuya Nomura of Kingdom Hearts, Compilation of Final Fantasy VII (a precursor to FNC focused on games & adjacent media based on Final Fantasy VII; recently revived due to the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy) & The World Ends With You fame and was intended to be the opposite of Final Fantasy XIII (the flagship of the FNC project that was directed by Final Fantasy X-2 director Motomu Toriyama). Where XIII is a highly linear JRPG with a blend of menu-based combat & action elements, a distinctly futuristic setting, a story about free will & defying fate and would release on PS3 & Xbox 360 (with a PC port coming in 2014); Versus XIII was going to be an open-world action-RPG with a combat system based on Nomura’s prior work on Kingdom Hearts, a setting said to be “a fantasy based on reality”, a story about people who are trapped by their fate with no viable escape & was going to be a PS3 exclusive.
Unfortunately, due to staff working on Versus XIII being shuffled to other projects like XIII, the relaunch of Final Fantasy XIV & Crystal Tools (the engine that XIII, Versus XIII & XIV were intended to run on), Crystal Tools being a disaster of an engine ill-suited to Versus XIII’s intended design (or anything besides XIII for that matter, as the XIV team would also ditch Crystal Tools for A Realm Reborn) & Nomura constantly changing his mind as to what the game was going to be (with him even briefly considering turning it into a musical), Versus XIII would never materialize beyond a few trailers & some interviews. In 2012, Square Enix would decide to move Versus XIII to the PS4 & Xbox One, turn it into Final Fantasy XV & replace Tetsuya Nomura with Final Fantasy Type-0 (another FNC game) & Crisis Core (a Compilation of FFVII game) director Hajime Tabata. The game would eventually release in 2016 after only being in full production for 2-3 years.
The story of Final Fantasy XV underwent many changes over its decade of development (including the time it spent as Final Fantasy Versus XIII), with most of the ones made during its development time as XV being to distance the game from FNC (as Final Fantasy XIII had garnered a negative reputation amongst gamers by this point in time). Whilst the final game still bears many design hallmarks of the FNC games, its mythology is unique to it with no explicit ties to FNC’s mythology. Another set of changes made to XV’s story can be tied to the biggest issue with its story: The decision to excise parts of the story from the main game to be sold separately in various trans-media tie-ins. The invasion of Insomnia that kick-starts the game’s plot & leads to the death of Noctis’s father? Got to watch the movie Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV to see that. Want to learn more about Noctis’s past with the rest of the party? Go watch the Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV anime on YouTube for that. Want to know what those party members did off-screen during various points of the narrative? That’ll require you to buy the DLC (all of which except for Episode Ardyn (the game’s final DLC) is included with the Royal Edition & the PC port to be fair (the Stadia version does also include Episode Ardyn, but that service is shutting down in January 2023))! Want to know what happens after one of the endings of Episode Ardyn because Tabata left the company & Square Enix cancelled the ones intended to follow up that DLC? Go read Final Fantasy XV: The Dawn of the Future for your closure and it’s not even canon! And so on. This leads to the base game’s story feeling incomplete, even after patches that have added extra exposition & montage clips of key external media like Kingsglaive.
The shame is that when you take that external media into account (excluding Dawn of the Future because it isn’t canon and I hate what it did to some of the characters & the themes of XV’s story), XV actually has a pretty good story about brotherhood, coming of age, taking responsibility, coming to terms with a death you can’t escape & making the most of the time you have with your loved ones and can have some serious tearjerking moments (especially the base game’s ending). It’s a shame that a potentially amazing story was hampered by all these development troubles…
Conclusion
Final Fantasy XV has a great core cast, excellent OST, & a good story that are held back by half-baked & simplistic feeling combat, a rushed pre-launch production cycle that had a fixed endpoint, a lengthy stint in development hell before that & an open world that feels empty & not worth exploring after a while. Definitely my second least favourite FF out of the ones I’ve finished (only beating out XIII-2), but VII Remake & especially XIV have set the bar very high (didn’t finish XIII to be honest, just watched the story on YouTube so I could move on to XIII-2) & XV is still a decent or even good game underneath all of its shortcomings.
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 8.0 out of 10 (points subtracted for the mixed bag that is the English voice acting, the general pacing of the main story, & for that story feeling at times like it was chopped up to sell DLCs)
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 8.0 out of 10 (some great visuals & graphical fidelity that are clearly held back by the limitations of console hardware of the time, even on Xbox One X (the most powerful console of its generation))
Business Practices score: 5 out of 10 (Lots of transmedia tie-ins & DLC that had information & character development that should have been in the game itself (and probably would have if the devs had more time))
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 7.5 out of 10
But the strongest part of the audio has to be the music. Mainly composed by Yoko Shimomura of Street Fighter 2 & Kingdom Hearts fame, FFXV’s music lives up to that high pedigree. Shimomura mostly sticks to orchestras, but there are some guitars & choirs mixed in too. If you’ve played a Kingdom Hearts game before (or at least have listened to the OST of one), you’ll know what you’re in for with FFXV. It’s not my favourite Final Fantasy OST of the games I’ve played so far (that honour goes to Masayoshi Soken & his team’s work on Final Fantasy XIV), but this franchise has pretty high standards when it comes to music & Shimomura did a great job living up to them.
But perhaps the most notable contribution to the OST doesn’t come from Shimomura (not that she is completely overshadowed, Somnus, Dawn & Omnis Lacrima were composed by her and are some of my favourite pieces of music in the entire game). Rather it is a cover of Stand by Me by Florence & the Machine that is the standout, due to how it bookends the story & the heartbreaking recontextualization of this classic song’s lyrics to fit this game’s story & exploration of brotherhood. Florence also contributed two other songs: Too Much is Never Enough (also a great song with lyrics that’ll break your heart after finishing the main story) & I Will Be (which interestingly enough never actually plays in-game, maybe it would have played at the end of that second set of DLCs that never materialized with the exception of Episode Ardyn…).
The gameplay is where Final Fantasy XV starts to stumble, however. On one hand, XV saw the Final Fantasy franchise finally drop all pretenses of having turn/menu-based combat and just putting out an action-RPG instead. Problem is that the combat is simplistic & lacks the depth of other action-RPGs like Scarlet Nexus or Nioh. The latter is particularly worth mentioning as its gameplay would be altered & utilized in the recently released Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (which I have also reviewed here). Also problematic is XV’s implementation of magic as throwable & consumable grenades. While I understand that magic systems are difficult to implement into a hack & slash action game like XV, the way Business Division 2 implemented it just causes me to forget it’s even in the game and mostly stick to melee combat when I’m not using Noctis’s Warp Strike.
Said melee combat is also lacklustre though. The biggest issue is that all combat is done by holding a single button when most action games make you press it instead. This is a significant difference as it can lead to the impression that the game plays itself and that the player does not need to engage with the combat beyond a surface level, even though the combat does have some depth (ex: You can use the left analog to adjust the direction of Noctis’s sword slashes, with him doing a back-flip when you push the left stick backwards), although not enough to avoid feeling simplistic compared to other action games like Devil May Cry 5 (which will undoubtedly have an impact on Final Fantasy XVI’s combat given its combat director, Ryota Suzuki, worked on that game’s combat). As for gun combat, it is highly simplistic when playing as Noctis, mostly being executed by holding down a single button. There is more depth if you are playing as Prompto, but even then it is pretty barebones for a third-person shooter & Business Division 2 made the weird choice of mapping aiming & firing to the bumpers on a controller (L1 & R1 on PS4 & Google Stadia, Left Bumper & Right Bumper on Xbox One).
As for the open-world, it very much feels like a modern open-world game. All it needs are towers that you have to climb to see everything to do in a given area and then you’ll have all the hallmarks of the Ubisoft-inspired era of open-world game design that dominates the current era of open-world games, with only Breath of the Wild & Elden Ring acting as notable exceptions that forged their own paths.
As for the story, ever an important part of JRPGs, especially a series like Final Fantasy, this is where the game’s troubled development is most evident.
Firstly, some context as to why I call XV’s development troubled, as it is important if you are to understand my issues with XV’s story:
Final Fantasy XV was first announced in 2006 as Final Fantasy Versus XIII. It was to be part of the Fabula Nova Chrystallis: Final Fantasy sub-series (or FNC for short). FNC was to be a set of games that shared a core mythology that would be built upon and interpreted differently by each game’s director. Versus XIII was to be directed by Tetsuya Nomura of Kingdom Hearts, Compilation of Final Fantasy VII (a precursor to FNC focused on games & adjacent media based on Final Fantasy VII; recently revived due to the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy) & The World Ends With You fame and was intended to be the opposite of Final Fantasy XIII (the flagship of the FNC project that was directed by Final Fantasy X-2 director Motomu Toriyama). Where XIII is a highly linear JRPG with a blend of menu-based combat & action elements, a distinctly futuristic setting, a story about free will & defying fate and would release on PS3 & Xbox 360 (with a PC port coming in 2014); Versus XIII was going to be an open-world action-RPG with a combat system based on Nomura’s prior work on Kingdom Hearts, a setting said to be “a fantasy based on reality”, a story about people who are trapped by their fate with no viable escape & was going to be a PS3 exclusive.
Unfortunately, due to staff working on Versus XIII being shuffled to other projects like XIII, the relaunch of Final Fantasy XIV & Crystal Tools (the engine that XIII, Versus XIII & XIV were intended to run on), Crystal Tools being a disaster of an engine ill-suited to Versus XIII’s intended design (or anything besides XIII for that matter, as the XIV team would also ditch Crystal Tools for A Realm Reborn) & Nomura constantly changing his mind as to what the game was going to be (with him even briefly considering turning it into a musical), Versus XIII would never materialize beyond a few trailers & some interviews. In 2012, Square Enix would decide to move Versus XIII to the PS4 & Xbox One, turn it into Final Fantasy XV & replace Tetsuya Nomura with Final Fantasy Type-0 (another FNC game) & Crisis Core (a Compilation of FFVII game) director Hajime Tabata. The game would eventually release in 2016 after only being in full production for 2-3 years.
The story of Final Fantasy XV underwent many changes over its decade of development (including the time it spent as Final Fantasy Versus XIII), with most of the ones made during its development time as XV being to distance the game from FNC (as Final Fantasy XIII had garnered a negative reputation amongst gamers by this point in time). Whilst the final game still bears many design hallmarks of the FNC games, its mythology is unique to it with no explicit ties to FNC’s mythology. Another set of changes made to XV’s story can be tied to the biggest issue with its story: The decision to excise parts of the story from the main game to be sold separately in various trans-media tie-ins. The invasion of Insomnia that kick-starts the game’s plot & leads to the death of Noctis’s father? Got to watch the movie Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV to see that. Want to learn more about Noctis’s past with the rest of the party? Go watch the Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV anime on YouTube for that. Want to know what those party members did off-screen during various points of the narrative? That’ll require you to buy the DLC (all of which except for Episode Ardyn (the game’s final DLC) is included with the Royal Edition & the PC port to be fair (the Stadia version does also include Episode Ardyn, but that service is shutting down in January 2023))! Want to know what happens after one of the endings of Episode Ardyn because Tabata left the company & Square Enix cancelled the ones intended to follow up that DLC? Go read Final Fantasy XV: The Dawn of the Future for your closure and it’s not even canon! And so on. This leads to the base game’s story feeling incomplete, even after patches that have added extra exposition & montage clips of key external media like Kingsglaive.
The shame is that when you take that external media into account (excluding Dawn of the Future because it isn’t canon and I hate what it did to some of the characters & the themes of XV’s story), XV actually has a pretty good story about brotherhood, coming of age, taking responsibility, coming to terms with a death you can’t escape & making the most of the time you have with your loved ones and can have some serious tearjerking moments (especially the base game’s ending). It’s a shame that a potentially amazing story was hampered by all these development troubles…
Conclusion
Final Fantasy XV has a great core cast, excellent OST, & a good story that are held back by half-baked & simplistic feeling combat, a rushed pre-launch production cycle that had a fixed endpoint, a lengthy stint in development hell before that & an open world that feels empty & not worth exploring after a while. Definitely my second least favourite FF out of the ones I’ve finished (only beating out XIII-2), but VII Remake & especially XIV have set the bar very high (didn’t finish XIII to be honest, just watched the story on YouTube so I could move on to XIII-2) & XV is still a decent or even good game underneath all of its shortcomings.
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 8.0 out of 10 (points subtracted for the mixed bag that is the English voice acting, the general pacing of the main story, & for that story feeling at times like it was chopped up to sell DLCs)
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 8.0 out of 10 (some great visuals & graphical fidelity that are clearly held back by the limitations of console hardware of the time, even on Xbox One X (the most powerful console of its generation))
Business Practices score: 5 out of 10 (Lots of transmedia tie-ins & DLC that had information & character development that should have been in the game itself (and probably would have if the devs had more time))
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 7.5 out of 10
2011
In many ways, Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a product of its circumstances. It (as well as its sequel Lightning Returns (review here)) is a game that mainly exists due to the calamitous launch of Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 doing a lot of damage to the company & the need to recoup the money lost on that disaster somehow, and with Final Fantasy Versus XIII still deep in development hell (and still a couple of years away from being turned into Final Fantasy XV) and XIV being in no position to do so on its own without an expensive ground-up rebuilding of the game, Square ended up deciding that cashing in on the commercial success of Final Fantasy XIII & making a sequel or two to it that heavily reused technology & assets from XIII was the best option.
It is also a product of its circumstances due to its design choices, which were a mix of walking back things people hated about XIII, working within a more limited budget due to Square Enix’s financial troubles at the time (due to the aforementioned failure of FFXIV 1.0 & a then-recent acquisition of Eidos and their studios (ex: Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal) & following design trends of the late 2000s-early 2010s era of gaming. For instance, the linear structure of XIII is replaced with a much more open-ended one where you can play most missions during the middle portion of the game in any order you please (although the cutscenes do feel written with a particular order in mind).
There are also much fewer pre-rendered cinematics than XIII, down to 2 that book-end the story plus a couple of extensions of XIII’s ending cinematic. Whether this decrease is down to budgetary restrictions, the short for an RPG 18-month development cycle leaving little time for more cinematics, a desire to cram the entire game onto a single Xbox 360 DVD (the first game was made with the PS3’s Blu-Ray discs in mind & the 360 port had to be split across 3 DVDs as a result of all the pre-rendered cinematics, and even then they were of a lower resolution, bitrate & different video format than the PS3’s cutscenes (the PS3 & Xbox One backcompat versions have 1080p cutscenes encoded in a proprietary Sony-developed format (reencoded in Bink Video for the Xbox One) while the Xbox 360 & PC have 720p cutscenes in the Bink Video format that are highly compressed)) or a combination of the above is unclear, but the end result is the same.
The visuals, while pretty good for 2011, are also mostly just coasting off of reused assets from XIII (presumably another result of the circumstances of this game’s creation), although what new assets are present are some of the best-looking things in the entire game and do hold up against other games of that year like Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.
The combat is a strange topic for me with regards to this game. On one hand, not much has changed compared to XIII, with the biggest changes being the ability to change party leaders mid-fight & the addition of a Pokemon/Persona-esque monster-catching mechanic (almost certainly to make up for the lack of a character to fill that third slot due to Noel & Serah being the only two protagonists). But on the other hand, I also enjoyed XIII-2’s combat a lot more than XIII’s (I actually rage-quit XIII almost halfway through because of the combat, you can read more about that here). I can’t quite put my finger on why, but I think it’s related to how XIII-2 gives you access to the full potential of its combat system early, whereas XIII consistently leaves you with only two party members until past the halfway point of the game (by which point many players, myself included, will have quit).
As for the story, it’s a significant improvement over XIII. The presence of a clear antagonist throughout the story (whereas XIII didn’t really have one until well into the 2nd act) who has a clear goal helps give the story clearer stakes & a persistent emotional throughline. Said emotional throughline is focused around 3 of this game’s new characters: Noel Kriess (one of the protagonists along with Serah), Caius Ballad (the main antagonist) & Yeul (a young girl who can see the future & changes to the timeline at the cost of a drastically shortened lifespan & eternal reincarnation and Caius’s charge) and made me to tear up numerous times. It’s not perfect, though. This game’s time travel rules are very convoluted (for example, the game makes a big deal about how changing the future changes the past, but they also allow players to revisit timelines that should have been overwritten by such changes. For example, there are two versions of Academia circa 400 AF (AF being short for After the Fall of Cocoon) you can visit in the game & both of them are accessible whenever you please once you’ve unlocked them, presumably for gameplay reasons due to this game’s non-linear structure. Overall I liked it though.
One thing I should note is that the PC port of this game is a mess. It’s unstable, has performance issues no matter what hardware you run & is prone to crashing. Fortunately, though, there are mods out there that fix these issues. This Steam guide should help you get this game to a more stable state on PC. If you’d rather not deal with mods, I’d suggest playing the Xbox 360 version on an Xbox One, One X, Xbox Series X or Series S instead for a better out-of-the-box experience.
Conclusion:
Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a step forward from the first game, but is very much an iterative sequel. At least the story is surprisingly good for a game slapped together in less than 2 years to keep a company afloat…
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 7.5/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 6/10 (pretty good graphics for its day, but the PC port is terrible)
Business Practices score: 6.5/10 (not terrible, but there was a lot of DLC for this game, including some bizarre Assassin’s Creed & Mass Effect crossover costumes)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, doesn’t consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 7/10
It is also a product of its circumstances due to its design choices, which were a mix of walking back things people hated about XIII, working within a more limited budget due to Square Enix’s financial troubles at the time (due to the aforementioned failure of FFXIV 1.0 & a then-recent acquisition of Eidos and their studios (ex: Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal) & following design trends of the late 2000s-early 2010s era of gaming. For instance, the linear structure of XIII is replaced with a much more open-ended one where you can play most missions during the middle portion of the game in any order you please (although the cutscenes do feel written with a particular order in mind).
There are also much fewer pre-rendered cinematics than XIII, down to 2 that book-end the story plus a couple of extensions of XIII’s ending cinematic. Whether this decrease is down to budgetary restrictions, the short for an RPG 18-month development cycle leaving little time for more cinematics, a desire to cram the entire game onto a single Xbox 360 DVD (the first game was made with the PS3’s Blu-Ray discs in mind & the 360 port had to be split across 3 DVDs as a result of all the pre-rendered cinematics, and even then they were of a lower resolution, bitrate & different video format than the PS3’s cutscenes (the PS3 & Xbox One backcompat versions have 1080p cutscenes encoded in a proprietary Sony-developed format (reencoded in Bink Video for the Xbox One) while the Xbox 360 & PC have 720p cutscenes in the Bink Video format that are highly compressed)) or a combination of the above is unclear, but the end result is the same.
The visuals, while pretty good for 2011, are also mostly just coasting off of reused assets from XIII (presumably another result of the circumstances of this game’s creation), although what new assets are present are some of the best-looking things in the entire game and do hold up against other games of that year like Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.
The combat is a strange topic for me with regards to this game. On one hand, not much has changed compared to XIII, with the biggest changes being the ability to change party leaders mid-fight & the addition of a Pokemon/Persona-esque monster-catching mechanic (almost certainly to make up for the lack of a character to fill that third slot due to Noel & Serah being the only two protagonists). But on the other hand, I also enjoyed XIII-2’s combat a lot more than XIII’s (I actually rage-quit XIII almost halfway through because of the combat, you can read more about that here). I can’t quite put my finger on why, but I think it’s related to how XIII-2 gives you access to the full potential of its combat system early, whereas XIII consistently leaves you with only two party members until past the halfway point of the game (by which point many players, myself included, will have quit).
As for the story, it’s a significant improvement over XIII. The presence of a clear antagonist throughout the story (whereas XIII didn’t really have one until well into the 2nd act) who has a clear goal helps give the story clearer stakes & a persistent emotional throughline. Said emotional throughline is focused around 3 of this game’s new characters: Noel Kriess (one of the protagonists along with Serah), Caius Ballad (the main antagonist) & Yeul (a young girl who can see the future & changes to the timeline at the cost of a drastically shortened lifespan & eternal reincarnation and Caius’s charge) and made me to tear up numerous times. It’s not perfect, though. This game’s time travel rules are very convoluted (for example, the game makes a big deal about how changing the future changes the past, but they also allow players to revisit timelines that should have been overwritten by such changes. For example, there are two versions of Academia circa 400 AF (AF being short for After the Fall of Cocoon) you can visit in the game & both of them are accessible whenever you please once you’ve unlocked them, presumably for gameplay reasons due to this game’s non-linear structure. Overall I liked it though.
One thing I should note is that the PC port of this game is a mess. It’s unstable, has performance issues no matter what hardware you run & is prone to crashing. Fortunately, though, there are mods out there that fix these issues. This Steam guide should help you get this game to a more stable state on PC. If you’d rather not deal with mods, I’d suggest playing the Xbox 360 version on an Xbox One, One X, Xbox Series X or Series S instead for a better out-of-the-box experience.
Conclusion:
Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a step forward from the first game, but is very much an iterative sequel. At least the story is surprisingly good for a game slapped together in less than 2 years to keep a company afloat…
Ratings:
Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 7.5/10
Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 6/10 (pretty good graphics for its day, but the PC port is terrible)
Business Practices score: 6.5/10 (not terrible, but there was a lot of DLC for this game, including some bizarre Assassin’s Creed & Mass Effect crossover costumes)
Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, doesn’t consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 7/10