Phvortt
2009
This review contains spoilers
I really wish I could have finished and enjoyed this game all the way through, but sadly, it overstays it's welcome around the 20 Hours mark and becomes an extremely boring slog until you give up, which is a shame since I really loved the story and characters! Gameplay is the real let down.
The game basically consists of walking straight on a big hallway, fighting enemies along the way and watching cutscenes. Really, that's pretty much it. No puzzles, no exploration, no side quests (Until chapter 11, but even them are boring), just these 3 things, And here's the thing, it actually works for the first 20 hours because of the story, the prospect of becoming stronger through Gear and the Crystal System keeps you engaged. However, these two progression systems (Crystal and Gear) end up falling flat because of how they depend on grinding boring battles over and over and over again.
At a first glance, the weapon/accessory upgrade system seems kinda interesting. You collect monster drops to stack a multiplier on your gear, to then use scrap parts to add a big amount to XP to it and level it up. However, the balance around it felt very weird to me, battles rarely dropped any items and when they do, it was only about 1 to 2 items, since battles don't reward money, you can't even buy more materials, in addition to battles rewarding crystal points to level your skill tree, it feels like the game really wants you to keep doing repetitive battles for a long time to be able to feel like you are progressing, which makes sense I guess, since the game doesn't offer any other thing to do. I also felt like I was completely locked in a singular weapon upon leveling it up, making any other weapon you find being just a way to get a small amount of money. Maybe there was something I missed, but I don't think so.
I stopped playing in the middle of chapter 11, once you get to Gran Pulse, the place where you actually have side quests and not just a hallway to keep walking forward... at least that's what i though, Gran Pulse ended up being just a singular large area leading to even more hallways with semi-bosses to fight and complete the quests, I just could not do it anymore.
The story really is the only thing that make you want to keep playing, but since the gameplay just becomes extremely boring, watching the rest of it online was the best decision to me. I really wished I could have experienced it to the end, such a beautiful story.
The game basically consists of walking straight on a big hallway, fighting enemies along the way and watching cutscenes. Really, that's pretty much it. No puzzles, no exploration, no side quests (Until chapter 11, but even them are boring), just these 3 things, And here's the thing, it actually works for the first 20 hours because of the story, the prospect of becoming stronger through Gear and the Crystal System keeps you engaged. However, these two progression systems (Crystal and Gear) end up falling flat because of how they depend on grinding boring battles over and over and over again.
At a first glance, the weapon/accessory upgrade system seems kinda interesting. You collect monster drops to stack a multiplier on your gear, to then use scrap parts to add a big amount to XP to it and level it up. However, the balance around it felt very weird to me, battles rarely dropped any items and when they do, it was only about 1 to 2 items, since battles don't reward money, you can't even buy more materials, in addition to battles rewarding crystal points to level your skill tree, it feels like the game really wants you to keep doing repetitive battles for a long time to be able to feel like you are progressing, which makes sense I guess, since the game doesn't offer any other thing to do. I also felt like I was completely locked in a singular weapon upon leveling it up, making any other weapon you find being just a way to get a small amount of money. Maybe there was something I missed, but I don't think so.
I stopped playing in the middle of chapter 11, once you get to Gran Pulse, the place where you actually have side quests and not just a hallway to keep walking forward... at least that's what i though, Gran Pulse ended up being just a singular large area leading to even more hallways with semi-bosses to fight and complete the quests, I just could not do it anymore.
The story really is the only thing that make you want to keep playing, but since the gameplay just becomes extremely boring, watching the rest of it online was the best decision to me. I really wished I could have experienced it to the end, such a beautiful story.
2011
What a great game! They took every criticism I had of the first game and fixed it, of course, in exchange for having a bit of a weaker story. I even got the platinum, since I really enjoyed it!
Starting with the part of the game that really got old for me on the first game: Gameplay. I feel like they fixed every aspect of it that turned the first one into a slog. Now you have MUCH more to do other than walking straight in a hallway and fighting over and over again. Since the context of the game changed to a non-linear story, the game gives you a lot of different areas to explore, a lot of side content, even monster to capture and develop! Even the equipment progression and the crystalium system got much better, they became even more simple, but much more impactful and fun.
Battles also feels much better, you don't get stuck in a cutscene every time you switch paradigms anymore and the unique skills/utilities of your monsters add a nice layer of variability. Speaking of which, monsters are a new feature of the game where you collect and add 3 of them to your composition, each with their own characteristics and developments. Very fun addition, since your party for the entire game consists of only Noel and Serah.
Talking about the story, it is not bad, but also not great. Everything makes sense, it has good beats and scenes. Caius and Yeul are good characters with understandable motivations and objectives. These two new characters and Noel feel like the real focus of the game, which is okay, although I really wished the first crew, mainly Snow and Sazh, were more impactful or at least showed-up more. I can't help but feel like the story was somewhere between Serviceable and good. But it does serve its purpose and helps you to stay engaged.
Talking about negatives, the version for the PC is TERRIBLY PORTED. Normally, it crashes all the time and its pretty much impossible to play the game. It's absolutely mandatory to download a fix and add it to the game files. A real shame they did such a poor job at porting such a good game to PC.
Besides that, the biggest annoyance in the game is how it expects you to find the fragments with NO GUIDANCE AT ALL. It's actually impossible to try and complete all the game's content without a lot of guides.
Also, the last effective world of the game is just really boring, it's a platforming level that really wants to keep you waiting while standing still, just boring.
The ending was also kinda disappointing, the final boss and cutscenes are really good, until the last rendered one that hits you with a "TO BE CONTINUED..." after 50 hours and 20 more to get the secret ending... which is disappointing as well.
I really do recommend this game and I expect the third one to be even better and give a great ending to the series, let's see!
Starting with the part of the game that really got old for me on the first game: Gameplay. I feel like they fixed every aspect of it that turned the first one into a slog. Now you have MUCH more to do other than walking straight in a hallway and fighting over and over again. Since the context of the game changed to a non-linear story, the game gives you a lot of different areas to explore, a lot of side content, even monster to capture and develop! Even the equipment progression and the crystalium system got much better, they became even more simple, but much more impactful and fun.
Battles also feels much better, you don't get stuck in a cutscene every time you switch paradigms anymore and the unique skills/utilities of your monsters add a nice layer of variability. Speaking of which, monsters are a new feature of the game where you collect and add 3 of them to your composition, each with their own characteristics and developments. Very fun addition, since your party for the entire game consists of only Noel and Serah.
Talking about the story, it is not bad, but also not great. Everything makes sense, it has good beats and scenes. Caius and Yeul are good characters with understandable motivations and objectives. These two new characters and Noel feel like the real focus of the game, which is okay, although I really wished the first crew, mainly Snow and Sazh, were more impactful or at least showed-up more. I can't help but feel like the story was somewhere between Serviceable and good. But it does serve its purpose and helps you to stay engaged.
Talking about negatives, the version for the PC is TERRIBLY PORTED. Normally, it crashes all the time and its pretty much impossible to play the game. It's absolutely mandatory to download a fix and add it to the game files. A real shame they did such a poor job at porting such a good game to PC.
Besides that, the biggest annoyance in the game is how it expects you to find the fragments with NO GUIDANCE AT ALL. It's actually impossible to try and complete all the game's content without a lot of guides.
Also, the last effective world of the game is just really boring, it's a platforming level that really wants to keep you waiting while standing still, just boring.
The ending was also kinda disappointing, the final boss and cutscenes are really good, until the last rendered one that hits you with a "TO BE CONTINUED..." after 50 hours and 20 more to get the secret ending... which is disappointing as well.
I really do recommend this game and I expect the third one to be even better and give a great ending to the series, let's see!
This review contains spoilers
After really enjoying Final Fantasy XIII-2, I was really looking forward to how they would improve the Battle System and exploration. It was quite a shock to see the direction they took in this game! It ended up being good, just a bit worse than XIII-2, but I really appreciate when game developers take risks and try out different approaches to their game, so in a way I must applaud them for this.
The strongest point in this game to me was the Story, after following the characters from this Trilogy all the way, I was really curious to know how they would end up. Although most of the game makes you spend time with side-quests, the main line story was very beautiful with an amazing ending!
Combat is the real big change in this game, the new "Garb System" makes you build synergies between loadouts to have you face against your foes. I really liked how I ended up really going for different garbs and spells during the Early and Mid-Game, later down the line I did stick to my one and only loadouts, but that makes sense as you begin to learn more about the enemies, ATB Costs and whatnot. However, I really feel like NOT having a party is a let-down, this trilogy had Sazh, Snow, Noel, Vanille, Fang but throughout the game you barely spend time with them. By the way, how come Noel is not involved in Caius's main quest? I just wish the game had more content with them.
Exploration is all right. You always have something to do thanks to side quests, but after completing all the main quests I felt like I had no incentive to keep playing at all. I did decide to do a lot of side quests and extinction hunting, but the time spent doing those were not really fun, just a big grind.
The game is based on a limited amount of days and time to save as many souls as possible. From the start of the game, this mechanic made me stress out a lot, life is already a game of chasing time, I was not looking forward to managing it in this game as well, but with the time stop ability you actually have plenty of time to do everything. I feel like this mechanic serves more of a story purpose rather than enhancing gameplay. It doesn't really hurt you that much, but it also does not add much.
Well, if you have already played XIII and XIII-2, you should play this game. It is good! Just not my cup of tea.
The strongest point in this game to me was the Story, after following the characters from this Trilogy all the way, I was really curious to know how they would end up. Although most of the game makes you spend time with side-quests, the main line story was very beautiful with an amazing ending!
Combat is the real big change in this game, the new "Garb System" makes you build synergies between loadouts to have you face against your foes. I really liked how I ended up really going for different garbs and spells during the Early and Mid-Game, later down the line I did stick to my one and only loadouts, but that makes sense as you begin to learn more about the enemies, ATB Costs and whatnot. However, I really feel like NOT having a party is a let-down, this trilogy had Sazh, Snow, Noel, Vanille, Fang but throughout the game you barely spend time with them. By the way, how come Noel is not involved in Caius's main quest? I just wish the game had more content with them.
Exploration is all right. You always have something to do thanks to side quests, but after completing all the main quests I felt like I had no incentive to keep playing at all. I did decide to do a lot of side quests and extinction hunting, but the time spent doing those were not really fun, just a big grind.
The game is based on a limited amount of days and time to save as many souls as possible. From the start of the game, this mechanic made me stress out a lot, life is already a game of chasing time, I was not looking forward to managing it in this game as well, but with the time stop ability you actually have plenty of time to do everything. I feel like this mechanic serves more of a story purpose rather than enhancing gameplay. It doesn't really hurt you that much, but it also does not add much.
Well, if you have already played XIII and XIII-2, you should play this game. It is good! Just not my cup of tea.
This review contains spoilers
I remember watching gameplay of this game when I was a kid and thinking to myself, 'Wow! I'm gonna play this in the future, I won't even finish watching this video so I don't get spoiled!' I finally did... and was quite underwhelmed. The game starts off good but gets tedious really fast.
The concept of this game is awesome; it's pretty much what every person thinks of when wondering about how a 'Realistic Zombie Survival Game' would look like. Creating a base, managing resources, scavenging, running out of resources in your area and having to move out. However, the ideas ended up being better as ideas, not reality.
My main grievance of the game is the story missions being locked behind an insanely long amount of time, which leads you to have nothing to do besides repetitive side-missions and collecting resources. You end up spending A LOT of time doing the same boring back and forth or just sitting still, waiting for the next mission to pop up.
But here's the thing, this downtime doing nothing should be the moment where the base management part of the game becomes the highlight. However, in my experience, this part of the game was nothing more than building stations inside your base, upgrading some of them ONCE and... that's it. I never had to think about managing resources and never came close to running out of anything. I also never felt like building bases, upgrading stations, and having more people join the base ever mattered. In my experience, if this whole part of the game was taken out, it would still be played the same way.
I finished the story looking forward to seeing what would happen... you escape. That's it, nothing that matters happened besides that at all.
I got really bored of the game cycle, so when I saw that the two DLCs "Afterlife" and "Breakdown" were pretty much more of the same, I just decided to move on. Maybe I'll try them in the future.
The concept of this game is awesome; it's pretty much what every person thinks of when wondering about how a 'Realistic Zombie Survival Game' would look like. Creating a base, managing resources, scavenging, running out of resources in your area and having to move out. However, the ideas ended up being better as ideas, not reality.
My main grievance of the game is the story missions being locked behind an insanely long amount of time, which leads you to have nothing to do besides repetitive side-missions and collecting resources. You end up spending A LOT of time doing the same boring back and forth or just sitting still, waiting for the next mission to pop up.
But here's the thing, this downtime doing nothing should be the moment where the base management part of the game becomes the highlight. However, in my experience, this part of the game was nothing more than building stations inside your base, upgrading some of them ONCE and... that's it. I never had to think about managing resources and never came close to running out of anything. I also never felt like building bases, upgrading stations, and having more people join the base ever mattered. In my experience, if this whole part of the game was taken out, it would still be played the same way.
I finished the story looking forward to seeing what would happen... you escape. That's it, nothing that matters happened besides that at all.
I got really bored of the game cycle, so when I saw that the two DLCs "Afterlife" and "Breakdown" were pretty much more of the same, I just decided to move on. Maybe I'll try them in the future.
2010
Kind of a let-down from the first game, which I enjoyed a lot. It is overall a fun game, but the story feels much weaker and worse paced than the first game. Every character is unremarkable or just boring, the only fun character to watch gets headshoted out of nowhere for the sake of a super weak "plot twist".
Gameplay is the strongest point, navigating through zombies, saving survivors and using new weapons is the highlight and what I enjoyed the most. Although, normal weapons are way worse than combo weapons, I understand why, but it's kinda lame anyway, since the premise of the game is to use anything as a weapon.
I was surprised by how the end sequence was boring. TK is just not it, Sullivan being a mole also made me feel nothing. Gas zombies made traversing through zombies annoying and the final boss fights was just boring compared to Dead Rising 1.
They tried to still push the theme of criticizing American culture, which was a very interesting point to me as a Brazilian, but it feels nowhere near as nuanced as the first game.
Overall, this game is a let-down from the first one but is still fun.
Gameplay is the strongest point, navigating through zombies, saving survivors and using new weapons is the highlight and what I enjoyed the most. Although, normal weapons are way worse than combo weapons, I understand why, but it's kinda lame anyway, since the premise of the game is to use anything as a weapon.
I was surprised by how the end sequence was boring. TK is just not it, Sullivan being a mole also made me feel nothing. Gas zombies made traversing through zombies annoying and the final boss fights was just boring compared to Dead Rising 1.
They tried to still push the theme of criticizing American culture, which was a very interesting point to me as a Brazilian, but it feels nowhere near as nuanced as the first game.
Overall, this game is a let-down from the first one but is still fun.
2019
This review contains spoilers
REALLY good game! Had a lot of fun with this one.
The game overall is nothing new, a story driven third-person shooter with abilities is not anything exactly innovative. But this games shines by having really satisfaying gameplay, shooting, powers and beautiful spectacles to look at. The story is the main driving force for the game, like most story driven games do, but Control is really good at selling you the atmosfere and making you feel unsettled trough sounds and enviroment. I felt like i was about to be jump-scare the whole time, genuinely scare of what might happen next. Thankfully the game never does any jumpscares, as i said, it prefers to keep messing with you through atmosfere alone. It pretty great!
To me, the whole story is heavly based on SCPs and Found Fotage content that sprouted heavly over the last decade, and the game really does a great job with it all. I really enjoyed watching the tapes, listening to the audio files and even reading some of the documents. They helped build the mistique around the Oldest House and what kind of universe this is.
I really had a great experience, the only reason i can't give it a 5-Star is because of the lackluster ending. I felt dissapointed that it doesnt even have a boss-fight, it's just another fight, a fun fight atleast. It would work-out fine if you fough your brother THEN clansed him, but it is what it is.
Super worth while experience, play it!
The game overall is nothing new, a story driven third-person shooter with abilities is not anything exactly innovative. But this games shines by having really satisfaying gameplay, shooting, powers and beautiful spectacles to look at. The story is the main driving force for the game, like most story driven games do, but Control is really good at selling you the atmosfere and making you feel unsettled trough sounds and enviroment. I felt like i was about to be jump-scare the whole time, genuinely scare of what might happen next. Thankfully the game never does any jumpscares, as i said, it prefers to keep messing with you through atmosfere alone. It pretty great!
To me, the whole story is heavly based on SCPs and Found Fotage content that sprouted heavly over the last decade, and the game really does a great job with it all. I really enjoyed watching the tapes, listening to the audio files and even reading some of the documents. They helped build the mistique around the Oldest House and what kind of universe this is.
I really had a great experience, the only reason i can't give it a 5-Star is because of the lackluster ending. I felt dissapointed that it doesnt even have a boss-fight, it's just another fight, a fun fight atleast. It would work-out fine if you fough your brother THEN clansed him, but it is what it is.
Super worth while experience, play it!