Not giving this a score as I only played the demo. If I ever do try out the full game I'll come back and give it a proper full review. But the demo made me not want to get the game.
I seem to have had the exact opposite experience with the demo as everyone else. You look at comments on videos of the demo and everyone says that it convinced them to preorder. But I went in thinking I'd get it day 1 only to come out of the demo underwhelmed at best, all interest lost.
I immediately thought the on rails shooting section felt cheaply made and unsatisfying let alone when the climax was the exact same boring thing for 5 minutes straight. The story was half mind numbingly boring and half predictable based off of stricly character archetypes. Was never a fan of Game of Thrones style storytelling and I'm definitely not looking to square enix for western appeal. The art style reminds me of the worst of the 2010's black and brown color palletes the industry has finally broken out of, though ff16 seems to have not gotten that memo.
Perhaps the story and world could grow on me over time but the combat failed to impress me at any point. Damage sponge boss fights you button mash on. And it's like they realized the fight goes on too long so they trigger some quicktime events that are practically impossible to fail just to speed them along. There is a section of the demo showing what combat past the intro is like... Which just made it seem like at best you'd get some shallow abilities and the bosses are still just boring damage sponges. Like they went "don't worry, it doesn't get good later either!"
I wasn't against a mainline FF not being turn based, as I thought FF7Remake and strangers of paradise had really good combat, but I'm just not seeing it here as far as the demos and clips i've seen go. I keep seeing combo showcases and to me it makes the game look so lame. People are doing these 30 second long combos and all I can think of is how underwhelming the visual effects and sound design are. As well as them seeming less like satisfying COMBOS, more like just an MMO ability rotation. Fighting enemies that die extremely quick is lame but anything that's a bit meatier quickly becomes tedious. Slowly staggering an enemy and with each attack seeing its health bar lose a pixel per hit...And then throwing all your most powerful attacks at it once its staggered and seeing its health bar go down by like 15% by the end just feels bad. Makes all your attacks feel weak and weightless especially when the enemy barely reacts and there's no punchy sound effects and all you get visually is some tiny particles. Like compared to even a 2009 game, Bayonetta, both the style and substance are very lacking imo.
If there's enough depth on the builds and strategy side of things to actually deal major damage I can see it getting satisfying. Like bosses in FF13 can have a seemingly insurmountable amount of health but if you get enough buffs and debuffs and weaknesses on top of the multiplied stagger damage it's so satisfying to deal major damage to something that your attacks normally do next to nothing to. But then I hear that very basic things like elemental weaknesses aren't even a thing in this game and I wonder if there is any depth beyond spamming endless weak combos.
Then there's all the little things like the haptics when pressing the trigger to open doors/break fences are very shoehorned in and poorly implemented when I know for a fact the triggers have the ability to be way more immersive than clicking once to charge animation that plays AFTER you already held the trigger. Or how Clive slides/glides when changing what direction you're running in a way that feels like his basic running animations weren't polished at all. All this and I also hear the sidequests are really bad from people who otherwise say this is game of the year.
Idk, I was so down to go all in on the new mainline final fantasy for literally the first time, I've only gotten into the series very recently. But from what I've seen and played it makes me more interested in literally any other game in the series. And side note, really not a fan of them going for an M rating here. If it was just so they could tell a darker story and not shy away from some more brutal scenes, I could respect that. But the strong language and nsfw scenes come off really annoying and forced to me. And I kind of worry every mainline final fantasy from now on will be M rated even if it's not strictly necessary for the story now that they've broken the ice.
Literally the only thing I liked was the sound the goblins made during their cutscenes. Would love to be proven wrong and change my mind on the game someday but I'm really not looking to drop 70$ coming off a demo that was just as much of a deterrent as the balan wonderworld demo was. It just kind of reeks of Square Enix chasing focus tested trends, except those trends were outdated a decade ago let alone now.
I seem to have had the exact opposite experience with the demo as everyone else. You look at comments on videos of the demo and everyone says that it convinced them to preorder. But I went in thinking I'd get it day 1 only to come out of the demo underwhelmed at best, all interest lost.
I immediately thought the on rails shooting section felt cheaply made and unsatisfying let alone when the climax was the exact same boring thing for 5 minutes straight. The story was half mind numbingly boring and half predictable based off of stricly character archetypes. Was never a fan of Game of Thrones style storytelling and I'm definitely not looking to square enix for western appeal. The art style reminds me of the worst of the 2010's black and brown color palletes the industry has finally broken out of, though ff16 seems to have not gotten that memo.
Perhaps the story and world could grow on me over time but the combat failed to impress me at any point. Damage sponge boss fights you button mash on. And it's like they realized the fight goes on too long so they trigger some quicktime events that are practically impossible to fail just to speed them along. There is a section of the demo showing what combat past the intro is like... Which just made it seem like at best you'd get some shallow abilities and the bosses are still just boring damage sponges. Like they went "don't worry, it doesn't get good later either!"
I wasn't against a mainline FF not being turn based, as I thought FF7Remake and strangers of paradise had really good combat, but I'm just not seeing it here as far as the demos and clips i've seen go. I keep seeing combo showcases and to me it makes the game look so lame. People are doing these 30 second long combos and all I can think of is how underwhelming the visual effects and sound design are. As well as them seeming less like satisfying COMBOS, more like just an MMO ability rotation. Fighting enemies that die extremely quick is lame but anything that's a bit meatier quickly becomes tedious. Slowly staggering an enemy and with each attack seeing its health bar lose a pixel per hit...And then throwing all your most powerful attacks at it once its staggered and seeing its health bar go down by like 15% by the end just feels bad. Makes all your attacks feel weak and weightless especially when the enemy barely reacts and there's no punchy sound effects and all you get visually is some tiny particles. Like compared to even a 2009 game, Bayonetta, both the style and substance are very lacking imo.
If there's enough depth on the builds and strategy side of things to actually deal major damage I can see it getting satisfying. Like bosses in FF13 can have a seemingly insurmountable amount of health but if you get enough buffs and debuffs and weaknesses on top of the multiplied stagger damage it's so satisfying to deal major damage to something that your attacks normally do next to nothing to. But then I hear that very basic things like elemental weaknesses aren't even a thing in this game and I wonder if there is any depth beyond spamming endless weak combos.
Then there's all the little things like the haptics when pressing the trigger to open doors/break fences are very shoehorned in and poorly implemented when I know for a fact the triggers have the ability to be way more immersive than clicking once to charge animation that plays AFTER you already held the trigger. Or how Clive slides/glides when changing what direction you're running in a way that feels like his basic running animations weren't polished at all. All this and I also hear the sidequests are really bad from people who otherwise say this is game of the year.
Idk, I was so down to go all in on the new mainline final fantasy for literally the first time, I've only gotten into the series very recently. But from what I've seen and played it makes me more interested in literally any other game in the series. And side note, really not a fan of them going for an M rating here. If it was just so they could tell a darker story and not shy away from some more brutal scenes, I could respect that. But the strong language and nsfw scenes come off really annoying and forced to me. And I kind of worry every mainline final fantasy from now on will be M rated even if it's not strictly necessary for the story now that they've broken the ice.
Literally the only thing I liked was the sound the goblins made during their cutscenes. Would love to be proven wrong and change my mind on the game someday but I'm really not looking to drop 70$ coming off a demo that was just as much of a deterrent as the balan wonderworld demo was. It just kind of reeks of Square Enix chasing focus tested trends, except those trends were outdated a decade ago let alone now.
jacobcowley27
7 months ago