Ambitious and layered narrative that is hindered by a poor English localization, a soundtrack that is far too short, a disc 2 with pacing and presentation issues, bland dungeon design, and combat that feels good but soon becomes trivialized by a lack of depth in its systems. How the game became flawed is no secret. Rather than contemplate what could have been, I am instead appreciative of just how much the staff set out to acheive and its delightfully complex narrative framework that would be put to good use in future games.

For the first time, I kneel for a Final Fantasy game.

FFX hadn't started well, but I didn't give up and continued playing. The protagonist's unique style made me interested. Slowly, as silly as it seemed, the game interested me in one thing or another until suddenly I was already halfway through it, when I looked back I noticed although its worldbuilding was nil, how much it had connected the story between its characters of the plot. What makes this JRPG different is that it's a story that seeks us to understand the characters there and feel each other, their connections. This was one of the only times I played a JRPG caring about the characters instead of the world of the plot.

Its only flaw was that the narrative is not polished enough and its artistic direction is not strong. FFX would be a monster if it weren't these two problems.

Cool game concept, it kind of feels like a proof of concept despite the fact that it's 10 hours long and probably could've been benefited by either being shorter or having more complex movement mechanics with the gravity manipulation. It doesn't help the game leans into combat for some reason when it's easily the worst part of the game.

I think it's kind of insane how I dropped this for 7 months right before episode 19 and suddenly I was like "oh yeah I never finished that, I really liked that game, I should knock that out" and then the last 3 episodes were like the most boring section of the entire game, with such a rushed ending to the story (I know it's basically part 1 of 2, but if the two towers ended with a random super big orc minion instead of the defeat of Saruman, it would be anti climatic and cringe too), that's just kind of the taste I'm left with.

The challenge missions are the best part of the game/10

I can see why I barely heard anything about this game, its nothing special. Being a PS5 exclusive at launch, as well as releasing the same day as Kirby and the Forgotten Land didn't help I'm sure.

Graphically its fine to pretty good but I found it to be quite dull style wise. Realistic Tokyo with some ghostly happenings. I have no problem with the designs of the enemies, it was nice to see how many I recognized. Majority of the traversal options were given to you very close to the beginning which was the smartest move the game did, with only one new ability being locked behind the skill tree.

This game has an absurd amount of collectables as well. The main collectable is over 200,000 but each are collected between a 90-600 batch and then the other 566 are a range of things tied to either upgrades or character and world backstory/building. Getting all of the collectables, which the game puts you back before the point of no return once you beat it so don't worry about missing anything, didn't seem to change anything about the ending other than the rewards which, while good, are now pointless cuz I've already 100% the game. They at least made it mostly easy to find most of the collectables, lots of ways to either get markers straight up added to the map or things to point you in the direction every time you activate your detective mode pulse.

Combat was pretty one note, monotonous and dragged on. Despite having a handful of different tools alongside your 3 main attacks, on normal there was rarely a time I had to use anything but the green and red shots. The talismans might as well be worthless in my opinion cuz the enemies you actually want the effects for are not effected by them. The only other thing worth its salt was the bow due to its power. Just about everything has a resource but its all so abundant its barely an afterthought.

As I said above I have no problem with the design of the enemies, but I do have a problem with the variety. Excluding bosses you'll be fighting the same 7 enemies, 4 of which have 1-2 reskins with little to no differences in attacks. This is the main reason for the combat being so boring to me.

Didn't give a damn about the story, its generally milquetoast and the music is forgettable. I'm not gonna remember any of these characters come tomorrow morning.

TLDR. The very definition of a mid game, combat gets old fast but traversing the open world isn't a chore. Its nothing special and unless you like Tango Gameworks, Shinji Mikami, or see this on sale for like $20 or less, you have better games to spend your time on.