Despite how much marketing this game seemed to have such as sponsored streams by people who aren't even in the anime space, a demo, and so many ads (unless I was targeted because I frequent the DBZ side of the internet), and this being a full multimedia event with an anime, this was probably the hardest time I've ever had finding a game on release day and not because I think the game is flying off the shelves. Amazon had the order delayed to the following Monday, I couldn't find a copy and any video game carrying department store like Wal Mart or Target within a 45 minute drive and even fuckin pawngamestop didn't have copies but Stellar Blade apparently is in abundance. I ended up double dipping and grabbing a digital copy (praise be to whatever god allowed this game to be only 20GB) while the amazon order got situated because goddamn it, I was looking forward to this. I think this is one of those underproduced copy situations but it gave me time to read the manga before getting into this.

Akira Toriyama's work was one of my main gateways into anime back in the day, with DBZ's ocean dub because I'm that fucking old. His artstyle is something I will always enjoy its why I played games like Chrono Trigger and Dragon Quest that to this day I think is such a standout in the genre. I'm glad another of his works is getting adapted in game form. I think his artstyle translated well in game, especially in terms of the bots (the machines you use throughout the game). That man really loved drawing vehicles and machines and it shows, especially since Sand Land's inception was because he just wanted to draw an old man with a tank which grew into something he never intended it to. Yes some characters I could see the "building blocks" and traits shared from his other work (I will always see Mr. Satan when I see that long square jaw) but his creature designs are also in full effect with giant cats with sabre teeth, dinosaurs with weird tails and prominent back and head spines, large toothed Pteranodons etc, they stand out even if the designs in game get re-used quite a bit with as much as a pallet swap and maybe one slight addition like a head piece to differentiate unless its a boss. There was also a design that was outright used in OG Dragon Ball that I was happy to see. There isn't as much to say about the style of the environments other than they look good and accurately reflect what they're named, Sand Land is very much a land of sand but I am grateful that it is not the only type of scenery available all throughout the game.

The story of the first half of the game mostly follows the manga, two demons venture out with an old man in a tank to find water, but some parts have had their order changed or elongated and there were brand new things added to what I assume more organically bridge into the second half which is entirely new. As I said in the intro, I read the manga but I did not watch the anime which I'm sure this new stuff is covered there. One of the notable new things added to the first half is the new party member, Ann. Originally it was just Rao, Beelzebub (who you play as) and Thief but she joins as the resident gearhead and a more organic style reason why the characters can get more bots because the manga was ONLY the tank. Well that is technically not true. Rao had a car but in the manga when it gets ruined it doesn't get fixed unlike in the game. I did enjoy the main group and think Ann was a great addition, though I can't say they aren't predictable as characters. Aside from a couple of the villains, the ones you spend the most of the time fighting against, I can't say I share the same feelings towards. They are just as basic, not that its a bad thing but it leads to some disengaging of interest in the narrative when I can predict every single plot beat introduced in the post manga content. I'm not saying I was expecting some Yoko Taro or Kojima level narrative and Sand land's is by no means bad, it just didn't do enough to make the predictability engaging. What you think is going to happen after reading the synopsis, is more than likely what will happen. The voice acting is hit or miss with I think Rao having the worst of it which is bad because he is one of the main characters with more of the important lines. I feel like they were going for the "battle hardened, tired old man has seen some shit" route but he is mostly so monotone it comes off as disinterested and doesn't match the character's emotion that is portrayed by the model's animations a lot of the time. Most other named characters were either good or fine but outside of the actual cutscenes, the stilted line reading that is common in this style of game makes even VA's like Kira Buckland (Ann's VA) unable to reach the levels we know they can. The dialogue that occurred during traversal also repeated a lot, and I mean A LOT. The dialogue updates after story beats but I heard the same line of dialogue three times on average when exploring ruins or doing story based dungeons. Its not as if they're allergic to dead air because there's plenty of times without it but other times they talk like its some first party sony game giving you a hint every 10 seconds. "We could get up here, if we had a bot that could jump" Beelzebub says as I am JUMPING IN THE JUMP BOT. This happens every time. I was also surprised that I enjoyed the music. Make no mistake you get plenty of "Desert Music" but the tracks that play specifically in the dungeons and towns at night were pretty beautiful.

So how's the gameplay then? Does it carry it if the narrative is as standard as I say? Depends. Do you like driving around? Because you will be doing A LOT of that. I would say 75% of the game was me driving a bot across the maps and doing various activities. There's grotto's to explore, hills to jump up (the game calls them hills but they're more like tall rock formations), field bosses to fight, bases to raid where some are stealth based and others are combat, ruins to explore and radio towers to fix, bounties and races. Those radio towers are not something you have to climb don't worry, and their requirement to fix might as well be non existent with how little you need and how plentiful those resources are as never once did I have to take a leave and come back to fix it and yes it does populate the map with undiscovered activities in the area. The grottos are just these small single room caves that have chests or ore deposits, maybe an enemy or two inside and sometimes need rocks destroyed to access. The hills are these tall rock formations that usually have a group of enemies you should defeat before jumping to the top and getting the treasure or ore deposits. Treasure chests have either materials or parts for the bots in them with the latter being in the large variant of chests. Ruins are generally larger than the grottos and sometimes have multiple entrances. Going through them you'll run into enemies, platforming challenges, and destructible rocks while you look for chests and ore deposits where both tend to be exclusive materials which in my case was assorted coins and old variants of metals. Unless I was just being blind, which is possible, the ruins always seemed to just...end. There wasn't really a noticeable "end point" or even a boss outside of specific mission based circumstances. It made them feel pretty limp, I'll be honest. The field bosses are differently designed but larger versions of the dinosaurs, panthers and crocs who's movesets aren't much different from their grunt counterparts. The human bosses are strictly from missions and have a lot more going for them than their animal counterparts or underlings. They are not just palette swaps with basic gear on their bots like what you find in the field, they have unique or specific optional parts for their bots to make the fights a bit more interesting such as emp mines, large missile packs or a grapple that then shoves 4 drills in you for massive damage.

If you aren't doing those then your time is spent driving around in whatever bot of your choice (until you need to swap for a specific feature one has), grabbing materials so you can upgrade your bots, finding fast travel points, shooting enemies and doing side quests whose contents aren't all that engaging outside of what worldbuilding they do and what they reward. The traversal gets a lot better once you get the first "traversal oriented bot" as early on it is pretty brutal with how slow the tank is even with boost. It was a good design choice to have the boost feature of bots be infinite outside of combat but I'd be lying if I said traversal didn't wear on me when those objectives where nowhere near the fast travel points. There is also a water mechanic. NO WAIT ITS NOT WHAT YOU THINK! It is not for thirst, its actually a heal and if your water bottle is full then its a revive should you die outside of your bot. A bot reaching 0 hp is game over though, no matter how many others you have on your person. The water can be refilled at the various water tanks around the map which is one of your discoverable fast travel point options. There were not many frame drops that I ran into while playing either. I only ever saw them when destroying rocks that blocked grottos, though this game does to the "low framerate mobs when far away" thing which never really bothered me to be honest.

Speaking of side quests, I won't call it a meta game but there's this hub you get early on called Spino. This town starts out with nothing, but as you do side quests they usually end with you telling someone "Hey, this town need people. Why don't you come on down?". This gets the town to grow and become more developed, get more facilities and upgrade said facilities so you can in turn upgrade your bots and just give people with nowhere to go a nice place to live in this harsh sandy land. It reminds me of building up colony 9 in Xenoblade Chronicles. Most side quests leading to "Come to Brazil Spino!" however is part of the reason why they aren't so engaging, the other being their standard side quests gameplay of "get this thing" or "find this person" or "kill this dinosaur" which is also not very captivating. I was doing them for what I got out it not because it was more game to play. You also gain access to a customizable room that you can decorate with furnishings you either buy, craft or find and can even put your bots in them which can also be expanded in size. I am not someone who really cares about interior design so I didn't spend much time on it and can't tell you if its good or bad. If you played Yakuza 8, its similar to the room you have on Dondoko Island.

Combat is generally pretty simple but it also tests your threat assessment abilities and if you've been keeping your bots of choice up to snuff. Generally though it boils down to driving around the encounter and taking shots at the enemy bots and using secondary weapons to pick off the foot soldiers as well as shooting down their missiles. You also need to suspend your disbelief because this game does the whole "The MCs don't kill, everyone they ever fought survived being shot by a tank cannon at point blank range and/or survived their bot exploding into a ball of fire". I'll give the game this though, you see the foot soldier enemies either have the dizzy stars or run away after to take down their hp fully (animals seems to actually die though, fuck their lives I guess) but I call bullshit on the ones in the bots. This also makes the times when the game talks about death to hit a lot more than it should which took me aback each time. Story based boss fights are different story as they have their phases the go in and out of and as you would expect, require a bit more actual ability to lead your shots than an normal encounter as they can be very mobile because yes this game asks that as well as having bullet drop for things like the tank cannon. There is also out of bot combat and Beelzebub is no slouch in that regard. He has his light and heavy attacks which as you should expect and the latter can be charged. Pressing heavy after a light will change the combo ender plus he can do ariel combos and the previous combo rules apply. My favorite was the 5 hit with the heavy ender which makes Beelzebub do that Chun Li super move, Tenshokyaku. Not only that, he can dodge cancel attacks even in the air. I LOVE DODGE CANCELING! Him along with the party have abilities they can use with Beelzebub having a meter and his party having cooldowns but otherwise your party will be fighting on their own. Rao has some moves for an old man, I gotta say.

I've brought up bots a lot so I'll get into them now. There are many different bots although there is some overlap between their unique function and those that overlap seem to have one lean more towards combat and the other traversal. If I wasn't doing every side quest as they appeared they would have been gotten in a reasonable flow. The tank is well, a tank. It is slow but has a lot of health, does fantastic damage with its main cannon and will be your bread and butter more than likely though my personal favorite is the Battle Armor and its goofy style punches. Other bots are made to jump high, traverse over unsolid ground, move items or just be a fast traversal bot among other things but can be used in battle with no issues. That doesn't sound like a lot sure but coupled with the overlap, you're coming up close to 20 different bots you can build and upgrade. Yes this does mean this is a game where you're better off engaging in every encounter if you can as not all materials can be found, some must be crafted with what you have on your person (or I guess demon). I am not someone who upgrades anything and everything, only what I use, so I never had an issue with not having materials unless they physically were not obtainable yet at that point in the game. It seems to be the game's way of limiting your power, though it feels like anything that is under your level scales to you (everything in the first Sand Land map was level 18 like I was when I went back for cleanup) while things that were set above stay that way until you out level them (I ran into level 20's when I wanted to go to a previously unexplored map section when I was level 15).

Even with knowing going in that the bots were a large part of the game, I was still surprised with just how much you could do with the upgrading and customization. Each bot has a different amount of parts they can equip and each individual part can be upgraded but using the tank as an example you can change and upgrade the primary and secondary weapons, body, suspension, engine, option (bonus feature, in the tanks case something like extra armor) and then 2 chip slots for bonuses. Each one of these will change the visuals for that part of the tank, not all are unique but there's several different looks you will see. Not only will they change physically, and stats wise, which should be a given, but after a certain point in the game you can customize the paint on your bots and depending on your bot you can have a lot of things to paint as some weapons have multiple color sections you can adjust. There are also several slots for decals with rotation and size options and you can adjust the metallic and glossy finishes on each individual parts. I gave my tank the angry face with sharp teeth look, some Pteranodon emblems and made it black and white. This does cost paint to do each time so its not free, and you can unlock more colors by doing some side quests. I did not see any way to transmog parts so those of you weirdos who put aesthetics above stats will need to either deal with being underpowered, hope you find a stronger version of that part you like or upgrade that part with materials.

This was honestly a type of game that on paper I should not have enjoyed as I am pretty staunch in my stance of "traversal is generally the worst part of large map/open world games". Until the first traversal style bot is build, going around the map was a chore and I recommend not trying to do too much exploring until you get one. Combat while simple is still engaging enough due to the customizable builds of the bots and ability to make them your own with colors and decals, along with out of bot combat being fun as well. The activities could use more variety to them with more worthwhile rewards other than materials 99% of the time but at least fast travel points are plentiful once discovered. The story is by the numbers at every turn and even with enjoying the main cast, it was really Toriyama's art that did the lifting for me which is how I felt after reading the manga. I don't know why this game was giving me such a hard time to track down but I think it was worth the effort. Rest In Peace, Akira Toriyama. I'm glad more of your work is finally getting attention.

I wanted to get this done before Sparking Zero, not that I think it has any chance of releasing soon but I'm also worried about my PS3 so I'm gonna try to clear my games that need it out of the way.

Every complaint I stated in my Review of Raging Blast 1 still stands but for anyone who doesn't wanna click, the tldr is that it is very similar to the first game with just some extra mechanics and balance changes that I am not well versed in the intricacies of this duology to understand it on a deep level. Outside of being able to be hit out of supers, new recovery mechanics, and a beam finisher for pursuits while in high tension mode. Otherwise it still feels floaty, supers lack impact, dash supers still have no range, the cameraman is being paid off by the enemy so its hard to see, the right stick for super attacks is still an awful control idea and its largest new mechanic called Raging Soul are not something I enjoyed either. I in fact hate the raging soul gimmick, and it sucks that I do because it causes the intro song to play and I am always of fan of that. Whoever decided to have its activation be the guard button should have been fired. So many times did I enter high tension but the enemy shot something at me so I intended to guard that it activated. So now I gotta only rely on rush combos for damage because it locks you out of supers and ultimate attacks without a specific customization item until you run out of ki. Sure I'm getting 20 hit combos, doing twice the work that any ai above normal can vanish out of at any time with a vanish for the same damage I could get for a 5 hit launcher into an ult. The game seems to have wanted to try to be a more competitive style.

The attention to detail from the first game is still here from the transformation scenes, Janemba's cubey movement and in battle dialogue. The customization is also more front facing than ever as it is the main component of the game's main mode, Galaxy. It stops Goku and Vegeta from taking up 50% of the slots and Orange Gi without the weighted clothes underneath still goes hard with SSJ3. There is no dragon fist still however so I'm gonna dock points for that. The roster is more to what I expect from a Db game, pulling from movies and adding in some baffling absences from the first game such as Ultimate Gohan. I will also give the game props for using some damn near unused characters to this day like Neizu, Dore, Tarble, Android 14 and 15. Also I got actually Future Gohan'd by the android's fusion attack, the disrespect on those damage numbers was off the charts. I was on my last health bar and it did 99999 damage. LSSJ Broly is still yellow hair despite SSJ Broly being blue, but at least SSJ3 Broly has the green he deserves. Again its a nitpick but if you're gonna have blue hair broly, then have green otherwise make SSJ yellow too.

As I said above Galaxy Mode is the main single player feature as it gives you the credits when you beat everyone's and its unfortunately a tedious gimmick fight slobberknocker. Its similar to Smash Ultimate's World of Light now that I think about it. While each mission has difficulty ranging from easy to ultimate and the AI does get more aggressive/actually uses the defensive abilities on the higher ones, the main difficulty comes from the debuffs you will get. Health constantly draining, start near death (one hit from it), beat the enemy before raging soul runs out etc. Sometimes the game throws you a bone and YOU get the buffs like constantly recharging ki but those are few and far between. There are seal items in the game that can counter those debuffs, but they come in levels 1-3,4 or 5 and it seems arbitrary on which strength you need. Sometimes the level 1 seal works on the ultimate difficulty and sometimes level 5 won't stop it at all. But when you get one of those seals to work, then the difficulty drops dramatically. Its honestly super lazy. You can either just try to get by with what you have like I did or leave that character's galaxy and go to another's to maybe find said seal. With the exception of the fights with "perfect action" criteria, I didn't see any indicator of "this battle has an item reward" and I got so tired of the "beat the enemy before raging soul runs out" fights that I just looked it up. Some character based rewards are out of order and by some I mean Future Gohan. I went through his, got to a perfect action mission only to find out I still didn't have his SSJ transformation and after doing all of his battles. Other times a move or ability you might need isn't unlocked until after beating the "perfect action" mission that required it to fulfill, so beat the mission then do it again and thats just a dumb design decision.

I get it, we've seen the Z story 18 million times before, so how about you make your own like what handheld games like Shin Budokai Another Road did? A selling point of this game is the "Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans" OVA and it has an easy way for this "dream match" with movie characters already explained in it. Instead its just "fight with these criteria for every single character in the game". Every character didn't need one, Saibaman didn't need one, Cell Jr didn't need one. You could tell they didn't really know what to do with some of these characters because they had maybe 4 battles to their name and fighting Saibamen, Guildo and Chiaotzu with draining hp every 3 characters probably means you should have cut down.

This also might not be the game's fault as the copy is used and a little dinged up, but the game crashed on me three times on a specific mention. One time my PS3 just full on restarted, I actually thought I lost power but didn't and the other times whenever Kid Trunks was tagged in and went SSJ the game would hard freeze the console. Taking the disc out and putting it back in seemed to fix the problem as I never had the issue again on that mission or any other.

One of the other solo modes was the World Tournament, you had access to both the World tournament and Cell games, complete with ring out option for the former (I didn't look for the latter). Did both on hard and it was nice to just have a fight without any sort of buff or debuff on either side. The other solo mode was Battle Zone and I was just so fed up with the game by that point that I only did the first one. It seemed like a standard arcade ladder affair with the fights having no real gimmicks to bog it down, again only for the first one cuz there is a handicap option that I assume comes into play in the later ones.

TLDR: Having gone through both now, I realize I didn't miss out on much skipping these back in the day as harsh as that sounds. Raging Blast 2 in my eyes did not fix any issue I had with the gameplay of the first. The increased roster in terms of inclusion was much better which didn't cut down on individual attention to detail in the characters and the customization in game is still strong. Its main single player mode however is a quantity over quality, annoying gimmick filled slog. The game was at its best when it was just a strong enemy with not bonuses on either side. Half of Galaxy Mode's content could have been culled with no loss of anything of value. I will never like right stick controls for supers and I pray that Sparking Zero takes more from BT3 with actual button combinations instead.

DISCLAIMER: This is the first game I have reviewed where an update, version 1.3.1, has come out before I beat it that added substantial QoL. Usually I don't update my games but it read like no nerfs, only buffs so I said why not? As such, some topics about early game might no longer be viable but because I was more than halfway through when the patch dropped I cannot correct those topics without another playtrhrough. It is worth bringing up because it did, in fact effect my score

As usual, I will try to not do any story spoilers but gameplay is free reign. I had worries going into this game, most due to the style of combat they decided to go with. Would fight be too long? Would the darker tone come off as "what your average 13 year old wants all media to be"? Many said to me "Trust in Yoshi P" but when you also don't care for the game that got him his standing, it isn't something I'm going to do easily.

As far as plot goes, I was slipping in and out of interest as the game went on. I had played them demo on release but I redid the intro again for easier reacclimation and reminder of purpose. The early plot I was the most engaged with and given how most jrpgs are, it was totally unexpected. The entire mid plot however, I had zero interest whatsoever and was just going through it to get through but thankfully once that was resolved the plot also became interesting again. The general pacing didn't help, and its one of those "Oh right, the mmo team made this" aspects. There are sidequests that are only not classified as such due to them having the red marker instead of green. Come come off this large climactic moment and you next course of action is running back an forth between 3 people to have them talk to you and then maybe go do a fetch quest or fight a group of fodder enemies, after of course seeing a cutscene shown via a map with pieces on it to illustrate "what has now happened". I guess they blew the budget on other things because this reeks of trying to cut down on something. We saw plenty of scenes where the main cast should have no way of knowing so why go about it this way? If I was just told "oh yeah this happened" in a blurb it would have had the same outcome. And yes, majority of the sidequests are awful but I did them all anyway and thank god that update added the quick warp back to the questgiver. I was real tired of Clive's "its chilly outside but I'm too lazy to bundle up but I gotta get the mail" jaunt of a walk in the hubs. Why didn't they allow him to dash? This is in EVERY hub, town whatever. I swear if the teleport wasn't added it would have put another 45 minutes to the total game time. I will say though, the darker nature of this game had me shocked at some actions they took. I certainly never would have expected violence of that type in a Final Fantasy game before. Also lots of Fucks were said, sometimes comically so.

The characters were, fine I guess. Honestly I didn't really have a favorite aside from Torgal. Clive seems to be very well liked and I can see why, Ben Starr did a pretty damn great performance. Cid had a very nice voice too. But Torgal, I think he's up there in terms of video game dog hierarchy. My boy was doing some sick ass combos and follow ups on enemies both in and out of cutscene. Everyone else I couldn't care less about and thats probably another large reason why I was having a hard time keeping interest in the plot. I'm probably not gonna remember most of the character's names outside of the main like 5, and one unfortunate girl who's nickname is an accurate description of interacting with her.

The music was very good. The ost had a lot of slower, soft and somber tracks which if anyone knows me are my favorite types. There was even a rendition of the main theme that is probably my number 2. I'm just a sucker for that theme, its like a cheat code to get a smile out of me in an FF game. The prelude was also invited to the game and its renditions were nice as well. The most surprising thing was even the battle music had its slower moments. I'm trading blows with a boss and suddenly the strings come in and its like something I'd hear during some high class party, not a life or death battle.

I'll be a lot more detailed going forward, because we're entering the gameplay now.

Lets start with the game's gear and general itemization. Why is it even here? This gear system is 6 items: Your weapon, belt, arm and three accessories. There is only 1 weapon type Clive has access to and that is his sword and all that matters with them is the attack and stun numbers, this goes for your belt and arm gear as well but it replace attack and stagger for defense and bonus health. Majority of the time both will increase so it doesn't matter. There was maybe two times were I had to choose between keeping my current sword on or using one that only had more attack or stagger. There is also no innate elemental affinity to the weapons themselves. Flametounge, Icebrand, Gaia Sword etc just do typeless damage. The accessories is where you're gonna get any sort of meaningful changes from however its still not much. You have your usual stat increase ones for attack, defense and HP (the rest of the stats despite being in the level up menu seem straight up pointless), your "easy mode" ones that automate certain aspects and then ones that decrease the cooldown of your eikon abilities or their damage. I played on action difficulty the whole time (basically normal) and I never saw a reason to swap from the increased exp, increased ap and auto charge magic ones once they were unlocked. I did try the eikon related ones but the changes seemed negligible on action, on final fantasy difficulty (that you need to beat the game to access) I'm sure they're more necessary. The game also has a crafting system which also begs why its even in the game. There are weapons and gear that can only be crafted and you can also reinforce you gear to make it stronger. Sounds fine so why does am I questioning it existing? Because most materials are in abundance! Unless it was a sidequest, mark or boss reward I never was lacking and could make gear the moment it appeared. Even the limited materials were only needed for the specific items so their rarity was more just to block you out of getting stronger stuff early than anything. Your consumables are also limited in terms of how many you can hold of each, you can also only access 3 types at a time that you set and they're all standard. Potion, Hi Potion, attack/defense buff potions, elixer, one time revive elixer etc. Hey though, this is probably the first final fantasy game I can say I used the standard potion during the final boss!

Exploration was barely a thing. Sure there were some more open maps but most of the time it was empty with just the scenery and a couple enemies. The chests you run into would mostly have either gil or materials, with the more important ones being in the story based mapless dungeons. Clive has access to that dash I complained about earlier but outside of the more hallway oriented parts it isn't enough. Even when you get the Chocobo, I think she's too slow. She's faster than Clive for sure but I don't know, she just didn't feel like she helped me get to where I wanted to go all that much quicker. I fast traveled any chance I could have.

Combat is the big thing in this game. "Devil May Fantasy/ Final Fantasy May Cry", its as deep ad you want to make it but even then I didn't find it any deeper than waist high. You have a handful of tools at your disposal: Perfect dodging, parrying, ability and dodge canceling, timed magic burst, eikon switching, ariel rave air combos, however you only have one singular 4 hit combo as you main and I think is the largest issue. There should have been more routes, maybe delayed style to vary it up a bit because no, the eikon abilities do no do enough since they are limited as well. You can set up to 3 eikons in your loadout, and each has 2 slots you can put a skill in along with each one having a unique mechanic like a dash, charge or block on the other button since X is relegated to jump. This limits them greatly, each eikon has 4 moves not counting the unique one and the skills can only be changed outside of battle. Upgrading costs AP with some of them being expensive to master with the point of mastering being that skills can be used on other eikon sets. Once I got my full moveset situated, I build my loadout and didn't bother with tinkering for the remaining 1/3 of the game. Titan's was probably my favorite because I am a simple man and anything that allows me to punch is my go to. Before I unlocked it I was honestly not into the combat, just going through the motions hoping it would eventually become fun. Flurry of Punches was just so satisfying and the fact it could be used to counter not just melee but also magic made it even sweeter. The eikon abilities are the closest thing you will have to a different weapon type in the game. Magic is just aesthetic, as it changes with each eikon equipped but otherwise did no difference in damage and enemies didn't seem to have any weaknesses.

Credit where its due, the normal fights never dragged on which was one of my largest fears going in. I say normal fights because the stagger rears its ugly head here and if any of you read my FF7 Remake review then you know how I feel about their last attempt at it. I can say here while the general feeling of "it feels more like a nerf and then allowed to do full damage", aside for a SINGLE fight it never once reset after a cutscene. The bosses did drag at times, but I expect a boss to have more health so I'm not too annoyed about it. Some of those fights were pretty damn great anyway. The sidequests are the weakness of the devs but the cinematic aspect of the bossfights are their strengths. One fight its a tense one on one sword, perfect dodge and parry fest and the other is an Asura's Wrath level event. I do think the Eikon fights could have used more depth, the trickle of moves made the first few some of the slowest fights in the game but in terms of pulling them out to fight they showed a surprising amount of restraint. The setpieces of these eikon fights were lovely to see for the first time and the sense of scale was preserved no matter what they did. I do think that these would be the worst part of replay though, due to just how cinematic they can be. I hope you like quicktimes, especially the mashing kind. Also I don't know where to put this but an enemy had an attack called "Spirits Within" and I find that funny.

Saying that this game was a twice as long but half as fun Devil May Cry is false, there is much more to the game than that and same goes for the "Final Fantasy of Thrones" or "Game of Final Fantasy" or whatever that joke name was. However in trying to make sure the usual rpg fan can get in, the combat is shallower than what a character action stlye enjoyer would want so as a fan of both it left me doubly displeased. The story had more ups and down than a merry go round horse in terms of its pacing, it could have used some fat trimming. Turning such a longstanding plot tradition on its head could just be for the sake of it or those who try to find meaning in every sentence could see it as a direct statement on some reliance of the past and needing to break it. Despite that I will still never agree with Final Fantasy ditching turn based/atb and going full on combo MAD, but I wouldn't be opposed to coming back to FF17 if they allow the combat to pull from more of the movesets. I don't know if the darker tone is going to be the standard going forward, but maybe don't realy on people yelling FUCK so much, eh? FF16 tried dto do something new, its trying to get its feet planted on the ground again, which some would argue its been doing since FFX, but the groundwork is here. Whenever I get around to Rebirth, its combat is gonna have a hard time comparing and this is exactly why I went through FF7R before this. I wonder if those Torgal plushies are still on sale?