WAAAaaaayyyyy more interesting than its direct predecessor, with much higher highs. Structurally, conceptually, visually, as well as narratively, this game hits the mark. Sadly, however, its lows are astoundingly low, and its second half being a pretty crappy escort mission through areas you already explored hits the game in a way it never fully recovers. For as great as the room sections were, the dungeon crawling moments showcased tons of questionable design decisions, to the point I can't, in full consciousness, call the first half fantastic either.
It's a flawed game; flawed up the whazoo, but even if not originally intended as part of the series, it's such a unique beast that I cannot imagine myself preferring the series without it.

Pretty cool in all the ways that matter, but my assumptions weren't proven wrong.

This is the original with half the personality or camp (making the dumb lines actually stupid this time around, given the more serious tone that permeates the whole thing), and a couple "cool changes" for things that never bothered me in the first place aren't enough to compensate.

However, it's probably the best remake (excluding the GC one of the PS1 original), and an extremely fun time--although, with RE4 as a jumpin' off point, they'd have to really fuck up for it not to be.

Clunkier than its sequel in many ways, but far more respectable in others. The better radar makes treasure hunting levels 10x smoother, and Gamma's movement and sound design make his segments far funner than SA2's counterparts, if we're naming the most notable examples.

It may not have been quite the jump to 3D it perhaps hoped to, what with its godawful camera and obtuse structure, but it's one with tons of creativity on display at all times--more notably in the different stage settings/set-pieces it exhibits, and in the different play styles it has the player switch between. Not all of these are created equal but the bigger picture stills ends up quite dynamic thanks to them.

All campaigns, except for Gamma's, feel pretty disjointed due to the broken up form of the thing, further hindered by laughable cutscenes (even for the time), but such wasn't too big a deal.

Flawed but inspired.

It's a complete and utter shame the game got released in this sorry state.

The story itself is nice. It's a Silent Hill 2 type of deal, where everything is just metaphors until it starts making sense near the end but, unlike Silent Hill 2, the end result can feel overly complicated with how forced and contrived some of its beats are. Still, it is nice.

The atmosphere, the same thing. Like Silent Hill 2, it goes for a melancholic sadness type of horror that works relatively well. The art direction is great and the soundtrack isn't bad either. It traverses a couple of different settings and they all feel pretty well realized. Never scary though, despite clearly attempting it, which is a shame.

Everything else is very much awful. All that makes a game a game... Is awful. I'm a passionate defender of horror games having clunky controls as they work well to naturally build extra tension and can be surprinsingly satisfying once you get the hang of them--especially "fixed camera/tank controls" games--but this isn't that. Here, every time the camera changes, you lose your way (a problem usually fixed with the tank controls it sadly excludes as an option); Everytime you try hitting an enemy, you gotta pray the stupidly small hitboxes even connect--or to be more specfic, YOUR hitboxes connect, because enemies will almost always be at a ridiculous advantage--I hope you like getting stun-locked everytime you're forced to fight multiple enemies; If you lose too much health, the dip in speed it causes leads to either getting hit an unfair ammount easier or just getting plain bored;
As far as gameplay's concerned, the only positive is how much potential the dog mechanic had--which it still somewhat squandered as it made traversal a matter of going from point A to point B, disincentivizing actual exploration. The couple instances where that limitation got turned on its head were definitely cool--but also Megalodon levels of rare.

Survival horror games aren't meant to be fun but they are definitely meant to be gripping, and it's almost impossible for me to be gripped when I have cheap frustration taking me out of it at every corner. Old Resident Evil and Silent Hill games work because they are well designed around its intentional clunkiness but there's, virtually, no clunkiness to work with here... It's just broken.

What remains is good. Even if all too easily comparable to SH2 in most regards it does enough to stand out and be pretty interesting by its own merits. That's why the score is still positive. I just wish it was actually fucking finished.

Konami should not be remaking any Silent Hill games but Atlus should really be remaking this. If good emotional horror is something which interests you enough to put up with an entire cattle's worth of bullshit then, please, play it. If not, don't bother.

One of the more unique takes on the "just explore a house" subgenre of horror games.

It's very short but also very well paced and I could easily see myself beating it in a single play session, without any fatigue, would outside influences allow it.
Everything just works.

...Well...
Except for the right stick.
The way it's used to aim the succ machine could leave something to be desired given the game's camera. Using it to raise and lower And turn the Poltergust 5000, while you're already moving your character with the left stick, did not exactly evoke the most polish.
On the other hand, the game also employs an "aim assist" of sorts to make it close to a non-issue 80% of the time.

At the end of the day, it's a charming short burst of puzzle-combat fun, elevated by a very innocent kiddie-horror aesthetic. Very much a blast.

Hard to believe how this game I was spoiled to death about, and used to simply brush aside as nothing more than an overhyped crowd pleaser, managed to not only surprise me but also rise high above all the cliches people say it presents. It's not a common tale.

Sure, it did have too many minigames forced upon you (with most of them being pretty mid); sure, the pacing was inconsistent between the 18 to 25 hour marks; sure, the summoning cinematics took too long; sure, it was way too criptic about some of its side content; and sure, two of its characters (Cait Sith and Yuffi) can go suck a dick ; BUT...

The RPG mechanics and the way they let you build a team that felt truly your own was nothing short of amazing. The story, at first, seemed to be trying to juggle too many themes but still somehow managed to wrap them all up together nicely in a truly impeccable finale; The OST goes without saying; And Cloud isn't just some emo guy with a big sword. He's a human being through and through and I hate how many seem to ignore that side of him (Fuck you, Advent Children). His story is beautiful, hard hitting and inspiring, all at once.

I don't care. Final Fantasy VII is truly something special that every JRPG fan should play at least once and "Random soldier takes off helmet" will forever be one of the industry's greatest plot twists.

Final Fantasy VI pissed me off into oblivion. Not once had I seen such a perfect game become so tiring towards the end.

The pixel art is amazing, The OST is Godlike, and the writing is remarkable---even more so for SNES standards. Up 'till the 20th hour, we'd had on our hands a perfectly balanced RPG that not once required you to do any grinding. It was all strategy.
Sadly though, at one point towards the end, the game puts you on a wild goose chase to "refind" your party members, which is actually fun up until the point you find out these guys can be super low level if you fucked up early on, and you really need every single one of them for the final dungeon.
In there, you have to divide your team into 3 small parties and switch between them at choice as you traverse said dungeon. Here's the problem, the dungeon may be as hard--and cool--as it should be, and the final boss battle may be some top tier shit, but all the characters you never once used are now required for both, and therefore, what are you forced to do? Painstaking Grinding, and while grinding, I wasn't thinking "Damn, Kefka really is the best villain in gaming" or "Locke is such a cool relatable dude" or even "The combat here is so fucking S M O O T H". No, I was thinking: "when will this annoying bullshit end?"
Before, if I was stuck in a certain spot, I knew I'd just need to change up my strategy. Here though... Not really, and that near ruined the final hours of the game for me.

So, what did I do?
I cheated.
This game I'd been salivating for? Yeah, I cheated at it.

I don't like cheating AT ALL, but it got to that point. I didn't even have to do much, the game's many glitches did half of the job for me.

This? The Best JRPG ever? I think not.

However, the rest of the game really is absolutely phenomenal so it was never really in risk of receiving a bad score from me. Don't get me wrong. If it wasn't for all that the headaches the final dungeon brings, this could have been a clear 9, or even a 10.

Being developed as a way to signify the end of an era, the developers tried to grab everything that made the series special and put it in one neat little package. It wasn't aiming to reinvent Final Fantasy, it was aiming to perfect it and, as far as I'm concerned, they hit the nail right on the head.

Every character is unique and well defined; the story is a rollercoaster of emotions, paced tighter than the tiniest crevice; the Equipment Add-On mechanics hit that perfect balance of having a battle system feel strategic without being complicated; and the Music, OH, the music; and the Art Direction... OH, the ART DIRECTION. Be it the FMVs or the in-game graphics/backgrounds, this game was a visual behemoth for the time, perfectly bringing this somewhat usual, but still meticulously crafted, fantasy world to life.

As for the side-content, although divisive, I found it to be the best out of the FFs I played. It had an interesting card game, cool treasure and frog hunting mini-games, as well as many lesser diversions spread throughout. No matter where you happened to be, there was always entertainment on the way. I mean... Kinda.
Although pretty cool, EVERY SINGLE ONE of these mini-games started to drag at some point--especially if you're looking for every possible secret the game has. ("As if catching 99 frogs and 24 treasures wasn't enough, why not try skipping rope a THOUSAND TIMES?!") I didn't do that though as I respect my own sanity.

Even then, the slow combat is what almost kept me from giving it a perfect score. Battles take too long to start, as do the character animations. It was never so bad it'd become a deal breaker, but it did begin to dent the experience towards the end.
Still, I'd say we've a got keeper on our hands. It's funny, touching, and whimsical, with contrastingly grounded characters and themes to boot. A masterpiece of the genre and a new all-time favorite of mine.

Visually stunning and poignant with what it's trying to tell the "player".

The writing could sometimes be a bit on the clunky side but what was being said always felt palpable and, most of all, real -- as if two people really could have been having that very same conversation at one point in time. But even so, the way you pick dialogue options and how those options move the convos along always felt somewhat jarring, and kinda forced -in the same way most visual novels seem to be- and the way the different endings came to be depending on your choices didn't seem to happen organically enough. (Again, as with most visual novels).

I really feel I should mention its visuals again though. I mean, sure, looking at them, the screenshots speak for themselves but, GOOD GOD, it is gorgeous to look at.

A decent short Visual Novel. It ain't exactly no Doki Doki but it's still somewhat worthy of your time. If you can find enjoyment in VNs, that is.

Final Fantasy X is what I call "a series of elements in constant turmoil with one another". The locations are beautiful and the world of Spira is quite fascinating to learn about BUT you're limited to traversing it through a series of linear corridors that can't help but feel stagnant after a while. The battle system is fantastic and the sphere grid is super satisfying to build but the difficulty goes through a weird-ass spike near the end game that I still can't pinpoint if good or bad (it's definitely still manageable though and, THANK THE GODS, you never NEED to grind. It might help, but it is never mandatory, which I greatly appreciate). The side quests can be fun, even if on the grindy side of things, but most if not all of the mini-games are so stupid that even thinking of 100% completing this beast would be enough to lock you in an asylum (dodging 200 lighting bolts is just too much, man). And finally, the story itself may be pretty fantastic but the actual dialogue is often jarring, with spotty voice acting, and the in-game cutscenes suffer from some real bland and aimless camera work which totally totals the game's presentation (The FMVs are all sublime though). But even then, despite all these flaws... There is definitely something truly special to be found here. The story is deep af and begging to be dissected and the way the emotional beats get set up only to later rip your guts out is nothing short of marvelous. The romance in specific is quite remarkably handled, perfectly capturing the awkwardness of these conflicted teenagers as they go through the motions, having their interactions start off as the cringiest convos on the planet but making me bawl my eyes out by the end.

Overall, a flawed but great experience whose strengths far outweight its flaws and whose story will stick with me for years to come.

Haven't played X-2 yet but will make a new review for it once I have.

Some say FFXV is good. Others say it's mediocre or even bad. Me? I say it's a complete and utter storytelling failure, so much so that it becomes an embarrassment.

Great graphics, good music and a good main cast are all the positives it has, with everything else, from the combat, to the exploration/side-quests, to the camping mechanics, to the driving, to the clarity and structure of the narrative, all ranging from shallow to underdeveloped. It had a few good standalone moments, sure (the beginning with the car), and the story itself perhaps could have been great but the way it was told was so much of a mess--cutting and skipping important shit every chance it got, or kicking it to the sidelines--that I felt 200% of those 35 hours having been a waste. Seriously, fuck this game. There should have been more broken down cars and less "pulled out of ass" plagues.

4- out of 10 and I hate how generous I'm being.

Only recently, with releases such as Breath of the Wild and The Phantom Pain, have games begun to catch up to the immense sense of freedom this game exudes. The maps are designed with so many intricate means of approach, and the mechanics at the player's disposal offer so much to work with, juxtaposed with conservative ammounts of hand-holding, that the end of each level always comes attached with a ridiculous sense of autonomy and accomplisment. Many were the times when I found myself having a blast while, supposedly, exploiting the game's limitations before realising: "wait, this is exactly what it wants me to do". It encourages thinking outside of the box in whatever way that works for YOU. It's the gaming equivalent of free jazz.

Ironically enough, this approach to gameplay also seems to go hand in hand with the game's narrative. A compilation of balls to wall conspiracy theories that somehow end up capable of being taken seriously by means of the great writing on display and the ways it tackles its ideas of "free will". We've heard of great VAs saving awful lines but this is closer to the opposite. The voice acting may not be some lazy embarassment (the Hong Kong section is kinda weird though) but it ain't some crazy achievement either, yet each character felt real, and each topic engaging enough so as to drive the player forward.

I may have found some jank here and there--no doubt a fault of its age--but each example ended up a non-issue:
-The cameras take a while to move again after you hide and there's no way of knowing where they're pointing while taking cover, making it very easy to be spotted again just from peaking--yet that only encouraged me to take bigger advantage of the pretty cool in-game hacking;
-The guards' AI is dumber than a koala but, by some happy little accident, it ended up flawed in a way that's fun and engaging to play around with;
And I honestly think that's it. There were some floating dead bodies here and there, but I didn't even bother to pay those much mind. Every game has glitches and programming flaws so, as long as it doesn't ruin the immersion/ experience, I won't give a shit--especially given its age.

Honestly, how stuff like that could ever dent the immersion present in something such as this is beyond me. The graphics may not be anything worth writing home about--even for the time--but the locales they built around them most definitely are. The lighting is honestly phenomenal in its ambient use and the OST's quality isn't talked about nearly enough. These elements, mixed with the previously mentioned genius of how each map is built, constantly kept me playing for hours on end before realizing the lights outside were now coming from the street instead of the sun.

It's a special little (big) piece of gaming History that should be played through at least once. Some old 3D games from that era may have aged as poorly as ur mom lol, but this one stands proudly near the top of those that didn't.

Heads up: just like the other 2000 RPG juggernaut classic that I love to hell and back, "Final Fantasy IX", you may need some mods in order to get the proper experience. I, for one, prefer to play games as they were intended so I limited myself to installing the Deus EXE launcher and the Unreal Engine Direct3D 10 Renderer--as I recommend you do too, since all they do is pretty much get the game running up to standard with modern systems.

Anyway, stop reading and get playin'.