Xbox fans love to defend Microsoft buying out studios because Sony does it too, but at least when Sony does it, they don't IMMEDIATELY shut down an entire 14 year old studio a year after they put out their first exclusive for the company, which also happens to be the best game on their platform in DECADES just to line the pockets of their executives.

Japan Studio's closure was the worst thing Sony ever did. But in the bleakest of perspectives, it makes sense as their games were never financially profitable, and were bleeding money for over a decade, especially after the development hell The Last Guardian went through, only to sell a little over a million copies.

Hi-Fi Rush was a much smaller game that reached universal acclaim with 3.5 million sold copies in just a little over a year. That is insanely good for a mid-budget game. Microsoft had zero reason to shut down the studio to prop up Bethesda with their most mediocre game yet that even IGN gave a 7/10, along with an extraordinarily generic Indiana Jones game and a generic Marvel tie-in game.

Not even to mention that Microsoft is a TRILLION($3,000,000,000,000+) dollar company that has zero reason to purge studios that make successful games.

Hi-Fi Rush was one of the most unique games we've gotten in years and now it will never receive a follow-up thanks to corporate greed and incompetency from the worst company in the entire gaming industry. Far worse than EA or Ubisoft.

Welcome to next generation. Final Fantasy 7.

It's a game where one of the best journeys you can get and still is. A goofy one. A serious one. A sad one. A happy one.

A one big adventure that is.

I was expecting a overrated but fun game. But this game... This game managed to bring me the old lighthearted feelings back to me. I liked 4,5 and... first half of 6 but HOLY MOLY. Ff7 the Best one when it comes to the Journey yet for me.

To the point I even went as far as to get gold chocobo and take down Emerald weapon I was that committed to it (If you know you know).

When it comes to story, I wasn't expecting to get shocked because the spoilers everyone knows about. You know it. I know it. (Do not worry I am not gonna go into detail even if you don't know it)

But I was wrong. It shocked me it emotionally gripped me and kept me smiling with every conversation.

Story wise it's a bit messy to understand. But in it's core it's about two broken people. A person that wants revenge from the world and an another person that wants to take revenge from him. Sephiroth and Cloud. And just like that, both of them is the main characters of the story. Oh also, there is an another empire(it's called mega corp this time) to fight of course

But just like ff6, Empire are the Reason. Sephiroth is the Cause. And Cloud is the Solution.

And I loved that it's sticks to this to the end.

And side characters wise, they were fun. Are they the best side characters tho...? It's hard to say. There is a lot of good ones, Barret is awesome with a story of how a man can get angry to the point becoming a terrorist, Tifa and Aerith is awesome with their stories of coping with loss in their own way and seeing the romance blooming is just heartwarming, Cid is awesome with the story of a man can't let go of his past and turn into a rude as##ole but that's because how much he cares people around him even tho he sucks at showing it. There is also Turks, an opposite agent group that tries to takes us down but with every clash we slowly come to a respectable rivalry with them. There is Rufus, Big part of the Empire, even tho he is not much shown in the story, his sticking to his ambitions somehow manages to make him admirable(also I kinda wanted to see him more because of that even if he is a side character). There is also Cait Sith, he doesn't have a story arc like others but just for his clash with Barret and the argument of what is terrorism or not kinda made him good in my eyes.

There is also others... Vincent. Edgy word personified just like Shadow from ff6. Also Yuffie, same empty as Gau from ff6 but maybe with a little more personality. Shinra council members... Goofy but forgettable villains they are. Also Professor Hojo... The most despicable scientist there is... And couple more I forgot.

But when it comes to moments... This game really shines. Midgar plate event... The forgotten city... And the "Reunion". It's... Single-handedly enough to make this game better than all of my previous experiences. That's all I can say.

Unfortunately it's not perfect.

Because this game does not have a epilogue.

Why it's a flaw you ask? Because for me. The epilogue, the celebration, the aftermath is one of the most important things in a story and this game does not do that unlike every ff game I had played. It ends ambiguous. I can see why people like it but for me every ff's epilogue parts are best ways to cap a story down. But I guess it's never meant to be... ಠ⁠︵⁠ಠ

Gameplay wise it's the game I wanted ff4 to be. Classes but with customizable skills/materias. It's actually ff6's Relic system but expanded exponentially. You don't learn a strong magic and called it a day like ff6. You customize and select whatever skills you need. But you can't go overboard like ff6 because you are limited of what you can select. Then the real part kicks in. You strategize and prepare beforehand. Make some people healers, some of them physical attackers, some of them supporters, some of them magicians etc. I really enjoyed this part of it.

But for some reason class specific skills turned to something called "limit breaks" that is one shot hard hitting last defence kinda skills. While I understand that they want to make it not spammable skills like ff6 did(ehm sabin super combo attack ehm), it was kinda disappointing for me because they take too long to kick in and when they don't, character differences gets lost. I don't know why they did it tbh for example a dragoon joined on our party. But not being able to "jump" command freely kinda disappointed me.

It looks like ff5 gameplay is still is superior to all.

But one super duper nice thing is other team members still can level up with getting 1/2 exp from the main party unlike ff6, also at least there is no forced create teams part(I mean there is but it's not forced) like ff6 bc Fu#kin piece of sh#t grinding it gave me for the last dungeon still in my nightmares.

Also this game requires no grinding as long as you have the necessary skill/materia. You can rush the story without fighting once in the overworld. Heck yeah. Tho, most of the bosses have so little health, I kinda wish more balanced bosses so I didn't kill them in 3 minutes including the finale boss.

Also this game have minigames. How many you ask? A modern yakuza amount I would say and I am not frickin kidding. Be it timing minigames to even submarine or motor riding minigame in it to play. It's damn insane that HOW MANY minigames in this game that somehow works in the little puny ps1. It's insane.

Oh also using fmv videos on the background while characters on the screen running around is one of the greatest ideas ever.

Anyway that's all for the gameplay. I liked it but I would prefer highly nerfed but openly usable class skills rather than limit breaks next time. But really enjoyed the customizable skill/materia system so it's more on the plus side.

So yeah that's Final Fantasy 7. A wonderful game that if you still have your child in you, you will still enjoy it full percent. Think it like the goofy but heartful adventure you watched countless times in cartoons but still wish to see it again and again. This is what final fantasy about after all. A story of a friendship that borns from an adventure.

And no I don't recommend starting from remake. I haven't played it but what I heard is story is not the same.

after 7, it seemed like they were finally moving away from kiryu and having ichiban be the series' new main protagonist, so i was a little bit skeptical when they announced the next game would focus on both kiryu and ichiban. i was still pretty interested in seeing where they would take ichiban's character, and the hawaii setting sounded promising. having not payed much attention to the trailers and previews pre-release, most of this game's story and content came as a surprise to me and i'm happy to say i really enjoyed it for the most part.

gameplay-wise, it's quite a large step up from 7's combat. in a game where positioning is a big deal, being able to move your characters around manually allows for more strategy during battles. being able to see what direction you'll be knocking the enemies into, as well as proximity bonuses and back attacks which do more damage, gives you the opportunity to better optimize encounters and finish off groups more quickly. this also lets you change the path of aoe skills, including as many enemies as possible in the attack or hitting only ones with a specific weakness. this was one of the biggest improvements i wanted to see from 7, so i was excited that they went through with it.

jobs also work a bit differently compared to the previous game. before, only certain skills from each job could be inherited, and they would be attached to that character permanently once you unlocked them. it made it so that you would grind every job up to a certain level to unlock all of the inherited skills. now, you're able to choose which skills to inherit out of the entire job's move list. of course you still have to level up those jobs to unlock more skills, but being able to choose adds an element of character building that wasn't present before. it's balanced somewhat, you can only inherit five skills total, but being able to customize each character's move set to this degree brings a lot of depth to the job system.

admittedly, i'm not a completionist, i did as much side content as i felt like before i got tired and i still ended up spending a lot of time with this game. most of my time was spent grinding characters and bond levels so that i could fill out everyone's move set. not that it's necessary to grind that much, the main story wasn't super challenging, i just wanted to unlock more skills as soon as possible. the dungeon is marginally improved from the previous game. there are more floors and some floors have trapped civilians, giving you a bit more of an incentive to explore more before moving on. completing a floor also gives you points that you can exchange for weapons, collectables, or crafting materials. the level design of the dungeon is still not too interesting, but at least it doesn't feel as monotonous to grind in there.

while on the subject of side content, the new minigames are... okay i guess. sujimon battles are an amusing idea, recruiting random enemies you find and building a team to fight with is pretty fun. i didn't find the battles themselves to be super engaging but maybe that's just me. and honestly i kind of ignored donodoko island entirely lol, maybe i'll go back eventually to finish that but the little i played of it was not very interesting.

i mentioned earlier that i was skeptical of kiryu coming back as a main character, but his side of the story turned out to be the highlight for me. this main story in general is what i'm mixed on the most. it has a lot of great ideas that just don't come together super well, and the antagonists are pretty uninteresting. kiryu has his own set of substories separate from ichiban, where he reminisces on events from past games, and we see what some of the old characters are up to now. these smaller moments are where i found myself enjoying the writing the most, and i ended up pretty happy with kiryu's role in this game's story. perhaps this very well could be his last game? maybe? i dunno, i'll wait till Like a Dragon 9 comes out to see for sure.

i enjoyed this game actually a lot more than i expected to. it was pretty easy just to sink time into exploring the new location and experimenting with the combat and new jobs. the new party members are all pretty likeable and have satisfying arcs by the end. and despite my issues with the story i can't say i was disappointed with how it all turned out. this is definitely up there with some of the better games in the series overall.

"this happened to my buddy eric"/10