Yamigishi
BACKER
2004
Disc 1 (Evolution) is kinda terrible. They added a new control scheme where you can finally use your right stick for camera control but i'm so used to the old controls i reverted to them after one mission. They also rebalanced everything. Those balances changes are mostly ass, like for example machine guns now have to reload every X shots which is stupid. The game's easy overall, but it never felt satisfying to play in the sense that unlike previous games i never really got to a point where my machine was an unstoppable behemoth, which is fun! the heat mechanic is now HORRIBLE, boosting now heats your mech and a lot of powerful boosters just melt your radiator it's no fun
The game also has changed the entire economy. Now selling parts doesn't give you back as much money as buying them, which is a stupid change because that means you can't just try out a new part for free now! But don't worry, it doesn't matter because every mission gives you 10 times more money than the repair/ammo cost, and so you're virtually never gonna run out of money. At this point why even have a shop, when you can virtually buy a brand new mech in like 5 missions (even without selling your current parts). They also made the shop UI worse than in AC3/SL which is really funny
They also got rid of the arena, now you just sometimes have missions that are 1v1 AC fights and that's it. The other missions are as uninteresting as ever, but i feel overall they're even shorter than ever. the last boss is somehow even funnier than the AC2 another age last boss in the category of "wait why is this dude the final boss"
Disc 2 (Revolution) is kinda cute but also eh? you play remakes of missions from Armored Core, Project Phantasma and Master of Arena, and they all have a reverse side (play for the opposite camp) and/or and extended side (a followup to the og mission) that adds more lore to them. It's cool conceptually, but since the mission design never really evolved it's not as cool as it could have been, even if there's some really cool fanservices for fan of the PS1 games. Had this disc not been here i would probably only have given 2.5 stars to the game, but even with this i still wouldn't recommend Nexus tbh
The game also has changed the entire economy. Now selling parts doesn't give you back as much money as buying them, which is a stupid change because that means you can't just try out a new part for free now! But don't worry, it doesn't matter because every mission gives you 10 times more money than the repair/ammo cost, and so you're virtually never gonna run out of money. At this point why even have a shop, when you can virtually buy a brand new mech in like 5 missions (even without selling your current parts). They also made the shop UI worse than in AC3/SL which is really funny
They also got rid of the arena, now you just sometimes have missions that are 1v1 AC fights and that's it. The other missions are as uninteresting as ever, but i feel overall they're even shorter than ever. the last boss is somehow even funnier than the AC2 another age last boss in the category of "wait why is this dude the final boss"
Disc 2 (Revolution) is kinda cute but also eh? you play remakes of missions from Armored Core, Project Phantasma and Master of Arena, and they all have a reverse side (play for the opposite camp) and/or and extended side (a followup to the og mission) that adds more lore to them. It's cool conceptually, but since the mission design never really evolved it's not as cool as it could have been, even if there's some really cool fanservices for fan of the PS1 games. Had this disc not been here i would probably only have given 2.5 stars to the game, but even with this i still wouldn't recommend Nexus tbh
2020
This game manages to make the difficulty ramp up by doing more than just increasing the BPM of the songs/number of presses you need to do, and it also manages to have a story that on top of being pretty good (tho the dialogue feels a bit rough at times, which is probably a translation issue more than anything), actually mashes with the gameplay in a really cool way. The gameplay's awesome, the music is phenomenal, there's even a song from xaki, one of the composer for the hit visual novel Umineko: When They Cry which is a reason to play the game by itself if you ask me fr
it's still just the same game as last time + a couple QoL changes/more parts but this time i was actually pleasantly surprised because i feel like this game boasted the highest amount of unique missions. There's also a ton of hidden parts, multiple by missions, usually gotten by achieving certain objectives, which is neat tho the game doesn't tell you what the objectives are so you need to follow a guide
definitely the one title i'd recommend above the others if you only had to play one game from gen 1-3, tho i think it works better if you also played 3 beforehand
definitely the one title i'd recommend above the others if you only had to play one game from gen 1-3, tho i think it works better if you also played 3 beforehand
2002
It's another Armored Core game, just like virtually every other games that came before it. You take what the previous game had, slap a few QoL improvements (like seriously i think the only big thing the series has added since the first game was the arena, and it was added in the second game), and you got a brand new game. At least this one had a few missions that felt a bit more unique than what gen 2 offered, and i like the atmosphere, but that's kinda it.. that doesn't mean it's a bad game, it's definitely a better one than 2/2AA but i'm starting to get tired of this series never really trying anything new, and from what i've heard this doesn't change until gen 4 sadly
you have to complete all the missions to beat the game (there's 98 of them, not counting the postgame ones) and it's as fun as it sounds. 90% of them are extremely simple and boring, but some of the last ones are extremely hard and frustrating. this game doesn't add anything to AC2's formula, but it did remove the arena tho. It's an all around boring and unnecessary experience, unless you reaaaaaally loved AC2 i guess
2000
it's more armored core. The jump to 60 FPS is awesome, the heat mechanic is whatever (it's annoying most of the time but sometimes you can make enemies overheat in the arena which is cool), and that's about it. more missions, more arena, at least this time you have to start from 0 instead of importing your mech but at its core (heh) it's just more of the same, which depending on how you feel about the previous games may be good or annoying
The best one of the PS1 trilogy. The arena is finally mandatory (but not in a way that's annoying, which is cool), going from regular missions to 1v1 AC fights is really cool. The last level also was really good which is a big change from the previous games. There's no change to the gameplay (except new parts) so your enjoyment of the game will be tied to how much you enjoyed AC1/Project Phantasma, but if you did like those this one is by far better on every points, in my opinion
it's more armored core 1 but shorter (especially if you import your save)
i didn't really touch on the arena apart from like a couple fights to try it out, it's a neat concept but the base gameplay isn't fun enough for me to really care about it
that last boss got hand but unlike in Armored Core it doesn't happen in a really long and hard stage so it's way easier overall
i didn't really touch on the arena apart from like a couple fights to try it out, it's a neat concept but the base gameplay isn't fun enough for me to really care about it
that last boss got hand but unlike in Armored Core it doesn't happen in a really long and hard stage so it's way easier overall
2023
About 3 weeks before Final Fantasy XVI released, Square Enix released a demo for the game, that was basically the story’s introduction, and in my opinion this demo was genuinely awesome, and made me really excited for the game. Sadly, as it turns out, it feels like the game should have stayed a demo, because after a few hours of playing the full game, it becomes incredibly jarring that a lot of the game’s aspects should have never gotten past some kind of playtesting.
The demo really worked because it was short: everything was well paced, the combat system seemed full of promises due to only having one eikon while still managing to be fun, and the story opened up very strongly. All the full game needed to do was to just expand Clive’s toolkit as the game progressed to keep it fresh, and you’d have a really solid game. And that’s what the game failed to do correctly, which led to it being an experience that was way too long and repetitive to be enjoyable.
The pacing of this game is atrocious, and I frankly don’t know how most people don’t seem bothered by it. While getting your second eikon is something that happens pretty fast, each subsequent one takes way too long to get unlocked. Most “action games”, for lack of a better term, take between 10 and 15 hours to complete, while FF16 is around 60 hours if you do the side content (more on that later), but even without it it’s probably around 35-40 hours. And nothing in the game is there to justify its length. The entire time, you’ll follow the same structure: you do a dungeon, get back to the hub, unlock new sidequests, then go “explore” a new part of the overworld, rinse and repeat. The dungeons take up maybe 20% of the runtime (and i’m being very generous), and they’re the only part of the game that’s even remotely good.
The overworld is where you’ll spend the biggest amount of time in the game, and at no point does it manage to justify its existence. It’s just big open spaces filled with nothing. Sure, there are enemies to fight, but it gets old quickly and it’s not rewarding: just like in a certain MMO from the same series, you’ll get 10 times more exp doing quests than fighting mobs, meaning every mob that’s not mandatory to kill is just a waste of time once leveling up starts to require bigger amounts of exp. Fighting enemies is useless, but so is exploration in itself, since the loot mechanics in this game are so laughably surface level I can't stop but wonder why they’re even here in the first place.
Final Fantasy XVI decided to ditch “RPG elements” to have its gameplay focus entirely on the combat itself, which is a choice i don’t have issues with on a fundamental level. Except that for some reason, the game decided to still have loot and crafting, but their implementation is laughable. Every enemy will drop some kind of materials, and other kind of materials are scattered all around the open world, and you use those materials to craft new weapons and equipment. Except all those new equipment do is increase numbers in a linear fashion. So all you have to do is craft whatever’s the strongest equipment at any given time because there’s never any situation where equipment X has slightly more damage but Y has added bonuses that would make you consider using it instead. And you get way too many materials to craft things anyway, like i had triple or even quadruple digits numbers of most of the materials which was useless, and it’s not because i farmed those, it just happens naturally.
The combat in this game is… Clearly lacking depth. Now I’m not an expert in “action games” the title took inspiration from, I just played the first 3 DMC games, bayonetta 1 and i guess nier automata if you want to count it as an action game (i wouldn’t) so maybe, just maybe, i just lack the necessary skills to make the combat more fun, but i doubt it.
Clive’s base toolkit is very limited. If you’ve played the demo you’ve seen it all, his base moves don’t evolve. There’s only one combo, a charge attack, a lunge/downthrust, and magic that you can either charge or weave in between hits of your one and only combo. You can also order torgal to launch enemies, but everything else has you rely on eikons. Want to warp to an enemy after launching him? That’s an eikonic ability. Grab an enemy from afar to pull them towards you? Eikonic ability. Since you can only equip 3 eikons at a time, that means two of the eikon slots have to be used by phoenix and garuda if you want to do longer combos.
Eikons also let you equip 2 abilities to them, and those all have cooldown. So while you can implement some of those attacks in a combo, once it’s done you have to wait before being able to do that combo again. But chances are after a while you won’t even do that, because of how the combat system works and how unbalanced the game is. Normal enemies pose literally no threat 99% so you can just do your basic juggle combo on them while waiting for your cooldowns to be off,which gets very very repetitive really quick, especially with how long the game is.
(Mini)Bosses are where the game’s system is really flawed. They all have a poise bar you can deplete by attacking, and once you break their bar they’re staggered for a while, and attacks will raise a dmg multiplier up to 1.5. Which means every single boss encounter will follow the same cycle: you dodge, use regular attacks and maybe some abilities to go faster, but your goal is to have as many abilities off cooldown for when the boss will be staggered since that’s when you’ll do the most damage. Even worse yet, some abilities are extremely broken when combined and it’s not hard at all to figure out which ones they are, so you’ll likely have them constantly equipped. There is almost no player expression in this game, instead the game plays more like something like Kingdom Hearts and i like kingdom hearts gameplay! But not for a game that long. Again, nothing in this game justifies it being that long.
The kaiju fights are.. Okay? They’re definitely some good spectacle but gameplay wise they’re not much better than the rest of the game, especially considering how long some of those can be. The QTEs are also hilarious, you have a 5 seconds window to press either R1 or square, it’s really funny. I absolutely disagree with the consensus that they’re “some of the best bosses ever”, they’re just cool looking bosses but they’re really not that thrilling to fight, it’s all style over substance (just like the rest of the game)
But what about the story, Final Fantasy is all about the story right? Well i want to keep my review spoilers free so i won’t delve too much into it, but it didn’t get me. The game opens up very strongly, but the more it goes on the more it sidelines all the interesting political stuff to instead become very “anime”. None of the characters really stood out to me, except like Cid he’s cool. Clive’s alright, Jill is a bowl of soup and there’s a couple side characters that are really cool (shoutouts to Dion and Byron, i like those guys) but it feels like none of the characters bare Clive are developed enough, even if you do the sidequests they’re like all missing something to be more than just pretty stereotypical characters, some of those being almost 1:1 copies of Game of thrones character (like yeah i do like Goetz but he’s literally just Hodor from GoT lol)
And what about the music? This game’s got to have good music right? Eeeeeeeeh. Older FF titles (except 15 which has the same issue imo) have really good and memorable music, the music in this game is just there. It’s like a movie score, sure it’s fitting most of the time but is it memorable, apart from a couple key songs? Not really. Worse than that, i’m actually wondering why the fuck they got Soken for it. I do like his work on FF14, but i think everyone will agree his best tracks are either rock and/or electronic music, which are genres completely absent from this game except for like one song. Everything in the game is just either medieval sounding stuff, or orchestra for the big fights. There’s also not a lot of variety in the songs which is insane. Like in A Realm Reborn alone, each city had its major themes that all gave off different vibes, Ul’dah has a bombastic song that screams of its riches, Limsa has a song that gives you the feeling of being called by the sea, Gridania is a calm and inviting place… FF16 has no diversity in its themes like that. Every city has the same songs, none of them give off really emotive vibes, they’re just medieval_town.mp3. The combat theme is always the same, same for the miniboss themes, even every eikon battle has the same song playing for the first phase… The only places where the music stops being repetitive is the dungeons, driving even further home the fact those are the only good piece of content of the game.
All in all, Final Fantasy XVI was a very mediocre experience for me. It’s a game that wanted to be different, but half baked everything. It’s a game that wants to be a dark and mature experience, but rapidly falls into common RPG tropes. It’s a game that wants to be a “spectacle fighting” game, but that doesn’t feature any deep mechanics to make that spectacle feel fun to play. It’s a game that wants to be a full length RPG, but doesn’t ever justify why it should be that long, it feels like it’s just that long either because you expect a Final Fantasy game to be long, or because the dev team behind it is a MMO team and apparently MMO devs are unaware MMO designs do not work in single player experiences. It’s a game full of flaws, and it feels like as soon as you start noticing some of those all the other ones become apparent really quick afterwards, leaving you with a game that has potential, but got so half baked it just ends up being the same thing Cid’s daughter is: Mid.
The demo really worked because it was short: everything was well paced, the combat system seemed full of promises due to only having one eikon while still managing to be fun, and the story opened up very strongly. All the full game needed to do was to just expand Clive’s toolkit as the game progressed to keep it fresh, and you’d have a really solid game. And that’s what the game failed to do correctly, which led to it being an experience that was way too long and repetitive to be enjoyable.
The pacing of this game is atrocious, and I frankly don’t know how most people don’t seem bothered by it. While getting your second eikon is something that happens pretty fast, each subsequent one takes way too long to get unlocked. Most “action games”, for lack of a better term, take between 10 and 15 hours to complete, while FF16 is around 60 hours if you do the side content (more on that later), but even without it it’s probably around 35-40 hours. And nothing in the game is there to justify its length. The entire time, you’ll follow the same structure: you do a dungeon, get back to the hub, unlock new sidequests, then go “explore” a new part of the overworld, rinse and repeat. The dungeons take up maybe 20% of the runtime (and i’m being very generous), and they’re the only part of the game that’s even remotely good.
The overworld is where you’ll spend the biggest amount of time in the game, and at no point does it manage to justify its existence. It’s just big open spaces filled with nothing. Sure, there are enemies to fight, but it gets old quickly and it’s not rewarding: just like in a certain MMO from the same series, you’ll get 10 times more exp doing quests than fighting mobs, meaning every mob that’s not mandatory to kill is just a waste of time once leveling up starts to require bigger amounts of exp. Fighting enemies is useless, but so is exploration in itself, since the loot mechanics in this game are so laughably surface level I can't stop but wonder why they’re even here in the first place.
Final Fantasy XVI decided to ditch “RPG elements” to have its gameplay focus entirely on the combat itself, which is a choice i don’t have issues with on a fundamental level. Except that for some reason, the game decided to still have loot and crafting, but their implementation is laughable. Every enemy will drop some kind of materials, and other kind of materials are scattered all around the open world, and you use those materials to craft new weapons and equipment. Except all those new equipment do is increase numbers in a linear fashion. So all you have to do is craft whatever’s the strongest equipment at any given time because there’s never any situation where equipment X has slightly more damage but Y has added bonuses that would make you consider using it instead. And you get way too many materials to craft things anyway, like i had triple or even quadruple digits numbers of most of the materials which was useless, and it’s not because i farmed those, it just happens naturally.
The combat in this game is… Clearly lacking depth. Now I’m not an expert in “action games” the title took inspiration from, I just played the first 3 DMC games, bayonetta 1 and i guess nier automata if you want to count it as an action game (i wouldn’t) so maybe, just maybe, i just lack the necessary skills to make the combat more fun, but i doubt it.
Clive’s base toolkit is very limited. If you’ve played the demo you’ve seen it all, his base moves don’t evolve. There’s only one combo, a charge attack, a lunge/downthrust, and magic that you can either charge or weave in between hits of your one and only combo. You can also order torgal to launch enemies, but everything else has you rely on eikons. Want to warp to an enemy after launching him? That’s an eikonic ability. Grab an enemy from afar to pull them towards you? Eikonic ability. Since you can only equip 3 eikons at a time, that means two of the eikon slots have to be used by phoenix and garuda if you want to do longer combos.
Eikons also let you equip 2 abilities to them, and those all have cooldown. So while you can implement some of those attacks in a combo, once it’s done you have to wait before being able to do that combo again. But chances are after a while you won’t even do that, because of how the combat system works and how unbalanced the game is. Normal enemies pose literally no threat 99% so you can just do your basic juggle combo on them while waiting for your cooldowns to be off,which gets very very repetitive really quick, especially with how long the game is.
(Mini)Bosses are where the game’s system is really flawed. They all have a poise bar you can deplete by attacking, and once you break their bar they’re staggered for a while, and attacks will raise a dmg multiplier up to 1.5. Which means every single boss encounter will follow the same cycle: you dodge, use regular attacks and maybe some abilities to go faster, but your goal is to have as many abilities off cooldown for when the boss will be staggered since that’s when you’ll do the most damage. Even worse yet, some abilities are extremely broken when combined and it’s not hard at all to figure out which ones they are, so you’ll likely have them constantly equipped. There is almost no player expression in this game, instead the game plays more like something like Kingdom Hearts and i like kingdom hearts gameplay! But not for a game that long. Again, nothing in this game justifies it being that long.
The kaiju fights are.. Okay? They’re definitely some good spectacle but gameplay wise they’re not much better than the rest of the game, especially considering how long some of those can be. The QTEs are also hilarious, you have a 5 seconds window to press either R1 or square, it’s really funny. I absolutely disagree with the consensus that they’re “some of the best bosses ever”, they’re just cool looking bosses but they’re really not that thrilling to fight, it’s all style over substance (just like the rest of the game)
But what about the story, Final Fantasy is all about the story right? Well i want to keep my review spoilers free so i won’t delve too much into it, but it didn’t get me. The game opens up very strongly, but the more it goes on the more it sidelines all the interesting political stuff to instead become very “anime”. None of the characters really stood out to me, except like Cid he’s cool. Clive’s alright, Jill is a bowl of soup and there’s a couple side characters that are really cool (shoutouts to Dion and Byron, i like those guys) but it feels like none of the characters bare Clive are developed enough, even if you do the sidequests they’re like all missing something to be more than just pretty stereotypical characters, some of those being almost 1:1 copies of Game of thrones character (like yeah i do like Goetz but he’s literally just Hodor from GoT lol)
And what about the music? This game’s got to have good music right? Eeeeeeeeh. Older FF titles (except 15 which has the same issue imo) have really good and memorable music, the music in this game is just there. It’s like a movie score, sure it’s fitting most of the time but is it memorable, apart from a couple key songs? Not really. Worse than that, i’m actually wondering why the fuck they got Soken for it. I do like his work on FF14, but i think everyone will agree his best tracks are either rock and/or electronic music, which are genres completely absent from this game except for like one song. Everything in the game is just either medieval sounding stuff, or orchestra for the big fights. There’s also not a lot of variety in the songs which is insane. Like in A Realm Reborn alone, each city had its major themes that all gave off different vibes, Ul’dah has a bombastic song that screams of its riches, Limsa has a song that gives you the feeling of being called by the sea, Gridania is a calm and inviting place… FF16 has no diversity in its themes like that. Every city has the same songs, none of them give off really emotive vibes, they’re just medieval_town.mp3. The combat theme is always the same, same for the miniboss themes, even every eikon battle has the same song playing for the first phase… The only places where the music stops being repetitive is the dungeons, driving even further home the fact those are the only good piece of content of the game.
All in all, Final Fantasy XVI was a very mediocre experience for me. It’s a game that wanted to be different, but half baked everything. It’s a game that wants to be a dark and mature experience, but rapidly falls into common RPG tropes. It’s a game that wants to be a “spectacle fighting” game, but that doesn’t feature any deep mechanics to make that spectacle feel fun to play. It’s a game that wants to be a full length RPG, but doesn’t ever justify why it should be that long, it feels like it’s just that long either because you expect a Final Fantasy game to be long, or because the dev team behind it is a MMO team and apparently MMO devs are unaware MMO designs do not work in single player experiences. It’s a game full of flaws, and it feels like as soon as you start noticing some of those all the other ones become apparent really quick afterwards, leaving you with a game that has potential, but got so half baked it just ends up being the same thing Cid’s daughter is: Mid.
i don't think i could have finished this game without being having someone back (and even at times front) seating me because holy shit are those puzzle games convoluted (but once you get what to do, they're actually cleverly simple)
but i believe you'd get a really good experience even without solving a single puzzle in this game because as cool as the story/progression is, the game's biggest strength is just how GORGEOUS it looks. i'm sure almost anyone will agree pre rendered backgrounds in games look awesome, and Riven is definitely up there in term of looking amazing. I can't count the number of times i've just been getting to a new screen only to go "wow this looks so awesome"; getting to a different island triggers a cutscene that looks so dope i only skipped it a few times because i was backtracking a lot, that's how good this game looks. Add to that a really atmospheric soundtrack and you've got a killer of a game where you could just explore around and feel satisfied, the puzzles and story are just the cherry on top
but i believe you'd get a really good experience even without solving a single puzzle in this game because as cool as the story/progression is, the game's biggest strength is just how GORGEOUS it looks. i'm sure almost anyone will agree pre rendered backgrounds in games look awesome, and Riven is definitely up there in term of looking amazing. I can't count the number of times i've just been getting to a new screen only to go "wow this looks so awesome"; getting to a different island triggers a cutscene that looks so dope i only skipped it a few times because i was backtracking a lot, that's how good this game looks. Add to that a really atmospheric soundtrack and you've got a killer of a game where you could just explore around and feel satisfied, the puzzles and story are just the cherry on top
As a huge fan of Xenogears and the Xenoblade Chronicles trilogy, I really wanted to enjoy this game, and while I'm sure my opinion of it/the Saga trilogy is likely gonna evolve over time, for now it's really hard for me to do so.
Xenosaga episode 1 is by far the most painfully slow turn based RPG i've ever played, in every aspect. Fights are LONG: even the shortest attack animation is probably like 2 or 3 seconds long, with your most powerful moves taking around probably 15 to 20 seconds per turn, and enemies attacks aren't any quicker than that. Combine that to the fact that a lot of enemies have high HP or defense, that you don't really get "fast" AOE moves until a good chunk of the game, or the fact that the combats get really repetitive soon and you've got a big snoozefest to play.
The weirdest part is how the game has "complex" mechanics on paper but is actually very simple? like you get 3 kinds of exp points, you've got to choose the attacks each character will use and they got like 3 different kinds of properties to level up, but all of that is pretty superficial in my opinion. All you'll do for most fights is press square and circle or triangle and circle every round, there's way less options than in Xenogears. The boost system is interesting on paper, but in practice i didn't even use it that often. And I almost forgot to mention you can switch to a mech because guess what: they're so useless i only used them like twice in the whole game.
The story is also extremely slow. Way too much for me to really have enjoyed it. There are a LOT of cutscenes, and while some of them are really cool, I feel like a lot of time i just didn’t get it. Obviously, the game was planned to be the first part of a series from the start, so i wasn’t expecting them to explain everything, but dear god there’s a lot they don’t explain at all. I’m not against having some mystery, but there’s a difference between a mystery where you’re given some answers (and more questions) as you go, Xenosaga doesn’t do that, it doesn’t really explain shit for a lot of topic and it really bothers me.
Pretty late into the game i realized/remembered there’s an ingame encyclopedia so i decided to check out entries related to a couple things and uh. There’s like 600 entries. While i think it’s cool to have an encyclopedia that complete, imo Xenosaga falls into the same issue as FFXIII: not giving you enough explanations in game, and forcing you to rely on reading the encyclopedia. I only read a couple entries but some of them also literally don’t really tell you shit except “you’ll find more about that in the next games…..”
I’m sure after going through the other games, or even just youtube videos explaining the lore/story i’ll have less issues with the game’s story, like there’s a lot i didn’t get but i know it’s intentional. (at least for some of it) But imo that’s a problem. Xenogears is cool because there’s a lot you won’t get by simply playing it once, but you still understand most of it. That’s not the case here, and while I get it’s because it was designed to give you answers later, it doesn’t give you enough immediately, or at least not in a clear enough way, to be satisfying, and imo it makes it really frustrating. Combine that to a really slow and boring combat system, and an atmosphere that feels nonexistent a lot of time (i know the lack of music can make for a great one, but that’s not the case here) and you end up with a really weird game. It’s hard to judge it entirely because it’s part of a series that was planned to be a series, but at the same time i don’t think knowing it’s gonna have a sequel is an excuse for not giving you enough.
Xenosaga episode 1 is by far the most painfully slow turn based RPG i've ever played, in every aspect. Fights are LONG: even the shortest attack animation is probably like 2 or 3 seconds long, with your most powerful moves taking around probably 15 to 20 seconds per turn, and enemies attacks aren't any quicker than that. Combine that to the fact that a lot of enemies have high HP or defense, that you don't really get "fast" AOE moves until a good chunk of the game, or the fact that the combats get really repetitive soon and you've got a big snoozefest to play.
The weirdest part is how the game has "complex" mechanics on paper but is actually very simple? like you get 3 kinds of exp points, you've got to choose the attacks each character will use and they got like 3 different kinds of properties to level up, but all of that is pretty superficial in my opinion. All you'll do for most fights is press square and circle or triangle and circle every round, there's way less options than in Xenogears. The boost system is interesting on paper, but in practice i didn't even use it that often. And I almost forgot to mention you can switch to a mech because guess what: they're so useless i only used them like twice in the whole game.
The story is also extremely slow. Way too much for me to really have enjoyed it. There are a LOT of cutscenes, and while some of them are really cool, I feel like a lot of time i just didn’t get it. Obviously, the game was planned to be the first part of a series from the start, so i wasn’t expecting them to explain everything, but dear god there’s a lot they don’t explain at all. I’m not against having some mystery, but there’s a difference between a mystery where you’re given some answers (and more questions) as you go, Xenosaga doesn’t do that, it doesn’t really explain shit for a lot of topic and it really bothers me.
Pretty late into the game i realized/remembered there’s an ingame encyclopedia so i decided to check out entries related to a couple things and uh. There’s like 600 entries. While i think it’s cool to have an encyclopedia that complete, imo Xenosaga falls into the same issue as FFXIII: not giving you enough explanations in game, and forcing you to rely on reading the encyclopedia. I only read a couple entries but some of them also literally don’t really tell you shit except “you’ll find more about that in the next games…..”
I’m sure after going through the other games, or even just youtube videos explaining the lore/story i’ll have less issues with the game’s story, like there’s a lot i didn’t get but i know it’s intentional. (at least for some of it) But imo that’s a problem. Xenogears is cool because there’s a lot you won’t get by simply playing it once, but you still understand most of it. That’s not the case here, and while I get it’s because it was designed to give you answers later, it doesn’t give you enough immediately, or at least not in a clear enough way, to be satisfying, and imo it makes it really frustrating. Combine that to a really slow and boring combat system, and an atmosphere that feels nonexistent a lot of time (i know the lack of music can make for a great one, but that’s not the case here) and you end up with a really weird game. It’s hard to judge it entirely because it’s part of a series that was planned to be a series, but at the same time i don’t think knowing it’s gonna have a sequel is an excuse for not giving you enough.
2016
First shmup i've ever 1CC'd, and i think it's a really solid one.
The music's awesome (twice, because there's an alt version for every song in the game!), the game looks pretty good too, and i think the game does a really good way at easing shmup newcomers like myself into it. On normal mode, if you get hit while holding bombs, you will autobomb which is really really useful because that means even if you still struggle with timing your bombs to escape death, the game got you covered. You also need to try the game for a while to unlock continues, which i think is really smart, because that means you actually have to try the game before being able to simply use infinite credits to get to the end.
The scoring system is also pretty neat, forcing you to use your subweapon and be pretty aggressive to get more points (and, by extension, more lives), which imo also is good for a newcomer, at least having to be aggressive with the subweapon resonated with me.
On top of that you can try missions to familiarize yourself with the stages, or even play in stage select mode starting from the mini bosses or even bosses to learn their patterns, etc...
All those elements make the game a really good one to start shmups imo, and from what i heard even for shmup veterans the game is really solid on higher difficulties
The music's awesome (twice, because there's an alt version for every song in the game!), the game looks pretty good too, and i think the game does a really good way at easing shmup newcomers like myself into it. On normal mode, if you get hit while holding bombs, you will autobomb which is really really useful because that means even if you still struggle with timing your bombs to escape death, the game got you covered. You also need to try the game for a while to unlock continues, which i think is really smart, because that means you actually have to try the game before being able to simply use infinite credits to get to the end.
The scoring system is also pretty neat, forcing you to use your subweapon and be pretty aggressive to get more points (and, by extension, more lives), which imo also is good for a newcomer, at least having to be aggressive with the subweapon resonated with me.
On top of that you can try missions to familiarize yourself with the stages, or even play in stage select mode starting from the mini bosses or even bosses to learn their patterns, etc...
All those elements make the game a really good one to start shmups imo, and from what i heard even for shmup veterans the game is really solid on higher difficulties
I’m absolutely not interested in farm sims in the first place (and from what i’ve been told none really compare to RF4) but holy shit does this one manage to just fit everything together in a way that gets me invested in it. There’s a shit ton of mechanics and not only are they pretty good individually, but they all interact with each other in a way that flows so naturally and makes them even better. RF4 lets you live in a small town with a bit more than 20 other characters, and (except for 2 of them that are cameo characters from previous games and have way less dialogue than the others) they’re all really cool and feel like actual characters. In my 46 hours of playtime, i don’t think i saw a single line of dialogue being repeated. And i know you could spend more time in the game and it’ll still be like that, even if you go above 100s of gameplay you’ll still find new lines, new events, it’s crazy. Not only are the characters all cool, but they also interact with each others which apparently isn’t something other games in the genre have and it’s so crazy?? Like you could just go out and see people talking to each other, sometimes it’s just visual (like they’re next to each other and have emotes above their head to show they’re talking), sometimes you get actual conversations between them. The MC is also pretty cool, they’re not a silent character and it’s for the best because i don’t like silent characters to begin with, you still get some freedom in what you say but they also have a personality behind that which i like.
You can take characters with you in dungeons, and the combat in this game is pretty cool too! There’s multiple types of weapons (swords, spears, fists, magic etc..), all with different moves, and the equipment system is pretty neat. You can unlock new crafting recipes by leveling up your crafting level (which is something you do by crafting), this gives the game a real sense of progression since sometimes you’ll unlock weapons you can’t craft because they require components you don’t have access to yet. But on top of that you can upgrade your weapons, and there’s a lot of different materials that’ll give you different effects: more damage, poison attacks, paralysis attacks, etc… there’s a lot of options to choose from.
And last but not least, the farming aspect is really cool too. You start off with only one type of crop, but quickly unlock more. The entire system is pretty simple, you plant your seed, water it every day, and after X days you get veggies from it. But where it gets really interesting is how deep it can get, without ever forcing the player to invest themselves too much into it if they don’t wish to. You can level up your seeds level to yield better veggies, there are items you can buy or craft to make them grow faster, there’s soil quality that can make a seed yield more or less veggies, you can even make GIANT veggies… And all of that is optional, you can also just simply plant seeds and wait if you don’t want to bother.
And in my opinion that’s why RF4 shines so much. It’s a game that understands that not everyone wants to have the same experience nor investment in it, so everything in this game feels like it’s been made to be there if you want to interact with it but also you can just ignore it, and it ends up making a game that feels like everyone will have a unique experience. Nobody will take care of their field the same way. The same applies for your equipment, there’s so many ways to customize! And let’s not even talk about the NPCs, there’s so many lines of dialogue, so many little things you’d have to really try hard to see everything. And on top of that, everything just mashes together in really cool ways: the story and characters are engaging so you want to see more, so you have to go do the dungeons, but then that forces you to make food and healing items so you have to farm, and dungeons reward you with better farming tools etc… There’s a lot of stuff i haven’t even seen (like i know there’s a fucking roguelike mode, i can get married and have kids, etc..) this game is just incredibly good and packed to the brim, and it’s a real shame it’s so not well known.
You can take characters with you in dungeons, and the combat in this game is pretty cool too! There’s multiple types of weapons (swords, spears, fists, magic etc..), all with different moves, and the equipment system is pretty neat. You can unlock new crafting recipes by leveling up your crafting level (which is something you do by crafting), this gives the game a real sense of progression since sometimes you’ll unlock weapons you can’t craft because they require components you don’t have access to yet. But on top of that you can upgrade your weapons, and there’s a lot of different materials that’ll give you different effects: more damage, poison attacks, paralysis attacks, etc… there’s a lot of options to choose from.
And last but not least, the farming aspect is really cool too. You start off with only one type of crop, but quickly unlock more. The entire system is pretty simple, you plant your seed, water it every day, and after X days you get veggies from it. But where it gets really interesting is how deep it can get, without ever forcing the player to invest themselves too much into it if they don’t wish to. You can level up your seeds level to yield better veggies, there are items you can buy or craft to make them grow faster, there’s soil quality that can make a seed yield more or less veggies, you can even make GIANT veggies… And all of that is optional, you can also just simply plant seeds and wait if you don’t want to bother.
And in my opinion that’s why RF4 shines so much. It’s a game that understands that not everyone wants to have the same experience nor investment in it, so everything in this game feels like it’s been made to be there if you want to interact with it but also you can just ignore it, and it ends up making a game that feels like everyone will have a unique experience. Nobody will take care of their field the same way. The same applies for your equipment, there’s so many ways to customize! And let’s not even talk about the NPCs, there’s so many lines of dialogue, so many little things you’d have to really try hard to see everything. And on top of that, everything just mashes together in really cool ways: the story and characters are engaging so you want to see more, so you have to go do the dungeons, but then that forces you to make food and healing items so you have to farm, and dungeons reward you with better farming tools etc… There’s a lot of stuff i haven’t even seen (like i know there’s a fucking roguelike mode, i can get married and have kids, etc..) this game is just incredibly good and packed to the brim, and it’s a real shame it’s so not well known.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is a game that took drastic changes from the original Final Fantasy Tactics, but I think almost all of those changes made it a worse game than its predecessor.
There’s a couple good changes in the game, don’t get me wrong: you can finally cancel movement meaning that if you realize that moving to a tile isn’t enough to get in range to attack you can just cancel that and move somewhere else, which is the big QoL feature i wanted the most. Random encounters now appear on the map, which is cool! The game also feels like it was made with the GBA in mind: you’ve got a lot of missions (300), and they feel more compact, more designed around a mentality of being quick pick and play missions, which is fitting for a GBA game. The game’s tone is also way more lighthearted than FFT, which again feels more fitting for a GBA game.
Sadly, the story is not great at all. You play as Marche, a young kid who gets teleported in a magical world full of Final Fantasy inspired imagery, along with some of your friends (tho you’re separated from them), and your goal is to find a way back to the real world. A pretty standard isekai scenario, but none of the characters are really good. For example there’s one of your friend whose entire character arc is “i don’t want to go back to the real world because my hair in white in it and i have to dye it red every day”. There’s nothing really interesting or innovative in the story, and i don’t really care for it’s message on escapism which doesn’t even fit with the narrative that much imo.
And the gameplay is a big, huge, massive step back from FFT imo. None of the maps are really that interesting or memorable. The game UI is atrocious, there’s no button to automatically equip your best equipment, i don’t even think there’s a sort button either, seeing if an item is better than what you have equipped is so unintuitive it took me 10 hours to figure out it was a feature, there’s a lot of issues with the menuing in this game and none of it is due to the lack of buttons the GBA has.
Abilities have been reworked too: instead of spending JP to learn an ability of your choice, you learn them from your equipment, like in FF9. This system is awful. It makes sense in FF9 because each character has a specific class (Zidane is a thief, Steiner is a knight, etc..) so this system allows you to build their specific class as you wanted. In FFTA everyone can change job between fights, so it makes no sense. Worse even, some of the best abilities are locked behind equipment you can’t find without following a guide because you need to steal them (which requires getting the right stealing ability) or do specific missions or w/e to find them. I didn’t follow a guide, so i ended up only having the most basic of abilities which sucked.
The game is also very grind heavy. Unlike in FFTA, there’s no level scaling for enemies, and only doing the story missions with a few side ones here and there won’t be enough to have a good enough team for the endgame. I had to grind around 10 levels for it (which isn’t even hard, just boring), and even then the final boss had an attack targeting my entire team that one shot almost everyone.
Overall, this game isn’t really bad, it’s just very forgettable, and a lot of its design wasn’t enjoyable to me, especially coming from FFT. If you enjoy it at least there’s a lot of content in it, but for me, it’s just a disappointing “sequel” to an excellent game
There’s a couple good changes in the game, don’t get me wrong: you can finally cancel movement meaning that if you realize that moving to a tile isn’t enough to get in range to attack you can just cancel that and move somewhere else, which is the big QoL feature i wanted the most. Random encounters now appear on the map, which is cool! The game also feels like it was made with the GBA in mind: you’ve got a lot of missions (300), and they feel more compact, more designed around a mentality of being quick pick and play missions, which is fitting for a GBA game. The game’s tone is also way more lighthearted than FFT, which again feels more fitting for a GBA game.
Sadly, the story is not great at all. You play as Marche, a young kid who gets teleported in a magical world full of Final Fantasy inspired imagery, along with some of your friends (tho you’re separated from them), and your goal is to find a way back to the real world. A pretty standard isekai scenario, but none of the characters are really good. For example there’s one of your friend whose entire character arc is “i don’t want to go back to the real world because my hair in white in it and i have to dye it red every day”. There’s nothing really interesting or innovative in the story, and i don’t really care for it’s message on escapism which doesn’t even fit with the narrative that much imo.
And the gameplay is a big, huge, massive step back from FFT imo. None of the maps are really that interesting or memorable. The game UI is atrocious, there’s no button to automatically equip your best equipment, i don’t even think there’s a sort button either, seeing if an item is better than what you have equipped is so unintuitive it took me 10 hours to figure out it was a feature, there’s a lot of issues with the menuing in this game and none of it is due to the lack of buttons the GBA has.
Abilities have been reworked too: instead of spending JP to learn an ability of your choice, you learn them from your equipment, like in FF9. This system is awful. It makes sense in FF9 because each character has a specific class (Zidane is a thief, Steiner is a knight, etc..) so this system allows you to build their specific class as you wanted. In FFTA everyone can change job between fights, so it makes no sense. Worse even, some of the best abilities are locked behind equipment you can’t find without following a guide because you need to steal them (which requires getting the right stealing ability) or do specific missions or w/e to find them. I didn’t follow a guide, so i ended up only having the most basic of abilities which sucked.
The game is also very grind heavy. Unlike in FFTA, there’s no level scaling for enemies, and only doing the story missions with a few side ones here and there won’t be enough to have a good enough team for the endgame. I had to grind around 10 levels for it (which isn’t even hard, just boring), and even then the final boss had an attack targeting my entire team that one shot almost everyone.
Overall, this game isn’t really bad, it’s just very forgettable, and a lot of its design wasn’t enjoyable to me, especially coming from FFT. If you enjoy it at least there’s a lot of content in it, but for me, it’s just a disappointing “sequel” to an excellent game
2000
Vagrant Story is a game that had the potential to being one of the best game i’ve ever played, but missed the mark and ended up being a good, tho extremely frustrating experience.
In Vagrant Story, the player controls Ashley Riot, a special agent of the Valendia Knights, whose mission is to save the family of Duke Bardorba, that has been attacked by a cult. The mission fails however, and Sydney (the leader of the cult) and his right hand man escape to the ghost city of Lea Monde with the duke’s son taken hostage, so Ashley is now tasked to follow them and to rescue the hostage and kill the cultists.
Vagrant Story’s story (heh) is told in a really cool way, that really makes it stand out for a PS1 game. The game’s cutscenes are all in engine, and there’s clearly a ton of work put in them: from the camera work to the lighting, they’re some of the best directed cutscenes i’ve seen from a PS1 game, beating even MGS imo. The story itself is also really solid, and told in a way I really love: there’s a lot of points that are unanswered, but in a way that definitely feels like it’s on purpose, that the dev wanted you to fill in the blank yourself.
Visually speaking, the game is definitely the most impressive PS1 game i’ve ever seen. The character models are on a visual level that clearly feels like it’s pushing the console’s limit, they all have actual faces that are more than just one texture of a face you’ll usually see in PS1 game. The game environments are a mixed bag tho: the actual city of Lea Monde has a really great atmosphere, but a lot of the game also takes place in mines that are just kinda boring to look at.
However, even the blandest looking parts of the game manages to pull off a really incredible atmosphere, thanks to the amazing sound design and music. This game honestly reminds me a lot of Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls 1, in terms of atmosphere. You’re just wandering alone in some medieval inspired dead city, fighting enemies while trying to piece together the few bits of story/lore you received, and everything is improved by the art direction/sound design, it’s an eerily beautiful game world to get lost into.
Speaking of getting lost, that’s something that’s likely gonna happen a lot if you don’t follow a guide. I did follow one so it never happened to me, but often times you have to do huge detour to get a key, and by the time you found whatever item you needed you may have likely forgot where you had to use it (tho the map shows you which key is required for each locked door so it’s not impossible to find your way back). The game rarely if ever gives you any indication on where to go either: it’s up to you to explore, and while i didn’t do it i think it’s neat!
There’s however a big reason that forced me to use a guide and skip over all the exploration: the combat. Combat in this game is extremely complex, and not at all explained in game, like sure there are in game tutorials but you don’t play through them and they’re just not fun to read (and apparently even contain mistakes), so it’s just easier to read up stuff online. There are a lot of different mechanics that come into the combat: 3 different kind of affinities to calculate damage/defense, equipment crafting, 2 different kind of weapon durability, etc… There’s quite a lot to take in. In theory, the combat system is interesting: everyone has different body parts, you choose which one to target, depending on the one you chose you have a higher/lower percentage of getting a hit in with a higher/lower damage value.
But that’s in theory. In practice, the game is extremely tedious to play, because you’ll have to do a lot, a LOT, of pretty slow menuing. You very often have to change weapons, because of the aforementioned affinities, and there’s no quick way to do this, i’d say each weapon switch takes around 15 seconds which is a lot when you have to do it almost every fights. And sometimes, even your best weapons aren’t enough because you don’t have the right affinity on them, so you end up doing pathetic damages to enemies and fights can often drag on for multiple minutes. That really tedious menuing, coupled with the fact you sometimes have no way to do good damage, made me give up and look up a guide.
The game’s difficulty is all over the place. As i said, sometimes you don’t have any way to do good damage due to affinities, but after a certain point in the game everything becomes kinda easy (tho still painfully slow) because you can give yourself most affinities so it’s extremely rare to not be able to do damage. You’re also in theory immortal, as long as you’re good. During attacks, if you time your button press correctly, you can chain different skills to keep attacking, and the same applies to when you’re attacked, if you press a button at the right moment you can use a defensive skill, and two of them literally make you regenerate health even if you go under 0 HP, meaning if you can time them, you can’t die.
Vagrant Story is a game that has the status of hit classic (heck, it’s the third game ever to have received a perfect Famitsu score, which i don’t think really matters that much but it definitely shows how well received the game was), and i can definitely see why. It’s sometimes extremely frustrating, but the gorgeous visuals and the atmosphere more than make up for it, and while it didn’t apply to the way i played it, beating it with minimal guidance must be something extremely rewarding. It’s definitely a game well worth playing, despite how tedious it can be
In Vagrant Story, the player controls Ashley Riot, a special agent of the Valendia Knights, whose mission is to save the family of Duke Bardorba, that has been attacked by a cult. The mission fails however, and Sydney (the leader of the cult) and his right hand man escape to the ghost city of Lea Monde with the duke’s son taken hostage, so Ashley is now tasked to follow them and to rescue the hostage and kill the cultists.
Vagrant Story’s story (heh) is told in a really cool way, that really makes it stand out for a PS1 game. The game’s cutscenes are all in engine, and there’s clearly a ton of work put in them: from the camera work to the lighting, they’re some of the best directed cutscenes i’ve seen from a PS1 game, beating even MGS imo. The story itself is also really solid, and told in a way I really love: there’s a lot of points that are unanswered, but in a way that definitely feels like it’s on purpose, that the dev wanted you to fill in the blank yourself.
Visually speaking, the game is definitely the most impressive PS1 game i’ve ever seen. The character models are on a visual level that clearly feels like it’s pushing the console’s limit, they all have actual faces that are more than just one texture of a face you’ll usually see in PS1 game. The game environments are a mixed bag tho: the actual city of Lea Monde has a really great atmosphere, but a lot of the game also takes place in mines that are just kinda boring to look at.
However, even the blandest looking parts of the game manages to pull off a really incredible atmosphere, thanks to the amazing sound design and music. This game honestly reminds me a lot of Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls 1, in terms of atmosphere. You’re just wandering alone in some medieval inspired dead city, fighting enemies while trying to piece together the few bits of story/lore you received, and everything is improved by the art direction/sound design, it’s an eerily beautiful game world to get lost into.
Speaking of getting lost, that’s something that’s likely gonna happen a lot if you don’t follow a guide. I did follow one so it never happened to me, but often times you have to do huge detour to get a key, and by the time you found whatever item you needed you may have likely forgot where you had to use it (tho the map shows you which key is required for each locked door so it’s not impossible to find your way back). The game rarely if ever gives you any indication on where to go either: it’s up to you to explore, and while i didn’t do it i think it’s neat!
There’s however a big reason that forced me to use a guide and skip over all the exploration: the combat. Combat in this game is extremely complex, and not at all explained in game, like sure there are in game tutorials but you don’t play through them and they’re just not fun to read (and apparently even contain mistakes), so it’s just easier to read up stuff online. There are a lot of different mechanics that come into the combat: 3 different kind of affinities to calculate damage/defense, equipment crafting, 2 different kind of weapon durability, etc… There’s quite a lot to take in. In theory, the combat system is interesting: everyone has different body parts, you choose which one to target, depending on the one you chose you have a higher/lower percentage of getting a hit in with a higher/lower damage value.
But that’s in theory. In practice, the game is extremely tedious to play, because you’ll have to do a lot, a LOT, of pretty slow menuing. You very often have to change weapons, because of the aforementioned affinities, and there’s no quick way to do this, i’d say each weapon switch takes around 15 seconds which is a lot when you have to do it almost every fights. And sometimes, even your best weapons aren’t enough because you don’t have the right affinity on them, so you end up doing pathetic damages to enemies and fights can often drag on for multiple minutes. That really tedious menuing, coupled with the fact you sometimes have no way to do good damage, made me give up and look up a guide.
The game’s difficulty is all over the place. As i said, sometimes you don’t have any way to do good damage due to affinities, but after a certain point in the game everything becomes kinda easy (tho still painfully slow) because you can give yourself most affinities so it’s extremely rare to not be able to do damage. You’re also in theory immortal, as long as you’re good. During attacks, if you time your button press correctly, you can chain different skills to keep attacking, and the same applies to when you’re attacked, if you press a button at the right moment you can use a defensive skill, and two of them literally make you regenerate health even if you go under 0 HP, meaning if you can time them, you can’t die.
Vagrant Story is a game that has the status of hit classic (heck, it’s the third game ever to have received a perfect Famitsu score, which i don’t think really matters that much but it definitely shows how well received the game was), and i can definitely see why. It’s sometimes extremely frustrating, but the gorgeous visuals and the atmosphere more than make up for it, and while it didn’t apply to the way i played it, beating it with minimal guidance must be something extremely rewarding. It’s definitely a game well worth playing, despite how tedious it can be