Yamigishi
BACKER
Going into this game i wasn’t sure if i was gonna like it, since i never really played a SRPG (i played a bit of FE7 and some Advance Wars but that’s kinda it), and holy fuck was i wrong this game is awesome
I’ll start by saying i technically didn’t play this version of the game, but instead I played The Lion War of the Lions, which is a romhack of the original Final Fantasy Tactics that brings almost all the WOTL content to it (i think onion knight isn’t in it) and even made the multiplayer only rendez-vous playable in single player. I went for that romhack instead of the psp game because i know that while the slowdown can be patched, the audio quality can’t and i’d honestly recommend playing this hack instead of the psp port unless you really want to play it on a real PSP/Vita or plan to use one of the few elements they didn’t bring over
As i said above, i wasn’t sure if i was gonna like this game at first, and yet it ended up being one of my favorite game of the series, and unless we count spin-offs, it even is the one i’d say has the best gameplay. I’m obviously not an expert in the SRPG genre, but the way FFT approaches some of its mechanics in a different way than other series (at least Fire Emblem which is like the series i associate with the genre, even if i’m aware most other games probably differ from it a lot) really made me love it a lot. This game is extremely similar to Final Fantasy V (which might have one of the best gameplay of the turn based FF), but as a SRPG. Every character starts with a couple jobs unlocked, and performing actions as a job nets you EXP (which increase your overall level) and JP, for job points, which increases your job level. Each job comes with different abilities to unlock, divided in multiple categories depending on what they do : active abilities have their own category, and then you have one for movement, one for support abilities etc. Each unit, no matter its current job, can equip one of each kind of abilities from any job, just like in FF5, so for example you can have a thief that has black magic as a secondary ability and also has a passive ability that lets him equip swords. This system works extremely well, because it allows you to really build your team the way you want it. Each job has its strength and weaknesses, it’s far from being well balanced (monk is by far the most busted physical job, especially if you grind for dual wield) but it just works so well, coming up with ways to make your team really good is just so fun. Some story characters even come with their own special jobs, and those are really good, shoutouts to holy knight it’s just so good. The game has most of the classic FF jobs with a few exceptions like red mage, and even has some unique jobs, like mimic, orator or one of my favorite job, arithmetician
The game also approaches dying in a really unique and awesome way. When a unit dies (this applies to both allies and enemies), they don’t immediately disappear. Instead, for three turns, you won’t be stay on the tile they’re on, but you’ll have the ability to bring them back to life, using a raise spell or a phoenix down. If you don’t, the unit will disappear, leaving behind either a crystal (that heals you or sometimes lets you learn one ability if you stop on it) or a chest, and if it’s one of your unit, there’s permadeath so it’s goodbye forever. This approach to dying is so cool because it allows for a lot of strategy: if someone dies, it’s no big deal, you can bring them back! I know that depending on the game permadeath isn’t always that punitive because you’ll always get more units later on, but in FFT, since you build your units the way you want, losing them would be much of a pain considering there’s some grind involved (i ended up never losing a single unit permanently, and used the same 3 units + story related characters for the entire game and i think most people play that way too)
Spell casting is also awesome in this game. With a few exceptions, each spell will be cast in a cross shape around the tile/unit you’re targeting (for each spell you can decide to cast it on a tile or a unit, meaning if the unit moves your spell will still target them). Spells don’t cast as soon as they’re used tho, they all have a different cast speed which mean they’ll be cast after X units take a turn (you can even see who is gonna take a turn before you cast the spell, to know if it’s worth using it!) This can lead to really cool strategies too, like targeting one of your unit with a healing/buff spell and moving it next to another one of your unit to have the spell target them both, or even moving next to an enemy unit with one of yours that’s being targeted with an offensive spell to have the spell hurt both your unit and theirs. Some abilities other than spellcasting also have delay like jump for dragoons or aiming for archers, and i think this aspect of the game opens up for a lot of strategy, it’s really cool.
And on top of the combat system being amazing, the story is also really really good. It starts off a bit confusing since yknow, it’s a story involving a lot of factions in a war so there’s a lot of characters that are named and you have to remember them all, who they’re allied to and oh shit count bingus actually betrayed duke floppa so actually the relationship between their faction has changed, there’s a lot to take in but once you get past the first few hours and understand who’s who, it gets really good. Ramza is a really good protagonist, and Delita is one of the coolest mfer from the entire series. The game also has a lot of really awesome quotes, those dudes keep spitting fire at each other before, during and after battles.
The game starts off really challenging, and with a lot of difficulty spikes every now and then (you better make those backup save files), with the ending of chapter 3 being the big one a lot of people know about because if you don’t make a backup, chances are you’re gonna have to reset your game. Once you get past it tho, the final chapter is pretty easy, even the optional dungeon with the superboss in it isn’t that hard. The difficulty of the game is awesome tho, it’s challenging but not in a bullshit way and getting past those hard battles is so satisfying, and grinding isn’t even that bad since battles are more involved than in a turn based game.
Final Fantasy Tactics is a really awesome game, one that’s being slept on by way too many FF fans, either because it’s not a numbered game, or because it’s a strategy game. Almost everyone who played it will agree that it’s one of the best tho, and for a good reason: once you get into it, it’s one of the most fun and rewarding game of the entire series, backed up by some extremely extremely cool characters and settings.
I’ll start by saying i technically didn’t play this version of the game, but instead I played The Lion War of the Lions, which is a romhack of the original Final Fantasy Tactics that brings almost all the WOTL content to it (i think onion knight isn’t in it) and even made the multiplayer only rendez-vous playable in single player. I went for that romhack instead of the psp game because i know that while the slowdown can be patched, the audio quality can’t and i’d honestly recommend playing this hack instead of the psp port unless you really want to play it on a real PSP/Vita or plan to use one of the few elements they didn’t bring over
As i said above, i wasn’t sure if i was gonna like this game at first, and yet it ended up being one of my favorite game of the series, and unless we count spin-offs, it even is the one i’d say has the best gameplay. I’m obviously not an expert in the SRPG genre, but the way FFT approaches some of its mechanics in a different way than other series (at least Fire Emblem which is like the series i associate with the genre, even if i’m aware most other games probably differ from it a lot) really made me love it a lot. This game is extremely similar to Final Fantasy V (which might have one of the best gameplay of the turn based FF), but as a SRPG. Every character starts with a couple jobs unlocked, and performing actions as a job nets you EXP (which increase your overall level) and JP, for job points, which increases your job level. Each job comes with different abilities to unlock, divided in multiple categories depending on what they do : active abilities have their own category, and then you have one for movement, one for support abilities etc. Each unit, no matter its current job, can equip one of each kind of abilities from any job, just like in FF5, so for example you can have a thief that has black magic as a secondary ability and also has a passive ability that lets him equip swords. This system works extremely well, because it allows you to really build your team the way you want it. Each job has its strength and weaknesses, it’s far from being well balanced (monk is by far the most busted physical job, especially if you grind for dual wield) but it just works so well, coming up with ways to make your team really good is just so fun. Some story characters even come with their own special jobs, and those are really good, shoutouts to holy knight it’s just so good. The game has most of the classic FF jobs with a few exceptions like red mage, and even has some unique jobs, like mimic, orator or one of my favorite job, arithmetician
The game also approaches dying in a really unique and awesome way. When a unit dies (this applies to both allies and enemies), they don’t immediately disappear. Instead, for three turns, you won’t be stay on the tile they’re on, but you’ll have the ability to bring them back to life, using a raise spell or a phoenix down. If you don’t, the unit will disappear, leaving behind either a crystal (that heals you or sometimes lets you learn one ability if you stop on it) or a chest, and if it’s one of your unit, there’s permadeath so it’s goodbye forever. This approach to dying is so cool because it allows for a lot of strategy: if someone dies, it’s no big deal, you can bring them back! I know that depending on the game permadeath isn’t always that punitive because you’ll always get more units later on, but in FFT, since you build your units the way you want, losing them would be much of a pain considering there’s some grind involved (i ended up never losing a single unit permanently, and used the same 3 units + story related characters for the entire game and i think most people play that way too)
Spell casting is also awesome in this game. With a few exceptions, each spell will be cast in a cross shape around the tile/unit you’re targeting (for each spell you can decide to cast it on a tile or a unit, meaning if the unit moves your spell will still target them). Spells don’t cast as soon as they’re used tho, they all have a different cast speed which mean they’ll be cast after X units take a turn (you can even see who is gonna take a turn before you cast the spell, to know if it’s worth using it!) This can lead to really cool strategies too, like targeting one of your unit with a healing/buff spell and moving it next to another one of your unit to have the spell target them both, or even moving next to an enemy unit with one of yours that’s being targeted with an offensive spell to have the spell hurt both your unit and theirs. Some abilities other than spellcasting also have delay like jump for dragoons or aiming for archers, and i think this aspect of the game opens up for a lot of strategy, it’s really cool.
And on top of the combat system being amazing, the story is also really really good. It starts off a bit confusing since yknow, it’s a story involving a lot of factions in a war so there’s a lot of characters that are named and you have to remember them all, who they’re allied to and oh shit count bingus actually betrayed duke floppa so actually the relationship between their faction has changed, there’s a lot to take in but once you get past the first few hours and understand who’s who, it gets really good. Ramza is a really good protagonist, and Delita is one of the coolest mfer from the entire series. The game also has a lot of really awesome quotes, those dudes keep spitting fire at each other before, during and after battles.
The game starts off really challenging, and with a lot of difficulty spikes every now and then (you better make those backup save files), with the ending of chapter 3 being the big one a lot of people know about because if you don’t make a backup, chances are you’re gonna have to reset your game. Once you get past it tho, the final chapter is pretty easy, even the optional dungeon with the superboss in it isn’t that hard. The difficulty of the game is awesome tho, it’s challenging but not in a bullshit way and getting past those hard battles is so satisfying, and grinding isn’t even that bad since battles are more involved than in a turn based game.
Final Fantasy Tactics is a really awesome game, one that’s being slept on by way too many FF fans, either because it’s not a numbered game, or because it’s a strategy game. Almost everyone who played it will agree that it’s one of the best tho, and for a good reason: once you get into it, it’s one of the most fun and rewarding game of the entire series, backed up by some extremely extremely cool characters and settings.
2016
The core concept is cool (i mean, this is superhot, but in VR), but the actual game is too frustrating: throwing doesn't work half the time, which is a big problem when most of the later levels revolve as much if not more into throwing stuff rather than firing. there's no way to move around with the controller, meaning that if like me, you play in a small area, it's sometimes very frustrating to have to wait for an enemy to come closer to you because you're out of stuff to throw or fire (i don't think having to do a silly little dance because there's nothing else you can do to progress is really fun), and trust me considering how easy it is to miss a throw it will happen to you quite often. The checkpoint system is also really annoying, having to redo the same levels because you died on the 4th one is really annoying, a easy mode option to have a checkpoint after each level would have been welcomed. When the game feels good it's awesome, but i ended up being frustrated way more often than that,
1997
Good concept, but i feel like it's too easy to find a build you just vibe with and never have to change your mech afterwards which is kinda weird (i basically didn't change anything about my build around halfway through the game) and seems like it goes against the idea behind the game. The controls suck but once you get used to them it's like passable, it's not good but it's playable
Also that last level was fucking horrendous it's genuinely one of the worst thing i've played through the game loses half a star just for it
Also that last level was fucking horrendous it's genuinely one of the worst thing i've played through the game loses half a star just for it
This review contains spoilers
I'm extremely torn on this game
On the one hand, the characters are really really great, especially trucy and Gavin, with one exception imo which is Phoenix, i really have big issues imagining him as being the same character we followed for so long before. I'm ok with him being different and part of his plan but i feel like he's way too weird for it to work
On the other hand... While the first case is really good, 2 and 3 are extremely mid. They're not awful, they're just not really extremely interesting, 3 also having the insanely annoying tendency of replaying the same fucking video you can't skip every 5 minutes near its end. And case 4 is.... Not that great either, imo. The idea behind it is cool, having it tie up with the previous cases, just like the AA3 ended with a final case that tied all its trilogy together. It even used the same idea as the end of AA3, where you play through an older case (except in this instance it's all in one episode as opposed to aa3 splitting it in two), that's neat! But a lot of stuff in this case annoyed me, and it can all be summed up to one thing: this case constantly breaks my suspension of disbelief. All. The. Time. Someone really decided to have a weird matrix style computer thingy part where you go to both the past and the present time to unravel the mystery and communicate stuff we learn to the other timeline... Despite it not being possible since like yeah i know there are psychic powers in ace attorney but afaik phoenix can't travel to the past to give himself evidence to present. Also said matrix style thing isn't ever explained like yeah ok cool that just happened. The motive for the main villain is utterly ridiculous too, they really built him up as a really charismatic mastermind who was really cool but his motive was so bad it absolutely ruined it for me. Also phoenix learned that Apollo and trucy are half sibling. Sure. He didn't tell it to Apollo despite giving him all the evidence he collected for seven years. How does that work? Phoenix lost his badge because he used forged evidence but once you get to the case it's so obvious he was set up and he had multiple ways to prove it or at least y'know get it reviewed it's insane (also iirc in the previous trilogy it was often said how some prosecutor like Edgeworth were sometimes forging evidence to win, so him losing his badge over this sounds weird tho it may be some critics of the japanese judiciary system so idk). Speaking of Phoenix losing his badge, how come an ex lawyer can arrange to have a brand new kind way to judge set up? Especially when the victim is the literal guy who forged evidence for him?? And also for some reason Apollo/trucy's mom is lamiroir???
This entire case is a mess like wow i really have to not question things way too often for it to work. I don't like it
Overall this game is extremely disappointing, they came up with some cool characters and yes, the visuals are really top notch and the music is as good as ever but they really fumbled hard on the big ending case and made the middle ones really boring. Case 1 fucking rules tho but that's about it
On the one hand, the characters are really really great, especially trucy and Gavin, with one exception imo which is Phoenix, i really have big issues imagining him as being the same character we followed for so long before. I'm ok with him being different and part of his plan but i feel like he's way too weird for it to work
On the other hand... While the first case is really good, 2 and 3 are extremely mid. They're not awful, they're just not really extremely interesting, 3 also having the insanely annoying tendency of replaying the same fucking video you can't skip every 5 minutes near its end. And case 4 is.... Not that great either, imo. The idea behind it is cool, having it tie up with the previous cases, just like the AA3 ended with a final case that tied all its trilogy together. It even used the same idea as the end of AA3, where you play through an older case (except in this instance it's all in one episode as opposed to aa3 splitting it in two), that's neat! But a lot of stuff in this case annoyed me, and it can all be summed up to one thing: this case constantly breaks my suspension of disbelief. All. The. Time. Someone really decided to have a weird matrix style computer thingy part where you go to both the past and the present time to unravel the mystery and communicate stuff we learn to the other timeline... Despite it not being possible since like yeah i know there are psychic powers in ace attorney but afaik phoenix can't travel to the past to give himself evidence to present. Also said matrix style thing isn't ever explained like yeah ok cool that just happened. The motive for the main villain is utterly ridiculous too, they really built him up as a really charismatic mastermind who was really cool but his motive was so bad it absolutely ruined it for me. Also phoenix learned that Apollo and trucy are half sibling. Sure. He didn't tell it to Apollo despite giving him all the evidence he collected for seven years. How does that work? Phoenix lost his badge because he used forged evidence but once you get to the case it's so obvious he was set up and he had multiple ways to prove it or at least y'know get it reviewed it's insane (also iirc in the previous trilogy it was often said how some prosecutor like Edgeworth were sometimes forging evidence to win, so him losing his badge over this sounds weird tho it may be some critics of the japanese judiciary system so idk). Speaking of Phoenix losing his badge, how come an ex lawyer can arrange to have a brand new kind way to judge set up? Especially when the victim is the literal guy who forged evidence for him?? And also for some reason Apollo/trucy's mom is lamiroir???
This entire case is a mess like wow i really have to not question things way too often for it to work. I don't like it
Overall this game is extremely disappointing, they came up with some cool characters and yes, the visuals are really top notch and the music is as good as ever but they really fumbled hard on the big ending case and made the middle ones really boring. Case 1 fucking rules tho but that's about it
it's definitely an improvement over the psp game except for the voice acting (i literally switched to japanese because of how much i dislike zack's new VA compared to the og) and like the music where they like remade some songs but like a lot are still the same as on the psp so why would you do this and i also think for most of the different songs the OG ones were just better lol
the story is unchanged and i'm very biased towards it because it was my first FF game (don't do like me don't play this game before FF7 it's a mistake bc it spoils some extremely big stuff from FF7) and even like my first game with an actual story that i can think of. replaying it now after so much time and more knowledge of the FF7 universe (i did replay it one time after beating FF7 but that also was years ago) i still extremely like it, zack is just such a cool character. there are definitely some issues with it (mostly genesis related) and replaying it now i can definitely see the psp pacing (like it's way shorter than i remembered it) but unless you're a guy who doesn't like FF7's story being messed it's enjoyable especially if you enjoy how fucking stupid some of it can be
the gameplay is the big improvement the game got, combat doesn't suck anymore because it's not as stiff, the DMW doesn't interrupt you mid fight, you can even skip the cutscenes for it and choose not to use the limit breaks, it's definitely not as fun as FF7R but it's not bad either, it's good enough but with if you like being broken there's a lot of option to do so. The game itself is fairly short tho 100% all the missions takes time cause there's 300 of them, it's a bit of a tedious process at times but i like part of it because tackling on hard missions where you get killed in one hit bc you're not supposed to do them now is a thing you can do, which i did, and i personally think it's fun. The superboss is legit impossible on hard mode tho that's funny (there's an undodgeable attack that deals 99999dmg even with maxxed out defense and removes your phoenix down) getting 100% DMW sucks tho it's legit just RNG lmfao
the story is unchanged and i'm very biased towards it because it was my first FF game (don't do like me don't play this game before FF7 it's a mistake bc it spoils some extremely big stuff from FF7) and even like my first game with an actual story that i can think of. replaying it now after so much time and more knowledge of the FF7 universe (i did replay it one time after beating FF7 but that also was years ago) i still extremely like it, zack is just such a cool character. there are definitely some issues with it (mostly genesis related) and replaying it now i can definitely see the psp pacing (like it's way shorter than i remembered it) but unless you're a guy who doesn't like FF7's story being messed it's enjoyable especially if you enjoy how fucking stupid some of it can be
the gameplay is the big improvement the game got, combat doesn't suck anymore because it's not as stiff, the DMW doesn't interrupt you mid fight, you can even skip the cutscenes for it and choose not to use the limit breaks, it's definitely not as fun as FF7R but it's not bad either, it's good enough but with if you like being broken there's a lot of option to do so. The game itself is fairly short tho 100% all the missions takes time cause there's 300 of them, it's a bit of a tedious process at times but i like part of it because tackling on hard missions where you get killed in one hit bc you're not supposed to do them now is a thing you can do, which i did, and i personally think it's fun. The superboss is legit impossible on hard mode tho that's funny (there's an undodgeable attack that deals 99999dmg even with maxxed out defense and removes your phoenix down) getting 100% DMW sucks tho it's legit just RNG lmfao
i'll forgive every bad decision square enix made the day they'll port this to PC
2016
This game is a mess, which isn’t surprising considering how its development went. That doesn’t make it bad per say, but it’s definitely not as good as it could have been and even makes it frustrating in some ways.
As far as gameplay goes, Final Fantasy XV is one of the most bland game i can think of. The combat isn’t terrible per say, but it just feels so boring. Attacking is done by holding a button (you can mash it instead i don’t know if it really makes a difference tho) and you have a few different moves depending on which direction you hold your stick in but at its core it just boils down to one simple act: holding a button, there’s no timing required, and the closest thing there is to combo would be that if you’re close to an ally/behind the enemy you have a chance to unleash a move with them. Dodging works very much the same, you just hold the block button. That’s it, no timing. Unless the attack is an AoE or there’s just a lot of attacks coming from every way at once just holding a button means you’ll dodge everything. Sure there are warp strikes and different weapon kinds with different movesets etc but at its core the combat is just very weak, and it’s made worse by how easy that game is. Unless you forcefully restrain yourself, dying is quite virtually impossible because once you die you can just use a phoenix down on yourself so unless you decide to use no items you really need to try hard to die. It’s also very easy to get overleveled: since the game is an open world with a lot of sidequests and hunts, if you’re like me and decide to do virtually every single one of them you come across you’ll end up way way way overlevel, for reference i finished chapter 3 after 27 hours and at level 46 while the recommended level is like 15 or something like that.
The pacing of the game is also extremely fucked up, the end of chapter 9 marks a big turn in the game tone which i’m totally not against but… I think the way everything from this point on goes so fast goes against it by not letting you process what’s happening. Sure, i did spend way too much time doing all the sidequest before that, but even then the last 5 chapters with the exception of the last one are all in a straight line, there’s no longer any open world to explore (you can technically go back to it but there’s nothing new there so if you’ve already done everything it’s kinda useless) and except for the much dreaded chapter 13, everything goes extremely fast, you don’t really have the time to catch a breather and think about what just happened. Some might say it helps show how fucked up everything is going since neither you the player nor the characters get time to breathe, but i personally think it’d have been better to let you spend more time in those parts of the game. The ending at least was extremely good, i just feel like everything leading to it was too rushed.
The story itself is also kinda eh for me. The main characters are really good, i love the bros and their bonds between each other, and Aldyn is a funny villain (he wears a fedora). But i find the plot simply not that engaging, which is something i’m totally ok with for once because of how strong the roadtrip feeling is (this game really is about the journey) and the ending also being very good. However i really hate how parts of the story is split outside of the main game: movie (which sucks), anime (which is decent with episode 2 being really really good), DLCs, books… Like i get this game got a fucked up development cycle but come on
Another point i’m really extremely underwhelmed about is the music. Final Fantasy has always been a series with OSTs of top tier quality, and this game’s ost is… Weird? First of all, it feels like they forgot to actually use it in the game, i learned there’s supposed to be an overworld theme AFTER beating the game because it takes so long to start you’ll likely never hear it because you’ll get into a fight before that, and it also doesn’t play if you’re on a chocobo or in the car which is how you’ll spend most of the time moving around. The car also doesn’t have any theme, you just either play the radio (which is old FF games song and a few ones from the DLCs/movies) or listen to nothing. Having listened to the full ost outside of the game, some of the tracks are really strong (somnus, Valse di Fantastica, the battle themes…) but a lot of them are also just ok or like.. They’re more like a movie score, like they’re not the kind of songs i’d listen to on a regular basis and i feel like they lack identity. The good songs are really good as expected from the series, but i just feel like overall that OST is pretty disappointing by being filled with a bunch of just eh songs, and due to how poorly implemented in the game it was.
Overall, FF15 is for me a pretty weird game. It’s not bad, but it’s not great either, and a lot of it is just very frustrating like you have to play a dlc released 3 years after the game to have the villain’s backstory/motivation which sounds insane to me like i’m totally fine with some things in games not being explained but in this case it’s not “not explained because they wanted to have it be a mystery up to everyone’s interpretation” it’s just not explained because they didn’t have the time to put it into the game. As I said above, this game is a big mess in a way that’s pretty frustrating, but honestly considering the development cycle it’s kinda a miracle that despite everything it’s still a decent experience
As far as gameplay goes, Final Fantasy XV is one of the most bland game i can think of. The combat isn’t terrible per say, but it just feels so boring. Attacking is done by holding a button (you can mash it instead i don’t know if it really makes a difference tho) and you have a few different moves depending on which direction you hold your stick in but at its core it just boils down to one simple act: holding a button, there’s no timing required, and the closest thing there is to combo would be that if you’re close to an ally/behind the enemy you have a chance to unleash a move with them. Dodging works very much the same, you just hold the block button. That’s it, no timing. Unless the attack is an AoE or there’s just a lot of attacks coming from every way at once just holding a button means you’ll dodge everything. Sure there are warp strikes and different weapon kinds with different movesets etc but at its core the combat is just very weak, and it’s made worse by how easy that game is. Unless you forcefully restrain yourself, dying is quite virtually impossible because once you die you can just use a phoenix down on yourself so unless you decide to use no items you really need to try hard to die. It’s also very easy to get overleveled: since the game is an open world with a lot of sidequests and hunts, if you’re like me and decide to do virtually every single one of them you come across you’ll end up way way way overlevel, for reference i finished chapter 3 after 27 hours and at level 46 while the recommended level is like 15 or something like that.
The pacing of the game is also extremely fucked up, the end of chapter 9 marks a big turn in the game tone which i’m totally not against but… I think the way everything from this point on goes so fast goes against it by not letting you process what’s happening. Sure, i did spend way too much time doing all the sidequest before that, but even then the last 5 chapters with the exception of the last one are all in a straight line, there’s no longer any open world to explore (you can technically go back to it but there’s nothing new there so if you’ve already done everything it’s kinda useless) and except for the much dreaded chapter 13, everything goes extremely fast, you don’t really have the time to catch a breather and think about what just happened. Some might say it helps show how fucked up everything is going since neither you the player nor the characters get time to breathe, but i personally think it’d have been better to let you spend more time in those parts of the game. The ending at least was extremely good, i just feel like everything leading to it was too rushed.
The story itself is also kinda eh for me. The main characters are really good, i love the bros and their bonds between each other, and Aldyn is a funny villain (he wears a fedora). But i find the plot simply not that engaging, which is something i’m totally ok with for once because of how strong the roadtrip feeling is (this game really is about the journey) and the ending also being very good. However i really hate how parts of the story is split outside of the main game: movie (which sucks), anime (which is decent with episode 2 being really really good), DLCs, books… Like i get this game got a fucked up development cycle but come on
Another point i’m really extremely underwhelmed about is the music. Final Fantasy has always been a series with OSTs of top tier quality, and this game’s ost is… Weird? First of all, it feels like they forgot to actually use it in the game, i learned there’s supposed to be an overworld theme AFTER beating the game because it takes so long to start you’ll likely never hear it because you’ll get into a fight before that, and it also doesn’t play if you’re on a chocobo or in the car which is how you’ll spend most of the time moving around. The car also doesn’t have any theme, you just either play the radio (which is old FF games song and a few ones from the DLCs/movies) or listen to nothing. Having listened to the full ost outside of the game, some of the tracks are really strong (somnus, Valse di Fantastica, the battle themes…) but a lot of them are also just ok or like.. They’re more like a movie score, like they’re not the kind of songs i’d listen to on a regular basis and i feel like they lack identity. The good songs are really good as expected from the series, but i just feel like overall that OST is pretty disappointing by being filled with a bunch of just eh songs, and due to how poorly implemented in the game it was.
Overall, FF15 is for me a pretty weird game. It’s not bad, but it’s not great either, and a lot of it is just very frustrating like you have to play a dlc released 3 years after the game to have the villain’s backstory/motivation which sounds insane to me like i’m totally fine with some things in games not being explained but in this case it’s not “not explained because they wanted to have it be a mystery up to everyone’s interpretation” it’s just not explained because they didn’t have the time to put it into the game. As I said above, this game is a big mess in a way that’s pretty frustrating, but honestly considering the development cycle it’s kinda a miracle that despite everything it’s still a decent experience
A much needed dive into Ardyn's backstory which definitely should have been in the main game (AGAIN, that's really a recurring issue i have with all those episodes)
I'm not the biggest fan of all of the story bit in it but it's definitely by far the best of the DLCs, the combat is even quite fun because of how op ardyn is + for some reason they put lotus juice on the ost which rules
I'm not the biggest fan of all of the story bit in it but it's definitely by far the best of the DLCs, the combat is even quite fun because of how op ardyn is + for some reason they put lotus juice on the ost which rules
that one is pretty weird why is there a district reclamation mechanic that literally has no purpose why is there a non canon alt ending why wasn't it part of the full game what was square enix cooking
pro: has battle on the big bridge
con: this shit should have been in the main game lol
con: this shit should have been in the main game lol
idk i feel like this entire part of prompto's (back)story came out of nowhere and undermines his Brotherhood backstory that was really good + the gameplay is kinda meh i don't like this one too much
[Review written during 6.25]
After being mostly disappointed (tho still enjoying) Shadowbringers, I wasn’t really expecting Endwalker to be any different, so I was pleasantly surprised to be proved wrong by the game. Endwalker doesn’t fix all my issues with the game (which, to be fair, is impossible since a lot of them stems from the game being a MMO), but at least it tones them down a lot. The big pacing issues i had with ShB are mostly gone: sure, it’s still a MMO, meaning they still sometimes drag out how long certain part of the story are, but for the most part, in this expansion the “filler quests” feel more involved in the ongoing story or are self contained stories that are usually pretty good, like in Heavensward, instead of being “help those dudes and they’ll help you back” like in ARR/SB/ShB. There’s a couple of moments where the MSQ really feels like it should progress faster and overall it’s still way better paced than the previous expansions. This pacing being better also applies to the story: unlike Shadowbringers, the story actually concludes in 6.0, with 6.1 and onwards just being a new arc starting. And the story itself goes at a way faster pace than before: what i thought would be the endgame happened pretty early on into the game, and basically everything they advertised in trailers etc happened by the halfway point i’d say, meaning you had a lot of surprises in the game. And overall, the story is really good! Some might say that its last third is too conventional because it shares themes found across a lot of other RPGs (nihilism bad), unlike ShB that had something more unique to its themes, to which i would agree, EW is less original than ShB for its themes. However, i still really enjoyed the end of the game, because it’s a theme i really enjoy and also it’s literally just the plot of Gurren Lagann which instantly makes it raw. Gameplay wise, i’m still not a fan of how the game is played but it’s just me simply not being a fan of this kind of gameplay and not it being boring. There’s been a few fun fights tho, there’s like a couple single player instances that are really good, the last one of them being probably the rawest moment of the entire game, and there’s even a trial you can do with the scions instead of a party of player which is really really cool (tho alisaie has a tendency of literally griefing i died a couple times because she decided it’d be funny to run away from everyone else while having a stack marker on her)
Overall, i still think i would have had a way better time just watching cutscenes on youtube than playing this game (at least it’d have been shorter), but apart from that, Endwalker was a surprisingly better time than i expected it to be. It’s not at the level of my fav FF games (6, 7, 9 and 10) and having to go through ARR and SB was soul sucking, but HS, ShB and EW are all pretty good stories tho the game they’re in really made them less enjoyable for me.
After being mostly disappointed (tho still enjoying) Shadowbringers, I wasn’t really expecting Endwalker to be any different, so I was pleasantly surprised to be proved wrong by the game. Endwalker doesn’t fix all my issues with the game (which, to be fair, is impossible since a lot of them stems from the game being a MMO), but at least it tones them down a lot. The big pacing issues i had with ShB are mostly gone: sure, it’s still a MMO, meaning they still sometimes drag out how long certain part of the story are, but for the most part, in this expansion the “filler quests” feel more involved in the ongoing story or are self contained stories that are usually pretty good, like in Heavensward, instead of being “help those dudes and they’ll help you back” like in ARR/SB/ShB. There’s a couple of moments where the MSQ really feels like it should progress faster and overall it’s still way better paced than the previous expansions. This pacing being better also applies to the story: unlike Shadowbringers, the story actually concludes in 6.0, with 6.1 and onwards just being a new arc starting. And the story itself goes at a way faster pace than before: what i thought would be the endgame happened pretty early on into the game, and basically everything they advertised in trailers etc happened by the halfway point i’d say, meaning you had a lot of surprises in the game. And overall, the story is really good! Some might say that its last third is too conventional because it shares themes found across a lot of other RPGs (nihilism bad), unlike ShB that had something more unique to its themes, to which i would agree, EW is less original than ShB for its themes. However, i still really enjoyed the end of the game, because it’s a theme i really enjoy and also it’s literally just the plot of Gurren Lagann which instantly makes it raw. Gameplay wise, i’m still not a fan of how the game is played but it’s just me simply not being a fan of this kind of gameplay and not it being boring. There’s been a few fun fights tho, there’s like a couple single player instances that are really good, the last one of them being probably the rawest moment of the entire game, and there’s even a trial you can do with the scions instead of a party of player which is really really cool (tho alisaie has a tendency of literally griefing i died a couple times because she decided it’d be funny to run away from everyone else while having a stack marker on her)
Overall, i still think i would have had a way better time just watching cutscenes on youtube than playing this game (at least it’d have been shorter), but apart from that, Endwalker was a surprisingly better time than i expected it to be. It’s not at the level of my fav FF games (6, 7, 9 and 10) and having to go through ARR and SB was soul sucking, but HS, ShB and EW are all pretty good stories tho the game they’re in really made them less enjoyable for me.
A good story that’s, in my opinion, really being brought down by being in a MMO. Shadowbringers starts off really strong, by introducing you to a brand new post apocalyptic world that looks really cool, and I’d say that up to Il Mheg, almost everything with the expansion is really good: the setting is good, both of the twins quests make you discover some really cool locations with interesting storylines, the exarch/crystarium are shrouded in mystery, you even get to talk to John ‘Ardbert’ Shadowbringers once again! The only thing i found kinda silly was Ranjit who’s like way too strong to be credible imo (like no character should be able to overpower the entire scions with no exposure about them to explain how come they’re so strong imo, and even by the end of the expansion him being so strong isn’t explained). But then, once you get to Il Mheg, I think the story starts to take a dive. Because the game falls back into the same old boring loop it uses for most of its runtime: go into a new locale, help the people there, get exposed to their lore, you can now progress to the new locale. Rinse and repeat. I get it, you’re in a new world, nobody knows you and everyone needs help because the apocalypse literally happened, plus you’re retracing the step of Ardbert, so it’s normal to just play the beginner adventurer, but i still think it’s boring and drags on way too much. The settings are interesting, yes, but it takes so long for the story to progress that it killed a lot of my enjoyment for it overall, and a lot of time i was just wishing this entire story would be in another game because I think shadowbringers really highlights how the MMO structure is draining away all the fun i could have with the game’s story, by making it so slow to progress. Which is a shame, because i liked the story! I don’t think it’s as good as the best games of the series, but still pretty good overall, and Emet-Selch is definitely one the coolest villains of the series. The scions are finally starting to feel like they’re actual characters and actually are a band of friends, since for the first time ever they’re all here instead of the expansion only focusing on one or two of them. The crystal exarch is also a really cool character, and even side characters like the Chai couples are pretty cool instead of just being kinda there like most side characters in previous expansions. I do have some complaints about the fact that it really feels like the end of 5.0 feels more like it’s the actual midpoint of the story rather than the end of it, which imo should be the case since you get literal credits rolling etc after it, however. And like i said, the pacing of everything in between Il Mheg and Amaurot is horrendous and really made me not enjoy this as much as i could have. That coupled to how everyone sells this as one of the greatest game of the serie really made the expansion feel underwhelming because while it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t as good as i expected it to be. Maybe if i cared about the MMO aspects of it, it’d be better, but I still don’t, and at this point i’m fully convinced i would have probably have enjoyed this game’s storyline/lore better if i had watched it instead of playing it.
1993
i liked the part where you turn a rose hologram into a skull
A huge setback from Heavensward, Stormblood really just feels like it’s A Realm Reborn 2.0.
The gameplay felt better, still boring but not to an excruciating level like it was at low level, tho part of it might be because i switched jobs (i played Dragoon for ARR and HS, and switched to Dancer once i reached level 60 and Reaper at 70) and started playing on controller instead of keyboard and mouse which feels way better for me. Some of the solo instances were actually close to being fun (mostly the Zenos fights), but I still have the same issues with the gameplay that I don’t think the game is ever gonna fix: 99% of the time you just do your rotation and while the bosses have mechanics, failing to understand them is almost never an issue because at worse they kill you and only you, and unless your entire team dies and you have to start over, all that means is that you’ll have to wait a few seconds before you can play again and you don’t learn anything, so the entire experience is mind numbing because if i don’t understand what i have to do before it happens there’s no real consequence, and since i don’t plan to replay dungeons/trials i’ve already done i basically learn nothing.
Story (and pacing) wise, the expansion drops in quality a lot compared to Heavensward. Stormblood is all about liberating an occupied country from the grasp of the empire, but there’s a twist: you do that twice! And that’s one of the biggest issue with Stormblood: not only is the prelude of the story pretty generic, but you quickly realize the expansion is gonna make you go through very similar events twice. Sure, Ala Mhigo and Doma are different places with different cultures, but you still end up doing the same thing twice. You go to a new region, help people by doing fetch quests, they start trusting you, you confront the empire and win, the place is liberated, rinse and repeat. There’s no big plot twist or anything too, you just liberate some cities and like i don’t think every story needs a plot twist to work but when the prelude of the entire expansion ends up really being what the entire story is about i’d at least expect to have something on the side to motivate me like some really really good characters you’d meet to really make you go “wow those are my friends i need to save them” and… Stormblood also fails on that front. Sure, I really like Gosetsu and Hien for example, but it’s just because they’re archetypes of characters i really like, because otherwise for most of the expansion, they’re kinda not really developed in my opinion. They have their moments every now and then (and the 4.3 storyline for Gosetsu was really good but more on that later) but I feel like they’re pretty one dimensional and not developed enough, I think the mainHeavensward cast (Ysayle, Aymeric and Estinien) was way better than the main Stormblood characters. On top of that, a big part of the story focuses around Lyse and I really think she might be the worst character of the entire game, not because she sucks but because of how bland and boring she is. I can’t think of a single thing she did during the story or any like big quality she has, she’s just there and kinda just randomly becomes a leader despite having no leadership quality, and when you compare her “development” to Alphinaud in Heavensward, it’s really night and day. And her development sucks: she doesn’t seem like she matured or anything near the end, and she only becomes a leader because… The previous leader decided to make her the new leader instead of choosing someone who’d fit the shoes way better like Raubahn or even M’naago? It’s just so weird.
As I said, the story really was bland for the most part, but the funniest part is that they decided to introduce a lot of new stuff and reveals for the like… 5 or so last quests of 4.0? So you basically went through an insane amount of quests (ARR asides it’s the expansion with the biggest number of quests and a lot of them are just empty fetch quests just like in ARR), to have a really not original story repeat twice (like seriously “the resistance fights off the evil empire” is nothing new) and just at the end the story introduces all this new stuff that get a bit relevant in the 4.1-5 MSQ and probably will be more relevant in Shadowbringers which imo totally sucks because that just means this really really long story i just went through was just a bunch of nothing to tease a future story. The 4.3-4.5 story bits were fine and all (i don’t really have an opinion on 4.1 and 4.2 they were just here to close some character arcs from the previous story) but like they were mostly there to introduce you to whatever the hell the MSQ of Shadowbringers is gonna be about, especially 4.5, which imo just goes to show how boring Stormblood is: the best piece of content in it is content that is mostly if not completely outside of its main story.
Even the music in my opinion is a step down in terms of quality. It’s not bad by any means, but I don’t think it’s as good as what Heavensward or even ARR had, and even worse it made me realize some stuff the game does with music i don’t like that has always been there. In this expansion, one of the song is a remix of Cyan’s theme from FF6, and it’s mostly played when Hien appears. And this made me realize that there’s no real character themes like in previous FF games, which i didn’t really think about during the previous expansions but realizing it now i really miss having themes linked to characters, but all this games has is themes for factions or areas. So the first (and so far only) character theme being a theme from a previous game makes it even worse like if he had an original theme just for him that’d be fine tho it’s weird he’s the only one with a theme, but it’s not even original so like why would they even make that
Overall Stormblood really was a mediocre experience for me. It’s not as actively bad as ARR was, but compared to Heavensward i can’t help but wonder what they were thinking because they managed to just ignore everything HS did well to instead go back to something more similar to ARR, which like is probably fine if you liked ARR but I hated it so this just looks like an insane decision to me.
The gameplay felt better, still boring but not to an excruciating level like it was at low level, tho part of it might be because i switched jobs (i played Dragoon for ARR and HS, and switched to Dancer once i reached level 60 and Reaper at 70) and started playing on controller instead of keyboard and mouse which feels way better for me. Some of the solo instances were actually close to being fun (mostly the Zenos fights), but I still have the same issues with the gameplay that I don’t think the game is ever gonna fix: 99% of the time you just do your rotation and while the bosses have mechanics, failing to understand them is almost never an issue because at worse they kill you and only you, and unless your entire team dies and you have to start over, all that means is that you’ll have to wait a few seconds before you can play again and you don’t learn anything, so the entire experience is mind numbing because if i don’t understand what i have to do before it happens there’s no real consequence, and since i don’t plan to replay dungeons/trials i’ve already done i basically learn nothing.
Story (and pacing) wise, the expansion drops in quality a lot compared to Heavensward. Stormblood is all about liberating an occupied country from the grasp of the empire, but there’s a twist: you do that twice! And that’s one of the biggest issue with Stormblood: not only is the prelude of the story pretty generic, but you quickly realize the expansion is gonna make you go through very similar events twice. Sure, Ala Mhigo and Doma are different places with different cultures, but you still end up doing the same thing twice. You go to a new region, help people by doing fetch quests, they start trusting you, you confront the empire and win, the place is liberated, rinse and repeat. There’s no big plot twist or anything too, you just liberate some cities and like i don’t think every story needs a plot twist to work but when the prelude of the entire expansion ends up really being what the entire story is about i’d at least expect to have something on the side to motivate me like some really really good characters you’d meet to really make you go “wow those are my friends i need to save them” and… Stormblood also fails on that front. Sure, I really like Gosetsu and Hien for example, but it’s just because they’re archetypes of characters i really like, because otherwise for most of the expansion, they’re kinda not really developed in my opinion. They have their moments every now and then (and the 4.3 storyline for Gosetsu was really good but more on that later) but I feel like they’re pretty one dimensional and not developed enough, I think the mainHeavensward cast (Ysayle, Aymeric and Estinien) was way better than the main Stormblood characters. On top of that, a big part of the story focuses around Lyse and I really think she might be the worst character of the entire game, not because she sucks but because of how bland and boring she is. I can’t think of a single thing she did during the story or any like big quality she has, she’s just there and kinda just randomly becomes a leader despite having no leadership quality, and when you compare her “development” to Alphinaud in Heavensward, it’s really night and day. And her development sucks: she doesn’t seem like she matured or anything near the end, and she only becomes a leader because… The previous leader decided to make her the new leader instead of choosing someone who’d fit the shoes way better like Raubahn or even M’naago? It’s just so weird.
As I said, the story really was bland for the most part, but the funniest part is that they decided to introduce a lot of new stuff and reveals for the like… 5 or so last quests of 4.0? So you basically went through an insane amount of quests (ARR asides it’s the expansion with the biggest number of quests and a lot of them are just empty fetch quests just like in ARR), to have a really not original story repeat twice (like seriously “the resistance fights off the evil empire” is nothing new) and just at the end the story introduces all this new stuff that get a bit relevant in the 4.1-5 MSQ and probably will be more relevant in Shadowbringers which imo totally sucks because that just means this really really long story i just went through was just a bunch of nothing to tease a future story. The 4.3-4.5 story bits were fine and all (i don’t really have an opinion on 4.1 and 4.2 they were just here to close some character arcs from the previous story) but like they were mostly there to introduce you to whatever the hell the MSQ of Shadowbringers is gonna be about, especially 4.5, which imo just goes to show how boring Stormblood is: the best piece of content in it is content that is mostly if not completely outside of its main story.
Even the music in my opinion is a step down in terms of quality. It’s not bad by any means, but I don’t think it’s as good as what Heavensward or even ARR had, and even worse it made me realize some stuff the game does with music i don’t like that has always been there. In this expansion, one of the song is a remix of Cyan’s theme from FF6, and it’s mostly played when Hien appears. And this made me realize that there’s no real character themes like in previous FF games, which i didn’t really think about during the previous expansions but realizing it now i really miss having themes linked to characters, but all this games has is themes for factions or areas. So the first (and so far only) character theme being a theme from a previous game makes it even worse like if he had an original theme just for him that’d be fine tho it’s weird he’s the only one with a theme, but it’s not even original so like why would they even make that
Overall Stormblood really was a mediocre experience for me. It’s not as actively bad as ARR was, but compared to Heavensward i can’t help but wonder what they were thinking because they managed to just ignore everything HS did well to instead go back to something more similar to ARR, which like is probably fine if you liked ARR but I hated it so this just looks like an insane decision to me.