Really enjoyed the narrative arc, the visual and audio design are about as good as I've ever seen incredible, the actual game design philosophy here is completely absent, there is absolutely no HUD, no direction, no tutorial, you brute force your way through the entire run,To that end the exact same endlessly frustrating combat sequences repeat themselves a dozen times over. Do you block that attack? Do you parry? Dodge? ¯\(ツ)/¯ who knows just bash your head against the same 5 enemies in one on one arena bouts.

Temp review for some placeholder thoughts: I enjoyed a lot of the narrative changes the final few hours especially pose some interesting angles and interpretations.


I LOATHE so much of the end game and side activities I have zero interest to returning to the game for the platinum.
There are a few mini games that I would put in the hall of fame for being bad. Toad tumble, 3d boxing, literally all of the arena fights that take place in the final 2 chapters. Chadley is genuinely the secind worst addition to the remake trilogy and I will not be convinced otherwise.

The worst being the combat system is so fundamentally flawed and broken that many fights that take place in the endgame window will require cheese builds to even engage with them on a remotely fair playing field. Have fun fighting bosses that will counter your attacks despite their Intel explicitly saying attack when performing "X" action and then proceed to get barrel stuffed every time regardless.

Music is mostly good to phenomenal the jenova remixes and Cosmo canyon being personal standouts.