This review contains spoilers
Better than the maidenless game.
The gameplay connects instantly, when the jobs are all new and the possibilities many. There really is enough customisation, with the different weapons and jobs, for even side missions to not feel boring, even if the menus and loots can be tedious.
The story is another beast entirely. A re-imagination of the very first game, where the only twist it had was a time-warp of the very first boss, to overpower himself and become the very last. And this is an over-complicated journey of that character, Jack Garland, and his later-to-become boss-minions.
By going the extra mile with the time-warping stuff, the dimensional-rifting and the world-resetting shenanigans, I was having a hard time grasping 60% of what was going on. But when fighting Astos, the pieces start connecting and the emotional weight kicks in. After that, the resolve of the characters is set in stone, the not-warriors of light. Everything felt off from the beginning, because this is a different story. The story of memories, of dark crystals, of Chaos and the end of the world, of invoking the greatest darkness in order to wait up the real finale: the blinding shininess of the four warriors of light.
They are the warriors who have fought so hard to preserve a prophecy they cannot be part of. Or at least, not as how they imagined. In the end, they were part of the world's salvation, but they did it their way.
The gameplay connects instantly, when the jobs are all new and the possibilities many. There really is enough customisation, with the different weapons and jobs, for even side missions to not feel boring, even if the menus and loots can be tedious.
The story is another beast entirely. A re-imagination of the very first game, where the only twist it had was a time-warp of the very first boss, to overpower himself and become the very last. And this is an over-complicated journey of that character, Jack Garland, and his later-to-become boss-minions.
By going the extra mile with the time-warping stuff, the dimensional-rifting and the world-resetting shenanigans, I was having a hard time grasping 60% of what was going on. But when fighting Astos, the pieces start connecting and the emotional weight kicks in. After that, the resolve of the characters is set in stone, the not-warriors of light. Everything felt off from the beginning, because this is a different story. The story of memories, of dark crystals, of Chaos and the end of the world, of invoking the greatest darkness in order to wait up the real finale: the blinding shininess of the four warriors of light.
They are the warriors who have fought so hard to preserve a prophecy they cannot be part of. Or at least, not as how they imagined. In the end, they were part of the world's salvation, but they did it their way.