"Life is both an adventure and a journey."

It took me a full year to complete this in just over 109 hours, and I can blame that on several things. Honestly there's not much structural variety throughout all eight of these stories--start plotline, explore, find item/character, fight boss, repeat for 4-6 chapters per character--which made it a hard one to "binge" despite really wanting to cross it off my list to free up another JRPG slot in my play rotation. Legends say Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology is still collecting dust on my 3DS memory card to this very day........

When I did feel up to coming back, though, I felt welcomed every time. I was able to pick up so easily from where I left off, like catching up with an old friend (or 8). There is only so much room for depth when the plot is spread thinly in eight different ways, but the game balances that simplicity with intrigue pretty impressively. I wasn't blown away at every story, but the ones I only "really liked" were welcome pace changers anyway; Throne's is a tragic revenge story about escaping her shackles to a murky underground thieves guild, but Ochette's was like playing a Monster Hunter game where the main objective was to eat tons of really good food. Each has memorable enough anchors, twists and arcs that I conistently wanted to know what happened next. And for what happened last, if it's really been a minute since you played, you can even--thank GOD--look over a journal that both summarizes recent events and lets you play back cutscenes in full to keep up with what all's going on with the octo-friends.

It also helps that the presentation is nothing short of spectacular, with consistently great vocal performances for the whole cast and a sweeping and lush landscape of beautifully made pixel art dioramas. The real killer is the musical score, whose soaring strings and ghostly piano refrains moved me to tears at pretty much all of the crucial poignant moments in each story. "Heart's Lament" is my favorite, it reminds me a lot of Hisaishi's "The Sixth Station" from Spirited Away.

If you're a JRPG enjoyer like me, you'd be missing out if you didn't at least try this one. Especially if you like FF6!!

"Life is both an adventure and a journey."

It took me a full year to complete this in just over 109 hours, and I can blame that on several things. Honestly there's not much structural variety throughout all eight of these stories--start plotline, explore, find item/character, fight boss, repeat for 4-6 chapters per character--which made it a hard one to "binge" despite really wanting to cross it off my list to free up another JRPG slot in my play rotation. Legends say Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology is still collecting dust on my 3DS memory card to this very day........

When I did feel up to coming back, though, I felt welcomed every time. I was able to pick up so easily from where I left off, like catching up with an old friend (or 8). There is only so much room for depth when the plot is spread thinly in eight different ways, but the game balances that simplicity with intrigue pretty impressively. I wasn't blown away at every story, but the ones I only "really liked" were welcome pace changers anyway; Throne's is a tragic revenge story about escaping her shackles to a murky underground thieves guild, but Ochette's was like playing a Monster Hunter game where the main objective was to eat tons of really good food. Each has memorable enough anchors, twists and arcs that I conistently wanted to know what happened next. And for what happened last, if it's really been a minute since you played, you can even--thank GOD--look over a journal that both summarizes recent events and lets you play back cutscenes in full to keep up with what all's going on with the octo-friends.

It also helps that the presentation is nothing short of spectacular, with consistently great vocal performances for the whole cast and a sweeping and lush landscape of beautifully made pixel art dioramas. The real killer is the musical score, whose soaring strings and ghostly piano refrains moved me to tears at pretty much all of the crucial poignant moments in each story. "Heart's Lament" is my favorite, it reminds me a lot of Hisaishi's "The Sixth Station" from Spirited Away.

If you're a JRPG enjoyer like me, you'd be missing out if you didn't at least try this one. Especially if you like FF6!!