First off, I'm a huge FF fan. I've been playing their games and RPGs in general since early 90's (my age is showing). It hurts me to write this review. This title is a complete let down and I have no idea how it's receiving such high ratings.
The release was smooth, not much glitches and technical problems......other then the terrible graphics and environments. For a game that was suppose to be a innovation, 1/2 of it looks like a PS2 era game. Shading, texture, colors...it's terrible. They even went as far as using still photos as backgrounds that look like their from some of Squares (RIP) PS1 titles. Rumors are swirling this will be patched, but wow...it's quite shocking. It seems some chapters with excellent views are exempt of these visual defects, leading me to believe it wasn't by accident alot of the chapters look so terrible.
This game is LINEAR. I mean linear. There is almost zero exploration and your hand is held during the whole game. They also littered the game with slow walking segments, endless squeeze points and ladders in an obvious attempt at adding complexity and length to the levels. It becomes more and more apparent as you playthrough and almost kills any motivation to playthrough a second time. I mean the game is filled with this, if I had to ballpark ..30% is VA sections, 20% Live Animation(which is skippable), 15% Battles and 35% walking in very linear maps. Most enemies don't respawn, boring linear maps with zero exploration, forced soowed down segments everywhere make for a pretty boring experience.
Quest are very limited and very boring, other then one or two in chapter 9, which is the Las Vegas of Midgar, it's fairly well done. Only 3 Chapters of the 18 contain any quest and they have to be done before moving on or their lost. Chapter select is available after finishing the game, but as I stated above, it's hard pushing through the boring chapters again since 80% of the filler cannot be auto skipped and it just becomes a walking simulator while you mash X.
Story is hard to rate since we really didn't get anything. Expanding Midgar, which is a very small section in the original game, about 10%, resulted in no significant addition to the plot or really the segment of Midgar as a whole at all. Tons of the game consist of slowly walking through linear paths while useless banter is thrown at you. All this filler had zero substance and could have been cut down by 50% and we wouldn't have lost a thing, but we could have gained a more relevant story and areas to explore (Like Mythril Cave, Kalm...). It's extremely slow paced, dragged out and full of filler material.
That combat is decent. Their hybrid of turn base and live action genres turned out alright. Kind of a jack of all trades. Not really excelling in anything but getting by. Roll during combat is absolutely useless with no Iframes and honestly..you eventually will rarely even touch it. Block will be your line of defence, but it's got a terrible delay and with the speed of enemies and most bosses/enemies having Super Armor, the lack of a good roll really brings down combat fluidity and pace. It adopts traits from FF13, FF15 and Kingdom Hearts. The magic system is well done, the materia system is solid and offers alot of customization options. It's really one of the high points of the game and there aren't many.
The VA is well done for most of the game. They did a great job bringing Cloud and the crew back to life and the depictions are great. The atmosphere transitioned well, One main character is introduced at the end of the game, but non controllable and battled as a AI for the last 2 Chapters. Not being able to use him was another big let down... It would have brought a little variety to a very bland game.
All in all the game is very mediocre. Its filled with useless content, didn't offer any significant changes or plot to the Midgar section and would have been better as a 3 hour movie rather then a 40 hour game. Hopefully they can come up with more interesting content and exploration for part 2. Alot of people have no idea where all the time put into this game went, when other publishers are releasing games with better graphics, unique stories and innovative gameplay in a quarter of the time it took for them to release this snooze fest of a Action Rpg. Once again...not sure how it's getting rated so highly.....Where did all that production time go?
The release was smooth, not much glitches and technical problems......other then the terrible graphics and environments. For a game that was suppose to be a innovation, 1/2 of it looks like a PS2 era game. Shading, texture, colors...it's terrible. They even went as far as using still photos as backgrounds that look like their from some of Squares (RIP) PS1 titles. Rumors are swirling this will be patched, but wow...it's quite shocking. It seems some chapters with excellent views are exempt of these visual defects, leading me to believe it wasn't by accident alot of the chapters look so terrible.
This game is LINEAR. I mean linear. There is almost zero exploration and your hand is held during the whole game. They also littered the game with slow walking segments, endless squeeze points and ladders in an obvious attempt at adding complexity and length to the levels. It becomes more and more apparent as you playthrough and almost kills any motivation to playthrough a second time. I mean the game is filled with this, if I had to ballpark ..30% is VA sections, 20% Live Animation(which is skippable), 15% Battles and 35% walking in very linear maps. Most enemies don't respawn, boring linear maps with zero exploration, forced soowed down segments everywhere make for a pretty boring experience.
Quest are very limited and very boring, other then one or two in chapter 9, which is the Las Vegas of Midgar, it's fairly well done. Only 3 Chapters of the 18 contain any quest and they have to be done before moving on or their lost. Chapter select is available after finishing the game, but as I stated above, it's hard pushing through the boring chapters again since 80% of the filler cannot be auto skipped and it just becomes a walking simulator while you mash X.
Story is hard to rate since we really didn't get anything. Expanding Midgar, which is a very small section in the original game, about 10%, resulted in no significant addition to the plot or really the segment of Midgar as a whole at all. Tons of the game consist of slowly walking through linear paths while useless banter is thrown at you. All this filler had zero substance and could have been cut down by 50% and we wouldn't have lost a thing, but we could have gained a more relevant story and areas to explore (Like Mythril Cave, Kalm...). It's extremely slow paced, dragged out and full of filler material.
That combat is decent. Their hybrid of turn base and live action genres turned out alright. Kind of a jack of all trades. Not really excelling in anything but getting by. Roll during combat is absolutely useless with no Iframes and honestly..you eventually will rarely even touch it. Block will be your line of defence, but it's got a terrible delay and with the speed of enemies and most bosses/enemies having Super Armor, the lack of a good roll really brings down combat fluidity and pace. It adopts traits from FF13, FF15 and Kingdom Hearts. The magic system is well done, the materia system is solid and offers alot of customization options. It's really one of the high points of the game and there aren't many.
The VA is well done for most of the game. They did a great job bringing Cloud and the crew back to life and the depictions are great. The atmosphere transitioned well, One main character is introduced at the end of the game, but non controllable and battled as a AI for the last 2 Chapters. Not being able to use him was another big let down... It would have brought a little variety to a very bland game.
All in all the game is very mediocre. Its filled with useless content, didn't offer any significant changes or plot to the Midgar section and would have been better as a 3 hour movie rather then a 40 hour game. Hopefully they can come up with more interesting content and exploration for part 2. Alot of people have no idea where all the time put into this game went, when other publishers are releasing games with better graphics, unique stories and innovative gameplay in a quarter of the time it took for them to release this snooze fest of a Action Rpg. Once again...not sure how it's getting rated so highly.....Where did all that production time go?
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