33.1 hours played
Written 23 days ago
I barely don't recommend this product. Mostly just at full price, on sale at like half off or something sure, go for it, but it does have issues that for some will be pretty serious.
Gameplay is it's best part, though with big issues, the story however, is frankly just really bad and what ruined this for me, from a good experience into one I just couldn't stand by the end.
First and foremost, I did get some decent enjoyment out of it, and also plenty of frustration. The game has mostly good core combat and gameplay, better than most JRPGs that's for sure, and that was it's best general point. It also has some great spectacle moments and stuff that just feels awesome to play through and keeps you going full throttle through them in the story. The visuals are generally great, enviornments, characters, bosses, most things look quite nice, and while it runs my graphics card hard the performance never was an issue so it's pretty well optimized. No crashes either thankfully, only a few bugs, never to major.
So, the problems... First, it's like some say got a sort of monster hunter vibe of hunt, upgrade, hunt again as side/optional/end game content. Unfortunately it's not as refined as monster hunter, and has plenty of issues. Camera being the biggest, lock on is the most buggy and troublesome thing the game has when there's multiple enemies, and sometimes it locks you to X camera perspective for some boss move that doesn't actually let you see things, can't look up much at all ever and when plenty of bosses fly that's not good.
Then collisions, some moves don't match them and you'll just keep getting hit and need to learn it yourself. Some attacks going out from one point like a fire wave spread, but not by stretching or scaling up, they just at a certain point add new sections of fire to the sides, like a fire wave is moving towards you, you run to the side, and pop some new fire wave just appears on the side of it making it another few meters wider right before it would have passed by you.
Invisible walls at the edge of many arenas will get you killed constantly since positioning is the only answer to so many enemy attacks with large AOEs or stuff, and navigation/movement collisions have that common issue of keeping you from getting close enough to enemies to actually hit them with damage collisions. Like a big enemy rears up or is more vertical, it's nav collisions mean you can't run up and just slide around its invisible movement barrier, still five feet from the actual model, that is what attakcs need to hit. Some moves like the drop kick have really short range, so lots of cases of those just sliding aganst the enemy but never hitting them. Gotta learn how to avoid stuff like that on many enemies during some animations or stuff. So ya, overall combat is good, great by JPRG stanrads I think, but still troubled and lacking polish it feels like, core polish, visual polish is all there, but the core gameplay side needed more love as in some cases it gets VERY frusterating when you might be dying in one hit/mistake to an enemy, and it's attack collisions aren't accurate, or it doesn't preview the red ground warning effect for an AOE attack but its size and animation means you don't see the queues for it up on it's arms because if you are close enough to hit it's feet and attack it, the camera wont even let you look up at that angle to see the queue. So ya, good for $20-30, not so great for $60 on gameplay I think, though some will just like the style and still go for it and enjoy it plenty.
For the story, it's pretty simple at it's core, nothing too surpising or interesting here in the main of it. The problem is the writers just made a series of character moments, events, emotional highs/lows, etc... and only cared about the character side of the story. It's ok... not great, not bad. The problem is they didn't care about anything else it feels like. You need characters to have a high point? Ok, give them a win, but now there must be a shock and desperate situation! So that enemy you just beat? Ya they're back like nothing happened, no excuse for that literally seconds after being beaten, they'll attack your mate, start casting to destroy the world, or otherwise X evil thing your whole group wants to stop, and for like 30 seconds to 2 minutes as they go through the motions of this obvious thing you'd want to stop your entire group just stands there watching, EVERYONE HAS WEAPONS! Ranged attacks from guns to magic to sword slashes that cut from a distance (shown in some cinematics, not just gameplay thing), there's no excuse not to do something. It's like if you beat some guy and smash him to a pupl, then your squad in a gang starts celebrating, but now needing a low moment that guy you pulped gets up, pulls a knife, and stabs one of your mates in the chest. And now instead of helping him you all just sit down and pull out a sandwich as this guy just starts toruring your mate in front of you... And you're whole purpose was to stop him from doing X or something? Ya just sit back and watch them do that too, it makes all that gameplay before with the fight feel pointless. And it's way to long for any shock value or thing to excuse a brief lapse in reaction. Oh, and this sh*t don't just happen once, or twice, or thrice! No, it happens like ten plus times, I stopped counting, completely lost any investment in the story by that point, and was just trying to finish the game for the sake of it to get past this, hoping there was more game left. Honestly main story was shorter than I expected, but oh well, at least I didn't have to suffer through even more of that. Seriously, if you like a world where things make sense, actions have consequences, and the game doesn't just ignore stuff and do whatever it wants yet act like you should care about the new random nonsensical twist... you'll probably be hating this story in the latter half. This was the part that really killed it for me. I honestly think it'd be better to just skip many later cutscenes and moments, so you don't see and struggle through the leaps of logic that connect moments, I do think as a first time player it would have been better to just skip them, for the story experience. Problem is I wouldn't know which ones I had to do that with... and obviously still would miss out on some bits so not great, but ya, it's that bad.
