I am desperate to discuss this game, it’s possibly one of my top 3 Final Fantasy games.
The combat feels pretty great, I don’t mind it being a Devil May Cry action system. It’s really satisfying to chain together evades and teleports and blow up the screen with particle effects. The game really opens up as you get more abilities but it does take a while to get into the full scope of combat.
The sense of spectacle is amazing, I am a huge fan of kaiju movies, so I am all on board for 50 foot monster battles.
And the story and characters are so good! It’s so refreshing to get a story where the protagonists want to make the world a better place by throwing down oppressive authority and are actually allowed to do so. Clive has a strong sense of honor and a very endearing dorky streak wrapped up behind all his emotional trauma and he’s a great sympathetic protagonist. Cid is possibly one of the best Cids of all time (where did they find the absolute mutant that voices him?). Jill is a perfect complement to Clive, they are possibly the only two people who can fully understand each other.
Additional marks for letting everyone say “Fuck.”
Please mark spoilers!
There’s a lot I love with the game and a lot of things I wish could be improved.
Music is phenomenal. Lots of great stuff, including lovely little nostalgic riffs and exciting new pieces.
I’m enjoying the combat system. I haven’t played many games with this kind of action-oriented system, but I have found it easy to get in to and satisfying to explore new combos and maneuvers. I do feel like some of the battles overstay their welcome a bit, perhaps because I’m not as much of an aficionado for these systems nor as adept.
I found it hard to get into the story at first, but it’s definitely “Final Fantasy worthy” if that makes sense. I am enjoying as everything unfurls and putting the connections together.
I like how the world feels vast but manageable. Before this, I was playing a lot of FF7 Remake and FFXV before that. This seems to be finding a nice balance where something like FF7R has everything in tight levels and corridors and FFXV was vast and open, but it felt like a lot of the openness was uninteresting (like, they had to give you a car to get through it all at a quasi-interesting pace). With the different map segments, it narrows down to the more interesting places to explore, while also opening up to more detail and still giving a sense of a larger world.
I wish the economy and crafting system was better/more interesting. I’m not sure how far into the game I am, but I’ve felt like gil has been mostly useless since the second weapon I got, and crafting has been dull enough that I don’t really care about or track what components I’ve gathered up.
All-in-all, loving the game and excited to keep going. I feel like there’s still a lot of story to go and that’s awesome because I also feel like I’ve put a lot of time into it already.