Clive is so great. He’s just a little guy who wants to be an edgy loner so bad, but he cant help it. He just wants everyone to be safe and happy. Not counting 14, I’ve only ever played the 7 remake, and Clive is a nice contrast to Cloud.

Don’t get me wrong, Cloud has a similar vibe. But like Clive talks, and smiles, and he gets a little awkward when people flirt with him. He compliments people who do good things, and his dialog during side quests shows he’s genuinely concerned with the well-being of people around him.

It’s just nice to have a Clive to play. Like I’ve done lots of Zelda lately, and Link’s personality was never the draw. D:OS and Baldur’s Gate 3 both have protagonists that like to veer into “hard person for a hard world”. Elden Ring is Elden Ring.

Give me the protagonist who is human enough to be affected by the world, but also actually nice and stuff.

I’m 30%? way in and freaking love it, graphics aside, the music is beautiful as heck and story is good enough but hot dang the lore, so much lore <3

I’m really bad at video games and I have a desperately short attention span; every second of this Game of Thrones x Godzilla bullshit is the coolest thing I have ever seen. My husband is playing it and he keeps me abreast of the story as he plays. I love it. Best Final Fantasy for a non-FF player. 10/10 no ragerts

I finished the game a couple of days ago, here’s my thought:

• Characters: the lack of diversity is weird, not only it doesn’t have black people, it only has white and middle eastern. That aside, the main female character is kinda bland, but the female side characters are better written, have more personality, interesting back stories. To me, Clive is also kinda boring, brooding character, probably still better than Noctis, but at some points I wished the main character is (best) Cid or Joshua.
• Story: I truly enjoy the story, it paces itself quite well, keeps throwing mystery to get you going. The sidequests are okay, but somehow are kinda backloaded, you get tons of them near end game.
• Gameplay: Yes, I really love the combat in this game, it’s DMC-lite, not as demanding, but still fun enough. It is also paced in such a way that you get new skills every couple of main story beats, and they are varied enough so that it always feel fresh. The treasure chests and items are very boring though. And, I love every single Asura’s Wrath moments, made me wanna replay Asura’s Wrath again.
• Music: is probably the best part of the game.

The other issues I have with the game is:

• The motion blur (which is now patched) and the uneven frame rate for performance mode
• Why in the world is the game so dark that I can’t see anything half of the time?

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.

Zelda is still my GOTY but story-wise, FFXVI is easily my favorite. Played Bayo 3 pretty recently so playing with the new combat style is quite refreshing compared to my mild disappointment with that game. I’ve been doing every side quest- some are better than others but definitely worth it to do them.

I just love that every chapter/boss fight is climactic enough to be the final, only to be outdone by the next one 3-4 hours later!

it was banned in saudi arabia for having say gex (gay sex), which is a huge W

i thought it was gonna be in my top 5 but I decided that a lot of the parts that try to smooth out the intent of what the game is meant to say about heavy topics like slavery, freedom, genocide, the harmful side of religion, etc really hold the game back a lot

it has pacing issues when it comes to side quest availability

and it’s not really an rpg which is kinda frustrating given it’s a mainline FF game

it’s a good game, but it’s not a great game for me. too much moralistic talk that doubles back and presents a “both sides” argument too much despite concretely setting up how in the wrong one of the sides is.

worth playing, lots of really good characters, the combat is extremely fun and the monster fights are also very fun.

Yeah, I’m really disappointed it’s not available on PC because now I’m going to have to wait forever to play it :-(

What are your two other favourites out of interest?

I saw some of the gameplay and if I can’t get another SotC, I’ll settle for this. Still not buying a PS5 just for this though. Screw exclusives.