Finally, we arrive at the last Final Fantasy game I'll be reviewing for now, Final Fantasy X-2, a direct sequel to Final Fantasy X, it is also a contender for the fanbase for worst Final Fantasy game so that's exciting.
The basic plot summary contains spoilers for the previous game, so if you don't want it spoiled I recommend avoiding this review before you play it.
For starters, the main character this time is Yuna, who goes on a journey with Rikku after they find a sphere that shows someone who looks very much like Tidus, who disappeared at the end of the last game.
With Rikku's brother and a friend of his, they form the Gullwings, a band of sphere hunters who search the land of Spira for Spheres that might contain clues to where Tidus might be, and get some treasure along the way.
They are also accompanied by Paine, a new character who joined their journey as sphere hunters, supposedly only for the money, though her goals could be different.
So with no clear lead as to where to begin, they look all over Spira for clues, meeting some characters along the way and getting involved with the new politics of the world, which are somehow linked to the mysterious place they saw on the sphere.
So, to talk about the plot of this game is even more complicated than with the previous game, since it's mostly stuff happening left and right, but at least the main objective is clear from the start, which is pretty much all I can say without detailing everything that happens on the story.
All I will say is that I enjoyed Yuna, Rikku, and Paine, I liked watching them getting along and just talking, but found Brother really annoying, and every other new character not very interesting, especially the comedic relief characters, which were also kind of annoying.
The overall plot also felt like it came out of nowhere with a very flimsy excuse, but I really won't get into detail, I prefer to avoid the headache.
The combat is ATB again, and it really bummed me out, not because it was bad but because the turn-based combat from the last game felt so good.
This time battles are way faster and there's no waiting period between actions, meaning, one of your characters and the enemies could act at the same time.
Attacks come out instantly but spells and skills have a cooldown before they come out, which can get interrupted by attacks, this applies to both allies and enemies, the rest of the basic combat is more or less what you would expect from Final Fantasy, but also like you would expect, it's the Jobs that change things up.
Jobs this time come in the form of Dresspheres, which you get throughout the game, levels work like normal again, with the characters getting exp and leveling up, but to develop the classes you need to use them, kind of how the GFs worked in Final Fantasy 8, which I am happy that idea was reused.
In the menu for the jobs, you can pick what you want to unlock next for said job, a new skill, a stat bonus, or a passive skill, and it shows how much progress you have made so far for unlocking it, I really like this system.
I was checking constantly what I had unlocked for each class and got excited when I unlocked a new cool skill, and the way this progression works makes it so every class is relevant throughout all of the game.
You might not use the classes you already mastered on random encounters, but on bosses you really need to bring your best in order to beat them.
And before I go on I just want to mention that I really love the designs and how they change depending on the characters, not every class fits aesthetically with every character, but I just love the visual variety there is, some of the designs really rock and I love them, I wish this system was in more games, it's a shame it hasn't come back.
You are also able to change classes mid-combat, which may be what inspired the Final Fantasy 13 system, but it's only speculation.
The way it works is that you equip jobs into something called Garment Grid, which is several nodes joined together by lines, you can change into any class that is a neighbor of your currently equipped class, and the path that connects both jobs is then activated, and depending on the Garment Grid you have quipped, you can get different bonuses for the fight.
There are a lot of types of Garment Grids, with different numbers of available slots and types of bonuses, some give you bonuses just by equipping them, and others need you to constantly change classes to access bonuses, as I mentioned before.
There are also special Dresspheres that you can use only when you completely traverse a Garment Grid, and they work kind of how summons worked in the previous game, with the other 2 characters going away when you change into that Dressphere.
All of this is very cool in concept, but not so much in execution, instead of making battles feel dynamic, some battles can feel tedious at first when you are getting all the bonuses by constantly switching jobs.
Because there's no cooldown after you change jobs, you can change again instantly to get all the bonuses, and that's kind of boring, I really think it would be way more engaging if you had a 2 or 3 turn cooldown between job changes.
I also didn't feel like using the special Dresspheres, there are Garment Grids that let you change into the special Dressphere right away, but trying to unlock the skills for it meant the other 2 characters wouldn't advance their skill learning, and I really didn't feel like grinding.
There's an extra dungeon that looked kinda long and maybe I could have trained all of the classes there, but I also didn't feel like doing that dungeon, I wanted the game to end quick because of how the main game progression is handled.
Besides the main missions, there are numerous quests you can engage with in all over the world, and this is one of the game's biggest weaknesses.
You can explore every part of the world since the start of the game, and you can keep track of the percentage completed on the location selection menu, there is a lot to do, which doesn't sound too bad, but the problem is that the game is divided by chapters, and sidequests become unavailable the moment you advance to a different chapter.
So in order to do most of the sidequests, you need to check every location again in every chapter, which becomes rapidly tiring even while on the first chapter.
Traveling through the world you explored in the course of a whole game in only the first chapter, only to check if there's stuff to do on every single location again in every single chapter is incredibly frustrating to me, and it's the main reason I kind of hate the game.
There's just so much stuff that you would miss otherwise, and just the previous game made a lot of effort at making nothing missable, this game then goes in the complete opposite direction and makes everything besides the main missions missable.
I really think that the game would be way way better if they restricted the areas you could visit, and I am for real.
If they did what the previous game did, and locked you only on the main missions first, and just before the end they let you explore to your heart's content while making everything not missable, it would be such a better experience in my opinion.
Even if they left the plot intact, which I really didn't like, but made the side content not missable, it would improve the gameplay experience a lot.
So, to summarize, the base gameplay is very good, the Garment Grid system wasn't as engaging as it could have been but it was interesting nonetheless, I liked the character moments between the main girls but I didn't really enjoy the rest of the characters, and the plot overall was kind of a letdown, but it was the progression of the game that made me not enjoy the game as much as I wish I did.
There's not many RPGs where all of the main characters are girls and I was really excited about this one, it's just sad, but it's not the worst game ever, there's some fun to be had, especially if you focus only on the main missions or only on the gameplay.
I would only recommend it if you really want to play all Final Fantasy games and especially liked Yuna and Rikku, and also if you are down for some very tedious exploration and a not great plot, otherwise, I'd say it's not very worth playing, I wish the systems were used on a better game, but I doubt Square Enix will ever do that, guess I would have to wait until an indie dev uses them.
I was actually pretty excited to play this one, what specifically made me excited was the leveling system, I didn't really know how it exactly worked before I started it but knowing something different waited for me made me curious about the game.
After playing it, I think this might be my favorite Final Fantasy game so far, rivaled only by Final Fantasy VI or IX.
I got quite a lot to say about this game, so let's start with a summary of the plot.
You play as Tidus, a young blitzball player, who is heading to a game while also giving autographs to fans.
While the game is being played, an enormous mass of water rises near the city, and out of it projectiles start attacking everything, with the stadium destroyed Tidus tries to flee, he then meets with Auron, a friend of his missing dad, he gives him a sword and instructs him to follow him.
Out of the projectiles that were hitting the city, monsters start crawling out of them, Auron instructs him in how to fight and make their way, closer to the body of water, which he calls Sin.
When they get close enough Sin engulfs them, and when Tidus comes to his senses, he finds himself on ruins of a temple he's never seen before, Auron is nowhere in sight, making his way through it he is ambushed by monsters, but someone speaking a language he can't understand pitches in to help him.
After the monsters are taken care of, more people speaking the foreign language come in and they capture him.
The girl that pitched in to help him turns out to speak the same language as Tidus, and explains him that they want him to help with getting rid of some monsters on an underwater ruin, after that it's taken care of, Sin attacks the ship they were on, and Tidus is once again knocked out, but this time he wakes up on a beach, where the locals talk to him to see if he is alright.
After trying to explain what happened, and saying he comes from the city Zanarkand, everyone assumes he is crazy or something, because Zanarkand was destroyed 1000 years ago, making him realize what really is going on.
To make things shorter, he learns about summoners, who fight Sin, and he meets Yuna, a young summoner, and decides to accompany her on her pilgrimage, which ultimately aims to defeat Sin.
And that's basically the start of his journey, talking about the plot is hard, because quite a lot of things happen before the main objective of Tidus is laid in stone, and I don't want to reveal that much of the plot.
I like the main cast a lot, and the fact there's a lot of interactions between them is really nice, it's the first time in a Final Fantasy where I don't feel like there needed to be more dialogue or interactions between characters, because the ones that already exist are plenty.
I do admit that some dialogue might be cheesy or weirdly delivered because of the voice acting, but nothing really was "off" or too awkward, rather that gives it some charm in my opinion.
If anything, it's the expressions of the models that left a bit more to be desired, and that's basically a new problem in the remasters, it wasn't too much of a bother though.
Despite Nomura being involved in the writing process, it doesn't reach levels of incomprehensible plot like he's famous for, outside of the bit confusing start, the plot is very easy to follow.
Another thing I loved about the game is that the world is very well realized, they managed to create a unique culture with traditions and a unique look, something that all other final fantasy games are lacking in my opinion.
And that's pretty much everything i am willing to say about the writing-related stuff, pretty solid all around in my opinion, and unintentionally funny at times, also the laughing scene isn't cringe shut up.
But now moving to the gameplay, there's a lot to say about this.
This game FINALLY came back to actual turn-based combat, which is a welcomed change to me, not that I dislike ATB, but it's prone to some problems like I mentioned in my Final Fantasy 9 review.
But also how they implemented the turn-based combat is pretty neat, a character can act multiple times before an enemy, and the opposite is also true, and a character can also be delayed, all of this shown on a grid on the side of the screen.
The party size also changed, it went from 4 to 3, but you can freely change with characters not currently in battle, and as long as the character does any action, they get full EXP, this is a good thing and a bad thing, it's nice that every character can get full EXP on every fight, but to do that you need to constantly change party members and defend to do any action that doesn't take too much time, at that point it would have been way better if every character got full EXP no matter what, it's not a huge problem though, just a minor inconvenience.
The biggest change in my opinion though, is the equipment, equipment doesn't have stats, rather it gives traits instead, like elemental attacks, armor piercing attacks or a bonus % of attack power for the weapons, and resistances, defense bonus and immunities for the armors, each one can have up to 4 traits, and some may have empty slots, which can be filled with a trait via crafting around the middle of the game.
All in all it's a big deviation for normal Final Fantasy but I really liked the system a lot, not worrying about having the weapons with the best stats was strange at first, and when I got to building equipment for specific situations it became really fun to think about the possible combinations.
Yet another big deviation from normal Final Fantasy is how the leveling works, this one is a completely different beast.
When you get a level up, instead of your stats incrementing, you can advance in a grid, and use items to activate nodes that increment a specific stat or unlock skills and spells.
I really liked this system, specially towards the end.
All the characters advance through the same grid, just in different sections of it, and each of their sections build on their class, but there's several points in their path where they can deviate and enter another character's sections, learning some of their skills and getting stat increases, which is crazy to me, the level of personalization allowed while at the same time allowing each character to remain different because of their limit breaks is very very cool.
Now having talked about combat, equipment and leveling up, it's time to talk about the dungeons.
They are all extremely linear, and when I say this, I really mean they are linear, there's very few optional paths and some are even a literal straight line, and while it is a bummer there are no satisfying dungeons in the game, they aren't a slog to get through as they could have been.
Throughout the journey there's multiple interactions, npcs and sidequests you can engage with to make the traversal of the dungeons not as monotonous.
And while there might not be real dungeons, there are a couple of puzzle rooms, but there are only a handful of these, and the puzzle solving is really easy and short, they really live something to be desired for me.
Then there's the enemies.
The enemy selection is pretty small, there's like 15 unique designs and the rest are color variations, this is done because each enemy has a specific role it plays, it either has armor, very high evade, or is prone to ranged attacks, among other things.
The designs can get tiring after a while but they serve well to the gameplay, it makes you make use of all of your characters in all of the game, and you can instinctively know what to do when you encounter an enemy in a new area.
The bosses though, they are completely unique and they are very fun to fight against, they can get pretty hard, and I appreciate that a lot, they make you use all of your tools to defeat them and they don't really require you to grind at all.
The post-game content though, that's a different story.
I have to confess, I didn't do a lot of the post-game or extra content, and that's mainly because I was playing the PS Vita version of the game and not the steam version.
They are not that different, but the Vita version doesn't have fast forward or auto-battle options.
To even attempt to have a chance at winning against some of the extra bosses you need to grind a lot, and I mean you basically need to fill the whole grid with each character and have perfectly crafted weapons.
There's a lot of things that help with the grinding a TON, namely the monster arena, one of my favorite optional content things, you can fight any monster you fought before for a fee, but also if you killed a certain number of a kind of monster you unlock unique fights in the arena, so killing every single monster at least 10 times was a fun endeavour to me.
It would have been way faster if I was playing the steam version though, and even though I found a grinding technique, it still would have taken too long to my liking to win against every extra boss encounter.
Not that the game is slow, even without the fast forward feature I felt like the speed of the game was quite fast for the main game.
To sum everything up, I really liked the plot and the characters, it was very different from what every other Final Fantasy had done before, and the same can be said about the gameplay elements, all of them, from combat to equipment to leveling.
And while enemy variety is not that great, it's still fun to fight everything because of the customization while not making every character the same when you reach the endgame, and even though dungeons leave a ton to be desired, the locations are varied enough and there's enough stuff to do that it doesn't become a complete slog to go through.
So yeah, that's pretty much it, this is one of my favorite Final Fantasy game alongside 6 and 9, I really want to revisit this game again, this time on the steam version, to finally do all of the extra content, or I might give in and do it on my Vita since I don't have a good pc to run the game on yet.
I think it's obvious by now but I really recommend this game, it might be different to every other Final Fantasy but I think it's a great place to start, specially if you prefer turn based combat.
It is kind of a bummer Square Enix will never make a game like this again, but oh well, at least we have indie games to fill in the gaps in our hearts.
Final Fantasy IX is considered by many as a love letter to everything Final Fantasy stood for, with a number of callbacks and classic designs, it is also considered one of the best in the franchise and I can see why some people would think that.
I think it's an interesting game and it's worth talking about, so that's what I'll do.
Unlike the past 2 games in the series, Final Fantasy 9 comes back into a more traditional fantasy world.
You follow Zidane, a member of a band of thieves that call themselves the Tantalus Theater Troup, with the facade of throwing a theater show, they plan on kidnapping the Princess of the Alexandria kingdom.
But unbeknownst to them Princess Garnet also wants to be taken away from the castle, as she has noticed some concerning changes in her mother's behavior.
After a very entertaining introduction, they both get away from the castle, along with Steiner, a knight set on taking the princess back, and Vivi, a young black mage who got dragged into the situation against his will.
They will discover what is really going on with the queen, and you will see the personal challenges every character has ahead of them. New characters are introduced throughout the game, each with their own conflicts.
In multiple parts of the plot, the characters will get separated, and you will take control of them, but the most important characters are Zidane and Garnet.
Both of them are on a journey that will make them grow up, learn who they truly are, and make hard decisions.
The characters also interact between them quite a lot, which is not something Final Fantasy did a lot of before this point, and I really appreciate that they interact so much.
Besides this, every time you reach a new town or village, characters will split up, and you are able to see how everyone interacts with their enviroment, you can clearly see the personalities of each of the main cast and get attached to them.
Though I wish some characters had more dialogue and that some of the optional cutscenes were not so easily missable, it's a huge step forward compared to what they were doing before in characterization.
Another thing I like about the plot is that the main villain changes and grows, it might still have a simple motivation that comes down to wanting to destroy everything, but you can believe that the villain has emotions and acts according to them, which is saying a lot when talking about Final Fantasy villains.
So in general, both the plot and the characters are pleasant to see, and I didn't find many things that really bothered me about the writing at all, it's for sure one of the best Final Fantasy plots.
It also has the best Final Fantasy character ever, just look at this little guy.
The exploration in this game is also very good, at least in the cities, they are very lively, and with the characters interacting all around a given city it makes every location stand out.
Unlike in so many other RPGs where the cities all look the same, every location has a very distinct style and feeling to it, visiting a new place doesn't get boring.
While the city exploration is good, the dungeons leave a lot to be desired.
They all look nice, but every single dungeon is extremely short, there were several times during my playthrough when I thought a dungeon was looking interesting with the concepts it introduced, and right as I thought it was getting good, the dungeon was over.
There's a lack of gimmicks and puzzles, and they all feel very linear.
I would have loved if dungeons were more intricate, even if that meant they were worse looking.
Now it's time to talk about the gameplay.
Like it's usual now, ATB makes a return, and it works the same, we are back to 4 player characters and there's a new addition, the trance status, which replaces the limit break system.
When you take and deal damage the trance gauge fills up and when it reaches 100% your character transforms, this gives them new abilities and generally makes them stronger.
Although it is neat, I don't really like that it activates automatically, most of the time it will activate on random encounters where they don't make a significance, and if it activates right before a boss fight it'll take extra time to fill all the way, making trance extremely situational and not something to rely on.
Every other aspect of the fights is more or less the same as it's been for a couple of games now, you wait until your ATB gauge fills up and decide what to do, and like past games magic still works the same, you can decide to use a spell on 1 enemy or on multiple by pressing a button.
What is different is how characters learn skills, which is very unique to this game.
The skills come from equipment, every piece has skills that can be learned, though the character has to be compatible with the skill.
To have the skill you have to actually equip it, and each one has a cost of gems, which you get more of as you level up.
If it ended there it wouldn't be that different from how Materia worked, but what sets it apart is that you can permanently learn any skill.
At the end of every battle you earn AP points, which go into mastering the skills you have equipped, once you master them, they are yours forever.
It's a neat system and it allows you to customize your characters however you like while also letting each character be unique in what they can do, which I appreciate.
Another mechanic in the game is the ability to combine equipment in specific stores.
This nets unique equipment with unique skills that are not able to be obtained any other way.
If you happen to have the required ingredients you can get a way stronger armor or weapon than you could get in other ways, with the advantage of learning good skills.
Though I wish some of the equipment wasn't missable, so if you play it try to check every equipment store for stuff you might not have yet, and don't be afraid to buy repeated equipment.
Some of the strongest equipment can be entirely missed, along with some skills, which kinda sucks if you want to get all the skills on all the characters.
While I'm at it I also want to mention that the difficulty in general is very accessible, it's very well balanced, and the superbosses are quite challenging, and even if you decide not to tackle the superbosses, the final boss is quite challenging without being unfair.
In the Playstation 1 version of the game, there's an issue I do have with the gameplay, and that's the battles taking too long.
You might not think it's a gameplay issue but the length of most of the animations messes with the ATB system and how it works.
Some animations are so long that while the animation is playing, every other character filled their ATB gauge already and is waiting for their turn to act, it also messes with how some bosses attack, they have higher speed stat so it's natural they would attack more, but with how the system feels stuck waiting for the animations to play, it more or less feels like they are getting way more turns than they should, it's hard to put into words.
Just for reference, this is how long a fight against a single enemy can be with the default game speed, just as it was on the PlayStation 1.
If this ATB worked like how it worked in older Final Fantasy games, with all the gauges pausing every time an animation played, I wouldn't have any issue with the gameplay, besides feeling battles take too long, which they already do.
This general slowness also discouraged me from willingly starting random encounters when I played the original version, and only really playing through the absolutely necessary encounters.
There's also the introduction to every fight, as if it was the first time you saw the battle arena, it might not seem like much but it takes so much of your time as you progress through the game.
This isn't an issue on new versions since there's is both a speed-up option, a skip battle intro option and an auto-battle option, I replayed the remastered version and it's such a better experience compared to the Playstation 1 version, it's definitely the way to go.
The past six paragraphs or so don't really apply on this version, except maybe only the bit about the ATB not behaving like in olderFinal Fantasy games, but that's a nitpick I have with every single game doesn't behave like that.
Just for comparison, this is how fast the same battle can go in the remaster.
The music is, as usual, very good, with a lot of memorable themes, the graphics are outstanding for a PlayStation 1 game, for the longest time I thought this was a PlayStation 2, the prerendered backgrounds are very good and the models themselves have a lot of detail.
The visual style is also more animated than the previous 2 entries, the designs really stand out and are absolutely memorable.
On top of Vivi being the most handsome guy we also got another peak design in the form of Freya, take a look at her please.
So yeah, in general, this game is great, I do have some grievances with the missable weapons and skills, but that's almost to be expected from a Final Fantasy game at this point, to have missable things, and it's not that much of a problem if you consult some guides for missables.
So don't be afraid to try this Final Fantasy, it is not only one of the best places to start, but it's one of the best Final Fantasy games out there, if you want a good RPG this is definitely a game I would recommend.
We finally arrive at the infamous Final Fantasy 8. Before I played it, I was under the impression that it would be the worst Final Fantasy game in most aspects, but the reality is more complicated than I expected.
Like, no doubt this game has very obvious problems you can't just overlook, but behind all of the problems there were ideas that could have been executed better and would have resulted in a much better game, I like the base ideas of this game a lot, but it misses the mark is such obvious ways it's kind of sad.
This game has the most complicated plot so far in the series, with the most reveals out of any game for sure, but I'll try to keep the summary just to the starting incident.
You follow Squall, a student in a military school called Balamb Garden, as he is about to undergo a field test to become a SeeD, an operative that does jobs for people and organizations from various parts of the world that commission the garden to do so, with the garden acting more or less as a mercenary group.
The field test turns out to be a mission to protect a kingdom called Dollet, from an invasion from the republic of Galbadia. Squall's rival, Seifer, is assigned the captain of his team, consisting of them both, and Zell, a hyperactive martial artist, Squall and Zell follow orders, but Seifer decides to act on his own, forfeiting his chances at passing the test.
Squall and Zell pass the test, alongside a transfer student called Selphie, and they are immediately assigned on a mission to aid a resistance group called the Forest Owls, who oppose the Galbadian occupation in the city of Timber. it's in this mission that Squall and his team learn the true nature of the Galbadian army and their recent hostilities.
So the plot in this game is kind of all over the place, even more so than in Final Fantasy 7, there are a lot of early mysteries that make the game very confusing on the first pass, and there's also a lot of unsatisfying answers to these mysteries and reveals that don't quite make an impact.
But even if I have a lot of issues with the game's plot, it does still have good moments and character interactions, with some flashback scenes being my favorite parts of the game, and the character pairing being actually genius in my opinion.
Squall is a lame character, he is ultra-serious and doesn't communicate properly with people or let them know how he is feeling, which contrasts with how unserious the rest of the main cast is, with some of them regularly making fun of him for putting such a tough exterior, so on the surface I do like the characters a lot, but it's towards the end of the game and with the numerous reveals that they kind of muddle the relationship between the characters and makes things complicated for no reason.
The same criticism goes for the plot in general, there are a lot of unnecessarily complicated things in it that make it less compelling than it could be. Most of the ideas are actually very interesting and if done well, this could have been one of the better plots in the whole series.
Not only do I think the plot is flawed, but the gameplay also has its fair share of flaws.
Once again, the main battle system is the ATB, with 3 characters active in your party at most, just like in Final Fantasy 7.
The limit break system is back but with a big change, instead of limit breaks having a gauge that fills as you take damage, when you hit around 30% health you will have a chance to use your limit break, the lower your HP is the higher the chance, making them a matter of luck instead of something consistent, through most of the game anyway.
Instead of learning magic you collect it and equip it to your characters, each can have a maximum of 100 copies of any spell, and upon casting the spell you use up a copy as if it were an item, MP is not a thing on this game.
The big systems this time are the Guardian Force system and the Junction system, the Guardian Forces, shortened to GFs, are summons you can equip to your characters, you are free to use the summon on every fight as many times as you want without using any resources, also characters can equip as many GFs as they want.
GFs can level up by gaining EXP at the end of combat, dividing the EXP the character gained by the number of guardian forces it currently has equipped. GFs can also learn new abilities by gaining AP at the end of combat, which is not divided like with EXP, everyone gains the same amount of AP.
One type of GF ability is being able to Junction a spell to a certain stat, boosting the stat considerably, different types of spells boost stats by a different amount, and each copy of it a character has increases the stat by the same factor.
The stats you can Junction vary from GF to GF, so you need to equip multiple on every character to be able to Junction most stats at the same time.
Another GF ability that only a few have is being able to transform enemies into cards, the lower the enemy's hp the more likely they will be transformed into cards, also enemies transformed into cards won't give you EXP, but they will give you AP, the same goes for enemies turned to stone.
The purpose of these cards is to play a minigame which I'll describe later, and to transform into items and spells with other GF abilities.
Finally, there's a command called Draw to steal spells from enemies, the spells you can steal depend on the enemy and the level of said enemy, the amount of spells you draw also depends on the user's magic stat and no more than 9 spells can be drawn per character on one turn.
That was a lot, but it was needed to explain it all to properly explain my issues with the general gameplay. As you can notice, everything links back to the Junction system and the GF system, and to me, the weak link of it all, that makes the gameplay be frustrating and grindy, is the fact you lose spells when you use them.
Spells are tied to your stats, so using spells that are junctioned immediately reduces your stats, so right away you are discouraged from using your spells, not to mention that to even get good stats you need to grind for the spells, so getting to the 100 cap for a spell takes longer if you are using them in between you grinding for it.
The grinding itself is also quite slow, forcing you to spend several minutes on a single encounter to max out on the spells they offer. In some situations, you can't even replenish your spells due to you getting them from a boss fight or card and item synthesis, and these stronger spells rarely come up on random encounters, so these stronger spells are even more of a no-go and should be limited to only junction to a stat.
All of this makes using magic in combat feel like something that should be avoided, and to only rely on your normal attacks or GF summon, which makes the battles stale, not to mention the summon animations are kind of long, the draw command also can immediately cast a drawn spell, making it not cost anything and letting you continue with your arsenal maxed, but you are limited to the spells the enemies have, which most likely they will resist, and when you cast spells in that way they are considerably weaker, so it's not even worth it most of the time.
The game also punishes you if you play the game as if it were a normal RPG, leveling up shouldn't have a negative connotation but in this game it does, leveling up not only increases your level but also increases the levels of the enemies you encounter, meaning everything grows stronger alongside you, so ideally you actually want to avoid leveling up.
To avoid getting EXP you need to either turn enemies into stone or turn them into cards, which adds an annoying layer to the combat, not every enemy is susceptible to being turned into stone, but turning them into cards can be very tedious, you need to be careful to not be so strong that you kill the enemies in one hit, but also deal enough damage to make them close to death, and then have luck on your side so they actually get turned into cards.
This makes the gameplay loop boil down to:
Holding back against random enemies.
Spending minutes drawing their magic if you don't have it already.
Turning them to stone.
Attempting for minutes at a time to transform them into cards if you can't turn them to stone.
Checking if the cards can be turned into a strong spell or item that can be transformed into a strong spell.
Not using the cool spells because they are more useful being junctioned to a stat.
And repeat endlessly.
And like I mentioned, most of the frustration is because spells are lost when used, it would still be frustrating if that wasn't the case because of the leveling system, but at least you would be free to experiment in battles without worrying about your stats and having to replenish used spells.
The leveling situation is also the reason limit breaks are useless unless you are fighting a boss, using them on normal enemies will just make the game harder so there's really no point, and even on bosses it can be easily abused. Because there's a random chance you will get to use it when your hp is low, you can constantly press the change character button to reroll that chance to guarantee it every time, or use a late-game spell that lets you do them no matter what, an exploit that wouldn't exist if the gauge worked like in Final Fantasy 7, and even if the exploit was not a thing, depending entirely on luck to unleash your best attacks feels lame to me.
This shows the reluctance of the Final Fantasy team to reuse concepts and polish them, they always want to add a new gimmick, which is respectable, but it sadly means they almost never get to polish already established systems, and in this case, with such a flawed, but interesting system, it's sad to know it was never picked up again.
There's also the card minigame, each monster, and all major characters have cards, and each card has a number for each side, the way the game is played is on a 3x3 board, with a player randomly selected to go first playing a card wherever they want, followed then by the other player, if upon setting a card, it touches an opponent's card, the game checks if the number in the side of the card that was played is higher than the side of the card it touched, and if it is the card is flipped, changing its color to that of the player that flipped it, this goes on until all 9 spots on the board are filled.
Upon victory, you can pick one of the cards you flipped, but there are special rules in different parts of the world, which you can then spread to other parts of the world, which is a confusing process to me, but it can make winning cards way faster, there's also some special rules to the game itself that can also spread.
It's a fun minigame, but the reward being cards links it back to the Junction system, which ultimately means it's an alternative grinding method, one that doesn't require you to fight at all, and if you spread rules correctly it transforms into the most efficient grinding method, which makes me feel conflicted about the game even more, a minigame being more rewarding than the actual main game is just bizarre to me.
But after all this criticism it doesn't mean the game can't be fun, bosses can be very fun, if you ignore trying to steal as many spells as possible from them, and the final dungeon is definitely the best one out of all Final Fantasy games I have played so far, dungeons are not the series' strength but this final dungeon is very good indeed.
Also if you asked me I would say this game deserved a remake more than Final Fantasy 7, not because this is a better game, it definitely is not, but because the amount of improvements they could have made is far greater.
If spells weren't used up when casting them it would immediately be a better game, if they still don't want an MP system it could be replaced with spells having a cooldown to avoid spamming, and to make random encounters not tedious they could limit the number of spells that can be drawn to just a few, making progression feel more organic rather than a grind-fest.
But yeah in short, this game is as bad as I expected and at the same time way better than I had expected, parts of the plot really stuck with me and I did have fun sometimes with the gameplay, next time I play I will be using the built-in cheats to max out spells I get, which will make the gameplay so much better to me, and will let me experience the moments I liked without it being a chore to get to them.
As for if I would recommend this game, I would only do so if you already have played most Final Fantasy games and want to see something different in the main series, you could appreciate what it tries to do with its systems but you really need to have tempered expectations, at least it is very likely you could like most characters, so that's something you could look forward to, but if you wanted me to recommend a really good game, this one isn't it.
This is the game that got me into trying Final Fantasy games in the first place. It is often regarded as one of the best RPGs of all time and deemed so important by Square Enix that they made the remake trilogy.
It is by far the one Final Fantasy game most people know about, and also the most talked about, and as the contrarian I was back when I heard of it, I had to give it a go, but not without having a big bias against it.
This time I came back to it with an open mind, and while it was way better than what I remembered, I still find issue in people calling it one of the best ever, but more on that later.
The plot is what I criticized the most the first time I played the game, but I have to give a brief summary of it first.
You play as Cloud, an ex-soldier acting as a mercenary for a group called Avalance, an eco-terrorist organization trying to sabotage the energy corporation Shinra, who are using the vital energy of the planet as an energy source, slowly killing it in the process, with more threats popping up along his journey.
I really don't want to go past that because 1) spoilers and 2) the main focus changes so much from one moment to the next it's really hard to make a summary without it being a summary of half of the game.
Overall, I like the theme of the game a lot, it being the preservation of nature, it really drives it home in showing the consequences of excessive industrialization and how not only does it affect nature but also the people.
In the past, I thought the plot was confusing and nonsensical in some parts, and even though it can and does get confusing, it's not nearly as bad as I remembered.
Other than that I do feel like the characters could have used some more work and fleshing out, there's a point where some characters just stop getting lines or have close to no development, the way the game handles the events hurts it too in my opinion, with almost always your benched party members not being present for plot events inside dungeons.
I think the only point where I haven't changed my mind that much is with the main villain, I do still feel like Sephiroth is a bit flat when compared to other characters in the series, it does a good job at being intimidating but it doesn't really go past that for me, which could be said about most antagonists in the series, the antagonists are not the strong point of Final Fantasy games.
But in general, I think the plot works, it has some very good moments, and I only wish there was more dialogue and interactions between the characters, something I think almost all of the games in this series need.
The character design is great, this is probably the best designer job Tetsuya Nomura ever did. Tifa and Aerith both look like archetypes of female characters but their characterization subverts that expectation pretty well, Sephiroth's design is also iconic, it's probably the most visually interesting villain for me this far, after Kefka, though Kefka only applies if you look at this concept art or illustrations.
But the meaty part of this game is the gameplay.
You guessed it, ATB comes back, and it works basically the same as in the previous game, your party size is now 3 characters as opposed to the 4 we had in the past 2 games, probably because of the deep character customization the game offers, but I will explain that later.
The unique addition in this iteration of the battle system is the limit break system.
Every character has a gauge that fills by a small amount every time they suffer damage, and once it's filled the attack button changes into a limit button, which allows you to unleash a very powerful attack, or in some instances, a pretty strong buff for your party.
There's 4 levels of limit breaks, with 2 limit breaks per level, mostly. You can only have one limit break active in a battle for any character, and the way to unlock higher level limit breaks is either to defeat a certain number of enemies or use a limit break multiple times, with the final one being locked behind a sidequest most of the time.
The system is fun, if a little broken in most situations, you are able to carry over the progress of the limit break bar to the next fight, which if it is against a boss, you could wait until all of your party members have their bars full, and then avoid using the limit break until you reach the boss, which is doable if you have magic or special skills equipped to avoid using normal attacks for damage, and then blast the boss with limit breaks, chopping down a big portion of its HP in the process, but the downside is that you stop grinding limit break uses for the next unlock.
But I don't think it is necessary to use that exploit, since I feel like this is one of the easiest games in the series, not including the super bosses, I never really felt like I needed to either change up my strategy or grind.
The other core system in the game is very flexible enough, the materia system, this is what makes the gameplay stand out and at the same time what can make it so easy.
So characters in this game don't have unique characteristics between each other, only their limit breaks, stat spread, which isn't that different from character to character, and whether their weapon is ranged or not, all the skills come from items called materia, which you equip on your weapons and armor, each weapon has materia slots, and they vary from weapon to weapon, with some having paired slots, where some materia can react to each other.
What materia does varies from type to type, represented by a color, green materia allows you to use different types magic, blue materia can be paired with other materia for different effects, yellow materia gives you new commands, purple materia gives buffs or stat increases, and red materia is used to call summons forth.
Equipped materia can also level up, each level unlocking a new spell, strengthening the effect or increasing uses of that materia, it depends on the type. Also, when a materia reaches max level, you get a level 1 copy of the same materia, which is the only way to get more than 1 copy of some rare materia.
This is the most flexible customization system in the series so far, every character is able to do anything as long as you have the materia and enough slots in your equipment, but I do feel like it makes the characters feel not very special.
Having their only unique characteristic be their limit breaks and weapon range, makes it so the best characters just boil down to who can deal the most damage with their limit breaks, and even if every character is viable, allowing you to beat the game with any combination, I wish it was a bit more like Final Fantasy 6, with characters having actions unique to them, on top of the materia system.
But overall, this is a very good game, if I were ranking all of the main Final Fantasy games I would place it right above the middle, personally.
While it has one of the most solid plots so far, it feels very incomplete in the character department, with Final Fantasy 6 being able to explore more than double the characters while also providing them with arcs and different interactions.
While it has one of the most flexible systems, the difficulty is way too low to truly take advantage of it, even with sub-optimal combinations every main boss is very easy, to the point I never felt the need to use attack spells, normal attacks are the fastest way to win almost every time, and with the limit breaks and you being encouraged to use them as much as possible, a lot of fights pose no threat.
If I could change something about the limit breaks, it would be the bar not carrying over between each fight, and instead starting from 0 every time, and changing the conditions to unlock higher level limit breaks, a sidequest or normal level progression would be better than grinding in my opinion.
The gameplay in general is pretty good regardless of my issues with it, but the dungeon design is quite lacking, probably the worst in the series so far, to be clear, they all look very good and memorable, but there's nothing besides going from point A to point B in them, barely any side paths or puzzles.
Something the game does have going for it is that it has quite a lot of memorable places, setpieces, and minigames that break the normal flow of the game, from the presentation of some areas to the density of NPCs and things to explore in some towns, I think out of any Final Fantasy game so far, this one has the best towns, it makes the places feel more real and the NPCs help flesh out the world a bit more.
So while this game does a lot of stuff very well, the moniker of the best RPG ever still bothers me, not because it's not good but because it makes a bunch of people settle for this game and not look beyond what less popular RPGs have to offer.
They might not have as much iconic imagery but there are games with better gameplay, better plot, better characters and so much more, maybe not with everything at the same time but with settling for one game you can't really visualize what a much better game it could have been with small improvements, like adding more dialogue, adding interactions, finishing character arcs, or making dungeons more than pretty hallways.
I understand very well why so many people like this game a lot, but all I want to say is that I wish more people gave more games a chance because while, again, this is still a very good game, people are missing out on a lot of different experiences the RPG genre has to offer.
This is the Final Fantasy game I was looking forward to the most, besides the near-universal praise VII gets, this is the other one that is considered the best in the series, and while I thought VII was kinda over-rated (more of that on its own review), I was really hoping VI be as good as people claimed it was, and for the time it was released, it probably was true.
There is a lot to talk about when it comes to this game, so I'll try to describe some part of the plot first.
The game opens by offering some exposition, 1000 years ago a war known as "the war of the magi" left the world in complete disarray, eradicating magic from the world completely.
In the present, steam engines and gunpowder run the world, but the Gestahlian empire is trying to revive magic to enslave the world.
We now meet our initial protagonist, Terra, who mysteriously can use magic and is being held captive by the empire thanks to a mind-control mechanism on her head.
She is being taken to a village in the north, where an important objective for the empire is being guarded.
After arriving and finding what they were looking for, a mysterious creature trapped inside ice, Terra reacts to it. Both of the guards disappear in a surge of magic, and Terra is left unconscious.
She wakes up in the house of a resistance member that is fighting the empire, but she has no memories of her life, a side effect of the mind control mechanism.
The resistance member tells her that she won't be able to exit the village normally, as the villagers saw her with the soldiers, and she is now thought of as an enemy, so she will have to use the caves around the village to escape.
He also sends another resistance member to assist her shortly after she leaves, who meets up with her to lead her into the resistance base, and that pretty much sets everything in motion.
This is the game that really steps up the storytelling, the whole first third of the game is still, in my opinion, unrivaled by any other Final Fantasy game.
The game keeps on introducing characters, raising stakes, and even showing you multiple perspectives on the events going on.
There is a point where the group of characters you formed gets separated, and you are able to decide which side of the story you want to see first, and the game doesn't skip on what the rest of the cast does, and when you finish the scenario you picked, you pick the next one.
All the while, characters interact with each other at every step of the way, showcasing their personalities and relationships.
It also goes the extra step and tries to give characterization to the main villain from the very start of the game.
Kefka is, in my opinion, the first truly great villain in Final Fantasy, and is still to this day one of the best the whole franchise has to offer.
The game establishes his personality traits from the moment he enters the screen, and it's always entertaining to watch him do his deeds, despite still being kind of a just evil guy, he had way more personality than any of the villains that came before.
The game also boasts a whopping 14 playable characters, each one with a unique gameplay gimmick, personality, and relationship with multiple characters.
However, as much as I appreciate everything it did with the plot, it isn't completely perfect.
While the first third of the game, as I mentioned, does everything very well, after that you are pretty much free to pick what party you carry for the rest of the game, with the option of multiple points of view not returning.
This is a problem because there are multiple times when the characters get separated and this could have helped to flesh them out and the overall plot more.
But besides this, interactions between characters slow down dramatically, being restricted only to specific plot points, and even then, quite a lot of dialogue after the first third is replaced by generic dialogue that anyone could say, to the point the text boxes don't show the portrait or name of the character talking.
All of this is alleviated a bit in the last part of the game, and even then I have some grievances with that last third too.
For example, for things I won't mention for spoilers, the party gets separated and you get your characters back one by one.
There are situations where you will have a character with an important relationship with another one you are trying to recruit back, but they won't say anything for the whole time you are trying to get them back, it feels like a missed opportunity.
And I know that specific dialogue for every possible party configuration is too much to ask, and situations where character-specific combinations neat more dialogue already exist, but I also have problems with these, if you don't know said combinations you will be missing out on some character development.
I feel like if they restricted the player to specific parties through the second third of the game, like in the first third, the situations could have led to more concise character development and interactions, and even if they didn't, simple but clearly characterized dialogue would have helped a lot too.
I mean, what we get is already way above basically every other game on the SNES by that time, and it's pushing the limits of its original console at every turn, but I am only trying to say that I think it could have been even better in that aspect, but they had limitations.
With the plot review out of the way, it's finally time to talk about the gameplay.
The description of the base combat will be short, it continues what Final Fantasy 4 and 5 started with the ATB, characters wait for their ATB bar to fill before it's their time to act.
A change made from Final Fantasy 5 is that bars keep going even when a character is making an action, making battles take slightly less, but in my opinion, it's at the cost of making turns feel inconsistent, as some animations will take longer, they will fill both the enemies and allies ATB bars, technically reducing waiting, but also making fast-acting characters feel less important, but to be completely fair, this is almost a non-issue on this game, later games are the ones that take it too far, at least in my opinion.
Outside of this extremely small nitpick, the other changes made to the game are mostly how characters work.
Each character has their own special skill, Locke, the thief, is the only character with the stealing skill, Edgar is the only one who can use machines, which lets him do different things, Sabin is the only one who can use martial arts that are inputted by pressing button combinations like in a fighting game, and the list goes on.
This makes every character feel special in their own way, but also, later into the game, the characters can equip items that let them learn magic, which not only lets you personalize characters with any magic you want, but some of these items also give bonus stats on a level up, allowing you to personalize characters even further.
And like the whiny loser I am, I have a problem with this too.
The concept itself is very fun, the problem comes with the fact that you get these items pretty late into the game, and the ones that give better stats boosts are even further into the game, closer to the end.
This creates a limited amount of levels that a character can enjoy getting bonus stats, so if you did any amount of grinding for any reason you will be missing easy bonus stats.
It isn't THAT big of a deal but I wish it worked in a different way, like every character having an independent level for that item, making bonus stats impossible to miss.
Even with that, it's a cool system to mess around with, being free of letting almost any character learn whatever spell you want might make it sound like every character will feel the same at the end of the game, but they still have their unique gimmicks, so they will never really feel the same.
Besides plot and gameplay, I also have to mention the graphics and music.
Visually the game is excellent, the game is able to create some amazing imagery, to the point it's hard to believe they were made for the Super Nintendo, like really, some bosses look stunning, and there are set pieces that are very memorable.
And then there's the music, which is some of the best the whole Super Nintendo had in its lifetime, there are SO MANY great songs that never get old, some that you only hear once but stay with you for a long time, after experiencing the game I was left with so many songs I will no doubt add to my music list on Youtube. Specifically, the regular boss theme is so catchy to me, despite being only a 1 minute loop, I was legitimately overjoyed every time the song came up.
The music is just excellent, I can't find other words to describe how good it is.
All of this criticism I made to this game come out of love, because I can only imagine how much better both the plot and gameplay could have been, at least to my whiny standards.
It's in cases like this when I wish remakes only consisted of tweaks to the gameplay, and some little rewrites to the plot, and only the visuals would be the thing that is upgraded, instead of a big change to the game in every aspect, when sometimes the initial charm gets completely forgotten.
But I feel hopeful, now that the Dragon Quest 3 remake is finally out, the team has expressed interest in doing the same treatment to Final Fantasy 6, and considering how Dragon Quest 3 turned out, they have the opportunity to not only make a faithful remake of Final Fantasy 6, but make it even better than it already was, without the limitations the Super Nintendo had, I am super excited and I hope Square Enix lets them do it.
But even as it was when it first came out on the Super Nintendo, it's a game I would 100% recommend, not only is it a classic, it's by far one of the best Final Fantasy games, and honestly one of the better games the Super Nintendo saw on its lifetime, if you could only play 1 Final Fantasy game from the ones I reviewed so far, this one is definitely the one you should try out.
Out of all classic Final Fantasy games, it breaks my heart that this one didn't get a 3D remake like 3 and 4 did. This is one of the best Final Fantasy games and if it had gotten that treatment it would be one of my favorite games ever.
The plot starts with one of our protagonists, Lenna, seeing her father, the king of the kingdom of Tycoon, off as he is heading for the wind crystal, one of many crystals that give the world life. He suspects something must be going on because the wind stopped blowing, and so, he flies away on his drake, but without realizing Lenna left the castle in an attempt to follow him.
Meanwhile, another of our protagonists, Bartz, who I renamed as Baldz, is riding along with his Chocobo, when he hears a very loud crash and goes to investigate.
He meets Lenna, who is unconscious in front of a meteorite, and even closer to it he finds an elderly man named Galuf, who appears to have lost his memory, and only seems to remember that he had the mission to check on the wind crystal, and Bartz decides to tag along with both him and Lenna.
With no clear path to the crystal, they go inside a cave, where they spot a pirate ship that seems fine despite no wind to sail with.
In an attempt to steal it the group gets captured by the pirate gang, they are then interrogated by their boss, Faris, who seems preoccupied by the pendant Lenna is wearing, which is the same as theirs.
After listening to what they have to say they agree to take them to the wind crystal, where they also join the party to see what's going on.
After finally arriving they see the crystal is in pieces, then they see what appears to be king Tycoon, who tells them they 4 are the chosen ones by the crystals, and that they must protect them.
And so the adventure starts.
If it weren't for the 3D Remake of Final Fantasy 4, this game would be the one with my favorite plot so far, but the enhanced dialogue of FF4 3D took its place, this is still a good plot for an RPG of its time though.
While relationships between characters are still kind of simple, they do interact a bit. There's also a lot to discover about each character. We might be lacking the cutscene direction from Final Fantasy 4 3D Remake, but it makes the most of what it has.
There are emotional moments that feel impactful and sequences of events that are quite gripping, and the music adds a lot to these scenes, it's incredible what they were able to manage with the limitations all things considered.
The interactions are still far too little and simple for my taste, but I do appreciate them existing at all, it's definitely a step above all of the previous games.
Other than that, this game has one of the best antagonistic characters from the whole series, and it isn't even the main villain, it's more of a henchman of the main villain.
Not only is he the centerpiece of one of the best sequences in the game, he clearly grows as a character and interacts with the main group a lot during the encounters you have with him, he is definitely more fun to see than the main villain in my opinion, and I am glad he periodically shows up for the rest of the game from the moment you encounter him for the first time.
And that's pretty much everything I'm willing to say about the plot, it was definitely a step in the right direction for the series.
Now moving to the gameplay, it is again an ATB battle system, and it behaves more or less like in Final Fantasy 4, character bars fill over time and when they get full you can act.
I love that the bars stop every time an animation plays, it makes it so much easier to plan your moves, and I feel like this is the best iteration of ATB in the whole series because of the rest of the mechanics it adds.
Outside of turn order the combat is the same, attack, item spells, you can multi-target spells, you know how it is.
What sets this game apart from the others is the Job system, and it's one of my favorites in the franchise.
After you arrive at the wind crystal, the crystal shards give you various jobs, and you are free to assign any job to any character you want.
But also, each class levels up with the AP you earn after combat, unlocking skills for each class, BUT ALSO you can assign an unlocked skill from any class a character has, so the character could be a monk who knows basic white magic, anything goes.
The default class, called freelancer, can equip 3 skills and is also able to equip all equipment types, normal classes are restricted on what they can wear.
The whole system is truly lovely, letting you build your characters from the start while also giving you more classes as you advance on the game is such a fun ride, and you can also create some nasty combos with it, I heavily recommend coming up with disgusting builds.
The dungeon design is more or less what you might already expect from the series at this point, but at least there's a handful of puzzles this time around, which is a step forward at least, I still wish there were more to the dungeons, but that's a recurring feeling in this series to me.
Having said that, this is still one of the most fun Final Fantasy games, the plot is engaging enough and it takes unexpected turns, the new job system is nothing short of amazing, and there are a lot of memorable setpieces.
Out of the first five, this would probably be my top pick for someone starting out.
I can only imagine what the team that 3 and 4 3D remake could have improved if they were able to do a 3D remake of this, I really hope it happens someday, a day when Square Enix decides to embrace old aesthetics without compromising the game, come on it would be cheaper to make than any other game they are releasing, but I can only dream.
Definitely try this game if you haven't already, I will be replaying it multiple times in the future and will keep on dreaming it gets a remake of some kind too.
The first time I played Final Fantasy 4 I wasn't impressed, I played the PSP version, and I thought the plot was way too simple and lame, and that the combat was incredibly easy throughout all of the game, except for the final boss.
I was also still in the phase where I wanted to find flaws in the series to be a contrarian so it's fair to say I was pretty biased at the time.
This time I tried the DS version of the game to change things up, and that was probably the best thing I could have done in this series of replays.
The plot is simple, you play as Cecil, a black knight heading back to his castle after stealing a crystal from a mage village, filled with grief over what he had to do to take it from the peaceful villagers, Cecil starts to doubt the king, but his loyalty stops him from doing anything about it, he is then sent to the summoner village to deliver a ring, alongside his childhood friend Kain, a dragoon, who is also starting to doubt the king and his actions and wants to support Cecil as much as he can, but they are still loyal to the king.
After a short journey and slaying a mist dragon guarding the entrance to the village they arrive, only to discover that the ring they were tasked to bring carried monsters inside, who immediately start wreaking havoc, setting the village on fire, At that moment Cecil swears that he will stop his king, as his actions are unjustifiable.
The plot remains mostly the same but it feels better to experience in my opinion, the different wording from the PSP version makes lines have a bigger impact, and the voice acting in scripted scenes along with accompanying music make the set-pieces pop up a lot, I got chills on the scene at the start of the game of Cecil looking at the night sky.
Also, some of the scenes I remember being lame are actually impactful on this game, these scenes might have not been as bad as I remember them, but they for sure have a bigger impact in the 3D remake.
Visually it follows the ideas of the 3D remake of Final Fantasy 3, but it refines the style a bit. It also revamps the map layouts a bit, giving the caves and castles a more organic feeling.
I prefer the enemy design on this game compared to Final Fantasy 3 3D remake, they are very well stylized, but I do have to mention that the pixel art in the PSP version is nothing far from delicious to look at.
Something else I really appreciate the 3D remake did is that it gave all of the player characters thought bubbles when you open up the menu, which makes you able to know the characters and their feelings further.
Also as a side note, there's a character named Namingway who offers to change your name, but the game doesn't let you change it, which discourages the Rabbit and makes him travel the world, you can meet him multiple times and the character has a long sidequest that nets a very good reward, so while it's sad I can't name my characters Bald, the character is pretty fun.
The biggest changes in the game when comparing it to Final Fantasy 3 are in the gameplay, it was the first game in the series to introduce the Active Time Battle system, or ATB for short, both enemies and player characters have a timer that when it's up, allows the character to act, this timer is visible through a bar for the player characters, but not for the enemies. Also, depending on the mode you pick, timers will stop while you are selecting a target, item, or spell in Wait mode, or go on no matter what in Active mode.
The system is made to make it feel like battles are taking place in real time, and add a sense of urgency, but personally, I am not the biggest fan of the system.
While you can take advantage of the system, like say, your best attacker's turn is next, you can wait a little bit so another character can act, so you switch to that character to then buff your attacker, optimizing damage, or wait for an enemy turn before healing the whole party, situations where this is needed are quite rare.
How the system feels to me most of the time is: Acting as fast as possible to make the enemy act as little as possible, not much strategy is required, just attack with your best stuff and heal when needed.
At least that's how I felt with the PSP version of Final Fantasy 4, the DS version is considerably harder, and also counting with some additions to the gameplay. Also, as a note, other ports of the 3D version count with 2 difficulties, normal and hard, people say that hard mode is close to the DS difficulty but having both versions at hand I can confirm that the hard mode on the Steam version is considerably harder than the DS difficulty.
The 3D remake follows the same base, each character has only one class, spellcasters learn spells as they level up, and the battles follow the ATB format, the difficulty, like I mentioned, is turned way up compared to the PSP release, you need to pay attention to what enemies do and what their resistances are, or else you can game over pretty easily.
An addition to this version is the augment system, over the course of the game you will get special items called augments, that teach the character you use them on a command, normally exclusive to other characters, or passive skills, but they only have one use so you really need to think carefully on who to use them on.
Also, you can only have 5 actions or passive abilities equipped at the same time, so it doesn't really break the game, but there are some that play well with each other for pretty killer combinations.
There are requirements to get them and you might miss some if you don't follow a guide, but the ones you do get carried over to new game plus, and if you used it on a character, they retain the skill as well, which is helpful since you literally can't get them all on a single playthrough.
And yeah, this game has new game plus, unlike almost every mainline game in the series, the main purpose of it is to get the ideal combination of augments to tackle the super boss, which I didn't get to try because I didn't want to burn out on the game, but I will definitely give it a go in the future continuing from my current save.
So adding this layer of customization to the characters, and with the difficulty being higher, it makes for a good combination to try and come up with both builds for your characters and strategies in the middle of combat.
The only issue I have with the combat has nothing to do with the combat itself, but with the fact that FPS is capped at 15, which I could understand to a degree on the DS version, but this carries over to all ports of the 3D Remake, which makes no sense to me, you will have smooth gameplay on the overworld and in cutscenes, but slow framerate on battles, even the summon animations run normally, and then it goes back to being 15 FPS, which makes them quite jarring. .
Exploration is the best in the series so far, there is still not many puzzles, but the environments feel organic and the game also comes with a map for the dungeons, on the DS the map is always at the bottom, which makes that version the most comfortable to play in my opinion, on other ports you can pull the map up with the press of a button, and if you move while it's up it will become transparent so you can explore while looking at the map. In both versions, the game rewards you with items when you complete a map, which makes exploring really satisfying.
Something else I want to mention is that the 3D remake addresses all of my criticisms of the Final Fantasy 3 3D remake, it properly utilizes the 3D environment to its advantage in all cutscenes, and goes a bit further than that by adding voice acting to important moments, and it also improves upon the original gameplay, both with its difficulty and customization.
The only drawback is, as I mentioned, the low FPS battles, and also turning on auto-battle mode doesn't speed up battles at all, like it did in Final Fantasy 3 3D, I promise it doesn't make the game unplayable, I played it to completion on a DS, but it is disappointing how one of the best Final Fantasy games didn't get the treatment it deserved.
There is a mod out there that increases the FPS in battles for the Steam version, which I will be trying the next time I play it, that is if I decide to play it on Steam instead of DS.
I really can't describe how much better the 3D remake felt to play compared to the original, it has been a while since I played the original but the joy I got from playing it is one I get only for my favorite games, especially with the challenge it had, while at the same time not feeling frustrating.
I know not everyone is down for difficult RPGs so it's nice the DS difficulty is optional in newer releases.
I wish big studios kept making games like this, with this type of graphics, the games can still look appealing without costing the studios millions in high-definition graphics, the many indie games with success stories are proof not every new game needs expensive graphics to be beloved.
So yeah, I really liked the game if that wasn't obvious, so much so that I'm already thinking of replaying it in the near future, it's a highlight of the whole series and I would recommend it to anybody who wants to try a Final Fantasy game, it's a very good starting point, especially if your interests lie in the ATB style of Final Fantasy games.
Final Fantasy 3D is the only version of the game I've played so far, this is the second time I've played it, in fact. But as a remake, I wish it would offer more than what it does.
I remember liking this game a lot when I first played it, like a breath of fresh air after my first playthrough of Final Fantasy 2, which was abysmal, but with this replay, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would, maybe because I wound up enjoying Final Fantasy 2 this time around.
The plot is quite simple, you control a party of 4 orphans who were chosen by the elemental crystals to return the light to them, but this version of the game adds a little bit to it, instead of the 4 main characters being blank slates, they gave them names and unique designs, though they didn't do much as far as their personalities go.
There's Luneth, the first one to come across a crystal, who doesn't have any more major characteristics to talk about, Arc, a meek boy who lives in the same Village as Luneth, Refia, the only girl of the group, daughter of a blacksmith, and who I think has the most going on, but even still it isn't much, and finally Ingus, who I renamed as Bald, a knight who is in love with a princess.
While I appreciate the fact they added characters to the game, I am mostly disappointed because they missed a big chance of giving them more dialogue and character, they have the most dialogue and interactions at the start of the game, but the further you go, they start only giving one-liners every couple of hours.
The same feeling goes for the cutscenes. I like the 3D aesthetic, but they completely fumbled it by not doing anything special for them. They are as basic as they can get, even in moments that are supposed to be tense or action-packed. It's just the models in neutral poses not interacting with anything. It's not a huge deal, but the missed potential really gets to me.
Before I move on to another point, I want to reiterate that I really like the 3D look and how they chose to go for a cartoony 3D style. The original monster designs and the jobs translated really well into this 3D look.
Now for the gameplay, it completely abandoned everything that Final Fantasy 2 tried to do, thank goodness, and instead of completely going back to what the first game did, they created an entirely new system.
You can freely change the character's jobs, and these jobs level up, on top of the characters also having levels, jobs level up like every 5 actions you take in combat, while character level increases with exp.
Each job has unique abilities, on top of changing the stat spread of the character, with the exception of HP.
A job's stat spread will tend to favor either physical skills or magical skills, if a job has high physical attack, even if it can use magic it will most likely not have that much MP or magic power to take proper advantage of them.
I also really like the visual details of every class, they all have unique details for every character.
I like this system, even if I have some problems with it. I like the option of being able to freely change jobs, but jobs that you haven't leveled up first perform very poorly in combat, on top of you getting a stat penalty whenever you change them, which goes away after some encounters.
It is fun to experiment with the unique commands each job has, but I just ended up sticking to the best available jobs at the time, I really didn't feel the need for constant job switches, but whenever I replay the game, I really want to experiment with a different job combination for my party.
I would be more daring with job switching if the penalty for switching didn't exist, it forces you to go out of your way and fight weaker monsters for a while before being able to properly tackle monster from the current part in the game.
I think the penalty comes from how HP increases when you level up, all the jobs change every stat except for HP, it goes up depending on your vitality, so having an active job with high vitality would make you get more HP, and honestly I would just prefer if HP also changed around with jobs, instead of adding a layer of min-maxing that just increases grind.
The dungeon design also felt lackluster. Except for the last dungeon, they are all pretty short and simple, way more so than they were in the previous game. They are serviceable but I wish they had more meat to them.
The game added a zoom-in mechanic I feel is bothersome most of the time, you can find hidden items or buttons by zooming in, but its addition just makes me want to stay zoomed in so I don't miss anything, but at the same time being zoomed in makes exploring very awkward, which is a good way to describe it, it's an awkward mechanic.
Something else I felt ticked off by was that the encounters had a small number of enemies per encounter, at most 3 enemies at the same time, it's not a problem in isolation, but considering the job leveling system, it makes getting job levels slower than it would be with more enemies, it also made the game feel very easy, the last dungeon encounters are the only ones that I felt posed a challenge, and the very start of the game can be a bit rough too.
Something I really like is being able to change who your lead character is, letting you walk around with whoever you think looks the best at the moment, which in my case will always be Refia, there's also a system that makes use of this mechanic.
Mognet consists of a Mog that will deliver letters to you from characters you have met before, they are mostly flavor text with no big significance, but after you get a certain number of them for every character you unlock a short sidequest that rewards you with unique equipment. But it is a bit lame that you have to manually change your lead character to check every time, as all characters have only 1 of the playable characters that will make the letters appear.
It might sound like I am being rough on the game, but it comes from a place of love, I feel frustrated by the lost potential of some of its elements.
This is also a good game to grind while watching something, to get the most out of it, you need to pretty much master every job to get the best equipment for it, and to be capable of beating the superboss of the game (Which I skipped this time around).
The auto-battle option they included really helps make the grinding go faster, but I would still recommend watching something while doing all that grinding, I am happy at least grinding is not required at all to beat the normal final boss, the game is pretty well balanced in that regard.
I definitely want to give this game yet another go in the near future, along with the pixel remaster version to really confirm whether more enemies per encounter enhances the experience for me or not.
I can see myself enjoying this game even more on my next playthrough now that I know how to properly approach its mechanics, and I think it's a safe starting point for anyone trying to get into Final Fantasy, just don't expect a deep plot out of it.
And now, it's time to talk about the dreaded Final Fantasy 2.
I am not going to sugarcoat this, I hated this game the first time I played through it, hated the dungeons, the stat growth system, and the plot, but to be completely honest, I was quite the hateful creature back then, like I mentioned in my Final Fantasy 1 review.
So despite having bad memories of it, I was quite excited to give it another go, and this time I was ready.
So, let's start with the plot.
A group of four friends flee their village after the evil empire attacks, and while fleeing they get beaten up by soldier, with one of them being taken away.
When they come to, they learn that they were rescued and taken care of by the resistance, and with nowhere else to go, the group decides to join them and help them free the world of the empire's control.
It's a straightforward plot, but it's quite a step up from the first Final Fantasy, with action happening as soon as you start the game, and dialogue happening every time a major event happens. And even when it's still pretty simple dialogue, it does add a lot to the game, and it even dares to do some brave stuff for the time in killing some of the characters you meet.
There's also a mechanic added where you can learn words and ask select NPCs about them, it's a little simplistic, and instead of being used for fleshing out the world it's more or less like key items so the plot can go on, but it is still something interesting for the time, trying to add interactivity to the plot itself.
And that's pretty much all I can say about the plot, it was very well done for the time.
Now it's the meaty part, the gameplay.
The base gameplay is more or less the same as in Final Fantasy 1, turn-based battles, you can attack, defend, and use magic, there are some changes, however.
When fighting more than 4 enemies, the enemies past the second row of the front cannot be targeted by normal attacks, but they can be targeted by spells.
Also, spells can all be made to target one or all enemies or allies, unlike in the previous game where spells either targeted one enemy or all of them, this is balanced by the spells being less effective when used for a group.
Fights feel like a natural evolution of the first game's system, it's fun to experiment around with spells, even status-inducing spells, which are way more useful in this game, and I didn't encounter enemy groups that felt unfair.
But despite the praise I have for the combat system, I don't feel the same for the dungeon design.
In every main dungeon, there are sets of doors sprinkled around where only one leads to the path forward, the wrong ones teleport you to the middle of a room where the encounter rate gets turned to the max, meaning you can get up to 3 guaranteed encounters for every wrong guess.
This wouldn't be a problem if it was done sparingly, but the game does it a lot, there are some dungeons that have several floors with multiple sets of these fake doors and they waste so much time.
There's a point where they could be considered like a fun joke by the devs, but there are so many that it feels like getting punished for simply playing the game.
Outside of these doors, there isn't much more of note about the dungeon, there's no mechanics in them, it's just straightforward dungeon crawling, just like in the first game.
When you aren't being messed with just for the fun of it, the general design does work for me. Fork roads have rewards and a wrong turn won't make you lose too much time, it's serviceable, as long as there's no trap doors around.
The world exploration is much less forgiving than in the previous game, if you stray from your direct path more likely than not you will encounter extremely strong enemies that WILL destroy you, and there's no "guard rails" so to say like at the start of the first game, take a wrong turn and you will be sorry.
After every major objective, you have to return to the first town, which if done in a bad way, could have felt repetitive and like wasting time, but the game does give you options to speed up this process with boats that drop you off closer to the town.
This process makes it feel like the group is actually part of that organization and is actually important to it, which is kind of cool.
Now that I am done talking about how you fight and how you move around before fighting, I want to talk about how you actually get stronger in the game.
There are no proper levels for the characters in this game, the only things that level up are weapon and spell efficiency, with every character having their own individual efficiency levels.
Efficiency increases by using a type of weapon or spells, they get exp until they level up, though depending on how strong your enemies are, you might stop gaining efficiency experience if they are too weak.
What efficiency levels do is increase the number of times an attack or a spell makes an effect on the target, making you do more damage with attacks and damaging spells, and making buffs and debuffs more powerful, as well as status effects having a better chance of being applied.
And I like this system very much, it's fun to experiment and try different weapons and spells, and every character can be equipped with whatever you want, so you have the freedom to build your characters in any way you want.
And unlike the first game, you can't pick the class of your characters, the only customizable when you start the game are the names.
You also have to buy your spells, like in the first game, and any character can learn them.
And if this was it, I would vastly prefer this game over the first Final Fantasy.
But this isn't it, there's one more thing I need to talk about, and that's how you gain stats on this game.
If it worked the same as in efficiency levels this would be the end of the review, it would be one of my favorite classic RPGs, and I would be quite confused as to why this game is so divisive, but that sadly isn't the case.
The way you actually gain stats is up to luck, unless you go out of your way to guarantee a stat-up, let me explain.
Attacking, using white magic, and using black magic, all contribute to the chance of increasing a specific stat when you use them, Strength, Spirit, and Intelligence respectively.
The way the game decides if a stat-up occurs, is if a random number is bigger than the number of times you performed any of those 3 actions.
All 3 actions have a magic number, so to say, if you perform them enough times in a single encounter, you will get a stat-up no matter what, 15 for white magic and a Spirit-up, 25 for black magic and an Intelligence-up, and a whopping 45 for normal attacks and a Strength-up.
HP and MP gains operate a bit differently, the lower your HP or MP is at the end of an encounter, the higher the chances of getting an HP-up or MP-up, this doesn't do anything if, say, you start the encounter already at 1 HP, it also takes into consideration your max HP and MP.
There are also other kinds of stat-ups you can get but those aren't as important as these five, so I won't go over explaining how they increase.
This is, in my opinion, a deeply flawed system, first of all, relying on luck just doesn't sit right with me, considering the other ways of getting stronger rely on your repeated actions, the way they decided to make the stats increase feels like going against what they set up already with the efficiency system.
But besides that, it's kind of unfair unless you go out of your way to get guaranteed stat-ups every so often.
Most encounters end after 3 turns on average, less when you get better equipment for the current area you are exploring, naturally, you wouldn't think about only using one of your characters to maximize the chances of a stat-up, so you would almost always have abysmal odds for a stat-up as everyone attacking at the same time makes the encounter end faster.
The problem with HP is that the game only checks how low your HP is at the very end of the encounter, and not how much it decreases during said encounter, meaning that if you are like me, and you don't like your characters being at the edge of fainting, you would, naturally, heal them, crippling your chances at increasing your HP.
It is nice VERY nice that the Pixel Remaster fixed at least the HP issue and it now counts how much it decreases during the whole encounter.
The problem with MP instead is that you don't really use that much MP on every encounter, at the start of the game, sure, you get MP-ups quite often, but eventually, you hit a point where the amount you use per encounter isn't big enough to grant an MP-up, but it's big enough that you run out of MP in a few battles, since MP consumption goes up as the level increases levels.
This means that you have a harder time increasing the efficiency of your spells, and also an even harder time increasing your MP pool, and MP items are expensive in this game for most of it.
So you can see how someone who didn't know how the stat-ups worked back when they first played the game could have such a bad time with the game, but here's the kicker, I actually had a much better time now because I knew how they worked, that's what I meant by being prepared for the game.
After every major objective, I engaged in encounters in a way that guaranteed a stat-up on each of the main stats, a combination of self-attacking, wasting magic, and guarding a lot.
It also didn't take very long, and it took even less time when you get the Swap spell, which swaps HP and MP with a target and guarantees an HP-up and MP-up when used against a weak enemy.
Another adjustment I made while playing was making only 1 character attack when a large group of weak enemies appeared, greatly increasing the chance of a stat-up while at the same time not forcing it.
And to optimize the grinding even more you can equip the rest of the party members with 2 shields and select the attack button, they won't actually attack because shields can't do damage, but it will count towards the likelihood of increasing the attack stat.
This didn't make my characters broken, if anything, the game felt pretty balanced to me, this small amount of grinding made my playthrough very pleasant.
Getting just a bit of the randomness out of stat gaining improved the game by a lot, and I really wish it could have been like the efficiency system from the start.
So yeah, after replaying the game and this time being prepared for it by reading how the stat-up formulas worked, I had a much better time, so better in fact I will most likely replay this game someday, not out of obligation like I did now, but because I want to have a good time.
If you were on the fence about trying this game before because people said it was bad, keep in mind how the stat-up formulas work, and if you feel like you are falling behind, force only like 1 or 2 stat-ups at a time, it will greatly improve the experience, the wiki has all of the formulas.
Or you could play the Pixel Remaster and double the amount of stat-ups you get, it will be most likely the version I replay.
Also if I could give another tip is that you should limit the magic to only one character, the effectiveness of your spells will be much better than if all of your party used spells evenly.
I really didn't expect to change my opinion on this game this much, but knowing how stuff works really makes you able to adapt to the game, I still wish the stat-up system was different, but as it stands, it is still a game I don't regret replaying.
Final Fantasy is a series I was never interested in while growing up, I only decided to check it out because of the endless talk about how Final Fantasy 7 was the best RPG ever made, and when I tried it I did so trying to find stuff to dislike about it.
Because I was such a little hater back then.
After FF7 I also tried other games in the series and I even liked some aspects of them, and also hated some of them, but now it's been years since I played the first few, so I decided to go from the beginning all the way to FFX with an open mind, not trying to hate on the games, and see what I think about them.
So here we are at the start, Final Fantasy 1, I went with the PSP version because I am just not brave enough to play the original NES version, and I was broke to get the Pixel Remaster.
Besides, I always wanted to try this one because I didn't know it existed when I played the GBA version back then, only after I was done with that version I learned about the PSP one.
The plot is very simple, the land is decaying, but a legend speaks of 4 heroes of light that will return the world to a state of balance, and these 4 heroes are the ones you create.
There's not much else to the plot, you have to speak to townspeople to learn of your objectives, and basically, the game progression is that, but repeated over and over, getting stuff to get over obstacles until you arrive at the final dungeon to kick some butt.
And that's why I'll leave it at that and move on to the gameplay.
As I already mentioned, you make your 4 characters, though the only customization you get to make is picking a name and their class.
You get to pick between: Warrior, Thief, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, and Red Mage.
Warriors, Thieves, and Monks serve as physical attackers, with warriors having the best defense, Thieves the best agility, and Monks the best attack.
The White, Black, and Red Mages are your magic users, White Mages specializing in protective and curative magic, Black Mages in offensive magic, and Red Mages having access to both, though not having access to some of the better spells.
And once you create your party, it's exploring time.
By spawning you right under a city and a castle you are encouraged to check them both out before starting to explore the rest of the world, and there you learn a lot of things that direct you on your journey, so it serves as a tutorial while also letting you know what to do next, which is ingenious design for the time it was created.
And even if you don't, the rest of the world is blocked off until you clear the initial objective.
You will quickly learn that you need to purchase spells, if you have any spellcasters, and spells are divided into several levels, with your characters being able to learn only 3 of each level.
This very deliberate limitation forces you to think of what you value more in fights, do you prefer having a wide variety of attacking spells, debuffs, buffs, or healing ones?
Though to be clear I found debuff spells and ailment-inducing spells to be mostly useless since they mostly don't work on bosses, and the normal enemies aren't that big of a threat to waste a turn on debuffing them.
It is still nice you get the option to pick your playstyle with spellcasters though.
The characters that aren't spellcasters are not very complicated, you just equip them with their preferred weapons, or no weapons for the monk, and just have them attack, their strength is their stats, and not their abilities.
The gameplay loop is pretty simple, you will learn from villages around the map of characters or places scattered around the world, and mention certain items that might do something, so your goal is meeting those characters, listening to them, and extrapolating what you might need to give them or what you need to do to advance in the game.
Despite being an elaborate fetch quest, it's quite fun to travel around the world almost aimlessly, talking to every NPC and checking every nook and cranny of the world map, it doesn't feel like a chore to explore it.
The bosses can actually be pretty challenging, though they can be trivialized later on in the game with the right spells, but they can be beaten with any strategy and they don't become too easy or too hard, which is great.
I do have to mention a big difference between this release and the original and pixel remaster, this release uses MP for spells, instead of the magic charges the original and pixel remaster uses.
What this means is that magic is way more plentiful in this game, like waaaaay more plentiful.
The way I saw charges being described is the following: You get a number of charges dedicated to a level of spell, say you have 3 charges for level 1 spells and 2 for level 2 spells, when you use a level 1 spell, a level 1 charge is used, so after that you are left with 2 level 1 charges and 2 level 2 charges.
It's pretty simple, but the amount of charges is quite limited in comparison to the MP you get in the game.
I mentioned some bosses get trivialized with some spells, these are buff spells for your party. Because there's a lot of MP, you can spam them for your best attacker, but with charges you have to keep in mind that if you spam it, you run the risk of not being able to use any spell from that level, which adds more strategy to the game.
Having said this, I can't actually comment on the balancing of magic because I haven't played a version that uses it, I just wanted to let you know that the version I played is very different from the original and Pixel Remaster.
Despite being a kind of simple game overall, Final Fantasy 1 could be considered half of the reason RPGs exploded in popularity in Japan, the other half being Dragon Quest, of course.
What Final Fantasy brought to the table when comparing it to Dragon Quest was flying vehicles and the ability to pick the roles of your characters, which clearly impacted the genre forever, with the flying vehicles being almost like a requirement for quite a lot of RPGs out there.
Also, even the original version of the game had a map, which does wonders in helping exploring the world.
But I did mention exploring aimlessly previously, that totally isn't because when I played it for the first time I didn't know you had a map for 80% of the game and felt stupid when I randomly figured it out.
Anyway-
Something new to the PSP version are the Souls of Chaos dungeons, these are extra dungeons that get unlocked after defeating major bosses, they provide an extra challenge, but I can't really speak too much about them, as I decided to skip them for now.
I will, however, be replaying this version of the game in the near future to do everything I skipped, and I will also play the Pixel Remaster version eventually to really know how much the balance changes with magic charges as opposed to MP.
And finally, all modern versions of Final Fantasy 1 let you save anywhere, which I really appreciate in RPGs.
So yeah, there's no doubt this is a very important game for the genre, and despite its age, I still find enjoyment in it.
It has aged pretty well in my opinion. The new arrangement of the music is very good, and it also has some killer sprite work. I really enjoyed my time with it for the second time, and it is still a game I would recommend to any RPG fan.
This is an RPG Maker game initially released in 2009, and I gave it a try because the more recent games from this dev team, Dancing Dragon Games, seem promising, and you can see a lot of effort in some areas of this game too, but I can't say that my experience was all that positive overall.
The plot is simple, the protagonist, Lorelai, is the real heir to the throne and has been living in hiding since she was a child under the protection of a powerful mage named Winchester, he disappears one day leaving only a note behind, explaining to Lorelai her situation and how she must seek help to overthrow the fake empress.
The idea of the plot is fine but the game loses me in the dialogue, which is very stilted in my opinion, trying to balance both the old english trope and generic anime dialogue, you don't get to know the characters very well outside of their very basic characteristics, and the development of Lorelai, in particular, feels too sudden.
I also feel like the overall mapping is subpar, they mostly use default assets for the maps, which is not wrong in itself, but a lot of the time it feels like tiles were put in without much thought, and it is my belief that even if making custom tiles results in technically worse looking tiles, it really helps making the game feel unique and like a lot more effort went into making them.
Most of the enemies are also default assets, which clash with the clearly custom player sprites, the only custom sprites for enemies are those of 2 major bosses, which are actually well-made, I wish the rest of the game was made of custom sprites, but I can't know the conditions they were in when they made this game.
The place where most of the effort went into was completely overhauling the normal gameplay of the RPG Maker engine, the battle system is its own thing.
Fights are still turn-based, but character actions occur the moment you select the action, and not when all of the actions of the party are selected, like it would normally be in the RPG Maker engine.
MP regenerates slowly after every turn, and 2 out of the 5 characters have a completely unique skill system that replaces MP, one is called Overdrive, which increases the resource you would use for skills as the characters get damaged or use a normal attack, and the other one has a Stamina system, which regenerates each turn, but at a faster rate than MP.
The game also uses a Threat system, depending on how much damage a character deals, the Threat percentage for that character will increase, which is the chance enemies will target said character with their attacks, adding a layer of strategy to the combat.
The item variety for fights is very scarce, you only get access to 4 items, a 50 HP and a 200 HP potion, an item for healing status effects, and a revive item, the game intends you to deal with the resource management of magic without items at all, which is a unique take.
The game has an interesting way of dealing with random encounters, they exist, but they can be turned off near the end of all rooms by interacting with a crystal, which will also give you skill points, making traversing dungeons you already explored for hidden loot much much faster.
There's also a skill tree system, every fight you gain skill points, which you can then use to unlock or upgrade skills, which is quite cool, but it's quite obvious what skills are the best ones, which is probably why there is a restriction on what skills you can get depending on how many skills you have gotten or upgraded.
The system is cool but I feel like I ignored like 80% of the skills, most feel almost useless or they don't make enough of a difference, which brings me to the overall balance of the game.
Most of the game is incredibly easy, you will be using the same few skills to completely wreck all random fights, and even the boss fights won't be much different, the only difference is that bosses will have a very large HP pool, and sometimes you will be running out of MP which will only slow down the rate at which you kill the boss.
The end of the game is quite different. While you will still be wrecking random battles, the last 2 major bosses are quite the challenge, these are also the only bosses with unique sprites by the way.
These bosses boast an enormous HP pool, and use attacks that target the whole party, which invalidate the Threat system completely, the first one of those felt quite impossible to me, but I cheesed it by the end, it was vulnerable to getting stunned so I just stunned it over and over.
The final boss, however, I could not beat, no matter the strategy I tried it was just too hard, to the point I think it's impossible unless you grind for hours, which I also couldn't do anymore because I foolishly activated all the crystals in the final dungeon, which blocked me out of grinding, quite the oversight.
So yeah, while I was not able to finish the game, and I am not willing to replay the whole game to then grind away for even more hours, I like a lot of the ideas the game had, and I am very interested in checking out the sequel, which I will definitely be playing.
I can't recommend this game, but at least I can say I appreciate the work that went into it, I am excited to see how the studio grew between each game.
I'm very excited to review this, this is the third game of Team Ladybug, a developer team I am quite fond of, they made 2 of the best Metroidvanias out there and it might seem weird that their next game following 2 Metroidvanias was a shoot em up, but if you take a look at their 2 previous games, it does make sense.
Touhou Luna Nights is basically a fangame of the Touhou games, a bullet hell series, and Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth had elements that were heavily inspired by shoot 'em ups, specifically, the element change system, which is similar to how Ikaruga works.
So them making a shoot 'em up seems very logical to me.
Another interesting fact is that this is their first completely original game, both of their previous games were based on an already existing franchise, so that makes this game even more special.
I'll start with a brief summary of the plot.
You follow Irina, a young woman who fights to destroy the evil galactic empire that has control over countless planets, she counts with the help of the incredibly handsome Gehnie, an artificial lifeform sent from the future.
He manages to steal the empire's secret weapon, the Drainus, and contacts Irina so she helps him free the universe from the empire.
The plot is fairly straightforward, but the inclusion of obtainable disks scattered through the levels, that contain conversations between characters on both sides of the conflict, help flesh out the world.
Now, moving out of the plot, because I don't want to spoil too much, let's get into the gameplay.
When you boil it down, it's a very classic shoot 'em up, but it has some features that make it stand out a lot, for starters, the whole draining mechanic.
When you enter draining mode, you drain all energy-based projectiles you come in contact with, and when you exit draining mode or run out of meter, all of the stored energy auto-targets the enemies.
It's very reminiscent of Ikaruga, like how the upgrade system is reminiscent of Gradius, but they add their own, very unique spin to the system.
You start with a basic weapon, and each upgrade item will unlock the next equipment you have equipped, it can be a different laser weapon, a fleet of mini ships with different properties, missiles, or even a stat boost.
You can unlock them with special points you get after defeating enemies, and after purchasing them you can equip them wherever you want.
The equipment level you are currently into is displayed in the top middle by the power-up meter, once you get all of your equipment unlocked, any new upgrade items will charge your bombs.
You can also buy hard upgrades for your Drainus, like unlocking more equipment slots, increasing the draining gauge, and increasing the number of bombs.
The upgrades also work like your life meter, when you get hit you lose your highest upgrade, and if you get hit while you have none at all, you lose a life, which I think is quite friendly for players who aren't that good at shoot 'em ups, like me.
But if you want a greater challenge, there is the option to enable 1-hit kills, making the game way harder.
You can also change the speed of your ship whenever you like, making maneuvering in tight spaces easier.
The actual levels are very dynamic, there's a wide selection of enemies, environments, and transitions that keep the level fresh and fun the whole time.
And as a cherry on top, the bosses are extremely cool.
Most of them have more than one bar of HP, and when it depletes they morph into a completely different machine, the music also aids these encounters greatly.
The whole OST is incredible, really.
These are all the first boss!
The artwork is also incredible, it's in my opinion the best artwork in any of their games to date, it's something to admire.
So in a few words, this game has very tight controls, gameplay, upgrade system, and difficulty customizations, while also counting with an incredible OST and artwork.
So if you like shoot 'em ups, it's a must-play, and even if you don't play a lot of shoot 'em ups, it's a game anybody can enjoy due to its difficulty options, it's just that good.
I can see myself getting lost in doing challenge runs on this game, like I have been doing in Touhou Luna Nights and Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, except on this game it's way easier to determine the rules because of the levels of customization.
This is the second Team Ladybug game on Steam, it came after Touhou Luna Nights, which I reviewed.
Despite being interested in it only because it was a Team Ladybug Metroidvania, it did a great job of making me interested in the source material, which I will be reading into very soon.
To explain the plot of the game, first I need to give some context.
The setting is based on a series of light novels called Record of Lodoss War, they date back to the 80s, and another novel was released not too long ago, 12 years after the last one, and this game serves kind of like an introduction to this new series of novels in a way.
The game does give you some backstory, enough to establish its own, coherent narrative, and even without reading the novels, I feel this game can be enjoyed, along with its themes.
Though I would imagine reading the novels and then playing this game would be nice for the fans since you would know all the characters and their backstories.
The plot of the game is pretty simple, you are told there was once a group of heroes who brought peace to the land of Lodoss, and that the only girl in the group, Deedlit the elf, fell in love with a human.
She wakes up in an unknown place, with her memories feeling hazy, she must travel the labyrinth she finds herself into and discover what she is truly doing there.
As I mentioned, you will find several characters from the original series, from protagonists to major antagonists, but despite the game not explaining each character, you can see a theme in Deedlit's journey, and it's one of sorrow and loss.
The game doesn't have that much dialogue, but in the little it has it's able to convey those emotions at the end of the game, there is not much else to talk about in terms of plot, so it's time to talk about the gameplay.
The gameplay is just a bit similar to Castlevania Symphony of the Night, but there are big differences, for one, you can aim in 8 directions for your attack, and you also have a bow you can freely aim.
Magic works similarly as it does in Touhou Luna Nights, but there is one more mechanic that mixes things up, very early on in the game, you get wind and fire spirits, and you can switch between which one is active.
This changes the element of your attacks, and when you have any of them active, you can level up the other one by defeating enemies, by reaching the max level, you automatically regain health while having that spirit active, getting hit removes a whole level though.
Another property the spirits have is that you completely absorb the damage of the same element, which replenishes your MP, which reminds me of Ikaruga in a way.
I like this system very much, at the start I thought it would make things too easy, but you die pretty fast if you are not careful, and the HP recovery rate is not that high to feel like it removes danger completely.
I especially like this system in bosses that use both of the elements, it's very satisfying for me to learn their patterns to optimally defeat them.
The level design is also alright, it's the typical "unlocking an ability or key to progress" kind of design, but it also takes the spirit changing into account, including obstacles that need it to be surpassed.
While the level design isn't as great as in Touhou Luna Nights, it's still pretty good.
Enemies are also pretty standard, what stands out are the bosses, as I mentioned before, they put the spirit changing to the test, and they all have at least one tricky attack that might need some figuring out.
The boss rush has the same issue it had on Touhou Luna Nights though, they have the original health, making it so the first few die in just a couple of hits.
The game has some extra features though, after you complete the game once you can pick a number of modifiers to the game, like always staying on level 1, 1 HP, spirit levels being always 1, or retaining all of your learned spells.
For me, that increases replayability quite a lot, I kind of wish these types of settings were retroactively added into Touhou Luna Nights, these challenge runs in Metroidvanias are very fun to try, and giving you the choice to pick exactly what you want makes me more willing to try one.
And that is pretty much all there is to the gameplay, it's pretty solid overall.
The only stuff left to mention is the graphics and music, and they are both fantastic.
Team Ladybug did a great job yet again, the sprite work is incredible, just like with Touhou Luna Nights, visually the game is eye-candy, though the afterimage of the Deedlit can be bothersome sometimes, you can turn it off if you want.
And that's pretty much it, I heavily recommend this game, even if you never heard of Record of Lodoss war or haven't read the novels yet, I think this game holds up on its own, And if you are a fan of the series already, it will be a very cool experience.
I didn't have any plans to review this game, but after experiencing all of what this game had to offer, I just had to review it.
This game was a huge disappointment, not because it didn't deliver on what I expected, it was more or less on point to my expectations, but it was because of all of the wasted potential I saw while playing the game.
The original Criminal Girls was released on the PSP in 2010 only in Japan.
In 2015 it was ported to the PS Vita as Criminal Girls Invite Only, which replaced some minigames with new ones that featured Live 2D models, instead of static images.
Later in 2017, it was finally ported onto PC, being basically a direct port from the PS Vita version, and at least in my experience, the port has some issues.
For example, there are times when a sound effect will be like 10 times louder than normal to the point even when all the volume in the game is turned off, it will still be heard, it's very weird.
Another thing is that, while there is not a run button, if you are using the mouse for movement, there is a pixel-perfect position where you will move like twice as fast.
I guess they did plan for a run button but got scrapped for some god-forsaken reason, and the only remains are 4 pixel-perfect positions in each cardinal direction.
Also, you are not able to customize the mouse controls, I wanted to map the middle mouse button to the menu, but you are just not able to, if you are playing only with a mouse you need to stand without doing anything for a bit and click on the inventory icon, it's kind of unnecessary.
And I know mice with way more buttons exist, you would be very much capable of completely playing the game without problems with just a mouse if not for that.
And yet another problem has to do with the minigames.
You can't play them with your keyboard, only with your mouse, hence why I mention that mapping more things to the mouse would be helpful.
But also, there is a tutorial screen that appears the first time you try a minigame with every character, and you can't get past it with just a mouse, which is confusing to me.
There are also a couple of minigames that won't work properly, like you will do the right thing but it won't register, it's a pretty bizarre port that failed to take a lot of things into consideration.
But now that we got past the small stuff, let's start with the plot.
You find yourself in a prison, where a girl named Miu, as your instructor, tells you that you will be in charge of reforming girls who were on the path to becoming criminals, but died before turning into one.
Miu calls them delinquents, and the reformation program lets these delinquents redeem themselves by climbing the Hell's Spire, where they will be challenged in multiple ways.
After convincing the girls to follow you, you go into the spire to receive some training, but there seems to be something going wrong, monsters called convicts, who were delinquents but failed to reform, seem to be running amok on the lower floors of the spire, where they are not supposed to be.
Miu tells you to stay put, and that she will scout ahead to see what's going on, but after some time of her not returning, you decide to follow her anyway, starting your actual climb of the spire.
With a plot like this, they had a lot of opportunities for cool stuff, they had the chance to:
-Explore each character and why they ended up there.
-Show how their sin relates to their character.
-How that affects how they interact with each other.
-A progression from the start of the game of the characters learning from their mistakes and effectively reforming.
-Told us how the characters died earlier because of their sin.
But they went with the laziest approach possible, the characters feel like they have one dirty secret instead of having deep character flaws, like they suggest is the case.
The sources of conflict throughout the plot are completely separated from how they are as characters, and it's instead because external reasons.
Their sin only gets explored in the late game, and in a lazy way, they pretty much explain it to you, you fight a boss and now the characters learn from their mistake.
It's just very disappointing.
Also as an extra, the way they approach all the roadblocks in the game is very lame, but I'll talk more about it when I talk about the dungeons.
So, because of all the missed chances, the characters themselves end up being not very interesting and quite stereotypical.
But also the world is very flat as well.
Towards the end of the game, it ends up being demystified, and it only makes the world seem sillier
At the start, you are told that these girls, who didn't live long enough to become criminals, but were on their way to becoming one, end up there to redeem themselves instead of going to hell.
No explanation given for the specifics, and it really didn't need that, it's alright.
Then towards the end of the game you are told that a "committee" created the program a couple of years ago and the system is kind of glitching out.
But they don't elaborate on how the whole system was created and who this committee is at all, and it only damages the game in my opinion.
Yet another thing I feel is very lackluster is the main character, it's a blank slate with no personality, only there so the player inserts in them, which is quite a shame, a character with actual personality would have been a good decision to interact with these characters.
But no.
A blank protagonist the players could project into while motivating the girls or when they show any sign of affection towards them would be better, obviously.
That only makes the game even more disappointing.
Moving over to the gameplay though, despite everything, it's kind of interesting.
I want to get the dungeon design out of the way before the combat.
It's very very simplistic, there are no puzzles at all, all fork roads lead into a chest, or to nothing, and there's really not a lot of exploration to be made.
It's all divided into floors, and each floor is pretty much self-contained, once you explore all of it there's nothing left to do there, besides going up.
So yeah, it's kind of monotonous, which makes not being able to run even worse, but at least you can unlock skills that help in exploration, like sending you to the last save point, disabling random encounters, or instantly starting a fight.
As for the roadblocks you encounter, they will always be going from point A to point B without any challenge in between other than the occasional battle.
I really wish exploration was more involved.
now actually getting into the combat.
Instead of selecting the move for every character, each character will recommend you an approach, and you need to select which one you want.
At the start of the game, for example, the recommendations will be stuff like a single character attacking, despite having a party of 4.
After you unlock special moves they will also recommend them.
Early on you unlock a guard command, which is exclusive to a single character, so you need to have it in your party to be able to guard, this does apply to all the party though.
And all of these options pop up in specific situations, like, say you are fighting against enemies weak to fire, if you have a fire skill it's more likely a fire skill will be recommended.
Or say the enemy will do a very strong attack, the guard option will always pop up.
You also don't have to always pick the same option in each situation, when you unlock buffs you can choose to block the big attack or buff the whole party for example.
But as interesting as the system might be, as you can expect, it has some problems that make it not that enjoyable.
The options that you get, in most situations, are not the most optimal you could get.
You could have a skill that defeats all of the enemies in one move, but if the game doesn't feel like it you will waste several turns fighting the enemies.
Also on the harder fights, not being able to decide on a specific skill that might help you out can make the battle very tedious.
Or on the REALLY hard fights, not getting the right skill might make you lose, making it very luck-based.
It is until near the end of the game that you get some items that guarantee the activation of some moves, but these are very limited in quantity.
in my opinion, it would have been way better if these items got introduced around mid-game, and made available for purchase at an affordable price, you could save hours of tedious gameplay with that little change.
And talking about tedious, the pace of the combat is very slow.
The speed at which turns go by is very slow, and sometimes the text is so slow the game needs to wait for several seconds until all the text lines are displayed.
It's another example of how the game was not optimized for the re-release, letting the game stay like that makes it a slog in some of the encounters.
And that's really it for the combat.
As I mentioned before, there's a mechanic in the game called motivation.
Motivation consists of some minigames you have to do to unlock all of the skills for a character, even for unlocking normal attack options, so it's pretty much required to go through them a lot, basically, every time you get money to play them.
And I wouldn't be making a whole discussion point on them if that was it, but there's quite a lot I want to mention about them.
First what they actually are.
These minigames consist of the player engaging in BDSM activities with the girl you select, the first one you unlock, for example, is spanking.
The rules for each minigame are different but it's very similar, a pink or blue icon will appear, and by using the left or right mouse button you will get rid of the icons.
At the start, there's quite a lot of pink smoke, but as you progress on the levels of the minigame there will be less and less smoke to the point there's basically none left
Except for specific clouds that cover very sensitive spots on some girls' bodies.
Another difference between the minigames is the girl's clothes, the pose remains the same.
I personally find these minigames very tiring and almost out of place.
If you like lewd stuff in games that's ok, I also enjoy them on some games, but like, on this game specifically it feels very forced in.
There's no other lewd content in the game outside of these minigames and it's very tedious having to go through them each time you need to get skills, you get desensitized to it pretty quickly.
I also don't appreciate how the younger characters also take part in those minigames.
I see all the complaining about the censorship in the reviews of the game's Steam page, and I really don't get it, is not being able to see a little girl's panties that horrific it ruins the game for you?
Did they even play the game before installing a patch that removes the little extra smoke? Because of course a patch exists, and a bunch of people recommend it in the reviews.
I just don't get it, I feel like all the complaining is very exaggerated
If what they appreciate about the game is neither the gameplay nor the plot and only that lewd part, that feels completely separated from everything else, they got really low standards.
There are plenty of actual Hentai games on Steam that offer way more than just the same pose in different clothes.
And like I said, I have nothing against lewd content on games, but with how minimal the censorship is on this game, and with how little actual lewd content there is, I just don't get the complaining.
I honestly think the game would be better without them.
It would be less tedious, it wouldn't put minors in those sexual situations, and it wouldn't take away from the more serious parts of the game, but that's just my opinion I guess.
So in summary, this game has an interesting premise and gameplay, but it doesn't go far with either of them, the plot always goes for the low-hanging fruit, the gameplay lacks smoothness, the level design is lacking and it needed a lot of extra quality of life stuff.
I really wouldn't recommend it, unless you don't mind playing a not very good game and you got nothing else to play.
This is a game by the creator of Five Nights at Freddy's, it's available for free and it's pretty bizarre.
The game takes place on a distant planet where 5 AIs were sent by humans to run simulations to find out if colonization of that planet was possible.
The simulations were supposed to last only 5 years, but the station lost contact with Earth, so they kept going for many more years than that.
And we control a coffee machine with arms and legs that was included by accident, but more precisely, we control a program that controls the body of the coffee machine.
The original AI for the coffee machine altered this program to fight a virus that has been attacking the simulations.
By going into the rooms where each AI is located we can enter their simulations, and just before entering the simulations, you can already see the very crazy designs these AIs have, all of the exposed wirings and tubes make them look creepy and weird and I kinda like that, though they also look very goofy.
It's inside their simulations where the actual gameplay takes place, you are still a coffee machine even in the simulations, but in them, you can jump and shoot.
Inside the simulations you will find enemies, honestly most of them are pretty harmless, they also drop egg-like things that fill bars on top, I'll talk about them in a bit.
You can also find friendly robots that sell stuff to you, though what they sell is not very clear at first.
Your goal on the simulations is pretty much to find the AI inside of them, so the coffee IA can locate the actual virus so you can fight it.
But before I get into those fights I want to talk about something else first.
Hidden through the simulations you can also find screens like this, these take you to another layer of simulation, and change the gameplay to a top-down game.
Your goal here is to find a fissure inside of this simulated simulation and fix it by shooting at it, the game is kind enough to tell you about fake walls to look for, as the fissures will more likely than not be hidden behind one of them.
As far as the gameplay for this type of section goes, it's not outstanding, it's pretty slow and it's not challenging at all, you get locked into a fight sometimes when you enter a room, and when you defeat an enemy they drop a bush-like thing that the rabbit following you around eats, and it gives you some money.
However, the rabbit often takes very non-optimal routes that waste even more time.
You can find an NPC inside that lets you upgrade the reach and power of your attack, along with increasing the value of the bushes the rabbit eats, which is by far the fastest way to grind money.
And yes, you do need to grind for money a lot in this game, before you actually fight the virus you need to spend a lot of money upgrading various stats and bonuses so you have a chance to win, as going into a fight without upgrading will lead to a fast defeat.
Completing one of these sections awards you with a conditional, which I'll explain what that is later.
Now it's time to actually talk about the virus fights.
These fights are what all of the game elements build into, the game was trying to go for a kind of calm, creepy atmosphere, and these fights throw all of that out the window.
I liked the concept of them, but the execution is, in my opinion, horrible.
I want to make clear that the part I liked conceptually was the mechanics and not the visuals, they are an attack on the senses, very annoying to look at, and pretty much a hazard for people with epilepsy, so I won't even try to show you how bad they get.
They also completely ruin the mood, from exploring a ruined and decayed place you go into a rave with lasers and music at full blast, but besides that, I really don't like how they flow gameplay-wise.
It's like a final fantasy active-time battle but on steroids, you don't get the mechanics explained to you, so you gotta figure them out for yourself.
I'm gonna try to explain the most important parts.
When your turn comes you get a lot of options depending on how the charge level is, and you can charge on a turn to get more options on a later turn.
You can also see what each skill does by hovering with your mouse, but they don't give very detailed information, I think that all of the buffs and debuffs apply to all of your party and not only to one character at least.
The lower the option is on the list, the more charges it will take.
On a corner, all of your buffs will be displayed, and on top of your characters, the debuffs will be displayed if there are some.
Also, remember the bars on the top of the screen in normal gameplay? They carry over and serve as bonuses, you can also load mini-games with a character once their charges are at their max to get more bonuses.
And yes, they are actual minigames you can play to get the bonuses, but while also paying close attention to the actual fight.
A character has the skill to activate autoplay on the active games so they play by themselves though.
Then on the virus side, you can see the debuffs, and look at the stats of the virus itself.
The energy is just the health, the white bar is when it will act, and the one below is when it will activate a skill that I believe is dangerous to people with epilepsy.
The actual stats are mostly meaningless since you don't know the stats of your characters to compare them or anything.
All you need to know is that they get stronger, and that later when you get the hack ability, there will be a button that will allow you to turn both their strength and defense to 0, but they will still hit like a truck anyway.
The whole thing is a lot, it's gotta be the busiest battle screens I've ever seen, and if not, it's definitely the one I want to see the least because it hurts to look at because of all the flashing lights.
I wish it was like the active battles that paused when it was your turn with any character, you don't get to think properly about the stuff you want to do because everything is going so fast.
And this is especially a problem in the later virus fights, they can KO your entire party in 5 seconds if you don't act quickly enough.
I also wish it didn't hurt to look at.
But that's pretty much what the virus fights are all about.
So all of the game is to prepare you for these fights, after you beat one of them you need to go back to the IA and then find the virus again.
There are 4 in each area, and you can tackle them in any order, though there's clearly an intended order just by looking at stats.
Also, each time you defeat one, the simulation gets a glitched effect that bothers the eyes too.
The way you get stronger is by exploring the simulations, getting money, buying a ton of upgrades, grinding a lot in the simulated simulations, and leveling up.
But this is probably the worst implemented level-up system I've seen ever.
There's no exp or anything, but there is a night and day cycle, during the day you get to explore simulations and fight the virus, but at night you get to explore the desolated planet.
You exit the station and walk in a straight line to the left, sometimes picking up random items, and these items you gift to the AIs to give them one level up.
The catch?
You can only bring 2 at a time, you need to manually walk to each of their rooms to gift the items to them, then go all the way back to keep exploring for more items, and you are limited to 6 items in total per night, there's also some times when it takes forever to find items.
It's just not a good system, it completely halts the gameplay, and you can't skip the nights either, the most you can do is get the 6 items per night, after that, some space invaders clones will appear when you go exploring, and if they hit you time will go faster, it's just a forced slog.
Oh yeah, and because you can't check the character stats, you don't know if leveling up a specific character is preferred or not.
The last thing you can do to better your chances of winning a virus fight is to change something called conditionals.
As you complete the simulated simulations, you unlock more conditionals, they are activated when something specific happens in the fight, and you can select what you want to happen when that condition comes true.
It's a cool mechanic, but with how the fights go, I can't say I ended up appreciating it a lot.
This is one of those games I wish were better because I like a lot of the ideas, but the result ends up being a mess.
The gameplay ideas were interesting, but they weren't executed properly at all, the plot is also interesting, it slowly gives clues as to what is really happening, and it all kinda comes together in the end, but it's still underwhelming.
But even if I think this game wasn't good, I definitely got more out of it than with any FNAF game.
This game is free, but it wasn't always like that, I suppose once FNAF skyrocketed, the creator didn't see any hope in this game picking up in popularity, so it was left alone as a free game.
It was a unique experience for me, but I can't say I recommend it at all, and I kind of regret playing it a bit because of the headaches it caused.
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