Recent reviews by UziBunny

TLDR: Cheap, decent and short souls-like, but lacks refinement for fans of the genre. Would not recommend for anyone trying to get into the genre. 6.5/10

It's not a bad game, especially for the price. However its definitely one of those "you get what you pay for" games. The game has a really cool concept with stealing temporary weapons, and I do love the whole medieval plague atmosphere, which is what drew me to the game to begin with. However there are flaws with some of its in game mechanics which can make some fights feel kind of random and not skill based. Especially against some of the bosses, its not clear when you can attack without getting punished, and sometimes it seems like the bosses will start their attack animation in the middle of your combo, but you would be animation locked and have no way of dealing with it. If youre looking to make this your first souls-like, I would recommend against it and go with one of the classics with really clean and well defined mechanics. But if you want something with a bit of challenge that isnt going to take several weeks to finish, then this does the job pretty well.

TLDR game isnt bad, just disappointing how iconic and important to the community this particular final fantasy is. Feels like a better version of 13. I dont think someone would be able to enjoy and finish this game without nostalgia lens.

PROS

- Beautiful, the graphics definitely do the game justice considering how important this particular game is to FF lovers and gamers in general

- Everything audio about this game is just mind numbingly good, from the voice overs to the music, both thematic and environment

- The characters are amazingly well written and all extremely entertaining on screen

-Alot of good systems in the game: menus, materia, weapons, summons, stagger, limits etc

CONS

Pacing
- this is a big one and it impacts almost everything in the game so theres going to be multiple points. Too much of the game feels like theyre trying to stretch out the experience just so they could say players spent X+ amount of hours. We know theyre going to split the original game into parts, but the sheer amount of filler content that just isnt engaging is pretty rediculous

- SO MANY UNNECESSARY CUTSCENES, you climb a ladder, or you kill a mob, and it launches into a cutscene just so they can say "we did it!", everything in this game needs an associated cutscene and can be pretty infuriating. To be fair, you can skip a good portion of it, but then it just feels very inorganic. Plus alot of these lines and interactions can just happen as youre moving around....

- how picky doing interactions could be, hitboxes are pretty small when it comes to interacting with anything, so you'll often times run past, then double back then double back again. So if youre running around and you run into a button, or a merchant or a ladder, youre forced to slow down and line yourself up instead of interacting with it when youre within a certain area. Very annoying if you are trying to move through an area quickly, I found myself running around the chest/ladder I want to use alot because on top of being in the right position the game also takes a second to register that and for the promp to come up. Slows the game down ALOT

- Enemies are weirdly very spongy, some of them just take too much damage for how difficult the fight itself is, and some of the bosses just feel like youre beating a sandbag for half an hour without doing anything technical or dynamic

- narrative pacing is a little bit weird. Minor spoiler alert. In one of the first missions you end up in a motorcycle fight where you trash the other characters bike on your way to a mission, within the SAME night the guy gets it fixed and finds you again for a rematch. Not to mention when he does you're supposedly in hostile territory with a bunch of enemies and they all just stop so you can fight this random guy instead??? I understand back in the day games were limited by the hardware you played on, but narratives like this just feels weird and very out of place, and it happens alot in this game.

Combat
- I honestly hate the combat. I have nothing against action combat per se, the animations look good and the skills hit well.... but its not combo based so you're just spamming attack until your gauge fills up for you to use a skill. The game feels like it should still be tactical turn based with the way you play it. Literally just feels like a better version of FF13, and you know what they say about polishing trash...doesnt matter how shiny it gets its still trash

-Being able to switch characters is a cool idea except all the characters end up playing the same. Its even worse if youre playing Cloud or Tifa since theyre melee characters, you have to be within melee range and attacking (to fill your gauge) to do ANYTHING (items, spells, abilities) and because enemies move pretty dynamically (which is great in an action game) if you use an ability and it misses, it feels even worse. Its also annoying how the mobs will always go after the character youre playing, which makes sense to a degree, but you can never just take a step back or stay on a boss's flank

- target lock isnt very good either, because the enemy can literally move off your screen and your character isnt forced to be facing them so there will be times where you attack nothing, or use your melee skills into nothing even though you have target "lock"

- Aerial combat, is atrocious, its cool to see your character jump up in the air and attack, very anime 10/10, but sometimes the aerial enemy is just out of reach, like beyond a hand rail, and youre just sitting there waiting for your gauge to fill so you can cast a spell

- summon system is REALLY FREAKING COOL, but disappointing. You can only call on the summon when you fight a "hard" enemy. But its pretty arbitrary what the game determines as a "hard" enemy. Multiple times the summon started triggering and counting down when the boss was about to die that I killed the boss before I could get the summon out. Sometimes in relation to the point I made above about aerial enemies, it would start triggering just because the fight drags on so long because I cant hit the enemy. Also never have been able to get multiple summons out in a single fight

- the stagger/limit system is good just seems pointless 90% of the time. Oftentimes the mob will die before you get to stagger them, which means even more rare you get to build up your limit to do that ultimate move, even on some bosses I killed them without ever getting a limit break off.

- switching materia around is pretty cool, but outside of your basic offensive spells and heal spell, the majority of them just go unused because theyre just not impactful enough. Eventually regardless of proficiency, every character turns into this hybrid spell casting but most of the time spamming attack kind of character

To sum up

The game is playable 100% and at the time of writing I'm almost done myself, but I'm finishing the game more because of loyalty and im definitely intentionally skipping content in the back half of the game just to get it over with faster. Too much of it is just meh, and outside of a couple of really well rendered cutscenes, theres not much thats very memorable about this game.

My recommendation comes at a strong maybe. I'm going to try and list all of the pros and cons for me and you can base your decision on that. Overall it was a fun way to pass 2 hours and definitely worth what I paid for ~3 dollars on sale but in no ways is it so good that its an instant recommendation.

Pros
- Very Easy on the computer, very well optimized.
- Creative
- Responsive Controls (I never did something I didnt intend to do)
- Amazing camera work. Even though it has the option to use your mouse or right analog stick to look around the environment akin to any open world game, thats usually very limited. However the camera is more similar to early 3D games like Mario 64 or the first few 3D sonic games where the camera follows you and switches its angle based on where you are. Theres no glitchy back and forth that makes you lose sight of where you're going and overall is done very well.
- Impressive visuals and artstyle

Cons
- The environment can be a bit clippy
- The screenshots definitely make it look better than it actually is. Its by no means a bad looking game and ingame looks very similar to what they show you. Its just a little bit worse. Wasnt a deal breaker for me but I did notice it
- It's actually horrendous to play with mouse and keyboard. Granted they do recommend using a controller but I figured I'll give mouse and keyboard a try for 20 minutes before I used my controller and I hated it.
- There wasnt really anything that captivated me to enjoy the gameplay. It's too short to have a deep story and alot of the gameplay was just simplified platforming and walking around. For those of you looking for a great piece of art from a small studio I'm afraid this isnt it.