Recent reviews by Gender Frame Advantage

I beat this game on PS5 and it's peak, it's by no means a perfect game, but the trilogy is going to go down in history if they nail the ending.

This game is so, SO close to being perfect, it has amazing music, beautiful visuals, and a fun (if tropey) story... the one issue is the enraged status effect. It makes any tanky or support beasts useless and forces you to go full DPS, while I understand where they were going with it "Make them fight all out with limited heals" the healing is too limited otherwise. You get 5 pencils (healing items) at the start of the game, that is it, and the only way to refresh is to trek back to town. Removing the usefulness of two thirds of the games archetypes and over half the abilities is a truly baffling decision and it makes the combat so much worse than it could be. The worst part is that I still love the game, it's fantastic other than that, the music is drop dead amazing, the sound design is stellar, and the world is incredibly fun... just the combat doesn't land due to that one status effect, especially since every damn monster can apply it.

"The guillotine... falls"

Amazing game but ♥♥♥♥ that boss

I adore this game so far, the music is stellar post prologue, the combat is literally just Mario and Luigis, and the story is engrossing with a fun world so far. I haven't beat it but I already can't wait for the DLC.

This game is abysmally short for the size of the map and the depth of the story it so wants to tell, the main story clocking in at just under 25 hours, and has some of the worst writing and characters I have ever had the misfortune of sitting through. Every single line is "Oh wow the Zeniths are going to take over the world!" followed by a few seconds before whatever god awful companion (save for the one armed guy he's fun) makes a quip about "I have just one regret... all this climbing!" It takes what is an otherwise 7/10 game with some meh combat thanks to the enemy projectile spam making the screen unreadable into a 4/10 game that is better to play on mute. It's such a damn shame this was one of Lance Reddicks last roles, what a travesty. The first game had the same flaws, of course, but it was never this bad. One of the only good sections of this game is Ted Faros bunker, and that's because of the reveal at the end and the sheer depravity of that character, it's wonderfully written but one 45 minute mission does not save an otherwise insufferable (if visually beautiful) game.

Also to be clear, I don't hate the characters because like that one consulting company worked on the game and DLC, I'm not some man-child who worships a man so exiled from the industry that he has resorted to grifting on Twitter. I just think the writers were given too big of a main cast to deal with and as such resorted to making them just tropes (Strong leader, drunk goofball, hippie, guy, nerd who's blind to the world, so on and so forth). This appears to be the case because Burning Shores, the DLC, is SO much better since it only focuses on 3 characters, you, the companion, and the antagonist. It is due to that that the DLC is leaps and bounds better than the main game, I mean I actively skipped the second to last cut-scene where a legacy character shows up because they were just so sullied in my mind compared to the DLC characters who I adore.

I love actively discriminating against people who smell by kicking them from my shop the literal second they sit or stand near a table.

This game... is not Final Fantasy. It is a hack and slash trying to be Final Fantasy, but that doesn't make me like it any less. It is an audio and visual spectacle on all fronts, weighed down only by a trope-y story that is still fun, and one truly awful DLC. If your PC can run it, buy it, it's well worth every penny. I do hope that in future they both improve their PC ports so that lower spec systems can run their games (they wont, it's a JP company) and that they change to FF7Re/Rebirths combat system as to at least keep some of the elements that made this series what is was. I know they probably wont as Square has said time and time again that turn based RPGs are dead (BS) but I can still hope.

I'm liking the game so far, its fun and the priming/detonating system in what little combat I've played takes me back to Anthem in the best possible way... however controllers seem to be bugged and have some weird input delay, and the facial animation is truly abhorrent even for BioWare, who aren't known for good facial animations, the mouths especially look pulled right out of Andromeda.

Tentatively, I recommend the game, but this is in progress and can change.

I wish Paracelsus was real so I could have Bonding and Dissolving done to me.

She's a bit better now in S4, but prior her only gimmick was having a bunch of REKKAs.