Matthew Kennerly

It meets, but doesn't exceed my expectations. AC6 is the giant robot fighting game with all the mech buildings goodness that we know and love from it's previous titles updated for modern hardware... But it doesn't really expand on itself. We are are still stuck in the same sortie based system from the past. Load next mission>build mech>replay last mission>fight your friends. When you pick what your doing from a text based list you don't feel the stakes.

The fact that this game is rated so highly baffles me. I weep for the future of gaming. The battle system assign 1 of 4 buttons to do a different flavor of the same attack. The world is big but seems empty and the story has you on train tracks. The game that can't even be bothered to animate it's cut scenes half the time and when they are you can tell it's low effort skeletons are clonky and move strangely details are sparse. The game uses anime trope after trope to limp along...Bandai spent all their money for this one on marketing and developing purchasable SAO skins. I think the only thing keeping games like this afloat is weeb/otaku blinders.

Lazy. The story is complicated but not complex and uses anime tropes not as a crutch but as a damn wheelchair. 75% of the cutscenes aren't animated. The weapons only have a single upgrade tree. The game's only redeeming quality is the the somewhat unique/fun combat mechanics and that's somewhat crippled by poor camera and targeting control.

Final fantasy 7 remake struggles to connect with an aging audience by focusing on obtuse and ultimately irrelevant character developments while not giving the greater associated world and lore it's deserved time in the sun. The first 4 chapters of the game seem absolutely determined to fetishize various female relationships caught in our protagonist's orbit... and the game only loses steam from there. I understand that this is a ground up "remake" but this installment is a far cry from the quality of narrative I expect from square enix.