D Mc – Google

The game is gorgeous. Area exploration is good. Feels like 15's engine for the open world. Story is just not the same though. Make sure you try the OG! Minigames and zone exploration reeeeally slow down the pace of the game. Option to switch parties would have been nice in battle also. They seem to have balanced the battle difficulty a little more in normal. Dynamic mode was an interesting addition. Staggering gimmicks still meh. Almost too many options in battle now, IMO the synergy skills could have been left out and kept the synergy abilities only. Lots of quests, the story is really slowed down because of them. Chadley becomes a little overbearing and annoying with his technology, giving a very Zelda BOTW type vibe to the over world map. The poor moogles, what did they do to the poor moogles?! 😢 -1 simply for whatever happened to the design choices here lol. Fort Condor was good in Intermission, not so good this time around. Card game is ok, found myself wishing they would have stuck with older FF8/9 style game design however. Alot of padding.

This is one of the worst battle systems I've ever played. It's on the verge of something great, but the fact you have to build up ATB just to lose it if your hit during animation or miss is infuriating. Bosses phase change, canceling all your actions you just executed after saving up your ATB to do so was rage inducing. Zero interest in replaying this game after one slog through. Slow, way too drawn out, bosses are rediculous, good luck without looking up a guide everytime to figure out the gimmicks. God mode/ invincibility on bosses is poor design. Beautiful, but in the end not very enjoyable. And the story. My God the story. How your given a classic banger blueprint on a platter and manage to fumble it like this. The pacing was butchered. The dread of Sephiroth the original created was mangled. The sheer catastrophic feeling after the plate fell in the original was neutered. I don't even know what to say about the ending and the addition of the ghosts.

Was super hyped for this game, really wanted to enjoy it. But the reality is it's far from fun to play, infuriating at times infact. The designers felt the need to change the game from what it has always been, and make dark souls with robots instead. The levels aren't bad but the boss fights are something else entirely. The game teaches you the mechanics, then breaks the rules with bosses that zip around like light mechs when they are obviously not, and turn the game into a dark souls with bullet hell mode instead of armored core. To beat some of these bosses you are pushed into certain weapon builds which defeats most of the fun of building your mech (zimms/ gatling guns and songbirds/stun needles will be 9/10 builds). Double boss fights have and will always be lazy design (destroy fuel base). The input reading and tracking on boss weapons was low design also. The lock on failed too easily leaving you wondering where the enemy went sometimes. Really wanted to like this game but all-round honest 1/5 ⭐ as the game was not fun at certain points and felt like smashing your head into the wall. Mech customization and environment/ setting 4/5 ⭐.