Hands down one of the best games I have ever played if not the very best. Everything just works on a whole different level. Story is amazing and it is delivered through brilliant acting, fantastic voice acting, and phenomenal soundtrack. Gameplay is engaging, allows a lot of customization, and challenges you just the right amount. The world has tons of hidden things to discover without feeling unnecessarily bloated. Stellar game, can't recommend it enough. Play it but don't look up anything about the game until you have cleared it. Experience it all as blind as possible.
Fantasian Neo Dimension is a wonderful game that I will remember for a long time. It reminds me of the Final Fantasy VI to X era with vibes also from Terra Battle, a mobile game I loved playing back in the day, by Mistwalker. Pros:
- Dimengeon mechanics that allow you to save random encounters and battle them as a bunch later is a game changer that I wish all random encounter games would adopt.
- Battle Mechanics are fun and got me discovering new things frequently.
- Bosses really kept challenging me without ever feeling impossible.
- I ended up loving all the characters in one way or another.
- Soundtrack was very enjoyable.
- The new upgrade mechanics from the second half of the game got me really giddy and excited.
- Story was solid and I wanted to keep following it throughout the game. Cons:
- There was some extremely cringy stuff in the story like harem dynamics between some characters and a character checking through female characters wardrobe. It was somehow cringier than similar stuff in e.g. Final Fantasy VII.
- While I loved the second half of the game it did get bit repetitive in terms of exploration style as hours kept on accumulating.
- At least on Switch the text was sometimes lagging behind without being able to fast forward it as usual. Definitely recommending this to RPG fans. As the credits were rolling I was really happy that I got to play this game. For me the game took around 75 hours to complete but I was exploring things in a non-optimal way.
The highs of the game are stellar experiences that blew my mind many times over. The story and characters kept me and my wife really hooked to the game all the way through. Battle gameplay was really fun and I found a way to battle that suits my tastes really well. The overall experience was excellent but crafting system, item variety and side quests (except the endgame ones) left me hoping for a bit more. And as mindblowingly amazing as the Eikon battles are every time you didn’t have a clear floor under you it was really frustrating to try to figure out how close the enemy is and will attacks land or miss. Despite the shortcomings that caused frustration many times it would feel wrong to give the game anything lower than 9 due it’s really high points.
There is much to love with this game. The graphics are sweet, Rot creatures are super cute, music is beautiful and there is plenty of things to find and discover. I felt like the length of the game was perfect. Not too long, not too short. New mechanics are also introduced at a nice pace. On a personal level the storytelling is a bit too disconnected to keep me tightly hooked. The gameplay, although for the most part very fun and clever, is occasionally too unforgiving for my liking. My wife noted that on many occasions I was saying "This is not fun" out loud even after switching difficulty level to Story Mode. I usually play games on normal difficulty and I felt like the options were either too unforgiving or too easy. Still overall I think the game was a very nice experience and I'm really glad I played it. The shortcomings taxed the experience for me but I can definitely recommend the game to anyone. Especially if you are into more unforgiving and precise games.
Final Fantasy Battle Royale is something I did not expect but after trying it it is pretty much the game of the year for me. It helps that I am used to mobile gaming and the controls do feel natural to me. The review is based on weeks of daily playing from a paying gamer with Battle Pass lvl 96/150 and plenty of skins purchased. The core gameplay is good and innovates on the basic Battle Royale concept with the monsters. The monsters add nice variety to the gameplay. Opening chests during the match also helps with the sense of long term progression as some of the items obtained through them can be carried outside the matches. Chocobo breeding is slightly confusing as you don't really know what the nuts do (do they helpemphasizing those stats or do they random roll those stats?) but overall they are a nice addition to the game. Graphics and music are solid as you would expect from FF7 game. The main problems with the game come from the lack of players. Since people are hesitant to try the game matching times can be long especially on team matches if you are playing with just 1 friend. The game could also use some co-op PvE mode like Comrades from FFXV to cater more to what Final Fantasy fans would expect. Monetizationwise the game is still pretty player friendly. The skins can be bought with direct purchases instead of gachas so if you have a style you want you can snipe it pretty easily. There are some nice skins available through the gacha as well if you prefer those. The game can definitely evolve and be a great platform for fanservice with content based around older FF titles like 6 or 8 that haven't gotten a modern remake yet. I think 8 as a score is pretty fair considering pros and cons but for me personally it is 10/10 and I can't wait to get back to the game again later today.
This is a gacha-based mobile game so if you don't like those this game is not for you. I'm rating the game based on gacha games in general. I've played multiple gacha-based character collector games in the past. The device I'm using is iPhone XR and I started around the launch (currently on day 16 or so) and I have cleared all of the story and am currently farming endgame content. My player level is currently 83. The only crash issues I've had are after 3 hours of straight up farming. NieR Re[in]carnation is a fascinating game. It does some unusual things for a mobile game and can be very captivating. It excels in so many aspects. Then on the other hand the combat can be quite rewarding and at the same time one of the most boring ones out there. So let's break it down. STORYLINES and the way they are told is super fascinating. The interactive storybook-like cutscenes are pretty and the narration by each character is good. Stories are also present in weapon details, equipment items, character pages, tidbits from little ghost next to you as you explore the world, and so forth. The tone is very NieR style dark and if you like that this game offers a lot of greatness. MUSIC is phenomenal so believe the game when it says to keep the sound on as you play. Core gameplay (BATTLE) is a bit boring at first. It is a straightup auto-battle where your characters attack on their own and you control just their weapon abilities and super attacks. You can also walk around with your main character in the battle but it serves no real purpose other than better placement for screenshots. However, the more you play the more you learn to understand what matters in the battles. Finding those perfect combos and timing for them can be rewarding. Especially when you manage to take down an opponent way above your power levels. But that could have been done also in a more engaging battle system. The CHARACTER collecting is focused on a few characters compared to how most gachas do it. Each story chapter brings a new character that you get by playing. They are the lowest rarity but from the gachas you can find variations of them that are higher rarities (=higher potential). You are really focused on the stories of these few characters and they are more meaningful than just OP powerhouse you got from gacha. The most interesting thing is that the most powerful versions of the characters are not obtained from the gacha but instead are farmed little by little through EX Quests. Granted you need solid team from gachas to efficiently beat those stages but in the long run active playing gives the best rewards. The GACHAS are ok but nothing spectacular. The same gacha pool features both characters and weapons. At the time of writing this the rates are: - 4* Character + their Weapon, 2% - 4* Weapon, 3% - 3* Character + their Weapon, 5% - 3* Weapon, 10% - 2* Weapon, 80% Bit steep when you need 4 duplicates to fully upgrade your character. There is a pity system that lets you get the featured character you want from the banner after you have pulled from the gacha 20 times of 10x pulls. The game has so far been generous on the premium currency and I've used the pity system twice without spending in the game so far. There are MISCELLANEOUS fun small things that have been delightful atleast to me. There are little black birds to find as you travel that give you rewards. There are hidden achievements that give solid rewards. If you are up to date in the story you get free 5x daily summon of the premium gacha which can give you max rarity characters as well. The game has a PVP SYSTEM but so far it has been in the maintenance and hasn't been available to players. ALL IN ALL the game has really captured at least me. If you are into dark stories with awesome music and minmaxing characters little by little this game is super good. If not, the game could still entertain you but you are likely going to be dissapointed. But definitely one of the most fascinating mobile games out there and worth checking out.
This review is based on about 9 months of gameplay. I have 15 max level characters with 4 of them being collaboration characters. FFBE War of the Visions has a solid core gameplay that will surely please the fans of Final Fantasy Tactics games. There are tons of things to take into account that will surely entertain the most hardcore players but can in turn be a turn-off for slightly more casual players. Continuing on with positives the audio-visual experience is a solid one. The artstyle is just gorgeous and beautiful music accompanies the player no matter where they are in the game. Collaboration events with other Final Fantasy titles bring over well adapted versions of characters, enemies and environments. Voice acting is good and brings the (very complex and all over the map) story to life. Then to the negatives. The game is too meta-heavy. The character upgrade system is made so complex and convoluted that you will spend most of the time just watching menus. Maxing a character is a feat that takes months and and a lot of resource farming is needed. Gachas divide people. If you detest gachas this game is not for you. The gacha system itself in this game is both fair and unfair. Fair in that there are many special banners with decent additional perks. Sometimes there are even Step-up banners that guarantee a featured character on Step 3 or 5. The unfairness comes from a massive pool of characters and as a result a poor rate for getting worthwhile characters. Depending on when you are playing there might even be 20+ banners to pull from. You need a ton of duplicates to make a character useable ( = maxed ) so unless you are ok with farming a couple of shards per day from hard quests you are going to have hard time making anything that is not featured viable to use. Unless you have a ton of gems (50k+) stored up or are willing to spend a fortune in real money the limited time collaboration characters are not going to be for you. All of that being said the game is very enjoyable in it's core. If you can live with it's annoyances there is a lot to be enjoyed. Hopefully Square Enix can one day bring a game with this core and artstyle to somewhere like Switch as a premium game with no micro transactions.
Review written based on over 2 years of experience of daily playing with all characters and their skills unlocked. Current trophy count around 24 000. Brawl Stars is a varied game that can keep the player enjoying it a long time. There are various game modes and over 40 characters with unique playstyles so each player can find some combo they enjoy playing. Sometimes you might feel like playing solo challenges, sometimes you want to bring in a friend for a Duo Showdown and sometimes you feel like playing a ball game. Whatever floats your boat. The monetization is quite f2p friendly. Even though the Battle Pass system is heavily tied into the game players can purchase it with gems. If players save their gems they can purchase every other Battle Pass season just by playing. Characters and their skills are unlocked through gacha boxes but the game hands those out like candy. The gacha boxes also have a system that every box that doesn't give you a character raises your chances of getting a rare one next. Maxed characters are also removed from the gacha pool so you won't be getting annoying common duplicates like in many other gacha games. These days players can also create their own maps and share them for others to play. Some of them are cool but mostly people just copy each others meme maps. Player generated content is also present in the game in the form of skins. There are occasional skin design competitions where winners can have their skins added to the game with real money compensation. The frustrating moments with the game come especially with player made ball game maps where players are often locked in their small 1v1 areas. Then when all team members end up in an area where they can't influence the game and other side just keeps on spinning with the ball you just want to quit the match and block those people from ever playing with or against you. Sadly you can do neither of those things. So the toxic playerbase lives on corroding the player experience. But that is a fairly minor issue with an otherwise awesome game. Definitely worth checking out if you haven't already.
Review is based on about 5 days of gaming around launch. The game nails pretty well the audiovisual experience of a Crash Bandicoot game. To delight the fans of the original there are also some retro skins available for the characters. The gameplay is very responsive and easy to grasp. Boss battles are nice though could use some more variation and phases instead of just high HP and rotation of attacks. The crippling problems come in the meta game and gameplay loop. In order to get to the more interesting battles you need to create different weapon items. In order to make those items you have to run in a very repetitive and easy tracks over and over again to get the materials. Sometimes you also need to use those materials to craft other materials (eggs) so you can make the weapon. Then you have to wait an increasing amount of time for those items to craft. These kinds of meta elements are common in mobile games and that is acceptable to certain extent but here the mixing ratio is not working. There are some exiting challenges where you have to run pretty much the developer intended way to win (Gem challenge and Time Trials). The difficulty in them can be very high which works for the original Bandicoot fans who are used to failing constantly in levels like Road to Nowhere or Castle Machinery. It can also get very difficult to survive longest in Survival Run in Team competition. So the game has kind of two sides. A very casual and easy farming (and to be honest the bosses as well) and very intense and hardcore Challenges and PvP. They are trying to make a casual endless runner with a fairly hardcore game series Crash Bandicoot and while they try to please both audiences they end up not really reaching either of them. Monetization is done through "Skins" that have different boosts for farming items. Shop refreshes daily to bring in a new set of skins to buy and Special Offers pop up from time to time. When opening the game the player is every time annoyed with about a $5 Skin offer they need to close or buy. Every now and then there can also be a pop up advertising for other King games which conveniently reminds the player that they could be doing something completely different. f the meta and gameloop issues get fixed the game could potentially be a decent one. Maybe have the survival and randomness element in the item farming and maybe even consider dropping the timers altogether from the material crafting and people might enjoy the game more. So overall I'd say the game is a very rough diamond. Recommended for the most hardcore Crash Bandicoot fans who are willing to overlook the issues.
I'm rating the game on how well it does as a gacha-based mobile game. If you don't like gachas this game (and many other mobile games) is not for you. With that out of the way, I must say this is one of my favorite mobile games out there. The art style is beautiful and there is plenty of stuff to do as the game moves on. The Idle mechanics allow me to just chill and maybe do just the daily tasks for a week and when I return with intent to progress I've gained enough resources to do so without a need for extensive grinding. The game is fairly generous with items, premium currency and characters especially during events (which there are regularly). The gacha is also quite fair with customizable wishlists so you can influence which characters you get. If 2x 10 character pulls in a row end up not giving you an elite hero the next 10 character pull is guaranteed to give you one. There are collaboration characters that are not available anymore but players can rent them for 30+ days from friends so they can be used freely as if you had them. The monetization in this game can be very whale-heavy so you are going to be shown a lot of "awesome offers" of 50 to 100 dollars only available for limited time. There are 3 different Battle Passes with each of them at a whopping $24,99. The item content for them can be customized and gives those rare items quite generously but it is still one of the most expensive ones out there. The events in the game are varied and the developers often try out new mechanics. For example there is a fairly regularly recurring card-based PvP event and during a winter event they introduced a Match 3 mode to the game. Skins are often available during the event and mostly they can be obtained by playing with purchase option also available. Collaboration characters can be farmed during the events for free but require a lot of effort. Alternatively they can of course be bought. The game introduces a lot of its updates for the end game players. So even if you see something interesting added to the game it can take over a year for you to reach that content if you are a f2p player. So the experience with the game can differ a lot between early players and end game players. Though looking at it positively the game has a lot in store waiting for you. If you end up playing the game it is recommended to look at guides for character upgrades eg. in Reddit so you don't make the usual beginner mistakes. This review was written with exactly 400 days logged in to the game.
If you have made up your mind that this game will **** because it covers only Midgar or you wish that the characters would stand in a row and take turns hitting enemies, you will hate this game. For those people I recommend the original Final Fantasy VII which exists in all major platforms right now. For the rest of the people this game is a mindblowing experience. Characters and cutscenes are gorgeous and voice acting is top notch with great lipsync. Music fits really well everywhere in the game and makes it feel like a movie both in battles and in cutscenes. For the players of the original there are tons of references to smallest of details in the original throughout the game and I was mindblown all the time to the attention to detail they have had. How they have expanded the existing story feels really good. There is a solid character progression storywise for all main characters. The sidequests are also designed so that you learn of the world at the same time so while some may be tedious they help you learn something about the world and its people. They have included stuff also from other works relating to FFVII and they fit in really well. Battle system is the peak perfection of any Final Fantasy with solid tactical element in an action game. Especially in the end game content you have to rotate characters well and use their abilities really well. Boss Battles are challenging and require you to adapt to new situations without still feeling frustrating. There are some really nice optional bosses that push you beyond your limits. Character development systems work really nicely. The materia system allows customization like before. There are some new additions to materias along with many old ones. I was first sceptical about the weapon upgrading system but it adds a lot of customization and choice to your development. All this is not to say that the game doesn't have some flaws. Some textures can be really low quality and blurry ( especially doors have this problem ). The design choice to avoid loading screens for a better flowing gameplay comes with a cost of long narrow roads and tight spaces where you have to crawl slowly to move from area to area. This means that there are slow and annoying parts even when PS5 launches. Upgrading weapons can be tedious with the upgrade section opening animation and seemingly randomly moving cursor in upgrade screen. It can also be really tough to grind levels as monsters are hard to respawn and battle places are far from each other. However, the abovementioned small annoyances didn't distract me enough to take away from the experience. In fact, all those will likely be history in the next part of the series as the game likely takes turn to more open world exploration based storytelling. The game held me tightly in its grip throughout the whole experience. Story took me 47 hours to finish since I like exploring. Currently going through the endgame content with clock showing 60 hours and still absolutely loving it. Looking at the list of things to find I expect total playtime to go to about 100 hours. I'd give the game a score of 9.8 but rounding it up here to 10. My favorite Final Fantasy games so far have been VII, IX, X and XII in no particular order but I must say that Final Fantasy VII Remake is definitely joining them. Definitely recommending this to any open-minded gamer who doesn't expect every game to be free open world exploration. There are many things this game does spectacularly well.
