Recent reviews by BadRequest

Haven't finished yet, but already looking forward to my 2nd play through.

TLDR: Pick this game up on sale only if
- You are a massive fan of the original FF7 series
- You enjoy using a controller or are willing to struggle bus through the Mouse+Keyboard controls.
- When it is on sale


Long time series fan, but this game is really hard to enjoy. I'm in Cosmo Canyon.

Pros:
- The redesigned score is largely good, with few exceptions like MT Coral Hike Theme which sounds more like a racing game?
- The graphics are nice. Character models weren't tamed down for woke culture standards.
- The voice acting is "mostly" good.

Cons:
- The PC controls are awful, the mouse go's all over the place like there's a hair stuck in it because of hypersensitivity that is introduces at certain moments. PC ports shouldn't start with "Plug in a Playstation controller!"
- The combat is pretty boring generally. Threat is determined by whomever you are controlling, and flying mobs are frustrating when most characters are melee.
- I don't think there's a soul out there that likes quick-time events.
- "Party Selection Locked" happens way too much, or maybe once is too much. I'm probably not going to play this through again because it will be too similar due to how it forces parties on they player.
- The chocobo puzzles feel more like boring work than engaging in any way.
- Side quests seem awfully boring.
- The game at the start takes away a lot of player agency. The tutorials are EXTREMELY intrusive and annoying. It could learn a lot from Elden Ring which didn't help players at all. However these hold your hand a little too much and then after the explainations are done, appear to keep interactivity locked for 5 seconds or so.
- Chadley. I think because he reminds me of the fairy in Zelda that's annoying you with the "Hey! Listen!" interruptions.

All in all, this would have been better just as a movie. It doesn't feel like much of a game.

Recommendations for part 3:
- Make a PC game, not just a last minute port. Play with mouse and keyboard, and consider allowing play to be achieved without using the right hand on the keyboard. I am fine with the Piano play, however the Chocobo alone uses WASD for movement, the arrow keys, and elements of JKLI. The Arrow Keys moved to the scroll wheel and the JKLI interactions to the mouse movement, even if I had to hold right click, would be smoother here. There are probably better ways, but the current implementation doesn't feel well thought out.
- Make combat much more engaging. The issue with the mouse causing the camera going all over the place in melee combat should be patched into this game, not in the next.
- At least allow people to turn tutorials off. If this exists, i cannot find it. I don't want to be interrupted as much as the game is interrupting.
- The original game was much more open world as this one, and even less hand holdy. It also didn't force party composition on you as much.

They game's direction is trending towards very slow, unrewarding, combat. But maybe some would like that.

Game crashes every round or two.

When I restart it says:

It appears that "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II" did not quit properly. $70 Recycled, Recycled, Recycled game.

Edit: I got this refunded. The game was fun but just doesn't work. The last day I tested this was 11/3/2024 so after their patch to fix some of these issues. I tried a number of different settings. The only thing that appeared to give me some stability was setting the render resolution to something like 40%, which made it hard to see anything.

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core Processor
AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT
Driver Version: 32.0.12019.1028

TLDR: Highly recommend playing on the 12th, maybe caution shelling out for the preorder packs.

Cons:
- The campaign. If you're looking for a single player experience look elsewhere. This may be a pro for some that are looking for a competitive RTS may not desire them to put a lot of effort here, but it might have done them a favor to even just leave it out at this point and its not a reason to preorder.
- Performance can drop at times, even in 1v1.
- The UI is bad, same as <Insert Blizzard Game Here>. Everything is too BIG to look nice. Please look at UI's from other studios.

Pros:
- Coop has a progression to it to provide purpose to play, and feels a mix of Warcraft and Starcraft.
- 1v1 seems competitive and even the AI can provide some challenge here.
- Ultrawide support. I pretty much can no longer play SC2 because of my dislike of the resolution alone.

Pros or Cons:
- The upgrade system is "different". It doesn't allow you to really focus on a unit as much as it emphasizes using a diversity of units.
- Strength in battle seems centered around use of abilities. I don't think people will play this game the same as they played SC2 and be successful. Micro may matter more here.

Given that the entire dev team for this game has been laid off, it is amazing that it is allowed to stay on the store.

• Bosses are harder to set up. A majority of my deaths are in the first few seconds of the encounter. A majority of attempts which I don't die immediately go well. They linger around entrances of arena's which are more constrained. If they just reduced the initial aggression of bosses it would improve a lot of the gameplay. This is made worse by the fact the load times exist and can be long.
  
• Bosses are designed in ways that make lock-on really bad in regard to the camera.
  
• Even while not on NG+ difficulty there exists one shot mechanics. And the leveling system is more of a chore now, my second playthrough I just went and collected a few to get to 14/6 right away. At 14/6 these mechanics don't seem to change much.
  
• Stone Coffin Fissure

• The UI has not improved at all for PC. When they enable mouse the mouse will leave your window, for example when sitting at a site of grace or summoning a cooperator (which is more noticeable now that summons are inside of boss arena's causing you to lose control of your game when fighting a boss.
  
• Ultra-wide monitors still show black bars, which we know is a limitation that is imposed after the fact, but for perhaps the sake of multiplayer fairness, Lost Ark still solved this better by making this a PvP only limitation. Come on FromSoft, the game looks great, but half my viewing area is black from a software limitation.
  
• Games where frames matter shouldn't suffer from stuttering. From what I assume this could be DRM.

• Many new weapons you can enjoy in the base game as well as the DLC, with most weapons, short of rememberances, not having blockers to acquire.
  
• More recipes for the base game
  
• The DLC content is as large as the base game.
  
• Knowledge of fights, lack of guides, is reducing player ratings of the game.

If they removed all of the boss encounters which people may find difficult in the DLC I would still find the game worth the price. It's worth two rainbow horses in WoW...

6/10

I can't know if the game is good or not. I've been playing it for a month or so.

It has had its share of frequent disconnects before release, partly related to some vulnerabilities your firewall must accept to play.

It's performance has always been off. I regularly don't know if I am loading into an area, if I am teleporting to a friend, or if I am just disconnecting. You can get stuck in this state for hours requiring you to restart, so the game cant even disconnect you properly.

The dev's have stated that this is not a server capacity issue, and I have experienced these issues before release. So these issues are core to the games implementation. It's a hard no from me.

Great Game. Unfortunate Publisher.

It's probably worth a buy, but I wouldn't rank it high among souls like titles. Some of the difficulty can be shrouded in camera obstructing effects and parlor tricks making your character teleport right in front of a cliff when you decide to roll forward, not necessarily timing and mechanics alone.

Additionally some of the gear you have to farm is more annoying, like the Mantagora fight. Many of the dungeon puzzles in the game are unintuitive and your merely thankful that perhaps someone perhaps posted the solution which when uncovered only makes you thankful you didn't waste the time uncovering it for yourself.

This said its a great coop experience and a potentially good filler for your looter shooter craving until the next big title releases.