Recent reviews by Mask

Day 4 of 12, this game is starting to feel like torture and everything is going to hell. Everyone speaks in foreign culture tongue. You are trading kids some marbles for morphine. Death toll keeps rising. This is probably the most unique game I've ever played and it is NOT fun, but that's good.

The atmosphere is fantastic, it's so moody and miserable. The music and ambience is also some of the best I've ever heard, it feels eerie walking through the town in DAYLIGHT of all times.

Legit my only criticism is that it's hard to get into. HARD. I can see why people drop it instantly. There's so much word vomit in the first few hours it can get exhausting. This game tests your patience and literacy, be aware of that.

I'm not completely done with this game yet, but I was really "scared" starting it. There's so much going on at once it starts freaking you out. It really makes you think out of the box on what to do. Seeing how much I've been struggling makes me want to see this game to the end, regardless how much people are going to die. This is a one-of-a-kind product; no other game has made me feel dread. This is not a game for everyone, but I personally think it's a game a survival horror fan must play.

What a frustrating, annoying as hell game. Seriously, why are zombies spawning from the sky and falling on top of me? The countless numbers is way too much, and the melees feel like trash most of the time. What in the world.

It's honestly incredible how good Rebirth is, like it's genuinely one of the most fun I've had with any action RPG. This truly is the best remake sequel to a game ever, it somehow makes FF7 Remake look unfinished in comparison. (Which makes my excitement for Part 3 even more hyped).

Legit my only complaint about this game is the performance, like everyone else has had. (The mini-games and regions' point of interests can be a bit repetitive though.) Yet it won't stop my recommendation at all. It's so damn fun and the story hits hard, the characters are all great, the level detail is amazing I don't even know what else to say anymore other than every FF fan should play this no matter what.

Let's hope SE releases Part 3 on PC on launch day.

This certainly IS a game.

I think this game is way too hated, however, I do get why people don't like this game at all. At best, I would definitely rate this game like a 6.5 out of 10, it's not a terrible game as people make it out to be. But it sure does have its faults.

To start:
- The beginning of this game is really boring, up until Chapter 3 where the "real" mechanics begin. Yes, the combat (paradigm/crystarium system) finally works 3 Chapters in. I can see why people who don't know absolutely nothing about the game will quit it before Chapter 3 begins because it is SO BORING.
- The beginning of the game also makes you think you should know everything that's going on and it kinda forces you to make you read about the events unfolding. Yes, this is a common negative a lot of people talk about, the "datalog" and the lore. However it isn't as bad as people make it out to be. Yes, it's way too much information going on, and the narrative should've explained things much better instead of just blurting out names from the characters.
- You won't get a full 3 person party until Chapter 10. This honestly kinda pisses me off, the game is close to ending and you're barely giving me the permission to have a 3 person party. Yes, events happen where the previous chapters are only 2 party members. Still, it is really annoying just missing a person for almost the entire game.
- "The game opens up at Chapter 11." So you're telling me, the game actually becomes a game, 2 chapters before it ends. ??? Not only that but man does the difficulty spike hit super hard once you get to this chapter. You are forced to grind which depends on the type of player you are can either be really annoying or just part of the rpg genre. Had to grind about 2 hours because a basic enemy was 2 shotting my entire team lol. Call that a skill issue on my part. Still, this game makes Chapters 1-10 a glorified tutorial which is baffling to me, I just don't know how to feel about that.
- The main villain sucks and his name is literally Bart. Plus the final boss has an random chance instant kill spell, which is super dumb.
- Nitpick; when entering combat and switching paradigm, you're forced to watch a 3 second cutscene of your whole party switching classes. This is just me but this pissed me off because you can get a game-over during this small cutscene.
- Your party AI can sometimes be utterly brain dead to the point where YOU have to put matters in your own hands. Especially healer AI, they don't Esuna or Raise UNTIL all the party members are full health. This is stupid and I hated it.
- You cannot control your character's movements during combat, meaning ALL of your party members WILL stack together to get hit by an AOE attack. WHY????????????????????
- Upgrading system sucks.
- Save station menu navigating SUCKS.
- Whoever designed the camera needs to get punched in the face.
- If the party leader dies it's game over, go ♥♥♥♥ yourself.
- My biggest disappointment, and others can definitely say that I'm wrong about this, is that the summon system is terrible? Summons, KNOWN for dishing out TONS of damage hit like a wet napkin. They're only ever used for getting your party out of dangerous situations only for a short while.
- PC support is horrendous and the game looks horrible if you don't get a modfix. Base FF13 has a weird diagonal cut?? It's really bizarre, also the game is capped at 30fps along with ugly as hell graphics. The mod made this game look amazing though, so good on them for fixing it.
- The story is just mid. There's some good moments and then there's RIDICULOUS moments. JRPGs are known for being really tropey, but this game does it to an extreme. There are several parts in the story that legit makes no sense and the characters just play it off as nothing happens.
- Speaking of characters, I feel very mixed. I like them, but mostly their entire personality consists of just talking about one person, THE ENTIRE GAME. SHUT. UP. SNOW WE GET IT. The first half the characters are unlikeable, which I kinda like, they're all douchebags to one another and eventually will come together as a true party. Especially Hope, who can be super annoying at the beginning of the game. Vanille's stupid "noises" during combat and exploring is really annoying too. Lightning can also come off as having the personality of stale bread and I'm pretty sure anyone who played this game has called her "Girl Cloud" at least once. Fang is too cool to change. Either way, this game is way more character-driven than story-driven.
- The music is pretty good!

I've said a lot of bad things about this game but when it's good, it is actually engaging. The paradigm system can be a lot of fun once you start learning how to get around encounters, switching back and forth to see what meets and what not. A gripe I had is that some characters are miles better than others, Hope has a faster animation of casting compared to ANYONE else which kinda makes him a must have near the end of the game. However, any character can be viable, which is cool.

I've said enough; TLDR: This game has lots of faults, and can be summed down to be just a mid game, but it does have its highs.

I'm rather new to the FF franchise, starting with XIV (up-to-date) and finished XVI, so I thought I'd play backwards to see how far the series has evolved. I gave up playing this game, halfway through it clicked that I do not like this game at all. I had the mentality of just wanting to finish this game for the sake of saying, "I beat FFXV and I can say that it isn't good." If you like the game then that's okay, personally I think it's beyond shallow and a boring mess. I wanted to like the party, and they're just either really boring or insanely annoying (Noctis and Prompto). Similar to XVI, the open world is empty, and the dungeon layouts are either hallway simulator or confusing for no reason at all. The biggest enemy in the entire game is the damn camera, absolutely AWFUL CAMERA. Pair the terrible camera with the boring gameplay and that's all you will be playing for the rest of the game. Don't get me started on the sidequests, probably the worst sidequests in any game I've ever seen. I just don't get it, maybe I'll try to play it again in the future but as of now, no thanks.

I think the game's intro was really good, and the concept of having a road-trip with your friends was such an awesome idea. There really are a lot of cool things this game does, Arminger is really cool! I thought that maybe the hate wasn't justified. The combat was cool for the first 2 hours, then it kept repeating, and repeating, then gear check, then repeating. It just becomes brain dead. Also, Ignis' food looks delicious, at least you cooked there.

If there was a meh rating, I'd give it that, but I've never had a game made me give up halfway through.

What an incredible game, I haven't had so much fun playing a RPG in a looooooooong time. Persona 3R came out, that game is great but I think Metaphor really pushed the dev team to their limits and succeeded.

Starting off with the bad:
- The ending sort of becomes a little bit convoluted and "anime-ish/generic" but what do you expect from a JRPG? Especially from an ATLUS game, every ATLUS game ending will always go all out, and there's nothing wrong with that. Just wish some things were cleared up a little bit better, but by no means is it impossible to follow. I do think that the topic of "anxiety" becomes INSANELY overdone towards the end of the game, to the point where it IS THE GAME. Yes, people have anxieties but can we do it less generic? I'm sure FFXIV's Endwalker wasn't the first to do it but this game's finale really reminded me of it bar for bar. Like I said, it's a JRPG so I shouldn't be too surprised.

- (NITPICK) Endgame grind is real and was kinda annoying to go through, especially facing the last 4 optional dragon bosses. They're entirely optional of course, but simply getting to the level where I could actually do stuff against them was a bit annoying. That is indeed a skill issue on my end though. Grinding in this game was definitely the lowest part but that's just because I wanted to complete everything on this play-through. This was entirely optional, and can be skipped.

- I do wish the some of the dungeons were better laid out, the designs are really tedious to get around. I think this is a common complaint though so I'm not the only person who thinks of this.

- Biggest gripe of this entire game is not being able to respec the main character, why? Several games give you the option to respec, why couldn't this one do it? Building a mage character, and having some of the best archetypes strictly doing phys damage is kinda annoying. However, every time you level up you do gain a random increase to a stat so that's good, it still remains balanced to an extent. I just feel like if the player (like me) regrets increasing a stat and not being able to change it back is just dumb.

- Royal Archetype unlock requirements, ESPECIALLY FOR HEISMAY. WHY?

- This might bug a lot of people out but for the social links (followers), Ranks 2-7 are not voiced which is a bit disappointing because all the VAs (in English) are fantastic and I would've loved to hear more of them.

- SUPER NITPICKY but I absolutely hate that the game doesn't tell how to activate follower ranks, by that I mean some of the bonding scenes can ONLY happen on the gauntlet runner.

- Another nitpick is that once in combat, you CANNOT open the main menu to reload, change your options, anything. It is super frustrating.

- I do think the game can be really repetitive once you got the perfect party composition, but man, I just like hitting big numbers.



The Good:
- Art style; The first thing you see once you start the game. It's incredible what the artists did with this game and its designs. There's something so simple and designed on every single character, they're not too complicated nor boring, they're just perfect. Same goes for the monster (humans) designs, I know they're based off the paintings from Bosch, but seeing a human in this game is actually kinda jarring in a good way. They're so unique and I feel like that is what's needed in games nowadays, to just be WEIRD. The menu design, the painterly aesthetic, everything about this game is incredible to look at and is never an eye sore. What's really an eye sore is some of the animated cutscenes, my god, some are just... really bad. Still shouldn't distract from how well crafted everything looks in gameplay.

- World building in a new IP will always be insanely difficult to pull off, especially when it's a fantasy game. Here they actually managed to not only create a well-put together world, but to have it actually be different from other games is incredible. A lot of people will call this game "DEI crap" but I really like how there's conflict and prejudice between each and every race. Going across the world you see how terrible everyone is to each other and it drives home the idea that you really need to fix what's going on and become king. There's also segments in the game where the party will stop in scenic locations and it's so cool to see landmarks throughout the world that aren't really explained. They're just, fantastical.

- The Characters; I don't think I disliked any of the main cast at all, in-fact they're all really great characters. Surprisingly the ENG dub is really, really good? I've always found myself playing subbed JRPG games, but since this was a fantasy medieval-ish game I went with English. I'm actually kinda shocked that I can't listen to the JPN dub at all lol. Each character has their own conflict that you have to solve, and each bond provides an outlook on society; racism, hate, betrayal, loss of family, loss of trust, religion fanaticism, economic disparity, anxiety etc. In my opinion I believed there was never a dull moment, or a moment where the game just rubbed it in my face that "le racism bad". I do like the message of the game that fantasy can indeed be reality, but it needs time. My only pet peeve is that since this is an ATLUS game, only the main character can spend time with them one-on-one. Of course there are times where the party does come together and bond, but I really, really wish there was more of that because I do think they actually bond well with one another unlike certain games. Overall, great party, but I do wish Eupha's dialogue wasn't about magla 90% of the time. I do also wish that the MC had more of a personality trait than being the all-good optimistic character. Still, having a VA for the MC works wonders and he's not half bad either.

- Louis, genuinely steals the show every time he's on screen.

- The music is amazing and there's nothing else I need to say about it.

- Gameplay is insanely fun once you get used to it. A lot of people will get turned off as soon as they see the archetype menu, but I personally think it's great. It has this mix of old FF games combined with obviously SMT/Persona and made a beautiful Metaphor baby. There's so many combinations to mix and match, my brain though is very small when it comes to tactical games so I didn't put it to its potential. However, the difficulty of the game is just perfect. I played this game on HARD and it's definitely the best difficulty for a new player, the game actually makes you think. I think early game is almost impossible, but once it hits, it hits. I've seen a few people complain about the MP issue and I saw almost none of that. If you run out of MP just take the day off the dungeon and return back? Anyways, this game was so fun to play it makes me actually want to play more turn-based RPGs. Also the inclusion of the front/back row is so awesome, would love to see more that in future games.

In conclusion, I did enjoyed this game, and it was well worth the full-price I paid for. Will everyone like it? Obviously not, there are a lot more issues than what I stated, but having put 90 hours into completing almost everything was very fun. This is definitely one of Sega's best games to ever be released, and I'm so glad to have played it. Fantasy lives on.

After waiting a year for the PC release, I'm so glad I went spoiler free. This game gets way TOO much hate, it's such a fun game with an amazing story and great characters. It's still a Final Fantasy game, just with a coat of DMC, but who cares, I haven't had so much fun with a game before. Plus it has Torgal.

There are plenty of issues:

-It is super easy once you get the hang of it (first play-through)
-The side-quests are kinda bad, but it's manageable.
-The RPG mechanics are legit non-existent which is insanely disappointing, especially for an FF game. Vendors are only used to buy potions and nothing else which is lame.
-The leveling system sucks, you get way too much EXP which in turn makes the game stupid easy.
-Although visually amazing, the game has QTEs which in turn can be really cool or stupid, but it goes more in the cool direction so idrc.
-The "open-world" sucks and is completely barren and is a second thought. The real content are the dungeons and boss fights. There's hunts of course, but that's the only reason to go out in the world looking for them.

A lot of people will be turned off by this game, it definitely has issues, but it isn't terrible at all, it's just a rough diamond.

The DLCs are great, but too short, still, they provide the best fights.

The soundtrack alone is a 10/10, Soken does it again not a surprise. Some of the best pieces of music I have ever listened to, Find The Flame/All As One and My Star are his best works ever made.

This game is beautiful and badass at the same time. The tale of acceptance can be cliche, but they did it surprisingly well for Clive. Honestly shaping up to be one of my favorite games ever made period.

Peaksona 3, actual peak.

Probably one of the worst optimized games I have ever played, and for $70 too. It's been a month with no performance update/patch. What the ♥♥♥♥ is happening.

It somehow beat Yakuza 7/Like A Dragon, and it's a damn near masterpiece.

Infinite Wealth surpassed all my expectations and I'm so glad it lived up to the hype. It is beyond fun and the amount of content there is almost infinite. Definitely one of my favorite games ever made. However, there are some cons to the game, some nitpicking and others just downright annoying.

CONS:
-Sujimancer is very bad, for such a cool premise, even with strong sujimon, it is downright the worst job in the game.
-Some of the jobs just suck and not worth investing into, but that's pretty much typical for a game in this genre.
-New Game Plus priced as DLC, beyond stupid.
-Some English va's should've been in the Japanese dub, for instance; Mendez is not voiced by Danny Trejo in the Japanese dub, like why?
-Buying and upgrading materials is a damn chore, having to buy 1 material individually. WHY??
-The 2 dungeons are just boring to go through?? I felt like there should've been more events to happen other than saving people and the boss battle at the end.
-Minor nitpick but I really wish the level scaled with your party, being overleveled made the game just boring. But that's how RPGs work so that's on me for just playing the game too damn much.
-Another nitpick; watching the trailer and just seeing Kiryu having cancer just ruined the surprise.
-Really, REALLY wished we had the option to change time earlier in the game than in the final chapter, just annoying overall.

I'm sure there's plenty more negative stuff out there but the positives just outshine everything.

PROS:
-The parties feel much more alive than before, there is so much dialogue that I had to give up looking for them. It's great, and each party members are amazing to each of their own.
-Bond Bingo, as tedious as it was to go across the entire map, the conversations between Kiryu/Ichiban with their party members is fantastic. The finale of each bingo card is very sweet as well.
-Revamped combat; being able to move within a circle is a godsend, plus other mechanics.
-Akiyama, Majima, Saejima, and Daigo.
-As much as I hate the "Power of Friendship" syndrome with every game, it really works here, especially with Kiryu.
-Hawaii, such a fun map to walk around for the first time, if the series goes on, I really hope they keep doing this. By that I mean go out to other countries other than Japan.
-Side content aka Sujimon/Dodonko Island/Crazy Delivery/Sicko Snap etc. I just REALLY REALLY wished that Sujimancer was better. Another complaint is that I kind of felt limited to Dodonko Island's placement of objects, as usual that's a nitpick. Overall it's a very nice "mini-game" to customize an island resort.
-The story; I will definitely say that it isn't amazing, but when it hits, it really hits. It's a story carried by the characters, Like a Dragon stories are so ridiculously dumb you just have to set it aside and just play for the hell of it. It was great, I just wish one of the main villains wasn't so blegh compared to the other. They just felt like an afterthought?? imo.
-Memoirs of a Dragon and Life Links; thank you for catering for fan-service, as Kiryu's "final" game it was nice to see old faces again.
-Main Protagonists Ichiban and Kiryu splitting up into 2 parties. This might seem like an annoyance to some people but I actually liked this aspect of the game. It made none of the party members feel left out, except for Joongi which came in pretty late into the story (still ofc did Joongi things).
-Kiryu's finale; I'm just relieved. It's a beautiful send off to him and I cried like a ♥♥♥♥♥. The entire ending is beautiful really.
-Japanese dub, A+.

There is so MUCH stuff this game does right and it's impossible to get into everything, but I'm glad it's a big upgrade from Yakuza 7.

For 100hrs of content and completing almost everything, I definitely got my money's worth. Still not a fan of the new $70 trend but with so much to do, I hope the next game in the series surpasses even this one.

Overall it's an amazing game, we finally got a proper send off to Kiryu and in doing so, passes the torch to Ichiban who is an awesome protagonist. 10/10 would cry again.