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Aug 14th, 2026 at 16:51:49 - Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth (PS5) |
What to say? This was LONG! 115 hours. I did the majority of side content, but even without a lot of that, I think I would have pushed 100. The previous game took me 42 hours. So this was almost 3x as long. And I’ve realized something. Part of last year and this year, I’ve focused on playing the longer games in my backlog. After a certain point, my enjoyment (and therefore my review score) tends to decrease. Say, 5% per additional 10 hours over 100, or something. I usually love the games. Otherwise, I wouldn’t sink so much time into them. But, as they near the end, and I am binging them trying to finish, I get so tired of playing them. They often have boss battle difficulty spikes (hello FFVII Rebirth and Divinity: Original Sin 2) at the end that add even more hours and frustrate me. Anyway, I think I made a post about this one already (GameLog offline, so can’t check—go check before posting this!). What comes to mind upon completion? Some of the biggest things are:
Your allies are really limited when you aren’t controlling them. I wish you could set their behaviors like you could in FFXV. There is materia that lets allies auto-cast spells or use weapon abilities, but it is such a rudimentary system compared to FFXV. If I switch away from an ally, they just spam spells or weapon abilities. What if I want them to save their ATB charges? Or save their casting for when I want them to use a spell situationally? Then I shouldn’t use those materia and I should micro-manage them in combat. The one thing they are good at though is avoiding damage while not being controlled. I often switched characters to change my “tank” because enemies tend to go after whoever you are controlling, at least after you do a little damage with them. Cloud getting beat to shit? Switch to Aerith. Enemies target Aerith, who gets beat to shit. Switch to Barrett, while enemies are beating up Aerith. Enemies focus on Barrett. Switch back to Aerith and heal everyone. Etc.
I think I mentioned in the previous post that there are so many combat options. 7 characters (most of the time), each with different play styles, special abilities, materia load-outs, synergy abilities, summons, limits, etc., etc. It’s overwhelming. I disliked playing with half of the characters. I stuck with Cloud, Barrett, and Aerith for the most part. That was a good combination because Cloud is a badass melee character, Barrett is a badass ranged character, and Aerith is a badass spell caster and healer. I usually disliked the (many) instances in which I was forced to use other characters, especially Cait Sith, who mind-bogglingly had an entire 3- or 4-hour dungeon. Every character had at least one segment where you had to use them, but his was the worst and longest by far. It involved horrible puzzles where you had to throw boxes. The aiming felt all wrong.
Since I chose to use the same few characters, combat became very repetitive. I understand this was my choice, but still. The other reason it became repetitive was that I didn’t bother with micro-managing materia. All I did was try to level it up, which meant that my characters all had partially leveled materia and very few mastered ones (save various healing materia and Assess, which were necessary). This resulted in the funny outcome where I had like 100 max-level materia sitting in my inventory, but like 5 max-level materia equipped. But here’s the thing. You don’t need to min-max it! You don’t need to spend time micro-managing everyone’s materia! I beat the game without spending hardly any time doing it. Again, that resulted in combat being less interesting and more button mashing, because since I didn’t pay much attention to materia, that also means I didn’t pay much attention to spells (again, except healing spells and Assess). Sometimes, I would have to pay attention to elemental materia to exploit a boss’s weakness or something. But when I think about how bare-bones I played this game, I wonder why there were so many overlapping combat mechanics. I am sure they make the game easier and more interesting, but I was fine using the combos and play style that worked for me. Also, there are some design choices that would have made me more likely to pay attention to materia, such as if I could save materia configurations. Every time you want to change materia, you scroll through a list of 100 of the things. What a revolutionary idea to let players save load-outs! Like, sometimes, I want Aerith to focus on healing and other times to focus on damage. Two load-outs would be helpful!
One problem spot in FFVII: Rebirth is its tone and target audience. I could not figure out if they were trying to make this game for kids or adults. Often, it was embarrassingly childish and cringy. I’m looking hard at Yuffie, but at many of the other characters, too. Chadley, Don Corneo, the Mooglets, every time the writers had the horrible idea to make someone rap, that gang of biker/thief guys, Roche, Cait Sith, Hojo, Kid G. There are so many terrible characters. I think Remake might have had this problem too, but I cruised through the game so fast that I may not have spent enough time to get annoyed by more characters. Is it for kids or adults? Is the next game going to have a more serious tone? I’m honestly not sure right now if I want to play the final piece of the trilogy!
Exploration was a bore and/or frustrating. I like the Chocobo abilities in different regions, but the later regions become annoying to explore. I very much hated Gongaga and its stupid mushrooms. Cosmo Canyon was a close second at times due to its maze of floating fans. These regions had verticality and maze-like design that made it difficult to figure out how to get to where you were trying to go. The map didn’t do a good job of visualizing verticality in the open world areas.
On the other hand, the thing I looked forward to the most upon discovering a new region was finding Queen’s Blood players. Final Fantasy card games are always so fun! I completed that entire quest line, though I had to look up the location of one missing player (see critique about the map being bad about representing verticality) where the player was on a “hidden” tier of a city and also hidden inside a building so they didn’t show up on the map unless you actually went inside the building. This building is also where the last piece of sheet music was (the only song for which I could not get an A rating!).
On the whole, I certainly enjoyed my time with the game. There’s a lot to do, it’s nostalgic, it’s slick as hell. But it’s long, repetitive, and often cringe. I said in my last post (I think) that there wasn’t the bloat I criticized in Remake. But after finishing this, there certainly is. Tons of side quests, endless Chadley simulator battles, all sorts of shit to uncover on maps…if I knew that there would be so little payoff for so much of this stuff, I wouldn’t have done so much of it, and I would have saved myself like 20 hours (aka another good-sized game). I hope the third game changes some of the things I disliked about this one, but I have a feeling that it won’t. It’ll probably just add even more shit. But if it gets like 90% review scores, I am going to be compelled to play it…sigh!
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May 13th, 2026 at 14:58:07 - Hollow Knight: Silksong (PC) |
Kicking myself for not writing an entry when I was playing this 6 months ago. I am cleaning up my wishlist, backlog, and etc., and the FEELING I get when I see Silksong "in progress" is anxiety. I had jotted a few notes in December, as follows:
"Its true, Silksong is hard. Like, really, frustratingly hard. Like punishingly difficult. I hit a wall at the end of Act 1 trying to beat the Last Judge. The game likes to place benches far away from boss fights, such that retrying boss fights involves slogging back through tough platforming and other sections of the map."
I did kill the Last Judge and complete Act 1. I remember that took a very long time, and that after the Last Judge, I died a few more times and, probably, with shaking hands and rapid heartbeat, said, "I can't do this anymore." Actually, it may have been in one of those rooms with waves of enemies. This innovation is new and unwelcome to Silksong, rooms that lock upon entering and spill several waves of challenging enemies at you. Yeah, I think that is what got me, just being pummeled over and over in one of those rooms, getting tired of exploring the maze-like map, tired of dying, tired of corpse runs, just exhausted. The game became a chore.
Besides that, I loved it, haha. I was definitely into it for a while. It was sublime until it wasn't.
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May 12th, 2026 at 17:20:35 - Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (PC) |
I meant to quickly beat this back in April so I could have a "completion" for the month, but I got really busy after spending barely an hour one afternoon with Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, a bizarre little twin-stick shooter about a turnip...who robs a bank. The game builds off previous games in the series, which I have never played, in which Turnip Boy commits tax evasion and, according to this game at least, seems to have started a war. Work has slowed down for the first time in nearly two months, and while I wait for my next contract to begin, I figured I'd knock this out.
The whole game is silly. The world is populated by sentient fruits and vegetables. You are employed by a pickle / mafia gang leader to rob a bank of a garlic bulb / bad guy / killed your dad. You have a base, where you can get new weapon loadouts by bringing weapons from the bank (always try to return with something new or high-powered!), purchase progression items from the "dark web," and upgrade stuff at another vendor. You go on "runs" to the bank, which are timed (starts at 2 or 3 minutes, goes up to 5 or 6 with upgrades). Runs are over when you die or when you exit the bank. Die and you lose half the cash you accumulated in the run. Survive and you are handsomely rewarded. Upgrade stuff. Go back to the bank. It's a roguelite too.
The bank has a specific layout of rooms, but you'll encounter some randomized areas too, and enemies and treasure are somewhat randomized. Throughout the bank are tons of NPCs with little fetch quests that usually reward you with pictures (fun/ny to look at) or hats (fun/ny to equip). A blueberry might want you to find its wedding ring, a lime wants you to get divorce papers from her lemon husband, a scientist pineapple wants you to find a philosopher mango and ask it an ethical question about experimenting on fruits, etc. I had some good laughs.
In each corner of the bank is a boss. Boss fights were fun, but the most challenging were early on. Once you start upgrading stats, the game becomes easy. It definitely ends up being an "upgrade everything and go nuts on all the enemies!" type game, experience being overpowered.
I haven't played a twin-stick shooter in a while, and while this wasn't revolutionary or anything, it was fun and scratched the itch. I gotta get back to Divinity: Original Sin 2. I might have some extra time till my next gig, so maybe I can boot it up, remember what I was doing, and make some progress this week.
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Apr 13th, 2026 at 09:37:34 - Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth (PS5) |
Just a quick mid-point update for this one. Or, at least I think I'm around midpoint (40 hours, chapter 7, Costa del Sol). I forgot to add this a month ago when I began.
FF VII Rebirth improves on Remake in every way. It's bigger, funnier, more polished, has better pacing, and has way more systems. It even has a charming kind of open world (initially to my chagrin, as I had just come off an open-world game and chose this specifically because I thought it wasn't open-world).
Remake irritated me a bit because a lot of the new story, deeper character exploration, and overly long dungeons felt like padding. I don't find that here. All the main quest beats have been interesting so far, streamlined--no slogging it through the sewers this time. I suppose you could say that the open world is padding, but Ubisoft this is not. There are standard tasks and challenges in each of the game's zones, but this is carefully designed such that everything provides a reward and works toward something greater, namely, Chadley's research. But, this is how you level up your party more, get summons, find recipes, discover rare shops and items, and so on, and it is a joy to explore the world.
The side quests are also FAR more interesting and usually multi-step. I am doing one right now where Yuffie accidentally cloned an NPC in Costa del Sol. The NPC is this surfer dude bro who bought an old inn and is renovating it. So there are all these "bros" who recognize that they are bro-clones and are gathering supplies to improve the inn. You find some items for them (which involves finding and getting to the tops of ziplines), clear out some monsters, then find a unique recipe to craft a part they need. The NPC clones are funny and their asks are varied. Another one I recently did involves one of the many great mini-games, challenging gym rats to a sit-up competition (after clearing out some monsters for them). I have yet to beat the hardest sit-up challenge. It's 90 seconds of repeating a button pattern with increasing speed and precision, and I haven't made it to 30 seconds before messing up. It seems like you have to do it perfectly to win on hard.
I am finding Rebirth to be so CHARMING. It's funny. It's quirky. I am smiling a lot while playing. OH, and there is a card game, which is strategic and fun. Final Fantasy card games are always solid.
The only thing I dislike is how complicated the combat is. I have six characters right now (three in a party), each with a different play style and unique moves. Cloud is a melee fighter and can switch stances from "regular" to a slow and powerful one. Barrett is a ranged fighter and has an overcharge ability that builds up. Aerith has "wards" she can cast on the ground that give different buffs, as well as a little familiar she can summon. Etc., etc. Then, of course, they have weapon abilities and all the spells from materia. And there are like partner abilities (synergies). Skill trees. Blocking and countering mechanics. Air and ground combat. Summoning. Limit breaks. Special synergy abilities. And you can manually use each characters' abilities and control any of them, too. It's too much for me to keep track of! Combat is fun, but feels chaotic.
That's it for now. Looking forward to seeing where the story takes me, remembering nostalgic bits, and continuing to learn the combat.
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