Reviews

My first playthrough on normal difficulty was fun, touching and challenging for most of the time, but there was always certain things that I was hoping to overlook when making a 2nd playthrough on hard mode, for better or worst I do believe hard mode is the "better" way of playing FF7R although those certain things that I was hoping to overlook were stronger also.

As a general overview I think FF7R is a good game, great also but it certainly has its flaws, my favorite aspect by far was the combat system, similar to the one in XV but polished to the point that it truly feels challenging and fair, at first I was trying to main a character and the game also gives you options to play like that but when the combat truly shines is when you play your party as if they were a unit, is really mesmerizing to end a boss battle when everything clicked. Although the problem with the combat is that it feels that you don't fight as much as you like and this is where things get a little too rocky. My main problem with this remake is that its rhythm almost never manage to get a good balance between gameplay and cutscenes or even liberty to explore or things to do, a typical hour in this game goes almost like this: watch a cutscene of several minutes, advance some steps, watch a little clip of your party discussing something, advance some steps, have 3 or 4 fights, cutscene, advancing, etc. except for a few action driven chapters, you're gameplay is always interrupted by a cutscene or a clumsy mini-game, its difficult to grasp all the fighting mechanics when the game keeps you from fighting. Side-questing can be a good option when doing well... extra things, however, the catch is that there are just few side-quests for just a few chapters, and when you finish them don't expect to do a lot more, even the enemies doesn't seem to spawn after you clear them.

The story is great, if you know the original you know more or less how this goes, the difference is that this time they added a lot of things and backstories to fill the runtime of 40 hours or so and at times it feels a little like they were padding and stretching things a little too much, don't get me wrong tho', the characters are charming than ever and for the most part feel well scripted (aside from some notable localization choices but may is just me), but maybe cutting some content or making some scenes shorter certainly would do it better, I didn't mind the padding that much on my first play-through but when kicking in the 2nd round, I was skipping a lot of chunks of the game that certainly didn't add that much.

Graphically, the game is beautiful and it certainly does look like a final cycle PS4 game, Midgar looks massive and full of life, I love how things are quite different when is day or night, even when is the same place, more often than not I was fooled of what things were real time and what things don't, in reality a lot of the things were real time, no wonder how my PS4 sounded like a rocket.

The music was a little mixed for me, overall is good, I'm not sure how difficult is to screw over the amazing original tunes to begin with, but my problem with a lot of the songs is that they sound too "Hollywood blockbuster" generic, I do like some of the rearranged versions better than the original, but when they pick the more active or battle theme ones they tend to sound a little tamed, they're still good but not as much as the original source. Speaking of original source, I highly recommend that you play this with the original Japanese audio, every actor manages to capture the charm of all the cast, they sound like they should be, the dub cast, I definitely stay away from that one, it sounds too "saturday cartoon show" for its own good.

As my lasting impression, even with its pretty noticeable flaws I do like where this is going, I didn't like some of the narrative choices and there's a lot of room of improvement for the next chapter, I know that this section on the original game was not exactly "open world" but it hurts that you can only play like in FFXIII in a just one way corridor, hope the next one gave us the freedom to explore and do whatever thing we feel to do. If you played the original and don't mind the gameplay shift, most probably you'll like this game, if you haven't played it, I do recommend that you play the original first, since this game expect that you know some of the story (similar to Rebuild of Evangelion). Overall I enjoyed my time with this game, so I surely but not strongly recommend it, I'm aware that maybe a lot of people prefer a cinematic experience over a gameplay experience so maybe this can be your cup of tea if you're more in the former group, so give it a go.

Dead Cells makes a great first impression. A metroidvania inspired rogue-lite with itemization on the scale of Binding of Isaac sounded too good to be true.

It was. It quickly turned into that game I'll maybe play a single run of every few days, which is a real shame because the combat is fast, fluid, and engaging enough that I'd play a non-rogue game with it in a heartbeat. 

My first run of Dead Cells was the most fun I had in this game: Unlocking new abilities, learning the ropes, and finally defeating the "final" boss, all on my first try. I thought the game was too easy. Luckily, it seems you unlock harder difficulties each time you clear the final boss. So I switched to Hard mode and continued playing. I welcomed the extra challenge and started exploring for the remaining permanent upgrades that were locking me out of content. After a few attempts, I quickly realized that I had screwed myself. I was unlocking whatever items looked cool. Unfortunately, this is the worst possible strategy and permanently makes your save file less effective by diluting your item pool with shitty situational weapons and skills.

The itemization is nowhere near Binding of Isaac's level. You heavily rely on finding a weapon that matches your color (Red/Purple/Green) and isn't too situational to be good (bonus damage to bleeding enemies, for example, would be pretty terrible if you have no bleeding sources). Otherwise it turns into a game of cat and mouse with even the lowliest of enemies. Normally, this heavy of an RNG component would not be a bad thing for a rogue-like game, but Dead Cells runs last upwards of an hour, with most of the run being preparation for the final boss, because that's so much more challenging than the rest. Speaking of item modifiers, that's the extent of the synergies between items in this game. Some items apply status effects, others benefit from hitting someone with a status effect.

The randomization is okay at best. Level layouts change in small ways, but not enough to be memorable. I partially attribute this to the art style. It also creates poor enemy/environment clarity and some questionable animations.

I'm sure Dead Cells is a fine rogue-lite, but everything about it just felt like it was playing it safe with the typical rogue-lite formula. Nothing about it besides its obvious metroidvania roots felt interesting enough for me to stick around. It focuses too heavily on making you play over and over again to incrementally unlock all the game's features and items, as opposed to Isaac's approach of "if you're good enough, you could get every Completion Mark in a single run." The final straw for me, though, was the game crashing after every death, as if it was trying to tell me to stop playing.