I will definitely pick this game up later this year. Your sentiment is how I felt about FF7: Remake. I had loved the original Final Fantasy the most. That remake, though, connects with almost everything I enjoy about today’s games.
I’ve had the same issue.
Overall, I’ve found the game to be okay but it doesn’t hold a candle to Nioh 2 for me. I find the game very blurry and hard to see, lacking visual clarity. I don’t know if it’s a color palette issue or something else, but man it can be fugly and hard to distinguish things at times.
I’m around gear level 80 and I feel like I’m still waiting for the combat to really click for me. It’s certainly fine, but it’s nothing as good as Nioh and I can’t shake the feeling there’s more to it. It probably doesn’t help that all I’ve really been doing is just being a tourist with the various jobs to unlock all the passives and other classes. Play a couple missions, get them up to L30, then off to the next job. There are certainly differences but many of them feel samey enough that I wish that they had stuck with a reduced number and fleshed them out more. Of course, I’m only in the campaign and they’re capped at 30, I hear the levels go up further later?
In any case, I’m having an okay time with it but it does feel like it was made by Team Ninja’s B-team. Maybe that’s exactly what it is, given that Wo Long is out early next year.
Even though they cleaned up a lot of the graphical issues, it’s still kind of a blurry mess. It also makes the attacks hard to read. That took the longest for me.
I eventually learned to work around the soul shield control quirk. I think I stopped reflexively blocking like I do for Nioh and Ninja Gaiden. Once I could read the attacks better, I was able to be more deliberate about how I applied my defensive tools.
Like a lot of their combat systems, there’s a pretty rough early learning curve as you figure out all the tools. But the curve of your player skill and ability keeps going up geometrically, so toward the end you don’t just beat enemies, now you’re running circles around them. It’s still really hard and some bosses I had to retry many, many times until I learned of a few jobs that made things smoother. The point is the satisfaction is there. At least for me, I hope it works out for you too.
Does the loot system ever get better? I like the individual pieces of loot. There’s plenty of variety to the stats they affect, and each piece has its own detailed 3d model. Which makes it baffling that it’s dispensed by a veritable firehouse that never seems to slow down. It’s a waste of time to modify loot or develop a build with specific pieces of loot. It’ll be irrelevant a few minutes later.
It did eventually in Nioh 2 in the DLCs / NG+++, but the entire first playthrough was pretty much “just chuck on whatever is highest, it’s more important than anything else you can find”. It’s definitely feeling that way here so far where it’s not worth the time to optimize anything because it’s going to be replaced in a single mission and the “Optimize Gear” option seems a tacit admission to that.
I was disappointed to see this hadn’t been improved from Nioh 2, since it’s one of the few complaints I have about the game. No idea yet if it follows the pattern where gear becomes better, but so far for me it’s been bleh.
Not sure, I stopped at the end of my first playthrough to wait for the DLC. At max level I think there’s an affinity boosting system so you’re more focused on farming a special material than farming for loot. That’s my real concern with the endgame from what I understand so far.
Maybe you can still enjoy playing the actual game in the endgame like you could in Nioh 2, which was one of its strengths. It’s possible the farmers are just impatient.
Info on the first part of the season pass:
Glad to see they’ve confirmed that they’re following the Nioh pattern of adding a new difficulty mode (Bahamut mode) with the DLC. I played a bit of the post- game Chaos mode after finishing the main game, but it didn’t quite seem fully baked.
I’m going to be away from my PC and won’t be able to play right away, but looking forward to diving in once I get home
Might be a false positive but my AV threw a fit when seeing that embedded link (I hadn’t gone to the page yet).
Huh, weird. I think that site’s legit, but I swapped in a link straight to the trailer just in case.
I can’t tell if it’s a whole new NG+ or just some sort of extra mode with difficulty modifiers. Perhaps it’s both, play Chaos with additional debuffs for more loot.
New weapons, jobs, equipment slot, all that stuff looks good to me. I’d love it if there’s a NG+ with it like they did with Nioh 2.
Will this ever make it to Steam, or is this a lifetime Epic exclusive?
Don’t think they’ve said, but it seems like most of the Epic exclusivity contracts have been ~1 year.
I’m so conflicted. On one hand, I really want to play this. On the other hand, I’d rather have it on Steam. But I thought it would be there within a 3-6 month window. Oh well…
As far as I can recall offhand every single Epic exclusive so far has been 1 year.
FF VII Remake Intergrade was 6 months…
If it helps at all, I find the game to be “fine” but nothing special (for reference, I found Nioh 2 to be amazing and would jump all over that regardless of platform). And by the time it comes out on Steam maybe the season pass will be complete which might just take it past “fine” into “awesome!”. I kind of wish I had waited at this point.
Yeah, that’s probably the best choice for me. But I loved Nioh 2 and I love Final Fantasy, so I just have to play this at some point. :D
Thanks for your feedback. It is appreciated.
The first DLC seems to be getting mixed reviews. There’s not a lot of traditional content to see, but the hardcore players seem to enjoy the new weapon, jobs, gear, and difficulty level. There’s a pretty good new balance patch too. No help for the graphics, unfortunately. They added FSR 1.0 but it doesn’t do much.
I haven’t started it yet because I still don’t understand Chaos difficulty. The DLC seems to be designed for someone that’s played through that difficulty a little bit, although apparently the power level shoots up so quickly that it doesn’t really matter anyway. Very unusual. It doesn’t sound like Nioh DLC.
I’ll dig into it this weekend and report back.
Looking forward to hearing your impressions!