Recent reviews by Inner Sight

The general combat is pretty bad; the movement feels clunky and delayed. Any epic moves are a cutscene. You don't control anything for limit breaks or summons so it felt like you just hack and slash through the battle and sometimes- if you're lucky enough that the literal magic slot machine lands on the right numbers - you get to hit the "play movie" button where Zack would do whatever he wants to do. You just watch.

I turned on hard mode so the game would be a challenge but they made it "numbers" hard. (i.e. the enemy's random crit will still deal more damage than your max health in one shot sometimes - even if reduced by half because you blocked it.)

The maps mostly looked pretty good. They usually didn't feel properly sized with Zack though as door handles would be up to his nose and 1990's style computer terminals were big enough you could stuff him into one, but it generally held up the look of FF7's OG vibe with better graphics.

Ran into a quick-time event where I defended an entire village from a fire bombing barrage. Each firebomb politely traveled up the path where I waited and slapped them one-by-one out of the air with my sword. This was where it felt too stupid to go on anymore.
They didn't even try to make it look good; not cool, not comical, just... basic. It felt so lazy.

Truly the worst part about this game is the active game play. The combat feels so repetitive and clunky. The animation and graphics and voice acting were done pretty well though. The story and cinematography looked like it was going somewhere. All in all it was a story that looked like it'd be worth watching. Zack is cute. But the main game play was so bad it made it feel like I was forcing myself to play it.

It's a cool game when I want to just smash armies together and eat territory but I would be willing to bet a lot of money that no one - not even the devs - have played this game to 100% completion. This is a very very long game. It takes forever to get everything done. Perhaps thousands of hours to finish one full game.
This is coming from someone that has completed many Civilization V games. They're much shorter.

It's an army battle simulator with very little script. The borders will always soon look very different from how they started. There are so many other entities on the map roaming around (hundreds? thousands?) that it's fairly impossible to brute force things for long. As soon as you start pushing a huge force in one direction the tiny enemy forces take everything behind you again because they're faster. So you basically have to do everything slowly and calculated or you lose everything you spent time and effort taking as soon as you leave it undefended anyway. Everywhere is crawling with vultures.

• It feels so satisfying to smash things in battle. Whether I'm slapping something in the face with a giant ax, running over a straggler with a horse, or landing a javelin in my opponent. And with the dance of directional blocking and attacking it's easy to be drawn into a fight with one enemy and lose awareness of other aspects of battle. It's too complicated to treat as hack-and-slash.
  
• I love that every faction has a general inspiration from the ancient real world (Slavic, Mongols, Romans, Celtics, etc), and they're all unique with special army units. Khuzait for instance - inspired by the Mongols - has army units focused largely around horse archers and their home area is open desert. Every faction feels different to fight as or against.

• Bandit hideouts are especially slow and dull. They're the one thing that desperately does need a "send troops" option. In the early game you can use these missions to train up your ranged weapons, but they're completely uninteresting wastes of time when you're mid/late game.
  
• The "Roguery" tree is useless. There are a lot of individual perks throughout the sheets that aren't useful but that entire perk tree is standout as useless.
  It kind of reminds me of the uselessness of the speech tree in Skyrim. But there's actually a speech tree (called "Charm") in Bannerlord that's actually generally alright.
  
• I don't like the way betting works in tournaments. There shouldn't be a limit to what I can bet in general, but if the limit is so small I could make more (faster) just by selling a stack of salt then the tournament doesn't feel very rewarding. Why am I putting down 600 denars to win 850 denars? I'd only be winning a difference of 250 denars while risking 600!
  That's trash! I'd get more from a random battle - plus loot. The idea that winning a tournament with maxed-out betting isn't even enough to pay a single day of rent in this game is a problem. I should be able to set myself up for at least a week at low level if going through the multiple rounds of a tournament or what's really even the point?

I like Chimera Squad. I like XCom 1 and 2 more though. It's like comparing a meal to a snack. Even if you like both, but you innately understand that a meal is the better of the two.

Chimera Squad is like a compact version of Xcom. The missions are quickies. Where you might play 20-40 minutes in one XCOM 1 or 2 mission you'll play 5 in Chimera Squad.

The voices aren't bad but they do feel too... human. Like the voice actor had no idea they were voice acting a snake. Honestly the banter vibes like a cop movie. The whole game kind of does now that I think of it.

I do kind of miss making my own characters though.

I feel like reading reviews for Outer Wilds is dangerous since it's the sorta game you can only really play once. So be wary of spoilers. There won't be any spoilers in this review though.

Technically - if you know what to do - you could just beat the game in a few minutes. But this game is about exploring a toy solar system and learning the information how to do it. It's a lot - it's an adventure full of exploration - but don't worry: you don't have to remember everything yourself. and when the time comes that you realize how to do you can simply do.

The tone of this game is "curiosity." I was moved the more I learned. Ancient history, ancient relationships, how to make practical use of ancient tech, and of course the direct spelunking of entire planets.

Also important: When the game was over I felt immensely satisfied. A feeling I don't think I've felt in decades of gaming.

I feel like I would play more if I didn't have a storage limit. Once storage is topped off the drive to explore, fight, and collect sharply fades. There's just nothing else to do than explore, fight robots, and loot.

Everywhere looks the same as somewhere else (except for specific special locations like the safe houses). I could take a scenic screenshot - whether outside or inside - anywhere else and you'd never be sure what part of the map I was on. This game reuses assets worse than Bethesda.

The robots are really cool though. I love the alien - yet reasonable enough to be believable - designs and the way they handled the weak spot setups. It's a refreshing change to always fighting human, zombie/mutant, or fantasy creatures in games.

The sounds are amazing and haunting. When you're exploring the wilderness in the dark and you hear a sharp buzz or deep chirp pierce and echo through the sounds of nature, folowed by responding beeps and chirps over the air from yet more unseen robots all over the place, you get an amazing 'spook' vibe.

The biggest thing that stands out to me about this game is how free the customization is. You'll be a humanoid but otherwise the shape is pretty open. Whatever body type you want you can sculpt. Houses are similar; you can build your house anywhere in the game - even on another planet if you fly high enough - and design it in whatever way you can come up with.

The second thing that really stands out about this game is the beauty. Everywhere I went I was zenned out by the view. The sky, the water, the weather, the land. I flew into the Sun once. That, too, was beautiful. This game absolutely nailed the atmosphere anywhere I went.

Like any game it has its caveats but Chimeraland is unique in that with every player comes a house they have to build to progress in the game. These buildings really add up to the point that they will litter most lands sometimes. It can make the game feel empty when you see far more old abandoned buildings than you ever see actual players. It forces you to notice the lack of people.

I recommend you grab two or three friends that are interested to join you for this game. It doesn't feel like there's enough players to give it a feeling of community, but it's a simple and beautiful experience.

I do enjoy this game. It's like an old once-favorite song from my childhood unexpectedly remixed by a DJ. I do not deny the artisan's capability, but there are many times my brain interrupts the mood and feels the need to shout "That isn't how the song goes!"

The writing was noticeably changed from the original. Not just for the sake of adding more content, but to - for better or worse - boldly change the story itself. Most iconic scenes in the game are different than they were originally due to the sudden addition of what I'll just call "the swarm". It doesn't even make total sense unless you've played the original game from 1997 to understand the minor references. Personally I found myself constantly swapping between "Oh my god, this is too cool!" and "I really wish they didn't change this."
Ultimately - nostalgia withstanding - it is still a really cool game, but I wish it stayed closer to the original writing direction.

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• The new combat system. Fighting is fun in this game! Especially boss battles!
  The original FF7 had an issue where status magic only worked on trash enemies - making status materia worthless. I'm really glad they decided to change that.
  
• Every character is played a unique way. Not just in terms of each character having different stats, but different controls and methods.
  
  • Cloud's a versatile melee fighter with the best overall stats (and usually your highest level character).
    
  • Barret is a gunman built for high ranged damage and high-HP tanking. He's also usually the only one in the party that can hit fliers without spells.
    
  • Tifa is the agile speed-focused brawler that racks quick damage and staggers enemies.
    
  • Aerith is a glass cannon caster with a toolbox of abilities.
    
  • Yuffie is an agile range-and-melee ninja/thief designed for both magical and physical offense.
  No matter who you use the experience is different. That's pretty cool.
  
• Great voice actors! Everyone sounded exactly like I imagined they would. Even random people on the street all had words. Barret is totally my favorite.
  
• Overall awesome production! Even active battle feels cinematic.
  
• The overall vibe of Midgar is kind of appealing to me in an almost-cyberpunk sorta way. It's my favorite part of FFVII in terms of setting and I got to see so much more of it in this than I did in the original game.
  
• I really dig that I can actually see the materia that I slotted into the weapons.

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• In combat the enemies almost always stay focused on whatever character you actively control. This can be great if you just want to cheese them by controlling the tankiest character, but aggravating if you feel like being the group's magic caster and everything on the field is specifically only harassing you.
  
• They got rid of the bloody path when you're following Sephiroth through Shinra Tower. I thought that trail of blood set such a spooky scene in the original game. It's just purple goo now and doesn't feel like... anything.
  
• Generally speaking; less is more when it comes to Sephiroth's hook on our mind. They kind of flash him in our face a lot in the remake. More than enough to water down the mysterious nature of the unknown that the original game drew out.
  Past the point of no return now - we have conversations with him and fight with him. As a group. As solo. At this point writers would have to rely on shock-and-awe and nostalgia to enthrall us with Sephiroth. The build up was thoroughly halted before we were even originally suppose to see him for the first time.
  
• Can't use items in hard mode. That's admittedly harder but not the fun harder.
  
• I didn't get to control Red XIII like I could the other characters. I was looking forward to running around as him.
  
• I might not have paid as much for this game as I did if I realized they changed so much of the story. It's so expensive. I'm definitely shy of paying this much thrice.

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If you are buying this because you're eager to immerse yourself in a new upgraded remake of your favorite childhood game from 1997 it's probably important to know before buying this game for $70 that it is not Final Fantasy VII. Customers are intentionally led to believe that they are buying Final Fantasy VII, but this is actually a sequel to Final Fantasy VII. A dimension-hopping/fate-changing/time-traveling version that heavily revolves around (and changes) the important events of the first game.

That's honestly probably the biggest hurdle for fans that grew up with this game; being surprised that they bought a sequel when they paid out the ass for a remake.

If you can get past that? It's still amazing. It hits sweet spots. The game drips with nostalgia from the materia system and the weapons you equip to the 3d remakes of all those 2D backgrounds I saw way back in the 90s.

But it most certainly would have been a much better game than what it turned out to be if they didn't rewrite it with superpowers and time travel. Once I finished the story I felt like I just played a FF7 fanfiction written by a 10 year old that was picked up and given the production of a master.

It's satisfying.
I genuinely cannot tell if I heavily exceed at this type of game or if this is just a very easy game.

You become a bullet-hell shooting up a hoard. Collecting various power-ups that boost your various weapons and characters (all females for whatever reason). Make it 20 minutes and you've won.


I can easily lose myself into this. Brawling into a monster pile doesn't get old fast and the music is a bop.
The upgrades and variables make the game different a little each time. It looks like there are still more things being added too as Luna - a new character - was just added yesterday.


Not all weapons, girls, and power-ups are created equal. Some upgrades are always extremely useful no matter who you are or what you use (like extra projectiles), while others are never the best option to choose from (like magic lens, which makes your bullets a tiny bit stronger as long as you're aiming in one very specific direction at a time).


This game is incredibly cheap for how much fun I've been having in it. Only 3 dollars and yet strong enough that it looks like it's spawning a community

At first I was wary of this game due to the anti-hype and the fact that 'multiplayer Fallout' didn't sound particularly appealing; leaving me with the snap-judgement impression of a toxic community.

After a friend bought the game for me I gave it a spin. Granted at the time I felt I had to because it was a gift, but I quickly absorbed into it and met up with a lot of other friends. I can sincerely say this game is pretty fun.

The anti-hype was incredibly embellished. A lot of things that were very temporary issues (even some I heard were fixed same-day) were complained about for months by youtubers and presented as on-going bugs. It basically became popular to target the game for views.

The community is usually pretty friendly. I have one memory of a random group of people that I didn't know (and regret not having friended myself to). They saw me - at the time a newbie - throwing down a camp and they invited me and started polishing it with high-level upgrades.

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From my experience the PVP in 76 is pretty useless.

• In casual situations the first one to attack has a severe disadvantage since the second one can safely take their time to get the perfect instant kill weapon out - or safely walk away. There's no gain in attacking since they only fight back if they know they've got a reliable win.
  
• When defending a workshop the defender is at a disadvantage since only the attacker can deal damage first.

Basically there's never a fair pvp encounter. One side is just a harmless target until the other instant-kills them at their leisure. So generally no one bothers seriously putting effort into workshops or intentionally attacks other players.