Recent reviews by CCMatt

This game is hard to review as a single thing. The main story is pretty subpar, it's just Star Wars but in JRPG form. None of the party members are interesting, except Basch, and maybe Fran. Gabranth, a NPC, is probably the most well developed and interesting. You see a lot of events unfold (far from the party) from his POV, you learn his backstory, his questionable loyalties, his resolve, his anger. It's really weird how he is the most developed character, when the "main" character Vaan has almost nothing to do with the main story.

The gameplay is also quite mixed. It can get really, really boring fighting normal enemies and even some bosses. Most of the game is shockingly easy, the hardest parts are the first two hours (if you don't know what you're doing) and the optional bosses. The hard content is very interesting. On one hand a portion of the difficulty comes from ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like "immune to damage for 2 minutes" or "has a chance to cause instant-death". On the other hand, there are other parts to the boss that aren't dumb, and you can usually work around some of this stuff. It can be fun to come up with a strategy for a boss. Equipping certain items, getting the right party members, the right gambits (AI behavior). Victory after all this preparation can be a rewarding feeling.

The game also has a DREADFUL amount of RNG or arbitrary wait times. The weather in one zone is on a cycle, two IRL hours of dry, one IRL hour of rain. One quest requires you to hunt a monster in the rain, and if the RNG is bad you can just not ever see the target. After that, you have to turn in the quest in the same area... in a different cycle. So no matter what, your butt is going to be waiting for a while, for no good reason.

Despite these glaring flaws, I still had a lot of fun. Exploring, unlocking new espers to expand my job boards. Finding a new spell that hits more enemies for even more damage is always fun. Reading the bestiary entries on bosses/espers to learn the lore. The game's world is super interesting and quite decent looking too. It's just a shame the story and characters aren't. I did finish it, including the optional 50 million hp boss, so that has to say something. This game barely, just barely gets a positive review from me. I'd give it a 6.5/10. Maybe 7/10.

An extremely fun time with friends. But that's the caveat, WITH friends. Solo is a niche experience, some people might like it. Open games with randoms is just insanity. People will kick you the moment you join if you don't meet an arbitrarily high level.

Has quickly become one of my favorite games. It's challenging, but if you use the tools available to you, you can make it a smooth experience. Most of all, the open world is sublime. It doesn't have the immense square mileage that some AAA open world games have. That said, the open world is dense. You'll be hard pressed to find empty areas, exploration is rewarded with intriguing NPCs, dungeons, new gear, and fromsoft's volatile combat. This game's open world should serve as an example to other companies, this is how you do it. Assassin's Creed is a jumbo marshmallow, it's fluffy, mostly air, and can rarely be enjoyed on its own. Elden Ring is a cosmic brownie, dense, flavorful, and has goodies all over it.

Stole code from the developer of another emulation project (duckstation) and then harassed the same person they stole from.

I love this game to death. I don't really like most of the companions and their dialogue though. I see a lot of people share this criticism and let it dictate their entire opinion of the game, which is just silly. You can easily replace the companions with your own custom ones in-game, without mods. This is my preferred way of play actually and I find it a lot more enjoyable. Fun gameplay without the dorks. If you don't like the "rawr xD" dialogue of the Azata path (no one does), well, just don't go Azata. The most common gripes people have with this game are so easily avoidable.

Negative review for one, single, solitary reason: volume. You can change the in game volume settings, you can change the windows volume-mixer levels, you can do anything you can think of, but it won't matter. Cutscenes will sometimes simply decide to play max volume no matter what. Sometimes it will remember your settings in the windows volume-mixer, but it WILL disregard your settings later and play at max.

This game CAN be fun, but half the time it is a buggy mess with a toxic community and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ servers.

Be warned that if you play the steam version with the intent of playing with other people using the steam version, it is very likely that you won't be able to play together. As strange as it is, it works better cross platform (steam to epic games, for example). What makes this worse in my case is that steam won't give me a refund despite most of my time spent "playing" was in the menus troubleshooting.

It's so incredibly bare-bones that it is kind of mystifying. The graphics are great as far as mmo standards go, and the combat can be fun at time. But there is almost nothing to do. What little instanced content there is, is a one-and-done kind of deal. So you won't ever get a party, you'll be playing what little there is solo.

I'm not good at this game, but I have a lot of fun playing it casually with my nieces. It may sound strange, but this game is far more enjoyable at lower skill levels.