Évaluations récentes de Kosmozuikis

Plague Tale Innocence was a very good game and huge surprise because it was a new IP and wasn't a very high budget game. So obviously it needed a sequel. So is it good? Is it better than the first game? Oh yeah, it's one of the best games released this year.
So the story revolves around Amicia and Hugo again. They are a bit older now but for some reason Hugo looks same age or even a bit younger and Amicia looks extremely young too. Probably due to different engine they were redesigned. Nevermind, that's not important.

So the rats are back and it's time to embark on another wonderful story. Like always talking about the story in a story driven game is quite difficult. All i'm gonna say is that this is one of the best game stories this year and it's an emotional rollercoaster. Definitely better than the first game. Asobo nailed the characters, emotions and everything else. The events just go south really quickly and hit you hard.

Gameplay has changed a lot. First game suffered from being a bit too linear. You basically had only one right path, so by trial and error you discovered those paths. But you had had zero freedom in choosing how to approach the enemies.
In this game you have that freedom. You can play aggressively, you can play stealthy, you can take one route or another route through the area. You can kill everyone or leave most of the enemies alive. It's up to you.
This time the game is much much bigger and very open, with huge areas filled with enemies. Speaking of enemies – their ai is greatly improved and this time enemies are extremely persistent and cautious which means they spot you easier and they don't give up searching for you easily. They will walk around looking for you forever so you need to be extremely careful.
Since Amicia isn't some super human it's extremely easy to die. While you can kill everyone, you can't simply take enemies head on. You need to kill them stealthy. You need to pick your approach carefully, plan your actions and execute them perfectly.
You can unlock and upgrade skills which can help you a lot. You can also pick certain skills first depending on your playstyle. The skill bar is increasing depending on how you play the game. Crafting, being stealthy or being aggressive will lead to different skills. The game gives you freedom. You can avoid most encounters by being sneaky and taking one of many paths or you can be aggressive and kill everyone on the map.
Rats obviously are back and while they are similar to the previous game it feels fresh and makes gameplay even more diverse.
The pacing is also great. There will be tense moments, fighting, being helpless where you're forced to be stealthy, calm moments of just walking around admiring the scenery and smiling, dark moments and puzzles which is a nice change of pace. They're not very challenging and are perfectly balanced.

Graphically the game is stunning. Huge beautifully crafted open locations which vary in scenery with each chapter. Environemnts look absolutely stunning, from vegetation to buildings and lighting, everything looks gorgeous. Character models too are very high quality and since the game has some cut-scenes it's quite important. You get a true cinematic experience.

Performance isn't amazing. While the game looks stunning it comes at a price. Most of the time the game runs pretty good but in some areas fps drops drastically. Gladly those areas doesn't involve any combat. Just walking around. I had no framerate issues during tense moments or when the rats appear. Played on ultra/high settings @3440x1440, 5800x, rtx3080, 32GB. Yes the game has native ultrawide support which makes the game even prettier.
I and other people had some technical issues where the game didn't start which was caused by audio device selection. So if you have a black screen after hitting play then change your audio device.

Sound is another area where the game is astonishing. Voice acting is great and all the characters are well acted but what makes the biggest impact is soundtrack. It's one of the best if not the best soundtrack of 2022. It's just that good.

Overall an excellent game which was greatly improved compared with the first one. Amazing story, great characters, stunning graphics and excellent soundtrack makes this one of the best releases of 2022.

Pros

• Great emotional story
  
• Stunning graphics
  
• Outstanding soundtrack
  
• Improved gameplay
  
• More than one way to complete most levels
  
• Native ultrawide support

♥♥♥♥

• Average performance

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This is a very good little puzzle game with simple yet touching story. Not much to say about it so i'll probably keep this extremely short.

Gameplay is very simple – you run around solving puzzles. You get few huge areas to explore and a bunch of collectibles to find. Each area has sub-areas with its own puzzles, characters or quests. The story is told without words.
The main focus here is obviously puzzles which are mostly different and require different approach. But none of them are too hard so don't worry, you won't get frustrated, you'll have fun.
On top of that you're presented with a very nice heartwarming story and melancholic atmosphere so you want to progress further to unveil the whole story and see how it ends.
It's also a very chill and relaxing game, there's no pressure, you can just sit back, relax and enjoy.

Graphics are very cute and the game in general looks wonderful. Performance obviously is great and it has ultrawide support.

Sound design also is good and adds to the overall atmosphere.

Get this on sale, it's worth it.

Pros

• Good puzzles
  
• Good story
  
• Good sound
  
• Ultrawide support
  
• Chill

♥♥♥♥

• I don't even know

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Oh my this is a hard one to judge. One of the clunkiest and weirdest games out there. Weird in a good way of course. So where to begin?

The game revolves around ghosts and people missing and dying. Everything is related to legends and myths which actually might be true (in-game of course). You venture forth into the dark to look for missing person. On the way game gives you some story background and explains a little what and why is happening. The story is as creepy and weird as everything else in this game. But it's actually one of the better horror games and it feels quite unique.

While you explore the areas you encounter ghosts. And you fight them. With your camera. By photographing them. Yep. But it's logical according to the lore. You must capture them in a perfect frame and click the button which damages them. You also have different films and upgrades. Each film is different, some do more damage, some are faster. Upgrades are permanent and they also increase damage or other stats.
You also play more than one character, each with their own camera and unique abilities.

So gameplay consists of following the footsteps of the victim through the watery forests or water filled rooms. Why water? Well, it's tied to the lore. But you know what's weird? It has wetness meter. Being wet makes ghosts more dangerous so you need to use items to stay dry. Yeah...

Why do love this game? It's creepy, dark and unique. The atmosphere is extremely dark and even a bit depressive. You are constantly in fear of being attacked and pushed into a corner. Intense music and sounds, creepy ghosts everywhere and you running out of your good film. That's scary.

But my oh my it's clunky. Controls are atrocious. Absolutely impossible to play on higher difficulties. Not because it's hard but because you fight controls more than ghosts. You also often have too little space to move around and get killed. Some areas are poorly designed. So you get you camera out and use rb/lb to rotate it and R to pan around while using L to move around. You get stuck on every little obstacle while ghosts go through anything. Believe me it's VERY CLUNKY.

Graphically the game looks average at best. While atmosphere is extremely good and characters look decent, everything else is pretty bland. Of course this a port of a Wii game so not gonna complain much.

The game runs good but basically has no graphics options. Obviously no ultrawide support which is a pain to add manually. But it worked in the end.
Played on 5800x, rtx3080, 32Gb @3440x1440

Sound surprisingly is good. Music if perfect for a horror game and sound effects add to the creepy atmosphere. Voice acting is decent and does the job. The sound design in general is a big part of this game. Although ghost moaning could be tiring sometimes.

Overall a very weird, clunky and creepy game. Definitely worth for horror fans.

Pros

• Creepy
  
• Great story&lore
  
• Unique gameplay
  
• Few playable characters
  
• Sound design
  
• Weird

♥♥♥♥

• Clunky
  
• No ultrawide support
  
• Unbalanced

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Hollow Knight is an extremely difficult action platformer or in other words metroidvania/souls-like game. It's a pretty good game with lots of content but sadly huge part of that content is tedious or locked behind extreme difficulty.

Story is as cryptic as any other souls-like game – you want to know the story? Go google. You play as a cute little boy with a nail who ventures forth to beat evil bosses to take their place or something. Well the usual dark souls story.

It's a good game though. The main game is really fun and the difficulty is manageable although still very hard so only some people will be able to play it.
Side content or true endings are locked behind difficulty design for small minority of gamers and is not possible to complete for regular players without using “other methods” or trying over and over again for 10h.

The game has excellent world, enemy design and atmosphere. From the very first seconds the world just takes your breath away. It's so beautiful, dark and cute. Every area is different and is infested with enemies which will try to kill you on every step. Each area has its set of enemies and they often have similar moves to the area's boss which kinda teaches you how to fight the boss. You will also come to a lot platforming sections with deadly traps.
Boss design is excellent, most of the bosses feel unique and each one of them will need some learning and using of all your skills.

The game progression isn't entirely linear – you can go some places earlier or later. There's also plenty of hidden paths behind hidden walls which you can smash. Also you'll need to look for crumbling ground which also indicates you can smash it. Highly suggest to use a guide from the beginning so you wouldn't waste time.

Slowly you will unlock charms, charm notches, increase your soul pool and unlock more hp by collecting mask fragments. On top of that you will unlock abilities which will make your life easier and will help you to get to places you couldn't get earlier.
While the visual design and maybe design of each area is excellent and it feels like every centimeter was hand crafted, you'll soon notice there's no fast travel. You can unlock stag stations and a tram to travel between some points of the map but they're spread very far from each other so getting to them sometimes takes same amount of time than just going to where you want on foot. There's also sort of fast travel unlocked later where you can spawn two portals – entry and exit and you can travel between those points. But it's usually only useful for some boss fights where the bench is far away from the boss lair.
Speaking of benches – you sit on them to regain health, uncover the map and assign your charms. It would make sense for them to act as fast travel points but nope. So unfortunately traversing the map is a huge pain and a complete waste of time. There's zero guidance so you always guess where you need to go. You go somewhere you realize you need a double jump or swimming in acid ability and you turn back and wander for another 15 minutes. Having fast travel would help a lot. So like i said use a guide from the very beginning. It makes the game better.

This game also has wonderful controls. Doesn't matter where you are, since every corner of the map is carefully crafted you will never get stuck on some object, nothing will get in your way. And controls in general are super responsive and accurate which makes this extremely skill dependent game. A lot of games have either clunky controls or lazy map design which gets in a way of executing your commands perfectly. This is not the case here.
Now side bosses and side content are not fun. The boss you need to fight for the true ending is just bullet hell where only 50% of success depends on you and everything else is rng. Bonus area to get to the Radiance boss to get a good ending also feels out of the place, as if it's a different game. It's extremely tedious, pointless and hard platforming area.
Dream bosses are the stronger versions of the bosses you can challenge when you get your dream nail. Those fights are much harder but you lose nothing upon dying.

There's also dlc but I didn't bother with it since the game already is way too long and I was tired of it. It became too repetitive and tedious. Game takes over 50h to finish which is too much for a platformer. Besides wondering around without fast travel feels annoying.

Graphically the game is a great example of “simplicity at its best” or “art direction over modern graphics”. The game looks wonderful. Every single bit, every pixel looks amazing. You can see there was a lot of love put into making this game.

Sound design is one of the best. Sound effects are nice and you often need to listen for the sounds, like for example Cornifer who sells the maps and follow that sound to find him.
But what is absolutely out of this world is the soundtrack. It's just superb, a musical masterpiece.

Not much to talk about performance, it's a 2D game so it runs smooth and is potato friendly obviously.

Sadly no native ultrawide support but everything works well with a simple fix.

Hollow Knight is an excellent platformer with a beautiful world, excellent controls and astonishing soundtrack. Sadly there are no difficulty options so only some people can experience it and no fast travel makes otherwise a good game a bit tedious. Worth it on a good sale.

Pros

• Wonderful world
  
• Precise controls
  
• Wonderful artstyle&graphics
  
• Soundtrack is something special
  
• Great enemy variety
  
• Main story is very challenging yet rewarding

♥♥♥♥

• Insane difficulty spike if you go for good ending
  
• Tedious optional area
  
• No fast travel
  
• No difficulty setting
  
• No ultrawide support

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Lost in Random is a fun little game published by EA. Yes EA actually has a lot of good games and this one proves that. Although it has some shortcomings.

The story begins as main character named Even loses her sister Odd and goes after her. On her journey to saving Odd, Even goes through six towns (one town for each pip of the dice). She also finds a friend who is a dice and names him Dicey. Each town relates to the dice. While Dicey starts only with one pip you go to Onecroft. The goal is to collect more pips for Dicey so you could go to Two-Town, Threedom, Fourbourg, Fivetropilis and Sixtopia.

The game seems inspired by Alice and probably some other games/books/movies but still feels original. It also has pretty good lore. Would love to see a sequel or even a movie.

In each town you meet a bunch of characters and help them while trying to find help yourself.
Gameplay is quite unique and pretty fun. While you will complete quests and find collectibles just by exploring each town, you'll also need to fight and that's the unique part of the game.
There are two types of combat – regular and board game type. But first I should explain the combat system. It involves collecting cards and rolling your dice. You get the cards from completing quests and card seller. There are several types of cards, like attack, defense, hazard, etc. So for example if you want to have a sword, you throw a dice and draw the sword card and then you hit enemies with it. Same goes for any other type of weapon or effect. There are bombs, bows, defensive buffs and so on. You can have 15 cards in use for combat and draw from 5 cards only at once. You modify and build your deck to your liking.
Another type of combat is called a board game. The principle is very similar but there's a board piece on the ground which moves forward each time you roll your dice. So fight enemies, roll the dice, draw cards, the piece moves.

Now while this system is really fun and unique it feels unfinished and pointless sometimes. While the 5 cards you draw from when you roll the dice are random 5 cards from your 15 card deck, they can be reused. If you use the card, it goes back into your deck. So you basically can do nothing until you get the perfect combination of cards.
Combat also is a bit clunky and doesn't feel fluid or responsive enough. But no biggie, it's still fun.
And lastly the biggest downside for me personally – useless map. I get lost easily and I need a map. While there is a map in the game it doesn't show your position or direction you're going to, it's pretty useless. And towns mostly are mazes.

Graphically the game is just wonderful. The artistic style here will catch your eye straight away. It so cute and a bit dark. Every character, every cut-scene, every town looks stunning. Not by technical standards but by artistic ones.

Performance on my PC was great and the game has native ultrawide support.
Played on 5800x, rtx3080, 32GB @3440x1440.

Sound design seems like the only area where EA never ever fails. And this game is no exception. Highest quality sound design regarding both – soundtrack and voice acting. It feels like a holywood 3D cartoon by Tim Burton sometimes. Very well done.

Overall a good action/deck building/story driven cute&dark game with unique mechanics, wonderful graphics and great soundtrack. No real map is a letdown and some mechanics and combat could be polished more but still worth playing. Don't miss out on this one.

Pros

• Outstanding artistic design
  
• Good story
  
• Dark&cute
  
• wonderful sound design
  
• Unique gameplay
  
• Ultrawide support

♥♥♥♥

• Map is useless
  
• Gameplay needs more polishing

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Resident Evil 3 remake is fast and intense horror game. But is it good? Yes! Duh.

I loved the original game. It was entertaining, similar to RE2 but somehow felt fresh. And remake is even better. Honestly I enjoyed it more than RE2, although it's a bit shorter but somehow it feels like it has more of everything and also has more action.

You play as Jill and Carlos and...shoot zombies while being chased by Nemesis at times. Why I liked this more? Mister x is the most annoying and stupid thing in RE2 which ruins the game so much that you just download a mod and remove it. Here Nemesis also chases you but only in some scenes, he's not there all the time. He doesn't interfere with exploration and he's actually fun.

Gameplay is pretty standard RE gameplay. You get a map of the current location and explore it while shooting zombies, looking for keys and solving some simple puzzles. The game is more action oriented, you get more ammo, a variety of weapons and enemies also feel well placed and neither are too annoying.
One really good addition is dodge mechanic. Resident Evil 2 doesn't have that and it's so annoying since it makes hard to run past the zombies.

The game also offers great map variety so you never get bored by being stuck in the same location.
Game has several locations, some smaller, some bigger but none of them are annoying. Level design in general is great and there's little to none backtracking.
You still have that iconic and stupid RE inventory system which you need to manage but it's not too bad, although I would like if it just go away. Nevertheless the inventory system makes much more sense.

Graphically the game looks very good. Like really REALLY good. Character models are very well detailed, Jill and Carlos are hot as f***, feels like it's a holywood movie.
Graphics in general also look great, especially with ray tracing on, although it hits the performance pretty hard.
Performance without ray tracing is great, smooth as silk on max settings, fps hovering in the 90-100+ range. With rt on...well...it's worse but not too bad. Game looks even better but is it worth the fps hit? Nope.

Played on 5800x, rtx3080, 32GB @3440x1440.
Native ultrawide support is nice to have finally.

Sound desing matches everything else and is of highest quality. Again it's like watching a good action movie, awesome voice acting, music and overall sound design.

Well it's a short review for a short game. It's a very good game packed with plenty of action, cinematic cut-scenes and holywood'ish blings and bangs. Extremely enjoyable to play through and is a must play for action game fans.

Pros

• Engaging story
  
• Great graphics
  
• Excellent sound design
  
• Gameplay full of action
  
• Nice characters
  
• Good performance
  
• Ultrawide support

♥♥♥♥

• -

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Little Hope is the second entry in Dark Pictures Anthology series. It's a pretty good horror narrative game but has some shortcomings.

Hard to talk about the story and avoid the spoilers completely but the story evolves around a group of people who end up in a weird secluded town surrounded by fog and they can't escape it. When people try to go through the fog they eventually end up where they started. On their way the group encounters scary monsters, visions from the past and explore the town. Anything more is kind of spoilerish.
One thing I liked about the story was that it's harder to figure out what's going on. Medan was way too easy to figure out.

Gameplay is pretty much the same as it was before. You get to control different characters at different times. It also depends on the mode you're playing on (theatrical cut or not).
You can make choices as always – head or heart decision or none and stay quiet. In my opinion choices matter much less here than in Man of Medan. But overall atmosphere is better and the game is scarier. It has plenty of good jump scares and monsters also look scary.
Beside that you'll be looking for hidden pictures which count as collectibles.

There are some quality of life improvements. Coop is not needed for achievements anymore, collecting everything is easier and the most important part is that the point (door, object, etc.) which advances the story is marked differently. So you don't need to be afraid to explore anymore since you know which interaction advances the story.

What I don't like much is that it seems much easier to keep your party alive. In Medan one tiny mistake could lead to multiple people dying but here even when I haven't tried to save them all, only one person died.

Graphically the game is stunning. Animations and character models look absolutely stunning. Surroundings too look astonishing. The whole game is very dark but there are details everywhere.
But performance on the other hand could be better. Small areas, not much to render but on max settings even a decent PC can't run it at stable fps. I suggest to lower the shadow detail.
Played on 5800x, rtx3080, 32GB @3440x1440.
Game supports ultrawide natively and it looks glorious.

Sound design again is great. Maybe voice acting isn't perfect but it's really good for most of the part. And additional sounds, like jump scares, ambient sounds, etc. are great. Highly suggest playing this using headphones.

Overall a good horror game which will make you jump several times. It's very short so buy only on sale, it isn't worth the full price.

Pros

• Spooky
  
• Good story
  
• Looks amazing
  
• Good sound design
  
• Ultrawide support
  
• QoL improvements

♥♥♥♥

• Very short
  
• Too little meaningful choices
  
• Performance could be better

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Jenny LeClue is a cute adventure game but is it worth playing?
The game starts very cheerfully and from the start it seems like a very pleasant adventure. And honestly it is.

You play as Jenny – a young girl who wants to be a detective. In the beginning you may think the story will be all children's adventure but eventually it evolves into more serious story with twists.
There's also lots of humor which is not bad all and will make you laugh several times at least.

Gameplay is simple. You solve puzzles and explore the surroundings while interacting with other characters from time to time.

Lets start with the puzzles. Often you'll need to examine the area or a person, like their clothes, various objects and then do a deduction. That isn't hard at all and is rather fun connecting the dots.
You also get some traditional puzzles and while they are good and fun, they repeat several times through the game. Same exact puzzles all over again which is disappointing.
Interacting with other characters progresses the story. You also have some choices to make which leads to different responses from the characters. It doesn't change the ending or anything, mostly choices are tied to achievements.
Other than that you'll be running back and forth in a side scrolling manner. It's fun, you'll need to climb, pull/push things, etc.

But there's one huge downside. This game should be called “episode one” or something like that. The game ends with a huge cliffhanger and you as a player feel betrayed. And it's not your usual cliffhanger seen in movies where after beating the bad guys everyone is happy and you see some baddie appearing again at the very end. No, the cliffhanger feels like the game ends in the middle of the story. That's not right.

Graphically it's a beautiful game. Both the surroundings and characters are nicely drawn. Great variety in locations and nice animations. The game just looks cute, even in the darkest moments.

Sound design is great. Full voice acting with wonderful voices of every single character. Jenny sounds exceptionally well. The voice actors did a great job.
Soundtrack isn't a masterpiece but it's good and accompanies the overall atmosphere of the game very well.

Overall a very good adventure game with extremely disappointing ending. Buy this on sale since you're not getting the full story. Other than that it's worth it for every adventure fan.

Pros

• Great story
  
• Wonderful characters
  
• Looks good
  
• Sounds good
  
• Fun and diverse gameplay

♥♥♥♥

• It's only episode 1
  
• Puzzles repeating themselves

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Lake is a chill indie game which offers slice of life story and it's an enjoyable ride.

The main character end up in a small town by taking a temporary job of being a mail woman. You get your mail van and start delivering mail and packages to town's inhabitants.
You simply start your day, have a van full of mail and drive around the small map visiting people's homes. It's a slow and very chill game. It's starts slow and seems boring at first but with each day you talk with people more and start to get involved in their lives and care for them. Eventually you just want to stay there forever.

Gameplay is extremely simple. You get into the van, drive, get out, deliver mail, chat with people, go to someone else until you deliver everything and finish your work day. Repeat everything the next day.
It's nothing special and you can feel that the game is lacking something, maybe some gameplay elements, maybe more content (it's very short, too short).

Graphically the game looks ok but again nothing special. Animations are poor and facial expressions are non-existent. Lips also often don't match the voice at all.

Performance is good but considering how the game looks it could be better. Played on 5800x, rtx3080, 32GB @3440x1440.
For some reason there's no ultrawide support so you'll need to use a fix.
Game also has technical problems and pretty sever one. Sound sometimes simply disappears, it happens randomly. You lose nothing while driving but when you're having a conversation you miss some words or even the whole sentence. I have subtitles disabled so I missed some dialogue.
Also radio cannot be turned off.

Sound design is ok but again nothing special. Music is nice but forgettable and sound acting is average.

It's a decent game, if you enjoy calm, chill and slow games it's for you. The story is quite good. But it's too short and feels like it needed more time in the oven. Get this on deep sale only.

Pros

• Nice story
  
• Ok characters
  
• Relaxing gameplay

♥♥♥♥

• Technical issues
  
• Poor animations
  
• Very short
  
• No ultrawide support

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Final Fantasy 7 is one of the best rpg's of all time for a good reason. It has amazing story along with great backstories, great character development, lore, soundtrack, world and gameplay. It's basically a perfect game. Oh and one of the best if not the best antagonist in gaming history. But that was 1997, if you try to play that game now it isn't THAT good anymore but it's still great and it's not nostalgia speaking. I replayed it few years ago. What feels outdated is obviously graphics but that's no problem. The problem is the annoying combat of the original, it's slow and boring. It just isn't fun today. Turn based combat is cool, it works perfectly in games like divinity Original Sin but it doesn't in jrpg's. Why? Because 99% of the time you fight monsters in random encounters and that's just pressing one button.

So how is the remake? It's definitely one of the best games released this year and the best jrpg. It's the best game i've played this year in general. I did not expect much, especially from an SE game. I thought it will be some half baked FF15 with FF7 characters. But my oh my it almost made me cry few times. The intro cut-scene which is the first minute of the game leads to goosebumps. The game feels like FF13 (which I loves because it had good combat) mixed with a bit of FF15 and of course FF7.

So what about the story? It's basically the first ~8h of the original. Remake ends where the original begins. It took me a bit less than 70h to finish the story including the dlc. So the story is greatly expanded and you get to know characters like Jessie, Biggs and Wedge more. You get to explore the slums, a bit of the city and shinra headquarters. The game doesn't drag, it's all content, quality content. You get some side quests but those are fun and all different, besides there are only few of them.
The story revolves around avalanche – the eco terrorists who want to blow up the Mako reactors which are sucking the life out of the planet. And...well your journey begins.

Gameplay is where the most changes were made and FF7 Remake has the best combat system in the whole series. It's fast, it's fun, it's diverse. Unlike in FF15 where you had no items nor magic, here you have everything. Regular attack, heavy attack, countless number of abilities, spells, items, limit breaks and summons.
Each weapon has its skill. Once you learn that skill you can use it with any weapon, so with time you get a lot of skills to use. Each weapon also has upgrades.
Spells are the usual magic – fire, ice, wind, lightning, poison, etc. Haste, barrier and many more are also there.
Abilities are powerful attacks or buffs you can execute any time you wish. Each character has unique set of abilities, limit breaks and fighting style. Cloud is pretty fast and strong, Barret is slow and uses his arm-cannon. Aerith use ranged magic attacks, Tifa is very fast and uses her fists and Yuffie is the most fun for me. She uses a mix of melee and ranged attacks and also can imbue her weapon with magic element. She is extremely fast and agile.

Combat in general is the best i've seen in any rpg game. It's real time but you have atb bars – when they're filled you can execute your ability, spell, use an item or summon. You can switch characters on the fly or just give them orders. While switching or trying to use the ability/magic/item the time stops and you have time to think. Switching characters is essential. You'll need to get used to combat but when you get a hang of it, it feels so good.
And then we have summons. Those are powerful beings which come to help you. They have their special attacks and abilities and could help you a lot. You can summon when fighting tough enemies.

Gameplay is very linear, just like all the other FF games, but this one relates more to FF13. Is it bad? No. FF always was extremely linear. You basically just proceed through the story while doing some side stuff. And side activities are so much fun and they will make you sweat and laugh.
You also fight a lot. Remember those repetitive fights where you fight same enemies hundreds of times? It's not here. Sure you will fight same enemies but it won't be too often. Most of the time you will fight different enemies where you need to use different tactics. And there's a lot of boss and strong enemy fights where you'll spend significant amount of time beating them. And because combat is so good, even though you'll be fighting an enemy for 20 minutes it'll feel like 5 minutes.
Don't forget materia management, it means a lot and will change the outcome of many battles.

Another great feature is chapter select and hard mode. Chapter select is very well done which means that after you beat the game you can choose a chapter and grind for levels, materia upgrades and weapons skills or collectibles and side quests. All of this is handy in preparation for your hard playthrough. The good thing is that if you for example pick to replay chapter 12, the progress will carry to chapter 16. This is chapter select done the best way possible.
Hard playthrough works as a NG+, you retain your upgrades and everything else but can't use items and you get additional content which isn't available in normal difficulty. So in overall you're looking into 100h+ gameplay value.

Graphics look stunning and bad at the same time. Here's why. Main character models, animations, graphics are perfect. It's a joy to see all the characters in such great detail, something you have dreamed about in 1997 like “oh I hope in the future the whole game will look like these cut-scenes” and here we are – it even looks way better than those awesome cut-scenes. The graphics in general are very crisp and has no aliasing or anything, looks really neat. Speaking of cut-scenes – you get few pre-rendered ones but most of them are real time and they're awesome. You want to watch every cut-scene with passion, you want to cry wathing some, you want to laugh watching others. They're THAT good.
Now environment graphics...well it's meh. Low-res textures all around you. Like really low-res, ugly looking textures. Random npc's also are lower quality but still look pretty good.

Performance is fantastic, one of the smoothest i've seen lately, comparable to God of War. I played with flawless widescreen from the start so maybe it improves some things. I locked fps to 90 and it stayed there. On top of that I was streaming the game. It ran smooth like silk, only sometimes dipping to 80's. Combat was smooth with 0 slowdowns or stutter. Excellent performance.
Played on 5800x, rtx3080, 32GB, @3440x1400.
Downside is that there are only two graphics options so I have a feeling people with mid/low-range systems might have performance problems. SE is known for lazy ports. Also no ultrawide support so you're forced to use flawless widescreen.

Sound is a huge part of Final fantasy games. You will hear the soundtrack you already know and it's great. It will bring tears to your eyes.
Voice acting is highest quality too. Most characters sound exactly how I imagined so when you hear their voices it doesn't sound weird, you feel at home.

Overall an excellent game, one of the best jrpg's. Beautifully recreated world, characters, improved and fast combat makes a wonderful game. It's only ~15% of the original game but it's greatly expanded so you shouldn't be mad about that.

Pros

• Expanded story and characters
  
• Remake done right
  
• Fantastic combat
  
• Excellent performance
  
• Looks stunning most of the time
  
• Outstanding sound design

♥♥♥♥

• Background textures are low quality
  
• No native ultrawide support
  
• Lack of graphic options

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