Recent reviews by Lex Cyclone

The sprite quality and the atmosphere of the games are top-notch.
I know this was going for the Action 52 feel but with actual effort put in, but I'll have to say that it'd be best if these games were standalone titles on Steam for 2-5 dollars each. A lot of them are meaty enough to worth that.
A few of the games in the collection are either too frustrating to care or just not everyone's cup of tea. Some of them -mostly the ones without random generation- seems like they will not have much replay value in the long run. The games that are fun might also be very frustrating at times, I am surprised not all games have difficulty settings or cheat codes for infinite lives or health.
Overall, you might find some good fun in a few of the games, but not in all of them.

This game is a bad "puzzle" game. The puzzles are not clever or they don't have clever solution or something that makes you think outside of the box, you're just playing broken telephone back and forth with someone that basically has the strategy guide.
Plus the game is very finnicky, the hitboxes on some of the interactable objects are very small and frustrating to use. In addition the game wouldn't recognize my microphone.

I am now convinced Square Enix is not interested into making a proper Final Fantasy VII remake anymore.
After FFVII Remake being actually a sequel in disguise, this was probably the last desperate chance for us OG Final Fantasy VII fans of getting a faithful remake of the original game with updated graphics, music and gameplay.

But this is far from it.

The game is designed after popular mobile game/gacha mechanics. That means you will find your progress blocked by a hard boss unless you grind for days in the training missions (basically leave your phone or computer play the game itself in auto-battle while charging up your electric bill) or by paying for Blue & Red Crystals. Character progression seems to be capped at certain points until you pay up or they decide to give you a sliver of what they call Memory Crystals.

The game's story also is split in very tiny chapters which often interrupt the gameplay by throwing you back to the main menu instead of being a seamless experience like the original. Speaking of the original game, FFVII Ever Crisis is a summary of the original game. It cuts a lot of segments like the Wall Market & Honeybee section, the Aps battle & the Sewers, the Train Graveyard and even the iconic Shinra Building elevator battle is cut.
Additionally, in many chapters you don't get to explore the area at all on your own, it's all textboxes like if you're playing a Visual Novel, and when you do, the "dungeons" are very linear and boring.
The new storylines feel similarly very rushed and consist of a few textboxes and constant battles over and over.

Gameplay wise, the battle has been dumbed down to accommodate mobile devices which is expected, your commands are limited to 3-4 options. The Materia you get are pretty braindead so far just limited to your regular Fire/Ice/Thunder along with Cure and maybe Barrier to spice things up a bit, no combinations are available which was the entire point of the strategy of mixing and matching with Materia. But weird enough also Limit Breaks have been greatly weakened to the point that Tifa's Somersault might do just 90 HP damage while Thunder does like 500, so why would you bother to wait and use a limit break then?

You get weapons/equipment with paying for what they call Draw Tickets, so it's possible to have a Disc 3-tier weapon when you start the game instead of the Buster Sword, which also takes away from the sense of joy and progression you had when you discovered the weapons as you progressed in the original game.
Plus you also cannot use Items like Potions in battle anymore. Not even Phoenix Downs if your character dies. If your party dies during the training missions they prompt you to use Crystals or buy your way to continue. There is no way to revive the party during a story battle because they want you to grind or pay.

The little praise I'll give is that the low-poly graphics have their charm and remind me of FFIX, it's a shame they have been wasted on this project though.

Please, if you give it a try, refrain from paying for this "game", don't encourage Square Enix to keep milking and butchering the memory of an otherwise absolute classic.

It is really fun with friends, probably will be not so fun at the game's current state playing it alone.
The difficulty needs a bit of balance. I love easy mode because I like building my base without fearing too much about permadeath, however it'd be nice if the game was a little bit more challenging.
The caves I've been were interesting, but need a bit of variation and more uniqueness and character to them.
I see people are not fond of the ending, but this is an Early Access game, so maybe they will enrich or change it when the game releases.
The fact this game is getting constant updates shows the devs care enough.
Also if you accidentally kill Kelvin, whoever is the host do NOT save and exit the game, otherwise you'll all regret his absence. Talking from experience. Bad one.

Wasted hours of harvesting because of Willow suddenly getting stressed and set my camp and all my items on fire, I didn't even get a chance to see the new machine I was building.

If this game had an option to turn off permadeath and progressively introduced its mechanics to the player it'd be really fun and chill game to sink hours in.

I want to like this game because the planning strategy aspect and the experimentation. However this game suffers from the same issues that the 1st game had.
First of all, the rules are not clear, sometimes enemies will take hits, other times they will outright ignore them.
Apparently a lot of enemies have a trick to them, many times there's no hints as how to tackle them, you just have to learn from trial and error.
There are instances in this game where things get too crowded and confusing, like the Skyscraper level.
You also can very easily softlock in this game once you destroy a few items by accident, then you'll have no choice than to restart. I had also instances of gameplay bugs e.g. the witches jumped into the water and stayed there, I wandered for around an hour until realizing they were stuck there, and there was no way for me to defeat them.
It's a very interesting concept and can be fun, but the game design is sadly really bad.

Hiring new people to help with the project was the best decision that was done.
I am loving the new content and improvements that helped this game get out of its prototype-asset-flip-y phase.
A lot of other "ghost hunting" games tried to copy this game with no success, because they miss the key ingredients. Organic and not random jumpscares in your face every 10 seconds and building of atmosphere and eventual dread.

All I'd wish is for some balancing done towards the player's favor. For example when the ghost is hunting, you now have no indication that it is hunting unless you're very close to the ghost. In addition the ghost often is not visible, which might cause you to get killed with no chance to see it coming so you can plan and take action to protect yourself.

Can't wait for the new upcoming content and horror update.

It has potential for sure.

The Backrooms section where the first 3 entities hunt you is the most fun and atmospheric.
The game starts to get lazy with its mechanics when you reach the Office area.

The first indicator of that is that the game gives you the password for the elevator instead of making you explore and find it yourself. The safe puzzle could be great but as it is setup right now it makes no sense, and the safe rotation controls are wonky.
The birthday party maze is flat out annoying and can eat up your lives like nothing else, since you can often get trapped in dead ends and there's no hint of where the gift boxes are. Also seems the puzzles have not been designed around the fact that you might be playing the game with less than 4 people.

Some of the monsters also have certain mechanics that just don't work as intended, like staring down the dog or how to evade getting chased by the skin-stealer. Their AI sometimes gets stuck or they stay at one place too long for some reason, making progress a slog.

The game itself also needs to be optimized more, I can run more complex Unity games on my machine faster, there's no reason a game with floors, walls and the occasional 3D model would lag my machine so much.

Finally the cutscenes, voices and animations leave a lot to be desired, but it's an Early Access game, so these might be improved eventually.