Recent reviews by Fish

The gameplay isn't "bad" per say. There're some interesting ideas with putting up jobs for other players to tackle, or taking on jobs posted by others.
It's just... the kind of "ships" you build do not look like space ships at all, which makes it hard to live this fantasy of space traversal.

If you're a Rockman/Megaman X fan, this game is absolutely a must try.

This is the X series spiritual successor that looks, plays and sounds just like the real X series. With beautiful sprite works, great soundtrack and fluid action, this is exactly the kind of experience I wanted that capcom refuses to make to this day.
On top of that, this game is rogue lite so there are a lot of variations to the stages of varying difficulties, and a ton of builds to play around with.
When things line up, you can get some truly absurdly powerful builds given how benefits can stack and the end results are truly spectacular.

Compared to 20XX, this game addressed one major complaint I had back then: not enough stage variety. In 20XX, there wasn't enough stage themes and thus you were bound to see repeated visuals during the same run. That is no longer the case here. Every single stage has a unique theme with region-specific gimmicks.
Both Nina and Ace also now have very unique gameplay styles to truly set them apart from each other.

Then there's the most important selling point for me personally: this game supports both local and online co-op gameplay!

Even if you weren't a big Rockman/Megaman X fan, this is still well worth a try if you enjoy action platformers or rogue lites.

Hero shooter mechanisms do not blend well with battlefield at all

I think this game is bound to be devisive. The original FF7 came out in 1997, and many different fans loved it for different reasons.
Rebirth has a razor sharp focus on a specific vision. If you happen to be the target audience, you'll absolutely love it. If you aren't though, there may be aspects you won't enjoy.

On a high level note, Rebirth is basically FF7 Remake with everything dialled up to 11, and I absolutely loved it. We knew Remake would be a Midgar only game, which was the most linear segment of the original. Rebirth takes place after Midgar, which was where things opened up in the OG, and man they really massively expanded the scope of the explorable parts. The game is a slow burn adding a ton more lore to expand on its world building, as well as way more depiction of the people who inhabit this world.
I still fondly remember the OG FF7 for its sense of large world scale, variety of locations, enemies, and a ton of different mini games. Rebirth managed to capture that exact same magical feeling of the original on top of having a super satisfying combat system that blends in both action and strategy.
However, there are a few things that came at the expense of some pacing issues that I'll cover in greater details later.

• liked FFXV. Rebirth feels like the full version of what they wanted to do with FFXV's open world but couldn't achieve back then
  
• like a huge variety of enemies, most of which have unique weaknesses to make each fight feel memorable
  
• enjoyed the hybrid combat system from Remake. Here it's massively improved with expanded move sets, party synergy attacks, and far superior mid-air attacks against flying foes
  
• appreciate a ton of fantastic soundtracks for each location and all major fights
  
• enjoy taking your time to take in the scenic view to appreciate a huge variety of locations beautifully reimagined in expansive, explorable 3D space
  
• like having extra lore information from listening to random NPC banter in town, to really make the locations feel lived in
  
• love the cast of party members, and love spending more time with them and listen to their back and forth banter beyond the main story dialogue. The characters are the absolute highlight. There is so much love and care with how the party members are being portrayed, staying faithful to their personalities while massively expanding on their charm through additional banter/dialogues that weren't in the original. You really do feel like you're on a long journey with these colourful cast of characters
  
• appreciate additional lore details about locations, monster ecology, local traditions, and the people who inhabit the place
  
• like a huge variety of game mechanisms and mini games. Rebirth has a TON of those
  
• like a sizable selection of playable characters each with a unique style and moves
  
• love strategic gameplay by exploiting enemies weaknesses to turn the tide in your favour, especially when challenging foes well above your level

• are a purist to the OG FF7, and despise any alteration
  
• only want to rush the main quest
  
• dislike mini games
  
• didn't enjoy the first FF7 Remake
  
• don't care about optional lore or the story about other people living in this world outside of your own party members
  
• don't care about this cast of companions
  
• don't enjoy free roam exploration/open world structure of gameplay
  
• don't like action combat (just like in Remake, Rebirth is hybrid action where there's plenty of room for strategic gearing and tactical decision making, but the fundamentals are still real time action combat)
  
• dislike being challenged (such as optional mini game, combat challenges, unique/boss encounters that require specific mechanisms to defeat, etc.)
  
• dislike the cast of party members, you most certainly won't have a good time with Rebirth's story considering how big of an emphasis this is in the game

As for the technical side of things, the game generally runs well for me. I do get some occasional stutter, but I also barely meet the system requirements of Rebirth so it's really hard for me to comment on if this is a port issue or just my PC. All I can say is, the game runs well enough for me like 80% of the time, and I've only had a single crash over the ~80ish hours journey thus far.

I see a lot of the negative reviews criticizing about this game having too much "filler" in its open world.
While I understand how some players may feel the open world fatigue, or how activities feel like "check lists", I strongly disagree with the notion of filler content. I just think the way this game is made simply isn't for certain players.
Main reason being, these activities are very rewarding to complete, and the majority of them give you additional lore about the location, back story or personality moments for your party members, or stories about local inhabitants and what life is like. All of these help to massively expand upon the world setting to make the locations feel believable.
As an example, there's an escort quest in Junon that sees you escorting a dog half way across the whole zone. This activity on its own would've been pretty boring, but during this entire side quest I couldn't stop smiling from hearing Barret's banter gushing about Marlene. The fact he's such a big softie when it comes to Marlene adds so much charm to his personality.
Similarly, the summon crystal scanning is a very boring activity on its own, but when you break those guidance crystals, you get a lore piece about local traditions/religious worship of the regional summon creature, giving you an idea what the local culture/tradition/life is like and what their mythologies are. Again, this adds to the feeling of making the world feel lived-in which in turns really help with immersion.
Another example, life stream nodes: these give you regional history log to allow you learn more about the location in greater details, and I absolutely dig any additional lore about this world.

Granted, I didn't enjoy every single open world activity. The tower climb in each region, chocobo excavation, certain regional mini games like the chiken luring in Gongaga, weren't fun, and at times straight up annoying. However, everything considered, I enjoyed about 80% of all activities I came across, felt neutral for about 10% of them, and disliked the remaining 10%
Besides, whether intentional or not, the rewards from completing all optional content will make your party significantly stronger, which is a really nice throw-back feeling to a lot of classic JRPG where you could spend additional time doing optional stuff to become much stronger than your otherwise would be for the main story segments.

-Certain activities do overstay their welcome. Tower climb feels unnecessary, and it doesn't help that the climbing speed is rather slow. Chocobo excavation also gets repetitive
-Some mini games integral to a quest chain felt pseudo mandatory. For example, the Red XIII football, chocobo glide, cactuar time attack and chicken lure stood out as the ones I hated the most. I still want to finish the quests, yet I hated these mini games. This created a rather annoying time sink for these segments
-There're a few set piece moments that I feel move along too slowly. The slow walk through burning buildings in the opening chapter is a prime example
-As much as I love most of the open world activities, they do at times make the main story feel really segmented. The pacing can definitely use some improvement to more seamlessly blend side activities with main story.

Overall though, as a big FF7 fan, I think Rebirth is a master piece. Like, almost tailor made for me. While there're definitely still room for improvement, it is the best JRPG I've played in a long time.

This game gets a lot of criticism due to its mobile gacha origin.
However, I welcome the offline edition. This game does have some highlights, and instead of letting all those get lost forever in time when the original f2p game shutdown, ppl now have a chance to experience them in a stand-alone game without the microtransaction and RNG BS.

For this reason alone, I think this is worth a play.

• This is Rockman/Megaman fan service dialled up to 11. Massive roster of characters ranging from classic Rockman, to X, to Zero series, ZX, etc.
  
• A lot of the support characters, or boss characters like Roll, Ciel, Iris, Sigma, etc. who were not playable in the original games are playable here.
  
• There's a constant sense of progression. It feels like you're always progressing and becoming stronger for anything you do.
  
• Many stages and soundtracks are a good throwback of the classics. It's interesting to see 3D renders of a lot of the classic stages and enemies that used to be just 2D sprites.
  
• This game is heavily stats based (this is both good and bad, I'll get to the bad later). You can enhance your favourite character, and throw in a ton of upgrades to make it an absolutely unstoppable monstrosity, which is a really refreshing change of pace.
  
• Good variety of weapons to choose from, and they allow some really wacky combinations like letting classic Rockman hold a gatling gun. It looks kinda cursed but this is also part of the charm
  
• There are some original designs such as Dive Armor X, Dive Armor Zero, etc. These look pretty cool
  
• Past time-limited event stages are all playable in the offline version.

• If you hate gacha game progression system, you'll most likely hate this. There's no microtransaction but the systems are still based on the original f2p
  
• This game is heavily stats based. The game isn't very hard, and where it tries to provide challenge has more to do with your stats. It won't offer the same kind of platforming challenge as the older games
  
• Not all characters are made equal. Some are clearly stronger than others.
  
• The story is not fully voiced, and the characters unfortunately don't have banter during gameplay.
  
• There's grinding needed for upgrades. Not excessively so, but it's there.
  
• Every character can equip the same weapons, so aside from their own active abilities, their primary attacks don't really have much distinguishing feature.
  
• Collaboration characters aren't in the game

Overall though, I still had a ton of fun playing as the various versions of Zero and just blasting through stages mindlessly.

As a huge fan of tactical shooters, I really want to like this game.

In fact, it does have the markings of a good tactical shooter in the making but in its current state, this is more of a tech demo than an actual game.
It has an extremely solid skeleton, but the said skeleton has barely any meat on it.

For the price it's charging, this is simply way too bare-bones in its current state.

• Fantastic customization. Super indepth and has a lot of options to micro-adjust various attachment placement
  
• Very decent operator customization as well
  
• Great weapon handling
  
• Shooting feels good and weapons feel impactful
  
• Stance and arm stamina
  
• The maps do offer various distances for engagement

• Very basic enemy AI behaviour
  
• No real single player support (you're forced to play lonewolf, which is imo the most unrealistic way possible to play a tactical shooter game. I do not consider lonewolf gameplay a proper single player mode)
  
• There is no story, no scenario, or any sense of purpose. The maps feel lifeless and less like an immersive environment. Everything feels like a sandbox for you to play airsoft/paintball rather than a mil sim scenario.
  
• Very repetitive gameplay (due to a combination of basic enemy AI, no story/scenario, no command-able AI teammates). The entire game is practically just terrorist hunt with some very basic side objectives occasionally.
  
• At the moment, the only way to even have some fun with this is to play multiplayer, but that begs the question of: why play this when there are other tactical shooters that have both proper single player and multiplayer?

I'm aware that a lot of the mentioned missing features are planned to come, but this game came out in 2018. We're now in 2025 yet it remains mostly just a terrorist hunt simulator with no real single player mode.
For this price point, there are simply other better tactical shooters out there.
A good skeleton of systems here (the customization, weapon details and handling, etc.) cannot make up for the lack of content.
What we have here is a great foundation for a potentially fantastic tactical shooter to be built upon, but as of now, this is still just the foundation without sufficient "game" elements to justify its asking price.

I will probably buy it again in the future if it ever fulfils its visions, but not really worth the time nor money in its current state.

This game allows me to say "I played Nothing this year!" or "I have Nothing in my library!"

The first DLC felt like a map pack, and the overall theme it was pushing for felt under utilized.
While I still thought it was a good DLC pack due to its low price, that one did feel like the gameplay was too vanilla and didn't really add any new features to expand the game.

Dark Waters however, feels like a proper expansion. With a new maritime setting, it is significantly different in terms of its theme and visuals. The new chopper support now added actual new features that we never had before. It can now circle around the perimeter and automatically report on suspects it found and shine a spotlight on them, along with a thermal cam that we can access.

In addition to that, the new maps in this DLC are also a lot more interesting to clear. Not to mention there's now mission scripting that can trigger active shooter scenario mid-mission (Although, I think some tweaks are needed for its trigger logic. Currently it feels too chaotic and often luck-based, but this feature is definitely a very fitting and realistic addition that adds a layer of variance to mission).

I also like how they add changes to the police station with each update and new NPC dialogues reflect on how the city is seemingly going down hill as time passes.

Definitely a worthy addition that expands on existing features. I hope all future DLCs can each add something new to the gameplay like this one does.

Playing this feels like playing a wacky parody of a 3D sonic game combined with spider man web sling.
I struggled with the controls a bit but the game itself is pretty fun, especially after building up enough speed and successfully fly through several segments of obstacles. Quite a satisfying feeling.

It also comes with a multiplayer mode too and works well as a party game.

A bit clunky and repetitive, but it has a cozy and charming vibe.
Worth trying out during a sale.