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Apr 13th, 2026 at 09:37:34 - Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth (PS5) |
Just a quick mid-point update for this one. Or, at least I think I'm around midpoint (40 hours, chapter 7, Costa del Sol). I forgot to add this a month ago when I began.
FF VII Rebirth improves on Remake in every way. It's bigger, funnier, more polished, has better pacing, and has way more systems. It even has a charming kind of open world (initially to my chagrin, as I had just come off an open-world game and chose this specifically because I thought it wasn't open-world).
Remake irritated me a bit because a lot of the new story, deeper character exploration, and overly long dungeons felt like padding. I don't find that here. All the main quest beats have been interesting so far, streamlined--no slogging it through the sewers this time. I suppose you could say that the open world is padding, but Ubisoft this is not. There are standard tasks and challenges in each of the game's zones, but this is carefully designed such that everything provides a reward and works toward something greater, namely, Chadley's research. But, this is how you level up your party more, get summons, find recipes, discover rare shops and items, and so on, and it is a joy to explore the world.
The side quests are also FAR more interesting and usually multi-step. I am doing one right now where Yuffie accidentally cloned an NPC in Costa del Sol. The NPC is this surfer dude bro who bought an old inn and is renovating it. So there are all these "bros" who recognize that they are bro-clones and are gathering supplies to improve the inn. You find some items for them (which involves finding and getting to the tops of ziplines), clear out some monsters, then find a unique recipe to craft a part they need. The NPC clones are funny and their asks are varied. Another one I recently did involves one of the many great mini-games, challenging gym rats to a sit-up competition (after clearing out some monsters for them). I have yet to beat the hardest sit-up challenge. It's 90 seconds of repeating a button pattern with increasing speed and precision, and I haven't made it to 30 seconds before messing up. It seems like you have to do it perfectly to win on hard.
I am finding Rebirth to be so CHARMING. It's funny. It's quirky. I am smiling a lot while playing. OH, and there is a card game, which is strategic and fun. Final Fantasy card games are always solid.
The only thing I dislike is how complicated the combat is. I have six characters right now (three in a party), each with a different play style and unique moves. Cloud is a melee fighter and can switch stances from "regular" to a slow and powerful one. Barrett is a ranged fighter and has an overcharge ability that builds up. Aerith has "wards" she can cast on the ground that give different buffs, as well as a little familiar she can summon. Etc., etc. Then, of course, they have weapon abilities and all the spells from materia. And there are like partner abilities (synergies). Skill trees. Blocking and countering mechanics. Air and ground combat. Summoning. Limit breaks. Special synergy abilities. And you can manually use each characters' abilities and control any of them, too. It's too much for me to keep track of! Combat is fun, but feels chaotic.
That's it for now. Looking forward to seeing where the story takes me, remembering nostalgic bits, and continuing to learn the combat.
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Mar 25th, 2026 at 10:00:19 - Road Redemption (PC) |
This was actually great! I was skeptical because I'd never heard of this random Epic freebie and because of low-ish reviews. It's like a spiritual successor to Road Rash, which I loved as a kid. It was nostalgic playing this, remembering being 10 years old, kicking other bikers and whipping them with a chain, that straightforward racing violence.
Road Redemption channels the same energy. You play as a member of the Jackals biker gang, and the game is basically you progressing, in rogue-lite fashion (which was a surprise), through three other biker gangs' territories, racing them to kill an assassin with a huge bounty on their head. You get there first, your gang gets the cash.
You choose a motorcycle and a rider. The default motorcycle is actually the best through the entire campaign, perhaps until you unlock some others late in the skill tree, but at that point I had beaten it already. Riders have different bonuses, penalties, and weapons. Once I unlocked the one that gives bonus money and experience and gives you a heavy melee weapon to start, at the cost of 50% health, I kept him the entire time. Once you learn how to play well, you won't miss the health.
You have four weapon types: sword, other melee, gun, and explosive. Sword is a sword. There is only one, but it can be upgraded for more damage (as all weapons can). The point of the sword is to attack enemies who don't have a helmet. You decapitate them, which is endlessly entertaining. If you get a sword kill, you get double cash (and maybe double nitro). "Other melee" is a heavy weapon and a long-range weapon, which you can cycle between. Once I started using the rider who starts with a heavy weapon, I never used the long-range one again because, around then, I had learned how to avoid damage, so I didn't need the protective range; I could get up close with the wrench or the bat with spikes on it. Guns include a pistol, a shotgun, a grappling hook (slows enemies down?), and a machine gun (the best). Some levels feature a lot of ammo pickups. On those levels, you can go crazy with guns, which is fun. Then, explosives include mines that you drop in the road, C4 that you attach to enemies (endlessly entertaining watching them blow up), and like a grenade launcher or something that I never really used because you get access to it in the final area.
The key to using all the weapons well is memorizing where they are on the D pad and learning to see which one you have equipped at any given time without ever looking at the weapon selector icons. There is a lot going on in Road Redemption, and if you are busy looking at the bottom lefthand corner of your screen choosing weapons, you will (a) get annihilated by other bikers, (b) get annihilated by oncoming traffic, or (c) otherwise run off the road.
Enemies are no joke, especially later on. The first gang is easy. They are slow to attack and don't have special gear. Lop their heads off with the sword, or bash them with other melee weapons. By the end of the first area, I believe you also have a gun and some C4. In the second area, enemies are more aggressive and have more weapons. A slip-up here can end your run. By the third area, they are vicious, some have extra armor, and there are various types who come out in force to annoy you, such as the mine dropping guy and the "shield" guy who blocks all melee attacks. You have to shoot him, blow him up, or kick him (kick with B, endlessly entertaining) into oncoming traffic/into a light post/off a cliff/etc. Once you get good at dispatching enemies and avoiding damage, you will be golden. When you kill an enemy, you get cash, nitro, and health, so killing more enemies if you can is always a good thing.
Each gang's area has maybe like 6 or 7 levels. Levels are randomly generated and can vary among objective type. In some, you have to place third or better. In some, you have to kill x targets. Some are a time trial. In some, you just have to survive till the finish. At the end of each gang's area is a "boss fight" where you have to kill one especially tough enemy, and then after that is a "rooftop escape" where you flee that gang's territory and go to the next gang's territory. The bosses are easy enough, usually just heavily armored. I fought the last boss two times. The first time I got to them was after like 3 or so hours of gameplay. I got my ass handed to me, then didn't see them again until nearly 5.5 hours, at which point I handed their ass to them.
What happened between 3 and 5.5 hours that changed the last boss difficulty? I learned how to play better sure (Don't ride right next to enemies! Use "A" to block! Swerve to enemies and attack, swerve away, swerve back and attack, swerve away! Slow down or speed up [and save nitro to do this] if you get stuck in a pack! Or just put some C4 on someone and watch the pack explode!). But I also dumped tons of experience points into the persistent skill tree, so I had more health, more ammo, more damage resistance, more money (you can purchase items after every race), started with better weapons, etc., etc.
After you beat the game, there is a campaign + mode and a campaign ++ mode, which I can only assume is horrifically difficult. This was definitely fun, a straightforward callback to Road Rash, and it scratched that Burnout itch too. I love vehicular destruction. And I got my completion in for March! Back to Divinity: Original Sin II, which I might be able to finish in April.
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Mar 22nd, 2026 at 16:40:50 - The Falconeer (PC) |
This is an aerial combat game. Admittedly not my favorite genre, but The Falconeer won a BAFTA, despite receiving lukewarm reviews, and I got it for free or in a Humble Bundle, so I decided to try it out. It apparently had a remaster, so I was hoping that whatever issues it previously had would be remedied. It nails a visual style and commits to political-military worldbuilding, which I respect. Unfortunately, that’s about all it nails.
The amount of things the game doesn’t bother to explain to you is perplexing. It begins with a prologue and combat tutorial, the first and last thing the game explains. I appreciate figuring things out on my own, to an extent. When I decided to quit, I noticed some text on the menu screen that said I’d leveled up and saw that I was level 3. There are levels? Are there experience points, too? What do the levels do? Do they improve my stats? The stats are AG, SPD, ENG, HP, RGN, DMG, and ROF. What do these mean? Some I can interpret—SPD must be speed, for example—but others, I am at a loss. ENG? What is this? English? Engineering? What is AG? Agility? What does that do? There is no tutorial for this, no tooltips.
I also discovered shops. What is the point of shops? I played an hour without buying anything and it didn’t hamper my mission success. Do I have to buy things? What are these different categories of things I can buy? I stumbled upon an inventory of sorts, I think. Do I equip things? Some things are damaged. Can I repair them? Speaking of the difficulty, it seems to be random. There are skull icons indicating difficulty of each mission. In the hour I played, these ranged from 1 skull to like 6 skulls (out of 10?). I didn’t notice a difference. It would go like 1, 2, 6, 1, 4, 2, 5, 1. What does the difficulty mean? Why was there a “6” difficulty mission 15 minutes into the game? And why was it easy? Why are enemy names re-used over and over? I killed the same named enemies, blew up their falcons, sank their ships, and yet they continued reappearing. What is the point of the shrines? Are a lot of the open world locations just places to discover, but you can’t interact with them? What’s the point?
Related, the story is a dense political-military slog. There are a bunch of different factions, or countries, or organizations, and they are all fighting, allying, betraying. Some guy keeps barking orders at me to take main missions. I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t really care. It seems like the developers built a neat world here, but the narrative isn’t presented in an interesting way, and exploring the world on your falcon is boring, too. There’s a big map, but there’s nothing to do. The open world is empty, just an expanse of sea with islands and cities here and there, and various shrines and other “open world” boxes to tick off, but there isn’t much substance to any of it.
The controls are a hot mess, too. You can fast-travel immediately, which begs the question of why there is an open world at all, especially since there is not much to do it in. Actually, fast travel only works sometimes, though I cannot discern when or why. Sometimes, you can press “A” to fast travel and sometimes it doesn’t work. Other times you press “A” to fast travel, and the fast travel indicator doesn’t appear, yet you will fast travel anyway. In missions, you press “A” to target enemies. Sometimes “A” will target them and other times it won’t. It was very irritating. Occasionally, in combat the camera swings up for no apparent reason or the bird ascends, which is disorienting.
I gather I am not the only one turned off by all these issues. On Steam, 57.8% of players completed the prologue. Then just 10.6% completed the first chapter! That’s a huge attrition rate. Then nearly half of those bailed before completing the second chapter, which just 5.9% of players did! It looks like it’s not until the third chapter that players committed to finishing (4.7% in chapter 3, 4.3% in chapter 4, and 4.2% completed the epilogue).
I was just trying to knock something out in the next week so I could have a completion for March (because I’m in the middle of two long games), but this ended up being a retirement. I’ll have to pick something else to beat this week.
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Mar 9th, 2026 at 09:45:05 - Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS5) |
Yeah, this was incredible, as expected. The story, the character development, the historical setting, all incredible. My brother and another friend (especially the friend) were highly invested in me playing the game, so I was keeping them updated while playing. Another friend was supposed to be playing it at the same time as me, but I paused a couple months ago and he defected to Mass Effect for a break and never returned. I need to be like, "Dude, I beat it. Hurry up so we can talk about it!"
There are so many memorable missions, from the night out with Lenny (the game explores race and racism during this time and place, which was neat) to going to get the kid from the Italian guy to an epic train robbery to the final showdown, and even to the side missions, like collecting debts for Strauss (which seems so mundane), but realizing the damage that Strauss's money lending causes to individuals and families and then eventually kicking him out of camp. The characters are all flawed, and the main character arc of Arthur about made me cry throughout the last chapter (though I had a MAJOR plot point spoiled for me by a John Green book!). Truly, it is a story about redemption, with some characters growing and others succumbing to their flaws. Very human, very emotional.
Two main activities in the game are riding your horse and shooting people. Riding your horse could have gotten boring fast, but you have good control over movement and how fast you go, and have to manage horse stamina. You also encounter things along the road, from Strangers (capital "S") to meet (aka side characters with their own story arcs), to strangers (small "s") whom I usually ignored (aka random events to random NPCs like passing someone calling for help because he's getting chased by bandits, passing a person begging for money, passing a hunter stuck in a bear trap [I felt bad that I never helped the hunter]), to ambushes, etc.
There is a handy auto-ride system, where you can set a cinematic camera to take over as you go from one place to another. Arthur will actually ride the horse the whole way, but you can put the controller down and watch the beautiful landscape and bathe in the ambient music. You can also fast-travel using wagons or trains between towns, but I hardly ever did that.
Shooting people is pretty basic. You have a weapon wheel and an inventory wheel, and during combat you basically duck behind cover (R1), pop out and target someone (L2), which uses handy aim assist, flick the left control stick up to the target's head (because aim assist always centers on their chest), and pull the trigger (R2) for a headshot. Duck again, line up your next headshot, kill. Move forward to the next cover. Repeat until mission cleared. This did get repetitive by the end. I hardly ever used "dead eye," a slow time ability that allows you to shoot multiple enemies at once, and I hardly ever used items, including healing items, because you just don't need them. Weapons are just regular pistols and rifles and knives, whatever they had in the late 1800s. Combat was spiced up by the various contexts in which you fight (e.g., raiding a mansion, robbing a train, shooting on horseback, etc.), and it was engaging, but like I said, it did get repetitive.
Another thing that got repetitive, and that I quit doing after too long, was looting corpses and searching places for loot. Each "search" animation is way too long, and like I said, you don't end up needing health items, or any other items. You can always pick up new guns from the ground and ammo is plentiful. You can also buy guns and ammo too if you want. There is a "camp upgrade" element to the game in the earlier chapters, and I collected money and items to sell until I had upgraded everything, but that was a small portion of the game. Once I'd upgraded everything, first of all, the camp moves and you don't even have access to all the upgraded stuff for a chunk of the game (I don't think), and second of all, you don't need all the stuff anyway. So once camp was upgraded (by like chapter 2? of 6 + epilogues!), I basically had no use for money for the rest of the game. Sure, you can buy outfits and new guns and whatever, but none of that is necessary.
This made me feel like I went pretty straight through the main game, plus most of the Stranger missions, but didn't touch much else. I didn't mess with mini games, I didn't spend time in towns going to the theaters and whatever, I didn't mess with cosmetic things like giving myself haircuts or trying on outfits, I didn't do optional legendary hunts (those wild animals will kill you so fast!) or search for special gear or do the treasure maps, etc. That all sounds nice if you want to spend more time in the game and do everything that the Wild West has to offer, but I didn't. The main story was fantastic, so that was my focus, and I've played so many open world games and MMOs that I felt no need to hunt extra legendary creatures or collect special item sets.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was an epic tale. I can see why my brother and my friend were so excited for me to play it. Now I will be the one harassing other people: "Did you play RDR 2 yet?! Let me know when you start it! Keep me updated!" Next up from Rockstar later this year: GTA 6!
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