Let me get this out of the way, audio and visually the game is superb. Now the bad news.
If you thought the previous FF were dissappointing storywise, you're not gonna find much here either. I sat there playing through the game waiting for a moment when the game turned interesting and involving. This happened in other FF games where it starts slow but at least got interesting. But damn when I finished the final boss, I was like "this is it?!?"
When I got to the "final dungeon," I didn't even realize it. It was too hard for me to believe this could be the last stage even though several times the characters were like "this is it!" There was really no climax and nothing really came together to point into one direction. The story felt very very very very weak and I felt like I was only halfway into the game. Even as I slaughtered the final boss, I was somehow HOPING that this is the climax much like FF3 when the world was destroyed and turned into ruins. But nope, the credit came up and boy was I utterly dissappointed.
It took me about 2-3 days of staying up til about 2-3am to complete this game. Game-hour wise, I racked up about 18 hours. But most of the hours were not from advancing the storyline. It was because the random encounters were WAYY more difficult than boss encounters. I died several times facing random encounters in the final dungeon. Of course I had to spend some time leveling up. The game isn't balanced at all. I never really had any trouble with bosses but your average joe enemy is very difficult. Even the average joe enemy has way better spells than the boss. The final boss's super duper-mega move was your simple explosion.
On the good side, I only completed 47% of the game, which means I have a lot of "secrets" to unlock. I'll probably go back to see if I can find some secret items. I'll probably go and try to kill the guardian of the final boss (who is 100x harder than the final boss but the game lets you bypass him).
Overall I say this game is worst then any of the previous ones and that's not a good thing.
If you thought the previous FF were dissappointing storywise, you're not gonna find much here either. I sat there playing through the game waiting for a moment when the game turned interesting and involving. This happened in other FF games where it starts slow but at least got interesting. But damn when I finished the final boss, I was like "this is it?!?"
When I got to the "final dungeon," I didn't even realize it. It was too hard for me to believe this could be the last stage even though several times the characters were like "this is it!" There was really no climax and nothing really came together to point into one direction. The story felt very very very very weak and I felt like I was only halfway into the game. Even as I slaughtered the final boss, I was somehow HOPING that this is the climax much like FF3 when the world was destroyed and turned into ruins. But nope, the credit came up and boy was I utterly dissappointed.
It took me about 2-3 days of staying up til about 2-3am to complete this game. Game-hour wise, I racked up about 18 hours. But most of the hours were not from advancing the storyline. It was because the random encounters were WAYY more difficult than boss encounters. I died several times facing random encounters in the final dungeon. Of course I had to spend some time leveling up. The game isn't balanced at all. I never really had any trouble with bosses but your average joe enemy is very difficult. Even the average joe enemy has way better spells than the boss. The final boss's super duper-mega move was your simple explosion.
On the good side, I only completed 47% of the game, which means I have a lot of "secrets" to unlock. I'll probably go back to see if I can find some secret items. I'll probably go and try to kill the guardian of the final boss (who is 100x harder than the final boss but the game lets you bypass him).
Overall I say this game is worst then any of the previous ones and that's not a good thing.