Finally finished it yesterday.
Of the initial pros, the graphics and art direction held out through the entire game. It looks great. Terrain traversal and the combo system started getting dull pretty quick. The storyline (surprisingly, given the cultural wokeness) held up throughout the game. Combat stayed mildly engaging, in the sense that it's dangerous if you're not paying attention. The storyline was by far the best part about this game (besides maybe the graphics and art direction), and held up throughout. Wheels remained fun as well, with new pieces being introduced throughout play.
Character portraits were fucking awful. Everyone looks like they have 50 extra lbs of babyfat in their cheeks, their teeth all look like characters from Gumball, and it completely ruined facial expression changes during dialogue. Fucking awful. Fishing was quite obviously a shallow fan-service (more on that idea later). It wasn't engaging, difficult, or rewarding. It could have been cut with nothing of value lost. I never got used to the timed combat system, but I was able to do well enough that it didn't (usually) infuriate me. Meta references remained retarded throughout. This goes back to my mention of fanservice.
At the end of the day, this game's biggest strengths were its graphics and storyline. "Story, Kal?!" you say with a malicious gleam in your eye, "I thought you hated all forms of wokeness and SJWism! I bet you're about to take the bear dick with the rest of us!"
Well fuck man, you guys may be right. Let's look at examples of Current Year SJW on display:
- dumb, fat, black cunt who mouths cringingly snarky lines and makes constant snide meta remarks about JRPGs in general.
- character portraits straight out of CalArts. The most heinous isn't actually our heroes, it's a (horribly scripted) villain from early-ish game.
- gay ghosts. Yes, I'm serious. Only in one area, and only one enemy type. So I guess I could cope by LARPing that I'm purging the degenerates. Still.
- troon backer message that was allowed to stand.
Against these four points you have a storyline that's a simple, straightforward Hero's Journey played completely straight. The heroes are actually nice kids. Their best friend is a great Second Man. The other characters are all nice guys and girls whose motivations are, without exception, to help people (their own, or in general). The heroes' idols (older Solstice Warriors) do a very plain, unreversed heel turn. They become the villains and that's what they're shown as: villains, selfish and shortsighted. Their fates are commensurate with their choice. At the end our heroes take on a new, greater task with their accumulated power, and there the game closes.
I want to give special mention to the game's Second Man, Garl. His final contribution to the fight against the game's supervillain is simple, humble, fun, and has an enormous impact. It was genuinely warm and loving, and a great example of how someone who is never intended to be the great hero or focus of the story is nevertheless absolutely required for the heroes to win the day. It was very well done. Major kudos to the devs on this. And it also serves as a perfect illustrative example of how to do an homage, to evoke a certain feeling, without falling into shitty fanservice. The same goes, to a lesser extent, for the entire storyline.
Against these strengths you unfortunately have very large millstones around the game's neck: the entire thing (minus the storyline) is a fanservice. I've already mentioned the meta references repeatedly. We can add to that the fact that every aspect of gameplay - every single one - is a blatant copy of the games it services, done worse and more shallow. You see what's being aimed at here, and it all falls short. An on-rails game with a huge open world and lots of optional content/exploration near the end, becomes here a 30+ hour slog, followed by perhaps one hour's worth of side content (with one very fun, frustrating and well-made exception) prior to the final dungeon and battles. Fun and engaging minigames become here somewhat interesting activities that quickly devolve into boring chores for rote rewards. Cool character attack combos become here a flat, uninteresting group of options with very few right answers (hint: Great Eagle, Arcane Conflagration and Mending Light). This game constantly pokes you in the eye with its predecessors, rather than evoking a feeling gotten from older games while creating a distinct identity of its own. And they don't stop there. You're subjected to repeated cultural references (mostly movie quotes) from the 80s, 90s and 00s.
At the end of the day what I think we have is a game that might conceivably serve as a decent entry point to the genre for starry-eyed newcomers who have never played the greats. For the rest of us, its good storyline and good art direction might put it in the "above average" category, if you're willing to put up with cultural woke and an overall shallow game. 6/10.
