Recent reviews by June

this will take you less than half an hour to finish. florence is a wholly new and unique way to tell a story of heartbreak and renewal through music, art, and dialogue communicated with low stakes puzzles.

10/10

old people with marital issues makes it everyone else's problem and brainwashes teens into becoming child soldiers.

final fantasy viii is definitely a game of its time, from the unwilling and broody reluctant hero to the awful mechanics and level designs that boosted prima games guide sales. the plot doesn't make sense, there's no character development, the dialogue makes me cringe sometimes, and the mechanics feel like it's actively trying to make my game as inefficient as humanly possible. unless you like being stuck on a map and wasting away hours, it's impossible to play ffviii without a guide (i'm looking at you, tomb of the unknown king!!!). players will find themselves running into walls, not knowing where to go, looking for checkpoints to save, and there were too many long corridors and unnecessary maps to load into—everything is outdated and it makes me appreciate singleplayer games today a lot more. the plot is a mess; one minute we're in school, the next we're in space. none of it felt seamless due to the choppy combat system and terrible level designs. some might call the writing "ambitious" but it was a case of writers biting off more than they could chew. it's really difficult to write time travel well and the plot device was used like a hotfix when they ran out of ideas. lastly, the button mapping is horrible like i shouldn't have to drum on my controller to figure out what "b1, b2, b3...etc" is. square enix has the money to do the basics and this was not it.

playing from squall's point of view reminds me of why i don't enjoy anything from a broody teenager's perspective, especially reluctant heroes who are broody teens created in the late-90's and early 2000's. his energy was giving, "whatever, mom i don't care (but i really do) /slams door." squall is a whiny brat—and he's a child soldier so he deserves to be whiny and bratty—but sometimes he dogs other characters for no reason. teenage meandering annoys me and i'm surprised i went 30hrs enduring it. i liked squall way better in kingdom hearts and expected him to be more like that. quistis is a weirdo teacher who hits on her students; irvine only has "sexual harassment lawsuits" on his bucket list; rinoa is a boy-crazy girl who is equally bratty with unclear motivations; zell is the joey tribbiani of the group; and selphie is the most well-rounded one of the playable characters. the game would've been better if selphie were the main character. she lost her home, had to overcome a lot of realistic fears, has a big heart, is funny, believes the best in people, and she isn't perfect but it makes her the perfect protagonist. selphie is a good mix of tifa (ffvii), zidane (ffix), and rikku (ffx) and i always enjoyed when she took the lead.

i wanted to be one of the fun girlies who loved the game but i'm not and i understand why it has mixed opinions. steam needs a "just okay" rating because i don't have the nostalgia that positive reviewers have but i respect what ffviii did for jrpg's at the time of its release. if this game didn't have the magic booster function, i would've stopped playing a long time ago and asked for a refund. everything is more efficient when you don't have to prolong fights just to draw 2 firagas. with that said, i can't in good faith recommend this to anyone who wants to play final fantasy viii for the first time, let alone use this as their gateway into final fantasy jrpg's. the walking simulator coupled with the awful mechanics and confusing plot told via unlikable, bratty teens really killed the little enjoyment i gained (the witchy ladies and triple triad). i think it was also a mistake for me to play ffix right before diving into this because that was one of the best final fantasy games i've played and ffviii just can't compare.

4/10

i bought and played this on release when i had a ps5, bought and played it again for my ps4, and bought and started it just now on steam. after recently playing crisis core, viii, ix, xiii, and xv, this updated entry is one of the better and more well-rounded final fantasy mainline games. it's got better dialogue, character development, worldbuilding, and plot that has real-world metaphors/significance. my wife, tifa lockhart, is also a main cast member and i love her. she's the best character in any series. the mechanics get a little wonky and frustrating, especially with some of the boss fights towards the end, but i love everything else about this game and i can't wait for rebirth!

10/10 - favorite

good game, a little too goofy sometimes, and some really uncomfortable jokes made about a 16-year-old girl. they also automatically forgave the war criminal and the protagonist goes back to save the guy after the many acts of genocide, destruction, thievery, and terrorism he's committed across two planes of existence (gaia and terra) and then say the maniac gave everyone "hope" like HUH?? waaaay too forgiving. other than that, great characters, solid plot, and fantastic worldbuilding. vivi is the best.

8/10

i can flirt with anyone but i have to play multiple playthroughs to kiss everyone which is okay. good game.

10/10 - favorites

'home alone', but with zombies and death!

let's start with the things i didn't enjoy: i hated the mechanics. i died more times in this game than i did in any of telltale's other twd games combined. i shouldn't have to smash my mouse enough to wake the neighborhood just to open a door, only for it not to matter. once every now and then is fine, but going "PSYCH! it doesn't matter" after working out every muscle in my forearm as frequently as i did is not good mechanics. there's still no chapter select, no "skip dialogue" option, and no way to let the game keep going while alt+tabbed without it pausing. this should've been remedied two games ago. i hated that the last game made clementine a mom to aj when she's still a child and they just nailed that narrative home in this game. she's not a therapist and she certainly has no maternal instincts. i had to forget all of the weird convos about clementine being responsible for aj like she's his mom and pretend telltale went for a sibling dynamic. there were also a bunch of plotholes. off the top of my head: like how minnie was swarmed by full-grown adult zombies and took so long to get infected with the amount of wounds she had when other full-grown adults turned into zombies faster with just one bite. another was when clementine looked as pale as lee did in the end meaning the infection had spread. she was pale from head to toe right before aj chopped her leg off. there was an option to chop lee's arm off in twd season 1 and it didn't help him so, unless that detail in twd 1 was retconned, the ending doesn't make sense. i guess it's up to audience interpretation whether or not it was real but i prefer a more concrete end if that's the case.

the story was great, the characters were likable, there were shocking twists, the optional romances were a step up from the last game (i love the grumpy x sunshine trope as much as i love a sapphic story), and i was happy to be following clementine again after the mess that was 'a new frontier'. i liked that it was a group of kids who acted like kids without being annoying the way ben, sarah, and gabe were in the previous entries. it might be because of their circumstances before the apocalypse but it was still a good choice. i took the ending at face value so that things ended on a more hopeful note. this finale is a character study on children raised in a world surrounded by violence and death who find one another. it's a great way to close this chapter of clementine's story with the possibility of reopening the book with her as an adult.

edit: okay the game devs cleared something up in a tweet that makes sense about the ending that i mentioned regarding clem earlier—"The time between Clem getting bit and her leg being chopped off was apparently just 15 minutes. On top of that the constant blood loss since it was on her sliced open leg slowed down the infection spread. Whereas Lee didn't chop his arm off until a lot longer and didn't have the blood loss to help. So at that point it was already too far gone." i take back that bit about clementine and the ending. lee went whole chapters without doing anything about his infection so it makes a lot more sense.

7/10

there really needs to be a mid-thumb option or a star system because this entry was a 2 or 2.5 stars out of 5. great voice acting, improved graphics, i loved hearing garrus vakarian, i loved seeing clementine, and javi is a good protagonist to follow. he's everything i liked about lee without trying to be lee. the family dynamics were interesting and i'm sure it's relatable for a lot of people. i understand why telltale was trying to be less point-and-click and more action with their mechanics, but their narrative suffered because of it and they should've stuck to their strengths. i wouldn't have cared that clementine wasn't the main character if our choices from previous games carried over. sidelining clementine was a mistake; every decision i made had a bias that was heavily skewed towards her approval and her survival. all of the other characters were second-rate versions of the season 1 supporting cast and/or they were really annoying so i didn't care about their approval and survival. this game would have been a thumbs down if javi weren't a likable character but he barely saved it. clementine should've been written as a different character. an insignificant amount of lore and none of the choices we made in this game carries over to her game in the final season. 'a new frontier' was ultimately a disappointing amalgamation of recycled plotlines and character archetypes. it filled tiny pockets in clementine's story, but i don't care about it enough to do another playthrough like i did with its predecessors.

5/10

the stitching scene still haunts my dreams and clementine is even more traumatized than ever before! there are a lot of the same elements from the first one carrying over to this one. it's just as memorable, but doesn't have quite the same heart. i just loved lee and clementine's dynamic too much.

8/10

i'm too stupid and tired for this game lmao

let me setup how excited i was for this to come to steam: i anticipated this game since its announcement in 2006 while i was still in school, my friends surprised me by buying it for me around 2009 when it was a console-exclusive, it bricked my ps3, and then i bought it personally 5 years later. all i have to say now is that i've basically had this game for over 2 decades and THIS is what it came down to!?

the good things ffxiii has going for it are the voice acting, the designs, the graphics (for its time), fang, and sazh and his love for his son. i also like how linear the story is; i'm a working adult and jrpg's are often time-sinking commitments that i can't give. final fantasy xiii's story is just 'raya and the last dragon' except nothing makes sense, almost all of the characters are unlikable and one-dimensional, the mechanics are mindbogglingly awful, and the sapphics die . nobody could possibly be more disappointed than me. i'm gonna go scream until i forget anything from this game with "cie" in it.

2/10