Recent reviews by Parry

I don’t play on Steam. Ask for Hrs.

Overview:
I love this game, I cannot explain how much of an incredible feat of the MMO genre this is, & I wish I played sooner. I’ve played my fair share of MMOs, F2P or B2P, but this tops everything. I have never felt a game be so deserving of a sub-fee in my life. It cares about the story, the characters, the narrative setup, & the payoff first & foremost. It is remarkable both in terms of visual style & musical choices, & remains a good, quality, & remarkable product.

While ARR isn't particularly special in terms of storyline & gameplay, probably because they had to work with 1.0 to relaunch FFXIV but that's a story you can look up on your own, virtually everything beyond that - including Heavensward which is a part of the free trial - steps up the quality immensely, leading to an unmissable experience. You owe it to yourself to go through the journey the game places in front of you. You will not leave it the same person you went in. I often find that there are two kinds of FFXIV players, ones who never made it past ARR/ARR Patch content & the ones who are a walking billboard for the game.

Because of this, it is very difficult for me to get people I know to play it with me & bond with me over it. Not everyone can give it the benefit of the doubt & believe what I, the MMO, FF, or FFXIV community has to say. Not everyone can also have the discipline to finish ARR content, even if the free trial is the most accessible it’s ever been. Yes, it's an amazing game. Yes, you should play it.

If you do give it a go, it will reward you. If you love good storytelling, this MMO is the one. If you want to give an honest review on this game, I’d advise finishing Heavensward Patch content first.

FFXIV Context:
I played under the preconception that FF games are known for their good stories, world-building, music, & immersion in the worlds that they craft for stand-alone entries. So knowing this made me think that FFXIV would crank this dial to an 11 since there would be so many possibilities in the writing due to the nature of MMOs. This MMO is one of the few very popular MMOs that has an overarching story across expansions, ties together well with most of its content & does not sunset that content. FFXIV was so popular, Square Enix had to stop selling the game & lock people out of the recent level 60 free trial.

The Review:

-{Story}-
This is the best story in a game I have ever played & I'm not exaggerating because its emphasis on storytelling is a standout feature, as it is a FF game first & foremost. Most MMOs always fail to captivate the player of the story in general. A lot only have a main story in the base game. FFXIV is very unique because the developers put so much development & depth into this story & game that it just makes you enjoy it. It is deep, engaging, & expertly crafted. Not only that, the other major content contributes to the main story making it even more interesting & feel more grand in scope. The Main Scenario Quests feel like an epic tale rather than a gameplay design choice to level your character. This game builds a world & storyline across all the expansions rather than a bunch of expansions you play through & then forget about. For example, something that has happened, or you know about, in ARR will be relevant in future expansions.

This is the longest story in all the FF games & this is probably the only MMO that can potentially make you cry just from the story. That is how good it is. Most of the villains are also not 2 dimensional, actually have a good purpose, & have depth. The kind of villains that would spark people to make "<name> did nothing wrong" content. On the other hand, the story is a bit mediocre early on & only really gets going in the first expansion Heavensward. However, the developers did, recently, cut a lot of content from ARR, making it not as grueling as it used to be & did it without cutting out important plot points that would be relevant in future expansions. If you are a lore & world-building person then you are going to love it no matter what. As someone who enjoys immersive lore, I found myself drawn to the rich atmosphere of Eorzea & its diverse characters. Technically you can skip all the cutscenes (& rewatch them in an Inn or your house), & even buy a skip to Endwalker if you want to, but I'd recommend against it considering how much of a role the story, immersion, & character development play in this game. The story might be a bit bland & lengthy in its early stages, but it becomes one of the better parts of this game. You can tell that this story is someone’s life work & every detail is accounted for.

-{Community}-
The community is amazing from certain perspectives that are much better than most MMOs. What makes this community so unique is just the cycle of players who are willing to help new players. Yes, this is normal in all MMOs but in FFXIV we aren't forced to help new players, instead, we choose to. That's what makes this community so nice. Not all Communities are perfect or imperfect but the majority of this one is decently kind. So much so that the game has won the Best Community Award multiple years in a row. One of the first things I would do if I were to play this game all over again for the first time is to be involved in the community sooner. A strong community is what keeps an MMO alive & keeps you, as the player, engaged. This is the best MMO where I have actively engaged with the community, participated in a guild, became social, participated in community events, attended venues, live performances, & done content all the time with people that I would now know to be my friends. The game has a vibrant fan community with Reddits & Discords as well, & the attitudes are mostly always warm, positive, helpful, & accommodating. Especially when asking questions & seeking help. People are usually forgiving of mistakes in dungeons & boss fights & won’t try to start fights.

-{Gameplay}-
There is an insane amount of content this game has to offer even without the expansions, solo & group. What’s great is that it doesn't feel like I am always left behind grinding to catch up. This is a very “my pace” kind of game. The most notable content is the Gold Saucer, Maps, Deep Dungeons, 24-man Raids, 144-man instances, Dungeons, Trials & Extremes, Savages, Ultimates, etc. Once you start unlocking more content through the main story you will probably find yourself deviating from the main story at times or a lot with the friends you made along the way. It is a slow start in combat, but they only start improving when you start leveling up more & getting better gear. What intrigued me & got me interested the most was the ability to have all classes under one character. The flexibility in character customization, reducing the need to go through the same content again, is a game-changer. It encourages exploring different playstyles without the need for multiple alt characters.

If you find yourself at the endgame, just keep in mind that this game is easy to learn but hard to master. This game has a target audience of casual players to hardcore raiders. Normal Content is relatively easy to pick up but there are also Extreme/Savage/Ultimates which take a while to get down; also some classes are harder to master than others. This content is where the combat reaches its true potential. If you don't believe me, look up someone completing the Omega Protocol (Ultimate). Yes, the mechanics can be really cool & very satisfying.

-{Conclusion}-
Have your friends play with you & show them this review. I promise you that you will not regret playing, it is a must-play. Catch up with the main story & do the plethora of content with your friends. Who knows, you might find yourself getting in the conversation of lore, story, & start theory crafting with others.

After I saw the way Arkham Batman was disrespected in SS:KTJL, I had to make a positive review here.

Don't play SS:KTJL, play this instead. I will not consider SS:KTJL canon.

R.I.P. Kevin Conroy

This is not a serious review.

All I gotta say is that it was fun playing with friends unironically, but I can never see myself playing this by myself. Worth the money when it's on sale and goof off and chat/catch up with old friends. You can also add the achievements you get, all at once, to an achievement "Featured Showcase" for your profile with whatever you want said on it. That alone makes the purchase with it. lol

Forwarning, The game is buggy as hell. The UI breaks with widescreen monitors and the room/lobby system doesn't make sense. Sometimes the UI is unresponsive in certain menus. You can also clip through walls and shoot people through them.

The game truly was "early access." Now time for monkey business

Almost all RPG fans have heard of the name “Final Fantasy” and many RPG fans are fans of the Final Fantasy series, but many from the modern gaming community do not know the significance and importance of Final Fantasy’s release. We would, most likely, not have the RPGs we have today without this game. Taking inspiration from Dragon Quest, Wizardry, Ultima, and Dungeons and Dragons; Final Fantasy would be the game to popularize RPG video games on a console and in the west in a time where RPGs were mainly in the PC market globally. Final Fantasy would innovate, and set the standard, for future RPGs to come. It would also continue to do this with its subsequent entries. It was this game that put RPGs in the mainstream and would inspire game developers to make more RPGs. No true RPG fan can dispute the significance of this RPG in the greater RPG landscape we have now.

It would be one of the first of console RPGs to be narratively driven, take advantage of all the space of the Famicom and NES cartridges and the hardware of those systems, see a full cast of party members, be strategic in nature, and take advantage of a class system that gave a lot of replayability. It was very ambitious for its time and was a major risk for Square, as they didn’t see the appeal of a game based on RPG elements in a time where Square was in financial trouble and the console video game industry did not deem it profitable until Dragon Quest, or Dragon Warrior in the west, released.

This game is a remaster of the Famicom version, not the NES version, with QOL improvements, many bug fixes, updated visuals, and updated music from some of the original development team. This is the definitive way to play the original game with its intended vision, but it is highly suggested to people getting into the series to not start with this game. Surprisingly, this game has stood the test of time and still holds up today.

Many in this review section would have you believe that the new fixes and QOL features should not have been included, as it takes away from the original experience. I would disagree because some of these criticisms are based on the NES version rather than the Famicom version, which both have a lot of differences of their own including a lot of censorship. I would also say that this new version gives new players to the game, and the series, greater accessibility. Bugs such as the Peninsula of Power were not intended to be in the game. The progression structure of the game was very deliberate in that the game was supposed to be hard in the very beginning. This would teach the player how to manage their resources, be strategic, and encourage turning back from a dungeon to restock, heal up, and return to the dungeon to continue exploring until they got the key item, or reach the boss, they needed. This in itself would make grinding unnecessary, as grinding in an RPG is considered an indication that the player is not deploying, or lacks, any type of strategy to encounters, commonly known as a “skill issue,” or running away from encounters, which is encouraged in the original game and is a viable strategy. This is quite evident when watching speedrunners play the game or any RPG for that matter. For context, the original Final Fantasy version was considered to be the hardest in the franchise because trying to attack an enemy that was already killed would waste a party member’s turn. This makes realistic sense when we think of two people attacking an enemy at the same time, but a major problem that made the game hard was that some of the spells didn’t work.

Final Fantasy is a charming and simple RPG in today’s standards and it is a good remaster to see where the series all started. The updated visuals bring the character models, monster sprites, backgrounds, and locations new life and gives the rest of the games in the pixel remasters an artistic cohesion while still capturing the charm of the original game.

The game remains true to its original by going back to the spell slot magic system and staying true to the classic turn-based combat system where strategy and party composition matter for your playstyle.

Exploration, as it ever was, remains expansive for players that like to have an adventure with rich and diverse environments in a nonlinear nature. This encourages the player to explore everything, take on new challenges, expand your arsenal, and increase your party's power. No way points that break the immersion, just figuring out where to go next and giving you a true RPG experience that rewards your progression.

While the narrative is primitive by modern standards due to the time of its release and compared to later entries, it establishes the foundation for the series’s mastercrafted stories.

The soundtrack is as memorable as any other Final Fantasy. The music is something you will never forget and all incredibly redone and modernized while still staying true to the originals.

Finally this title comes to Steam and it isn't a bad mobile port. Thank you Square Enix.

When the original first released, it was easily a 9/10. However, in this modern landscape with the context of its creation in mind, this game is a 7/10.

Please Square Enix, give us a full Dragon Quest series release on Steam.

*Note:
This will be a series of reviews for each mainline Final Fantasy game. If you are interested in what I have to say about each mainline entry feel free to follow me. I will be replaying each game to completion and then completing and reviewing other critically acclaimed and classic RPGs. This is by no means a retrospective. There are already great Youtube channels that have done that for each mainline title and the series as a whole*

Only recommend this game to die-hard TES fans, but even us TES fans have been in debate about this title for years & its identity/validity as an “MMO.” I, & the rest of the TES community, agree that this game is a spin-off of the franchise. This, with the fact that ESO is listed as a spin-off on every TES database, the amount of inconsistencies/retcons the game contains that simply make it not canon, & no official statement from BGS. I would rather play through the entirety of any of the numbered titles besides Arena. This product takes away everything that makes TES great.

Played this game for a long time on the launcher. Started out with friends, then they all left & I started playing by myself. During that time I’ve gotten to the end game & did a multitude of content & did high-end raiding. Joined a group to try & stay active with the community & make friends so that I had a reason to stay. However, I did end up leaving & have tried getting back into the game 4 other times with no luck. There are just better MMOs out there with better quality & that respect your time & money.

Story:
There are the Main Story Quests that only go to level 50, Chapter/Zone Stories, & Alliance Story, each have their own self-contained story. These quests are what make the game world come alive & great for people who only like questing. However, there is barely anything that makes the player care about the characters or what's going on, especially when you get to chapter content because then it gets worse. It lacks strong & memorable characters, & when the player does see some of these characters again in later content it feels like they have become a shadow of their former selves. These stories don’t narratively set up anything for later content & have no payoffs for things that have happened previously. Sure some quests tie into each other in some way, but it doesn’t do it well or in an interesting way. This doesn’t have an engaging story, overarching story, fragmented if you don't follow an order, & doesn’t have continuous character development. If you are looking for an outstanding story that keeps you engaged throughout, this game doesn't have it.

The Main story was not interesting & was literally the plot to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but with several inconsistencies & retcons to the pre-established lore of TES.

Combat & Gameplay:
Combat is just atrocious & deviates hard from the holy trinity, which makes roles useless & makes group content underwhelming. Instead of auto-attacking like in any other MMO, the game makes you do it yourself to create the illusion of an action MMO. The animation canceling as well as the combat feels very clunky & floaty. Animation canceling requires too much skill from a new player, isn't fun & isn't an intended feature. If someone wants to do any endgame content they need to be able to do it, otherwise most guilds will not consider them.

The other problem with combat is the abilities. You can have a total of 10 skill slots, 5 for each weapon you have equipped. After a while combat gets quite repetitive & there are not many buttons to press, while other MMOs have a feeling of variety compared to this. When I am high-end raiding I want to feel like I have my entire toolkit.

Endgame:
Endgame trials & the trial design is bad in my opinion. Bosses have some decent mechanics but it just isn't very fun, interesting, or have depth due to the poor combat. Trials also don't drop powerful gear which is worth chasing after or any cool cosmetics.

Zenimax started putting very overpowered gear into each new expansion/DLC to get people to purchase them, & then they nerfed those items within a few months. It is downright scummy.

At one point the devs "forgot" that healers are important. There were heal checks in the game which mathematically couldn't be passed without trial gear & you needed to pass that check to get your trial gear. The devs don't play the game at all & act like the end-game community is just trash. Raid Leads are the sole reason why new players can get into trials right now.

What is an MMO?
Probably the least MMO feeling MMO I've played. The general community is very toxic. Player population isn’t doing so well & has declined, but doesn't look like it because of the Megaserver. Anyways, there is little to no interaction with players. The majority of them are minding their own business & do not react or respond to you. No one seems interested in interacting with a random stranger. You might attempt the same open dungeon with a stranger, but they refuse a party invite. It doesn't feel like an MMORPG. More like a single-player game disguised as an MMO, which happens to have other players in it that feel like NPCs.

Difficulty:
Next aspect is the difficulty, or rather, the lack thereof. This is a shame, as the world design is incredibly good, & the level designers did a fantastic job. However, the perceived dangers of this world are not reflected in the actual difficulty of the game. It's nearly impossible to die. You can run through all the mobs & kill the ones you need to kill, even in 4 man dungeons by yourself. The lack of challenge may also be the reason why nobody wants to interact with another person. The game scales you to max level at the start & slowly nerfs you while gear scales up. It is the least satisfying leveling experience in any rpg.

Only challenging thing in this game is the high-end-raiding. Veteran Hard Mode Trials are the only thing that makes this game difficult, but they are disappointing & don’t have really good rewards. This means there is less incentive to do them & leads to a problem of no sane player wanting to do them.

Monetization & Retention:
I have noticed that ZOS loses players & shoves more advertisements in your face. Maybe fine for free-to-play games but this is pathetic, neglecting to add legit ways to earn cosmetics that add depth to the roleplay experience as a massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

It’s very hard to play without the monthly subscription as inventory space is highly limited which pressures you into buying ESO+. Even after subscribing, too many things are paywalled. The game has 95% of mounts pay walled with no other way to get them & the good ones have to be gambled for. Housing in this game is decent, but it's so ridiculously overpriced as with everything else in it. New dungeons that should be included with new map DLC are sold to you as micro DLCs. Instead of making great content they just add more crap to the cash store. Bottom line, they don't care about gameplay, only the cash shop. Now even skill lines & skill points are sold through the crown store, which is needed in more difficult content. They are grindy & boring to level up. It literally takes 100 hours to grind all the skill lines on one character. Many players have asked for it to be account wide, but in the end the solution is sold through the crown store. So the crown store isn't limited to cosmetics only, there are game play impacting items as well. I would call it pay-for-convenience-to-win. All of this is the ZoS way, create a problem & then sell you the solution.

Other criticisms:
They shut down any criticism & leave bugs hanging for months if not years & ask you to keep spending money. The changes are also causing more & more people to leave. It adds up to 2+ hour dungeon queue times & with nobody running older trials as there is no incentive to do so for newer or older players.

Zenimax’s strategy seems to be to ignore the few long-term customers because they aren't going to leave, & focus on the new players who are dumb enough to spend tons of cash on the game. PvE is oriented to catch new players, hook them up, then take a hot dump down their throat when they reach end-game.

For people who like TES universe, not general MMO fans.

I cannot recommend you play this game because it is nothing but a list of chores and doesn't actually allow you to experience a story.
Not to the regular player, not to a returning one, and certainly not to a new one.
Bungie will not respect your time invested in this game or the criticism you give.

Look, it's no surprise that I hate free-to-play games and buy-to-play MMOs. However, if there was one free-to-play, or rather free-to-try, MMO I had to choose that did everything wrong it would be this one.

One of the main things that turn me off from this game is that the developers sunset major content and regular content too much. Here's what I mean. The new player experience is atrocious in that they can't enjoy the full story. They will only be landed in whatever is current. This leaves the new player absolutely confused about what's going on and requires them to watch youtube videos in order to catch up. That doesn't really hook players into the game Bungie. It's a very bad user experience and the worst part is that they can't access the past story content in-game. Bungie deleted over half of the game tossing it into the “Destiny Content Vault”, and with it the identity the game had. The writing is now horrible and unoriginal, the characters are largely forgettable and unremarkable. As I said before, you cannot even play the original game or expansion 2 anymore which had pretty good storytelling. Then we have another 2 years of stuff that has been completely sunset, just so they can give us back worse versions of the weapons later for a price.

Most players' favorite guns in the game were vaulted and rendered useless because of Light Level requirements for PvP and other modes. Stasis ran rampant in Crucible rendering the mode nearly unplayable for the casual player. You’ll deal with cheaters in PVP, trash balance, and lack of maps, and innovation/changes in meta that would make a PvP side interesting

The developers at this point expect the entire player base to purchase all the DLC and season passes, as the content you get as a free player is almost nothing. They are intentionally using fear-of-missing-out marketing by deleting old content from the game. You'll have almost no idea what is going on in the story and 90% of the guns and exotics are unobtainable unless you shovel out $300+. It’s far too costly for new players.

Bungie got a taste of microtransactions from Activision and only cares about the cash shop. There are too many predatory monetization practices and pay-to-win features. After separating from Activision, they have employed the most absurd scheme known to the gaming industry.
You buy the expansion expecting to get all the content right?
Silly consumer. You purchased the base-level expansion. To unlock the dungeons which are in the expansion, you also need to purchase "keys" to unlock those dungeons.
The monetization of the game becomes beyond disgusting with no adequate delivery of things to do in the game.

Its monetization is getting increasingly more unnecessarily confusing and there's a handful of problems that Bungie has the resources to fix but simply won't. Core activities continue to struggle, with rarely new strikes, gambit or pvp maps.

The Destiny 2 developers don’t listen to their players, don’t care about their players and they made that clear with their State of the Game post. The game is a husk and the developers have moved on to work on marathon. Whatever skeleton crew is left in this game is out of touch with the community and makes the worst imaginable decisions ever, basically refusing to make the game better. It is a game that lost its way in all aspects. This game truly does have unreal amounts of untapped potential still, but it doesn't matter because the developers have already lost interest. They are just here to give the bare minimum and fill the eververse store.

The game has a horrible community and is of no help to the new player who doesn't know how to do a certain new raid or content.

Even if you didn't get what you feel was the "full value" out of the money you sunk into this. Face the music, accept the fact it's not coming back and move on.
Pull the handbrake on this sad rollercoaster and just get out.

This business model Bungie chose to do for this game is an insult to gamers as a whole, do yourself and everyone else around you a favor and do not support it. If you value mental health, nontoxic friendships, or peace of mind while you play games, then do not even think about downloading it.

Whenever someone says they are a big fan of RPGs, I always check their Steam library to see if this game is there and completed.

Any real RPG fan has played and beaten this game.

I guess I’ll give my review since everyone else is doing it.
This is why I don’t play the game and don’t like playing the game.
This is made up of news we have all heard, what I’ve experienced, and what all my friends have said about the game.

>It’s Blizzard (Getting to EA levels of scummy)
>Overwatch 1 > TF2 > overwatch 2
>shut down OW1 cause they knew few would like the new game (market cannibalism)
>the pros don’t outweigh the cons
>can’t play overwatch 1 anymore
>actually paid for overwatch 1 and still have to pay for the content
>payed for a good game that turned into a scam
>players obviously exploited for company gain in the second iteration (especially OW1 players)
>does not respect your time or money
>anti-consumer business models
>Fear-of-Missing-Out marketing
>free to play business model (we all know what that entails)
>microtransactions, heavy monetization, overpriced skins and predatory behavior
>removal of FREE lootboxes
>once free content is now locked behind a paywall or is a grind to unlock
>removing key features of OW1
>featuring content as “new content” that was in OW1
>5v5 instead of 6v6 (game was not meant for 5v5)
>Actually pay 2 win
>can queue into comp games without the full roster of characters, it’s core gameplay feature
>Battle Pass is a joke compared to other games
>sunsetting content in Battlepasses
>game is buggier than ever before
>Lied to players about a PvE mode to sell them battlepasses with garbage rewards
>canceled PvE (Devs even knew before OW2 launch)
>OW2 can boil down to be called the Cash shop update, but somehow gets worse
>Blizzard failing to make this PvE 3 times (StarCraft: Ghost, Project Titan, now Overwatch 2)
>PvE missions that are not worth the money and have no replayability
>scamming its customers with false advertisement
>molesting their female employees
>announcing hero is homosexual to cover up abuse
>losing more than half of the playerbase
>Toxic community and playerbase
>Molest woman until she commits end life
>hero creation diversity space tool that made the LGBTQIA+ community cringe
>Steal womens breast milk from the office refrigerator
>crawls under cubicles to look under women's skirts
>Have terrible balancing and make awful gameplay changes
>seems that reworks and “Balancing” is not playtested
>lack of actual content for the past 3 years
>have skins at a price point where you could buy an actual good game
>no competitive integrity
>content that pale in comparison to the original vision of OW1
>the amount of content does not justify the 2
>game is literally broken from a AAA studio
>almost worse than a mobile game
>the awesome OG developers for OW left
>Jeff Kaplan left the company
>Overwatch 2 is just Overwatch 0.5
>Overwatch 1 has now died for nothing
>could play TF2 and have a much more fun and positive experience
>TF2 will outlive OW again
>putting more effort in this review than the OW2 Devs

It’s true that you never know the value of something until it is gone.

Let’s face it, Overwatch 2 and Blizzard have no respect for your time and money, let alone you. It will gouge you of that time and money and masquerade as the game it used to be. At this point I’m surprised there is not a class action with the OW1 to OW2 stunt. People saying that other games do the same things as above isn’t a valid excuse, stop normalizing this behavior. It is what’s dooming the video game industry. Things could have been a little different if they put a lot of passion into the game, but they don’t and it really shows. They probably don’t reinvest that money back into the game.

All of Blizzard’s bad decisions and scummy behavior have led to this moment. They have now crawled to steam to ask Gaben to save their dying game hoping something will change and now the reviews are rolling in. We know you’re trying to get the Chinese market back Blizzard, so desperate for players.

It’s time to wake up and jump from the sinking ship. The Activision/Blizzard copium needs to end. The company and the game has turned into actual garbage and is not what it used to be. No amount of reviews and forum posts are going to change this because we have known for years that they have never taken our feedback seriously from games like World of Warcraft and Diablo. Blizzard has run their popular IPs and customer satisfaction to the ground and it’s time to respect, and vote with, your time and your wallet. Don’t log in to contribute to their player metrics and don’t buy anything from the cash shop update. I don’t want to see our money pocketed by some high and mighty executives so they could afford a 5th yacht.

We all deserve better. Go play something that you enjoy and you deserve to enjoy. At least we still have the memories of when the game was good.

Playing through this game for the 3rd time. Is it worth it?

Yes