The premise is very interesting. A Final Fantasy story that is structured like a war story, following a classroom of elites amongst elites that is fighting in a war against an expansionist Empire and turning the tide. The brutality that is presented from the very cutscene sets this game up as a unique Final Fantasy experience. Except for the fact that it utterly fails to execute it all properly in a way that is satisfying.

First problem, the gameplay. Even if part of the blame can be put on its handheld origin, the gameplay for this game is subpar, repetitive and not fun. Characters are unique from one another, sure. And there are numerous characters to play with, sure. But they are all shallow, unbalanced, with speedy characters holding absolute advantage over the slower ones and their gameplay not being impacted much from the beginning to the end of the game. The player will also have to grapple with an unwieldy camera system that sharply drifts all over the place and does not focus properly. This, and the map limitations literally being small box areas most of the time, with a few unique ones thrown in once every 5 or 6 hours or so make it monotonous to go through.

The world map is also horrendous, requiring the player to waste a tonne of travel time going to and from objectives, with high level monsters that only exists to kill off player characters for no reason blocking the way, adding onto the annoyance. The cities that exists in this game are generally just one block of map as well, which is copied and pasted all over the world map and populated with different NPCs, defeating the point of exploration. There are some dungeons, but they are generally just level and damage gates that offer no new gameplay challenges.

Then there is story. The core of it is interesting. But the characters are not developed at all, to the point where there is no one in the main or supporting cast that the player can latch onto. With a system akin to the Persona time management where players can interact with characters in the academy using limited amount of free time, one would have think that they will use this time to develop the characters and their motivation more. But no. They are all shallow anime cliches from beginning to end.

Another problem is the war story premise. The majority of the game is set up in a way that makes it a gritty war story full of losses, triumphs and sacrifices. Might not be many people's cup of tea, but if the game sticks with that theme it would have been respectable. But the final chapter of the game just nukes all of that out of the window and introduce the Final Fantasy god and cycle thing out of nowhere, catching everyone by surprise. It's such a mood whiplash that the theme of the story is lost to an entire chapter of inane exposition dumps and fantastical elements thrown out of nowhere in a setting that, insofar, was to an extent, a realistic and gritty fantasy.

Overall, a not recommend. I really like the setting, the war story and the commitment to that brutal realism. And some part of the story can be really good to sit through, if the player is not invested in the characters and just want to watch Final Fantasy Warcrime Edition. But if that's all you want, then just watch them on youtube. No need to suffer through the horrible grindy gameplay to get to it.

Good game. Must play.

This is the most unstable FF game the Square has ever released, whether you are playing on PC or Steam Deck, this game has a constant battle with you. I guess now we all know what the Zero is in FF Type 0, it's for the lack of optimization done on this game, I played a bit of it on PlayStation 4, a little more on PSP hardware, I never got the chance to play the game on Xbox, all I can say is that even on other platform you had issues with the game, the game really does not want to play on anything above the PSP display capabilities, going above it, and weird visual glitches will pop up every now and then.

This game needs to be better optimized, not just for PC, but for every platform it once came out on, and is still coming out on, this game has so much potential, unfortunately I don't think the team at Square even know how to optimize this game, they couldn't optimized FF16 on the PS5 properly, and that is a locked hardware, imagine doing the same on a PC platform, poor guys, well because of that I would give this a 3 out of 10 stars, performance really needs some tweaking, not just on PC Square, but on everything past the PSP, because this game runs like it came from the PS2 era of gaming.

Now for the visuals, the visuals are not bad, so if you do not like anime like visuals in your RPG's, avoid this one, because this one is so anime, that it was one of the early pioneer of the RPG anime genre, yes it is dated, but it just adds to the charm, I hope to never get a much up to date visual for this game, because you know that a more up to date visual would make this game run far worse, also, I am already uncomfortable with the fact that the females wear such a short skirt, and that you can see there underwear, why? They are all under age, if they were all on age, say 18 +, hell yeah, but below that age group, no, I find my self having to take a mental break, and wishing that the characters were made as adults, because this game has a lot of sex a peal, the females will pose every now and then in such a sus way during cutscenes, menu selections, luckily the game does not dwell on that, and there is no fan service involving the literal children, but I feel that if it weren't for the ESRB, as much as I despise them, we probably would have gotten such a thing, and I would have bleached my eyes, and joined a cult.

Game play, it is pretty simple, you get one of four main optional attacks, choose one, spam it, dodge, and that is it, the game play elements is a bit of an action like, just be aware, this is not a fully action based game, if you have a keen eye, you will realize the slight hesitation for your moves, canceling a move set is not guaranteed, just like in Dark Soul's, except, Dark Soul's is quicker, much more focused on actively going offensive or defensive, were as this game is more focused on being offensive and positioning your self.

So over all the game gets a 5 out of 10 from me, I do not recommend this game for anything above $20, as it is good, just not at a higher price, if Square could ever remake, remaster, or whatever this game, my advice would be to age the characters just a bit, remember, college students aren't always minors, and a lot of people going into a military academy are usually at or above the age of 18, concentrate on making the game perform better on all platforms, don't worry about the visuals, we are okay with the current visuals as is, we just ask for performance improvements, at age characters, and 60+ frames, which this game can do, people have shown me they can, I just do not have the technical know how to do so.