I wish Japan was real
My wife said if this review. Every like's or award she will tell me this word やめて ください オニイ ちゃん UwU help !!

This game broke my soul.
i give it 10/10 Ignis cooking stars

This is a difficult one to review. It's clear that, like XIII, there were ambitious desires for the story and world-building that weren't quite realised. Even with all the DLCs, it's a half-baked game on the whole.

The game wanted to tap into the open-world trend of the time. But even though the road-trip vibe is well done, and there are some beautiful world spots, the incentives to just explore and wander are limited. The ratio of essentially fetch quests to mainline content is rough, and because it's poorly communicated in game you worry that you need to do everything as it shows up in case you get to a point of no return (which affects how you pace out plot content significantly). And there are a lot of those fetch quests to do.

The main-game combat is easy, with very few notable or memorable bosses, and the aforementioned side-quests keep you somewhat overpowered for the main content. Items are too plentiful and easy to use. Weirdly enough, you actually see in the DLC what the combat could have been - there was a lot of space for more strategic fights and the appendages mechanic is more important in Comrades than in the main game. I will say that I did enjoy the hunts, there are a lot of classic Final Fantasy monsters that come back - yes you have your Bombs, Tonberries, Behemoths and someone in the developer team clearly liked their Coeurls. You also have ones like Chadarnook, Garula, Attack/Defense nodes that are more retro references. I liked these nods.

There's the Xenogears problem of having to backend so much story, to the point where you condense a zone that could have been its own fully fleshed out thing in a short chapter or couple of chapters. There's a city in the mid-to-late game that's beautiful - if mazelike - but you spend all of five minutes there because of how the pacing of the game has been managed. I think it's good to have some mystery and mystique regarding things like the villain, the history of the world, the nature of gods and so on. But not to the point where you're genuinely not even sure what you're even doing, and why you're doing it, until so late in the game.

This hits characterisation too. The main foursome are written in a likeable way and the sort of banter-style of interaction is charming and done well. There are some touching moments. Many minor characters are only seen in brief flashes in the main game, though some are fleshed out a little in DLCs they still aren't entirely complete characters. I personally would have liked the option to cycle in other characters into the main party more regularly, most of the guest characters pop up so very briefly and it's a pity.

There's a lot of little things that are functional and fine but none of which I could really love. The off-road races, chocobo races, the awkward Justice Monsters Five arcade game, the magic mechanic (both creation and usage), Royal Arms, car customisation, farming, fishing, cooking etc. I also found 100%-ing the game a little tedious, a little too much busywork (esp when you add on the DLCs), but I did slog my way through to get it all done. Wish the DLC achievements were separate from the main game for that purpose!

On the whole I would say I did enjoy myself, but you can see the potential in what the game could have been. It's better put together than XIII, but it's not golden age FF.