Final Fantasy IX: Great aesthetics that have aged very well. The story for the first two discs and the first few hours of disc 3 is gripping, as you have an urgent plot about war and powerful summons being used to annihilate kingdoms and armies, and you're constantly exploring new towns and meeting new characters. However, once you return to Lindblum a few hours into disc 3, the plot becomes about the hunt for Kuja (not very interesting), and you stop going to new towns and meeting new people. Instead, you get dungeon after dungeon for the rest of the game, and the final act really jumps the shark. The Terra plot is poorly explained ingame. We had to wait years for the Ultimanias to be fan translated into English to explain what was going on in the ending, and even then, I don't think Necron was ever explained. I think the first 2 discs are 9/10 great and recommend playing for that. As a whole, probably a 6/10 fine.
Final Fantasy X: The pacific setting and aesthetics are good, and parts of the soundtrack are memorable. The turn based combat is relaxing, and the game has some good ideas, with only Wakka (who wields a ranged weapon) and magic being able to hit flying enemies, Auron using his strength to break armored enemies, and so on, so each character feels distinct in gameplay. The character progression system,
the Sphere Grid, offers no meaningful choices and just exists to waste your time, as filling in each slot on each character's grid is a tediously time consuming and laborious task. The highlight is the journey with the characters, who are overall likeable. Unfortunately the plot is rather boring. I had started three or four different playthroughs of FFX, but never finished it. Always stalled out at the wedding.
Final Fantasy XI: Japanese Everquest. The hey day of MMOs are long since past so you're not going to get that MMO experience anymore. That just leaves the story, which doesn't get good until the second expansion. The game has surprisingly good cutscene direction, but it the game is unvoiced, and the MMO format of the game gets in the way of the storytelling, so I would not recommend playing FF11 for the story. Has aesthetically held up well. The music was not to my tastes. I played this on PS2 (with the big extension you plugged into the back of your console) and it played surprisingly well. On PC the controls are awful, though.
Final Fantasy XII: I like the more grounded tone of the game. Aesthetically great. Decent soundtrack. The combat is boring. The story is incomplete as Matsuno dropped out of the project during development. Vaan noticeably never gets to do anything. I suspect he would have taken center stage had the second half of the game been completed (
there is a popular rumor claiming that Vaan was shoehorned in by the executives, but this contradicts the info we have). The story we got is also weird, as it pretty much concludes at the Pharos, with the Death Star from nowhere feeling egregiously tacked on. Also didn't like that Vayne was turned into a final boss when he was good as being a non-action big bad. The main cast of characters are rather dull. Wish I was playing with more lively characters such as Larsa or Al-Cid as my main characters. The English voice direction is superb.
Final Fantasy XIV: has become popular over the last two years. As an MMO, it is overall disappointing compared to WoW. The world is hollow. No world PvP and your faction is meaningless. FFXIV has a lot of jank, such as input lag, or being locked in place, not being able to whisper people while in a raid, not being able to log in to your house, and so on. The game engine has problems with lighting and shadows and antialiasing, and overall I don't think FFXIV looks as aesthetically good as WoW. The boss battles have spectacular phase transitions, but aren't fun to actually play like WoW's boss fights. That said, unlike modern WoW you do not need to play FFXIV as if it was a second job to keep up, which I like. This game feels great to play with a controller and makes it hard for me to go back to playing WoW or GW2 with mouse & keyboard.
The story varies in quality. I overall liked the grounded stories of ARR and Stormblood where you fought against the empire, and disliked the Kingdom Hearts shenagains that Shadowbringers and Endwalker delved into. There is too much fellating of the player as the game goes on, and I disliked how tame the cast is. Wish I had people like Fordola as my party member. Like FFXI, the MMO format of the game gets in the way of the storytelling. If you can withstand long winded visual novels like Trails or Utawarerumono, you might like it, but it wouldn't be my first recommendation. Music is superb.
Final Fantasy Tactics: the plot feels like a beat by beat lesser rehash of Tactics Ogre's chaos route. The demon transformations were admittedly pretty spooky, though. While being able to rotate the 3D maps is technically impressive (and characters being able to stand on bridges over a tile), I found the gameplay of FFT to be really aggravating. Party size is too small, and you have to do an absurd amount of grinding because of the speed requirements for the Wiegraf and Elmdor fights, and I didn't like being restricted to just 5 characters in battle. I felt that Tactics Ogre was overall the better game in both story and gameplay. Aesthetically, the characters suffer from sameface syndrome.
Vagrant Story: I think I'd recommend checking out the first couple hours of the game, if only for the superb cutscene direction. Or looking the cutscenes up on Youtube. That being said, I think this was the game that convinced me that while Yasumi Matsuno is a great storyteller, he is not a good game designer. I've noticed that pretty much all of Matsuno's games weren't very fun to play (at best, the gameplay is okay, as in Tactics Ogre), with Vagrant Story being pretty unfun.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: this game has the most fun gameplay of any tactics game I've ever played. Coincidentally, Matsuno was not involved in designing it. I quite liked developing my characters and making them into OP one man armies. I also liked the aesthetics of the game and the varied races. You have dog lady wizards, awesome lizardman dragoons, vikings, and so on. The story is bleh.
Tactics Ogre - Let Us Cling Together: FFT but overall better. I liked the characters more and the plot hits harder. You also have actually meaningful plot choices, like being able to burn a village of elderly people and blame it on your enemies to stir up popular sentiment against them, or join with your hated enemy to fight against a common enemy, and so on. The gameplay is more epic, with larger maps (not too large like FE4's maps) and you can field 10 guys on the battlefield at once.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles - Echoes of Time: Not much to write home about. When you create your character, one of the racial options you can pick are clockwork mages, which were pretty cool. Some of the music tracks were memorable. Otherwise, bleh.
The Last Remnant: I thought that the setting was very interesting, with nations centered around magical artifacts. Unique races like fat fishmen, little frog people with floppy ears, and rare four armed lynx men. The protagonist Rush, the deuteragonist David, and the antagonist The Conqueror were likeable. Great powermetal battle music. Commanding 20 guys on the battlefield gave me that war feel I craved. Unfortunately, the game really suffers from layers of RNG upon RNG which just kills the game for me. Walking through maps just to check if the right mob spawned, and then fighting it and killing it only for the item you need to not drop is not fun. The game also suffers from a bad case of walkthroughitis, where you need a guide telling you when to do stuff and the obscure requirements or you will miss out content. You really need to play on PC with the TLRplanner mod to have a good time. Each time I think of replaying the game, the thought of the RNG and the walkthroughitis turns me off.
Trails series: everyone praises this series for its worldbuilding. Personally, I think that the Trails setting isn't very interesting, and having hundreds of thousands of dialogue ≠ quality. Over the course of the series, you come to realize that there are no stakes, and that the plot never goes anywhere. 1,000+ hours of playtime and 10 games in, and you still have no idea WTF the bad guys' motivations or origins are, and at this point I don't expect the Ouroboros storyline will have a satisfying conclusion. So you have to judge the Trails games based off of their individual merit. The only Trails games I really like are FC, 3rd, CS1, and CS2. I utterly hated Azure/Ao. The rest are okay.
Trails in the Sky FC: slow start. I like the political intrigue plot. Richard was right. Rough combat system and bad sidequests. Overall good.
Trails in the Sky SC: literally nothing happens until chapter 5, 30 hours into a 60 hour long game. The villains are overall weak compared to the villains of FC. Combat is still not fun and the sidequests are still meh. One thing I particularly liked about Sky compared to the later Trails games is that you had a more varied cast of characters. It wasn't just kids. Sure, you had three teenagers and a 10 year old, but you also had two guys in their late 20s, a guy in his early 30s, and a woman in her mid to late 20s. Later Trails games ostensibly have party members who are older than 20, but they still look and act like kids.
Trails in the Sky the 3rd: overall fun adventure story. The side content is overall better than before. Combat is actually fun this time.
Trails from Zero/Zero no Kiseki: okay. I found the cast to be meh. Crossbell is the most boring country in the series thus far. Combat is a step down from 3rd and is meh. Sidequests are meh. Plot is forgettable.
Trails to Azure/Ao no Kiseki: bad. Like SC, nothing happens for the first half of a 60 hour long game. The first half of the final chapter is really great, when you are flying around in the airship liberating cities. Then you reach the top of Orchis Tower and the plot goes down the toilet. The story is awful and the ending made me want the villains to win. I finished the game hating the protagonists and disliked their involvement in the following Trails games.
Trails of Cold Steel: very good. Likeable characters. Aesthetics have held up well. Fun combat system and I liked building out my characters. There are fewer sidequests but they're actually decent this time around. Plot is overall good and held my interest throughout, though the story dragged a little in chapters 5 and 6. I said earlier that I thought that the Trails setting was boring, but here I actually liked Erebonia. It felt like it had history and was a varied place. Music is superb. Good English voices.
Trails of Cold Steel II: Fantastic. The plot feels fast paced and has high tension. Is one of the few JRPGs to have a playable epilogue that provides closure. The combat is even better, and now there are Escaflowne-style mecha duels. Music is superb. Good English voices.
Trails of Cold Steel 3 & 4: decent. The old characters from CS1 and CS2 are fun. The new cast of characters are meh. The game is also bloated with too many characters, many of whom I disliked. Nothing happens for the first 90 hours of the game, which is criminal. The story feels tonally inconsistent with CS1 and CS2 and botches the payoff. The new locations are rehashes of CS1+2 that I was more invested in, and I resent Crossbell. The devs made changes to the battle system that I did not like. There are parts of the soundtrack I liked but the music is overall a step down from CS2. The English voices of the old characters are okay, but the new voices are rough.
Tokyo Xanadu: CS1 but set in Tokyo and with an action combat system. I found the combat to be meh. Half of the cast was likeable. The urban fantasy setting was kind of wasted, maybe a sequel will flesh it out. Music is superb. Overall fine.
Ys 1 & 2 Chronicles: bleh. I'm not really into action RPGs where you control a single player and do dungeon crawling for hours on end like this. Finished 1, and dropped 2 a couple hours in, after I realized that it was just more of Ys 1.
Fire Emblem 4 - Genealogy of the Holy War: not the masterpiece it is made out to be, but good. The plot doesn't waste your time with filler. Later FE games feel like they are 100+ hours long game but only have 10 hours of plot, and they feel bad because they waste your time, whereas FE4 has only 10 chapters of story to tell and doesn't waste your time. The maps are a little too big and some of them are poorly designed. Moving through the forest in chapter 2 was a slog. I liked how one of the party members at the start is your brother-in-law coming to help you out, and in chapter 2 you had that knight from the other kingdom who stopped that army from wiping out your castle while you were away. Felt like there was true camaraderie.
Fire Emblem Fates: this game has a hatedom against it, but I thought it was okay. Honestly, Fire Emblem plots are usually never nothing to write home about. I did felt disappointed by Conquest, though. The premise is that you stick with the evil empire and conquer the Japanese kingdom, but you don't get to do that. Instead, it turns into this bizzare imitation of World of Warcraft where you're on the side of the conquering faction, but you play as characters who are doublethinking themselves as the good guy heroes. I wish I could have just been a straight up evil conqueror. For Birthright, the medieval Japanese aesthetics were quite refreshing. I bought Revelation but never got around to it.
Suikoden 1: I started this game but never finished it. Dropped once I reached the elf village. Just wasn't really invested in the characters or what was going on, and didn't find the combat to be very fun. Hearing Resonant Arc rank Suikoden 1 over 2 has made me interested in trying it again.
Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald: I like the tropical island feel of Hoenn. I liked the interconnected world design, and there was a strong sense of adventure. Bushwacking your way through a dense rainforest during a storm, and then emerging on the other side felt great. The game wasn't a cakewalk and could get challenging at points. I remember a lot of the music fondly.
Pokemon Colosseum: I liked the "man vs the world" feel of the game. It takes place in a desert in which there are only a handful of populated settlements. The land has been taken over by a powerful syndicate. Criminals lurk around every corner. There are no police to save you. You are a defector from an evil team who has set out to set things right. The game can be very challenging, as there are no wild Pokemon to catch. There is a limited roster of Pokemon and you have to figure out how to make the best of them. Beating the final boss felt pretty satisfying. Some of the musical tracks were pretty forgettable.
Pokemon XD - Gale of Darkness: I never finished this game. The game didn't have the sense of urgency that Colosseum did. Instead of being a man fighting against his former comrades and trying to stop the takeover of the world, you're instead a boy who is wandering around a mostly safe region. There was some plot about a missing passenger liner in the background that I didn't really care about.
Pokemon Black & White: the first story heavy mainline game, but executed well. You're not trapped in 5+ minute long unskippable cutscenes every 10 feet. I overall liked the cast. Probably the best story in the mainline games. The new completely brand new roster of Pokemon was exciting. The Pokemon League was brutal and I game overed on the final boss, and beating him felt really satisfying. I disliked how linear the world was, and the lack of side activities like Pokemon Contests or the Trick House. The game did have some postgame content in the form of hunting down the Sages.
Pokemon X&Y: the transition to full 3D was not done well, and the game is aesthetically a downgrade from the prior games. We start seeing lots of mandatory cutscenes and the writing is bad. World design remains boring. The game is too easy. No postgame content.
Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire: eh. I sunk 200 hours into it. Really enjoyed being able to fly around, and being able to use Pokemon from newer generations was nice. The O-powers were also fun. That being said, I think ORAS is over an inferior game to the original RSE. The ORAS remakes are bloated with long, unskippable cutscenes, where RSE just lets you play. The ORAS remakes are too easy. RSE wasn't super hard but you at least had to do some strategizing and preparation. The ORAS remakes also teleport you around everywhere, so you lose the feeling of journey and travel that you had in the originals. I think you should play the originals first, then play ORAS.
Pokemon Sun & Moon: Bad. Everything wrong with X&Y but cranked up to 11. There are even more unskippable cutscenes than before, and you're not even the hero of the story. You're forced to watch some girl's family soap opera. Bleh.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - Explorers of Sky: it's a roguelike. The earlygame is meh because you're not high enough level to learn cool moves and don't have enough money to buy any, and don't have a large party to command yet. Once you reach the midgame and your options open up and you have 4 party members and you're customizing their moves, the game gets pretty fun. That being said, the gameplay begins to wear out its welcome around the 40-50 hour mark, near the end of the story. The story was surprisingly good, probably the best written story in a Pokemon game I've played. There was a postgame storyline which was okay. Has some great tracks towards the end of the game.
Utawarerumono trilogy: Basically Fire Emblem but it is 200 hours long and 80% of it is slice of life visual novel fluff. 10% of its battles. And 10% of it is really hype scenes. The first game has a more varied cast featuring older party members, while the second and third games are pretty much all kids. The story quality varies. I liked the first arc of the first game but that was it. Nothing happens in the second game until the end. The third game has some cool moments but the story goes down the toilet during the last 10 hours. Overall fine. The gameplay is meh. Some of the music was memorable. The game is fully voice acted (in Japanese), which really helps the 3rd game because you hear the difference between what the protagonist says, and what he really thinks. The 3rd game has a really compelling protagonist.
Xenoblade Chronicles 1: overrated. Has good cutscene direction. I found most of the cast unlikeable, only liked Shulk, Dunban, Dickson, and Riki. While the setting is conceptually interesting (the world is set on the backs of titans), most of the actual environments were rather boring to walk through and look at. The MMO combat is meh. The sidequests are bad and a waste of time. The story is interesting up until Prison Island, after that it goes bad. The ending is garbage. Voice direction is good. Some of the musical tracks are memorable.
Zwei 1 - the Arges Adventure: Dropped. I'm not into dungeon crawlers like this. The game suffers from a bad case of walkthroughitis.
Zwei 2 - the Ilvard Insurrection: the story is quite good. The action combat is... tolerable. The difficulty scales way too high towards the end and boils down to whether or not you have enough food to heal through the damage.
Yakuza 0: the setting is atmospheric and the story was interesting, but I suck at fighting games so I didn't enjoy the gameplay.
Valkyria Chronicles 1: great aesthetics. Story is okay and cliche, don't expect any real depiction of war. Combat is fun and some of the missions towards the end are pretty challenging in a fun way.
Sakura Wars 1: visual novel SRPG hybrid. The visual novel sections actually have gameplay, as timed dialogue boxes pop up and you have to decide how to respond within a certain time limit. Sometimes, letting the timer run out and not saying anything is the correct answer. That helps spruce up the gameplay and makes the VN sections fun. The combat sections are okay. The game looks aesthetically great. Good music.
Sakura Wars V: same as Sakura Wars 1 but the combat is actually really fun. The battles are separated into two halves: the first half is a traditional SRPG battle, and then in the second half the boss appears and your mechas transform into jets and you battle in the skies, and it's a spectacular setpiece fight. The battles towards the end got really challenging and were fun.
