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They asked for a review number and what we thought, basically a copy paste of its current state.
700 View2023-10-04
I like the overall system for combat. Getting the gauge up and properly
balancing it can be enjoyable. Story was ok for the information that was
actually new to me, as I'm pretty sure most of us have played FF7 at
some point, maybe Zack's was something people might not have known.Most
of the rest is kinda in the 2nd category.
For no good reason, the game has the camera have a seizure and spaz about, despite the fact that it's necessary at times to be able to click on things to retarget and know
what the enemy might be doing, whether it's a gauge or potentially
missing an attack name.
The reward structure is just straight up awful. One of the things you really need
to balance out is getting the player to come in and accept the grind,
it's there, but it's not a burden. Not only are the rates low, but
amounts are high and it can take an absurd amount of time to get even
the smallest amount. Most people were literally exploiting cactuars,
which was then removed and restructured to continue doing it in other
ways, because your standard rates are just that bad, dropping out and
coming back with more drops is just the better option. Then, you put
these items down like they're common, when you don't even wish to post
what their rates even are. When I first started, some people said newer
players would basically latch off early before they even get to this
point, with how bad this is and the other issues as well that can
negatively effect it, not doing you any favors.
Auto battle is unfinished. It's not just bad, it's not just a little fixing,
it's unfinished. If I got away and use auto, they don't use their most
potent abilities that they build up to. Other gachas have put these in a
way that they'll trigger when needed or circumstance, like wait for a
boss. This game opts to not use it at all, a bold strategy, I'm sure it
saved some money. The swapping is programmed in a "Eh, close enough."
way that the auto will linger on defense, when it's basically done with
it. If you were in control, you could swap, heal, then swap back, as you
don't need it to linger. This game programs it to linger, making it a
pretty big certainty, that you'll be missing out on maximum damage. This
also helps make effects that boost you damage when had maximum on auto,
almost worthless.
The AI is just bizarre. My best advice here when I see most games do this kind of
thing, if you don't know what you're doing, don't put it in your
product. At bare minimum, you'll be dealing with 2 AI, 3 on auto. You
can babysit them, but that still takes like half a charge on swapping
and since units swap positions, can be obnoxious at times. Units don't
seem to be programmed to actually take advantage when they should, like
if a unit is in a weakened state, they'll usually hoard their gauge,
even in the most dumb of situations. As of recently, I lost two cactaurs
on Shiva because of this, because my AI Barret decided he needed 7
gauges before attacking a sliver jumping fish. I don't have time to
babysit his actions, he drools on the ground, I defend, people die,
cactuars show up at low rate, can't carry with just Glenn. Thanks by the
way. Units will do this with healing as well, even if you go into it,
they'll wait till the very end of the 7th gauge, then heal, despite
doing it at 5. It's kinda funny that the games I remember that used AI
would utilize a gambit system and make it so good that you could just
auto fights. This one barely even works.
Weapons are nonsensical at most points. Physical weapons will be loaded for
magic damage, have mag+ R abilities, all sorts of things that make them
garbage fodder. Then on top of that, you have the hidden effects, I love
these in gachas, where the animations of a weapon can also make sure to
stick some more nails in that coffin.
Stamps are probably one of the better ways for me to say I don't believe the
%, at least for itself. For something that is down by 10% to a
combination of 2 and up, it sure shows up to swarm the board. I wonder
what that'd look like with a third party. Rates are pretty standard fair
after that, though it is a bit impressive to somehow make a 5 star
ticket worthless, as it's very unlikely to land on the unit you're
building into. Several units can get in the way and only so many things
can be good for pure support. It can be quite easy to not see any real
progression from pulling, whether it's from pulling nothing at all, as
both Blues and Purples are pretty equally worthless in most cases, to
just getting off units that don't even meet R ability use. It also kind
of sucks that if you want to do anything really interesting in most
cases, you'll need a gold weapon, despite FF7 and such allowing you to
basically swap in whatever, mostly being LB differences. Want a debuff?
Hope yea get lucky.
The game seems prone to fixing beneficial incidents fairly quickly, cactuar was
already mentioned, but the text on the keys when on release used to say 1
key a day, which worked with the season pass weekly of doing 5 Crisis
Dungeons, which might still be there. Course the new buff of 30% item
drops, which doesn't work on cactuars despite not being excluded in
anyway in the text, is currently just being ignored, despite being put
on twitter and email to you. You'll get to it when yea feel like it
right? Performance started going down on Ifrit, I haven't done the rank
dungeon, but I guess that's crashing and burning too. Ironic that you'd
start with fire and have it just burn.
While I can agree with the ranking system in some cases, where it actually
affects one time rewards/ranking/etc, it mostly just comes off like a
prevention tool. Since the AI isn't good, that can easily drop your
rating pretty significantly, despite it being a developer problem. Even
if you can handle the higher end power limits, like I recently did Shiva
Very Hard with a cherry picked team, so the AI would be less dumb, like
I removed Esuna fog, as Barret used it exclusively to heal 300 damage
instead of doing anything useful. Removed his def debuff, as he was
spamming it and not actually helping. Anywho, I got a C on it, so even
if I wanted to, I'd get gutted on rewards, so I simply get to be able to
be trapped in the middle ground, where I'll need to take control to go
from a B, to an S on Hard.
Despite the game having a conversion option for lower end 3 mats into 2s and
1s, there isn't any available for the needed 3s and 4, making the Nanos a
chore for the lvl 60 through 80 uncapped weapons. The game even
punishes you by having the rates of the Blue and purple items have
higher spawn rates in their first displayed fields. So I can pay 20 and
get a boost to those and drop out the mats I also need at the higher
difficulties, or just farm the highest more and hope they drop there.
Loss items on the drop list, don't, Hmmm.
For improvements, AI not being a detriment is always a plus, most AI
programmed well should honestly be doing a better job then a person, so
the gauge shouldn't really be losing out in most cases. LB/summons added
to auto. Maybe a stacking effect on Cactaurs so doing 3s wouldn't be a
total disaster for your drops over fishing for them. Weapon reworks are
probably out of the question, but it'd be nice if at least weapons
moving forward make sense to what they are. Making animations not
ridiculous without some sort of beneficial tradeoff. This one wasn't
mentioned as some things aren't even skippable anyway, but having an
autoskip feature in the options for boss intros, summons you do, etc.
Maybe even add skips to LBs.
It's a lot, but that's what I saw and hopefully things will improve for the
better. I'd like the game to be something I want to come on to grind for
the content that is enjoyable, not simply to just be grind that feels
like there's no real progression, not at least without cheesing the
system.
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