I 100%'d every zone until Cosmo Canyon then uninstalled. Platinumed FF7 Remake on PS5. TL;DR Chadley almost single-handedly ruins this game, and there's a bunch of other irritating elements. If I were to describe this game in a word: Annoying.
To elaborate:
If you liked Remake, then you'll probably like a lot about this game too. Cutscenes are mostly faithful while some moments are more elaborated on, just like Remake. A few things are spun very differently but still generally the same story, just like Remake. Soundtrack is full of masterpieces, just like Remake. Cutscenes are great whenever Nomura's dumb kingdom-heartsy-destiny-ghost garbage isn't involved, just like Remake.
Then there's [b]Chadley Chores(tm)[/b]. (foreboding music)
Unfortunately, about 60% of this game's gameplay hours is just Uninspired Ubisoft Game #38, and the worst part is, Chadley talks to you about it the entire time. I genuinely think I've heard Chadley deliver more dialogue than most of my own party members. Yet somehow, he never, ever, has said something important. He only tells you something you just did, or something you're about to do, and that's it. Worse still, he doesn't even match the tone of the game. He's a futuristic android kid in a steampunk fantasy setting. Chadley, and by extension the rest of the game, trusts you to do nothing. It's extremely handholdy about every trivial objective.
Here's an example.
I'm walking down a canyon. Its a dead-end with a warehouse. Quest indicator is highlighting the warehouse. A quest description on the side of my screen reads "Enter the warehouse in the canyon." I approach the warehouse. Chadley calls me. "I think that's the warehouse you're looking for. You should check it out." I approach the warehouse. The door lights up; it says "Press O to enter the warehouse." I press O. A slow animation plays of a confirmation menu fading onto my screen, and after a few seconds, it asks me, "Are you sure you want to enter the warehouse? Yes/No." Uh, yes already, why the ♥♥♥♥ else would I be here?
That was not hyperbole. That was a legitimate sequence in this game. Also, the pause menu design is asinine. "Materia & Equipment" and "Upgrade Weapons" menus can be the same menu. "Save / Load" can be in System, Combat Settings is what the Party menu should be, while Party menu can just be deleted. Icing on the cake is that the live-rendered models and special effects cause more framerate drops in the pause menu than in combat. Just total top-down dysfunctional failure.
Some more rapid-fire issues:
[list]
[*]The optimization is bad;
[*]The movement is super clunky. The parkour is jarring as hell;
[*]While your chocobo has a need for speed, every world map is so cluttered that you can't move in a straight line for more than 3 seconds without crashing into something and watching your chocobo or character whine about it for a few seconds;
[*][spoiler]Red XIII is the equivalent of about a 16ish year-old trained warrior, the last Watcher, but he acts and sounds like he's 8;[/spoiler]
[*]Dynamic difficulty is generally fine most of the time but the Battle Square, Deity battles, and a spare few other fights are SO poorly upscaled. Just a really weird pitfall that feels like it severely lacked QA testing;
[/list]
There's probably more but I'm sick of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about how much of a disappointment this game was. 4/10 at best.
