Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (PS5) Review

David Hogan2 Comments

Time to take a look at one of my most anticipated games of recent memory with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. The second part of the Final Fantasy VII “Remake Trilogy” arrived back at the very end of February and I’ve been playing it like a man possessed! Taking characters and a world I already love and not only expanding the already great combat system from the last game but also adding in fun open world exploration with great graphics and no pop ins and errors like the PS4 Remake was a recipe for greatness in my eyes, and I’m thrilled to report it lived up to those heights. So let’s take a rather unavoidably long look at the game!

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Final Fantasy XV: The Dawn of the Future Review

David Hogan6 Comments

When being in a Final Fantasy mood in the run up to Rebirth coincided with having a gap in my “book to read in bits before bed like some sort of old man” schedule I decided to give this Final Fantasy XV book a go after a reader commented about it (which was handy because I completely forgot it existed!) “The Dawn of the Future” is actually a novelisation of the final DLC story, “Episode Ardyn” as well as the three that were planned to come after it but were cancelled. What’s interesting is those three comprise a “What if?” scenario that leads to a completely different ending, giving the whole book a unique feel, though if you’re not already a fan of XV it’s safe to say you’ll be lost! So let’s take a look…

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Final Fantasy VII: Remake – Intergrade: INTERmission (PS5) Review

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Now I don’t normally review DLC add-ons separately but given this was released a while after the original and exclusively on the PS5 (well, and PC) instead of the console I reviewed the original game on (that review can be found HERE) it didn’t really fit discussing it there, so here we are! INTERmission (I guess because it’s an extra mission in Intergrade? Maybe?) is set during the latter half of Remake and focuses on Yuffie, a character who didn’t get much story in the original due to being an optional party member. Given Rebirth is just a few weeks away I thought I’d better finally get round to playing through it, so let’s get to it!

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Final Fantasy XVI (PS5) Review

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I wasn’t sure about Final Fantasy XVI for a while, I knew I wanted to play it but I wasn’t sold on the visual setting and the more “gritty” style so I waited until it was a bit cheaper and I had the time to dedicate to it. Now I’ve played the game all the way through I have to say that it’s an odd one. There were times when I was thinking of either giving it up or just running through the main missions, then by the end I did every side quest and monster hunt available before hitting that final chapter, so it got its hooks into me at the end, but if someone were to say to me they gave up half way through I’d understand… Want more detail? That’s lucky, I’ve written a whole review, so let’s take a look at it!

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Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line (PS4) Review

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I never saw this review coming at the start of the year but I really need to get this up now because it’s oddly become something of an obsession of mine in the last two-ish months, despite the fact I’ve never really played rhythm games before, and I have no doubt it’ll end up on my Top 10 2023 Games list somewhere. It’s all thanks to the YouTube channel Good Vibes Gaming for covering the build up to its release so favourably combined with a demo release allowing me to think “well, why not? It’s free, I’ll give it a try.” Famous last words…

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Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (PSP) / Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII – Reunion (PS5) Review

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Crisis Core is a prequel to Final Fantasy VII that was released alongside the movie “Advent Children” (a sequel to FFVII) in a celebration of the influential game, and I was dead excited. I’m not much of a portable gamer but my PSP got some serious action with this one, but in the end I got stuck on a boss near the end and couldn’t be bothered to grind. Fast forward a decade or two and a remaster arrives on modern consoles, so it was finally time to right a wrong, especially as I’m much more inclined to grind sitting in front of a TV than with a handheld (which is really the wrong way round, but hey-ho…) So let’s take a look at both games, which are actually quite different in the end… Also this is my first PS5 review on this blog, and it’s a remaster of a PSP game… Oh well!

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Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Review

David Hogan5 Comments

Speaking of things just released on 4K blu-ray (as I was a week ago… that paragraph starter doesn’t really work here in that case… oh well) we have Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, the CG follow up film to the mega-popular RPG. At the time of its release I was blown away by the animation and CG effects and I guess I convinced myself to buy the 4K version because I was desperate to reclaim that feeling but I have to say it doesn’t matter how uncompressed it is CG animation from 2005 just doesn’t impress any more in 2021… Still, what’s the actual story and experience like? Let’s take a look!

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Final Fantasy VII: Remake (PS4) Review

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Final Fantasy VII Remake

It’s funny how I’ve only been running this blog for five years, and for a good chunk of those years I wasn’t even covering games, and yet here we are once again covering a PS4 remake of a PS1 game I’ve already covered on the site! Admittedly, this is less a complete remake and more of a partial remake… that’s also a sequel? Sort of? Well, either way it really fun to play, and that’s the main thing! Let’s take a closer look!

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Final Fantasy XV (PS4) Review

David Hogan7 Comments

Final Fantasy XV

I actually had plans to review this game when I played through it in 2017, but I was focusing almost entirely on the non-gaming blog at the time (when they weren’t combined into one!) and ended up leaving it. Fast forward to today and I played through the quick “Episode Ardyn” DLC, the final piece of extra content for the game, and thought I’d make up for lost time. Happily I still had a bunch of screenshots saved! ANYWAY, Final Fantasy XV is a hard one to quickly sum up, it’s quite unlike any other game I’ve played, part open world RPG, part Japanese RPG, definite Final Fantasy looking character designs, but a very American looking world… It’s a bizarre blend, but one that surprisingly worked! Let’s take a closer look.

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