I’m 30%? way in and freaking love it, graphics aside, the music is beautiful as heck and story is good enough but hot dang the lore, so much lore <3

There’s a lot I love with the game and a lot of things I wish could be improved.

Music is phenomenal. Lots of great stuff, including lovely little nostalgic riffs and exciting new pieces.

I’m enjoying the combat system. I haven’t played many games with this kind of action-oriented system, but I have found it easy to get in to and satisfying to explore new combos and maneuvers. I do feel like some of the battles overstay their welcome a bit, perhaps because I’m not as much of an aficionado for these systems nor as adept.

I found it hard to get into the story at first, but it’s definitely “Final Fantasy worthy” if that makes sense. I am enjoying as everything unfurls and putting the connections together.

I like how the world feels vast but manageable. Before this, I was playing a lot of FF7 Remake and FFXV before that. This seems to be finding a nice balance where something like FF7R has everything in tight levels and corridors and FFXV was vast and open, but it felt like a lot of the openness was uninteresting (like, they had to give you a car to get through it all at a quasi-interesting pace). With the different map segments, it narrows down to the more interesting places to explore, while also opening up to more detail and still giving a sense of a larger world.

I wish the economy and crafting system was better/more interesting. I’m not sure how far into the game I am, but I’ve felt like gil has been mostly useless since the second weapon I got, and crafting has been dull enough that I don’t really care about or track what components I’ve gathered up.

All-in-all, loving the game and excited to keep going. I feel like there’s still a lot of story to go and that’s awesome because I also feel like I’ve put a lot of time into it already.

Clive is so great. He’s just a little guy who wants to be an edgy loner so bad, but he cant help it. He just wants everyone to be safe and happy. Not counting 14, I’ve only ever played the 7 remake, and Clive is a nice contrast to Cloud.

Don’t get me wrong, Cloud has a similar vibe. But like Clive talks, and smiles, and he gets a little awkward when people flirt with him. He compliments people who do good things, and his dialog during side quests shows he’s genuinely concerned with the well-being of people around him.

It’s just nice to have a Clive to play. Like I’ve done lots of Zelda lately, and Link’s personality was never the draw. D:OS and Baldur’s Gate 3 both have protagonists that like to veer into “hard person for a hard world”. Elden Ring is Elden Ring.

Give me the protagonist who is human enough to be affected by the world, but also actually nice and stuff.

Zelda is still my GOTY but story-wise, FFXVI is easily my favorite. Played Bayo 3 pretty recently so playing with the new combat style is quite refreshing compared to my mild disappointment with that game. I’ve been doing every side quest- some are better than others but definitely worth it to do them.

I just love that every chapter/boss fight is climactic enough to be the final, only to be outdone by the next one 3-4 hours later!