Screenshot: Sandfall Interactive / Kotaku
Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows PCs (Steam Deck: “Playable”)
Current goal: Actually finish it (probably!)
I know. You’re all like, “What do you mean you didn’t finish this game after writing about it for three weeks in a row in the Weekend Guide?”
Look, I have a busy, complicated life. Also, this game is enormous and, really, am I just gonna walk up to the final boss without being level 99 for every character with as many Pictos and Luminas as I can stock them with?
This weekend, I shall finally finish this game. I mean, at least in theory. I will tell you that Saturday will most likely be spent just grinding combat while listening to Dream Theater. And yes, I love the soundtrack in this game, but I’ve heard all the fight music at this point. Plus, the challenge of nailing the parrying and blocking window while listening to something like “Dance of Eternity” sounds like a good time to me!
The combat in this game, while stressful at the highest difficulty given its reliance on blocking and parrying, is a ton of fun. Every time I feel like I’m getting destroyed, I see a path to relearning the reaction-based mechanics, spec out my characters to become even more devastating, and power further on. The power you can scale to in this game is truly impressive and sometimes more than a little intoxicating, and it’s all based on a comfortable combination of RPG stat-readiness and reaction time. Best of both worlds!
But I do have an epic fantasy story to conclude. If I’m being honest, a soft critique I have thus far of this game is that its lore gets a little too tangled up with itself. Maybe the ending will stitch it together for me, or perhaps I’ll have to suffer reading a synopsis because some of the nuances passed me by. That said, Renoir is waiting for me in Lumiere. I’ll just show up once I’ve knocked out all the trials in the Endless Tower. — Claire Jackson