Competed the game today. Finished the main quest, side quests, all the monster hunts and even completed that Clive’s display setup. Took me around 68 hours.
The story/plot and setting gets full marks - 10/10. Perhaps the best story I’ve seen in a video game so far. It’s rich enough to be an actual novel.
Gameplay and the world itself is pretty dull though. The gameplay and the rpg progression system is way too simple, especially the whole equipment upgrade /crafting system is pretty basic. You get all these rewards for defeating monsters and all these side quests, but aside from buying some music I found there’s little to no use for Gil and most resources were unused. I got the best weapon and gear crafted and still had a ton of resources left. The level progression is pretty basic as well with points unlocking different moves for each eikon and some upgrades but that’s it. I had quite a lot of unused points left towards the end as well. Overall I felt it’s mostly an action game and not really an rpg.
I found gameplay to be mostly just executing one eikon ability after another and you don’t control any of your party members and they keep adding/dropping out based on the quest progression. The world is mostly like a wall paper in the background for Clive to run thru his quests and most npcs have no ai in them whatsoever.
i felt the devs used all their budget to craft a beautiful world and story and added the gameplay with whatever was left. Ff7 is leagues ahead overall as a “game” but if I want to just experience the story/world/lore with basic gameplay then this is like the best game I’ve played !!