French final fantasy, if final fantasy games were still good in this day and age.

Incredible story and great game systems, presented with spectacular music and art. The gameplay experience is very focused and balanced, with a small exception near the end. It also does not outstay its welcome, with a main story completion time of ~30 hours and a 100% completionist playtime of ~60 hours, no grinding necessary.

Performance is fine, which is more than can be said for the majority of 3D games with realistic art style nowadays.

My only criticism is that past a certain point in the game, the player's power scaling goes off the charts, trivialising all but the very hardest combat encounters. This doesn't mean that I would like to see it reigned in, though - it's very fun and almost a staple of traditional turn-based RPGs to put together complex ways to break the combat balance in the post-game. Rather, I would like these three aspects addressed:
- adding more gimmicks to post-game encounters, so that they still pose a challenge to a player that is able to output 100x the opponent's HP in the first turn.
- in tandem, ensuring that in-combat dialogue is guaranteed to play out. There are several voice lines from story bosses which a player will never hear if they put together an alpha strike build.
- either giving clearer direction for the player to beeline the main story in Act 3 and leave the side content for post-game, or rebalancing the Act 3 main story encounters. At the moment, it's way too easy for a player to wander off doing side content, propelling them into higher levels and upon returning to the main story path trample over what should be a hyped up story ending fight.

All in all highly recommended, personal GOTY so far.

bnuuy

it has an FOV slider, and the rest of the game is also pretty good

guess going to hell ain't so bad after all

Great game, highly recommended!

+ The art style is gorgeous, really nails the atmosphere of a dead land
+ UI is as equally beautiful as the art style, and skill and inventory management is a breeze
+ Music is amazing
+ Large variety of abilities to mix and match, the game encourages you to use the ones best suited to the situation instead of sticking to a single set for the whole playthrough
+ Combat starts out easy, but quickly ramps up during the mid game and by the time you reach the endgame region regular enemies will be two-shotting you. The game gives you plenty of time to figure out that Lily is absolutely not a bruiser, and dodging attacks is crucial. To this end all enemies have very noticeable tells and attack animations, which once learned makes combat a very dynamic hit-and-run affair.
+ For the most part each boss brings its own set of challenging mechanics that force you to adapt your approach, and are an absolute delight to figure out. Special shoutouts to Elaine and Ulv, the former for being the first big "wall" in the game and the latter for being just an all round fun fight.
+ The game gives you snippets of lore and story after every boss, humanising them and making them more than just another Big Bad Evil Guy
+ This is important enough to be a separate point - the game places Respites (save points, the equivalent of bonfires) just before a boss fight. No-one wants to die to a boss, then spend the next 5 minutes running through enemies to get back to the arena to try again.

+/- The bulk of the lore is told through text pickups ("Findings"). I personally love this sort of thing but this might be a turn-off if you're not a fan of reading lots of text to piece together a vague story.
+/- Following on from the praise of combat, you will inevitably die during exploration and even if there are Respites every 3 maps or so, getting back to where you were involves getting through all the enemies again. Given that the only thing you get from fighting regular enemies is EXP towards your level (more on that later), sometimes I found myself just running past enemies instead of engaging them.
+/- The platforming is just okay, mediocre compared to a game like Ori and the Blind Forest but given this game's greater focus on combat I can give that a pass. As with other reviews momentum feels off with some of your abilities, in particular the grappling hook feels a little unnatural to use when Lily immediately changes direction mid-air.

- The one sour point on the UI is how the map is represented as a series of rectangles. While praise can be given for the way the game highlights complete/incomplete areas to make backtracking and finding secrets less of a chore, it is incredibly spartan next to the elegance of the item and skill menus.
- A couple of the bosses have mechanics that feel incredibly cheesy - coincidentally these bosses are the ones that summon adds (looking at you Hoenir). No matter how you look at it, getting mobbed by adds teleporting on top of you and dealing touch damage while the boss tries its best to run away isn't really fun.
- The levelling system seems out-of-place in a game like this - from what I could tell levelling up just increases your damage. There was never really any need to grind levels, I got to the final boss on my blind non-completionist run by around level 73 which was sufficient. Since defensive upgrades are placed as discoverable secrets and equippable items, why not do the same for offence?
- The final area is filled with toxic fog and pools of noxious water that constantly eat away at your health, even once you obtain the item to lessen its effects. This really dampened my mood to explore the area, as you are basically punished for sticking around and looking for secrets. This area also features the worst enemies in the game - the "giant blob", which likes to spam a tentacle whack that chunks half your health while being an absolute health sponge itself.

yeah it's pretty good aye

3 years later edit: yeah it's still pretty good

another 4 years later edit: it somehow got even better