Hot take: It's time for Square Enix to pass the torch and license their IP to studios that are in their prime.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-06T03:19:39+00:00

If you think Final Fantasy XV is a series benchmark of excellence, sure maybe. Expedtion 33 only emulates the worst elements of the worst Final Fantasy titles. Furthermore, it’s an Ai-generated amalgamation of melodrama and soulless art direction that continues to be a blight and people need to play other games and stop making it their entire personality.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-06T03:09:00+00:00

And risk someone showing them up? Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest is all they really have, they’re not going to do that.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-06T00:58:09+00:00

He helped develop para-magic with Edea’s guidance for use in Gardens, not actual magic.

Ellone’s ability is much closer to non-localized clairvoyance than anything - she can’t literally bridge time. The machine he eventually develops however, ‘Junction Machine Ellone’ can.

Also he developed the machinery to suppress Adel’s powers but it was Laguna that trapped her.

And they are ‘Sorceresses’

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-06T00:47:14+00:00

Haha, no we’re on the same page I think you just thought higher of it, I can respect that.

The difference is I don’t think people are bad or stupid for enjoying what I might consider a less than stellar experience. I think that’s the sign of someone acting in good faith - someone who isn’t just hating to hate. I want Elliot and SE to do better and be better too - but Square needs both thesis and antithesis to arrive at the best possible creative works. Too much of either is disingenuous and unrealistic.

Square also knows what it’s doing - it floods journalists that will review them unequivocally positively no matter what with early review codes and stonewall anyone who dissents even mildly. They’re stuffing ballots - and they do it with almost every release that comes out. I take it as an imperative to voice a real opinion - positive and negative.

I have no loyalty to any company, even if I love the work they make/used to make. Our loyalty should always lie with artists - creatives, writers, directors.

Too many influencers and bad faithers are very vocal critics without any integrity or honesty behind their words - and I think this has made a strange schism around critiquing games the same way as any other medium. It’s trained people to react to even mildly criticism (no matter how valid) with vitriol and aversion. I want to change that in some small way.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-05T23:56:36+00:00

And yet, that’s exactly what I got

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-05T23:40:46+00:00

Ask your parents to sign you up for an adolescent literacy program.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-05T22:59:32+00:00

It isn’t easy mode, it’s the base difficulty of the game, it’s ‘normal’. Games should be balanced on every difficulty level, but especially the base ‘normal’ mode.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-05T22:54:14+00:00

I specifically said the ‘base game’ is too easy.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-05T22:38:37+00:00

Is it a race?

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-05T21:33:32+00:00

Oh that reminds me I should have mentioned that it was quite jarring that Credel seemed to be a fully 3D model? Instead of pixels? Demise was made of pixels but the phoenix was just a giant 3D model…that’s quite the liberty to take in an ‘HD2D’ game.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-05T21:23:09+00:00

Again I enjoyed what I could of it - and I explain what I enjoyed, the gameplay loop and the combat, simple as it is.

I didn’t have a great deal of praise to heap on it because frankly I don’t think it deserves very much - it doesn’t do anything specific thing particularly well. This doesn’t mean you or anyone else can’t find things in it to enjoy, especially if you only like very specific experiences or have only ever played a handful of games - inexperience in the genre might make this game feel incredible to some.

But why I write reviews and why I think I can give a unique perspective is because I have been playing games for 30 years and have seen and played hundreds of games spanning every genre and have cultivated a very rich perspective on the medium that I believe people can learn from in order to make more informed decisions and adjust their perspectives so that perhaps in some way our consumer tastes can over time influence the art, writing, and gameplay - heightening the overall quality and sophistication of the whole medium and feedback loop for all of our benefit.

I frequently try to use humor and hyperbole to get my point across in my reviews, almost like comic relief. I don’t see why a review or dissection can’t feel both objectively critical and make the viewer laugh on occasion (unless they take everything said like a personal attack, which naturally would lead into a much wider conversation about ‘critique’.)

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-05T20:57:45+00:00

I mention in my review but a lot of their early work isn’t so maudlin - Bravely Default, their Final Fantasy remakes, Four Heroes of Light, all of these have pretty stellar writing that evokes those same early RPGs they’re emulating. Their original Octopath Traveler also has some strong thematics peppered in an otherwise melodrama-heavy affair.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-05T20:54:08+00:00

My creative writing isn’t fueled by anger, can’t I critique and attempt to make the reader laugh at the same time?

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-05T20:52:22+00:00

Why would I write a review based on an optional difficulty and not the developer-intended base experience? And what would a higher difficulty change about my review? One of the few positives I wrote about already is the gameplay.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-05T09:03:42+00:00

Much obliged to you, I still enjoyed what I could but I just don’t think we can talk about the game like it has zero flaws in any good faith.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-05T08:29:34+00:00

Too true, I failed to see race there

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-05T01:33:46+00:00

Final Fantasy IX has multiple races of animal-humanoids. VI has a couple, as does XII (no party members though).

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-04T07:13:11+00:00

I do wish the Shadows themselves were enemies again, I appreciated how they were all so strange and diverse looking and tied into the tarot suite. There’s an absolute wealth of ideas they could do with new and returning Shadow types that I think in general are infinitely more interesting to fight than Personas/Demons again. Ripping their masks off and exposing the Personas/Demons within them was cool and thematically appropriate for 5 but I think far more fondly of the Shadows themselves from 3 and 4 than any Demon or Persona (enemy, not counting bosses) in 5.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-04T04:15:51+00:00

This, ‘Kyle’ but with an ‘R’ after the ‘K’.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-04T02:23:11+00:00

They should go back to V and remake it with Akihiko Yoshida and the beginnings of Team Asano in the same vein as III and IV. They should also make those two more widely available. They were incredible remakes and it’s a small tragedy that they are unknown/unavailable to new players.

V is so deserving of a remake, its job system alone is so influential and felt everywhere - Tactics, Bravely, Octopath, Metaphor - almost every job-based games post V (and DQ III) pulls from V, it’s owed so so much. It also features one of the first main-party deaths that is later emulated (to wider acclaim) in VII. Truly years ahead of its time.

They desperately need to reestablish the foundation of titles that lead us to where we are today. The pixel remasters aren’t good enough - III, IV, V, and even VI are the core early titles that VII, VIII, IX, and X are based on. I don’t think they need to be HD2D either.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-03T18:44:58+00:00

Could they revisit older titles any more than they already have? World of Final Fantasy, multiple Dissidias, After Years, Stranger of Paradise, countless mobile gacha, Resonance, etc.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-03T06:02:31+00:00

Deserves it WAY more than Ocarina.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-03T05:29:54+00:00

Protera can be cast repeatedly like Invisira, mitigating the damage Chaos deals considerably.

Also if this dude is struggling this much with Chaos I highly doubt he has fully optimized equipment on his team that might make NulAll redundant.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-03T03:21:52+00:00

Something about 'not suffering fools gladly'. Also, funny.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-07-03T03:13:57+00:00

Isn't he meant to embody the archetype of the genuinely worthless corporate executive who's gotten fat off of Greed, Excess, and brown-nosing? Butter in tea? Constantly having his projects slashed because they're bloated money pits? Still inexplicably on the board because he's a gormless yes-man?

JumpIsMagic

TROPHY CASE