Recent reviews by fey

I have... mixed feelings. I played the original when it came out, bought and played FES when it came out, loved it. Highly impactful game. But for others who did so and are indecisive about getting the remake, here's a few things.

The New Features - they're great. Mostly feel like they belong. They didn't change the mechanics around a bunch or nerf anything, as far as I can tell so far.

The New Soundtrack - the vocals are better, easier to understand, but the instrumental completely lost its teeth. It doesn't feel as impactful, or create tension where it should.

The Visuals - Also great. The characters still feel pretty close to their original design. The color grading leaves something to be desired, but it's nothing reshade can't fix.

Small details - they removed the spinning cylinder design in combat. This is like a nothing thing for most people, but my autistic ass liked being able to spin the cylinder while thinking in combat, and not having that there sucks.

I'm most broken up about the soundtrack. I really love the new vocals, but the trade off is that they feel like completely different songs, with less emotional depth.

If there was a middle ground between "buy it" and "dont buy it" that's honestly where I'd be. It IS a good remake standing on its own, so for that reason I'll recommend it, but for original fans, you may be happier emulating + modding the original.

Updated review: After almost reaching the 30 hour mark, I have more thoughts. The tl;dr is that in its current state, I wouldn't recommend it. What is there is fun and (mostly) solid, but there are a lot of broken events, buggy UIs, and other major shortfalls - especially with the building mode. There's a great foundation here, but a lot of letdown too. For example, the buildmode only has 4 wallpapers. That's it. There's also menu pieces that just simply don't work with a controller. Wallpapers disappear when you hover your mouse over them, and you can't copy a wallpaper unless it's from part of the default build. At about 15 hours in, the game becomes a total grindfest - you have one level you go to for the vast majority of your materials, and there's just never enough for what you need to do. Some items you produce for quests disappear into the UI after you present them to the quest giver, making you think you didn't get to keep it. As far as I can tell, I made 2 realm boxes (think void bags in terraria, but with a huge material cost) for a handful of pocket change.

Also of note, the interactions between characters feel very shallow. 3 out of 4 the male romanceable options look like they could be twins. They also whitewashed the other one. Then when is comes to quest givers, the quests feel very unbalanced. The rancher line is especially bad for this, ramping up the requirements to advance at a crazy amount each time given how weak your ability to make money is. There's no real feeling of an economy here, not even at the level of Stardew Valley. Most of the things you produce are worth very little, and refining them into better products doesn't matter.

On the MC, the starting CC screen leaves a *lot* to be desired. There's 4 hairstyles, and two outfits. I don't expect it to be loaded with options, but that's pretty abysmal. Then as you get into the game, you unlock outfits at a snail's pace, and the clothing store doesn't update to have anything new. Right now, that wouldn't be a priority because there's so many kinks to work out, but given that you've seen pretty much everything by 20 hours in, they need more things to suck you in, and fashion is just one medium.

I do love the game. But it's got a ways to go.

This game is an absolute gem. Very relaxing and requires little focus. The customer stories are fun and cute. My one feature wish is for more descriptive reminders for the quest items, sometimes I forget what pieces they want when it's not a straightforward complete item.

I wish there was a "not yet" button. It's a great game so far, but it struggles with a ton of major bugs (and yes I know there was a patch today, same major bugs are still not fixed) and it seems like 90% effort goes to new content and 10% to fixing what is already there (poorly implemented). Lots of events, especially heart events are totally broken in winter, items inside structures disappear forever if the structure is moved, invisible obstacles in the middle of pathways underwater, etc the list goes on. When they fix the core gameplay issues I'll happily recommend this game. There are also gameplay design elements and story design elements that do not make sense. Most of the romances don't feel like romances at all, because the player is just standing there silently observing drama. You often don't get to know the NPC beyond their problems. You can really only come up with a story for how player / LI got together with a headcanon, because what's ingame leaves a lot to be desired.

After receiving patches, the game runs much better. Very few hitches or freezes now. I feel this game has received a lot of unfair criticism. Given the circumstances surrounding the development, it turned out surprisingly well. The writing is its weak point - as someone else said, it feels like HR is in the room. That aside, the combat is very fun and the companions are very lovable. The world itself is stunningly beautiful. I only wish EA hadn't wasted time trying to turn it into a live service game.

It's been a long time since a game made me laugh this much. The writing is excellent, the art gorgeous, the voice acting top notch. I especially enjoy Dr Drayne and... him. Absolutely S tier game.

The OST is a little lackluster. Some the best tracks or not included, my most favorite being the shadow cursed land's battle music. Absolutely criminal in my opinion.

Well written characters, great community, great fun.

CTD simulator

Just do it.