u/nabiscosantajr

So I was a big fan of the DR and ZE series; started this game a WHILE back and made a ton of progress then got sidetracked cause... this game is so gotdang long. I'm done now and have somewhat mixed feelings. After such a long experience feel like I just wanna type out my feelings to close the book on this.

Gonna break down this 'review' into a few segments.

Gameplay: I'm a big fan of XCOM/FF Tactics/Pathfinder etc. type combat so I enjoyed the game a lot at first. It did get quite a bit repetitive over time with low enemy variety and repeating bosses. The board game section was a cool idea but alas, also became mad repetitive/grindy. These wouldn't be downsides if the game wasn't designed to be played this long but it is... so yeah.

Music: The music is good because the music in DRV3 is good. Felt like the composer just opened up his DRV3 project file, shuffled some of the midi notes around for the melodies and reprinted to make this soundtrack. Sidenote 'downside' is Clair De Lune. As a fan of classical piano I love that tune and it was very emotionally impactful in DRV3. They really overuse it here. It's like every time I see a scene is about to get even mildly emotional "oh here comes the clair de lune waterworks".

Characters: I won't lie, I hated a LOT of these characters at first. I think because of the long marathon pace of the game, the very one-dimensional character traits that could be charming in a game paced like DR suddenly become grating very fast. Shouma and the constant self-deprecation, Darumi and the constant wink-at-the-camera edgelord stuff, etc.

I will say after playing through every timeline, as one-dimensional as every char is, it IS always interesting to see how everyone will react to whatever wild scenario I'm going through now and the surprising depth when given a chance. I hated tf outta Darumi and finally played the Retsnom story as one of the last timelines I did. Felt like she was Seth Brundle to my Gina Davis and it was heartbreaking. I don't know if her getting actual depth in basically only one timeline can be counted as a plus but whatever.

Story: So this is where I get real mixed on it cause some of these individual stories were really awesome. I also felt thrown for a complete loop on a LOT of them. Like the zombie timeline and only me and Kyoshika survive?? Complete curveball to me.

My personal timeline on this game was playing "Last Defense 1" aka the first timeline thinking "hmm.... this game kinda fuckin sucks" and then getting the ending where we go back in time and unlock timelines. I then thought "ooooh this game might be fucking incredible" and the first ending I got was the 'comedy' ending with fishheads. I quickly went back to thinking "hmm nah i had it right the first time, this game fucking sucks"

Fortunately the second story I got was one of the killing game ones with Kamyuhn escaping in the rocket etc, very fun. Some of these stories are great..... Some are okay....... some.... fucking suck. As invested as I was about halfway through the game I ran into the 'serial battles' timeline and I legit almost quit 10 fucking times. Is the game trying to punish me for picking the obvious asshole option to Shion? Because I ALWAYS pick the bad option first to get it outta the way in these games. When I sacrificed Tsubasa instead of the two willing participants, I still unlocked the V'exhness route which was awesome and entertaining.

To conclude on the story, I will say I was VERY bummed that there's no 'true' ending. I thought the mega-bummer ending where everyone dies fighting the Shion bots together with the unique soundtrack, etc. was a GREAT ending... to unlock the true ending. Kinda like how Zero Escape always had those amazing bummer endings that were necessary to unlock the true ending.

The SF Route was... fine? It felt like a happy ending but I still got the generic ending music so... huh? what's next? Usually in ZE you beat every timeline to unlock the REAL timeline or whatever so... huh... Kinda wish the director(s) just had vision here to say "this is the definitive ending" just leaves me a little hollow especially after all this time.

Conclusion: I still feel pretty good about having beaten this game; plenty of fun stories and memorable moments. I feel pretty let down by the (lack of) ending; comparable and yet arguably worse than MGSV. "fuck it, let them decide what the ending is" I'm not a writer!! Finish your fucking story! What could have been really amazing I now just leave like "hey alright" atpQuan

Just curious. I don't remember working very hard for GM in Season 0 and while I just started kinda playing ranked again, it has felt consistently more challenging in every rank and after hitting master, can't help notice the point progression instantly took a big hit from like +17 a game to +6 or whatever.

I actually feel the ranked progression is at a pretty good spot right now cause Master is honestly the range I felt like I should've belonged in the first place. Feels like with all the rank inflation in SF6 and T8 making our achievements retroactively lamer, kinda glad that GM will feel like more of an actual achievement if I do end up hitting it.