Final Fantasy VII Remake (NO ROCHE SLANDER)

[one-armed dwarf]

lol Square, making sure that anyone who traded in the PS4 game has to buy it again now.

 

They could just use the built in save upload feature but why make things easy like that.

[mfnick]

7 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

making sure that anyone who traded in the PS4 game has to buy it again now.

Yep that’s me. Ah well. 

[one-armed dwarf]

One thing that's a bit of a disappointment is they seem to have not put in a harder difficulty above hard. Hard mode seems geared to high level characters but you out level the fights pretty quickly. A max level party on hard mode is comparable to easy mode, IMO, so there's definitely room for more there. The combat and equipment system is good enough to have a really engaging difficulty that demands strategy and clever use of materia. I could only find that myself by turning all my weapon upgrades off, but that's not ideal.

 

Reason I say it is I would consider playing it all again to spot the differences (both in PS5 and HDR presentation) but wouldn't like it to just be a cakewalk either. Nor do I want to start again and do those awful side missions.

[mfnick]

On 04/06/2021 at 12:53, one-armed dwarf said:

Hard mode seems geared to high level characters but you out level the fights pretty quickly. A max level party on hard mode is comparable to easy mode, IMO

Really? You just have been a lot better at this than I was then ?. I remember it being a tough challenge throughout when I played through on hard. With a couple of sticking points like the Hell House and the Train Graveyard bosses. Most of the rest of the games bosses I got through first try but it felt sufficiently challenging still. Couldn’t relax and rest on my laurels I know that much. 

[one-armed dwarf]

The hell house and graveyard was really hard, but there were lots of bosses where you did so much damage to them you would skip their stagger meter and it would reset. Felt weirdly tuned

[Maf]

I actually couldn’t finish FF7R even on normal because I hated the combat so much. I got all the way to the Shinra Tower, which I assume is quite close to the end and just got the knock with it so hard and so frequently I was like fuck this. 
 

I think there is just something in the combat I didn’t understand which is why I’m willing to give it another shot with the PS5 version from the beginning and see if it makes more sense to me. Because I feel like I understood everything the game does, it’s not exactly innovative in terms of combat. But I could never make it work. For instance when a enemy gets  staggered do certain attacks on them to raise their stagger percentage and do more damage. Simple enough. I played Xenoblade 2, I get it. Ok.

 

I ended up having to Google how the fuck you actually do that and it turns out Tifa has one move keyed to Triangle that does it. I couldn’t find anything else that did it. 
 

What the fuck is that. Is there really only one move that does it?
 

The fight with the House is where I started to lose it. It switches what it’s weak too. Magic or physical damage. Sure. No problem, game. I’ve seen stuff like this before. I completely get it. 
 

How head fuckingly difficult was that fight. I still did it on my first or second go but it constantly jumping away and shooting rockets. Getting close to it and getting eaten by it. God damn. It’s not even hard it’s just so frustrating when I can’t make the mechanics work. And they’re not even complicated. 
 

And that was pretty much the story for me for the entire game. I was never in question about what it wanted me to do. I could just never figure out how to actually do it. Like increasing the stagger gauge or understanding how to do boss specific mechanics. 
 

By the end I was getting in to normal encounters and either coming through it basically unscathed or being beaten down so bad my characters were on their knees begging for mercy and I was never sure of what I was doing different. 
 

Even thinking about it I’m getting pissed off. I haven’t played a game as rage inducing as FF7R in a long time. But I’m willing to give it another shot and see if there is something I just didn’t understand. I feel there must be because I haven’t seen anyone have the complaints I have with the game. 
 

But I also feel like I definitely understood it it’s not exactly complicated. Maybe it just does suck. I’ll give it another a go and see if I can rank it anywhere above the most dickhead video game in 2020. 

[one-armed dwarf]

The house fight is genuinely bad, well it's actually quite good, but bad in its design cause it fails to communicate what it wants you to do. So it fails for that reason (but if you know the trick then the fight is really cool)

 

The trick, which I couldn't figure out either until finding a speed kill video on youtube, is that you're supposed to interrupt its charge move with low level magic. No other fight in the game is designed like that.

All that said though I think it's got one of the best examples of a game splitting the balance between action and turn based in a way that preserves the high tempo-ness of action while keeping things tactical. IMO it actually is pretty innovative but it really demands you don't take a surface level approach and actually play it quite slow paced. I've compared it like FFXIII x Dark Souls to other people who struggle with it to explain its approach a bit better. All it fundamentally is is a game about managing ATB and responding to enemy tells. I think the boss fights handle it better than the random mobs, which do just kind of mob you sometimes. 

 

The worst thing you can do in this game IMO is spam dodge move cause (1) you aren't actually mitigating damage in an effective way, it's not like a Bayo or DMC dodge it's more like Dark Souls. And (2) you're wasting time which means less ATB generated, less DPS, enemies stay alive longer to kick your arse etc. It's a game about being efficient and takes more than a few design cues from FFXIV tbh (which makes sense cause people from that will have worked on this)

 

I also just think each of the 4 characters is so well designed. Barret is particularly undervalued I think as a tank/support type character who can just heal and sustain the team really well with his abilities. Cloud can give your whole party ATB with Disorder & the ATB assist materia. Aerith can basically set herself up as a turret. Tifa's battle system is badly explained tho, like the fact that her 'unbridled strength' ability changes her basic combo and 'overpower' ability is something the game never explains that I only discovered on another forum. But basically her whole idea is to induce the 'pressure' status which leads into 'stagger', as well as those abilities which increase stagger %. Basically they designed her like she would be the character people spend the most time playing as (which I didn't, I mostly stuck with Cloud)

 

It's why in spite of all the weird pacing, structural and boring story problems the game has I come back to it cause it's such a fresh take on RPG combat and way better than anything Square has done in that department since Crono Trigger, IMO

[mfnick]

I started off not liking the combat in this, I also remember struggling to understand the stagger stuff at first too. But eventually it clicked and I ended up really liking the combat. Even though I’d have still preferred it being a standard turn based system but I’m just weird like that. 
 

My memory is shit so I can’t actually remember the details but you must have been missing something Maf because the stagger system was really easy to exploit especially on normal. There’s definitely a lot more to it than Tifas triangle move. I think the abilities even state whether they can stagger or not.  
 

Hell House is one of the best battles in the game too imo - on normal anyway. On hard he’s a cunt that takes way too long to beat even when you have the technique down but on normal he’s a great boss and really helped me understand and appreciate the how all the combat mechanics worked.

[one-armed dwarf]

Aerith has a move which is a big beam which also builds up the stagger percent, and any move with 'focus' in the name is best for building up the stagger bar. But pressure is the state you want to get in before stagger, which is purely a DPS thing if I'm right. So the whole flow of the game is find ways to deal big damage/exploit weakness, then build up stagger then go for the really big attacks.

 

But more fundamentally the issue I see when I watch twitch streams or whatever is people struggle to figure out about quickly generating ATB. For Tifa her default triangle uppercut skill is always a good fallback for that, then focus strike also returns ATB on attack. Barret's overcharge cooldown generates ATB (and there's a skill which shortens the cooldown on it), Cloud's disorder skill returns ATB while changing him into a stance that also gives more, Aerith's tempest is a grenade which gives an entire ATB chunk on detonation when fully charged. 

 

Then there's lots of pink materia which change how ATB is generated and give you even more actions per minute. Basically you can't win fights easily just by mashing square as the only method to build ATB, if anything that is like your fallback when the other ways aren't available. I always see people leaving overcharge overcapped when it is ready, or never using tempest, or under-utilising pink materias. When it's not a game about always saving your big attacks but using them all the time (even limit breaks, sometimes). While all the time spamming the dodge roll which is purely a situational maneuver and not something you use when it's not needed especially as it actually pauses the ATB gauge.

 

Now could the game do a better job explaining all that, perhaps. But I figured most of that out myself. I just really think people look at it too much as if it's purely an action game, when it's only borrowing some stuff from action games but is mostly a game about managing bars that gradually fill up.

 

For me the main problem with the battle system is it handles aggro really badly, I hope they fix that and let you manipulate enemy AI a bit better. But if anyone wants to listen to somebody actually interesting explain these mechanics instead of a boring nerd like me then give the chip and ironicus lets play a look cause they get across the fundamentals of the fighting really well, plus they are funny to listen to.

 

 

[Maf]

Sorry when I said not understanding the stagger gauge I just meant the percentage part. The pressure and stagger stuff I understood. I just couldn’t raise the percentage.

 

Not that I even needed it. I just saw there was a trophy for getting above 200% so after trying lots of stuff I ended up looking online and it turns out the answer is Tifa. But why is it Tifa, how are you meant to know.

 

Apart from interrupting the House’s charge attack with magic and maybe pink materia (I can’t really remember which materia I was using a lot of) I’m not reading anything I didn’t already get. I’m sure in this thread somewhere is me saying “Oh, it looks like an action game but you can’t play it like one”. Like with the dodge mechanic and whatnot. I remember early rolling out the way of an attack and getting hit by it anyway. Realising it’s not that kind of game. 
 

Also using different attacks to stagger and then unload all the big guns I get in theory. The concept isn’t in question for me. It’s just doing it. That’s why I feel like there must be some really basic, key part of the combat I missed because it can’t be this hard to do things this simple. 
 

Aside from boss specific tricks I say it’s not innovative because in terms of base mechanics I don’t think there is anything here I haven’t seen. Which is why it’s so annoying when I can’t get it to work, and why I think I’m missing something super obvious. 
 

Even the very first boss in the game had me spamming Phoenix Downs. Because I get you have to hit the thing on it’s butt but even then I just got massacred because I know what it wants me to do, I just could never do it. 
 

There were only select times when the game fell over as expected. When you fight the red head guy. Clearly he moves too quick to do anything but counter. That took 5 seconds to figure out and I blew his ass up. I like that, that felt good.

 

Then there’s a monster in the sewers where you have to break his horns or something to do big damage. Again, seen this shit before, and it just so happened it worked really easy.

 

The only thing that completely escaped me was the ghost train boss fight. When it goes in the air and shoots missiles or spins around the arena. A lot of Tifa hiding behind the box in the middle of the room while Barret and Cloud lay dead on the floor waiting for the attack to stop and be revived. I just didn’t know what I was meant to do there.

 

The most savage boss in the game for me was the Leviathan fight. It’s the only thing that killed me more than 3 times because it had a OHKO move. I had to completely strip all my characters of all their materia and abilities and rebuild them specifically for this one fight. I made Tifa punch lightning so when the boss was on the ground she could stagger really fast. I had Cloud only using lighting magic for when it was in the air. I gave Barret all the MP, healing and revives I could apply to him so his health was over 4000hp. That way if I couldn’t stop the OHKO move happening he would just survive and could revive everyone. It took a lot of attempts but I got it in the end.

 

But by that point I was so angry I couldn’t even feel good about my success. My happiness with putting together a winning strategy was totally smothered by my utter rage at this stupid ass boss. 
 

I don’t know. I really want to like it. But I really, really hated it. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I dunno, without footage of you actually playing it it's hard to guess what went wrong. I would say if pink materia is the only thing that sounds new here it's a pretty massive thing in this game, when it comes to giving you more effective shit to use on enemies. Use them right and it can easily double if not triple the amount of ATB slots that get filled.

 

IMO, if an awful lot of your time is spent just pressing square then there is definitely a big thing you're missing. I dunno if that is what went wrong for you but it does sound like you had fights that went on forever, therefore took more damage therefore more deaths etc. Especially as more damage means more ATB spent on healing, which means you could just be mashing attack just to keep yourself alive but without actually doing anything that makes much impact on the enemy. If that sounds familiar at all then you've either set up your materia in an ineffective way or haven't figured out the use case of some really useful moves. When ATB is constantly being acquired it means even if you take things slow that your window for attack can still do massive damage, but if you're just peaking out from behind your sword to do a single ATB skill here or there then that can be something which turns it into a war of attrition.

[one-armed dwarf]

They've added an effect here I'm not fond of, every strike of Cloud's regular sword attack causes the entire screen to flash white for a split second

 

[Whiskey_chaser]

Managed to get the PS5 upgrade sorted - what an absolute ball ache that was. Deleted the PS4 version not realising I had to upload the saves first so had to re-download the first chunk of that again, whilst the console did it's best to hide both versions.

Anyway - I never finished this on PS4, I got to the end of Don Corneo's mansion and bounced off it so this seemed like a great opportunity to go back. Needless to say, it looks amazing. The neon lit parts of the city just look jaw dropping in all their HDR glory. Coming off Last of Us 2 though, the 'acting' and voice work is so mind numbingly cringy. I actually laughed during one of the emotional moments during the plate scene because it was just awful.

I'm not entirely sure i'm enjoying it, theres some really odd design decisions that don't sit right in a modern game. It's just the rose-tinted nostalgia helps carry me through it all.

[Maf]

I’m guessing I can delete the PS4 install and still keep the PS5 install. It should still let me have access to the game because of the disc? Let’s try it. Hard drive space has the value of gold on these next gen machines. 

[one-armed dwarf]

From what I hear you want to keep the PS4 install for a bit at least to upload your old saves

 

Oh yeah and even with a disc your PS will probably still try and install that shit, at least if it is anything like PS4

[Maf]

Not sure. It’s still downloading the PS5 version even though I’ve deleted the PS4 version. But the disc is still in. Let’s see if this PS5 explodes or something.

 

The Smart Delivery stuff on Xbox is a bit of a con and publishers use the logo like they’re giving you something cool when they’re not. Either they jack up the regular Xbox One version price or you only get both versions if you buy the most expensive one anyway.

 

But it is simpler than this. Maybe this will just work. That’d be good. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Messing around with the PS5 version of this, they added animation cancelling to it. Pressing block or using the parry dodge is instant. I dunno how I feel about that, I thought the deliberate feeling suited the whole action/RPG hybrid. Take it out it veers more into an action game. Maybe people will prefer that though

 

One thing I'm finding is the ABL on OLED is ruining the look of the game when everything is full of lightning like when fighting Ramuh (was in trailer not a spoil), everything is washed out and grey cause the OLED is trying to prevent burn in or something. Looks awful. In general it doesn't look like a PS5 game, which it isn't I suppose. Just a PS4 game running at 60fps with some shonky textures.

 

I beat the first half of the DLC. It's fine I think. I didn't do any side quests, they seem boring again. Yuffie has a last second dodge ability which retains ATB when you use it and cycles through melee and ranged attacks. When you throw the shuriken you get elemental based ranged attacks and you can 'retrieve' it by homing in. So I do think they are making these subsequent games more 'action-ey', which could go either way I think. As always tho I think the hard mode will probably give a much better impression, on normal you can just sort of mash except for one wolf enemy where you have to read its attacks. For some reason the boss fight is a pushover in comparison

[Nag]

What's ABL?

[mfnick]

That was my first thought, just googled it 

 

Automatic Brightness Limiter

 

Not sure I’ve ever experienced that on mine. Where I’ve noticed it anyway… Might have turned it off without remembering. I hate it when TVs auto adjust brightness so always disable it where possible so that’s probably the case. 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

You can turn it off but only with a service remote.. and it voids warranty with LG

 

The Ramuh fight just looks very dim, I actually took a video of it but the HDR part hasn't encoded yet or something on youtube

 

 

 

Though I don't know if it's specifically HDR which causes it (HDR makes things more bright so I guess it could). When that gets added you could watch that video on an OLED or something and you might see the issue, or not. Tho even with HDR youtube videos are less bright