Final Fantasy VII Remake (NO ROCHE SLANDER)

[AndyKurosaki]

Visually, it looks bloody brilliant in my opinion. I’m playing on my day one PS4, which is handling it fine. There’s no load times, probably helped by the huge data install you have to do before you can play the game. I’m not a massive graphic geek or anything. But anyone that complains at how this looks, is in my professional opinion fucking insane.
 

The side quests can be skipped. You have to do a couple that introduce you to the town’s shops, and mechanics such as upgrading your weapons. After that, you can skip them. I chose to do everything possible, to get as much out of it. There’s an option in the map menu to view what quests are available for each Chapter, and your progress made in them. 
 

Once I’d completed all 8 optional quests for Chapter 3, Tifa recommended a break before carrying on, and this unlocked an optional Progress mission, which develops the relationship between Tifa and Cloud. Nothing dramatically important, although (and I’ll spoiler this) 

Spoiler

Tifa suggests you “have a night on the town” to celebrate. You’re given a choice of 3 outfit options for Tifa (Mature, Sporty, Exotic), but you don’t see what those look like, you only see that word description). 
The quest ends soon after that, and the main story progresses. I’m guessing that choice will come up later in the game)

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah that sounds good. Sidequests I mean. One reason why I read spoilers these days is I find a lot of modern games don't pace themselves well (cause of side content) and I get impatient to see where the story goes (funnily enough for all the issues I have with RE3make it is super well paced and I was engaged throughout).

 

Uh, speaking of which the stuff I heard for this sounds super cool and I'm even more excited now. (Don't worry I won't post them).

[Snaggletooth]

Also on Chapter 3 and loving it, So glad I opted not to play the demo and this being my first experience.

Plays so nicely, was hesitant it might veer to nearto FFXV but glad it isn't, Its so much more responsive.

 

Having played FFVII more times than I can recall over the years this really does a great Job so far at retelling the core story

But in a more cohesive manner, the additional fillers are welcome, my only concern was sephiroth appearing in a flashback so early, though I get why they 

done it to me lI fear it may loose a bit of its impact of the gravity in the introduction of the character from the original.

But at the same time, thats only really going to  be an impact on people who never experienced the story before.

 

Graphically its lush, environments feel alive especially the hussle crowds of the slums, and looking into the distance at the structures is captivating to me,

My only complaint visually has been the occasional texture that hasn't loaded in properly, usually on a door or sign but its not a frequent thing.

 

And that sound track,YES, YES, YES, YES, YES.

 

 

 

 

[AndyKurosaki]

I gave up on playing FF properly after X, which I absolutely hated. 
I tried 13, but found it immensely boring.

15 seemed ok, but I didn’t play much of it.

 

Thankfully, this is very much a return to form. They’ve absolutely knocked it out of the park. Just starting Chapter 4 now.

 

And yeah, the soundtrack is brilliant.

[OCH]

We do know why they did it, but pulling the Sephiroth (and Summons) card so early in the game is a mistake. Unlike the original though, you can't put the genie back in the bottle with the mystery of certain story beats anymore. As you say, when he first properly appeared in the original, that scene is so effective. Now it will be "oh look here he is, again".

[one-armed dwarf]

I think because it is such an iconic/overexposed character that it makes sense to do it like that though. 

 

It's like if you remade The Matrix, the reveals wouldn't be very effective cause it's so permeated into pop culture.

 

I can't wait to play this. I really want to talk about the stuff in it. 

[OCH]

Seeing the primary antagonist within the first hour of the game with no real context, instead of building towards a natural, narrative reveal is pandering. Which is a creative mistake. Much like Cloud, all subsequent overexposure and misguided media saturation has bastardised their original characters and personalities anyway. Cloud from Crisis Core, Advent Children, Kingdom Hearts etc is not the same one from the original game, after all. Sephiroth suffered from that even worse than he did.

 

It is why characters such as Garland, Golbez and Kefka can still be taken seriously as villains in their respective games. Whereas Sephiroth has been reduced to memes...

[AndyKurosaki]

Chapter 4 has been proper action packed. I’m really enjoying the way they’ve developed the personality of the Avalanche crew. Jessie is proper into Cloud, she couldn’t be more obvious about it. Wedge being voiced by Badger continues to make me smile. While walking through a town with them, Wedge stops to try get the attention of a cat, which isn’t interested. Something I always do whenever I see a cat out and about. 
 

The voice acting is great. I experienced an issue that Snaggletooth mentioned, a poster on a wall was a blurry mess until it suddenly popped into being what it should have looked like. But that’s a minor niggle really. 
 

They obviously had to do something different with the Sephiroth introduction scene, due to this not being the complete game, and THAT iconic “walking in flames” moment happening after Midgar, which this game won’t cover. Still, I don’t have an issue with how they introduced Sephiroth here.

 

I’ve had high hopes for this ever since it was announced. 6 hours in, and I’m not disappointed at all. It’s really, really good.

[one-armed dwarf]

Are you going to play this OCH or watch it online?

[OCH]

1 minute ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Are you going to play this OCH or watch it online?

Honestly, I don't think I'll bother with either. I've played the original too much and I just don't find the tutorial section Midgar an interesting area of the game. Tarted up with better graphics & voices or not. I'll hold off making a decision until subsequent post-city parts that I find feature the actual meat of the game.

[bellow]

I'll be in that boat with OCH, I think. The demo really didn't do that much for me. I think it was the boss that put me off. Chipping away for ages at an enemy who, strangely, doesn't seem to present much actual danger, isn't my idea of fun, to be honest.

[one-armed dwarf]

The trick for that boss is to use its elemental weakness (thunder), then use attacks that increase stagger (focus thrust), then use high power attacks to deal lots of damage. Similar loop to FFXIII.

 

What I think catches people out is they look at it like it's a pure action game, when it's actually still sort of a turn based game underneath all the action. 

[Jimboxy]

Be mindful of spoilers please chaps. Remember that some of us are playing this for the first time. I don't think there's been anything so far, but I imagine we are only three posts away from people flexing those ff7 knowledge muscle's.

[bellow]

19 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

The trick for that boss is to use its elemental weakness (thunder), then use attacks that increase stagger (focus thrust), then use high power attacks to deal lots of damage.

 

That's how I did it. Still took ages.

[one-armed dwarf]

Man, this OST is sick.

 

Putting it in spoilers.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

One more day ?

 

 

15 minutes ago, DANGERMAN said:

I don't think I've ever had to say this before, possibly a while ago...

 

don't take this as a hard and fast rule, we don't have an issue with people chipping in with the odd comment about games they haven't played, but if you haven't played the game you can't post impressions of it, so you're not adding a lot by repeatedly posting. To be clear this isn't a blanket "Don't post if you haven't played", but regular posts are just going to derail ?

Sure thing ?

[DANGERMAN]

I don't think I've ever had to say this before, possibly a while ago...

 

don't take this as a hard and fast rule, we don't have an issue with people chipping in with the odd comment about games they haven't played, but if you haven't played the game you can't post impressions of it, so you're not adding a lot by repeatedly posting. To be clear this isn't a blanket "Don't post if you haven't played", but regular posts are just going to derail ?

[AndyKurosaki]

Binged my way to Chapter 8. Absolutely loving this, it’s definitely going to be up there as one of the best remakes ever made. It’s certainly as high quality as Resi 2 Remake was last year. 
 

Chapter 6 took a little figuring out, as the area layout was a bit confusing. What I found really helpful though, was your Team-mates specifically said when you were going the wrong way, so that was appreciated.

 

It’ll definitely be fun to discuss opinions when the rest of you have had chance to play it. There’s plenty I could say, but absolutely won’t as this is something that deserves to be experienced for yourself. But my opinion remains that this has most definitely been worth the wait, as it’s excellent.

[one-armed dwarf]

While the fighting in this is really good, I'm sort of taken aback by how bad sector 7 looks graphically. There's great level of detail on characters and stuff but the environment often uses big JPEGS as backgrounds (like the sector plate) which personally looks quite off a lot of the time

 

The slow pace can be tough going too. I am 8 hours in and I am at the 1 hour point of the original game. Some of the stuff they fill in that time with is really good but a lot isnt

 

But the combat is excellent and the characters better than ever. It's not just visual fidelity, this might just be the first time any of these characters have been done justice in an English localisation. It is such a more interesting version of Cloud while it is also the exact same character.

 

Cloud is me at parties (we cant upload screenshots yet)

 

[Maryokutai]

What nasty stuff have you done to Tifa for her to be locked out now?

[one-armed dwarf]

The locked out icon is because she is worst girl.