Final Fantasy VII Remake

[one-armed dwarf]

Demo is out, first chapter of the game.

 

I made a video fighting the demo boss. I did really bad, maybe you can do better.

 

It feels well designed but lacking in polish, I dunno. There's a lot to like here but I hope they get it up to a better standard for release

 

 

edit ok I spent time practicing and took a better video of the boss fight. This game has really good combat. It's so mechanical, a nice amount to think about. 

 

Some AI problems tho. I wish you could call characters to a position but it seems you need to babysit them with switch mechanic

 

 

[radiofloyd]

Lacking in polish, what do you mean?

 

I liked it. The demo is about a solid hour of gameplay. It’s definitely something new. Will be hammering this day one. 

[one-armed dwarf]

The camera seemed weird and it wasn't always as easy to follow where characters were going as I would like. Apparently there's a camera option in the settings though so maybe that fixes it.

 

Also visually it doesn't look as good as I thought it would, but it is a demo. It's got this kind of dithering effect around some stuff, Kingdom Hearts 3 had it too. Cloud's hair has it pretty bad.

 

These are nit picks though I think the combat could be the best I've seen in a game like this.

[Maf]

Watching EG play the demo and this looks really amazing, actually. I think this is the first “real” game play footage I’ve seen and the traversal looks very straight forward (But it’s basically tutorial) but the fighting looks a lot more interesting than what I had thought it would be. The graphics are insanely good. Can’t really see a game being better looking than this in that AAA way. 

[DANGERMAN]

I played through the demo, it's pretty good. The only bit that's a challenge is the boss fight towards the end. I felt like I didn't have a full grasp on what I was doing. Like I couldn't tell if it was supposed to take as long as it did, Cloud was chunnering on about learning patterns and various other things, but I didn't seem to be doing anything wrong, I just wasn't doing a lot of damage and seemed to be using a lot of the (abundant) potions I'd picked up

 

The combat feels like it could be really good and fluid, but I'm not sure it is in this demo. This is the start of the game though, there's no way you can judge an rpg's combat on the first 45 minutes.

 

It's well made, looks good, but it's a shame they haven't made the dialogue and performances better, Barret is awful, but it's hard to know if it's some sort of nod to the past or if the final Fantasy team just cannot write

[one-armed dwarf]

Huh, I wonder why everyone thinks the graphics look good except me

 

I think there are parts that look nice but the art is sort of boring.

 

Combat is sort of about resource management. Exploit weaknesses of the boss with lightning magic, which stuns it. Then wail on it. Cloud has a sort of DPS stance called operator which hits hard, Barry has a cooldown called overpower which does big damage and gives you ATB gauge. You dont want to leave your ATB bars full, you should always be spending them on something. Also you can switch characters mid action

 

To me it's like all the systems of FFXII, XIII, XIV and XV mashed together in a really clever way. I'm having a lot of fun figuring it all out.

[HandsomeDead]

I've got the demo downloaded but I've not played it yet.  I did see the Giant Bomb Quicklook but I just found it frustrating as they're not clued in on the original game at all and their assumptions were not helpful to anyone.  Most were whatever but the insinuation they kept having that they were padding the game with another reactor to blow up was just eye rolling stuff (it happens in the original fyi). 

 

I dunno, whatever I guess. 

 

I think I may check out the Eurogamer stuff.  They've had a play through of original going for a while and it's wholesome as fuck.  Zoe, the new one there never played it and went into it with a bit of cynicism and has just steadily fallen in love with it so at least it'll be a more informed look. 

[Maf]

5 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Huh, I wonder why everyone thinks the graphics look good except me

It’s called taste, some people just don’t have it, I’m sorry for you

[one-armed dwarf]

Maybe its cause I have a real gaming machine and you don't. Gears 5 on ultra settings ?

[Maf]

How’s the HDR?

[bellow]

Oh, that's not for me. I turned that off during the escape from the reactor. Just a load of noise. I hate games like that.

[one-armed dwarf]

1 minute ago, bellow said:

Oh, that's not for me. I turned that off during the escape from the reactor. Just a load of noise. I hate games like that.

Arent you glad you played the old one now? ?

[Maf]

1 minute ago, bellow said:

Oh, that's not for me. I turned that off during the escape from the reactor. Just a load of noise. I hate games like that.

You like Metroid you shuddup 

[bellow]

1 minute ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Arent you glad you played the old one now? ?

I love the original, especially now I've got my airship.

 

2 minutes ago, Maf said:

You like Metroid you shuddup 

Metroid is hardly a reasonable comparison to this mess. I'm happy to point out that I'm getting on a bit and I'm not interested in the type of on screen confusion this demo is serving up. 

 

I'll be sticking to my turn based adventure if it's all the same to u lot. A much more civilized manner of death dealing, from a more cultured time.

[Maf]

All Metroids have countdown timers where you have to escape as things blow up. It is exactly the same. These games are like twins.

[bellow]

I didn't mean the timer, I'm talking about the combat. It's just too confusing. I'm not convinced by it, and there is minimal feedback as to how your strikes are connecting. 

 

I'm not saying it's not well done. It just doesn't interest me.

[OCH]

A friend of mine downloaded the demo earlier. He text me about about an hour ago "Combat is crap. They've ruined it." ?

[bellow]

They've sort of achieved the impossible - make  modern action combat seem less fluid and tactile than a decades old turn based system.

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

I love the fighting in this. I actually think it might already be my favourite combat system in an rpg.

 

You can use ranged attacks (Barets powerups and magic) to interrupt the boss. You can coordinate ATB usage between cloud and Bareett to maximise damage during burst phases. If you 'pressure' the boss you can use the downtime to charge up barrets cooldown, which can also be used to shoot it down during the bit where it jumps on the wall. Cloud's stances have different recovery properties where one can dodge cancel attacks and the other is slow and deals lots of damage so you really have to know the fight well to know which stance to take.

 

Everything looks so good, also I put it on ultra sampled and fixed some of my visuals issues. It is more than I ever expected. The game could literally just be a bunch of shite and this combat system would still make me happy.

[Maryokutai]

I don't know why dwarf thinks this doesn't look good, I think it's one of the most visually impressive games of this generation. Right up there with Gears 5 and probably Uncharted 4, though I never played that one. A huge step up from both FFXV and KHIII, though in fairness the demo is build around tiny and limited corridors so it'll be interesting how the streets of Midgar look like.

 

I also think it felt rather polished. I just wish the camera was a bit further away from Cloud, he takes up too much screen space during exploration. 

 

Combat from what I gathered felt fine. Takes some ideas from FFXIII's combat system which was the only good thing about that game (graphics were nice, too). I didn't quite understand what to make of the last phase of the boss when he starts healing himself but I managed to beat him by just relentlessly attacking him through it. The mix between real-time inputs and menu-driven skills and spells works quite well too.

 

Overall I'm rather impressed but I'm not quite convinced if this game is for me. I only played the original for about six hours so there's no nostalgia here for me. The characters seem really unlikable for example, at least early on. Barrett has some of the worst lines spoken by a videogame character since FFXIII's Hope - where did the writers from FFXII go?

On the other hand this seems well made and is a really important project for SE so I might just buy it for that reason and hope that at least one party member is nice.