Final Fantasy VII Remake

[mfnick]

Awwww fuck yea! Made a start, having just played OG has made a huge difference to how I felt about this. Compared to when I played the demo I found the whole reactor part and seeing the characters and scenery again looking this good had a far more emotional impact! The part immediately after too was really powerful and brilliant. 
 

Im not sure about 1 of the changes I’ve encountered so far though.

Spoiler

The fact Shinra blew up the reactor properly after the bomb basically did FA. I much preferred having it be Jessie’s amateur bomb making skills as it was in the original. I just think it’s far more interesting having it essentially be your fault theres so much collateral damage. Obviously the characters don’t know this at the moment and are still going ahead with further bombings which is still a strong story point. But I do like the guts of saying it’s your fault in the original, I think it loses something by changing that. Even if that was their original intent.

Just not sure I like that. 
 

Im starting to find some enjoyment in the combat. It has issues, still far too button mashy for my liking, the button layout is causing me a lot of initial confusion where I keep pressing the wrong thing for ability and character command lists and targeting being a bit awkward to press during battle etc. I also need to mess about with the camera as it seems to close to see most enemies which are attacking you and it keeps being in the wrong place and take loads of cheap hits because I can’t see the enemies shootings at me. A few times even in my short time and especially during the Scorpion fight the camera focused on Barrett’s face when I changed to him rather than the 20 foot fucking enemy firing missiles at me.
 

It’s a bit chaotic and hard to keep track of at times too and could do with having the meters be bigger or repositioned. Got to low health without knowing a couple of times & hard to keep track of when my ability gauge is at the usable levels. Hopefully all will come naturally with time though and as a whole it’s a lot better than XV at least. 
 

Overall though I’ve loved my first couple of hours with it  

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah it's way better than XV. XV just never made sense but VIIr is so much more clever with its systems. I pretty much had my team members on potion life support in that game as they did next to no damage... in VIIr I can actually make them useful (especially with later materias)

 

Not without issues but they're fixable ones I feel.

 

Like straight up if they could somehow backport the ATB Remake system onto FFXV I'd be back on that game immediately. Roaming around a big open world sort of balancing load between the different party members ATB, it would be so cool. XV had a lot of content I straight up ignored cause of the battle system

[radiofloyd]

Finished! I started writing out a long post but fuck it, thoughts and ratings can wait for another time. It’s a lot to take in. I’ve been binging the game hard for exactly two weeks. Finished with 53% achievements. 
 

Spoiler

The ending obviously puts a new spin on the word “remake”. That was surprising. 

I look forward to playing the continuation and hope that someday VIII and IX receive a remake of this quality.

[radiofloyd]

Some more thoughts. Overall I really loved the game. I loved the story and the characters, the four central characters were excellent. The game mixed things up well with mini games and diversions at various points, there was an excellent balance between story and dungeon crawling. The linearity of the game was a strength. Artistically the game was stunning.

 

I agree with pretty much everything said about the battle system in the thread already. But I think we can all agree that there is more good to the battle system than bad, it’s a good foundation to build on. The game had a lot of memorable boss battles, memorable for many reasons...

 

With regards to the ending:

 

Spoiler

I don’t have particularly strong feelings about it, I don’t love it or hate it. But since I don’t love it, I would probably have to knock the game down to a 9/10 (albeit a very good 9). There’s certainly a lot of question marks about where the story will go from here, how closely (if at all, or up to what point ) it follows the story of the original game. I suspect that no matter what dramatic changes they make to the story, they will have to try to follow the original game to some extent. I hope at the very least we can visit the locations from the first game. But it’s clear from the ending that it’s not just the game, it’s the story that’s being remade.

 

[mfnick]

Up to chapter 7.
 

Holy Shit, Roche. Amazing!

 

Spoiler

 

That Kung Fu bike stuff is fucking ridiculous! In the best possible way. Couldn’t help but just laugh. 
 

Really, really enjoyed the whole Jessie mission story part. In fact I’ve been loving how all these characters are being fleshed out. I’m going to be absolutely gutted when the plate falls on them. If that happens this time anyway. 

 

 

Also just got to mention Tifa..... Wow. 
How much are those body pillows again ?. 
 

Game looks incredible. But why do the apartment doors - which you return to numerous times - have blurry PS2 texture on them? Weird. Just notice it more because everything else looks so good. 

[mfnick]

It’s not even the fact they’re loading in slow, they just never load in. As though the flat blur is just something they missed. It’s strange.
 

Nope, not at all ?. Think I’ve just found out I like red eyes too. 

[one-armed dwarf]

This came up on I think the GoT thread too but there's weird stuff going on with LODs in this it looks like. DF talk about it from 10:30 on in this video, I don't think there are any spoilers in it really

 

 

 

I also liked Roche but lots of people hated him for some reason. I don't know, I like that the game embraces its stupid side even more than the original did, even if it gets to be a bit more tonally inconsistent (which I don't really mind)

[mfnick]

So far I think it’s mixing the stupid and serious just right. 

[mfnick]

Yea probably. I can easily overlook loads of dodgy shit because “games”.

 

Like in the train where you’ve got a 6 foot sword on your back, a big burly loudmouth has got a gun for a arm and your other team mates all have guns on display mixing with people in suits and nobody bats an eye or suspects you directly following a terrorist attack. It’s a game, I don’t pay it any attention really even if I do recognise it’s a bit daft. Some people get really hung up on that stuff though. 

[radiofloyd]

I’ve been looking up the meaning of the final words spoken in the game.

 

Spoiler

In Japanese, Aerith says 「空、きらいだな」and in English, “I miss the steel sky.” The English words seem like a fairly understandable reference to missing the steel sky of Midgar, the plates. But the Japanese simply means something like “I hate the sky” or “the sky, it sure is scary”, with the nuance that these words are referencing a conversation had in the past. I was quite surprised by this expression being the final words spoken in the game. So I looked it up, and apparently, Zack says in Crisis Core, 「あの子当たり前の空を怖いって言ってたんだ」- “That girl, she said that the sky was scary.” Apparently Aerith couldn’t leave the slums because she was afraid of the sky. 
 

I think that this adds a layer of understanding to the final words spoken in the game which I wish I had known when I heard them. For people familiar with Crisis Core it would have held a lot more meaning.

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Spoiler

OG, Remake and Crisis Core

I picked up on it too, in Crisis Core you learn that Aerith is institutionalised a bit from living in Midgar.

 

If you want to go deep down that rabbit hole there are people translating scans of the Ultimania to this game and they found in an interview that the final lines are also to do with Jenova, the 'calamity from the skies' that wiped out the Ancients

 

[radiofloyd]

My interest has been piqued to the extent that I’m gonna buy the Ultimania. It doesn’t hurt that it has a lovely cover.

[one-armed dwarf]

Looks like a lot of those lo-res textures and grainy skyboxes are indeed a LOD error in Unreal.

 

So if that gets fixed, or when it comes out on Xbox X/PC it should make it look a lot better.

 

The bit with Aerith's flowers, there's a cutscene in the game that zooms in really close on the low res flowers. You can see way higher quality assets on the twitter link.

 

 

 

[mfnick]

That’s a shame, hopefully it’s something they can patch and optimise. Had a few moments like

Spoiler

at Aeriths home where all the scenery is beautiful but there was a big blurry rock face texture next to me which kind of hurt the impact of it.

I took a screenshot but can’t be arsed to share it here after realising how much of a pain getting access to my screenshots are on my phone for some reason. Shame you can’t access them & vids like on the Xbox app. Ah well. & overall the odd LOD issue hasn’t been bothering me at all really. 

 

Anyway I’m part way through chapter 8 now. Doing some side quests and still loving it. In fact loving being in this world so much I’ve been doing everything so far even though they’re pretty generic. I’ve reached the part where I’m actually enjoying the combat now too. My original complaints still stand and I’d still prefer a good turn based system but I am having fun with it now. This is doing a good enough job of being half way between fully active and turn based now I’m used to it. Did the summon fight and enjoyed altering the tactics I had to beat it. Genuinely enjoyed it. 
 

I love Aeriths voice actor. Suits her character perfectly IMO. She’s genuinely amusing too, played brilliant and being given a good script for her. Or allowed enough creative freedom to make her as she is. 

[Rikzilla]

I upload screenshots directly to Twitter, then go to Twitter and save the picture on my phone from there.

[mfnick]

Just now, Nag said:

There's also that way... but I've no intention of joining Twitter.

This

[DisturbedSwan]

It’s very easy, you upload to Twitter, save onto your phone from there and upload here. Make a twitter account, download twitter on your phone, link with PSN. Problem solved @mfnick.

 

You don’t have to engage with twitter at all, you don’t have to follow anyone and have your account set to private so only people you approve can follow you. It’s literally just for the ease of uploading photos, far less of a faff than making a dummy PS account anyway, for me.

[DANGERMAN]

I'm on to chapter 15 now. The side quests in chapter 14 took all day. I don't like the way a lot of them were structured, a lot of aimlessly running around, even if the actual content was pretty good.

 

Will hopefully finish this over the next week. Characters aside I've enjoyed it for the most part 

[mfnick]

Thanks for the offer and tips but I’m not that bothered. Would have just done it if it was easy without any further work is all.

Up to Wall Market now (Chap 9 or 10 I forget). I’m loving everything about this chapter, it’s fantastic! It looks amazing, captured the look of it which I had in my head from ground level even better than I could have hoped. 
 

Spoiler

 

The Demon House. Ha, so fucking stupid. I didn’t think they’d use enemies from the original like that in this for obvious reasons. But they not only used it, they basically made it a boss. & it worked Perfect.

 

I am concerned I’m not going to get to dress Cloud up as a woman at this rate though as it’s not matching the original when I went to the Gym or bar, (great background dialogue in the gym while doing the squats especially). The whole drag bit is one of my most anticipated parts of the remake just to see how they’d do it so going to be disappointed if they did away with it. Hope I’m wrong...

 

Now, to get “the sauce”!

 

 

[mfnick]

Spoiler

 

Well, I shouldn’t have worried! Came at it from a different direction but we still got Cloud dressed as a woman. & what a transformation. That whole Honey Bee Inn scene. Just amazing. The music, style and visual onslaught was just soo terrible it became amazing. 
 

Don Corneo has been perfectly captured too. What a cunt. That hair, I love it ?.

 

*Chapter 9 spoilers*