Final Fantasy VII Remake

[one-armed dwarf]

Waypoint radio spoilercast

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/epgjxa/final-fantasy-vii-remake-ending-waypoint-radio

 

They really liked it, spoilers obviously.

 

Spoiler

I think they mostly like it cause they have a collective hard-on for 'meta' story telling in games.

 

[radiofloyd]

Back on this now. 10 hours in, reached Chapter 6. Loving it so far, I think it has the best opening of any AAA game I’ve played in recent memory, I can’t think of a game that starts more impressively than this.

 

I think that they found the right balance of gameplay, story, cut scenes, linearity - this is a good formula for FF. I like that the game is relatively linear and story heavy. They’ve nailed that moving from one scene to the next, one chapter to the next type of story telling which is how I remember the classic FF games. 
 

Early days, but seems like the new benchmark for AAA jrpgs.

[DisturbedSwan]

Put about 37 hours into this now and am well into Chapter 14.

Chapters 10 and 11 seemed to go by really quickly after the lengthy Chapter 9. After the huge highs of 9 it was great to have a little more downtime in these chapters with some dungeon crawling. 

Chapter 12 absolutely floored me though. I know most of you have played the OG and knew that

Spoiler

the Plate was gonna fall but for me it was terrifying second guessing whether they were actually going to do it or were bluffing etc. That entire Chapter is such an emotional gut punch, making my way up the tower with Cloud, seeing Biggs and Jessie dying in his arms. Rescuing Marlene with Aerith, seeing all the devastation all around, everyone getting brutally murdered by Shinra. Had tears in my eyes the whole time. 

Back to a bit of Dungeon crawling for 13,

Spoiler

really refreshing playing from Barret’s perspective this time around though. The bits where he’s just shooting down debris with his gun having a whale of a time are just great. 

Everything seems to fully open up in 14 and the game lets you explore all the open world areas at your leisure. So I’ve just been here for the last 6 hours or so probably, just having a great time going around, doing all the side quests, completing all the battles in the colosseum and attempting to finish off all the battle intel stuff (still got to master another 8 types of materia which seems unlikely but I’m gonna try) and VR Mission battles. Took me awhile to do the Pull Up Challenge today but managed it after about an hour or so, just gotta get the knack to it, I came level with Jules 3 times before I eventually managed it, I was raging. ?

[one-armed dwarf]

This is interesting, the Remake was always supposed to be the last title in the compilation of FFVII

https://www.destructoid.com/final-fantasy-7-remake-director-says-that-the-new-remake-is-the-fifth-installment-of-the-vii-compilation-588813.phtml

 

So that PS3 tech demo was actually some real shit? Or it would have been if Versus XIII didn't halt and get rebooted.

 

Wonder what the parallel timeline with FFVII Remake on PS3 looks like. Maybe Donald Trump isn't president in that timeline.

[Rikzilla]

Back once again with a shameless plug. 

 

My friend and I recorded a SPOILER TALK video for FFVII Remake (HD version will be out in a few hours thanks to how YouTube processing works).

 

I've been working on this for well over two weeks and now I can't wait to never play FFVII Remake again until the week before Disc 2 is released. 

 

 

Annoyingly some of my opinions have changed since we recorded this video two weeks ago, so I'm going to make a FINAL THOUGHTS video for next week and then close the book on this game for a while.

[radiofloyd]

13 hours in and on to chapter 8 now, love it. If Ghost of Tsushima and Cyberpunk are as good or better then 2020 is gonna be a special year for games.

[one-armed dwarf]

Endgame spoilers (not Avengers)

Spoiler

I feel like the more I read spoilers and theories the less I understand of what actually happened.

 

There are 4 Sephiroths? Crisis Core Sephiroth is travelling to the future? What?

 

https://aitaikimochi.tumblr.com/post/616804865416527872/amp?__twitter_impression=true

 

 

 

 

 

edit more spoilers

Spoiler

 

Cloud has definitely got to be a time traveller too. 

 

[radiofloyd]

Around 18 hours in now, on chapter 9.

 

I spent most of Chapter 8 controlling Aerith in the fights, she’s quite powerful if you control her directly as she can fire off double spells with the Arcane Ward, but eventually I switched back to Cloud as it’s less fiddly and I can just tear shit up. Playing as another character for a an hour or two made me realise how little they do (relative to what they can do) when you are not actually controlling them, and the enormous difference in how slowly their ATB gauge fills up. You can’t possible rely on a non-directly controller character as a healer (well you could if you don’t use their ATB gauge willy nilly). Another thing in this game is the difference in strength between healing magic and healing items, healing (and revival) magic is much more powerful, although has a longer casting time and can easily be interrupted.

 

Anyway, I’m absolutely loving the game. It’s sitting on a 9.5 or 10 for me. The graphics and music are pretty much peerless, the voice acting is great. It struck me in the last couple of hours how much Aerith talks and behaves like a normal Japanese girl, or at least, I’ve definitely met girls here who she reminds me of. The environments and slum areas are absolutely stunning, I love the small details - like for example the children hopping around on the tyres who play rock, paper, scissors when they meet. The game reminds me of Chrono Trigger in the sense of how rather than fighting a million battles, you fight a set number of battles that are more or less unavoidable. 

[DisturbedSwan]

Doesn’t look like we’re getting Remake Part 2 anytime soon ?

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah I mean that isn't surprising.

 

Be careful clicking that twitter account Blakey, it's a lot of big spoilers and speculation about part 2 and the ending of part 1 are coming from.

 

lol I just read there that the writer doesn't remember what happens in the story after Midgar. Uh oh

Spoiler

Well it might not even matter anyway

 

[Rikzilla]

That reads like "we wrote and developed ourselves into a corner and now we don't know what to do."

[one-armed dwarf]

I don't see it like that. Development is about tackling problems in steps. Taking Midgar by itself and solving that problem first, then thinking about how to design the rest of the world later makes sense. Especially with the data streaming bandwidth they'll have with these new SSDs and CPUs. It's an engineering issue and design.

 

It's a good thing the old version of the game exists tho. I can see that becoming like 'just read the books' when Fellowship of the Ring came out and people were annoyed at the ending.

[Rikzilla]

I worked in game development for 5 years but thanks for explaining that to me.

 

This is definitely going to become a 'just read the book' thing, and I really don't want it to. For example:

 

Spoiler

The character Kyrie. Did you know her and Mirielle are characters in a book that takes place 2 years before Advent Children? I didn't until today! But apparently they're established characters in the FFVII universe.

 

I really don't want this to turn into a Star Wars thing ?

[one-armed dwarf]

Spoiler

All of the compilation is referenced in some shape or form so it's already a star Wars thing

 

It's not all bad though. Before Crisis has a great backstory for Rufus.

 

[radiofloyd]

24 hours now and I’m onto chapter 10, chapter 8 and 9 were excellent.

 

Did a lot of cool stuff in chapter 9.

 

Spoiler

I got the Sultan of Squat achievement which I’m impressed to see 41% of players have gotten, it’s clear people are really hounding the achievements for this game. I also got Cloud and Aerith’s second limit breaks in the Colosseum. 

Loving the game so far. I haven’t died yet either, but that might change before the end...

[DisturbedSwan]

Finished this earlier. Took me about 50 hours.
 

Despite a few early issues I found it mostly sublime throughout. There were a couple of annoyances like some long boss fights with unskippable cutscenes but aside from that I can’t really fault it. 
 

The presentation is absolutely flawless, I didn’t notice one technical hiccup or graphical anomaly throughout my playthrough. The music is astounding, the voice acting is sublime, just everything about it is polished to the nth degree.

 

The combat is amazing. I would say now I’ve finished it I’ve enjoyed it just as much as FFXV’s and KH3’s, this is different as you have much more control and there’s less theatricality to it but it feels more tactical and has you thinking much more without sacrificing the visceral real time combat clank. It’s got to be up there as one of my favourite JRPG combat systems, I will say I still hold XC2 as the pinnacle for me though.

 

There were just so many amazing moments throughout the game. The hustle of bustle of the slums in Chapter 3 and 8, the wonder and carnival gangster atmosphere of Chapter 9, the spookiness of Chapter 11, the emotional pull of Chapter 12, the exploration of Chapter 14, the bombast and spectacle of Chapters 16 to 18. 
 

I could honestly write an essay on Chapter 16 alone. It is possibly one of my all time favourite chapters in video games ever. It felt like that moment where you first see Columbia in Bioshock Infinite and are left to your own devices to explore but here you’re not immediately pulled back into ‘oh this is a video game’ by some extreme violence out the blue. You’re left to peruse this entire level at your own pace with loads of little Easter eggs and winks at where the game is going to go later on.

Spoiler

The section in the dome my jaw honestly hit the flaw, it was like a theme park ride, absolutely unbelievable. 

 

The ending I didn’t fully understand as someone who’s new to FF7.

Spoiler

 I know who Zack is as I quickly looked up the Crisis Core Wiki awhile ago and read the blurb about the plot but the rest of it just went over my head really. I watched the Spoilermode with Max Dood but had to stop as it spoilt a small thing from the OG for me.

But yeah, overall a truly superb game for me. Highly recommended.

[one-armed dwarf]

You really turned around on it huh, basically the reverse trajectory I had lol.

 

Agreed about combat, just fix the aggro system in the sequels please.

 

Spoilers for Remake, but not spoilers for OG

Spoiler

People think this game isnt a Remake, based off the ending. More like a sequel.

 

But we dont really know yet.

 

EZA have a second spoiler mode which seems to skip OG spoilers.

 

[radiofloyd]

Finished chapter 10 and 11 today. One criticism of the game I would say is that there is an inherent conflict between the menu based battle style and free movement of both characters and enemies. FF XII was the first FF to break from the turn based battle style but got over this problem effortlessly by allowing you to completely micromanage with the gambit system. FF7R doesn’t allow for this kind of micromanagement, so what you have instead is...organised chaos. Don’t get me wrong, I like it, it’s exciting, I just wish the enemies would stay right in front of me sometimes...so I can whack them to death efficiently.

[radiofloyd]

On chapter 14 now and still loving it. Is everyone else finished? 31 hours at the moment. 
 

I’ve loved nearly every moment of the game but in particular I liked this moment:

 

Spoiler

When Marlene gives permission to Barrett to go fight Shinra.

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah I tried booting it up again, got a capture card recently and wanted to get some really nice looking recordings of certain fights. Got bored quick tho because one thing I don't like about the stagger system in this is it's all about optimising DPS. I wonder if the game would be better without it because when you're just smashing out attacks and skipping mechanics it gets kind of boring.

 

There's a lot of stuff around combat I hope is done better next time even tho I still think it's really excellent here. I think what this really needed also was some hunts like in FFXII and XIII. So we could get better mileage out of the battle systems. They have one or two special enemies you can fight but the postgame is largely just hard mode which starts off strong but gets kind of samey by the end.