Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

[one-armed dwarf]

Tonally, I think the game has a weird MCU problem where it doesn't let moments breathe, it has to move onto another big action set piece, smothering the previous moment's impact. In fact I'm certain they use those films as a model, it works well enough with the character interactions, but the overarching story not so much

 

That's as much as I can get into that without spoilers. While I think individual character moments and interactions are better, and the world and lore very well realised, these games have pretty poor storytelling unfortunately cause while individual scenes are fun, none of it considers how the whole thing hangs together when these moments get juxtaposed.

 

Rebirth is less a story than it is a extremely flamboyant FFVII theme park musical Disneyworld thing, which is fun in its own way but it will never threaten the original in that regard.

[OCH]

Without asking how Rebirth have altered the scene. I remember thinking back in the day that Dyne was going to join the party here. Possibly as a palette swap of Barret? Growing up with games like Breath of Fire and Suikoden. Typically everyone with a distinct in-game model was a playable character. The following scene hit harder due to that surprise.

 

As for where I am, without reading too many details. I skimmed through the thread to add my own comments and picked up on Chapter 12 being the tail end of the game. This was fine I thought. Chapter 2 covered a lot so this must be a meaty game. Then I soon noted that Chapter 3 was only the Mythril Cave?

 

So last session I hit chapter 4. Went straight for the Protorelic and.. I don't know if that is supposed to be a homage to the original graphics or mocking them? Finished that first try, as I did with the original. I expected FC to be a little better if I'm honest. Not some weird Jumanji thing.

[one-armed dwarf]

There are 14 chapters, chapter 12 triggers the point of no return after a while. 

[HandsomeDead]

Oh yeah, and I've heard people pronounce Dyne a bunch of times but I was always sure it was just a fantasy way of spelling Dean and I guess I've got to take an L there.

[OCH]

46 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

There are 14 chapters, chapter 12 triggers the point of no return after a while. 

I see. But only four chapters in, I can already see they won't all be equal length. Which I shouldn't be surprised by. Considering they are padding out disc one content into multiple games.

 

27 minutes ago, HandsomeDead said:

Oh yeah, and I've heard people pronounce Dyne a bunch of times but I was always sure it was just a fantasy way of spelling Dean and I guess I've got to take an L there.

I always thought Dyne=dye with an "n"=dine.

[AndyKurosaki]

One chapter near the end is quite short, and is basically a series of enjoyable boss fights. Then Chapter 13 drags on for 5 bloody hours, and I was begging for it to stop.

[OCH]

It's funny that you can get a hell of a lot done without actually going towards Junon itself at all. So the landscape of Chapter 4 is weirdly gated. I guess we are skipping Chocobo breeding in this game and just being handed the alternate versions? Second time around, the "stealth" section is already feeling repetitive. The Mountain Chocobo doesn't seem to be thought out too well mechanically either. Their descent is a bit graphically wonky. Aside from one plot gated area to the west, I've seen all of the neighbouring Junon area now. Found the three Divine springs without even seeing Chadley. Beat all but one of the challenge fights (the final one of this area had an instant death spell I wasn't prepared for). Activated all the Chocobo stops and Mako Springs. So next session I finish off that fight (Phoenix might help, I guess?) and then head towards the plot...

[OCH]

Cards and Condor

This session was almost exclusively a minigame run. Phoenix was interesting. I actually beat Titan on the second highest difficulty (only found one crystal at the time) and didn't think he was too bad. So, although I got all four crystals with the fire bird. I opted to test my luck without them. How hard could it possibly be?

 

😅.. Two completely different fights. I got utterly annihilated, chiefly because I didn't expect it to summon help itself. Second time, even with all crystals on. It wasn't an easy fight. But considering it gives you revival magic that you otherwise don't have at this point. They rightly make you work for it. Funnily enough, the second time fighting Mindflayer I didn't even need Phoenix after all. I opted to rush him instead of keeping my distance. Cloud and especially Tifa are really effective at that.

 

Fort Condor, I begrudgingly finished. I doubt I'll bother if it comes up again. Considering they went to all the effort of shoehorning an all new card game into this. It's very disappointing to see such a lacklustre effort made with updating an existing minigame. 

 

Next session I might even go back to the plot, I guess?

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Phoenix without crystals is pretty real, I posted my run of that in the demo on the first page I think, lol. 

 

I've only beaten Phoenix, Bahamut and Alex so far, cause I kinda want to do them all without crystals. But because of that I've put off doing some of them, takes a while to learn the fight. Also because of the summon save import from Remake/Intermission/pre order bonuses, I don't really need the other ones tbh, I have mostly 'old' ones equipped. Phoenix is the most useful one (revives you), the power of the others is a bit underwhelming cause the full fat summon attack might not sync up with your burst phases, it's more for spectacle at times. 

 

I've beaten all the Gold Saucer arena fights, in fact the only thing left to do in the GS is to do the last two Queen's Blood challenges. Some of the high scores for things like the bike minigame and other games are surprisingly easy to achieve. But the QB challenges are real as fuck

[Nag]

It has to be said that Gongaga is not fun at all to navigate...😞

[one-armed dwarf]

tfw when in Gonganga turning the camera in 30fps graphics mode in HDR and it feels like your corneas are being serrated by extremely bright shiny razor blades

[Nag]

Well I did mean bouncing around in random directions in an attempt to get anywhere... so um....😆

[OCH]

So how did they manage to botch the CPR mini game and turn it into a tit joke instead?🙄

All side quests and QB matches clear for Junon. Which brings me back to the plot and the bit that in all honesty, I never liked in the original game. Lame anime guy on bike trope and whatever the hell Yuffie's characterisation is supposed to be (aside from OTT). Remake inserts that really don't mesh with the tone presented in Rebirth so far. 

 

It's weird that I'm still thinking this is a demo? I've been stuck with the same weapons, items and Materia for sale for so long. I'm thinking this is all there is? I'm pretty sure Cloud had more than two swords by this point in the original.

[DANGERMAN]

I'm in the Costa Del Sol area, I've done the various mini games in the town and have set off to hunt for a few shells. That's basically an excuse to open up the map. 

 

I'm glad to get back to some combat, but it did also feel like the chapter had finished and it's time to move on. I'm not sure why I'm off hunting for shells (I have them), it feels completely pointless, but we're doing it rather than moving on 

[Nag]

2 hours ago, DANGERMAN said:

I'm not sure why I'm off hunting for shells

 

For a fashion show, silly... cos you know Cloud is so in to fashion.

[one-armed dwarf]

 

[one-armed dwarf]

To Och's question about materia, there's tons of different compositions there. Also you should look at this game as its own thing and not try to see it as having any progression from the Midgar chapter, cause it doesn't (outside of just the game itself being a more rich experience with the Midgar game as its underlying framework)

 

Just had a look there, there are 87 different materias in this, there was 83 in the original FFVII. Remake had like half of this I think, it was fairly limited there. Early on you mostly get it from the VR thingy, and also from world intel. That's the weakness with this system I feel like, you don't really discover a lot of the new things so much as get it as a reward for doing the homework, but the possible compositions here with different materia and equipment make up for it as it's a much more interesting system. 

 

There are 7 weapons for each character, but each weapon is fully viable in the endgame. It's the same system FFXIII has, except without that game's grindy upgrade system. Buster sword is an all rounder, you have another one which is more physical based. Another is more magic. Another defensive. My favorite is one you get way later, which has fewer materia slots but has high crit chance, I pair that with luck plus and put Cait Sith in the party to boost luck so I'm getting crits all day. 

 

yesterday I beat all the summons I'd put off, max level

Spoiler

Titan, Kujata and Odin

. Kinda found the first two a bit easy even with level scaling, they are designed for the kit you have at that point in the game I feel like, endgame kits rip through them. The last one was different though, very unique gimmicks that I had to look up on reddit to understand

 

Fun thing is though (protorelic spoilers)

Spoiler

Now I have to do 4 fights where I fight two at once, in order to fight Gilgamesh. Though these should be lower power than the ones I already beat I guess. First will be Phoenix and Kujata, so elemental->fire is going on armour

 

[one-armed dwarf]

I beat the 'superboss', it's morphin time

 

Spoiler

it's Gilgamesh, still trying to find his way back to FFV. I think people already know this though. It was in a trailer

 

Before that, I had to beat Odin and Alexander at the same time. Went full DSP for a bit, was not very composed. Was much harder to fight them than Greg

 

In general was fairly sloppy through these fights though, and ended up seeing a lot of level 2 limit breaks for the first time. It seems if you start getting them often they become a comeback mechanic basically. Would like to go back and actually learn these fights proper at another point

 

Some of the optional fights near the end lean pretty heavily on the precision defense mechanic. Not as big a fan of that mech as others tbh, kinda pushes the gameplay balance more to the action part of the spectrum. The materia for it makes it a lot easier though (not that it's particularly strict timing) and more powerful.

 

The protorelic questline that leads to this has a lot going for it as well. Unique minigames, bespoke cutscenes dripfeeding teasers for future plot developments and wrapping up old ones (although at the same time, this accentuates the frustration at this piecemeal telling of what used to be a fairly brisk and easily contained story). FFXII's gambit system is in it for a bit, in maybe the most crazy bit of excess the game has to offer. 

 

After that, you unlock 'brutal' and 'legendary' VR trials, which are the thing they give you I suppose to justify the extra power grind you get from hard mode. Definitely appreciate that it's in there, but that's as good a point as any to put it on a hiatus. Tried the first one and got to floor 7 of the first challenge and some of the mobs were doing 2000 damage in stray attacks, so you have to really optimise and take build into consideration and use tactical mode to respect mechanics, not just mash buttons.

 

Great, great game. Very very messy though, feels all over the place. Though honestly, its complete abandonment of polish and throwing every idea at the player is part of why it's so great, in my view, modern FF has been too on-reigns until this point. But that is what this era of FF was like, the one that VII was a part of, the era most fondly remembered. If it actually had a story, it would be the best Final Fantasy

[Nag]

I moved on to Cosmo Canyon last night (Cid isn't really what i expected or wanted) but i decided to suck it up and returned to Gongaga to complete the region... in the end I've resorted to YouTube to navigate as I find the area an absolute fucking chore to get around, to the extent it would almost put me off a replay of the game. Just three more Proto-relic sites to hit now and I've saved at one of those and then I can leave this godforsaken place.

 

Other than that after 65 hours I'm still chugging along and mostly enjoying myself... kind've rolling my eyes at the introduction of more mini games now though.

[OCH]

Ok, so the parade bit was done a lot better here than in the original. I ended up with 94445/100,000 (I assumed the final figure based on the minus number) on my first try. Whereas in the original, I don't think I ever got the formation timing right and normally ended up with the grenade as the reward😄

I would guess there is some trophy or something for 100,000/100,000. But I wasn't that invested to return to this mini game.

 

Only a short session today. Covering the parade (10/10 divisions too) and Yuffie bit after that. Which was a surprise to say the least. I must admit, so far I prefer the Materia Thief OG Yuffie to what is being presented here.