Final Fantasy VII

[Sledgstone 8,672]

Yep its out today. The bosses might seem to take so long because nobody has solid strategies for beating them yet. I dunno. The Yongyea review said the developers changed up the plot near the end, but he didn't spoil it. But it should have an impact on how the story is apparently being changed from the original game for the follow up sequels. Check out his review in the yongyea topic. Also, if you haven't played the demo yet, give it a try. It's a solid hour of gameplay so you can see if you like it or not. 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

They took the first 5 hours of the original game and turned into 40 hours. The Boss fights can't be shortened by much even with a good strategy, you won't be able to deal an immense enough damage to make them short. They'll either be kinda long or really long. They're show pieces with minor cutscenes splice through out. Every boss has weak spots, and ailments that they're susceptible too. A lot of your highest damage output is through the command menu. I just beat a boss that pretty much rarely stayed still, it had a weak spot on each side but it kept turning non stop. Trying to use an ability on it would only connect if you're close to the right side and it was turning towards your attack while it does its wind up animation. I found the best method to every fight is to constantly switch characters.

So far the game is beautiful, the voice acting is really good, and the combat is pretty fun.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

On 3/3/2020 at 7:54 AM, Sledgstone said:

As you level up, the materia levels up and you get upgraded spells or abilities, Fire 2, Fire 3.. and your character learns the spells permanently as they level up, once leveled up, equip that materia on another character and they get instant access to all those spells from that leveled up piece of materia, then they start learning those spells permanently. Same with summons and ability materia.

I got this part confused with Final Fantasy 6. Once I actually got materia in FFVII Remake I remembered it correctly. FF6 had permanent learning per character. In FF7 it's only the materia that gets leveled up to unlock more abilities, but once the materia hit max level it'll spawn a new duplicate materia that is level 1 so you can level it up again for another character.

So far I'm loving the game. The graphics are amazing and the voice acting is pretty much how I expected the characters to sound like. Combat is great. Every enemy has weaknesses that need to be exploited to speed up the combat. Like riot guys and those melee guys I forget their names, hit them with fire or swap to punisher mode, block and wait for them to attack to auto counter and follow up with a focused thrust to stagger them and finish them off. The first boss from the demo was way easier this time around because when it got to the heal phase I threw a grenade from my inventory at its left leg and instant destroyed it, swapped to barrett for a focused shot to the other leg to destroy it and the boss melted quick after that. It helped alot that I was using R3 to target the specific legs. It made the combat easier. And Cloud punisher mode is damn good damage but is definitely hindered by the lack of mobility which seems like a good balance.

I got my cactuar summon off once. The summons only seem to kick in if a fight lasts too long. Then they just run around doing their own thing. I forgot to use an ATB charge to force an ability so the cactaur just ran around like a lunatic end only did 2 hp of damage until it ran out and did its 10,000 needle? Attack. Lol. That ? At the end is because it's a chance it could do that 10k damage. Lol. I think the odds of that happening are like winning the lotto.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

This game is SO beautiful. The voice acting and facial expressions really shine. It looks like everyone's face was mokaped for the main 4 characters for the language. Their lips synced with what they're saying perfectly. The NPCs are the only ones where it gets sketch sometimes. I'm about 27 hours in. I think I might be in the final stretch for main missions so tomorrow I'm going to cycle through all the side missions that are popping up at random now. I did every single one of the ones that where available along the way but I got the "Once you do X, you can no longer go back" and now they're popping up as I walk along areas.

I guess my biggest gripe is that if I'm almost at the end, I've gotten a lot of my weapons upgraded but it would have been nice to have some of the upgrades earlier instead of now that its almost over (at least the materia slots). The big problem with splitting the game up like this, is having to start over with all your gear again. Some of the weapons you can miss if you're not careful... like pretty much 90% of Tifa's gloves. Especially the Feathered Gloves which has her Starshower attack, which is by far the most bad ass looking attack and arguably the best if not only beaten by Omnistrike.

I guess since I didn't play the original I don't sense where they've "padded" the story out. But from a dialogue standpoint its really well done, and its gonna make me said when I finish, yearning for more. The only improvement I'd like to see next go around is more idle phrases. They could have added more than 2 different sentences for the end of battle. Hearing Cloud say "Keep those gloves up" and "You're pretty good at this" 100 times does get repetitive.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I noticed materia doesn't spawn new ones when they get maxed out. That seems ok since they are almost all available for purchasing as extras from vendors. The flow of the game is great, and unlike the original game theres no need to go around grinding out random battles to increase levels for a hard boss fight. Although, aside from one small training area that kept respawning 3 sentries, there doesn't seem to be anywhere that respawns enemies to grind out xp from anyway. I'm only about 10 hours in if that, I just got a second summon materia and a new gun for Barret that I didn't get the chance to equip yet. This is one of the most beautiful games I've seen so far. I read there might be a PC release and I could only imagine how much better it could potentially look on a multi thousand dollar gaming rig.

BTW, after that first mako reactor bombing, pretty much the entire story is new/padded out. Aside from the first bike scene, which was fucking awesome , everything else I've done never happened in the original game, like after the mako reactor bombing, that was the extent of Jesse, Biggs and Wedge involvement. They were literally only in the original game for around that first hour and that was it. Which is kind of odd, considering the original game was a solid 50-80 hour experience, but for this remaster they're adding way more content that never happened. I'm guessing the full remake will have an overall different plot than the original by the time its all done (like the walking dead show being different from the comic source material) because at this rate they'd need at least 10 of these games to cover everything from the original game. I'm not complaining though, I'm thoroughly enjoying this experience.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

This game was a ride. Beautiful graphics, fun combat system, it was tough but forgiving. As I age, I don't have the patience for super tough battles. Fallen Order is about as difficult as I'll accept on the extreme side of things. The most important thing to me was that it was worth my money length-wise. The battles were fun and flashy, and the story delivered an cinematic experience that Hollywood continually fails at these days. Cloud, Tifa, Barret, Aerith, Jessie, Wedge, Biggs, Red XIII... I love all these characters. They actually invested heavily into the VA cast with a lot of familiar people.

I looked up the differences between the two and found them interesting but also saw how cool of a job they did of recreating some of these areas from the original. Now to the controversy

Spoiler

So the whole narrative change was the fact that this is some type of alternate timeline of FF7 as the Whispers are there to keep continuity and you defeat them. The writers gave themselves a free pass to do things completely different from here on out. I'm sure that will piss off a lot of people. As Jim Sterling pointed out, it's probably most likely to keep Aerith from dying like she did in the original. Maybe they still kill her off but it seems they want to keep that whole love triangle aspect going strong. Apparently there was a whole shipper war over it with a team Tifa and team Aerith. The white materia dropping from when she died appeared briefly in the whisper battle, a long with what I guess was the final scene of the original game with Red XIII headed towards the overgrown Midgar.

To me, I like this. This is how remakes should be made. Instead of just upscaled graphics the whole thing should be overhauled into a new experience that keeps the spirit of the original. I hope they mostly stick with the original story and events and are only using this "broke free from the chains of fate" to make minor tweaks to the story. But as hilarious as it sounds, Sephiroth could basically the equivalent of the evil leaper from Quantum Leap. Aerith said the planet and whispers ignored him. I dunno if he's really a Jenova apparition anymore, but a lot of the original story was still alluded to with the whole Zack scene. The whole thing is crazy.

 

[slippers 3,168]

just a little bit of rant here..i checked before it came out preorder was $70. that was when i thougt it was a full game and wanted it under $60. checked back a couple days later and it was $140..wth..checked again yesterday and it was $90 for 10% of the game (yeah all from same seller). thats very disappointing they decided to slice up the game like that. its not a &^#$# pizza y'know. i try not to play long games if im not committed to it and my question would be how long do i have to wait until an entire thing comes out and how much itll cost me.. i have the original on steam, pc cds, ps3, and switch rotfl 😂 ill just play the original for now..its been years since i played it..and wait it out and see how fast the 2nd one comes out. in june i have some ps4 games im planning to get anyways thatll keep me busy for awhile

[Sledgstone 8,672]

Lol. I read the physical releases sold out and people have been jacking up the prices to gouge people out of their money. Its still the regular price digitally on the PSN store. Yeah it is roughly 10% of the original game, but they made that 10% with alot of additional content to make it into the equivalent of a full game on its own. I'm enjoying the hell out of it. Since you played the original you'd actually see alot of new content you've never seen before. And this game is drastically different than the original aside from the plot. Graphics, gameplay, fight mechanics, etc. I'm disappointed the entire game isn't done, but for being part one its a solid game. At this rate it'll take like another 2 years at least for the next part to come out. Kind of reminds me of how StarCraft 2 was launched with only the human campaign and then they sold the remaining two campaigns as separate releases over a couple more years for almost full price too. I think FF7 Remake will end up being different from the original game in terms of overall storyline, I can't confirm yet since I haven't beaten it though. If you're going to wait for the full game to be completely done, you'll have to wait probably another 10 years.  And the final part will come out on the PS6.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

It is a full game. Its a retelling of the original. If they did the whole story in one game like this, the PS4 probably wouldn't be able to hold it. The whole only 10% isn't going to hold up anymore now that its out because they put in an effort that's more than just better graphics and different combat system. You'll be waiting probably 6 years to get the full story if I had to guess. And the rest of it will probably be on PS5.

It won't be as long between games now that the engine and systems have been built, but if I had to guess, it will still be 2 years between each part. The reason the price is so high is because its gotta be resellers. I saw the other day that physical is sold out everywhere. Just another reason why I do digital.

Edit: lol replied at the same time as Sledge and said the same thing essentially. 

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I don't know about 6 years.. not with Square Enix's track record of Kingdom Hearts. All the Kingdom Hearts games.. sure theres 1, 2, 3... and 20 more. But if we consider the entire thing to be one complete game and not endless sequels then it took Square Enix 18 years to finish Kingdom Hearts.  Kingdom Hearts took so long, children were born and turned into adults by the time they finished it.  I figure FF7 Remake will be like that but not in that scope. We'll probably get a handful of sequels to finish it up but not 20.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

It depends on how many games they do. The difference between KH and FF7 is that there is already an outlining story to go by. This is extremely hard to talk about without spoilers. They don't have to fit in Disney licensing issues (I always think back to Roger Rabbit, and Disney vs. WB character screen time issues), along with an original story. They just need the script to be voiced and to make the games. Taking two decades to make the whole thing at this point is risky business for sales. The age of the group that played the original or were even around to hear the hype is getting older. A lot of them could even pass away from old age by the end of that time as crazy as that sounds. that's nearing 60 years old give or take a good 5 years.

Square treats KH like Blizz treats Starcraft and Diablo, but FF keeps coming out. Just doing a quick reference on Wiki, since 1987 they've released a FF game at an inconsistent sequence of every 1-3 years.

[Myk JL 1,731]

 

[Myk JL 1,731]

 

[Sledgstone 8,672]

On 4/16/2020 at 11:42 PM, DeathscytheX said:

This game was a ride. Beautiful graphics, fun combat system, it was tough but forgiving. As I age, I don't have the patience for super tough battles. Fallen Order is about as difficult as I'll accept on the extreme side of things. The most important thing to me was that it was worth my money length-wise. The battles were fun and flashy, and the story delivered an cinematic experience that Hollywood continually fails at these days. Cloud, Tifa, Barret, Aerith, Jessie, Wedge, Biggs, Red XIII... I love all these characters. They actually invested heavily into the VA cast with a lot of familiar people.

I looked up the differences between the two and found them interesting but also saw how cool of a job they did of recreating some of these areas from the original. Now to the controversy

  Hide contents

So the whole narrative change was the fact that this is some type of alternate timeline of FF7 as the Whispers are there to keep continuity and you defeat them. The writers gave themselves a free pass to do things completely different from here on out. I'm sure that will piss off a lot of people. As Jim Sterling pointed out, it's probably most likely to keep Aerith from dying like she did in the original. Maybe they still kill her off but it seems they want to keep that whole love triangle aspect going strong. Apparently there was a whole shipper war over it with a team Tifa and team Aerith. The white materia dropping from when she died appeared briefly in the whisper battle, a long with what I guess was the final scene of the original game with Red XIII headed towards the overgrown Midgar.

To me, I like this. This is how remakes should be made. Instead of just upscaled graphics the whole thing should be overhauled into a new experience that keeps the spirit of the original. I hope they mostly stick with the original story and events and are only using this "broke free from the chains of fate" to make minor tweaks to the story. But as hilarious as it sounds, Sephiroth could basically the equivalent of the evil leaper from Quantum Leap. Aerith said the planet and whispers ignored him. I dunno if he's really a Jenova apparition anymore, but a lot of the original story was still alluded to with the whole Zack scene. The whole thing is crazy.

 

I beat the game and I loved it. It was everything I wanted it to be. Only a few boss fights aggravated me with difficulty, Hell House.. one of the bosses near the end. Not necessarily that those particular bosses were difficult, just way too long. I think maybe I just wasn't grasping the correct way to stagger them or I wasted a limit break move at the wrong time. But the final boss fight was epic. It was down to the wire thinking I could lose right at the very end because my guy's started getting wrecked, but damn what a fight.  I hope the next game comes out within a year, but then again.. this one alone was worth the wait. I didn't see any progress save to the next game kind of wording anywhere so I'm guessing the next game will start everyone off with all the characters at specific levels with specific materia and items in the inventory so its not like starting the game over from scratch. And with the bosses and enemies still unseen from the original game that are far stronger than what we've seen so far from the remake so far, it'll be easy to keep the leveling up going.

Spoiler

The entire game I kept thinking.. wtf are these ghost things? I don't recall whispers ever being in the original game. I'm glad they finally explained them in the end.

I didn't really think of the whispers as a controversy or an "alternate timeline" I figured it was more of a distinction that wasn't emphasized enough in the original game. I don't think this is really spoilers since they showed it in some cutscenes as visions.. Jenova is an alien and crashed into the earth from her own meteor/mini planet. I see the whispers as the manifistation of the earth's life force/fate, because with the lore, mako is the planet's energy and all living things eventually return to the planet. So the whispers are part of the planet's overall design of fate and how things are meant to play out. Jenova is not of the planet and Sephiroth is basically the living embodiment of Jenova and not tied to the life force of earth, thus the whispers can't see him or interact with his fate. All the SOLDIERS like Cloud were infused with mako energy enhanced by Jenova.. but Sephiroth is more than that. I can't remember if Sephiroth started off as a human or if he was cloned/hybrid from Jenova cells to begin with. I'm sure the next remake will probably go into that more. And I never thought of Sephiroth being an apparition or a possible projection of Jenova. I think when Cloud had visions of him, that was Sephiroth screwing with him through a partial mental link since they both have Jenova cells in them.. but when Sephiroth was physically there, everyone could see him. He always had a way of being like Goku with an instant transmission kind of speed in the original game. At least thats how it seemed at the time. Even in the Advent Children movie he'd do it. I think it had to do with the black wing he had, we'd usually hear a flap and hes either instant there or instant gone leaving a feather.

I'm more surprised Biggs and Wedge are alive. Maybe I blinked and missed a shot of Jesse, but I think she's still dead. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong and they survived in the original to, but I thought all three died in the original.

Although the amount of times Aerith kept talking about fate, and them breaking it, etc. I like that.. maybe they will use this as a loophole to keep her alive. They better not kill off Tifa instead though, so help me god I would rage.

Showing Zack and Cloud at the end was epic. I can't wait to see their backstory fully shown in this style of game.

btw, there was a FF7 Zack anime made with the whole backstory thing.. it might have been included in a special edition of FF7 Advent Children bluray. I remember watching it in Japanese though so I'm not certain if it was ever dubbed. It was pretty good at the time, but that was well over a decade ago now.

Speaking of FF7 Advent Children, this remake did that movie justice by having very specific scenes look almost identical. Like the church was spot on. The Tifa fight in that church from the movie looked like exact same church from the game. The movie definitely influenced that design choice. And there was more emphasis with Jenova and those guys with the numbers on their arms, I'm assuming they're all the same as the clone enemies from the movies. Although I will say, the game developers did much better with the character models, personalities, mannerisms, and voice acting than in the movie, I'm very glad they went their own way and didn't use the movie versions as their inspiration.

This is how a remake should be. I've played the original game at least 2-5 times all the way through, I know it plenty.. If I wanted to play it again I would, but this remake is better. The plot is more defined, the characters are far more flushed out, the character models are all beautiful and the VA talent is top notch. This was amazing. I hope they do deviate from the plot of the original more for the sequels because what they've done so far has made me love this game even more.

The whole love triangle with Cloud, Tifa and Aerith should be hitting its peak in the next game. They should be going to the Gold Saucer like in the original, and depending on your choices when you talk to all the characters during the first so many hours of gameplay it creates a branch determining who Cloud has his date with.  In the original there was a way to be a dick to everyone and end up having what I called a "bro date" with Barret.  It was hilarious, Barret had a blast.  I think there was a way to have a date with anyone on the team at the time, including Yuffie.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[Sledgstone 8,672]

This DLC better not be restricted to just the PS5 version or that will piss me the hell off. It looks awesome though.

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

Most signs are pointing to it being PS5 only, not entirely sure if it's been 100% clarified but I've seen a lot of people on the old bird app up in arms saying it is.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

Damn that sucks ass if thats the case. I would have bought 10 more crunch bars for this DLC.

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP0082-PPSA01903_00-5827003902180177

Pretty much confirms it's PS5 only but who knows how accurate the PS store actually is but since Intergrade is literally the PS5 version of the game and the DLC is tied to it I wouldn't be surprised.

 

[slippers 3,168]

 

i wasn't wrong. every 5 years they are going to release piece by piece. i'm 42 now. i can hardly even walk (exaggerating) or lift 15 lbs with my right arm due to my injuries. you are telling me i'd be 75 until i get to finish this entire game har har har..