Final Fantasy VII Remake

[carlospie]

I just wish part one would come out on Xbox. I know how supportive Sony are of not having a monopoly over other game companies so I am sure they will let it come out soon. 

[BitterToad]

It’s never coming to Xbox. 

[carlospie]

Don't kill my dreams. 

[Qazimod]

4 hours ago, SuperCapes said:

In regards to how skills etc will be passed onto rebirth:

 

  Hide contents

I think they should have you travel to Kalm overpowered as flip with pretty much everything. 

 

Do the Kalm story sequence and then as you leave, you get your shit stolen by Yuffie. 

 

At the point where you meet her again the materia is long gone. 

 

I think it narratively ties it into her character and the original, whilst giving players of all a taste of what's kind of to come before yanking it away and making them earn it all over again. 

 

I just think it would be a nice and easy way for them to do it. 

 

I am incredibly excited for the game, and is my most anticipated game by a country mile, and next year is no slouch. 

 

Thinking about it, perhaps there is already a way to grant access to all of Remake's gear, levels and enemy roster, without giving it to the player automatically, and whilst still keeping it as optional rather than recycling content:

 

Spoiler

Throw it all into Chadley's VR training missions. Imagine that you bump into him early on in Rebirth, and a bunch of missions will be unlocked from the start. Do you want to get that materia drop again? Here's the enemy that drops it. Do you want to fight some of Remake's more familiar goons? They're right here. Obviously there's a danger that you could spend weeks in training and overpower yourself, so maybe there could be missions that you only get to do once? Or missions that are unlocked after a given amount of progress in Rebirth's story?

 

[partious]

Currently playing this on PS5. I’m at chapter 14 and I’m enjoying it, which you might find hard to believe by the end of this post… The music is great, the graphics are impressive and it runs nice and smooth. The gameplay fundamentals are well done, the combat feels satisfying and even just running around feels satisfying compared to other games’ implementation of running.

 

That said, I can’t help but feel there’s a cynicism/laziness to the actual design of the gameplay experience resting on top of those well made fundamentals, amazing music and great graphics.

The entire game is basically “walk down this corridor”, and along the way you must work your way through a succession of obstacles that lack any sort of challenge either mentally or mechanically.

Climbing ladders, fighting low level enemies, doing some brain dead “puzzle”, the random appearance of a boss, climb under some rocks, more ladders, oh no the floor collapsed yet again, let’s  climb more ladders and fight more low level enemies it would be basically impossible to be beaten by.

 

It feels like a game comprised almost entirely of dopamine releasing filler/padding, as if all the enthusiasm the creators had was for the story and spectacle and the gameplay was just added afterwards to hang cutscenes off and make the game last 30 hours instead of 10.
 

You can “explore” by taking the wrong turn when the corridor forks, this will lead to running about 15 metres until you hit a dead end. Then you run back 15m and take the correct path down the corridor.

 

So, this all sounds like I hate the game, but as I said at the start, I’m enjoying it!

I guess it’s possible to enjoy a game while simultaneously noticing that its gameplay is totally comprised of repetitive and uninspiring dopamine releasing tasks. 
 

It keeps the player entertained on a moment to moment basis, but there’s a hollowness to the whole experience that makes it hard to respect what the designers have made, even if they’ve succeeded in making a game that isn’t boring.

[Unofficial Who]

5 hours ago, partious said:

It keeps the player entertained on a moment to moment basis, but there’s a hollowness to the whole experience that makes it hard to respect what the designers have made, even if they’ve succeeded in making a game that isn’t boring.

 

You are going to love the end theme.

[partious]

I sort of regret posting that now... Reading it again it comes off as a lot more miserable than I'd intended.

[Qazimod]

I mean it's all true  but I replayed PS1 FFVII last year and it's a pretty linear and brainless journey in itself. Unless a location is due to be used for a narrative event, it only serves as a handful of shops and NPC dialogue vendors, and you see this in Remake as well once you get the

 

Spoiler

fast travel

 

and go somewhere that doesn't have a critical plot event. And the dungeons aren't much of an improvement unless you're specifically looking for a key or some secret item. There's always a specific destination in mind.

 

Remake does have a few random trinkets and sidequests that make use of the (spoilered thing) - I ended up finding all of the jukebox items with my endgame save. But I wouldn't be surprised if Rebirth is similarly linear, because the majority of the original game was.

[Vorgot]

I never played the original past a few hours despite many, many attempts, but am enjoying this, currently at Chapter 11. With a ton of caveats.

 

The characterisation is truly awful. Its anime tropes taken to the extreme. The villains are right from the "teenage boys book of bad boys", it's just horrible to watch. And the stuff shoehorning "that" guy into early game is ridiculous. I know about the original through cultural osmosis, but it really us a game made for returners.

 

Am enjoying the combat but wish party members would fill their bars quicker. Tifa takes forever, but when I take control I've got 2 bars in 5 seconds. She is a beast. I guess that's want they want me to do, but I think its an issue. Especially with Aerith as she can be brilliant as support and magic death dealer but takes forever to build ATB alone.

 

Still having a lot of fun, The left field bits have made me chuckle and I like the linear path with a bit of exploration, I'm not a fan of open world tomfoolery where the best weapon is hidden somewhere incredibly obscure. On weapons and stats, the systems and menus are nice and clean and well done. Using a weapons ability to permanently that have ability is great, as is the relatively small number of weapons and gear. Nothing gets too complicated, really like that.

 

Bur spare me FF characters, dear god. Tina is the only really likeable one so far, and she still has her moments. 

[Unofficial Who]

2 hours ago, partious said:

I sort of regret posting that now... Reading it again it comes off as a lot more miserable than I'd intended.

 

Now it's a fair point! But you'll know what I mean with that quote once you get to the end credits.

[partious]

I finished this last night. Nothing much to add to what I posted above. The story made less and less sense as it approached the end, which is an impressive feat I suppose. I quite enjoyed that it seemed to just progressively up the level of nonsense with each cutscene towards the end.

It's funny, I could go on and on about issues with every part of the game (like I did in my post above) but having completed it my feeling is ”I quite enjoyed that", so it did something right. Obviously it got a massive helping hand because of nostalgia and the ability to reuse classic music etc. 

 

Despite having enjoyed the game, I really feel no excitement about the upcoming installments. That's not to say I won't play the next one if/when it comes to psplus but I feel like most of my nostalgia for ff7 has already been covered by this game (a large part was already satisfied after the first chapter). 

Also this game was definitely stretched to at least twice as long as the plot/content warranted.

[Unofficial Who]

2 hours ago, partious said:

I finished this last night. Nothing much to add to what I posted above. The story made less and less sense as it approached the end, which is an impressive feat I suppose. I quite enjoyed that it seemed to just progressively up the level of nonsense with each cutscene towards the end.

It's funny, I could go on and on about issues with every part of the game (like I did in my post above) but having completed it my feeling is ”I quite enjoyed that", so it did something right. Obviously it got a massive helping hand because of nostalgia and the ability to reuse classic music etc. 

 

Despite having enjoyed the game, I really feel no excitement about the upcoming installments. That's not to say I won't play the next one if/when it comes to psplus but I feel like most of my nostalgia for ff7 has already been covered by this game (a large part was already satisfied after the first chapter). 

Also this game was definitely stretched to at least twice as long as the plot/content warranted.

 

And the hollowness you spoke of? Did you enjoy....

 

Spoiler

 

 

[partious]

On 07/01/2023 at 14:48, Unofficial Who said:

 

And the hollowness you spoke of? Did you enjoy....

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

To be honest, I didn't notice that, I was just happy it was over 

[Vorgot]

Am up to Chapter 15 now, still enjoying it. I don't think the "padding" is too bad, the side quests are standard RPG stuff and have some nice rewards. The balance of the weapons is good too, while I don't have access to all my characters at the moment the different weapons let me swap classes with ease.

 

Still don't like the battle system. Hybrid systems don't work well for me, and Classic mode on normal is hit and miss as characters don't fill their bars fast enough. I've knocked it down to easy for a couple of boss fights, because life is too short to replay fights too many times because something goes slightly wrong. Not a big fan of boss fights in a lot of games, they just seem like stupid difficulty spikes. But I mainly play turn based games, so it's probably a problem with me.

 

Characters have improved a bit too, once they move from their initial ridiculous personalities. I still maintain that Tifa is the only one who bears any resemblance to a real person (maybe Leslie too), but to balance that I enjoy some of the over the top side characters like Johnny and Kyrie (as I recognised the voice actress).

 

But as someone who has not played the original, from what I have heard, the ending may not make much sense. I'm already sick of long haired boy showing up all the time and no one really questioning what's going on with emo boy, but we will see. Why do people like Cloud as a protagonist? He is so one dimensional. Would have been nice to be able to take control of other characters in the field but we are stuck with him

 

Edit : Oh, and I am intrigued by the cat thing with a crown I glimpsed briefly. Great random moment that I presume gets explained at some point

[Qazimod]

1 hour ago, Vorgot said:

Characters have improved a bit too, once they move from their initial ridiculous personalities. I still maintain that Tifa is the only one who bears any resemblance to a real person (maybe Leslie too), but to balance that I enjoy some of the over the top side characters like Johnny and Kyrie (as I recognised the voice actress).

 

But as someone who has not played the original, from what I have heard, the ending may not make much sense. I'm already sick of long haired boy showing up all the time and no one really questioning what's going on with emo boy, but we will see. Why do people like Cloud as a protagonist? He is so one dimensional. Would have been nice to be able to take control of other characters in the field but we are stuck with him

 

Edit : Oh, and I am intrigued by the cat thing with a crown I glimpsed briefly. Great random moment that I presume gets explained at some point

 

Some of the characters were a little over-the-top in the original, but it makes it kind of goofy when you see simple animations and dialogue boxes translated into the ridiculous scenes in Remake. I think the Turks embody a lot of that daftness, but

 

Spoiler

Roche (the bike dude)

 

in Chapter 4 is totally new and one of the most over-the-top idiots in there.  

 

The long haired emo boy comment is very interesting, because I'd heard that as a criticism from others - in the original he was less prominent at the beginning which made his few appearances all the more intriguing. Since this game is one part of a multi-part story, they obviously believed that people would be disappointed if he didn't make an appearance in the first game, so they crammed him into various scenes without really thinking about the newer players who won't understand. It's just one example of the game assuming prior knowledge.

 

I eventually grew to like Cloud after one of the biggest twist/reveals in the original game where you find out more about his background - it doesn't happen until way later in the original, so it'll be a long time before the Remake saga gets there - but sometimes I feel like fans missed the point and just saw "cool silent guy with big sword".  And yeah, having control over others when exploring would have been fun! It's not like it would involve any massive changes, because you're still walking through the same areas and opening the same chests as Cloud. (I guess some of the walk-and-talk dialogue could have presented a problem if you weren't Cloud, but you'd think they'd have the money and talent to do some kind of intelligent sound mix.)

[Vorgot]

20 minutes ago, Qazimod said:

 

Some of the characters were a little over-the-top in the original, but it makes it kind of goofy when you see simple animations and dialogue boxes translated into the ridiculous scenes in Remake. I think the Turks embody a lot of that daftness, but

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Roche (the bike dude)

 

in Chapter 4 is totally new and one of the most over-the-top idiots in there.  

 

 

 

He was not in the original? Then wow. The Turks were a low as well.

 

I got that impression about the flashbacks, I'd seen the Zero Punctuation review beforehand, so realised it was shoehorned in. And if Cloud develops, that's great, he is slowly getting better, but I can see it is a long burn. And he is not 'cool' he is an idiot around people trying to help him and get closer to him. But more than happy to give it time. But I get why teenage fanboys liked him when the original came out

[Vorgot]

Finished this today, mixed feelings about it. Won't repeat the points I've made above except one. As a newcomer, this is a mess. Long haired boy all over the place, the cat thing with a crown that appears once, the guy with Cloud at the end and more, it's baffling. Plot is bonkers (and pretty poor anyway outside of a nice basic premise).

 

The worst thing is, as a result of it being only part of a bigger game, is the scale and scope. It's so small for a JRPG. In Chapter 16 you can look down on where you started. Its just feels so constricted.

 

It's not a fair comparison, but in December I finished Dragon Quest XI and it's so much more satisfying in terms of scope, scale, plot and most importantly, characters. Aside from Tifa, and maybe Aerith towards the end, the characters feel so one dimensional.

 

But that all sounds a bit harsh and I did have fun. The way Weapns, skills, material all worked was super streamlined but really flexible to be able to set up teams, that stuff was great.

 

I'll get the DLC done at some point but need a break I think

[Qazimod]

Congrats! At least you'll have plenty of time before Rebirth to check out the original game if you like...  

 

(Seriously though, if you can get past the midi beeps and polygon people and random battles, it's still worth a look. Plus the 100-150hr claims were always an exaggeration - it's probably more like 50hrs if you leave wiggle room for optional bits.)

[Vorgot]

4 minutes ago, Qazimod said:

Congrats! At least you'll have plenty of time before Rebirth to check out the original game if you like...  

 

(Seriously though, if you can get past the midi beeps and polygon people and random battles, it's still worth a look. Plus the 100-150hr claims were always an exaggeration - it's probably more like 50hrs if you leave wiggle room for optional bits.)

 

Thanks! I do have the original on the PS5 and am tempted to go back to it, but have too much other stuff to play for now, it will always be there. The retro stylings will not bother me at all, and it might be interesting to play up until the end of remake to see how it compares. Have it on the Vita too, it may get looked at on there

[SuperCapes]

@Vorgot

 

I think your points are totally valid, but I think once the whole game comes to an end in like 2034 it will be fantastic as a collection of games. 

 

But on its own I can see it being totally bonkers. 

[Vorgot]

5 minutes ago, SuperCapes said:

@Vorgot

 

I think your points are totally valid, but I think once the whole game comes to an end in like 2034 it will be fantastic as a collection of games. 

 

But on its own I can see it being totally bonkers. 

 

I'll be along for the journey!

[JoeK]

Is the PC version fixed these days? I've still yet to get around to playing the game, and it's now at a price I'm happy enough to bite at, but I'm assuming it's been patched a little bit since original release?

 

 

[stir fry]

It has shader cache stutter, and stutter in general when moving through the slums. But the slums stutter can be mitigated a lot by the recent CPU offerings, I think. At least I found a big difference between playing it on a 9700k and then a 7700x. Some minor microstutter, but nothing like the horrible stuff at launch

 

But shader stutter you're just going to have to deal with, tbh most of it happens in the first mission anyway when you're seeing all the particle effects for the first time. The game is also super hard on GPU and VRAM, but well, you have a 4090. If you're VRAM starved on that I'd chuck it in the bin cause something is wrong.

 

One thing I'll add is there is a mod on nexus mods to disable the dynamic resolution scaling. Again, maybe that doesn't even kick in on a 4090, but if it does you definitely want to turn it off cause it doesn't improve the experience whatsoever

[JoeK]

Cheers. I took a punt and it seems fine to me, thankfully. It's a very pretty game that's for sure. Kind of blows my mind to see visuals like this are leagues above what we thought was cutting edge cgi when the original game got released! 

[JoeK]

The voice acting is almost unbearable at times. English voices are pretty terrible, but Barret is on another level of shit.

 

I’d hoped the Japanese voices might be better, but nope. They’re ghastly too. 
 

I might have to turn voices all off and just do it with subtitles on at this rate.

[stir fry]

Could be worse

 

 

[JoeK]

God save us all.

[PaB]