Finished up to chapter 14, with 32 hours of play. At level 31, so my levelling pace definitely accelerated.
We already know Square-Enix is cowards who won't remake Final Fantasy VI, but goddamn. Seeing Midgar post-Sector 7 plate falling down makes a really good indicator of what the World of Ruin could look like, if they ever had the cajones to actually remake FFVI in full 3D with good sfx. Heck, even just do a chibi-form 3D like what FF4-DS and FF3-DS both had. Something. Anything, other than just more remasters but substituting out the sprites for the nth time (instead, they're liable to take the opera scene and make it a QTE on steroids).
There is definitely getting to be some annoying padding in the game. Like chasing after the mutated molerat in the sewers...since there's still 4 chapters left in the game, I'm going to assume once I get topside that suddenly, I'll need to do another 4-6 quests for topside citizens, too. The same goes for the underground Shinra lab, but at least that shows the game hopefully won't pull any punches with making Hojo a complete monster again.
I did all the Colosseum challenges that were available to me, so I'll just have to go back after finishing the game to do Aerith's few. I actually did take the chance to do a few runs of the 2-member party vs Slum fights (bandits, Corneo thugs, and Shinra troops), because it netted me a little bit over 2k EXP per run, good enough for another level-up and change after 3 runs. I legitimately ran out of MP while doing the other 2-member run, against the Payback squad, going through Thundara in the 3rd round, and then Aerora in the 4th round. I completely forget what the last fight was, but it was much easier in comparison.
The pull-ups mini-game...that was certainly annoying. It took me just a little bit under an hour to finally beat Jules. I don't know how many runs I did, but I did 5 complete runs with 3 44s, 1 43, and finally a 45. Every time I'd do a full run with no stumbling, Jules would crank out a 44. Then of course, when I made a miss and just ran to the end anyways, he'd get a 42 or 43, so that burned. I'm certainly willing to cop to missing a button on the button press from time to time, but then it feels like Tifa just arbitrarily drops off even though I don't think I'm speeding up my rhythm any faster deep into a session. What makes it really frustrating was the loading times. If I quit out of the game, it'd be close to a minute of loading time...but if you lose, it's a fraction of the loading time, even after going through the little losing cutscene at the end. Insulting. I wish there was a 'restart' button for the mini-game. That would have saved me lots of time. I ironically had a PS5 on order right when doing this, so maybe I should have just waited to play the game after getting it.
Oh, speaking of little bits of aggravating waiting around. The forced slow walking gait at times is one of those. Some of those make sense in context, like being in dark areas, but a lot of the time it's just inexplicable.