FF7 Remake

seitora

Well-Known Member
#76
A PS5 update was announced with an exclusive Yuffie episode.

Also, this game is now on the PSN monthly free games.
 

Jimbobob5536

Well-Known Member
#77
To note:
If you've already bought the PS4 version, you will be able to upgrade to the PS5 version for free, Yuffie episode not included. Still gotta pay for that.

The free PS+ version of the game however, will not be eligible for the free upgrade.
 
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seitora

Well-Known Member
#80
I totally need to play the first Rebirth game. It's on my active play list, so hopefully soon!
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#82
I'm finally playing through Remake, 3.5 years later. Trying to get through it before Rebirth releases, anyways. Just like how I played Marvel's Spider-Man just before 2 released. I've finished up to chapter 7, with Cloud at Level 17. Just a sliver over 10 hours.

I know I was a part of the group who was hoping for a Final Fantasy VII remake over the years (but then took 3 years to play it after it released, natch! Maybe I'll even get around to playing Rebirth before 2027!), though of course what I really wanted was an FFVI remake. Playing through it now, I do get the sense that it really had to get up to the Playstation 4 for Square-Enix to really remake it with this type of 'vision' for a retelling. Playstation 3 would have chugged hard trying to keep up with this stuff, and with suitably worse graphics. Though even then, there are some spots when looking close that the textures fall fairly flat.

On the opening cutscene: I'm impressed by the 1950s central European-esque design for Midgar's top plate. It quite literally looks like what I'd expect to see in a film from that time period depicting a city in West or East Germany.

Then going through the two Mako Reactors so far, one of my impressions was, "Why is it so dark?!" Like, literally dark. What, Shinra can't afford to pay the powers bills D:? Reactor 5 actually kind of explains this by the whole detour of having to kill sunlamps to re-route power, so I guess the implication is they don't care about maintenance which is affecting power supply and lighting.

Now, talking about the remake. I like the combat system for what it is. I know there's some purism about it not being turn-based anymore, but really, whatever. There's lots of pure turn-based RPGs out there still. Remakes of games can and should have the ability to deviate instead of just giving it a overhaul for increased graphical and computational power. The core nuts and bolts of the combat system are there still, just with far more running around.

On that note, I still do struggle with the fighting from time to time. The biggest issue for me is dodging. I am far too used to other games where dodging gives you invincibility frames, and this game...doesn't. Instead, I'm expected to guard when facing fire head-on, and that's a difficult habit for me to break out of! It also doesn't help that I struggle with the camera aiming system. I feel like I try to aim at one particular foe, and then the game actively tries to shift my aim away to a different enemy nonstop. I've wiped just once so far, and that wipe-out had a lot to do with the camera constantly pushing me away from my target so I couldn't kill the one machine low on health because I kept getting toggled to the machine right next to it.

Saying that, I know it's not a proper remake but a sort of re-telling and with fate as an actual force, but goddamn if they're not trying to shove it down the player's throat that Cloud is mentally disturbed instead of making it more subtle like the original game, with the constant flashbacks and Sephiroth apparation appearances.

It took me a while to realise this game is still as campy as the original. The extended ten minutes talking about Wedge's literal pain in the butt was what finally got through to me.

It feels strange to me there are actual Shinra middle managers who live in the slums. There's whole sprawling neighborhoods of people living on the surface, and from the downtown district of Sector 1, enough people to sustain a decent retail and entertainment area. There can't be that many Shinra executives and maintenance people, can there be? Next I'm going to find out members of SOLDIER also have to live in the slums.

I hope there's not too many more motorcycle sequences in the game after chapter 4 (though I'm expecting there'll still be one for the escape from Midgar). The remake makes the G-bike a lot less clumsy, but it's still not very fun.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#83
Say the line, Aerith!

Aerith: "This guy are sick!"

(I wish)

I've just completed chapter 10, and at 20 hours. At level 21, so it's been a serious drop-off in the leveling rate since then. I think I'm still fighting a ton of monsters and enemies, but the EXP requirement to level up has outpaced what I'm getting for EXP gain in turn. Which is also slowing down getting SP for my weapons upgrades. I grinded out Moogle Medals from the box whacking so I could buy manuals for everyone.

It still is a nice narrative break to completely shuffle off two of the party members to exclusively focus on Cloud and Aerith for several hours. The game is definitely leaning on a threesome polycule instead of a Betty & Veronica situation, particularly with their interactions going through the train graveyard.

Oh yeah, Hell House. That boss fight is definitely annoying. Literally only a couple of seconds to exploit its weaknesses and attempt Staggering it, and then later on in the fight, it just turtles up completely with flying around. Up until this fight, I had stockpiled a good chunk of Phoenix Downs, Hi Potions, and Mega Potions, and went through a lot of that stockpile (not so much for Ethers, though). All the other boss fights are an order of magnitude less frustrating (and they actually die on a timely basis, instead of what I think was genuinely 15 minutes plus for Hell House). Not a boss fight per se, but I also cleared Shiva in the VR simulator, rather easily too by exploiting her weakness to Fire.

Some kudos for some more inspired designs. The train graveyard is really nifty, and the lighting effect captures the mood well. Wall Market is helluva confusing layout, but certainly captures the 'slums' feeling even better than Sector 7 and Sector 5 slums do. Don Corneo is even more an outlandish monster than ever before. Other areas aren't so inspiring, like traveling through the underground tunnel to (try and) get from Sector 5 to Sector 7.

Most of the optional trophies haven't been too bad to get (well, I never got the motorcycle one). The button-pressing mini-games aren't too bad, which given this is Square-Enix who has pulled off some massive bullshit for absurdly difficult mini-games in other FF games, could have been much worse. I missed out on the dancing trophy, which is honestly a little difficult to visually follow at times. I only got 5 Bad ratings, which I think is borderline near the cutoff, but I simply didn't care enough to reload and try it again. If I do another run for Hard mode trophies or whatever, I'll make sure to grab it (and speaking of dancing, I think Aerith had an orgasm watching Cloud get a crossdressing makeover on stage. They weren't even subtle with her getting hot and bothered.)

Also, maybe I should have waited to get my PS5 before playing this game. 45 second load times going between areas (or reloading after the rare time I've wiped). Oof.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#84
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.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#85
I've finally completed the game, at 41 hours of play.

Chapter 15, the ascent up the ruins of Sector 7 to get topside, is one of those bits of the remake that just fits really well with significantly re-envisioning it, fleshing it out, and making it more 'epic'. It's a heckuva lot more fun than the boring grind to the top of the original. Chapter 17, though...ugh. The whole run through the Drum is just at the point of making the game go on and on and on at that point. Then in chapter 18, every time somebody's all "We gotta defeat these guys [Whispers]," my reaction was I never could defeat them because the game's too busy playing the nth action sequence in a row to actually let me fight. Though I am surprised! They skipped the first scene with President Shinra and getting put in the jail cells. About the only thing they actually cut down on the running time for.

Shinra building's elevator vs. stairs moment returns. I was genuinely hoping it would, and I wasn't disappointed. Another thing I was happy to see my expectations met for was Hojo being a complete monster, this time with voice acting and better graphics.

Boss fights...I think the camera controls for fighting Motor Ball may have legitimately given me cancer. Also, I believe I fought literally Cthulhu at one point. The Whisper fights and Sephiroth were annoying because of needing to have the right set-ups to make it go more easily, and after enemies freely dodging my magic throughout the game, it's annoying that Sephiroth's magic somehow seems to home in on me better than 50% of the time.

Funny thing. Up through the first 16.5 chapters, I barely used any Ethers, and no Turbo-Ethers and Elixirs. Then I remembered Hard Mode doesn't allow any item usage. So there's no point in sparing on item usage now just because they might be useful later. I finally went through a couple of Elixirs in Chapter 18. Although I find the game challenging in parts, that's just because I can't be bothered to get super-specific set-ups for some of the more BS bosses, and just bullrush through with some extra healing.

After getting the chapter selection, the first (and only) chapter I've gone to is Chapter 4, and playing it on Easy to finally get the Trophy for completing the bike section with 80% health remaining or whatever it is. After that, I finally have a PS5 after getting a Slim model, so I'll set that up, download the free PS5 upgrade for FFVII Remake, and hopefully have far quicker load times. I haven't really decided yet if I want to bother doing a Hard Mode runthrough of all the chapters. I'll at least clean up some other of the Trophies like getting a good score on darts, all the music discs, etc. Then figure out from there.

Still, though there's too much padding in some parts of the game, I did enjoy it. It was a nice adaptation of the original, truly fleshing out Midgar. I just hope they trim the amount they expand it for Rebirth. Midgar at least makes sense to make much bigger than the original considering its existence as a supersized dystopian cyberpunk metropolis. Other areas of the game...not so much. I don't think I need to spend 6-8 hours crawling around the Temple of the Ancients, or the Northern Crater on the first passby.

Amusingly, one mechanic that I did notice missing from the original is getting a free new Materia every time you maxed out the AP on an existing one. I guess that kind of makes sense given how much newer games try to balance out levels and set-ups (and even nerf some with patches), and some of the Materia in this game could break things open if you were given a second or third.
 
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seitora

Well-Known Member
#87
:eek:

Fixed up, thanks.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#88
Doing Hard Mode now. Finished up to chapter 9, and 51 hours of game time.

I grinded out some runs at the start on Easy at the Colosseum, basically doing the three-man team vs Shinra since it gave a lot of AP per run, to get some of my Materia boosted up. I especially got a ton of MP Up and HP Up leveled into the +30% and +40% range, which has helped carry me through a lot of tighter spots since.

Going through each chapter, I've barely needed to use Healing to take care of mooks. I've heavily abused First Strike + Triple Slash on Cloud to deal a significant amount of damage to enemy mobs right away, which takes care of most encounters. For any stragglers that survive, if I have Barret in the party, I switch over to him to use Overcharge + Maximum Fury. Then some strategic uses of magic here and there, typically with Magnify where warranted for multiple monsters. Now that I've had an entire runthrough of the game to get used to combat controls, it's been surprisingly easy to rotate characters to draw and avoid aggro on some of the stronger, tankier enemies, like the Sweeper and Cutter, without needing to rely much on magic.

Bosses are of course more challenging, but there haven't really been any that have been particularly bad. There are a lot of them that I end up being too conservative on MP usage, and have plenty of MP left by the end of the fight. I still wipe on some bosses, but usually I'm able to respec my Materia a little bit, and learn the boss' attack routine to more easily guard, dodge, Punisher guard, or Counterstance. I will say, dodging is still a big PITA, because some bosses have attacks that practically home in on me and give only a narrow margin to actually dodge. I restarted once on Hell House about 20 seconds into the fight, then defeated it on my second try. Others take me multiple attempts, but it's usually resetting after about thirty seconds after getting slightly more and more familiar with a boss's routines - the fight against Rude by himself was one of these, where I probably did about six or seven attempts at getting a good start against him, and then I easily cleared it. I defeated Airbuster on my first attempt as well.

Besides the aforementioned Triple Slash + First Strike, and levelling up myriad HP Up, MP Up, and Magic Up, I've gotten good leverage out of Elemental materia (either for striking enemy weaknesses, or to nullify and then later absorb elemental attacks from enemies/bosses), Prayer, and Steadfast Guard. Some fights I have to put Revival on everybody.

Before doing the chapters on Hard Mode, I did an Easy run of chapters 3, 8, and 9 to see more dresses, and set up my Hard chapter plays to finally get the Trophy for seeing all dresses in chapter 9. Along with that, The Johnny Experience, and the dancing trophy. Also, Darts was done.

I finally got my PS5, so I set it up and upgraded to the free PS5 version of FFVII Remake. And wow, it makes an enormous difference. Loading times of 45 seconds was cut down to 1-2 seconds, if that. Save times of 5 seconds was instantaneous. The animations of everything is definitely more fluid than it was. Surprisingly, I seemed to struggle with getting a good score on the dancing game after switching over. Maybe just the more fluid everything with the game threw my timing off some?

Finally got the Platinum trophy. Clear time was just a couple minutes shy of 69 (nice) hours.

I played Hard Mode for most of the game as it was meant to be played, in other words managing my MP usage. Somewhere around chapter 15 though, I just got exhausted with the constant HP tanks that I had to fight, and started using the cheesing method of saving and reloading to break the boxes for MP, and using MP freely on everything. Of course, it came back to bite me in the butt during chapter 17's boss marathon, where there are no MP restorations during the whole boss rush. Swordipede went down with lots of Thundaga and Firaga, and Jenova Dreamweaver went down on a first attempt but only narrowly. I had just enough MP for Cloud to get off Haste and Bio, and I could have used Stop as well, but by that time I finally had Götterdämmerung so made short work of Rufus after. Arsenal was actually a lot easier than I was expecting. Some of it is due to me learning guarding and dodging more in Hard Mode, but a lot of it was using Soul Drain to leech MP off it in the early part, when the drones and Arsenal only have one attack that can hit around a pillar and give several seconds of leeway to dodge.

I had Elemental/Fire on Cloud's armour, and Elemental/Lightning on Tifa's armour, so two out of Sephiroth's four magic phases, I could switch to a character who he healed. Punisher mode guarding, and frequent Counterstance. Plus, there was a bit in the middle he just slashed at Cloud about 15 times in a row, taking parry damage each time??? There was a brief dicey moment near the end where he felled both Tifa and Cloud all of a sudden, but I was able to pick them both back up with Aerith and get off another Limit Break.

The actual toughest boss battle I encountered in Hard Mode was Abzu, the second go-around. Just getting swarmed with a half-dozen Abzu Shoats at a time, making it difficult to crowd control while also whittling down Abzu's health. I think I wiped 3 or 4 times?

I got all the Shinra Combat Simulator encounters done at the start of Chapter 17. The Aerith solo battles against the Shinra enemies were a little tricky, but I managed to squeak through thanks to some good dodging and guarding. I did hers last, so I had the general rhythm and strategy down with Cloud, Barret, and Tifa already.

The first of the two difficult Shinra Combat Simulator runs actually went by fairly easy. I grinded a couple of runs out on Easy on the Shinra soldier trials with AP - Warding to finally get one of my Warding Materia up, and stuck that on Cloud with Subversion Materia to completely no-sell the two matches with Tonberries by aggroing all the Chef's Knife attacks to Cloud, and only taking 500 damage instead of an instant fatality. Behemoth could have been a little trickier, but I had just cleared the Behemoth fight in chapter 14 on Hard the same day, so I already knew how to fight it. After those, Malboro was a cinch.

It took me three runs to get the Legends battles (four I guess actually, since I wiped to Shiva on a third attempt). The first two runs, I did Element-Ice on Tifa and Element-Fire on Cloud, but switched over to Element-Fire on both after two wipes to Bahamut. Magnify-Healing on Aerith, fully leveled Revival on all three, and some Lightning Materia in there as well. One Barrier, two Time Materia, and then a lot of HP Up, MP up, and Magic Up. I didn't bother with Steadfast Guard. No Revival Earrings, though I had Reprieve on both Cloud and Aerith. Each fight, I usually started out with Tifa, built up ATB, got Haste on all three party members, and also got Regen off as well.

Shiva I mainly used Tifa, and lined up Arcane Ward to hit Shiva with Firaga a few times. Tifa's useful for quick attacks and quick dodges, which after she lost Ice absorption was useful for getting out of the ice attacks with a time delay. Fat Chocobo wasn't very tough on the first two attempts, but on the final attempt, he summoned Tonberries, which killed a party member a couple of times and took me a bit to get caught back up. Leviathan was just annoying with flying off into the air after taking two-thirds damage, so I tried saving my MP for near the end to get multiple Thundaga off with Arcane Ward.

Bahamut was...extremely frustrating, especially since each time I got him down most of the way. Just constant attacks, even at the start, making it difficult to set-up. Finally winning was just kind of luck of the draw, where I finally managed to line up a Limit Break on both Cloud and Tifa near the end. Cloud's Ascension defeated Ifrit and did some soak damage to Bahamut as well. I actually never got Megaflare on me in that run, though Bahamut had hit the 1-second mark and I had Manawall on Aerith and Tifa (and Cloud had a use of Reprieve still). On all three attempts, I was running low on MP for the entire cast near the end, and wiped at least once because I was down to one character with not enough MP for Revive. My winning attempt, I started using Cloud's Counterstance frequently to deal more damage before whittling down my MP with magic attempts.

Pride & Joy Prototype was a joke in comparison to Bahamut.

I finally got around to playing the InterMISSION after picking it up on a 25% sale over Christmas. I played about 8 hours, and then an extra hour in Hard Mode just to try it out and grab the Condor Queen trophy.

Yuffie has got some pretty interesting controls in battle, particularly with her large shuriken and the Throw/Retrieve command. It absolutely took me some time to get used to, and I admittedly didn't get a full grip on her fighting style until the boxes mini-game later on. Brumal Form is helluva useful, but it's also annoying when I use it and it doesn't actually work because the enemy just extends its attack animation instead.

Fort Condor was fun once I figured out how to play it, and it definitely flows a lot quicker than the original FFVII's Fort Condor. It makes me wonder just how big and ambitious Gold Saucer will be in Rebirth.

I completed the SOLDIER class boxes challenge in Chapter 2. I was only about to get 46,900 points at the most after running through it several times (I'd say 'nice', but I put a comma in there). Looking up strategies, I saw that I completely didn't notice Banishment could be used in the run as well. Once I did, I got 50,000 on my first run, with 20 seconds to spare. I do a lot of hitting the X button to put time at 1/100th flow, then target where I want Yuffie to throw next.

I decided not to bother with Hard Mode this time around. Well, except for going through just long enough to play Fort Condor again, which I was able to do fairly decisively. Just far too much of a grind for me.

Oh yeah. Something I'm not sure I bitched about enough when playing the main game. Fuck boss transformations that immediately cancel out attack animation or healing, negating the effects and losing me an ATB bar. It's far, far worse when I was doing a Limit Break and lose half of the attack to a phase change, too.

Just in time for REBIRTH to release!...which I probably won't play it for at least a year or so anyways lol.
 

silentorphan

Well-Known Member
#89
"Final trailer", says the label. Also, the playable demo is supposed to be live right now.

 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#90
Sweet deal.
 
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