Final Fantasy VII Remake

[Keyboard Koala]

After being shipped over 3 weeks ago, my copy of FFVII Remake is finally heading my way.

 

Tbh, it's not really Square's fault, their customer service has been excellent. It's the delivery service that was causing such a pain. I understand these are extraordinary times, but the package arrived at their facilities on April 6 , and it's been sitting there ever since. And most delivery services seem to be running just fine despite the crisis. I couldn't even contact them due to the whole covid-19 situation. Thankfully after two e-mails to Square EU, things are moving again, and my package should be with me later this week, or early next week. If it doesn't get lost during transit. Touch wood.

[Retroguy]

1 hour ago, Melon_Bread said:

 

No idea, it was 40 hours of gameplay away, I just remember doing that bit over and over until I swapped in the materia, it's not impossible that you were a higher level than me with better gear? But whatever, that fight was massively harder than anything else in the game upto that point and was wiping my party in seconds.

I wouldn’t have thought I’d have been much higher level- sure, I did all the side quests as they appear, but other than that I haven’t done any grinding. I just don’t really know how there’d be that much of a disparity between different party strengths/gear considering how linear the game is, and why/how your party was wiping in seconds. Had you been upgrading weapons? 

[BitterToad]

It'll be weapon upgrades/HP Up Materia, surely?

[Retroguy]

My weapons were obviously upgraded, but the only hp up material was 10% on Cloud, so it’s not like I was swimming in hit points. That’s the thing, this isn’t really much like a typical JRPG where different people will be coming to a fight at vastly different levels.

[Melon_Bread]

1 hour ago, Retroguy said:

I wouldn’t have thought I’d have been much higher level- sure, I did all the side quests as they appear, but other than that I haven’t done any grinding. I just don’t really know how there’d be that much of a disparity between different party strengths/gear considering how linear the game is, and why/how your party was wiping in seconds. Had you been upgrading weapons? 

 

yeah I was upgrading weapons and had zero touble with all the other fights, 2 or 3 goes on some of the bosses, but I could always see what I was doing wrong which is why the two fights I mention stood out for me so much.

It's possible that I was going in expecting an easy trash fight with lower than max health.

[BadgerFarmer]

It happens. There was definitely a tricky one in the sewers, but I don't know if it was that. I think in some battles, things sometimes combine in a way that escalates the damage quickly, especially when status effects are involved, and if you haven't got ATB it's hard to recover. Or you try again and take out one enemy before things get going and it's much easier to handle.

 

I think the battle I died on most in the entire game was a regular one towards the end

Spoiler

In the lab section playing as Tifa and Aerith. It's just a pack of dogs that bursts out from their cages, but they're impossible to escape from and all together can batter you in seconds. In the end, a few changes to set up made all the difference and it was a satisfying victory. But it's weird that that can happen, and it wouldn't surprose me if someone else just breezed past it first time.

 

[Melon_Bread]

9 minutes ago, BadgerFarmer said:

It happens. There was definitely a tricky one in the sewers, but I don't know if it was that. I think in some battles, things sometimes combine in a way that escalates the damage quickly, especially when status effects are involved, and if you haven't got ATB it's hard to recover. Or you try again and take out one enemy before things get going and it's much easier to handle.

 

I think the battle I died on most in the entire game was a regular one towards the end

  Hide contents

In the lab section playing as Tifa and Aerith. It's just a pack of dogs that bursts out from their cages, but they're impossible to escape from and all together can batter you in seconds. In the end, a few changes to set up made all the difference and it was a satisfying victory. But it's weird that that can happen, and it wouldn't surprose me if someone else just breezed past it first time.

 

 
Yeah that as well, that whole section was my least fave part.

[NecroMorrius]

All I've heard over the last page is people trying to counter my criticisms of the bad combat by telling me the game is too easy. And that being able to assess and instantly restart the fight is OK because it was in the original which is 25 years old. Ok!

 

Meanwhile I've just had a boss fight where Tifa and Aerith both lost their limits to interrupt after they'd been cast by getting hit by chip damage from offscreen and Aerith died 4 times to massive flailing boss attacks from offscreen with no windup while casting cure on herself with over 50% HP, because the AI obsessively attacks whoever the player is controlling and provoke only procs sporadically because there's no gambit system.  Meanwhile Shiva is shooting spells at a cargo container for 90% of the fight 

 

You could solve this pretty easily by making a couple of concessions:

 

• Characters you are controlling can break out of cast animations with dodge/guard button
• Characters you're not controlling can't be interrupted or damaged when they're casting
• Make spell projectiles and damage area move through objects (this seems painfully obvious and seems to be inconsistent rather than one or the other)
• Have the damage from melee ultimates apply regardless of distance. They're ultimates, they typically only cast once a fight, why can the boss slowly walk away from it while Cloud or Tifa are posing for the windup? It's not Dark Souls mate.

 

Also, I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden Aerith's gone from hanging as far as possible to constantly running into melee range as soon as I'm not controlling her. I don't really get it.

  

5 hours ago, wretcherd said:

This is pretty faithful to the beginning of jrpg's, you mash X to select "Attack" and that will do for a good while.

 

This is true, but I'm 20ish hours into what's apparently a 35 hour game.

[Harrisown]

Yeah the AI is completely unfinished but it doesn’t stop it being fun. it’s still not really an action game just a very fluid RPG.

 

Im in the section that they bloated out with nonsense quests. It’s strange pacing. I don’t mind doi BF it because I like the game a lot but to have it loses all into one little section towards the end of the game is odd.

 

The next game will be cool

[Mogster]

11 minutes ago, Moz said:

All I've heard over the last page is people trying to counter my criticisms of the bad combat by telling me the game is too easy. And that being able to assess and instantly restart the fight is OK because it was in the original which is 25 years old. Ok!

 

That wasn't my response, and you certainly can't instantly restart fights in the original. You were stuck with manual save points and nothing else.

[NecroMorrius]

Which were always right before the boss. It's the same in this - there's a cutscene and two loading screens to wade through for most bosses when you click restart fight.

[Retroguy]

I’m not trying to counter your criticisms by saying the game is too easy, it being too easy is the main criticism I have of it.

 

I know it doesn’t make any sense from a story perspective, but from a gameplay perspective, it’s far better to think of the characters as just an extension of you rather than separate entities because of how they function. Yes they don’t really do anything by themselves, and you can only counter for that very slightly with some of the behaviour Materia. You should be switching characters often, and the way to prevent one being targeted from dying is not to have it heal itself (as it will get hit and interrupted), it’s to switch to another character to do it.

 

For me, the fact that spells can get interrupted is all part of the challenge- if they were to remove this is would be even easier! I’m not sure exactly what you mean by ‘chip’ damage, but I’ve only ever seen characters interrupted my major attacks rather than regular damage.

 

Are you looking around to get an idea of the situation with bosses? They usually give tells before they launch big attacks, and their analyse screen will also give very big clues about their behaviour. Some attacks are definitely easier to avoid than others, but you should be able to plan for some of this. And you should be using this again to get an idea of when bosses are more likely to linger in one place (when you pummel them) and when it’s not a good idea to try and hit them as they’re likely to be more mobile. Once they are pressured, that’s when you use your abilities which increase stagger to good effect, and then once staggered, you use your high damage attacks.

 

I’m really struggling to understand why some people are finding this so much harder than others- I had to restart a boss fight in chapter 11 as I found that it had a weapon you could steal, and it actually took me about a minute of deliberately trying to die before my party got wiped out. I’m level 22 if that counts, maybe I am just higher level than others at this point?

[Retroguy]

3 minutes ago, Moz said:

Which were always right before the boss. It's the same in this - there's a cutscene and two loading screens to wade through for most bosses when you click restart fight.

You might get a loading screen for a few seconds, but you know you can skip cutscenes right?

[NecroMorrius]

Blizzara seems to be the worst culprit for badly implemented casting mechanics so far. You go to cast it, the animation plays, and it casts where the enemy was stood at the start of the cast animation, even when the enemy is just walking at a leisurely place or was stood still when you started casting it. 

 

You could fix this pretty easily by having the damage applied to the targeted enemy regardless of where the spell appears onscreen, or make casting time an actual stat (maybe an unlisted subset of magic attack) so your mage types don't look like complete idiots constantly. Everything's so close to being right it's infuriating.

[NecroMorrius]

Just now, Retroguy said:

You might get a loading screen for a few seconds, but you know you can skip cutscenes right?

 

Yeah, hold triangle. I'm not complaining. Mogster was saying it was different to the original because the original only had manual save points. I'm saying it's about the same. Either way it's crap that you can bail on a fight after first strike casting Assess (and practically mandatory in some fights unless you get lucky or want to waste 20 mins pressing square). 

[Retroguy]

3 minutes ago, Moz said:

 

Yeah, hold triangle. I'm not complaining. Mogster was saying it was different to the original because the original only had manual save points. I'm saying it's about the same. Either way it's crap that you can bail on a fight after first strike casting Assess (and practically mandatory in some fights unless you get lucky or want to waste 20 mins pressing square). 

Again, I’ve never had to restart any fights apart from once to steal a weapon, so it’s really not mandatory in any way, shape or form. Even to complete them in a timely fashion. As a caveat, I just keep a Materia of every elemental magic equipped across the party.

 

I’ll give you it is a bit silly than you can just assess and restart the fight in a more optimum setup, so as someone mentioned, maybe the best solution would have been the ability to change Materia mid fight.

[dug]

Oh yeah, I do find it irksome when a spell cast gets interrupted so the spell doesn't go off, but it still costs ATB and MP.

[NecroMorrius]

I barely watch any Youtubers but I do like this guy a lot. Strongly agree with practically all of this and yes, his #1 problem with the combat is the baffling lack of a gambit system. I love all the bits that he loves too for what that's worth. I stopped at the spoiler warning but interested to watch the rest.

 

 

[NecroMorrius]

4 hours ago, dug said:

Oh yeah, I do find it irksome when a spell cast gets interrupted so the spell doesn't go off, but it still costs ATB and MP.

 

Mmm it's really fun when you combo with Aerith's ward and watch cloud fire four Blizzaras at thin air in a row and then fall down dead

 

I thought of another incredibly obvious omission - why can't you move the camera when you're in "tactical mode"? So tactical that you can't even assess the position of combatants on the battlefield to take a guess at what the enemy is doing or who it's attacking. Again if you added this and allowed the player controlled character to cancel out of casting you could solve more issues. Maybe have it cost ATB but not mana (the ATB cost is applied at the start of the cast, the mana cost at the end) so you can cancel out of an attack for a penalty AND you can check your surroundings better and glean more info before you cast. Some fights are a joke - casting any kind of restorative is a red flag to a bull and the enemy immediately charges you with zero warning. Sometimes it interrupts the casting and sometimes it doesn't, and I can't figure out why. I mentioned DA:I earlier, it was far from a perfect game but I thought the combat was an actual good mix of realtime and strategy, rather than the weird kingdom hearts FF7-in-a-washing-machine we've got here.

 

 

Question - not a complaint - I had two instances very close together where a spell seemed to do unadvertised AOE damage. I was fighting some elite guards and a fira spell hit and crit all three of them for about 2k each and killed all three in one hit. They were a couple of feet apart from each other and the one I was casting on was staggered. I definitely didn't have magnify joined to the fire materia, definitely. I can't reproduce this though. Since then I've tried it loads of times and it only hits the enemy I'm targeting, not the enemies stood right next to them. But the same thing happened twice on two subsequent fights in the tower. What am I missing?

[Hexx]

9 minutes ago, Moz said:

 

Mmm it's really fun when you combo with Aerith's ward and watch cloud fire four Blizzaras at thin air in a row and then fall down dead

 

I thought of another incredibly obvious omission - why can't you move the camera when you're in "tactical mode"? So tactical that you can't even assess the position of combatants on the battlefield to take a guess at what the enemy is doing or who it's attacking. Again if you added this and allowed the player controlled character to cancel out of casting you could solve more issues. Maybe have it cost ATB but not mana (the ATB cost is applied at the start of the cast, the mana cost at the end) so you can cancel out of an attack for a penalty AND you can check your surroundings better and glean more info before you cast. Some fights are a joke - casting any kind of cure is a red flag to a bull and the enemy immediately charges you with zero warning. Sometimes it interrupts the casting and sometimes it doesn't, and I can't figure out why. 

 

Question - not a complaint - I had two instances very close together where a spell seemed to do unadvertised AOE damage. I was fighting some elite guards and a fira spell hit and crit all three of them for about 2k each and killed all three in one hit. They were a couple of feet apart from each other and the one I was casting on was staggered. I definitely didn't have magnify joined to the fire materia, definitely. I can't reproduce this though. Since then I've tried it loads of times and it only hits the enemy I'm targeting, not the enemies stood right next to them. But the same thing happened twice on two subsequent fights in the tower. What am I missing?

 

AFK as I know all the spells do AOE damage - certainly and level 2/3 when there's a delay before they "detonate". Just got lucky there?

 

Chapter 17 is really starting to drag on. They've really killed the momentum of the story in the later sections of this.

 

[NecroMorrius]

I seem to remember that being the case in the original (might be wrong, it's been a long time). The weird thing is I can't replicate it, I'm hitting a single target with firaga and it's not doing any damage to enemies stood inches away from him.

[Retroguy]

1 hour ago, Moz said:

 

Mmm it's really fun when you combo with Aerith's ward and watch cloud fire four Blizzaras at thin air in a row and then fall down dead

 

I thought of another incredibly obvious omission - why can't you move the camera when you're in "tactical mode"? So tactical that you can't even assess the position of combatants on the battlefield to take a guess at what the enemy is doing or who it's attacking. Again if you added this and allowed the player controlled character to cancel out of casting you could solve more issues. Maybe have it cost ATB but not mana (the ATB cost is applied at the start of the cast, the mana cost at the end) so you can cancel out of an attack for a penalty AND you can check your surroundings better and glean more info before you cast. Some fights are a joke - casting any kind of restorative is a red flag to a bull and the enemy immediately charges you with zero warning. Sometimes it interrupts the casting and sometimes it doesn't, and I can't figure out why. I mentioned DA:I earlier, it was far from a perfect game but I thought the combat was an actual good mix of realtime and strategy, rather than the weird kingdom hearts FF7-in-a-washing-machine we've got here.

It just seems that you want a totally different kind of battle system than the one that this game has- it doesn’t really feature AI control with the other characters. It’s really just a real time extension of the traditional system where you’re almost killing time until you can make a proper move, switching to that character and using ATB segments. But, you can speed up that process by attacking/defending at the right time with the characters you control. It’s not really supposed to be played with you controlling predominantly one character over another- that’s what usually gets you hurt, since the longer you play one character, the more the monsters focus on that character.

 

And yeah, certain spells like blizzard and aero target where the enemy is at the time of casting, and take a few seconds to pop. So again, you have to actually watch the monsters and decide when you don’t think they’re going to move. You won’t absolutely always get it right, but it’s usually pretty easy to tell. And monsters won’t target someone as soon as they start to cast heal- what they will do however is gradually start to target you the more you control one character. So heal them with another character. And if you’re casting heal and a monster is barrelling into you, you’re going to be interrupted (usually it’s when they use an ability rather than a standard attack). That’s part of the strategy of the game.
 

It’s not really broken or anything like that- you might not like it, but this is how it’s been designed. The things you don’t seem to like, like how some spells can miss, I actually like because it forces you to watch the monsters and figure out patterns in their movement and behaviour.

I’m not totally sold on the ‘target player controlled character’ mechanic, but once you understand that, you learn to cope with it and enjoy the game for what it is.

[BitterToad]

8 hours ago, Retroguy said:

 

It’s not really broken or anything like that- you might not like it, but this is how it’s been designed. The things you don’t seem to like, like how some spells can miss, I actually like because it forces you to watch the monsters and figure out patterns in their movement and behaviour.

 

Quoting the above post because it's totally nailed it for me, the battle system's more of an act of plate spinning than it looks. You shouldn't really be doing anything with the character you're controlling for too long. For me it's been a fun system of "charge up ATB, jump to someone else, start attacking to build up ATB, hit R2 to use the first character's move, back to the 2nd, finish charging up ATB, jump to the third, rinse and repeat." It's really fun. Especially with a character like Aerith in there who's clearly set up to only use magic, so every 3rd move becomes a really tactical "should I use her to heal/buff, or is it worth using her for her superior magic attack?"

 

Again, the system's not perfect, but when it all clicks it's given me some of the best fights I've had in a game for a while. 

[Kevvy Metal]

Moz doesn't like videogames (unless it's the Outer Wilds) and prob has more fun buying them all and complaining about them in these threads. 

 

For some tech impressions of the combat, I've been enjoying watching Maximillian play through the game after I've played through the section. There's loads of good stuff in here. 

 

 

 

 

[NecroMorrius]

Literally playing FFXIV right now, and it's great. 

 

Honestly I think I broke my brain on Divinity 2 and Gloomhaven and the lack of depth here is deeply disappointing in comparison.

 

And in comparison to FF12 of course. The game where they fixed all these problems before developing collective amnesia.

 

 

11 hours ago, Retroguy said:

It just seems that you want a totally different kind of battle system than the one that this game has- it doesn’t really feature AI control with the other characters.

 

Yeah, but imagine if it did. Just imagine.

 

 

Wouldn't that be nice.

[NecroMorrius]

These tips from a random Youtube comment sound useful, gonna give them a go later:

1- set the combo settings to free: Changing it to "free" allows you to change targets during the combo using the left stick. This allows you to more easily attack a group of enemies.
2- set battle camera distance to 3: this solves most problems with the camera allowing you to see the attack text from the enemies and boss before the attack animations Begin.
3- change target Lock change to directional buttons: this allows to rotate the camera when Lock on ,without Changing the target

 

 

[Thor]

1 hour ago, Moz said:

Literally playing FFXIV right now, and it's great. 

 

Honestly I think I broke my brain on Divinity 2 and Gloomhaven and the lack of depth here is deeply disappointing in comparison.

 

And in comparison to FF12 of course. The game where they fixed all these problems before developing collective amnesia.

 

 

 

Yeah, but imagine if it did. Just imagine.

 

 

Wouldn't that be nice.

That screen on its own has me considering paying £35 for the steam version. I really fancy playing through XII, never played it at all. 

[Retroguy]

2 hours ago, Moz said:

Wouldn't that be nice.

Well, it would be FF12, which we kind of already have complete with updated graphics. It’s a personal thing, but I’d rather this was its own animal- if they’re going to change it from the original FF7 system, I’d rather it was a new one.

 

Sure, this isn’t the absolute deepest system ever, but there’s still quite a bit of depth there. You’re complaining about spells missing targets and casting being interrupted, this is all part of the strategy you’re not taking into account.

[Hexx]

So done - And I'm conflicted.

 

It's so close to being amazing - but just never comes together. When combat works it's amazing, but all to often it's just a mess. When it works it feels like fluke of luck rather than design. Mostly it's satisfying, occasionally it's annoying.

 

There's a lot of padding - it's a 25 hour game that runs to nearer 40 due to lots of slow walking, slow climbing, slow crawling, slow sneaking section etc. There's also real pacing issues - particularly towards the end. Tedious slow sections completely kill story momentum. I thought I'd be up for replaying on hard, but the last few hours have really made me qeustion if I'd enjoy it.

 

The story stuff...it's ok. Most of the additions are good. (Huge spoilers)

 

The rest of it? Well some is still confusing, but overall I felt it got too concerned with doing something different/subverting expectations rather than telling something good. As it is the story feels a mess. Event happen or don't happen for no clear reason. (Was that alternative Seph? Future Seph? How does he know about Whisps? We (or Zack?) are in an alternative timeline. I think they made it messy and convulted...which isn't the same as clever. I'm curious to see where they go - but I wish it had been honestly marketed from the start.

 

It's fine/good, sometimes great, but rarely amazing. It's relying a lot on nostalgia I think.

[cohen205]

I’ve completed it and feel exactly the same as above. I wanted to love it, but just ended up liking it. It’s a good game, but it’s not a patch on the original.

 

which is fine... the original is always there to play if this all turns into the next kingdom hearts.