Final Fantasy VII Remake

[Kevvy Metal]

[Alan Stock]

The argument about elemental weaknesses is quite interesting because it's an underlying issue in a lot of JRPGs. Fortunately I scraped by without the appropriate "strong" materia for most of the fights, there was only one where it really hurt not to have the appropriate materia. I think they balanced it well in that regard, it would be hard to throw it out as it was core to the original game. Respeccing your party after failing a battle is a big part of the later game in the original, and a core part of the strategy is tinkering with your setup to optimise it for the current fight.

 

Of course that doesn't address the problem of having to go in blind and be punished for not having the appropriate element equipped on the first try. At least in FFVII remake you can survive without it in most fights - but I've played other RPGs (I am Setsuna being one recent example) where it's Game Over without the correct spells equipped. I always maxxed out my materia slots on weapons first so I could have an element for each party member to allieviate the issue. In a way its no different to playing other games where you have to learn bosses attack patterns, die and reload with the knowledge you gained.

 

I don't have an easy solution but materia swapping in-battle could be one (overly complicated) solution, maybe as an ATB action or something. The issue isn't a big one in this game, it never seriously hurt me and was more of a nice bonus when I could pull it off, but its a minor niggle in RPGs in general. Problem is I wouldn't want to sacrifice the gameplay of character setup, choosing between elements and the variety in the game in order to get rid of it.

 

On a similar subject, big props to the developers for including the "hold button during cutscene to open menu before battle begins" feature. What a great way to allow them to throw in battles after cutscenes without screwing you over. Even though it does give you a heads up there's a fight coming immediately afterwards.

 

 

[Alan Stock]

On 23/04/2020 at 09:42, Kevvy Metal said:

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. 

 

 

 

 

 

I've been watching Maximillian's playthrough as well. He's great. He's a massive FF7 original fan and is so enthusiastic about this game its infectious. He knows the source material so well and it's so dear to him that the game really tugs at all his emotions. He's also very understanding of the changes they made in the remake and he does a really good job of voicing his opinions and feelings throughout. Seeing his reactions to key moments, the music, new characters and reworked sections is a joy. I had such hazy memories of the Midgar section its great to watch someone who knows it like the back of their hand and their reaction to it all. On top of that he's entertaining and intelligent, a good Youtuber find!

 

I discovered him when I was looking for FF7 demo reactions and it turns out he had a famous reaction (with his friends) to the very first Remake teaser video. There's a great video on his Youtube where he explains how he was invited to the first showings of the game with other press and the developers. In the demonstration (just 10 press memebers there) is the director, producer and designers. He notices they are looking at him before the demo and talking to each other and smiling. He's curious but nothing comes of it until after the demo. When he goes to get a autograph with the devs, one of them asks to get a photo with him and the other devs. Flattered but confused, Max agrees. Then the dev tells him that whenever the team was in development hell and really struggling to make the right choices, they would send around Max's FFVII remake teaser video reaction to inspire them - the excited, over the top reaction. Max gets all emotional when he recalls it in the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OalvWEJCZBA). Great little story and what an honour.

 

[Kevvy Metal]

3 minutes ago, Alan Stock said:

 

I've been watching Maximillian's playthrough as well. He's great. He's a massive FF7 original fan and is so enthusiastic about this game its infectious. He knows the source material so well and it's so dear to him that the game really tugs at all his emotions. He's also very understanding of the changes they made in the remake and he does a really good job of voicing his opinions and feelings throughout. Seeing his reactions to key moments, the music, new characters and reworked sections is a joy. I had such hazy memories of the Midgar section its great to watch someone who knows it like the back of their hand and their reaction to it all. On top of that he's entertaining and intelligent, a good Youtuber find!

 

I discovered him when I was looking for FF7 demo reactions and it turns out he had a famous reaction (with his friends) to the very first Remake teaser video. There's a great video on his Youtube where he explains how he was invited to the first showings of the game with other press and the developers. In the demonstration (just 10 press memebers there) is the director, producer and designers. He notices they are looking at him before the demo and talking to each other and smiling. He's curious but nothing comes of it until after the demo. When he goes to get a autograph with the devs, one of them asks to get a photo with him and the other devs. Flattered but confused, Max agrees. Then the dev tells him that whenever the team was in development hell and really struggling to make the right choices, they would send around Max's FFVII remake teaser video reaction to inspire them - the excited, over the top reaction. Max gets all emotional when he recalls it in the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OalvWEJCZBA). Great little story and what an honour.

 

 

Yes absolutely, 

 

I'm really enjoying Maximillian's videos on the sections I've already played. He's into it and he know's action games inside out so it's interesting to hear his take. 

 

His spoiler-free review on the game is really, really good too. I share his sentiments as well. 

He makes the comparison to the Yakuza games. Like Square-enix used the Yakuza games as a bit of a template for this remake, which is interesting. I also agree with him that the level design is so much like the original almost to a fault, so it's all quite basic, but still reasonably fun to traverse through. 

 

[cohen205]

Another thumbs up for max here. I love his FF7 videos. 

[Vorgot]

Hate the derail the thread but it's in a good cause!

 

Going with my plan of playing the original before remake, it's gone on sale on PS4 today so I grabbed it. I will definitely use speed up, but will turn off random battles leave me under levelled? I love JRPGs so random battles are kind of a given, but if I can skip them it would obviously help. But then don't want to be squished and have to go and random battle for hours.

 

Give me a while, honestly I'll be here to talk remake as I loved the demo but want to finish the original first

[NecroMorrius]

On 23/04/2020 at 13:43, Retroguy said:

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.

Fair enough, I really think it’s charitable to assume most of these quirks are intentional though. 

[NecroMorrius]

On 23/04/2020 at 13:10, Thor said:

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. 

It’s 20ish at instant gaming but it’s out of stock. The switch version has some extra features I think, but it’s 30fps at sub 1080p docked. 

[Thor]

32 minutes ago, Moz said:

It’s 20ish at instant gaming but it’s out of stock. The switch version has some extra features I think, but it’s 30fps at sub 1080p docked. 

As I said in the FF XII thread, I bought it on steam last night, but got a refund after an hour. I'll maybe get it when it's in some daft steam sale for less than £15, but at £35 it's daylight robbery. The graphics are horribly dated, I couldn't get past that with the premium price-point.

[wretcherd]

@Alan Stock @Kevvy Metal @cohen205

Max has just done a spoiler discussion with the Easy Allies on their youtube channel.

Well worth a watch once you've finished the game, his insight is second to none.

[BadgerFarmer]

1 hour ago, Vorgot said:

Hate the derail the thread but it's in a good cause!

 

Going with my plan of playing the original before remake, it's gone on sale on PS4 today so I grabbed it. I will definitely use speed up, but will turn off random battles leave me under levelled? I love JRPGs so random battles are kind of a given, but if I can skip them it would obviously help. But then don't want to be squished and have to go and random battle for hours.

 

Give me a while, honestly I'll be here to talk remake as I loved the demo but want to finish the original first

It's best not to overuse the feature, otherwise you will end up underpowered with low level materia. You'll also miss out on a fun combat system. Most ordinary battles are pretty easy and once you get the hang of it the 3x speed up will see them done in seconds. Much better to rely on that, I think.

[Vorgot]

14 minutes ago, BadgerFarmer said:

It's best not to overuse the feature, otherwise you will end up underpowered with low level materia. You'll also miss out on a fun combat system. Most ordinary battles are pretty easy and once you get the hang of it the 3x speed up will see them done in seconds. Much better to rely on that, I think.

Cheers for that

[cohen205]

1 hour ago, wretcherd said:

@Alan Stock @Kevvy Metal @cohen205

Max has just done a spoiler discussion with the Easy Allies on their youtube channel.

Well worth a watch once you've finished the game, his insight is second to none.

 Yeah, I’ve had a brief watch of it. It’s 2 and a half hours long! 
 

He has some very interesting theories on where it might go next and his ‘level 3’ talk is fascinating. 
 

 

[Hexx]

Anyone that's done hard - is there a suggested order of difficulty or just do them in order?

[NecroMorrius]

Those tips I posted a while back make a positive difference. I actually set the camera distance to 3 in and out of battle and it feels much less claustrophobic, you can see around you to some degree now. Changing lock-on targeting to the Dpad allows you to look around with the right stick in tactical mode (one of my complaints from earlier) which helps you to determine quickly if something is flying at you from offscreen, without having to pick a spell and cycle through all the enemies. It’s not a game changer but it does help, why it’s not the default I have no idea. It makes more sense to cycle through the playable characters with up and down on the dpad, they’re arranged vertically onscreen in the bottom right. 

[sprite]

16 hours ago, Vorgot said:

Cheers for that

I agree with @BadgerFarmer. What I would suggest is to resist the urge to skip random battles through the course of natural story progression, if you are backtracking for any random reasons of your own, maybe consider it.   
 

You don’t need to grind a lot in FFVII, but there are certain places it’s worth doing to beef your party up a little also.  Much easier with 3x speed!

[Vorgot]

13 minutes ago, sprite said:

I agree with @BadgerFarmer. What I would suggest is to resist the urge to skip random battles through the course of natural story progression, if you are backtracking for any random reasons of your own, maybe consider it.   
 

You don’t need to grind a lot in FFVII, but there are certain places it’s worth doing to beef your party up a little also.  Much easier with 3x speed!

 

Thanks, that was the way I thought I would play anyway, I don't mind random battles too much!

[p b]

And it's over. See you in 4 years or so... 

[NecroMorrius]

@Thor (and anyone else interested).

 

Just got an alert to say FFXII: The Zodiac Age is currently half price on steam, £17.49. 
 

They probably noticed me hovering over the buy button 50 times a day but not biting. 

[Thor]

15 minutes ago, Moz said:

@Thor (and anyone else interested).

 

Just got an alert to say FFXII: The Zodiac Age is currently half price on steam, £17.49. 
 

They probably noticed me hovering over the buy button 50 times a day but not biting. 

Cheers! I did wonder if steam would follow PSN in discounting it. Worth a shot at that price.

[NecroMorrius]

2 minutes ago, Thor said:

Cheers! I did wonder if steam would follow PSN in discount g it. Worth a shot at that price.

Welcome, it’s on sale on Eshop and PSN too I think. 
 

(edit, nope, it’s £45 on eshop! Haha)

[Thor]

What's Eshop?  And yes, it's £19.99 in the PSN sale.

[kensei]

 Nintendi's store. It was reduced recently but has went back up. 

[David Kenny]

Just got to the end of Chapter 9 and have to say the Honeybee Inn section was simply superb.

 

Spoiler

It would have been really easy to get the cross dressing bit very, very wrong. But it was done in such a positive way, without any judgement, or sneering condescension. I was grinning from ear to ear through the whole thing.

 

[spanx]

I’m at the bit where...

 

Spoiler

Shinra is attacking the plate pillar to drop sector 7

It’s got a bit better, and had a couple of quite fun boss battles but I’m still not really feeling this. It feels like I’m perpetually on the brink of it kicking in to action but then it drops you back in to another cookie cutter set of ladders and boring scenery. It’s gaming blue balls. Something is keeping me plodding on though, so although I can’t put my finger on it , it IS getting g something right. 

[sprite]

So I just watched this theory about the game.  Huge spoilers for FF7R, FF7.  Finish both or don’t cry at me  

 

 

 

 

Aerith is obviously more aware of events than anyone else in the story, but the really interesting little thing is how she starts and ends the original, and starts this game.  Basically theory is that Aerith at the beginning of remake is an Aerith who we saw at the end of FF7, opening her eyes at the mako pipe.

 

She is weirdly prescient throughout the whole of Remake and it never really got explained how/why.  Did she time travel? Had she returned to the planet only to be reborn...?

 

hmmmmm

 

[Mr. Gerbik]

Nearing the end of Chapter 16 now, I got delayed for a bit of combat fun in the

Spoiler

Colosseum and later on in the Shinra Battle Holodeck

Question for those who've finished: did you finish the game with everyone at level 50 or is that something you work towards in NG+?

 

And omg I just spotted (chapter 16 massive huge spoiler)

Spoiler

Red XIII!!! Sitting in Hojo's lab - no button nearby to free him though and that's where I had to quit for the day.

I'm really enjoying it after the awfulness of Chapter 8 and the first half of 9, but I don't know if I like it enough to bother with Hard on NG+.

Spoiler

The game has also improved dramatically now that Aerith has fucked off and I'm rolling around with Tifa and Barret dream team again. I hope the game gives me the option to leave Aerith behind permanently! What a terrible character

 

[BadgerFarmer]

I wasn't close to level 50 when I finished it. In NG+ you can get there in no time.

[Hexx]

2 hours ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

  Hide contents

The game has also improved dramatically now that Aerith has fucked off and I'm rolling around with Tifa and Barret dream team again. I hope the game gives me the option to leave Aerith behind permanently! What a terrible character

 

 

Aerith is so much better than Barrett

 

[NecroMorrius]

I can’t tell if I’ve hit another stream of highs or turned a corner on this, but I’ve really really enjoyed playing it for most of today. I’m near the end, the fights are ramping up nicely and I’m finding ways around the things which were bugging me before. It’s a game of high highs and low lows, but the anxiety of the unknown has worn off and I’m really enjoying it for what it is now. Doing the optional combat challenges really helps you to understand some of the quirks and find some of the intentional little tricks. Having more materia slots makes a big difference too - I’m finding I don’t really need to assess in fights, I have most of the active abilities and different elementals equipped and I can figure out easily enough what the weaknesses of each enemy are. 
 

It occurred to me that some of the stuff which was annoying me, for example whiffed projectiles, might be from Dissidia? The amount of times a projectile doesn’t hit has become about equal to the amount of times I’ve been able to dodge them on purpose (made much easier with the tweaks I listed upthread) so that’s pretty good. 
 

The lack of gambit annoys the proper Euro fantasy strategy player in me, but I have seen the AI carry out gambit style actions like changing focus to attack an enemy binding one of the team. They’re not completely stupid when left alone as it seemed for a long while. So that’s good.

 

There are a few little tricks with each playable character to extend combos, remove frames and so on. I’ve found I’m gravitating towards Tifa the most by far, with her full complement of abilities she’s an absolute beast for dishing endless damage and chaining combos. Cloud is the least fun to control so I loaded him up with spells and magic attack and treat him like a mage.
 

The best thing about this though is the music. It was always a great score anyway, but the various treatments and recurring motifs popping up in unusual places make it a stone cold 11/10 masterpiece of a soundtrack.