Final fucking fantasy 22 3/4

[pacobird]

I mean, I guess the implication is that after the war Shinra just reduced their kingdom/lands to a fucking tiny little tourist trap town

IIRC it's never explicit but it seems like it was done in a way where it wouldn't be lost on a Japanese audience

probably the closest the game gets to actual real life parallels as opposed to general metaphor

[Brantly B.]

The fighting population of Wutai got pretty thoroughly genocided in Crisis Core, mostly by dopey Zack.

[Thad]

The fighting population of Wutai got pretty thoroughly genocided in Crisis Core, mostly by dopey Zack.

Yeah, the Wutai namedrop in the trailer suggests we'll be seeing a little bit more in the way of references to the war (and the parts we already saw in Crisis Core). Plus there's a new SOLDIER in the trailer; one assumes he fought in the war, too.

I wouldn't be surprised if we saw Cloud fighting in the war in unreliable-narrator flashback. While we don't get any of Cloud's recaps until just after Midgar in the original game, that's one of those things it makes sense to move up if we're looking at a full-length game set entirely in Midgar. (They could still hold off on the Nibelheim sequence until the next game; we've seen Sephiroth walking through fire in the previews already, but that doesn't necessarily mean we'll see the full sequence leading up to it. It could be an isolated image seen out-of-context in Cloud's freakouts, instead.)

I'm also curious if they'll make it more obvious this time that Cloud's an unreliable narrator. The original game dropped clues -- Tifa reacting with a bunch of "..." responses and suchlike when he told his story -- but it didn't lean too hard on them; it kept them subtle until the reveal. The remake could do the same, or it could assume its audience already knows the twist is coming and foreshadow it harder.

[pacobird]

I've always kind of loved how the game takes you through hours of unreliable narration through flashback and ends it with Cloud saying he has no memory of actually fighting Sephiroth and remarking there's no logical way he could have beaten him, only to later reveal he did fight Sephiroth and it was the only genuinely heroic thing he'd ever done.

[Brantly B.]

God, I can't believe I just realized this, but chances are really good that we're going to end up getting entire ported bits from Crisis Core with Cloud's model swapped in for Zack.

[Thad]

Welp, succumbed to the hype, downloaded the FF7 demo, put on a thumb splint, and played through it.

I loved the presentation, notwithstanding all the racism. Seriously, it's cringeworthy enough that they got away with Barret in 1997, but 2020? Really?

But the music and, aside from the whole "Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder but unironically" part, the cutscenes are fucking lovely. The opening sequence -- I was 13 years old again. Or whatever age I was when I got a PlayStation and a copy of Tobal No. 1 for Christmas and played through the original demo. 14? Somewhere in there. Anyway, it's fucking great. But unfortunately, that's the pinnacle of the whole experience. Much like that original demo, I suppose.

The gameplay...was a fucking slog. Just tedious. Took too long to get anywhere, and combat consisted of "hold Square, unless the enemy has a gimmick, in which case, press X, see that all your menu options are grayed out for some fucking reason that the game doesn't explain, cancel out, wait a few seconds, and try again, and of course characters shout inane catchphrases the whole time." There's a "classic" mode where supposedly you don't have to hold Square to attack. It does not work very well.

I guess on the plus side I just saved myself the cost of buying the game, and then all the subsequent episodes? But what a fucking disappointment. I was pretty firmly in the "come on, give it a chance, it may be different but that doesn't mean it's bad" camp. But now I've transitioned over to the "yeah, it's bad and I want my damn menus back" camp.

I mean, by all means try it yourselves, don't take my word for it; it's free, assuming the size of the damn download doesn't push you past your bandwidth cap. But this might be one to just watch the LPs. And I never watch LPs. (OTOH, that surround sound is amazing and it won't be the same without it.)

And my fucking thumb hurts.

[pacobird]

yeah, i'm going with the langrisser remake instead

[Brantly B.]

Well, here we are. Final Fantasy 7 Remake is

out.

Not much of a spoiler but I'm tagging it anyway:The most surreal thing about playing this game at this moment in time is how everybody's reaction to the big disaster is to go outside and congregate.

[Friday]

AERIS DIES

[Friday]

there it's done it's out of the way it's over you don't have to dread it anymore two months from now when someone thinks "oh man you know what would be funny" but then they see i did it already day one, ground zero

[MarsDragon]

YOU'RE TOO LATE

[Thursday, April 9, 2020] [10:13:10 PM PDT] <Brentai> Should we start up a channel for 7R spoilers or something?
[Thursday, April 9, 2020] [10:13:39 PM PDT] <MarsDragon> Aeris dies, Brentai
[Thursday, April 9, 2020] [10:13:52 PM PDT] <Brentai> Fuck you.
[Thursday, April 9, 2020] [10:14:05 PM PDT] <Brentai> How dare you.
[Thursday, April 9, 2020] [10:14:17 PM PDT] <MarsDragon> I followed my heart

[Friday]

damn my slow fingers

[Niku]

who the fuck is aeris

[Niku]

Also counterpoint to Thad above; personally I am loving the combat in the game. It's a more refined version of Kingdom Hearts, so that shouldn't be too much of a surprise. There are some aspects I don't love (I want to play as Tifa primarily for my melee, so I can set Tifa as my party leader which means that every time combat starts I will be playing as Tifa, but that means the camera will abruptly zip over to her as soon as combat begins and then zip back over into Cloud whenever it ends making for strange transitions of placement) but overall the level of customization you have over your own preferences is pretty great. I can turn Cloud into sort of an AOE machine by putting on the materia that turns your attack into a sweeping swing every time you dodge, or put a provoke materia on Tifa or Cloud and hang back with Barret or Aerith while they taunt enemies and I sling spells, or do the actual fun thing and plau as Tifa and just beat the everloving shit out of stuff while spamming up her combo skill and her self-healing Materia she starts with to kick everything in the fucking face and never dying and also her kicks are made of electric. Also by giving characters unique skills tied to their weapons, it sidesteps some of the "just materia-bots" problems with the original game's character diversity.

The downside is of course that a lot of the flexibility and customization is a slow drip, as in pretty much all Final Fantasy games; the more unique skills and options to change your strategies are mostly tied around materia, and you're getting only a few of those alterations in each chapter as you progress. You're also limited by whoever happens to be in your party at any given time, and you won't get the full crew of four (such huge!) until at least Chapter .. 11? Maybe? I'm in Chapter 8 of 18 and it hasn't happened yet. The game would benefit fucking IMMENSELY from FFXII's Gambit system for anyone who doesn't like to micromanage three characters at a time during action sequences; it would be infinitely superior to the "Classic" mode they have instead. Pretty much the only "programming" you can do for your other party members is slapping Auto-Cure onto one of them to make them automatically heal a party member in danger, because the game really wants you to constantly be bouncing between your characters (their ATB gauge -- the thing that makes your menu options work or not, because you can't even use a potion if you don't have at least one bar of ATB -- crawwwwls up if you're not actively controlling a character).

I just got to the point in the game where you can get an optional summon Materia through a sidequest by going into a fucking shinra VR simulation and beating the crap out of shiva and apparently, you can do this with whichever party you've got at the time. But somehow my dumb brain just figured, because I found it at a point where I only had Cloud in my party, that you had to do it solo. It took almost an hour for me to beat the fight to finish the sidequest but it really pushed me to use the dodging and blocking and micro-managing my materia and my ATB in a way that reminded me of a good character action game or a WoW boss. I'm curious if the game will continue to have that level of challenge (most regular fights are over before they begin, but most bosses are pretty well tuned to keep you on your toes) as I continue to level up and get more options or if it'll be relegated to options or hard mode.

Non Combat opinions: Barret is simultaneously the best and worst part of this remake. He has a moment of potent rage for every moment of head-slappingly fucking dumb racism. Aerith finally gets to be the spritely, goofy weirdo she always has been in a way that's obvious enough that some folks might finally stop thinking she's just "the boring good girl one". The additions to the story thus far range from "uh, okay" (new SOLDIER characters really bring the Advent Children vibe) to "pretty good" (Shinra's motivations regarding Avalanche) to "great" (Jessie gets so much more characterization, even if she also seems to be a Hornt Flirt Machine to placate all the people who somehow think Tifa got LESS fetishy despite the addition of thigh high socks) to "oh my god you fuckers should have just remade FFVI" (there are some ghost motherfuckers that haunt the game throughout that are literally just the FFVI ghost sprite come to life or i guess death even if everyone on the internet calls them dementors they're the fucking FFVI ghosts)

Most importantly, the game is still fucking weird. It's not weird in the same ways as the original, but I feel confident we're going to get snowboarding somewhere down the line because by the end of Chapter 4 things have already left reality so thoroughly that it's obvious Square is still gonna Square. I'm excited to get to Wall Market.

Biggest disappointment is I think every character who ISN'T in this chapter is going to be so much more interesting to play as whenever we get Final Fantasy VII Remake 2, which is definitely going to be the game's name because Final Fantasy VII Remake is literally the dumbest thing you could fucking call a remake that is only part one of a series of remake episodes.

[pacobird]

THERE ARE SO MANY CATS IN THIS GAME

THE CATS OUTSIDE JESSIE'S HOUSE ARE MORE FULLY-RENDERED THAN THE QUEST NPCS

[pacobird]

I like that the characters finally have some room to breathe. I like that, given the range of options they had in fully-characterizing Cloud, they decided against just making him an asshole like Squall. I like that Tifa treats Cloud like a charity case, but not in a way the audience would understand or recognize if they hadn't played the original game.

[Niku]

I.

Uh.

Fuck.

Well I finished it after about three 12 hour play sessions.

Notably there are some specific alterations to this section of the story that actually CAN be constituted as spoilers, so just a heads up that if you’re interested or going to play this remake, don’t assume you can just read whatever article about it because you’ve played the original. Unless of course you don’t care.

[Friday]

Well I finished it after about three 12 hour play sessions.

What the fuck are you doing Niku this isn't ek4

[Niku]

IM LOCKED IN THE HOUSE OKAY

my wife has never played or seen or known anything about ff7 before. her review:

“why do all the boys look the same
aerith and tifa seem pretty gay
doggie!!”

SPOILER ONLY FOR FRIDAY’S EYES but also kind of actually a spoiler but only if you really didn’t think they were gonna do this: the kingdom hearts 3 sephiroth fight didn’t get forgotten they just put it in this game instead

[Büge]