Final Fantasy VII Rebirth [PS5] - Winter 2023

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake [PS4] - April 10th

Post by Medicine Man » Mon Apr 06, 2020 7:35 pm


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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake [PS4] - April 10th

Post by Raid » Tue Apr 07, 2020 6:13 pm

So my copy arrived today, and while I'm still somewhat in awe at the size of the Hardy-Daytona model (I'll post photos once I've fixed a couple of minor issues with it), the game is great. The combat system works well, although it's perhaps difficult at times to realise you're playing badly as there's so much going on on-screen. The first boss acts as a real teacher, as it's easy to go through the fairly substantial amount of potions you've accumulated prior. It's the second time I've done the fight as it was part of the demo too, and I don't think I used a quarter of the potions I did the first time around.

The game looks amazing, almost to the point I'm surprised the PS4 slim is capable of running it at the framerates it manages (with only the odd small hiccup every now and then). Load times are a little disappointing (though I'm coming straight out of Doom Eternal on the PC, where it's rare that anything takes more than 5 seconds to load), but they only appear when you die and between chapters so far. The difficulty is decent from the small amount of the game I've seen so far; I have had a game-over once (though it was when Cloud was on his own with no opportunity to use a Phoenix Down).

...and then there's the bit that I expect may be controversial; the story. I'm coming from only a limited grasp of the plot of the game; I know vaguely how it ends, and I've played the first Midgar section before, but years ago and not any farther. I suspect that some may be put off by the stretching out of the runtime; this is a full-length Final Fantasy game by some accounts, but only covering the first five or six hours of the original. Minor spoilers for the first few hours below:
Spoiler
You know the bit where Avalanche split up after the first reactor bombing, and then Cloud eventually meets back up by jumping onto the train they're taking? There's about 30 minutes between those two events in the remake, and I doubt it covered more than a couple in the original. And Sephiroth makes an appearance in this section, although it's not entirely clear as to what is going on; he's clearly not *actually* there, but it's so far unclear as to whether it's just Cloud's imagination or something more. I was being thorough as there are a handful of hidden materia to collect, but if even this first extension section felt a bit like padding, I'm not sure how the rest is going to play out.

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake [PS4] - April 10th

Post by Raid » Wed Apr 08, 2020 8:59 pm

Image

This thing is, as I believe the kids would say, an absolute unit. The dimensions were listed on the pre-order page so it shouldn't really be a surprise, but it's one of those occasions where my brain didn't quite register the size. Cloud is a pretty bog-standard Play Arts Kai figure (of which I own a handful), no real surprises there, but I get the feeling the face was tweaked between designing this and the game's release, as his face isn't quite so pointy in the game.

I'm now five and a half hours into the remake, and I'm still very much enjoying it. There's a huge chunk of new stuff in between the first and second reactor bombings, and they're adding quite a bit of extra depth to what were originally very minor characters from what I remember. It continues to amuse me that Wedge is voiced by the guy who played Badger in Breaking Bad, and he's continually referring to a Jess(i)e in this too.

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake [PS4] - April 10th

Post by Mantis » Thu Apr 09, 2020 5:02 pm

4 hours in so far, going at a slow pace to explore every nook and cranny, but the amount of additional padding to every section is staggering. I haven't even got to the second bombing mission yet when normally you can get back from the first one and be on your way out of the slums within less than thirty minutes. Now Sector 7 is a hub with loads of side quests and random new characters like Cloud's landlord. :lol:

Looking at this with as impartial and critical perspective as I can but the nostalgia for this game is strong with me. Not only is it one of my favourite games of all time but it also had a very profound impact on pretty much my entire childhood and teen years, some of my closest friendships I built that I still have today were off the back of this game and other titles in the FF franchise. When I first booted the remake up I just sat listening to the outstanding orchestral version of the menu theme with my speakers cranked for a good ten minutes with pretty much goosebumps all over.

Suffice to say I know the original inside out, so it's very very apparent to me when there are new bits of content added. I can even pick out new dialogue and which lines are taken from the original. It's jarring to have so much additional stuff in between but it's also nice that the entire setting has been fleshed out and had more life injected into it. Time will tell how I feel about that when I'm working my way through repetitive side quest number 50. Thankfully they've absolutely nailed the combat system, so it is a joy to play through the battles for the time being.

One immediate criticism I have which makes me all the more concerned for the apparent plot twist at the end of this installment:
Spoiler
The heavy handed use of Sephiroth right from the get go. The story was so well told in the original because he barely even gets a mention until you're well on your way out of the Midgar section. You spend the first few hours fighting Shinra as the big bad and then it becomes apparent that someone far worse is out there and that Cloud has quite the mysterious and questionable past. It's subtle and well paced. I get that they felt the need to get Sephiroth into the first part of the remake because had they followed the original plot then one of the most infamous video game bad guys of all time would barely have had any screen time for the entire game, but such on the nose story telling makes me very worried for exactly what else they're going to pull with the plot as the story progresses.
Walking around Sector 7 looking at the skybox for Midgar and the plates above with the reactors all around the city. I still can't quite believe this remake finally happened.

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake [PS4] - April 10th

Post by Mantis » Sat Apr 11, 2020 4:43 pm

Just met Aerith and am about to go to Wall Market, thirteen hours in so far and loving it still.

The combat is far more tactical than people originally gave it credit for from the demo. When you get used to deciding between dodge or block and quickly giving orders to your team without constantly swapping to them you can make short work of most enemies without losing any health. At first I was constantly swapping characters to use their ATB and the manic movement of the camera around the battlefield was making it difficult to really make sense of anything.

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake [PS4] - April 10th

Post by Raid » Sat Apr 11, 2020 5:09 pm

The comments I saw regarding combat in the demo were actually pretty positive.

One of the few gripes I have with the combat system is that it's difficult to judge how much damage characters like Barret and Tifa are doing. It'd be nice if instead of tens of single-digit values popping up it just gave a cumulative figure. To be honest it's not a huge amount better with Cloud, there are too many numbers appearing in general. Is there any sort of DPS figure hidden away in the menus somewhere?

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake [PS4] - April 10th

Post by Mantis » Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:37 pm

There doesn't appear to be a way to change it. I was struggling to make much sense of what was happening in battles with lots of fast moving enemies but found that changing the battle camera option to number 3 helped a lot, it zooms out a lot more and makes it easier to see if you're about to be knocked over when getting ready to unleash an ATB skill.

I'm not sure if zooming the camera out also changes the scaling of the DPS figures on screen, but you may find it helpful.

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake [PS4] - April 10th

Post by Wrathbone » Mon Apr 13, 2020 3:38 pm

I’ve been packing some hours into this over the weekend. As a huge fan of the original I love that it retains so much of what made it great while not being afraid to do new things. The combat works far better than I’d expected, as from previews it looked like an impossibly confusing button-masher, which really isn’t the case in the majority of fights. The voice work is largely on point, although Aerith sometimes treads that line of dorkiness between charming and insufferable. Cloud’s constant stream of adolescent, despairing sighs never fails to amuse me. Aside from the odd gripe (why do game designers think that extended treks through junkyards or sewers are fun?), it’s a fantastic game.

I’ve just finished Wall Market.
Spoiler
They really went full beans with Don Corneo. :lol: I’m slightly miffed that we didn’t get the awkward choices and quests with putting Cloud’s outfit together that the original was so famous for, but the campy techno-cabaret dance almost made up for it.

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake [PS4] - April 10th

Post by Raid » Mon Apr 13, 2020 4:05 pm

Heh, you chaps are powering your way through compared to me; I've only just done the Airbuster bossfight. Minor spoilers for that fight:
Spoiler
I think I'd perhaps overspecialised Barret into my healing tank, leaving damage dealing duties to Tifa and Cloud. Well I wasn't expecting those two to be largely useless for a good portion of the battle, so I suspect that final stage lasted twice as long as it should have. Tifa had my sole Elemental materia, obviously expecting a mechanical boss I had it tied to a Lightning materia and really wish I'd given it to Barret instead.
I feel like I'm scrambling around in the dark, character-building wise. Perhaps it doesn't make too much difference at this point, but I don't know whether I should be going for balance or going all-in on one strategy for each character. Tifa has by far the most weapon damage so I'm using her as my main damage dealer, Cloud seems to be balanced around physical and magic attacks, but Barret feels a little left behind stats-wise, but I quite like his damage sharing ability so that's why he's been my tank.

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake [PS4] - April 10th

Post by Wrathbone » Mon Apr 13, 2020 4:14 pm

I’m also not really sure what I’m doing with the weapon upgrades, but picking the right materia for a battle makes enough of a difference. That’s one minor issue I have - some battles are basically impossible if you don’t have certain materia (usually elemental magic) selected, and you don’t tend to get clues as to what you’ll need in advance, meaning you have to lose and then restart with the right materia. It’s not a disaster, it’s just clumsy design that could be improved with some better signposting as to what to prepare.

The difficulty in general is near perfect on normal. Most boss battles have had me on the ropes, as they should do, yet even when my last conscious character is down in the red, it rarely feels like all hope of winning is lost. The only battle I turned the difficulty down on was:
Spoiler
Reno, in the church
and that was only because I’d nearly won twice and couldn’t be bothered getting to that point again.

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake [PS4] - April 10th

Post by Raid » Mon Apr 13, 2020 5:22 pm

I've so far only died twice; once when I ran along a path and pulled two groups of enemies when Cloud was on his own, and once when I went into a fight having forgotten to heal up. I've definitely been under threat of dying a number of times, though the Airbuster fight was the only time when I felt I could have died without the desperate filling of ATB gauges so I could use some healing spells or items (and man did I go through a lot of high-potions in that fight). I do get the feeling that a second playthrough will be a lot easier (that was certainly my experience with the first boss), because as you say, it's difficult to know how to set your party up on a first go.

I'll give the camera settings a go, that sounds like a good call on making sense of everything.

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake [PS4] - April 10th

Post by Mantis » Mon Apr 13, 2020 5:28 pm

I don't think character builds are really going to open up much until the end game, materia slots are too limited and characters come and go too much in the party to have a proper formation at the moment. A lot of the gear is broadly the same in terms of stats and slots too.

The best thing I've found is that I always keep fire, lightning, ice and air on my active party so that I can use Assess on an enemy and I'm properly equipped to stagger them. Even better if you know their weakness before going into a fight as you can put the materia linked with Elemental on your weapon and build the pressure gauge just through attacks though as Wrath says it can be a pain when you go into a lot of fights blind.

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake [PS4] - April 10th

Post by Raid » Tue Apr 21, 2020 5:42 pm

I've had a good chunk of time to play over the last few days, and I have to say that going into fights completely blind is still a bit infuriating. The last fight in the first coliseum bit was needlessly difficult because I was missing one of the materia I needed, and frankly I think I should have just quit out and restarted rather than SOLDIERing on (heheh). A game shouldn't make you want to quit before you're beaten. I'm sure it's probably made worse by the fact that I've only had two characters to play with for hours now; having three sets of materia slots would mean I wouldn't need to pick and choose quite so much.

I do feel like I was a bit hasty to say how technically accomplished the game was. It looks phenomenally good in the Bombing Run mission, but soon after you start to notice some irritating technical issues. There's a repeating problem wherein textures don't seem to load properly and you're just given a blurry mess instead. It also occasionally uses very low-detail assets in the foreground (the flowers in Aerith's garden for example). Other than that there are some frequent irritations, for example getting the icon that signifies a character or object can be interacted with, but needing to position your character in a very specific, very close position before you can activate it. It's one of those games where you need to wait for character animations to happen, making their movements sluggish, and it means you sometimes need to do this two or three times before you can interact.

I'm thoroughly enjoying this still; the new content hasn't put me off at all since those first few side quests in the Sector 7 Slums. When treated as its own entity, it's a pretty typical modern JRPG, but I could still understand if fans of the original didn't appreciate the pacing.

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake [PS4] - April 10th

Post by Mantis » Tue Apr 21, 2020 11:30 pm

I'm currently working my way through all the added content before the Shinra building and am starting to think that the majority of this bonus content could have been cut in favour of just making the actual original game. Aside from the cool added story stuff for Jesse before the Reactor 5 bombing and the really cool introduction to Midgar following the first bombing, there are a lot of sections which are essentially just long winded dungeon grinds with totally inconsequential minor NPCs.

Confronting bandits on a long diversion through Sector 5 and 6 before Wall Market, the sewers after Corneo, immediately followed by a lengthy Train Graveyard, the underground section following the plate collapse, the sewers before climbing the plate to rescue Aerith; all of these sections are simply drawn out very linear dungeon crawls that contribute bugger all to the story. I don't mind the hubs that send you back out over old ground to do side quests so much because at least they introduce different characters and gameplay elements, plus there aren't really all that many throughout the entire game. But these other sections just drag the game out and distract from what actually attracts me to FF7 in the first place, the story.

I'm also still really enjoying it, but my pace has slowed down a lot now that I'm hitting the wall of story pacing. As much as I really love seeing how well the characters have all been realised with modern animations and voices, when this is all said and done I get the feeling that I'll still prefer the original.

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake [PS4] - April 10th

Post by Raid » Wed Apr 22, 2020 9:09 pm

I'm spending the time in those long-winded dungeon sections to do things like making sure I have all of my weapon abilities learned, managing my equipment and materia to make that easier. I've just done the sewer section immediately after the Wall Market section (incidentally, the Honey Bee Inn bit was amazing). I just love the combat system in this; so long as there are a good number of fights, I don't mind them being a bit pointless otherwise.

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