Final Fantasy VII: Kind Of REDACTED In Retrospect

Pretty cool that Cloud had a cell phone back in 1997!

A big theme of this game is selective memories too. This game probably influenced Inception just as much as The Matrix.

http://i.imgur.com/lIi949H.gif

How many character models are there? 3? I think the CGI ones are the same as the battle ones but there are definitely some CGI scenes that use the super-deformed lego style models.

At any rate, it's funny that the battle models are the most 'realistic' and yet the battle is the most absurd, biology/physic/religion-breaking batshit part of the game!

have you gotten KOTR yet

It's weird to read people surprised that newcomers enjoy this game, with it's 'dated' graphics, yet you never read anyone say that Super Mario Bros. 3 has dated graphics.

well the appeal of (and advertising campaign for) ff7 when it came out was mostly about a polished level of presentation which hadnt been seen before. smb3 wasnt coming on that 'just give the guys who make cartridges a cigarette and a blindfold' tip

it's kind of ground zero for modern sandbox gaming

lol

^ hah i was gonna make a similar argument - FF7 was what everybody thought killed the n64 at the time (though looking back, i think everybody fondly remembers goldeneye), and it was largely because the ad campaigns only featured FULL MOTION VIDEO which the n64 COULD NOT DO because it was CARTRIDGE BASED

Hah Goldeneye. I remember playing that (and having a lot of fun in multiplayer) but just thinking "Man, Doom is WAYYYY better than this, and it was years ago."

FFVII is VERY ahead of it's time. For good and for bad. I always thought QTE's were some modern variation on Interactive Movies, that craze that was supposed to hit before The Internet came out and destroyed every VCR with a loud eeeee-rrrrrrrr modem death shriek. Constructing an interactive movie was one of the end goals of the optical media revolution.

I haven't gotten KOTR yet. I plan on it! Maybe a Gold Chocobo as well! I'm probably near the end of Disc 2 and wondering if I haven't effed myself over by not doing certain things in time. There were only 3 Huge Materia in Cosmo Canyon when I was there recently, I think I may have missed the one on the train. Was that when Cid had to alternate the brakes or something? I'm pretty sure I never caught up with the other train, or really had a clue what was going on.

I have to say it is nice to not have heroes that steal every single thing that is not nailed down to the floor! Ultima I am looking at you!

Also, they do give some story time to the female characters here, even though Aeris is somewhat of a Woman in a Fridge. I think Tifa saved Cloud twice and spent time as the captain of the airship (?). Also when she got tied up she freed herself with a cool minigame puzzle.

Ok wait I need a Gold Chocobo for the KOTR. Ok. Thing is I think I sold my Steal Materia. Well I can buy one at the Gold Saucer, and I love playing that Sub minigame (seriously, this is probably the best sub game that ever came out for 32-bit systems).

I mean, I can buy the Carob Nut at the Gold Saucer? Do I need that to get the Gold Chocobo?

Hah Goldeneye. I remember playing that (and having a lot of fun in multiplayer) but just thinking "Man, Doom is WAYYYY better than this, and it was years ago."

Watch yourself - I made basically this statement on the ILX video game ballot poll thread and was nearly run out of town on a rail.

Goldeneye is ALL ABOUT multiplayer tho

relevant

http://ryanhemsworth.bandcamp.com/track/battle

sorry to be that guy but can we change the title of this thread? it's not really cool to use a word when intellectually disabled people are offended by it (no matter the context) and are asking people not to use it

http://www.r-word.org/

you're right about Doom vs. Goldeneye, but it was much harder to set up a LAN party and networking over DOS vs. some drinks and a bunch of your idiot friends over to GODDAMNIT ODDJOB

I also would endorse changing the thread title.

kind of treeship in retrospect

otm. Maybe "Kind of Silly in Retrospect"?

I just finished Disc 02 (Hojo was pretty easy for me!) so i think Disc 3 is just the last dungeon + Sephiroth battle + long FMV ending? I will probably goof around, get my limit breaks maxed, collect missing materia, play tons of sub game missions, raise/race Chocobo, etc. before attempting the end.

Is that last cave the best place to level up? I did go in there for a minute and some weird gargoyle guys kicked my ass promptly.

there are 41 ILX thread titles containing the word "retarded", although the practice does seem to have tapered off somewhat in recent years

Barenaked Ladies thread probably the worst outstanding example, in terms of things that remain an active part of the hivemind.

enjoyed this revive. tho the series is generally execrable, the "final fantasy & philosophy" book had one interesting article about the environmental themes of the game & shinto. a good bit on the sector 7 cutscene w/ president shinra looking down listening to... haydn? that was a great scene

Haydn's The Creation!

yeah! that was a pretty nifty deployment. all the eden/fall stuff was interesting iirc, tho I was 11 when I played this

I'm in the final dungeon. I actually made it to Jenova (WTF giant naked woman/vaginal space-brain from Wayne Coyne's infinite nightmare) and Sephiroth before OMG what is going on, why is the planet Pluto on the screen? After that, 5 minutes of destroying the solar system, only to have it not completely kill me! Hahahah soooooo awesome. I intend on grinding a bit in that last dungeon and then traveling around, beating the weapons, getting a Gold Chocobo, etc. 55+ hours of play so far. What a game!

It's funny to read reviews of the FF series and have them compared to each other in any way. I mean it is basically a formula, a huge world with sprawling characters, lots of side quests, etc. Airships. Chocobos. Summons. Etc. I played IV and VI (on the SNES) but can't remember any of the stories at all. I think VII has a big hand up in that department because the story is actually about a small group of people that all know each other and all have a past together. When I think back to IV it's "Oh, here's King _______ of the kingdom of _______ and he needs your help". Maybe my memory is screwed.

The 16-bit RPGs are my main source of comparison, so I think VII is a HUGE step up. Graphics were always horribly dull in those games, just made out of tiles, and it's a huge breath of fresh air to have ornate picture-book ruined forests and snowy wastelands to trace your path through. That and the floating camera that gets all cinematic during the battles. At the very least it makes grinding a hell of a lot more fun.

Oh, and I'm convinced that the basketball minigame is the single greatest basketball videogame simulator ever. It really is all about knowing the precise microsecond at which is let go of the ball.

I probably spent at least 5 hours playing that damn b-ball game.

No regrets!

Adam, you should replay VI! Maybe not as batshit as VII but there's tons to love.

VI is the consensus pick for best FF, I thought

Yeah that's what I heard. Any reasons why that is? I know the opera scene is amazing and all but that's like one scene out of a long game.

I'll probably replay it, but my new roommate has FFVIII and I haven't played many post-16-bit RPGs so that might be fun. Not sure I'll replay VII for a bit, I now have a Gold Chocobo but still have to kill the Weapons and Sephiroth, and by the time that is done, I'll probably have spent as much time on this game as I did playing through Skyrim 2.5 times.

man I hate that I wrote this thread title

lol

ugh I hate that I titled this thread this

― Wes HI DEREson (HI DERE), Monday, March 9, 2009 8:53 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, opera scene probably my least favorite part of FF6!

It's just big, so much world, so many side quests, so many characters. Actually, probably too many on the last, but there's a strong core of 6-10 leads who are totally interesting IMO. Within the 16-bit palette you also get a real sense of a variety of environments and so on. I mean, I haven't seriously played it all the way through since I got it on emulator in the late 90s, so I don't know how completely this holds up. But I remember finding it broad and chewy. More to find and do than Chrono Trigger, though muddier-looking, and with some seriously flawed sections and certainly a less unique story.

Yeah that's what I heard. Any reasons why that is? I know the opera scene is amazing and all but that's like one scene out of a long game.
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Friday, November 1, 2013 8:50 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

best villain, arguably the best music, arguably the best easter eggs/hidden items.

man I hate that I wrote this thread title

then ask a mod to change it! i'd do it myself but my influence is not nearly so leveled up as yours

i've been playing ff6 lately actually. my first final fantasy. (i did almost beat super mario rpg: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN STARS as a kid tho.) some of the sprite art is really great; the characters are really emotive for how tiny and cramped they are. peanuts-esque use of space. i partic loved the part where you pick up the guy who just saw his entire city poisoned, and you flee through the forest and wind up on the train full of ghosts going to the underworld, and it feels cartoony and random and dumb until finally after you disembark the refugee sees all the people from his town, including his wife and kids, climbing numbly aboard the train, and chases after it as it pulls away, and ends up standing on the edge of the empty platform staring offscreen with his lil sprite head hung. i thought that was terrific. the opera scene i knew was coming so some of its impact was diluted but the wordless synthesized 16-bit singing kind of blew my mind.

idk if i can finish it tho. it just goes on and on.

yeah i was not a kid when i played that scene and got pretty emo about it

Didn't they re-release it recently?

Mario RPG. Man, I've NEVER played that. Always heard it was real good too!

SMRPG is fantastic & fun

But too easy. Still enjoyable.

My terrible shame is that I have NEVER beat FFVI!

^ i share in your shame! i was playing on an emu but w/o a controller and i couldn't do sabin's blitzes on the keyboard and i didnt want to kick him out of my party because i felt terrible abt it so i just quit altogether

pro-tip: you can do the blitzes very very slowly

press & hold left key
press & hold down key
release left key
press & hold right key
release down key
etc. etc.

fools, get a gamepad for your PC

on the emulated PSX version on VITA you can substitute either adjacent direction for diagonals and it still works, not sure if this was ever true of the other versions

Like, with the one where you have to do a hadouken d,df,f motion you can actually just press d, f, f OR d, d, f and it still comes out

I have also not finished FF6 despite starting it twice

the deathtrain bit is definitely weirdly powerful, poor little guy all jumping up and down with an exclamation mark over his head because his family got sent to the underworld

Any particular version of VI I should look for? I played the SNES III back in the day, but if there is a recent re-release with a better translation that would be ideal.

Yeah, I got an Afterglow Xbox 360 controller and it is USB and plugs right in and works with pretty much any game except some of the early GTA's where it WILL NOT map the analog sticks to the camera so it is pretty much impossible to play. Plus there is a button that turns your room into a gamma radiation isolation chamber (via lighting up insanely strong green LEDs).

the original VI translation is great! loaded for bear, even! (because the translator took strange liberties)

sad 4 all of you who never got to the heavy melodramas of the second half

Any particular version of VI I should look for?

GBA version has a better translation (although less quirky) but slightly worse music than the SNES. PS1 version crippled by load times iirc. There's iOS and Android versions coming "this winter".

then ask a mod to change it! i'd do it myself but my influence is not nearly so leveled up as yours

It's a stronger ask if someone else does it IMO