Final Fantasy VII: Kind Of REDACTED In Retrospect

a) a human
b) a machine
c) an animal
d) a cat riding a winged shmoo with fangs

Also, WHERE DA GAMEPLAY AT?

On the other hand...

--easiest last boss ever

--no hands

--"..."

--chocobo racing

I think people have a tendency to penalize games often very harshly (and the "otaku bullshit" certainly makes FF an easier target) not because the characters are really any more ridiculous or the gameplay is really less satisfying, but because it doesn't make them feel the same way it did when they were younger. I say it is a very rare and classic game that can accomplish such a feat. I could much more easily get behind the thread title "Final Fantasy VII: Not Quite as Classic In Retrospect."

When the game came out, I completely fell in love with it and played it endlessly until I realized about 2/3rds of the way through that it was really making me hate roleplaying games due to the insanely long cutscenes. Add into that a couple of really annoying characters (Cait Sith, Yuffie) and minigames that just suddenly stopped being fun and, well... the game is kind of retarded.

Conversely, I still love the PC RPGs that rocked my world (Baldur's Gate I & II + expansions, Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale I & II + expansions). They really, really did it right with those games and I'll defend them until I die.

At least we can all agree that Cait Sith is retarded.

I will not deny that the storyline to FFVII is great. It's some seriously excellent narrative. I found the actual game mechanics irritating, though; even when it came out for the PC, I had absolutely no desire to pick it up (I'd played it on my roommate's PS and I was moving out due to getting married.)

xpost I don't think they are!

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MORE BOLD CLAMS

BOLD CLAM: Tactical games have more replay value than conventional RPGs.

I don't know if your clam holds up to inspection when considering their entire line of stuff since FF7 (b/c the only Square game I've played to completion since that came out is Parasite Eve), but the lack of quality control sure pissed me off during my initial playthrough of the game after it came out. It seemed to me obvious that I was playing an unfinished game once I got past being totally enthralled by the early city stuff. All of a sudden, little touches started disappearing, like the branching dialogue boxes for the relationship subplots. I suppose that that Earthbound review duder would claim that that was just a brilliant bit of misdirection on Square's part, but the way it was handled was really sloppy. Moving on from the first part of the game, the overworld seemed nowhere near as interesting or well-formed an environment as the city was. Is that comparing apples and oranges a bit? Maybe, but why did the characters have to leave that environment at all? All the characters in the party that weren't part of the terrorist group just felt superfluous (especially Cait Sith-- WTF Japanese kawaii bullshit). And why did the third CD basically just contain the final boss?

I can't remember what I changed cait sith's name to, but I'm sure it was better than cait sith.

yeh, and after all that it causes only 200 damage or something.
i have very fond memories of ff vii, as i was very ill at the time i played it & the only thing i could cope with was switching on my console & then lying in bed pressing x and o repeatedly.

hell, even Planescape and Anachronax had them, and both games made explicit where they cribbed it from

Remember all of those awesome spell cutscenes that lasted for five minutes that were amazing the first time you used them but quickly became so outrageously annoying that you never used the high-end spells more than three times?
Also, Cait Sith! WTF?

― Dan (And So On) Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, January 11, 2006 6:02 PM (9 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when i was a kid i would go nuts for those summon cutscenes every single time, so screw you 2006 dan perry

Summon cutscenes were the best. I will be very surprised if they can top them. Bahamas in particular.

So I guess it will now be multiple games, and people are freaking out, playing the outraged consumer, etc personaly I think its fine and cant wait to see what they do. There is a lot of concern the world map will be cut. Thing is for a good half of the original game you could really only go one or two places at a time. People upset they wont be able to walk to Kalm when in reality isn't it just a big field from Midgar?

Then again that sense of scale once you left Midgar was a HUGE moment in the original so hopefully they can still nail that.

Remake is going to be episodic supposedly so they can release it quicker

maybe it's just best to wait for the inevitable Final Fantasy VII HD complete on-disc edition in 2017

remake is giving me The Spirits Within flashbacks

Man fuck this episodic bullshit. If it means that open-world exploration is severely curtailed at best then... I don't know.

Stupid of me to get excited about a video game dammit.

You know I didn't realize till I saw the remake trailers that Aeris doesn't have (and never had!) pointed ears.

just saw a spoiler for the remake that made my interest in it go from 0 to 100

Finally, the chocobo-fucking minigame we've all been clamoring for.

maybe it's just best to wait for the inevitable Final Fantasy VII HD complete on-disc edition in 2017

― Nhex, Monday, 7 December 2015 15:08 (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sad lol

mini games are dangerous. I remember just losing all interest in the story in FFVIII and just playing triple triad constantly, only playing the story to provide new games of triple triad

i'd be cool with them expanding the FF7 maybe HALF as much as they seem to have done, and then cranking out the games twice as fast.

that's how it works, right?

but seriously, i have no interest in playing a 250 hour full re-make of FF7, anyway, especially if that takes 8 years to put out. if it was around 125 hours, maybe, and over 4 years? that's way more in my range

especially if that takes 8 years to put out

8 years starting now, i mean

mini games are dangerous. I remember just losing all interest in the story in FFVIII and just playing triple triad constantly, only playing the story to provide new games of triple triad

― COVID and the Gang (jim in vancouver), Friday, April 3, 2020 1:55 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm doing a playthrough of 4 through 13 and triple triad is the thing i'm most excited about, hope it's as good as i remember it being when i was 12

there’s at least one implementation of that game mechanic outside of having to play final fantasy eight, you know

just saw a spoiler for the remake that made my interest in it go from 0 to 100

― ciderpress, Friday, 3 April 2020 17:02 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

can you put it in rot13 or something

big but vague spoilers: gurl ner tbvat erohvyq bs rinatryvba jvgu gung fuvg

nrevf qvrf

im heading in tonite

The early hours of this are more like Yakuza than I expected, i.e you walk around a vivid urban sandbox having chats and doing sidequests and uh also there is an awful deranged Goro Majima expy who loves fighting you

jesus now i am even more hyped

I'm seven hours in and approximately 40 minutes into the plot of the original game

Looks great, spend a lot of time just looking at stuff and soaking up the vibe, it's kind of bittersweet idk

The combat mechanics work for me, clattering people with Tifa doesn't seem like it'll get old and there's plenty of stuff for you to do in combat with each character right from the start

A lot of the hardcore fans seem excited that Biggs, Wedge and Jessie have (extremely) expanded roles, but a lot of the interactions with Jessie are just kind of distractingly uncanny gibberish. Britt Baron is a bit more natural as Tifa

There are at least two Skyrim guys in this game whose voices I'm extremely sick of

I'm seven hours in and approximately 40 minutes into the plot of the original game

kill me

there’s at least one implementation of that game mechanic outside of having to play final fantasy eight, you know

― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Friday, April 3, 2020 8:32 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

The only one I know of is through that square app but they no longer have online play

it took me a few minutes to place the voice actor who plays Wedge: it’s Matt Jones, who played Badger on Breaking Bad. And the character is kind of like an optimistic, less-stoned Badger

as far as I can tell, Cloud is now dating every female character. And also probably Sephiroth.

jim i swear every year someone does it on iOS with the serial numbers filed off -- e.g. here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/elementimals/id452197048 -- but i don't know if there's any recent versions still working on modern iOS iterations

i am not sure if this game is "good" but it's fun and very strange and very much interested in its own remake-ness.

the latter being what i was referring to upthread that made me interested in it

Game is very horny
Aerith is very annoying
Chadley is a little fucking weirdo and I wish I could smack him

Music is great

In the middle of a strangely sequenced bit where Cloud just sort of chills out for hours after a major catastrophe

no PS4/didn't play but watched the entire game online m/l start to finish on a cpl twitch streams. pretty amazing! def a surplus of drawn out parts and a little melodramatic but overall beautiful, they did really great things with all of the characters and the soundtrack is about as good as you could hope for. And after a cpl days thinking about the ending and how they remixed + restructured the game... pretttty fuckin smart!

have they nailed the psychedelia of the origibal game? sooo trippy in places

It's less trippy, I think. You lose a bit by having expensive orchestras playing everything instead of cheap but extremely evocative ps1 electronic noises. Like the mako reactor music does not chill me to my core any more for example

Also lots of gaps that your imagination filled in the original game are now filled by realistic character models and voice acting

Every time I think I'm going to finish this game I get north of midnight and get attacked by 300 robots in a labyrinthine facility that didn't look like it could be that big from the outside

Reserving judgment on the ending til I see it but I am fairly up for them pruning/abridging the less iconic bits from the middle bit of the original game. I won't be disappointed if I don't get to fight for my life for eight hours while traversing the network of sewers beneath the Costa del fuckin Sol

ILG: the gaming board where no one has time for Final Fantasy VII Remake, really

It's really good! But when are we going to get to the fuckin fireworks factory!!

I was going to download this but I'd have to delete some games off my PS4 to make space for it and I don't actually care enough to do that

I'm to the point where I've almost finished fighting my way up the stairs as the Turks are hovering in a helicopter getting ready to drop the plate. Taking my time, I guess

I won't be disappointed if I don't get to fight for my life for eight hours while traversing the network of sewers beneath the Costa del fuckin Sol

i haven't played the game, only read about it, but correct me if i'm wrong in thinking that it is more likely that you will instead have to fight for 16-24 hours in the sewers beneath the Costa del fucking Sol, with a bunch of expanded scenes and mini-bosses

man I have played a lot of ff7 and yet I'd completely erased that whole section from my memory. almost tempted to invest in a ps4 on lockdown but not sure it's really what i need in my life

At this point, Costa del Sol is probably going to be in like... part 3 or something

Not a spoiler at this point, but the released remake thus far only covers Midgar, from what I've read

the name 'costa del sol' is a sleeper hit for one of the wackiest real-world-appropriated name choices in all japanese video game development

and man i hope there's someone out there who's really really hyped for this and somehow hadn't learned it only covers midgar, and after their 60-hour midgar experience they're furious that the game ends there

Woulda been me eventually

I’m glad the kind-of-spoiler I read is actually something that becomes clear as you’re playing, regarding the weird spectres

Big fan of Cloud's mom being called Claudia

The late game bit where some toughs sic a monster on you in a junkyard with great fanfare is also good clean mischief

This game is very very pretty on ps5 and I have having a great time playing it. I think after 15 years of trying final fantasy games, it’s finally starting to click why they are so well loved

Initial (~8-12 hours, rmde) impressions:

This game is long! I'm still pnly bombing Shinra buildings?
After reading some guides, I think I'm finally understanding the combat, but man, it's complicated and the game doesn't do much to ease you into it. (It does make me long for simple nice turn-based action.)
I really don't like Barrett's voice actor. :(
I guess it's been a while since I played an FF (lol I think 9 was the last one) but I've forgotten how campy it could be.

Pretty much everyone who played the first part of the remake said the only thing it was really missing was having constant interruptions from that weird little cunt in the sailor outfit