Topic: Final fantasy discussion thread

With all the hype surrounding FF7R doing the rounds I bought FFIX on a whim today on Switch.

I definitely do want FF7R, but I'm gonna wait to pull the trigger until after I've cleared Tales of Berseria, which I've been playing for over a month now I think.

Hopefully all this hype I've caved into is worth it, because I have a mixed history with FF. I love X, like IV (but it took me a couple goes to finally finish that one), & even enjoyed that Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers spinoff, but I never got on with I & II: Dawn of Souls (got to the final dungeon in II, though) or XII.

@RR529 IX is a good one to get you into classic FF. It has a similar plot to the original ones but has some great systems such as the abilities being learned from equipment. I still haven’t finished it but it’s a really good one and a nice stepping stone to others such as VII and VI.

@RR529 I love FFIX. It's such a magical and charming game. Did you play the remake of IV or the original? I never like the original since (among other reasons) there's no character customisation at all, but they fixed that in the remake.

Wow, the FF7 Remake plays brilliant on Vita Remote Play. There’s a slight amount of input lag just due to the way Cloud starts walking but I have to say I’m impressed. It helps that the back triggers aren’t heavily used too.

@RR529 9 is brilliant 🤩

Glad to hear everyone is glowing about IX!

@Matroska, when it comes to IV, I first played the GBA port and stalled out somewhere on the Moon (I didn't realize just how close I was to completing it, and wasn't all that fond of exploring an entire 3rd world, not realizing it was so much smaller than the Earth & Underworld areas), I later bought the DS remake (well, the mobile port of it anyhow) and played it fully through. As really shallow as it sounds, just being in 3D (no matter how rudimentary) invests me more than pixel art.

Final Fantasy IX is an authentic 10.

@nessisonett you know i actually haven't tried it on remote play, i'll have to give it a go later

Also chiming in @RR529 that FFIX is awesome and in my opinion one if the best games in the franchise

@nessisonett I love Vita Remote Play for this game. Now in fact I replay chapters on hard in my Vita

@belmont i don't think i could do hard mode on the Vita, the screen is too small

but as i have to go through at least once more to get the last dress i might do a normal run on it

@FullbringIchigo i think you can just replay the specific chapters to get the last dress no?

no need for a whole playtrough unless you want to combine it with hard mode.

@jdv95 You can but you have to complete the whole chapters that have choices that change the dresses.

@Matroska @FullbringIchigo but what about when Cloud and Aerith are leaving toward Sector 7 in the middle of the night and he has a vision we don’t get to see - we just hear the first three notes from the opening and he has this sigle tear coming down from his eyes. Is he remembering the past? Is he seeing the future? I also wouldn’t trust Nomura to write a grocery list so I am a little bit skeptical it will make sense in the end. But I will be happy if it does

@ApostateMage Yeah Ithink they really nailed Wall Market. Could be better then the original tbh

Loving the hard battles, I wasn’t really sure about the battle system but it does its thing.

@Feena or he was feeling Zacks feelings for Aerith, remember because of the Jenova cells he has a part of Zack in him, including his memories, skills and feelings

also Nomura is just the director and i feel people are putting too much on him, the writers of the game are the same people who did the original FFVII but the main 2 are Kazushige Nojima (FFVII, VIII, X and X-2 are some of his works) and Motomu Toriyama (Bahamut Lagoon, FFVII FFCC, Dissidia are some of his morks) also Nomura is the head director (of which he didn't even know until months into development) but he was only 1 of 3 so i think it's unfair to lay every criticism at his feet

@jdv95 @belmont yeah and as you have to start at chapter 3 then you might as well play through the whole thing again at least to make sure that it works

I have been on a real rollercoaster since finishing Final Fantasy VII Remake. The original is one of my all time favourites and so seeing places and events in a brand new light was amazing for me, but I did feel like the game became worse the more they strayed from the path.

There's clearly a couple of areas that were added with the express purpose of padding the game out so it could justify being released episodically. Also, story-wise, it broke my heart a little towards the end. It wasn't just that it was bad - it was - but also that it made it clear that the game is not what I wanted it to be. I know the defence force always comes back with the, "Well, what's the point in a 1:1 remake - you've already played it?!" and I get that viewpoint. But I love a remake.

Remakes in games are different than in any other medium, because games more than any other medium are held back by the technologies of the time in which they're released. FFVII was changing the battle system and stuff so it was never just going to be a remake like Shadow of the Colossus, but it's the changes they made to the story that bum me out a bit. It's like, how hard is it to mess up a story when the story has already been written and it's already great?

Well, now we know.

Fortunately, because of the nature of the story they can mitigate the damage depending on where they go next. If the next game handles the story really well, then the ending to Remake 1 is just going to be a slightly clunky, slightly silly final chapter to an otherwise good game. If that ending is an indication of what's to come then this series is probably going to annoy me to a previously thought unimaginable degree.

I have thoughts/theories about where they're going to go but time will tell I suppose.

I have to say, the Air Buster boss fight in this game is one of the best I've ever played in a JRPG. Not only is the fight, in and of itself, challenging and epic, but I LOVE how they spend an entire chapter building it up, and how you subtly shape the boss fight ahead by choosing which key components to rob it of as you progress toward it. Boss fights, in general, I think, are the single most improved aspect of this remake.

On a less positive note, while I liked how enthusiastic the english voice actress for Aerith was prior to release, I have to say, her voice acting is just awful. I mean, maybe it's the way she's being directed, I don't know, but her voice sounds incredibly phony and faux-high pitched, like a lot of mid-00s tier English anime dubs.

Also, Robert was right about there being some insanely bad textures in this game, despite the characters and big setpieces look flat out gorgeous. I don't mind when it's some random wall or bit of rubbish in the slums, but I can't ignore it when the game pushes them in my face, and those flowers around Aerith's house at one point look like something out of a PS2 game. It was really, really bad.

@FullbringIchigo I have tried and it works:
Use chapter select and select chapter 3 and beat it. Wait for chapter 4 to load and skip the minigame. Then via chapter select choose chapter 8 and play till chapter 10 loads. No reason to play chapters 4 to 7.

@belmont i might do that after my current run is done