Topic: Final fantasy discussion thread

I enjoyed seeing the recognisable locations in 3D, looking up at the plate in particular and seeing the blue sky around the edges in the distance was really awesome. Other than that I didn’t really get along with the remake at all, it was padded out with weird side quests and far too long sections of walking and combat. I’ve tried to finish it a couple of times but can’t do it, I will have to watch a let’s play of the final section if I end up getting the next one. Funny because I expect the next ones will fly through things way too fast by comparison.

@kyleforrester87 The end is terrible so quitting when you did is arguably the best way to experience the game.

@johncalmc Yes, I have read it and know what happens. Awful stuff. Still, would like to see it with my own eyes one day.

@LtSarge @Kidfried @kyleforrester87 @johncalmc I quite enjoyed the ff7 remake. The yawn inducing padding and memory ghosts, just woeful.

All we wanted was a fully fledged remake to bring the game up to date. They did a fantastic job with the early story beats and the gameplay is decent, the graphics are sublime - bar some strange low resolution textures. What discourages me are the changes to the fantastic story. Unnecessary and actually makes the experience worse. I genuinely don't care what happens next. Factoring in the memory ghosts was such a rubbish idea, why did the developers feel the need to have them and change anything? The original story is great.

@themcnoisy I'm the same. I can't tell you - even with the padding - Remake was on course to be one of my favourite ever games until the end. It brought me such joy to see the places and people from Final Fantasy VII realised so well. It's one of my favourite ever games, and I was grinning so much playing the remake. My girlfriend loves Final Fantasy VII too and we were playing Remake at the same time and it was such a fantastic experience for us both.

Even broken up into parts I would have been totally okay with it. All it had to do was end with the cast walking off to Kalm after following the original story and I would have watched the credits rolling with a salute and a tear in my eye. But they had to Square Enix it. They couldn't leave it alone. And it really soured the whole experience for me. I still love what they did up until then, and I'll probably play it again one day. But where before I couldn't wait to see Junon and Cosmo Canyon and all the other places, now I don't care very much. They'll probably have Sephiroth turn up and tombstone piledriver Emerald Weapon or the Highwind will be piloted by the chipmunks from Kingdom Hearts or something. It's nonsense.

Once the story lost me I was less forgiving to the egregious padding of the game. I can overlook a lot of rubbish in a game for a good yarn. I frequently do. I'm playing Cyberpunk 2077 again right now because I love the story and the world even though the gameplay is pretty spotty. But without the story I'm more irritated by the other problems. There's entire pointless sections of the game that are only there because a fifteen hour Final Fantasy would have raised eyebrows and people would have cried. That whole bit with Hojo in the tower? Garbage. The bit underground? Nah.

I suppose it's hard when you really like a thing, and it makes you a little more critical when it's not as good as you'd like. Final Fantasy VII is one of my favourite games, so seeing it handled like it was in Remake really aggrieved me and pretty much erased any excitement I had for the games going forward. I'll still play them just to see, but I don't really care what they do with it going forward.

@johncalmc That’s well said. I think your comment encompasses a lot of fans’ feelings about FF7R.

Apparently Crisis Core Reunion is a more faithful remake which strictly polishes the original product and gets it up to modern standards without modification of the basic narrative. But like you say, after the way things went off-rails with FF7R at the end, it sapped a little of my hype for playing the others in the FF7 series.

Beat Final Fantasy’s remaster on Switch. Took like 5 hours, the last hour of which was grinding in the Chaos Shrine. Not bad, better than the other versions I’ve played of the game and really liking the new soundtracks.

Final Fantasy II done. Not much longer than the first and still kinda w***. Made more bearable by the boost function for sure. As AVGN would put it, it’s one of those ‘where the f*ck do I go’ kinda games and I got lost despite having played it before. The soundtrack rules though.

That’s FF3 done now. Not the best game I’ve played, and I suffered through the 3D version too. The addition of auto save makes this the best version of the game by an absolute country mile though, you not longer have the 2 hour slog at the end of the game.

Kinda steamrolling these now. That’s FF4 down. Great game made even better by the remaster, although it’s still pretty hard. New soundtrack is great for the most part but I might just prefer the SNES soundfont.

@nessisonett Are the old FF games that short? I think V is the oldest one I played (but I barely remember it, other than the job system - if that was even in there) and VI was kinda massive for a SNES game.

I have also started the platinum hunt on the Pixel Remaster games. I already have the platinum in FF1 to 5 and working my way in 6. I already have the platinum in 7, 7 Remake, 9 and 12. I may have to tackle 8 and 10 and 10-2 after.

To be fair getting the platinum in FF 1 to 5 was not that hard. I know those games by heart and the fast forward auto battles + boosters help a lot.

@Voltan Being able to turn battles on and off is an absolute godsend. Just grinding when you want and even cutting down the number of battles you need to level up is a brilliant addition. IV took me about 10 hours and was easily the hardest but the other 3 are quite short as they’re NES games. I played V last year but I’m going through it again and expect it to take me longer.

@nessisonett That makes sense. Thanks.

Final Fantasy V done. Quite a bit longer than the others and still a ludicrous grind even with 4x Job EXP. Probably the best gameplay wise out of the turn based games though.

I've been playing FFVII Remake for around a dozen hours now and I'm loving it the more I play. I'm falling in love with the characters (especially Tifa) thanks to the modern translation of them from the original game. Moreover, the music is still fantastic, the gameplay is solid and I absolutely love the upgrade/inventory management system. Granted, I feel like I'm spending way too much time in the menus rather than playing the actual game. But that's actually contributing to my overall enjoyment of it, as I've customised the characters according to certain styles. Tifa e.g. focuses more on physical attacks while Barret now has a combination of both ranged and magic attacks, which is super satisfying. Not to mention that whenever I play the game on PS5 after having played something like Zelda, I definitely get the feeling that I'm playing a next-gen game. The DualSense feels great, the graphics in FF are great, the load-times are super fast and it just feels like I'm playing a next-gen game, even though it originally came out on PS4. Absolutely loving it!

Aerith just joined my party and I honestly got a bit worried. Because in the original game, she was pretty much useless in terms of her basic attacks. Seeing as how the remake is more of a real-time JRPG, you have to use basic attacks more often. Fortunately, the devs seemed aware of this and actually made her basic attacks more useful. Instead of swinging a stick, she shoots magic from it and that's pretty dang cool. The attacks are fairly powerful as well. I need to use her more in battle but it seems like they've actually made Aerith really good in the remake. I might actually replace Barret with her seeing as how she's a ranged user as well.

@LtSarge Aerith is definitely an upgrade on the remake compared to the original game, both in the usefulness in battle as well as just a character in general. She’s much more endearing and they fleshed out her personality so much better with the remake.

@Th3solution I think that's the way with a lot of the characters actually. They come to life more when given a voice and more time to express themselves. It's hard to grasp who someone really is over text compared to actually listening to them. After listening to Aerith for a while, I got the impression that she's a very innocent girl. I don't really remember what I thought of her in the original game, but considering I didn't remember how innocent she is I'm guessing I didn't think like that back then.

As a side note, I'm starting to appreciate that Square Enix has expanded the game into multiple parts. It just feels fitting for FF7 given what an adventure it felt like compared to the FF titles that came before it. They're truly doing the game justice by going down this route. I genuinely cannot wait to play Rebirth.

I think that it is time to put my Final Fantasy Platinum hunt at a temporary rest. Within the last couple of weeks I got the Platinum in FF Pixel Remaster 1 to 6 and in FF8 while I have the Platinum in 7, 7 Remake, 9, 12, 13-2 and 15. In 7 Remake and 15 I don't have 100% though due to the updates that I did not all the trophies on and I don't think I will attempt 13 and 13-3 anytime soon since they never released the game in PS4. Someday I will tackle 10 and 10-2 (I really like both games) but maybe after 16.

@LtSarge I never liked Aeris in the original game. Her attitude got annoying fast and in the battle she died easily. She had some overpowered limit breaks but, well, you never had the change to grind for them.

This weekend I played the New Threat Mod. My opinion is somewhat mixed. They seem to have changed the story based on knowledge of the whole compilation of FF7 which is fine but I am not sure how much stuff was in the OG FF7s writers or was simply lost in the translation. The first time I played the OG FF7 back in the 90's I got the impression that Jenova was controlling Sephiroth's action and her is the actual main villain since he seems to carry her plan, although, since I replayed the game countless of times it is left somewhat vague. Hojo and Cloud clearly think Sephiroth is calling the shots though and the compilation of FF7 somewhat confirms it I guess.