i killed emerald weapon this weekend and can confirm ffvii rules yes
i was surprised by how consistent it felt, really! i think the pacing is really great even into disc two, though the section where cloud is in a coma and cid leads the party as you go get two large materia is functionally like ten minutes long and feels almost unfinishedly rushed/clumsy
when you first get to rocket town you meet cid and he comes into the house and is a huge asshole bully to this woman he lives with and i had yuffie in my party and as soon as cid left the room yuffie’s next text box was literally “wow, he sucks!” and that was the best line in the game
Tim is projecting his video review will be up by the 11th so I have until then to finish my initial play through. I’m still at the beginning of chapter 14 doing the side quests before heading off to save Aerith.
I like how they included a bunch of goofy, one-off mini-games sprinkled throughout. The original had a bunch but they were mostly in the rest of the game outside Midgar. You don’t see those much anymore because game designers want to reuse everything as much as they can to justify the costs of making it in the first place. Probably any other developer would have had you doing for instance the pumping mini-game in the sewers at multiple points instead of just at the end of that section. That would have been overkill. As they exist now they’re nice little refreshers. Something different to break up the battling on your way to the next story beat.
I’ve been tearing through Crisis Core and I mostly really like it, but at one point they have Zack name Seventh Heaven and I groaned so hard the earth beneath me opened up and swallowed my computer.
To add insult to injury, the guy he’s talking to then says something like “Hm, I can see it, and there’ll be a hottie with huge breasts behind the bar. Yeah!” and I felt super skeeved out that they invoked Tifa in the most reductively objectifying way they could.
It’s the worst of the fan servicey stuff I’ve encountered so far but, yeah, there’s some some other serious prequelesque idiocy in here.
Tbh, though, I’d love it though if they’d glam up the whole game with some FF7R assets, redub/offer Japanese VO, rewrite some of the worst stuff, and rerelease the game for current platforms. It’s pretty good (for real, the English VO is hot garbage).
honestly the combat system is like a super rough prototype for VII Remake, it could be a fun little action RPG if you just literally ditch the slot machine bullshit and graft on all the subsequent changes/improvements
Dialogue written by adults for adult characters that sound like shit that would come out of a 12-year-old is part of why I have a hard time stomaching RPGs anymore.
I found the slot machine thing offputting at first and still find it a little bewildering like 10 hours in, but I think I’ve come to like it more or less. Its implementation as a storytelling device is really interesting, too. Its biggest sin is how much goddamn screenspace it takes up.
i gotta say i really admire nomura’s restraint in this, waiting until the second to last chapter to introduce a character wearing a belt covered coat + pants where each leg has its own belt covered coat
I stopped playing after chapter 11 and may or may not get back to it, but I’ve been listening to the soundtrack all week. The variety and effort put into the themes often of barely memorable one-offs is astounding. I only dimly remember dispatching a midboss called “Crab Warden”, and his unique music for his two later phases is fit for the true final boss of any other JRPG:
