Like biggest problem is the story is a fucking mess. All of the attempts to “subvert” and “surprise” “fan” “expectations” lack any kind of natural drama, and the biggest subversion comes from reminding people who know the game of how the first game did something well and then absolutely shitting the bed by going all galaxy brain with someone that lacks all emotional or narrative impact.
Like the death of Aerith in FF7 is well written and staged and it lands impactfully. Here it’s a giant confounding clusterfuck. I wasn’t even sure she was dead. And now I’m not even sure what’s going on. I do know that I don’t really care..
I think I’ve said this here before, but taking a game with a narrative that’s all about trying to save this one world that’s being all used up, and that being driven home by the sudden and irretrievable death of a major character midway through and redirecting all of that to some bullshit about multiverses and alternate realities where multiple versions of Zack are running around and in one universe being heroic and dying and all this other shit just shifts the themes and drama to a place where it goes from being about something to being about nothing but masturbatory 21st century franchise habits. Aerith dies in one universe and in another maybe she doesn’t but some version of her is hanging around in this one now and Jesus Christ what does anything matter, nothing is forever and everything is stupid
Also, Chadley sucks. Some of the side quests are good, and structurallyl they’re all better than almost anything in FFXVI, but a lot of them are still stupid. Chadley sucks. Why does every character from FF7 Remake show up somewhere else in the world. I guess Midgar isn’t as sad and impoverished as I thought if even the local gym rats are borderline famous world travelers. Chadley sucks. The game takes all the potential joy from discovering stuff in its open world and systematizes it so hard that it never feels like anything but expanded checklist busywork. Chadley sucks.
Every dungeon is three to five times longer than it reasonably should be. Almost all of them have a “puzzle” gimmick that is literally very slowly dragging a large object to the one obvious spot on the map where it needs to go. This must have been some kind of conscious decision. Jesus Christ. Why.
Also, almost every boss (and there are too many bosses that don’t seem to have anything to do with anything) has a super-move that can one-shot most of your characters if you’re not super-prepared for it (and sometimes it seems even if you are) that triggers at some arbitrary health threshold. The telegraphing of these is very short. The way that ATB builds up usually means you dont’ have a lot of options to use spells, items, or abilities once this sequence starts, unless you’ve been saving them up for this very moment, and even then it’s a challenge. It’s bullshit. I had to redo way too many pretty easy-but-long first phases on way too many bosses because I got to that threshold with my characters at 2/3 health and very little ATB. I do not care for this design decision.
But man, the character writing is so good when it’s good. Game’s mostly beautiful. I really got into the combat. Playing as Yuffie was fun. Yuffie as a character actually owns in this game, she’s now my favorite. They take a lot of goofy stuff from the game and commit to it and make it good and fun. Just the big picture stuff is all fucked.
I think humanity was psychologically destined to stall out at the return to Golden Saucer. Who knows how much more of The Stuff I want to do, but also I don’t want to be locked into The Required for 3 hours, as the game likes to do. Maybe it is time, resignedly (as y’all have also said) to go ahead and try to beat it.
A maybe apocryphal legend, perhaps sourced but in my memory first said by the fabulist Tim Rogers, that Squaresoft in the height of its mismanagement and attempt to reckon with the 3D and HD eras employed a young lady whose literal only job was to produce cobblestone textures.
It’s not a tim story! Y’all just heard me repeat it like 10 times. But yes during the PS360 era Square Enix was trying to hyper specialize employees so they wouldn’t get poached/couldn’t get work elsewhere and development was so fragmented that they just had people making stuff (this is why we got the 13 sequels, because they had just made 3 games worth of assets.) but the legendary one is the girl that only made cobblestones for all the S-E games.
Hi Cloud I can’t help but notice you haven’t played Rebirth in the last 45 minutes. I’m sure you have your reasons and I am so excited what you’ll get up to in the final dungeon. Sure all the battle data will allow me to create all kinds of new encounters for the battle simulator.
I really don’t know what to think of Chadley inventing a girl version of himself that he is constantly misogynist towards.
I just wrapped the ending up! Around 86 hours or so.
They answered my question certainly! That’s like the only question they answered. I said at the beginning it is a game of All Middle and indeed it is ALL MIDDLE. You have to be okay with that. No questions are successfully answered. Stuff is left to itself. Once Aeris is on that tree branch I felt untethered from anything that was happening.
I didn’t hate The Bullshit as everyone else did. But walk away with no strong emotions either. The Japanese voice and script were fantastic.
I already said it in this thread but Guardian of The Galaxy was a more emotional and exciting ensemble game than this and much shorter.
oh damn, this is what the last one’ll be called, won’t it?
i really enjoyed Rebirth, but the chances i’ll ever replay it feel slim to none, whereas i dove right back into Remake, no questions asked, right after beating it
I’m looking forward to playing Rebirth again before the next one comes out, it’s like they made an RPG out of all the parts of other games that I like with all the trimmings. Meaty game!
i thought it’d be ‘reunion’ for sure but if they were planning on that, i’d think they’d have given the crisis core port a different subtitle, but maybe they still will
i’d really like them to go kingdom-hearts-style-galaxy-brain with the naming or even something wild and squaresian like ‘re:re:make’
final fantasy vii: unmake
final fantasy vii: afterbirth
final fantasy vii: stillborn
final fantasy vii: realization
final fantasy vii: respiration
final fantasy vii: readvent
final fantasy vii: advent children (guys the next game is gonna just be playable advent children)
final fantasy vii: reallocation
final fantasy vii: reformare
final fantasy vii: refrigerator
I am playing Intergrade because I guess I didn’t have enough FF7R yet. Really glad they buttoned up Yuffie’s pants for Rebirth because it is really distracting.