Topic: Final fantasy discussion thread

Gonna bump the f*** out of this forum post, as I can feel myself getting absolutely addicted to FF7 Remake Intergrade, and the Rebirth game isn't so far away, so people will be back here soon anyway.

There are games that I play and I really enjoy my time with, and then there are a few that for reasons unknown just get in my head and make me itch to get back on them. FF7 Remake, right now, is one of the itchers 😅

I've maybe played 4 or 5 hours of it, only 3? Chapters, and a large part has been setting up the story and then doing some side quests, and yet it has me hooked already. I can't really explain why, but I can just tell its a good'un.

At first I was just enjoying all the visuals, art direction, music and world. Then I was thinking, just jokingly, it's cool to be running around with a Mr.T inspired dude (A-Team reruns fueled part of my youth) and Badger from Breaking Bad. And today I realised it legitimately is Badger from Breaking Bad, so my mind was reblown 😂😂

So yes. I definitely got that itch where i'm casually thinking about the game in the back of my mind, and I really can't wait to get back on it tonight 😅

I'm imagining at some point for all of you here there was a moment where a Final Fantasy game gripped you in the same way?

@Ravix Good to see you’re enjoying the game, since FF16 fell flat for you, iirc.

For me, Remake was a great game, but not quite a “mind itcher” 😅. I enjoyed it and several aspects impressed me, but I think it’s a smidgen over-rated. I still thoroughly enjoyed it, but the OG FF7 was most definitely one that got under my skin and one I’d think about all day when I wasn’t playing it and at night as I drifted off to sleep.

The original FF7 is probably my favorite of the series, or a close second maybe to FF12. Either way, Remake is a solid entry and the reimagining of the characters and story is something I’ve come to accept after the initial disappointment that the story is divergent from expectations. I still am nervous about ever direction it’s taking and I won’t spoil anything for you, but I’m sure you’ve seen enough to be aware that it’s controversial.

@Th3solution FF16 didn't fall flat for me, I was loving it, but BG3 barged it's way in before I'd finished XVI. But I still enjoyed going back to it, just not quite to the same level as I enjoyed BG3 😅

I think I've got to thank Clive and XVI for setting me on this path to a game I was never likely to have tried before too! 😁

I've seen some say controversy, and be a bit down on changes, but it looks to me like those are a little exaggerated because of expectations (almost like the 'never meet your heroes' effect. As nothing will be as good as you rememeber it, especially if it is from childhood) or because it is not yet a fully told story, and that is like when people watch part of a film and say "nope, it's dumb" when in most good films it is the full story, especially the ending that defines the things you have experienced beforehand, and something that seems to be one thing can be felt in a dramaticaly different way once you have had the full experience and can think back on the whole work.

@Ravix Oh, okay - I just misremembered. I personally am liking FF16 more than FF7R, but both are great.

As far as my personal take on the reimagining of the FF7 narrative, I feel like my issues are less about it being ‘different’ and more about it being just… not good 😅, at least in some ways. It’s hard to know if having played the OG years ago and holding it dear is tainting my opinion, but there’s just aspects of the storyline that I’m not a fan of, independent of any relation to a previous version of things.

But this is where you’ll be a good source of truth because you’re going in without the prior experience.

@Th3solution perhaps part 2 of the remake could change things for you as well, perception wise, so whichever comes first, me finishing 7 Remake, or you playing through Rebirth. If it feels like it veers off at all or lacks something, I will probably mention it though 😄

Like I say, I don't even really know why I like it yet, it just feels like a game I'm getting a great deal of pleasure from, even early on. The combat clicked with me after an initial bit of confusion on how best not to get a million rockets in my face, and understanding how to switch between characters to keep stacking special moves, getting staggers etc. And it feels like a game that is going to have some enemy variety, which I always appreciate.

And the art design and level design is bloody lovely, especially compared to late game FF16 which does get a bit monotone and repetitive

If someone told me years ago that one day I'd be playing two Final Fantasy games concurrently, I'd have just laughed

But now I just have a big f***ing grin on my face as Barrett screams the FF battle victory tune on a train, for seemingly no reason. And he keeps doing it after battles as well. I hope he doesn't tire of it, as I certainly won't haha 😁

I realise that the FF victory tune or 'leitmotif', if we're being fancy, must be called something too, but I do not have that knowledge 😅

So, has anyone played the Rebirth Demo yet? If so, what did you think? Changed your mind about the game at all?

I haven’t played it and probably won’t, although we’ll see. I’m essentially sold on the game already, partially out of a feeling of obligation since I loved the original FF7 and have played the Remake. My lesser enthusiasm for the Remake’s narrative direction is well documented, but as a game it was fun and Rebirth looks even better from the gameplay standpoint. So for me it’s ‘when’, not ‘if’ I get to Rebirth, and perhaps the Demo would service to move it up or down my priority list. So I was wondering what people thought of it.

I can’t bring myself to finish Remake, I flat out think it is a bad game basically. But I’m really interested in Rebirth because my love for FF7 dies hard. My plan is to watch the remainder of remake on YouTube and inevitably pick up Rebirth at launch.

@kyleforrester87 Out of interest, which elements of Remake didn't land with you?

I ask because I actually struggled to get through the remaining 25% of the game....

There were elements I absolutely adored - the combat for instance (IMO now the benchmark for combat in the series) and I actually enjoyed the changing narrative beats and different story path. The voice acting was really solid as well, and felt that the game did well bringing Cloud and co to a new audience.

It was pretty much most things outside of combat that killed it for me, the endless corridor exploration / narrow lifeless areas + tedious subquests (rescuing cats!). The DLC was pretty good though, I enjoyed the Fort Condor mini game.

Hojos lab was pretty infuriating also and felt to last forever.

If I could summarise, I felt Remake was an 'OK' 40 hour game.... but if the padding was removed, and some tweaks made - it could have been an awesome 20 hour game.

Also, Hard mode being locked behind completion of Story/Normal was a shame. Would have been good to have had Hard mode from the get-go, as this really was incredibly challenging - in a good way.

@CJD87 The padding was just too much... In particular the section between Don Corneo and the plate being dropped, it really seemed to get in the way of the urgency of the moment. On reflection, the original game does it all in 2-3 hours. Yes Remake has some pros, but not enough to justify its time investment when you could just play the original.

@kyleforrester87 The remake definitely needed more jam, I give you that.

@JohnnyShoulder now listen here you

After 80 hours, I finally finished FFXVI.

Overall I liked it a lot. I enjoyed the story, characters, combat, music… just about everything. I do think the last couple chapters were a bit of a slog — at least it was a slog to do all the side quests. And the side quests in the last chapter all felt important, but were so filled with exposition and tying up character storylines, that it just dragged to have a shopping list of about 20 of them to do all at once. I would have liked to somehow have them spread out more. Some of the final character arcs needed to be at the penultimate section like for Jill, Joshua, and Dion, but some really could have happened earlier to help with the pacing.

And I think I’ve had my fill of boss fights for a while. Good grief this game’s boss fights go on forever. Some of them are like 2 hours each by the time you get through all the phases. And that’s without dying! If you die and have to start over I can’t imagine how frustrating that would be.

Speaking of, I found the difficulty to be just about right. One of the final optional hunts was the toughest fight to me and I died twice before beating it. The final boss was also very hard and actually the first time you fight Ultima it was a little harder for me, but the final fight was more like a marathon of endurance, and I can’t imagine how it would have been without obtaining the Gotterdammerung and the Oroboros items.

I played without the use of the “cheat” accessories though (except the one that makes Torgal’s attacks automated) and so that made it a little harder. But seriously, I don’t know how people thought you can get through the game by just mashing the attack button. The normal enemies maybe, but the boss fights were really intense and you had to stack your eikon attacks just right or else you were toast.

Glad to be done with it, and I’ll miss it in a way, but with Crisis Core and then Rebirth, I’ve got plenty of Final Fantasy to keep me busy when I’m back in the mood

I've already spent 30 hours playing FFXVI, but honestly, I'm really struggling to continue. I don't feel any connection with the characters, storyline, or combat. Everything just feels dull and uninteresting. Right now, I'm on a mission to find some thief kids, and that's when it hit me how incredibly boring the game is for me. Whether it's the combat, the lack of depth, or the monotonous enemies, I'm really hoping for some improvement.

I've spent way too much time with Rebirth this weekend but it's just one of those games you want to spend every free moment playing.
I think I need to look more into the synergy stuff you can execute while blocking, I'm definitely not utilising that enough.
My only minor complaint so far is that I liked Remake's character upgrade system more than the "folios"

@Qu1n0n3z I know exactly the part you’re referring to. I will say that a lot of the secondary and minor NPC storylines are sort of boring. For the most part, the main characters are interesting though, if you focus on those. Even some of the lesser characters like Quinton or Charon do end up having some cool story moments, but there’s plenty of other throwaway characters that could have been skipped, like Martha, Eloise, or Wade, just because they don’t distinguish themselves from the usual NPC tropes. There’s some side characters that actually could have benefitted from deeper context, like Tarja for example.

So there’s some unevenness to the supplemental storylines, for sure. I did 100% of the side quests and I found probably 75% of them fairly satisfying, but some of them took too much time to ramp up and the pacing was the worst part, as I mentioned above.

As for enemy variety, you’re right in the sense that the common enemies get fairly old after you’ve been to all the major areas of the map. They really focused the variety on the boss and mini-boss fights. The optional hunts were probably my favorite combat encounters. The story bosses were fantastic too, but like I also said up there, some of them were actually too bombastic and crazy with all the phases and copious attack forms and such.

It’s too bad that the game wasn’t edited down a little better. I think if they trimmed back 25% of the fat off the game and it ended up a solid 40-50 hr game then it would have been better for it.

Perhaps try and just skip all the side content for a while and see if it sticks for you, because the combat can be really great once you have a lot of eikon powers to choose from.

@Jimmer-jammer The ending… well I actually liked it a lot. Not the best ending of all time or anything, but really satisfying.

Was there some controversy about the ending? I didn’t realize that.

@Jimmer-jammer Ah, I see. I like a little ambiguity, if it’s well formed to not be too excessively cryptic. The inclusion of the epilogue was enough to erase doubt about the climactic outcome, and yet just vague enough about Joshua’s survival to leave some things open to ponder. I guess people just don’t like it when heroes die. I don’t mind it, especially if they die for something. Even if the death is not a huge world saving self-sacrifice, as long as the death carries emotional weight that is key to driving the narrative, I’m fine with that. This was the debate several days ago about the Suicide Squad game and I could see how the death/execution of beloved characters might fall flat in that scenario. I watched the Batman clip and it was fine, but it wasn’t the death of Batman that was the problem as much as just the overall cringe of the dialogue and other characters. In FF16 Clive’s death seemed appropriately developed and portrayed.

@Jimmer-jammer Same here. My favorite game endings often leave a few things open to interpretation.

I’m a little off topic for this thread, but I think about what game stories and specifically what endings are my favorite or most impactful, they would be games like Nier Automata (highly philosophical and symbolic), Bioshock Infinite (same), The Last of Us (leaves a few questions unanswered and open to interpretation), Shadow of the Colossus (quite an ambiguous ending), etc, etc.

Favorite game endings has been something I enjoy discussing and have considered making a thread for it, but I think it would just be a huge trap of potential spoilers and so I don’t think it would work. It runs the risk of inherently spoiling things to even know that a game has a good ending. 🤔

And speaking of spoilers, I don’t know what people expected from a game called “Kill the Justice League” but it’s weird that they are upset that the game’s title is what the game’s objective is. 😅

Really enjoying FVII Rebirth so far, but the Fort Condor mini game can go die in a hole as far as I'm concerned. Managed to complete the Junon artifact quest line that required a series of matches, but hopefully I won't have to touch it again (it was by far the toughest thing in the game so far).