Thoughts on Final Fantasy VII Remake
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I loved the combat system, so I enjoyed every fight in game (except flying monsters in the first game if you didn't have barret around). I think it's my favourite hybrid combat system that allows both tactical and reactionary attacks and shines the mist when you're juggling between characters to get the ATB gauges up on everyone as quickly as possible so you have more toys to play with constantly.
The Yuffie DLC (Intermission) then expands upon the traversal mechanics and team based combat mechanics which were a whole lot of fun. A lot of this carried over to Rebirth as well but expanded up again. Still ended up with Yuffie being one of the most fun to play though because she was originally designed to play mostly solo from her DLC, but having a character that is more fun to play isn't a bad thing obviously.
Story wise, without spoiling too much, I love how, much like a lot of the mechanics, tries to expand upon old elements rather than outright replace them. And the story being some kind of pseudo-sequel where meta-textuality enhances the experience it ensures that these games are not replacements of the original. Which makes me laud it up in the highest regards. If they had just tried to replicate everything I think it would've felt even weirder it trying to be a wholesale replacement of the original like a lot of standard remakes try to be (think resi and silent hill). I don't know how others can replicate what square is doing though since a lot of it is rooted in it's story and doesn't deviate far from the elements introduced in the original and the compilation games. Resi could not have replicated this intertextuality between versions of the game. You could argue silent hill could due to its story elements but they just focused on making it an enhanced version of the original.
I think I'm staying to ramble too much now so I'll end it. I think the fact I can ramble about these games and gush about them so much does how much I love them. Other than astro bot rebirth was one of the most refreshing breaths in gaming for me, despite me more often than not despising both large open worlds and ubi style towers. Yet I felt compelled to almost 100% the game just due to the amount of fun I was having that I could not get anywhere else.
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Thanks for your comment on this. I agree that flying enemies are annoying in the game. I did not realize they had improved the combat mechanics in the second game. That makes me interested in checking that one out.
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It's a massive improvement too. The changes they made to materia make it more fun too.
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I'm waiting until I can play the entire game at once instead of chapter by chapter.
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I absolutely adore the remake games. They both follow a type of game-design that makes me feel like I'm playing something from the PS2 era again. Makes me feel like a kid in the best kind of way.
The games do have some trouble with time-wasters. It's both improved and made worse in Rebirth. Luckily, in open world fashion, a lot of it can actually be ignored in Rebirth. And if you don't ignore it, you get rewarded with actually good side-content. And Rebirths fast travel is good to the point you basically never have to travel anywhere "the long way" twice.
I have the same problem with the combat being too easy. It wasn't too bad with Intergrade as I was new to the combat system, but with Rebirth I am absolutely crushing enemies. I'm deliberately sabotaging my character builds to make it more challenging, but I really wish they didn't lock "hard" behind ng+. Coming from the first game, you should be able to jump into the second at that higher skill level from the start. But no.
Don't worry too much about your stuff not carrying over. The characters do not get reset to level zero, and no abilities. They start with a little less than what you have at the end of Intergrade, but a lot of the stuff you'll have gotten by the end of Intergrade, is what you have at the start of Rebirth. And then over the course of the second game, you get a lot of NEW stuff, rather than just re-aquiring the stuff you had in the first.
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If you're just watching, you won't get the main appeal of the modern FF combat systems.
And unfortunately, at lower difficulties, you can get by with button mashing. It's really disappointing that the difficulty that actually requires thinking is locked behind ng+, but at that level, the system really shines.
It's all strategy, dressed up as a hack and slash, but if you just button mash, don't min-max your builds, utilize the entire party, their abilities, spells and synergies, you are dead.
And it's all made more intense by the combat happening in real-time (though you can slow time to a crawl at any time). I really love the panic of the way you are forced to control any last surviving party member, waiting for your turn to be available so you can use a pheonix down.
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Rebirth does something with the open world mechanics I haven't seen in other games. It interconnects everything.
The life springs give you a shitton of materials for the crafting system, they reveal the locations of crafting recipes, and eventually the area boss.
All of which interconnects with side-quests, not just at the start as a tutorial, but throughout each region.
It hence manages to make you want to do everything, almost on accident. If you do all the sidequests, you progress the collectathon a bunch. If you do the collectathon, you end up progressing quests a bunch just by "coincidence".
Add to that the fast travel that lets you jump anywhere instantly, and nothing ends up feeling like a chore.
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The synergy skill that allows you to have another party member throw you into the air at an enemy, when controlling a melee fighter, (Tifa, Cloud, Red) is so satisfying and welcome in Rebirth when fighting flying enemies.
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I agree, I didn't like the new combat system.
But I really like turn based combat. I don't like to have to run around, spam buttons, or time anything right. I like to read and have time to make a decision. It's a personal preference, but one that made me not get very far in the remake.
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They're fun enough in their own right and it's cool seeing a large 3d version of the world and cities, but the story changes are some Kingdom hearts overcomplicated bullshit. Each game gets dramatically worse near the end in order for each chapter to have a climax ending. I'm only looking forward to part 3 to see how weapons play out but concerned they are going to screw that up with over-animefying it. Not here for the story at all anymore.
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I haven't played it, but I'm bothered by Square Enix's aversion to FF's turn-based roots. What kind of 'remake' changes genre entirely?
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This is my biggest problem. I don't like the real-time combat. When I originally played the demo of part one of the remake and discovered it was real-time combat, I went into the settings to change it to turn-based, only to discover there was no such setting. Stopped playing pretty soon after that.
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It’s too bad, I wish they would have kept turn based as an option.
I would have loved that so much.
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I haven’t been following the story as I’m already familiar with the original story. I didn’t think they would have made and significant changes to it. I just wanted to see the worlds.
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Due to the unnecessary padding to stretch the game out, I feel that you might get burned out.
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Think you've hit it on the nail on the head. It feels less like a chore because of the way they all connect with one another.
Although even before fast travel I still did a lot of manual travelling to get everything done. At least until I realised that fast travel was very likely to get better later in the game, which it of course did.
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It's a modern game, nobody but people who played the original would play it if the combat stayed the same. There are many criticisms of the game, but the change in combat isn't one of them.
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Being forced to walk in certain places is a replacement for a loading screen. Some of your other criticisms are very valid. I hate that they fluffed out the games j7st so they could split it into three full ass games.
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Feels slightly hyperbolic. Atlus's games are mostly turn based and seem to have sold in only somewhat worse numbers compared to FF7 remake (Persona 5 in particular). One series (Yakuza / Like a Dragon) even switched from action combat to turn based.
Anyway, I found the combat to be kind of forgettable and didn't really add to the game, although I understand there have been improvements in the second game.
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I had major problems with Remake myself, mostly stemming from punishing encounter design and them padding out a 6+ hour section into a full game. The catwalk lights, the lab, and other stuff obliterated the pacing, and it was painfully obvious how much better the dungeon design based on the original content was when compared to the new stuff.
The good news is, in Rebirth, that 1:1 remake feeling is front and center if you want it, instead supplemented this time by optional content. I felt like I had much more room to put together materia builds, and it has one of the best video game soundtracks I've ever heard. I'd be over the moon if they did a version of Final Fantasy VI that felt like most of Rebirth did.
Except for the limit breaks. Why they didn't give those full target tracking and allowed them to whiff is an outright bizarre design decision (along with the constant splitting of the party).
