SPOILERS Final Fantasy 7 Remake SPOILER THREAD - CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT

[Laugana]

I can't believe ya'll aren't talking about the best line in the game:

"I know, killing it"

I loved that line “I know, nailed it, moving on”, just the way he said it lol.

[Kaslo]

I loved that line “I know, nailed it, moving on”, just the way he said it lol.

That's the one lol it was so good

[Draylo]

So am I using cloud wrong or does he just suck? The other three are just so much better, he constantly takes massive damage with not much benefit. Specifically on bosses like the simulator fights.

[Kaslo]

So am I using cloud wrong or does he just suck? The other three are just so much better, he constantly takes massive damage with not much benefit. Specifically on bosses like the simulator fights.

That's how I felt on whomever I was maining... I will say Barrier Materia helped a ton.

[AoE]

I don't really have any problems with Cloud. Whenever I feel like I'm losing control, I usually have use him to try to gain it back. I have him built like an all around dude though but he does a fuck ton of damage when I need him to.

[Antithesis]

Are the arbiters of fate meant to be meta commentary of the player base forcing the developers to maintain the purity of the original story?

Plausible deniability is what they represent. If they ditch the “we’re changing story aspects” angle they can make the whispers retroactively be whatever makes sense. All depends on fan feedback or maybe not. I can’t see a reason for Nomura to care about what fans think. The battle systems of KH games post KH2 are kind of garbage in my opinion and fans have been vocal about it.

Whatever the reason, they fit Nomura’s needs be they what they are.

[KuroTsuki]

So am I using cloud wrong or does he just suck? The other three are just so much better, he constantly takes massive damage with not much benefit. Specifically on bosses like the simulator fights.

Abuse Counterstance (the weapon ability. Not the R1 stance). It does a lot of damage and works on any physical attack. I personally don't set Counterstance to a shortcut on purpose, so when I see a move maybe coming at me, I hit X to open the menu to slow things down. Counterstance will interrupt most (maybe all?) animations you're currently doing as well, so you can just swing away until you see the enemy retaliating.

[Antithesis]

Triple Slash is also great with Cloud. Great way to deal with normal monsters especially if you have elemental materia on. Parry is also good with Cloud.

[KuroTsuki]

Can you get multiple Chain Bangles? Can't remember if it dropped from a boss or a chest

[BerenTebogo]

About to beat hard mode and have beat all hard sim VRs and I am happy to say I have never once equipped parry or deadly dodge materia because I do not understand them and I am lazy.

[Zetanio]

I have come back to say that I loved this game and it was absolutely worth the hype and Jessie better be alive because she's the smash queen.

Only major criticism was that it was way way too easy on normal. ~40 hours with 6 hours of pause time.

10/10.

#freeday

[Draylo]

Abuse Counterstance (the weapon ability. Not the R1 stance). It does a lot of damage and works on any physical attack. I personally don't set Counterstance to a shortcut on purpose, so when I see a move maybe coming at me, I hit X to open the menu to slow things down. Counterstance will interrupt most (maybe all?) animations you're currently doing as well, so you can just swing away until you see the enemy retaliating.

It doesn't work well on bosses, sometimes you'll counter but still take damage and stagger backwards. I just haven't seen him be that great for most bosses, especially the simulator ones. Tifa is quick and can stagger enemies quick, Aerith is a powerhouse w/magic and Barrett is a tank and long distance. Whenever I use cloud he just gets thrown around a lot. Granted, most characters I am on the mobs just go right for you so I usually just stay on Barret so far with the stoneskin and capped HP and guard and try to sneak in the other characters when I can.

[Antithesis]

About to beat hard mode and have beat all hard sim VRs and I am happy to say I have never once equipped parry or deadly dodge materia because I do not understand them and I am lazy.

Parry prevents you from being knocked off balance against virtually any attack (except those that will 100% knock you in the air.) It's much better than standard dodge and gives ATB to boot.

EDIT:

Also beat Hell House on Hard Mode. Only took me about 4-5 tries. I used the Gotterdammerung and Refocus materia on Aerith and basically had her spam Planet Protector the whole match. Gotta take it a little slow and stay careful. The worst part of the fight for sure are the Tonberrys. You have to snipe them ASAP or one of them can one shot Aerith and fuck up the whole plan and she doesn't get her three ATB back. Other than that it's just a patience game.

[BerenTebogo]

Parry prevents you from being knocked off balance against virtually any attack (except those that will 100% knock you in the air.) It's much better than standard dodge and gives ATB to boot.

Shame I’ll never get a chance to use it because I am fukken done with this lol.

[Gredival]

I just got past the train graveyard. Peak Peter Jackson right there turning the 1% mob that has a stealable item into a whole main story chapter basically. It wasn't bad writing and use of the source material was clever, but goddamn I don't have time to play ghost whisperer in the trainyard when the plate is about to drop.

[brozy]

What are y'all using for AP grinding? Read about that one fight in shinra HQ that gives like 50 for the first round and just give up and rego but dunno if i can stomach doing that for too long.

[Prothescar]

Finished it. I'm judging this as any other game and not allowing my judgment to be peppered by nostalgia glasses and Square Enix idolatry.

Graphics - 7/10
Far from the best looking game I've ever seen but also not the worst current gen title either. That said, any good is heavily marred by technical limitations and horrendous texture streaming bugs. Oftentimes environmental and character textures look like they were ripped out of the PS3 era. Lip sync looks like the character's lips are trying to escape their faces half the time. Spells and particle effects look good, main cast and important side characters also generally look good but they are not immune to the texture streaming problems. Large world segments that are supposed to be impact end up looking horrendous as a result of this as well; namely, any scene where you're told to look out over Midgar. The most distressing example of this is when you're climbing the tower in Sector 7 before the last few chapters of the game and Barret tells you to "remember this view". No problem, I can remember all 12 pixels. This has to be resolved for part 2 and beyond.

Combat - 6/10
Horrendously imbalanced and two dimensional but still slightly above average. People said an action combat system would alleviate the bread and butter, cut and dry turn based combat shortcomings but, alas. Fights are either monumental damage sponges that take ages to beat by attrition or laughably easy one shot fodder. There is no in between. A handful of the game's multitude of poorly designed bosses stood out as fun encounters, but most of them either pigeonhole you into a certain strategy that is often annoying or makes the fight a faceroll, or they're so heavily scripted that you can't even afford to stagger and combo them before they enter a phase transition and wipe your progress. Trash in general is shit tier as expected with a couple of standout exceptions that required me to pay attention to them. Defensive options ended up being hold down block and parry to avoid getting staggered, or just eat the hit and brush it off because the dodge roll has to be the absolute worst I've ever experienced in a video game. It provides nothing for using it, if it has iframes at all they're so minuscule that I never managed to have them absorb an attack. Dodging things like spells is better done just running in circles around the boss so that the initial projectile can't hit you. Parry and COutnerstance, on the otherhand, give you a large amount of super armor, charge your ATB, and in the case of Counterstance deals significant amounts of damage to the enemy, making anything other than running in circles or using those two options a complete waste of time. This could use improvement in part 2 and beyond.

Other Gameplay - 5/10
Average. Run of the mill busywork quests that have only the faintest hint of side story attached to them. The rewards are almost completely meaningless outside of plot-related developments that are tied to them and thus demand their completion. Running from point A to point B can be a trial in itself, but that will be touched upon later. Minigames range from infuriating to very easy but I can't say I minded their inclusion. Puzzles in the various dungeons and story segments were basically nonexistent due to how barebones and handholdy they were. Other side content such as the Colosseum and VR Simulator feel tacked on with a bunch of rinse and repeat battles that hold little impact to your overall progress and, if it weren't for the trophies, I wouldn't have bothered.

World - 7/10
The setting is great and they definitely nailed the atmosphere and overall design of Midgar exceptionally well. It did, however, fall apart the more I played. Every zone is essentially a winding hallway with little side halls that normally have a treasure chest, boxes, or a materia at the end. Design of some of the well-traversed areas like Wall Market is utterly infuriating and makes doing side quests and collecting items a chore. So many boss arenas and battlefields in general turned into narrow corridors where using the hamstrung defensive options at my disposal became pointless, and many attacks could lose their effectiveness entirely. Every single summon is fought in the same generic cyber arena as well, no set pieces of ambiance whatsoever to add to them. I honestly can't imagine part 2 opening up and becoming more freeform in the next part but I hope to all fuck they find a way to do it because an otherwise well crafted world was completely wasted by having you view it through a narrow slit in the fabric.

Characters - 10/10
The one part of the game that I can find little to no fault in. Even side characters have a decent amount of depth to them, but the main cast and primary side characters really shine. I found myself giving way more of a fuck about some characters in the remake than I ever did in the original, particularly non-Barret AVALANCHE members. Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge (Biggs easily being the weakest of the 3) are given a much more clearly defined role this time, and it pays off. It also makes the plate fall gutpunch far more impactful overall. Side characters like Marle, Johnny, and Mireille are delightful, whereas others like Kyrie are totally forgettable in this installment. Big figured like the ShinRa executives and Corneo are captured wonderfully as well, and even though most of them get very little screen time, you get a good sense of their personalities in just the minute or two that you get to see of them. As for the main cast, Aerith's personality here was very surprising as she never struck me as such a sassy jabberon like she is in the Remake, but she grew on me eventually; there's a lot more that will happen with her character over the next installments though, I'm sure. Tifa and Barret were as I would have expected from the original and they were captured well, and Cloud grew a much more fleshed out personality from the original, which is great. Character development was fefinitely the highlight of the game for me.

Story - 6/10
Oh man. It starts out strong, playing to the nostalgia organs and giving you all the right kinds of adrenaline surge. New characters and concepts are organically mixed in as you go and it all feels natural... except for those fucking phantoms. The Whisperers. A literary device straight out of the Nomura Handbook of Overdone and Unecessary Plot Elements. There is no reason for these things to exists, there is no reason for the "changing fate uwu" overarching plotline to exist. But, surprisingly, that isn't even my main issue here. The Whisperers themselves are the problem. They start out as overpowered, ridiculous manifestations of either the developer's will or the playerbase's, depending on your interpretation; a fourth wall breaking shitfest whose only purpose is to keep the story going exactly as you'd expect it to go from the original. This begins to slowly unravel, though. Things slip through the cracks. Characters survive when they shouldn't, things happen in ways that are not as you'd expect. That's all fine though, I don't mind it. I mind the device used to get us there. The Whisperers are fucking stupid and there's nothing anyone can say that will change my mind. The implication that Aerith could be some time traveling usurper of fate is also extremely fucking dumb but somehow less offensive to me than the existence of the shadow cloaked hoodlums constantly invading my gamespace and shitting up the already poorly-rendered environments. I can only hope to all fuck that dispelling the Shadow Lord/Sora's Heartless and his cronies at the end of part 1 means we won't be dealing with them in part 2+, but that seems like a foolish thing to expect. I'm not as up in arms about the result, aka greatly diverging the plot from the original, as some people might be, but the method by which it is being achieved is horrifically transparent and stupid to me and I can't overlook it. Other things that bothered me, though less intensely, include the sudden reveal of Biggs' survival at the end (we saw him take his last fucking breath...) while leaving best girl Jessie buried under 50000 tons of concrete and sheet metal; Cloud's ability to see into the fucking future for some god damn reason; Barret being killed off only to be revived like 2 minutes later; and the most tragic thing of all, no fucking dogs to pet.

Overall - 6.8/10
Above average but not as remarkable as it could have been. Hopefully the glaring issues are mitigated or completely addressed in part two and beyond. We'll be waiting a while before we find out. There's probably other shit I will think of in the coming hours/days that I didn't include in here.

[Koul]

My biggest disappointment was not seeing the shinra cell part in todays graphics. I was so looking forward to seeing that creepy shit but nope. Didn't happen. But boy, Hojos useless ass giant fucking maze of a backyard lab was fun, right? right??

[Antithesis]

What are y'all using for AP grinding? Read about that one fight in shinra HQ that gives like 50 for the first round and just give up and rego but dunno if i can stomach doing that for too long.

It's honestly not that bad. Start of chapter 16. Go to the garage and use Firaga + Magnify to melt everything. Once you're done with the garage restart and do it again. Have fun.

[Gokulo]

The bastards are actually teasing us about Jessie. When they show biggs, if you look at the nightstand her gloves and bandana are there, making you think she actually also might be alive.