What’s this? A not Top Ten of the year list? I couldn’t not have somewhere to put my thoughts down about this game while I sealed myself off from all forms of communication for 116 Hours and 25 Minutes to avoid spoilers, this is basically a ramble about my feelings on the game. It will also be chock a block full of Massive Spoilers
I think the theme of this game is surpassing expectations, at almost every opportunity it managed to do so. Remake set the bar pretty high, and I was looking forward to a game that met that bar while improving on critiques of the first game, but it managed to take that bar and use it as a second jumping-off point. The bar is so high now that I struggle to believe Part 3 can surpass this.
The game’s biggest strength? Variety. There are so many “things” in this game – different minigames, some of which you only play once. Music for each zone’s Chocobos, types of open world objectives, side quests that barely repeat objectives with voice acting and character relationship building. With this much stuff, it took until the very end of the game for me to go “okay game, time to wrap this up.”
Let’s take a look at the minigames, there are new ones introduced right up until the last zone, some you play once in one area, like Fort Condor and Frog Guys. Both are super high quality and fun to play. It’s nuts they were not in the game more (granted Fort Condor was in the Remake DLC). Then you have the game-spanning minigame, the card game Queens Blood, and it’s phenomenal. Some people say that it’s better than FF8’s Triple Triad, and to those people I say they are absolutely right! I wish there was more of it to play I desperately hope there is a lot more of this in a DLC or the third game, add it to FF14, hell just release a Queens Blood game just let me play more of it!
Two of the Minigames left a bad taste in my mouth, those being the 3D brawler and the Cactuar Crush. In 3D brawler’s case, I didn’t find learning the fights fun; they were just frustrating, and that Sephiroth super boss took me like an hour. Cactuar Crush was also frustrating; those little dodging, affinity-swapping bastards. You too can say things like “why didn’t that kill” and “how did that hit me” while playing this one.
I managed to stay almost completely in the dark on public opinion of the game but I did hear that people didn’t like the Cosmo Canyon Chocobo Minigame, which just tells me that people don’t know how to glide a Chocobo. Although I will give them that getting max points on the third level requires a turn that is too tight at the end.
World exploration is the biggest mixed bag, most of the open world objectives are fun, the combat trials one such example. the Ubisoft esc ones such as Towers and Lifesprings got a little checklisty by the end. To make up for that though, all the open areas were a joy to traverse, with phenomenal music (shoutout to Gongaga).
Another thing that made it through the cracks of my spoiler shield was that people hate Chadley, why? He is fine, nothing wrong with the open world intel lad. MAI can go do one though.
Sidequests are a massive improvement over Remake, they are much bigger and better designed. Most have unique objectives, for example, following a series of pictures to find a location or simply picking flowers. Each quest has a designated party member to be the “main” character of the quest, and it makes for some great relationship building between Cloud and the party. I would liken these quests to an attempt to be like Witcher side quests, and while I don’t think they quite get there, it’s pretty close.
I can’t talk about side content without bringing up the Protorelic questline. I’m not sure whose idea it was to add Gilgamesh to the game and have him involved in a game-spanning questline, but give them a raise! Each area has a set of four quests called Protorelics, and they are some of the best side content in the game, from chasing around Beck and his crew to being sucked into Fort Condor. Each area was different and cool (except Cactuar Crush), and with these cool mini-games comes with some cool cutscenes and a story related to Gilgamesh. You even fight him a couple of times throughout.It all leads up to a Superboss against him and it was one of the most blood pumping fights in the game (granted I found out afterwards I was 20 levels lower than I should have been).
The Protorelics in Cosmo Canyon region seems like they wanted to fit it into the main plot but couldn’t quite do it, as it involves the fate of Wedge. He is implied to have died off-screen in the Remake leading to the belief he might still be alive, but the Proto questline in this confirms he is outright dead.
Dungeon design is a vast improvement, it was in the Corel Mines playing the Yuffie section with the grappling hook I was just thinking how much more fun I was having than say the Train Graveyard or the Under-Plate from Remake. They are better thought out and more varied, but this would be due to these dungeons being from the original rather than ones made to buff out Remake. They are also a lot longer, but I think they are paced out well and don’t feel like a slog because of it.
Temple of the Ancients for example was a brilliant Dungeon, it was like a 3-4 hour long by itself but I should’ve expected that it being the final big Dungeon of the game like the Shinra building in Remake. But WHERE was the little wizard dude you chase through the tunnel room!? Jokes aside it was a great dungeon, but I did miss that guy, he was a core memory from being a kid.
The combat is another area that is built upon, aerial combat is much less of chore with more options to get up in flying enemies faces. The addition of the perfect block great, and of course the synergy stuff is A+ the cool animations on the pseudo limit breaks, the versatility of the skills themselves all add a lot of depth to the combat.
While there is a lot of cool new Materia, such as the multi-element Materia, this the area I think a lot more improvement could be made, for example, one of the new Materia is for your party members to use ATB charges on their own and I have to think that this could have just been a battle setting instead of using a materia slot, set a party member to “Use ATB when available” or “conserve ATB for manual selection”. Tie to the affinity system so you need to earn it or something.
I would also like to see multi-linked slots, for example you could use one Magnify Materia for both a Healing Materia and a Wind Materia, perhaps put a limit on how many Materia can be linked via the blue Materia’s level or limit the Magnify to level two spells. Another healing example is that the game as an auto cast spell materia, I would have loved to also link that to a Magnify.
I softlocked the game at two points and had one hard crash, the softlocks were both in boss fights, I broke the AI causing them to stand there, while they would take damage a phase change wouldn’t happen so after a while their HP would lock. One of the softlocks was a fight against Roche, I knocked him up into the Air and he started falling Infinitely which was pretty funny.
I’m not the biggest fan of Fog of War, as when it appears I am compelled to get rid of it no matter how long it takes, the recent Like a Dragon game also had it. When you unlock Tiny Bronco near the end of the game it was a double edged sword as I spent a good hour going back and forth from east to west clearing out the fog.
The world they built blew past my expectations, it keeps the sense of scale that leaving Midgar in the original had. I thought it would have been a series of large open zones that weren’t connected. But they managed to make the world of FF7 like is was back in the day. Fully connected and in one big map… sort of, you can see that travelling around isn’t seamless, loading different maps for the Tiny Bronco and on foot of the two continents. Its fine though, the moment you get free control of the Bronco and you realise you can cross the ocean freely was a true blow away moment. This have given me full confidence about freely flying the Highwind in part 3.
The music of course is stellar, so many new tracks of different genres, the future of Final Fantasy music is in great hands with Masashi Hamauzu and Mitsuto Suzuki. There isn’t a bad track in the bunch, this is clearly going to be soundtrack of the year unless Squares other maestro Masayoshi Soken works some dark magic Dawntrail later this year.
My favorite portion of the game was from the Junon Parade right up until you leave Costa Del Sol, the Junon section in particular was masterful expansion on the orginal, such love and care for what was a silly little minigame in the original, shout out to the best party members in the game, the 7th Infantry. The Shinra-8 was also blown up with a huge Queens Blood tournament, so it gets big points from me for that. Costa Del Sol was super fun, all the minigames there were great and a nice cap off for the “holiday fun times” section of the game.
The Date also shattered my expectations. I got Tifa who I was gunning for the whole game so we are off to a good start, then you have the Play which after a cool cameo dance sequence of Jessie performing in Loveless. you then get the original games play that has been blown up into this multi act quicktime event that is a perfect end to the goofy FF7 story stuff we got in this game. Capped off by Aerith’s performance, once her theme mixed in I got a little misty eyed, truly marvelous stuff.
After the Play you get the Skywheel sequence, again I thought we were going to get a conversation of romantic implications and that would be that, instead we got a full on screen kiss between the two! At this time I haven’t looked to see if this is the same with Aerith (Or Barret/Yuffie/Red lol), but the fact that we have gotten past only implying romantic interest in these girls at all is great, I am looking forward to seeing how the scene under the highwind in part 3 is handled with great interest.
Inserting Yuffie into the story more now she is no longer an optional party member was done super well, she isn’t annoying and can be quite funny. The part where she is just laying down on the sofa singing is great, when you tell her it’s a good song she sings it again with more gusto! Suzie Yeung is quickly becoming one of my favorite voice actors. I look forward to more of the new Wutai plot and I think it’s going to be a lot bigger of a section in part 3.
Cid was done great, with Rocket Town cut (for now) for a bit of streamlining, Cid has been moved to before Cosmo Canyon as a fast travel device. It was nice to actually fly in the Bronco for a little bit via this change. I’m guessing we are only going to go to Rocket town the once in part 3 now, I hope they don’t cut Palmer getting hit a by a truck.
Vincent’s handling was interesting, I was thinking about how they were going to handle his Limit Breaks, if they were just going to be small cosmetic changes or bigger changes to his model. They went beyond that, at least in his newly added boss fight and now I’m even more curious how this is going to work in part 3. Hopefully it won’t be case of the “Boss” Vs “Boss when he joins the party” joke.
In terms of the overall story I liked it, I mean 99% of it is just the original. I loved my time with the game and seeing a lot of the best parts of the original like this was an emotional blowout. If I were to put critique to the story though it would be to do with the changes.
What’s going on with Zack and the multiple timelines? Zack just mulled around Midgar the whole game and then fell into the final boss room. There is split a timeline where he goes to the Shinra building and dies and one where he goes to the Reactor and lives but Biggs dies. I mean I understand what happend but I do not understand why they are adding more timeline splits, at this point in time it seems needlessly complex.
I think adding more boss fights right after Aerith’s death lessens the impact, that and Cloud not acknowledging the death due to his current mental state is detrimental to this game. That said I can see what they are doing here at least, unlike the timeline thing, they are splitting the weight of Aerthis death between games. While I can’t say this is a good idea I would be shocked if Cloud regaining his memories in Part 3 doesn’t tie back to this change in some way. The biggest miss here is Cloud not lowering Aerith into the water, we saw it in the Arbiter of Fate fight in Remake so I hope we get it at some point in part 3 once Cloud is free, even if it’s only in his head.
This said I did like the actual fight, it was nice seeing Bizzaro the most underappreciated form of Sephiroth, Zack being in the fight was cool despite how he got there. Aerith walking in for the final phase was a bit silly but at least she faded away afterwards.
Not sure what is going on with Rufus and Lodbrok stuff, but there is clearly more going on there that we don’t know about yet so I will refrain from comment until part 3 or if this is the subject of DLC.
I do hope people can look past this while the ending of this game is a very important moment in FF7, there is so much of the game to love. We were told this was going to be a three part series a full year and a half before the game came out, so they have a plan. At this point I want to see the big picture so I can look back and judge it fully, Im sure in 2027-28 I won’t be saying I wasted my time at least.
I’m sad my time with the game is over so the ending didn’t ruin the game or anything like that, but I do think the Forgotten Capital section could have been better paced. I think I could sum it up best by saying that in the original the Forgotten Capital was quiet and slow, while in Rebirth it’s loud and fast. I really want to read about the intentions of the devs on this.
So to conclude, it’s a phenomenal game with many many many things to love and adore. My only real complaints were two minigames and the pacing from when you arrive at the Forgotten Capital, plus Zack’s nothing Intermissions. I’m not mad or upset like my initial knee jerk reaction to Remake, I’m coming out of this with one feeling, I just want to know how this all ends.
Is this Remake after all?
.
Little bit of hopes and predictions for part 3
.
To start I think Wutai will be greatly expanded, it will become the Wall Market/Gold Saucer of section of the game, and we will be spending over 10 hours there. I’m almost certain there will be a battle arena section at the very least. I’m not sure when we would go there exactly however, maybe after Rocket Town? Wild guess is that we get to stay at a local hot spring style Inn.
After sailing the seas in this game I am hoping we fly around it all in the Highwind, with the 7th Infantry in the crew (A sidequest confirms they are hanging around Junon so hey, they are still there).
Another Protorelic style quest for Knights of the Round, leading up to the hardest fight in the Trilogy.
The fights against the Weapons should be FFXVI-esc where you play as the summons (or this could be how Knights are included?), with both Ruby and Emerald included in the story
We go back to Gongaga include the Tankceratops this time (Plz)
On the return to Midgar I feel like they will include more Deepground stuff/Evil Sonon fight?
I hope MAI gets a physical body so she can be shot in the back of the head.
.
With the release of this game we only have Dawntrail left before we exit what as been a golden 3 years of Final Fantasy, with releases every six-ish months since Endwalker, I’m sad it’s going to be over as the games have all be great. But anyway time to move on, so with all that said…
Until next time!
Ryan's Collection of Thoughts! 
Leave a comment