Final Fantasy VII is Back

If there’s a good spoiler post or you want to DM me, I’d love to hear it.

Mind you I haven’t played it, but I’ve seen plenty of discussions and play of it.

Spoiler stuff:

As I understand it, Remake breaks off into another timeline. One where Aeris doesn’t die and a bunch of other stuff will likely happen that never happens in the original game (and vice versa). Instead of making a pure remake, they made a game that’s a divergent timeline where no one knows exactly how everything will turn out. The characters are all basically the same, but the story stops being the same story fairly early on and how it ends and important plot points are completely unknown because of it.

Whoa this is a $70 game? And it’s 1/3 of the original game?

It plays like a complete game, and it might be my favorite from the franchise (having played about seven of them). $70 seems fair. You should enjoy actiony combat and JRPG linearity to appreciate it the most.

Yeah, they’ve added a lot of game to the Midgar section compared to the original.

I really don’t like the real-time combat the newer FF games like this one have. I much prefer the turn-based combat of the older games. Real-time combat is less challenging, it’s hard to follow what’s going on, and you lose the often tough, nail-biting decisions that occur during turn-based combat. It sucks all future games will have action combat.

Try the demo - this is a legit fun combat, and I am also more a turn based guy.

It’s also a huge game with a lot of content- I think I put over 40 hours into it when it came out, let alone now with the new/extra content. I need to play this again…

I’ve put a lot of time into it, I’m on Chapter 14. I didn’t like the combat in Zodiac Age either.

Oh no, is it similar to Zodiac Age? I didn’t like that combat at all.

FFXIi was slower, more measured and had the scripted/gambit system. FF7r is more like Dragon’s Dogma.

$70? Is that a first? Aren’t new games still at $59.99 or did I miss something?

(Well, not technically a first, I remember paying $70 for Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System in 1987 but obviously that wasn’t the norm.)

It’s standard now for AAA console games on PS5/XBox. I still bristle buying Switch games at full price, but as (presuming here) PC gamers we have been quite spoiled with pricing for at least 15 years or so.

This game was how I learned about $70 being the new normal as well. At least the PC version has the Yuffie DLC included.

Though, to your point about Phantasy Star, I definitely remember SNES/Genesis games being like $80 in the early/mid ‘90s.

I also prefer turn-based combat, but I think it’s fair to say that Squenix have much more mainstream ambitions with Final Fantasy than with, say, Dragon Quest (from a global perspective as DQ is famously huge in Japan) and their assorted retro clones. So, action combat it is. Plus, it’s like a dry run for the solo action combat of FFXVI, with how borderline non-existent your AI-controlled companions are.

For me the combat is merely okay, but it really needs variety to shine. I’m hoping it gets polished quite a bit for FFXVI. What keeps the combat somewhat fresh here is being able to switch characters. Not sure I could handle 50 hours of hack-and-slash with Cloud. Especially since some (okay, most) of the boss fights have carried over the HP sponginess from classic JRPGs.

Are you in Canada? I haven’t seen any new games here in the U.S. at $70. They’re still at $59.99 in Best Buy, Gamestop, on Amazon, etc.

PS5 and Xbox Series X games are $70, as multiple publishers established would be the case at the beginning of the generation.

Disgaea 6 is on Steam for $70.

Where are you seeing this? I only buy physical games from Amazon and Best Buy and I have not seen any $70 games. Last few games I picked up were all $59.99:

Elden Ring
Cyberpunk 2077
Tales of Arise
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Guardians of the Galaxy

So far it’s a few publishers. Sony, Square, 2k. Maybe others, I’m not sure.

I think you’ve been lucky with the games you’ve bought. I’m scrolling through Gamestop’s PS5 games list as I post this and it seems nearly every upcoming and recent release (Madden, F1, CoD, Horizon, MLB the Show, Ghost of Tsushima, Hogwart’s Legacy, Midnight Suns, Disgaea) is $70 USD for a new copy (Elden Ring being a notable exception).

I just beat the game. I’d probably give it 7/10. Would be much better with turn-based combat. You have all these items that remove status effects and I never once used them, that shows how unbalanced the game is. Maybe it’s different at hard difficulty, I don’t know. All I ever really used is Phoenix Downs and health potions. I can’t help but think if combat was turn-based, I would have a use for those status removing items, at least I did in the older games. This is the dumbing down of FF :(