Final Fantasy VII is Back

Never played it, but I have to admit that was a great trailer.

I’ll admit this seems like a pretty cool game, but why is his sword so big?

Why Not…

He must be a Landsknecht.

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Correct me if I am wrong but isn’t Clouds sword a smaller more miniaturized version of that Berserk guy’s sword? My anime lore is a dump stat.

Square-Enix delayed the FFVII remake alongside Crystal Dynamics Avengers game today.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-01-14-final-fantasy-7-remake-delayed-to-april

The demo just finally launched on PSN!

There’s a bunch of previews that just went up all over the web as well.

I’m trying this out now, and I’m typing up my impressions and such while I play it for my cousin, I’ll post them here too when I’m done, plus some screens I grabbed. But I wanted to mention the difficulty/classic mode here quick.

First, let me describe Normal combat - it’s just pressing an attack button (or holding it down for cool combos). This, so far, isn’t like Devil May Cry or anything - you’re just attacking and building up your ATB that you use to spend on abilities or spells. More on that in a bit, it’s what makes the game. Anyway, the only difference between Normal and Classic seems to be that on Classic your character auto-attacks for you, so you don’t have to bother pressing the attack button (you still can, like it felt like he was just standing there a few times, so I manually did it myself to the same effect as NOT being on Classic). This means you can focus your attention on spending ATB manually, while your active character attacks.

Also, Classic difficulty is just like Easy, in terms of battle difficulty. So really, Classic is just even easier than Easy in that you don’t need to manually be attacking.

I would recommend playing on Normal - you can change the difficulty at any time, but manually attacking is really fun and honestly, it’s that or you just watch the action while holding the controller in your hand, which is… goofy. Just press the button yourself.

More later.

Impressions in Real-Time while I played. This may be spoiler-filled if you wanted to experience the demo yourself, so I’ll just say I freaking loved it and went from “maybe I’ll check it out when I get a PS5 and part 2 is available or something” to “gimmie gimmie gimmie” day one. Okay, for those that want details, here we go.

The first thing I’m hearing is the gorgeous, classic Final Fantasy music, from like Final Fantasy II I want to say even, and it sounds lovely. I can pick between Classic, Easy, and Normal - with Classic being the “turn-based” mode. “The player-controlled character will attack and defend automatically, allowing you to focus on executing commands. The battle difficulty is the same as Easy.” I’m going to try Normal first, and then I’ll play a little classic later, and it doesn’t really sound like “turn-based mode” so much as “super easy mode”? (NOTE: I wrote this before I wrote the above, Classic is really just an easier than easy mode, but without the need to manually attack, though I noted above and will here again - I feel like sometimes my guy was just standing there NOT attacking, and honestly other than holding the attack button down and moving/rolling now and then you aren’t otherwise doing anything in combat, the game isn’t asking a lot by requiring you to attack enemies by tapping square, imo.

Jeez, a seriously freaking gorgeous CGI leads to the title sequence and then Cloud makes an appearance with a flourish, and then you get to control the action. I thought I was still in the cut-scene for a bit so I just stood there and when I realized the game was waiting for me to move, I took a screengrab instead!

So the combat is really fluid and fun! It’s just an attack button right now, you can tap it repeatedly or hold it and watch the combos roll in, very simple (and by combos I mean literally, you just watching various attack animations). It’s not like Devil May Cry or anything, you don’t have “heavy” or “light” attacks nor abilities on a timer, for instance. Your reflexes don’t matter much, either. You can dodge or you can block, and maybe some enemies that’s necessary but in the demo I soaked up damage like a sponge and just used potions when needed. Plus playing as Barrett that guy is like a tank, he really can’t roll much to try and evade, anyway, so I didn’t even bother. Oh, also the very first two enemies you fight level you to 7, so this isn’t the opening of the game per-se and a lot of this is probably designed around being a demo, which is likely why your progress here doesn’t carry forward into the full release - presumably, the actual events here in the full game are different as is your characters level/equipment/items, etc. Anyway, as you attack, your ATB bar fills up and once you have at least one segment (out of two, so far) you can hit X and the entire game pauses completely (slight animations still happening, but it’s been paused while I type this and nothing has changed; it’s full on paused) and let’s you select things like spells or abilities from the menu, giving you then all the time in the world to select targets for said actions - this is pretty close to how Final Fantasy XII works - only in that game you don’t need to fill up a gauge by manually attacking to pause and use spells, of course. Or items, I’m editing this in here to note that in combat, using an item also takes an ATB “point” so there is some tactical consideration here. You can use items all you like outside of combat, though.

Actually, now I think about it “classic” is even closer to FFXII since you auto-attack in that game, too. Anyway, I just cast Fire and it was one of the best looking things I’ve ever seen, wowza.

I can’t wait to see a proper spell-caster type in the party, jeez these abilities and effects are incredible.

Now I’m being taught how to explore data out of battle, and I love the UI, check this out:

Man, that’s a good looking equipment/stat page. Looks like characters can have a weapon, armband(?), and trinket type thing which is neat, plus meaty stats and other numbers for the secret math nerd in all of us RPGers.

Oh, I was playing in the Options and you can change difficulty, even down to Classic, whenever you want. Further evidence that Classic is just easy mode without you having to do any attack button stuff. I’ve played a little Classic and I think I prefer Normal - the enemies are like paper on Easy, which is fine, but I don’t need to be that coddled. I love it’s an option, but I have a feeling most folks will complain “normal” is too easy while feeling perfect for me, as it is. Plus, I find the game is more interesting when you are manually attacking and not just doing the pause/select/target stuff. I recently got a second party member, and each has a unique action - Cloud’s for instance, puts him in a stance where he moves slow but deals more damage, and it’s a ton of fun as his attack/animations are different and more brutal, while Barrett can perform a huge cannon shot that fills his ATB gauge up and then needs to itself recharge, and he’s really fun to aim and mow down enemies with his default auto-cannon attack. At any time you can press R1 or L1 (for either party member, I assume, but when you only have 1 other party either button brings that persons menu up) and bring up their abilities menu, so you can control ALL the characters manually just with the press of a button, ordering Barrett to do his big cannon shot while also casting fire at an enemy.

Also cool, I pressed the main/map button on the PS4 controller by accident (it opens a Map up when not in combat) and during combat it gives you some fun details on the enemy you have targetted, presumably more data is filled in the more you fight the same enemy (or use Scan)?

Just had a bit of a mini-boss fight and it was a freaking blast, honestly. Using spells and abilities to stagger it (Barrett has Lightning as a spell, very handy) and using roll/block to dodge it’s attacks while it was focused on me felt good, tactically.

A note here, while I’m thinking of it - the characters are well voiced and great, the story is sweeping me up in a big way already, and other than a very scene chewing scene on an elevator, I’m really digging Barrett quite a bit here. Anyway, I suspect I’m nearing the end of the demo, so I’ll try to wrap this up.

Okay, the end boss of the demo is maybe the most fun I’ve had in a boss fight in a while, it was a really cool fight with lots of reasons to use all the things the demo taught you to do date, including introducing Limit Breaks (holy crap; Limit Breaks) and it looked and played so incredibly well. Wow. This entire game feels so good! The boss was a tough one, but even on Normal I never felt like I was in super danger (a few times I got low on health and I ran through ALL of my ethers trying to keep MP up, which is a good problem to have in a game like this, it means you need to use all your resources to succeed and is another reason I recommend Normal difficulty).

And that’s a wrap on the demo. That was so good! I may be in day one after all! It looked so, so good and plays so slick! It was legit fun, and I was bummed when it was over. Something to keep an eye out, if I have time and budget in April after all.

Wow, that was pretty cool. I like the active control attacking…maybe I’ll be picking this up after all.

I thought it was okay. The excitement of the music wore off eventually and the combat wasn’t quite as exciting as I hoped, though it’s only the beginning of the game. The characters were on the edge of being annoying, which was my biggest concern.

I would never realistically have time to play it anyway.

I enjoyed the demo. I thought the com,bat seemed more interactive than FF15 which was good. I actually thought Barret was less annoying than he used to be so that was a plus =) I’m kind of concerned about how much of the old game is in the part 1? Have they said where it cuts off? If it is truly just the midgard portion then that seems pretty small actually.

I read they expanded the Midgar bit considerably, but I don’t really know what that means.

So correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that this game will just cover the Midgar portion of the story? It has admittedly been many, many years since I played, but is that even 20% of the game’s content? What are they planning to do, release this as a six part game concluding in 2042? My dementia should be settling in by then.

Played through the demo.

I think I might just be done with Square’s kind of games. The tired anime tropes, the godawful VO direction, the constant (constant!) grunting and panting and other vocalization of stupid anime emotion iconography. Barret cursing out of nowhere to be edgy. Just bleh.

Combat on “normal” was i guess a slightly less shitty FF15? Hooray? Still an annoying combination of trying to keep track of a bunch of enemies and attack patterns while being forever locked into an animation that some poor bastard spent 700 hours going frame by frame on.

I think these kind of games may just not interedt me any more. I’d say they should just make a movie… but we know how that turned out.

My main complaint with the demo is the same complaint I had about FFXV (and the original FFVII, come to think of it): I really dislike how cartoony the characters look when so much effort went into making the world look so realistic. It’s nit-picky I guess and obviously an art direction choice that someone is consciously making over at Square Enix, but I just find it sort of immersion breaking. And this is from a guy who didn’t really think FFVI needed a visual update because the art held up fine, so I’m not averse to cartoony graphics. Just the jarring inconsistency.

All that may be true. But Cloud has an attack that looks like Stinger from Devil May Cry, so it cancels out the bad stuff.

Midgar was a very small portion of the game as I recall it. Probably more like 5%?

I haven’t played the demo but that’s what I got from videos I’ve seen. They really should have kept the ATB system. I really hated the combat in FF15. Once I discovered there was an option that pauses combat when you’re not doing moving or doing anything, I enjoyed it more but it was still far from ideal.

Funnily enough I’ve played the Midgar portion through like 6 times and never made it past mid-disc 2 apart from that.