Hello.
This is me from the future; Weaboo James. Ohio Go Semass.
It is 1:47 in the morning and I’m looking over some stuff. I’m closing in on my last hours of Final Fantasy VII Remake.
Before I get to that in this writing, I’m going to spend an obnoxious amount of words describing my history and my time with the original game. I’m not yet quite sure what will become of this thing, but I’ve been working on it for months. I first began writing notes about my playthrough in the summer of 2019. Then, I decided to include those notes, because I wanted this to be a wild, monolithic tome of bullshit. In one edit, I decided to combine the two separate posts I had mysteriously created, with notes on what I had written in the past whenever I started to disagree with myself. I have no clue if any of this is worthwhile. All I can say is this:
I am not a critic.
Hey. I uh, forgot to talk about my history with this game. Which was supposed to be this section’s topic. But instead I just talked about the fucking speed hack for three thousand words.
So here’s what’s up: Final Fantasy 7 was my first JRPG. I watched some friends play it, and I thought it was cool. I got my first PlayStation really late: about four months before I had a PlayStation 2 in 2002. I borrowed a copy of FF7 from a friend, but they soon requested I returned it back to them. I borrowed it a few more times for similarly short sessions until eventually buying a copy of my own for $15 at a Meyer in 2004.
Then I bought it on PS4 when that came out. I played around with it for about an hour. I think that was in 2017, which was the year of video games, so I definitely didn’t make much time for it.
Then it came out on Switch. I held off a little bit, eventually grabbing it and starting it for this blog post, and to be ready for the release of Remake. Started that in 2019, beat it this year in 2020.
What I can remember is being heavily impressed when I first saw the game, to being completely flippant when I saw other 3D JRPGs. It was immediately outdone for me due to the archaic visuals, and to be honest I used to really hate turn based battles. Then the volcanic popularity of the game really turned me off. I had to read sweaty, Dorito fingered ravings about this game for decades. My worst acquaintances screamed about this game in pitches I’d rather not replicate in typed letter. I was officially turned against the game, and for years I considered it to be an overrated piece of trash.
I knew that wasn’t true, though. I knew I enjoyed the game’s soundtrack: I relistened to it hundreds of times, even when I hated the game. I knew I loved the characters. I knew I loved big swords and gun arms. I knew I loved the design of Midgar; grungy, dirty dark diselpunk with themes of class warfare and environmentalism. I also like it when my video games cuss SO THERE.
Here’s some scattered-ass notes I fuckin’ wrote while playin through this gosh darn vidya gums.
#
In 2020 they be releasing remake right?
Here’s a space where I write about my current experience playing FF7 before that momentous occasion.
lol
Embedded Journalism
I played the switch port of FFVII–a funny artifact of inevitability contrasting with the historical harshness of Final Fantasy 7’s release “betraying” Nintendo by exclusively releasing on PlayStation. Since that release the game has seen ports to PS3, PS4, Vita, PC, and finally Switch–the first Nintendo console to feature their lost baby. Daddy also has to share, though: uncle X’s Box also gained the port. Sometimes you have to share, especially when custody is mandated by court. Or Cloud.
Clourt.
The modern port adds nice cheats that make playing the game a breeze. Players can speed up time by three, making the basic boring combat system (bears) bearable, and even still it’s possible to disable random battles entirely making backtracking easier. When you really wanna get through that last boss just to be done with it, you can enable infinitely regenerating HP, MP, and limit breaks. It’s not necessarily a WIN BUTTON, since bosses will one shot weaker characters. But it certainly removed the amount of times I would have had to restart and replay battles. Saved me time. Geico. Mecho. Macho? Cream. Cream of the crop.
As a child, Final Fantasy Seven seemed to me to be the kind of video game adults played. It was some mix of my ineptitude at RPG mechanics and ultra edgy concepts like cross dressing and poverty. I was too young to really understand what was going on, however it was so cool. You wanted to keep playing just to see what was going to happen next. But whenever I’d die in one of these games, I didn’t yet relish the grind. I didn’t want to level up my characters.
Grinding is now one of my favorite video game activities. It’s satisfying to just sit there and mindlessly make progress in a game while watching TV: an activity now made ultra possible with the switch. I spent a lot of time in handheld mode playing Final Fantasy 7 while watching YouTube and Twitch. I could have watched real shit. Like, I don’t know: porn. Or the history channel. Or porn! But instead I watched I don’t know GrameTrumps or something. Who cares?
Did you know that the Switch was portable?
The vita was too.
I’m excited about the new combat in the new game. It looks active, yet aspects are turn based–namely special moves, such as matria and item use. Otherwise you’re mashing square to attack ale Kingdom Hearts. lol i said ale
SEVEN classic was Square’s time to show off their PSX tech and they clearly designed animations that were too detailed run in a decent frame rate. As such each action appears as though performed under water, making this the most successful video game adaption of Disney’s Atlantis. Jokes aside, this game is better than Bioshock, so it’s definitely no joke for me to sideline that statement. Take that, 2k Games.
The option to play the game three times the normal speed is fantastic. I think all JRPGs should have this option. It speeds up the grinding significantly, but more importantly it speeds up the tedious scenes where characters s l o w l y walk across the screen, climb ladders, blah. Everything could have been faster. I drink too much coffee to chill with you unless you are RUNNING AT ALL TIMES.
Like any RPG you want to grind to level up your characters. To purchase bling. In Final Fantasy 7, you also need to grind to increase the potency of wielded materia, and oh yeah I didn’t mention Materia. I like Materia. If you don’t know what materia is, then google it. Compare what you found on google with what I’m about to say: Materia are spells, skills, and sandwiches that look like glowing orbs. You slot those into Weapons and Accessories. Different Weapons and different Accessories have differing amounts of Materia slots. SOmetimes I capitalize the M and sometimes I m, but mostly I hold down Shift while I type the first two letters of a sentence. So for example you have Bolt, which gives the player Lightning spells. Level that up, and you gain the stronger lightning spell. It levels a third and final time for the most powerful lightning spell. There’s also a restore materia which gives the player a cure spell, cura a stronger cure spell, regen, a spell which when casted heals the character over time for a short length of time, and curaga which is the strongest healing spell. So some materia give users access to other associated magics. What’s important about materia, is when slots are linked, you may use support materia to modify the other. Easiest example is the All materia, which when linked to Bolt will shock every enemy with lightning materia. Or, you link All to restore materia to heal everyone in the party with one cast. Level up the All materia, and the potency will increase, as distributing a spell across multiple targets weakens its effect. There are some incredible chains players can create late game that make the player ultra powerful if they’re willing to grind.
Despite the crude 90s flavor of this game’s story, I relish the characterizations presented in Final Fantasy VII. The chunk of story dulled out on Cosmic Canyon, for example, is such a delicious morsel of emotional expertise that tears nearly fell from these manly cheeks. The story of Red XIII may be more entertaining than the entirety of the Final Fantasy XIII Trilogy, however I never played those games, so I cannot bare to answer! STOP ASKING!!!! I will not accept anymore letters over this subject, and my shredder has been jammed with all of your submissions, so please, for my sanity, stop sending the FUCKING letters.
Embedded Journalism as a term referring to this document is utterly useless. I cannot remember what I was thinking. Perhaps this document was merely a means to peck out notes before the *big* time review? Why would anyone review Final Fantasy VII for the first time in 2020? Is it even worth expressing criticism over a game that is so utterly universally proclaimed as part of the canon of video game culture? It is said, that when a controller is first place into the tiny hands of an infant, the dad must bend over, whisper ever so softly in their child’s ear, that Sephiroth kills Aerith. Before cancel culture, before social media, before spoil outrage, every single human fit to mash the circle button learned this fate of one of the game’s main characters. And back then everyone loved Bill Cosby. How can someone as dull and inexperienced as I think it necessary to write a review of Final Fantasy VII in the year 2020? WHAT is my Gott Danged problem?
#
Two or so weeks before pecking out some of all that ^^^ I wrote another document entitled “Final Fantasy VII.” Apparently I needed one document for some kind of review, and another for notes? Is that what I was thinking? (scrolls up) No, I don’t think so. I think this post was meant to be a take, where as the other entitled simply FFVII was meant to be a take. That’s all.
Takes.
hot Takes.
Anyway I wrote this too:
“day 01 (6/12/2019)
sigh
It’s the game everyone loves.
In the deepest recess of my brain I want to reject this game. I know everyone loves it, and I hear them, and they annoy me. I want to dislike what everyone likes, and like what I like.
But I like DOOM. I like Mario. I like Dark Souls, I like Roguelites, I like Nintendo. I’m not in anyway unique.
I just hate edgelords. (side note: I am totally an edgelord, this sentence makes me squirm)
But I like metal. I like Berserk. (case and point)
Look I could do this all fuckin’ day.
FFVII has a somewhat nostalgic arc in my life. I remember watching my friends play it. It was the first RPG that seemed SO COOL that I could actually play it, and not worry about all the systems my child mind couldn’t handle.
Despite that I’ve never beaten it.
Sale. Switch. Mobility. Cheats. Let’s go!
The introduction is something I’ve done one thousand times? Probably not exactly–but close! And it’s just a real good introduction. You get a slapshot of characters, immediate conflict, and a mysterious backstory for Cloud that keeps you wanting to play. It demands you to play, so that you may uncover something. And it’s not like the author withholding information for the sake of doing just that–they want you to hook your mouth on that line in hopes that you’ll uncover the mysterious past, psychology, wants and desires of Cloud—the boy with spiky gold hair and amazing combat abilities.
He’s so cool. Look! He doesn’t even care!
Barret is a problem. I think I even knew that as a kid, but it was the 90s and I sneer. As a full grown 2019 adult, I remember those feelings fondly even as I disagree.
I’m fascinated to see how they treat the character in the remake.
These cheats rule. I love em. Such a great idea. Random battles suck? Turn them off. Wanna story? just fuckin heal yourself whenever ya want. Grinding, animations, loading, traveling too slow? Speed X3. Why fix the game when you can just enable a couple cheats. We all know why we’re here. It’s not to play a challenging version of a (now) archaic JRPG. It’s for the story, and maybe for the experiences along the way.
As much as I shit on FFVII (read the beginning) I love the story, I love the characters, I love the setting. To this day, it’s unlike anything else. When I was a kid, this was my first exposure to JRPGs. It was my first exposure to Final Fantasy. I assumed they were all like this.
They aren’t. We’re dealing with a franchise composed of unique entries dealing in completely different worlds, different development teams with different philosophies in design, and intent, and everything about every game is different. Except chocobos. And sometimes moogles.
Japanese storytelling? Yeah, sure: they’re all Jrpgs. (side note: I don’t know why I couldn’t help myself but bring up the country of origin. As if one work expressed the entirety of an entire country or culture. Especially in video games, a young medium. I’ve read Japanese literature since I wrote this blurb. I can say that, even though I read an english translation, that storytelling in Japan is NOT distinctly different than what we have in the “West.” So any argument or thought I tried to fart out about Final Fantasy VII being an example of what EVERY JAPANESE STORY is, is downright ridiculous. Just saying. Do better, me.)
((ok))
But ff6 is different from 7 is different from 8 is different from 9 and X and XII and XIII and XV. Shit’s crazy.
Anyway.,”
The letter drops off there, and fortunately there isn’t another page to continue the author’s line of thinking.
At the time, maybe via concerns expressed by my podcasts, I seemed upset about Barret, and intently focused on how Square was going to do this character in the remake. Even though he seems like a Mr T ripoff in a game where he is the only brown person of note, I didn’t find myself offended when playing through this game. He’s a loud, angry black man, and fiction loves making their black men loud, and angry. They gave him a reason to be loud and angry, almost as though they’re covering their tracks to excuse the well worn cliche. I can’t relate to people who are mad about this due to my position as a white man. I have colorful representation all over my favorite forms of media. I don’t have to think about how I’m being represented in anything. If every white male character was selfish, wrote long pointless blogs about games from two decades ago, ate a turkey sandwich for lunch and a bowl of broccoli at gunpoint, then screamed into a podcast microphone about space aliens delaying The Last of Us II, before crying in a cold shower whilst also drinking about five PBRs before stumbling into bed, naked cold and wet, screaming out an open window praying someone can save me from the invisible, the deranged, the omniscient being levitating in the corner of my room whispering while I sleep, invading my dreams, changing my thought catalog to adhere to the agenda by which I’m nowhere near understanding, then yes maybe I’d be a little pissed off too.
For now I’ll drop the Barret talk and leave that to someone who rightfully should be mad? And I’ll say: I understand why you’re mad. And I would be mad too. Probably. I’m not in your shoes. I’m not in any shoes. If that grosses you out you can just leave this blog right now, buster. Go ahead. Take a nap. Eat a cheese sandwich. Go on a walk. STOP WHISPERING TO ME WHEN I’M SLEEPING I AM VERY TIRED.
{i n T er MI ss o N}
I have been dumping time into Final Fantasy VII. My wires uncrossed and now I feel I can fully enjoy the game’s story. I’m at a point toward the end of the game where I feel as though I could easily straight-line my way to the boss. Rather or not I’d successfully defeat the boss, I’m unsure. It seems appropriate to the story that I grind, and look for the best weapons, the best materias, and earn the final limit breaks.
Most of these are fairly simple to retrieve. Go here and experience a side-plot. Defeat X amount of enemies, use limit X amount of times. Typically, final Materias are retrieved hand and hand with ultimate weapons.
Then there’s Cloud, who must earn 2500 battle points in the game’s battle tower at the Gold Saucer. To do this you must earn 10 GP (golden points) to register, and then you find a string of foes progressing in difficulty. But you must do so using one character.
Earning the 10 GP is itself a grind. Unless the player goes out and finds themselves a chocobo to breed for racing, earning GP is tedious. It feels like the ultimate waste of time. You play these trite mini games for minuscule amounts of reward.
The Internet told me I could find a shady back alley dealer who’d simply sell me GP. I cannot find this individual, else I’d take advantage of his offer. I do not believe he exists, and this great conspiracy to end my life shall go no further, for I have trained in the battle tower, and my muscles glow in the dark.
In the battle tower, in between battles, a slot machine deals you debuffs that cripple your chances as you progress through the tower. If you are defeated you keep your battle points, but lose said battle points if you leave the area, so they must be earned and spent in one session. Even with the ‘new-port cheats’ progressing through this challenge feels incredibly difficult given these in between battle debuffs.
I’m half-tempted to ignore this challenge altogether especially because Cloud doesn’t need his final materia to be a strong character.
But it doesn’t feel right.
I might give it a couple goes, or research the gp dealer further. I’ll report back when I find what I’m looking for.
{sig nal l o S t}
Headphones are the way to go. The music in this game is legendary. Saying that the soundtrack is great for Final Fantasy VII feels like a waste of time, because everyone already knows this. However, I’ve spent thirty hours of this game playing on my TV OR in portable mode, and I never thought to put in headphones. There are entire instruments I didn’t recognize until I put on headphones. It was a joyful experience. Maybe I need a speaker bar or something…
This concludes the notes I took while playing through FF7. I have beaten it approximately three months ago. Here is a hopefully more concise review of Final Fantasy 7 OLD.
Chapter One
That there FF7
An unforgettable PlayStation classic which has poisoned the memory of video games, Final Fantasy 7 is a JRPG meant for Nintendo, but then jumped ship and ripped off its T-Shirt to instead reveal it’s joined up with Sony. For the time, it was a graphical triumph, with full 3D graphics, beautiful pre-rendered environments, and state of the art CGI. Now it looks like a hilarious mound of garbage, with inconsistent 3D graphics that shift from lego men to mega bloks, pre-rendered environments that are impossible to read or traverse through, and slow, soundless, empty CGI cutscenes that often fail to fully sell any emotion, thus any proper connection the player could be making with these characters is utterly demolished.
I loved it.
I love weird PlayStation graphics that communicate a basic understanding a geometry while painting dull fuzzy colors over everything to satisfy the needs of an edgy decade. I love the grungy pre-rendered environments that show just enough as to guide the player’s imagination. I love the CGI cutscenes that call back to a time where we didn’t need the video game to handhold us like a movie to get across simple ideas as “riding a motorcycle” or “floating on a broken airplane.” I love how this game looks, and I’m glad I can still play a version that looks like this, but I’ll be happy to play the new game because this is obviously the one point in this game that drastically requires improvement.
The JRPG combat system here is fairly basic. It’s an ATB system where players build up a bar over time to spend for their next action, and enemies don’t wait for the player to select their actions, which helps the battle feel fast and frantic. There’s an option to turn off ATB but I actually prefer it this way. Makes it feel like I’m in a battle even though it still doesn’t look like a battle. The game has wonderful camera direction that flows around the character models differently in each encounter, and I turned that off because it made selecting my targets really difficult, plus I think having the default 2D camera speeds things up just a tad, but that’s probably a hallucination. Final Fantasy VII’s most important combat related features are A. Materia and B. Limit Breaks. Materia help players develop their characters the way they want to, however I always believed it made characters feel too samey. Limit Breaks give each character an individualized list of super moves, and they look really awesome, and I wish they were in every RPG ever, because there’s nothing cooler than building up and unleashing your super move on a giant robot scorpion or whatever.
Like most JRPGs of the time, the game features several locations that are distributed over an open world map. The world does not really open up until the main story is completely over, however. Players are guided specifically to where they need to go due to a distribution of land, air, and sea traveling vehicles, which gait the player away from properly exploring. Still, there’s plenty to see that is completely optional, including collection everyone’s final Limit Break, their final weapons, and collection the most powerful Materia.
The writing in this game is strong. You’ll meet characters that show colorful personalities through limited lines of text. You’ll get a story that twists, turns, and waivers throughout the game’s ~40 hour length. You’ll get lots of text. This game is a book. There’s no voice acting at all, which I didn’t have a problem with. Because I read books. I felt like I had a great time playing this game, I actually beat it because I wanted to know what happened next, and I especially loved the relationships between the characters. This is one of the strongest ensembles I think I’ve ever witnessed in the medium. I cared deeply about them, and specifically I enjoyed how much they cared about each other.
The greatest thing about Final Fantasy VII is its music. The OST has been a favorite of mine all my life, and I still regularly go to it for background music when I’m reading and writing. This isn’t a hot take by any stretch of the imagination, but the variety and mood of this soundtrack help make it one of the best video game soundtracks of all time. Easily.
This game is well deserving of its praise, and its spot in the video game canon. At the same time, I don’t think it is as impressive to people who just started playing RPGs with this entry in a long standing franchise. Back then, this was many people’s first video game, and that’s a major reason why it has become such a big deal. When I first played it, I thought it was cool, but I almost immediately saw games like Final Fantasy X after it, since I came to it a bit late. By the time Kingdom Hearts came out I was done with turn based combat altogether for almost a decade. I think this would have been way more impressive to me at the time if I played it after playing a bunch of 2D RPGs on the Super Nintendo. Instead, I played a game that was immediately outdone for me. And then when I went back, I was greeted with the greatest JRPGs of the sprite era with games like Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy VI. I couldn’t give the game its proper chance until I really forced myself to enjoy it, once the remake was slated to come out.
To its credit, I really didn’t force myself to enjoy it all that much. I’ve completely reversed my once edgy and loud take. Final Fantasy VII is not at all overrated. It is one of my favorite games I’ve ever played.
4/5
i guess that was concise
Chapter Two
And Now A Remake
(4.20.2020)
The remake has been out. I have played slightly less than I would like. I am slowly gathering my opinion, but I would like to take a few seconds in an attempt to convince you, dear reader, that my opinion is the only opinion that truly matters when it comes to this massive release that everyone has been talking about incessantly.
I get fidgety with long ass RPGs, yet I am compelled to WANT to play them and finish them as quickly as possible. One issue is I’d like to occupy my time efficiently, which largely means tuning into a stream or a YouTube while playing. The experience of playing 7r feels too demanding to split my attention. The battles can be intensive, yet the voice acting, the OST, the world design, the deeper characterizations, this game is demanding in a way that requires me to give it my entire attention. So I have to resort to playing when I know I can invest my entire attention.
Given our plague times there is a wealth of content I’d like to watch on Twitch and Tube. Luckily I have these other games to play when I’m not playing 7r.
Terraria
Terraria should be on my top ten games of all time. I love it. I bought it when it came out, and like many other games I love, I bought it on nearly every console I could, barring the WiiU and the 3DS because. Hell, I just bought it NOT ON SALE on the Switch because, even though I’m way more into the PC version at the moment. Having the game on my favorite mobile console is just smart gaming, dad. Relogic is gearing up to release Terraria’s final update and I have yet to truly experience most of the updated content. So I’m coming back time to time attempting to make it through the game’s final boss so that I can gain access to the second half of the game where everything gets harder and better. It combines the 2D movement, combat, and exploration I like from a Metroidvania, with the random generated resource gathering/crafting I love from something like Minecraft.
It’s sticky and regenrative like a piccolo NEXT
Fire Pro Wrestling World
I really like watching cpu’s wrestle in this game that’s what I be doin NEXT
Monster Boy
I’ve waited for this thing for about a year, and it finally went on deep sale at a time where I was poor-rich, aka after several Hero Paychecks and the Trumpbucks. That’s how it goes: I buy a bass guitar and several games because I’m lost we’re all lost please help me dad.
And the wait was worth it because this game is a delight of charming puzzle platforming, light RPG systems, and fucking effing beautiful visuals.
I’ll probably play more tonight because I don’t feel like playing Animal Crossing.
You play as a boy that can transform into monsters NEXT
Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age
Yes, sometimes I take a break from playing the new Final Fantasy game to play the one that’s approaching fifteen years of age. I’ve come to terms with it, and soon may you. Just shut up calm down, alright?
I’ve wanted to play Final Fantasy XII since the day I heard it was amazing from my nerd friend in drumline. And it always looked amazing.
I think I Gameflyed it, but totally didn’t have enough time to engage with it. Gamefly was a service where you payed a monthly fee, which at the time I was paying probably fifteen United States Dollars, to rent a single video game. You could pay more to have rentals out, but the point was you paid to have the game as long as you kept your subscription. It was a great way for me to sample a bunch of different games for my PlayStation 2, and I never took advantage of this correctly. I’d rent a game, wait the five days for it to come in, play a bit of it, become wildly fixated on my want to play something else further down my list of desired rentals, and send the game back. This happened to me with Final Fantasy XII and I probably sent it back to play something stupid. Like Godhand.
I loved Godhand but the same exact thing happened there as well.
The worst was when you’d reorder your list on GameFly’s website to get something very specific only to have another game further down your list shipped to your house because all the copies were rented out. They would just default to sending you a game, and now you have to wait extra long to get that game you wanted because it took five days to get the game, and five more to ship it. So then you’d tailor down your list to get the specific game you wanted. And eventually you realize you’re paying for the opportunity to play games more than you are paying to play games. The value immediately plummits, and you unsubscribe only to resubscribe later to see if the service has improved.
I think I did this about five times. The last time I tried I was in college, and the only thing I remember is that I unsubscribed after playing Dead Island for thirty hours. I actually beat that game, and it was horrible. I sent it back and, then Skyrim came out and, I don’t think I ever got back into it because I started buying games that I could sink hundreds of hours into while listening to Giant Bomb and Mastodon.
anyway
Since then I’ve eyed Final Fantasy XII in every used game shop but never pulled the trigger (like so many other great PS2 games(like Godhand)). When The Zodiac Age, a rerelase with extra features previously kept out of North American versions of the game, released on PS4 I eyeballed boxes in used game shops across Indiana waiting for some kind of sale. However by the time it became cheaper I had a Nintendo Switch in my position and an even better version of The Zodiac Age released to the greatest mobile console of all time. And so, Trumpbux in bank account, I made the purchase.
This game contains the speedup features from the FF7 port I played, which has been handy for getting passed the simplistic slow start of the game. Yet I still want to engage with it because the actual mechanics of the license board entice me to level my character and unlock more abilities. I don’t have any party members yet, meaning I haven’t yet touched the gambit system, which is the mechanic everyone likes in this game. When I get there I shall be ready to yelp “OH BOY” outside a speeding car window. You may hear me, you may not. That’s up to you.
But until then!
I’m also checking into Animal Crossing nearly daily. I haven’t focused full sessions on the game lately but that’s my intended experience with it. I love how pick up and put down it is. A little island community I can disappear into for thirty to fifty minutes a day while Better Call Saul is on TV, or during a GrandPooBear video.
Speaking of Poo, now Mario Maker 2 has this insanely large update that I am straight bananas about. I’m going to be checking in on community levels for a while with all the stuff they managed to cram. I’m possibly happiest about the Super Mario 2 inclusion, even though it’s just a powerup in Super Mario 1 tileset. Everything else is equally as exciting however. I can’t wait for uploaders to actually take their goddamn time utilizing the tools to craft fun levels instead of PUKING UP BULLSHIT AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.
Some express the idea that Super Mario Maker 2 is lackluster due to Nintendo’s inability to do anything on the Internet. I would argue that my issue is with the community crafting gimmicky levels that have no business being Mario levels. It’s not fun to play. So Stop Being Bad. (SSBB)
Anyway, I’ll come back here once I beat FF7r, which I contemplate will occur sometime in 2022. If we’re still alive then…
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I’m still alive however I must scream.
And I screamed to these video games.
Phantasy Star Online 2
This is a MMO from Sega and it is the sequel to a game old men shout about on the internet; a MMO that was available first on the Dreamcast, and second on the Gamecube. It sounded like a delicious adventure. A neon-infused Science Fiction world featuring robot men and nearly naked women. I mean the genders for each race are male anime protagonist and female titty. Congratulations Sega! PSO2 came out in Japan at the beginning of last decade, and has only become available in official English here in America in 2020 as a Free to Play MMO. It’s an action RPG with involved button pressed, classes that are distinct from one another, segmented Diablo-like levels, Diablo style loot, and boats and boats and boats of loads of content released in trickles of content over the original Japanese lifespan. This thing is bursting with so much content that it is near impossible to parse. IF you’re an old man who screams about Phantasy Star Online on the internet constantly. if you’re me, the content is quite easy to parse, and it’s not too hard to figure out how to get started. yeah, they don’t tell you everything. But all you need to do is touch the gosh darn controller, bump yourself into a menu, and use the eyes MOM gave you to read the dang text. Come on!
Try it out on your Xbox and PC. It’s free! I thought the little I played was pretty fun. I may play more of it one day. It’s Diablo with female titties and male sunglasses. Come on!
Streets of Rage 4
YouTube producers the world over made me aware that the new Streets of Rage was releasing on the first of May. Digital Foundry left a glowing review that caused me to purchase the game on my PlayStation 4. A day after my purchase, I found out that the game is available for those who take part in Microsoft’s Gamepass service. I do that! I could have played the game for, not free but, for far less than the twenty-three or so United States Dollars I paid! OH WELL! At least now I own the fricken’ thing, and I can confirm that this piece of video entertainment is well worth owning.
I have a hot and cold relationship with beat-em-ups. I grew up in the 90’s, and thus had spent a lot of time renting them, or playing them at friends’ houses. I’ve thought about writing about beat-em-ups quite often, and will most likely do so starting with some weird Super Nintendo ones I recall renting, and then moving on to Golden Axe, which I played a lot with a friend on his Sega Genesis: Golden Axe appeared on his 6-Pac, which came with Columns! Sonic the Hedgehog! Golden Axe! Revenge of the Shinobi! Super Hang-On! Streets of Rage!
We mostly played Golden Axe and Sonic the Hedgehog, but sometimes we dipped into that Streets of Rage for a while. We could never get far. We were too young to know how to live.
But for my money the greatest beat-em-up series of all time is the Streets of Rage series. They have more interesting mechanics, sweet eye-licking visuals, and some of the greatest video game tunes ever created. I listen to these OST’s OFTEN, especially while I’m writing this blog.
Streets of Rage 4 put me off at first due to the artstyle, but when I started playing it, seeing it in motion put everything together. This is a beautiful game with wonderful music and, maybe, the best gameplay of any side-scrolling beat-em-up of all time. If that interests you at all, PLAY IT. Especially if you own a Xbox, and are a Gamepass member.
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I played Final Fantasy VII Remake the midnight it was released. I was taken immediately by the beginning. The iconic flip from Cloud’s carriage: a subway train. The swelling Midgar music. The BIG SWORD. Immediately Barret and Friends depart, leaving you, with your gloriously rendered sleeveless turtleneck purple sweater complete with shoulder pads and studded gloves, pores rendered all over your barely tanned pale skin, yellowblond hair SPIKY, animated to flow like hair does with each and every movement, a fetishistic attention to detail on the material that makes up Cloud’s shoes, a mathematician’s attention to each appendage, and then there’s me, some asshole with a controller in his hand, sitting on a broken couch in the dark with a beer in one hand, the other fondling the aged and warped analogue stick of my half-fucked controller, I turn the camera and see the MAKO IN HIS EYES, and oh yeah some of the environment looks glossy and half-rendered, some of the NPCs look like they were thrown into a blinder and dug out with a knife, and oh yeah the skyboxes (and even groundboxes, at points) look like obvious jpegs, BUT all of this is far too easy to look past when Cloud looks like a real person!
Wrong. Cloud does not look like a real person; not even in this world of Midgar. Final Fantasy VII REmade suffers an anime effect as I’ve come to think about it. Stemming from JoJo’s Bizarre, where each protagonist LOOKS like a protagonist, and each rube LOOKS like a complete rube. It comes down to this: characters that matter, they get designed by the salaried veteran. Characters that don’t matter? They get churned out by some asset factory.
I know nothing about game design nor am I a critic.
Also, as I said, I DON’T CARE. Part of the charm of this game is the utter inconsistency with which the characters are, walking down the street as Cloud, being followed by Tifa, we stand out like grass in a toilet farm. We stand out like painted Juggalos in church. We stand out like water at a frat party. We stand out like muscles at a Magic tournament.
God I’m getting rude, hold on. Let me heat up some pizza rolls.
…
Okay that’s better. CONTINUE
Cloud delivers swift pain to some soldiers and then you’re running up staircases, cutscenes interlaced within combat sequences and traversal. The level is decorated with throwbacks which shoutout Final Fantasy nerds in the comments. The game wants you to Thumbs Up the video, and in the comments bellow type “DID YOU SEE BOMB I SAW BOMB ITS ENERGY DRINK NOW LOL.” It’s fine if you do that, it’s even better if you don’t. It’s an obviousness that I find charming. More of a wink than a bribe, and it doesn’t happen throughout the entire campaign. If the walls were plastered with the same flyers and signage it would be quite tiring.
Okay, so there are some flyers that lurk throughout the city but I mean come on. LOVELESS is a concurrent play? Musical? Movie? I think it’s a musical. Musical?
Oh it’s an epic that has been adapted into a play. Wonderful!
The opening scene introduces the player to three characters that receive major screen time: Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge. Though present in the original, here they are given colorful personalities, and exponentially more screen time, and I think the overall story of this here Remake benefits from the fleshing out of these characters. They’re all enjoyable to hang out with for differing reasons, and when the story moves passed their involvement, you actually miss them. In the old one, I think you speak to them like three times, and then you move on and forget they ever existed. In the new one, you have to sit through scenes of Jessie trying hard to throw herself on the tip of Cloud’s sword, if you know what I mean.
One of my favorite aspects of this game is how well done the writing is around Cloud. Constantly sighing, turning away from each conversation with his arms crossed, Cloud wants you to depend on him, but he doesn’t want to appear like he’s letting himself get too attached. It’s all just business. But what’s happening is he’s trying really hard to look really cool at all times. Every time he shows emotions, he sees it as a major set-back. Two different characters call him “Bro” all the time, and he will not have it. “Stop calling me Bro,” he’ll say. And then without missing the beat, the other person will say something along the lines of “Sorry, bro.”
Much like the rest of the game, I don’t think the script here is better. Nor is it worse. It’s different.
Whenever he starts to show emotion, care and attachment to other characters, Cloud becomes endears himself to me, the player with the broken couch. His slow transition from aloof teenage angst to supportive companion expertly complements the immediate appeal of each and every member of this game’s cast. It’s this evolution that makes each badass anime cut scene more meaningful. It’s this evolution that brought tears of laughter, and other-waters throughout my time playing this stupid dumb video game.
The chat with Tifa, in Aerith’s garden. The Honeycomb Inn scene, and really all of Wallmarket. The introduction of Red XIII. Every scene where with Barret and Marlene The realization, after their covert mission, that Cloud actually likes working with Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge. This game is full of sticky moments assumedly I will not forget.
Barret also says “suck on this” quite often, however not nearly as often as The Internet says he says, and sometimes I could imagine an offended party to this statement, but I thought it was perty dang funny.
Final Fantasy VII Remake’s combat is reminiscent of Final Fantasy XV, which was reminiscent of Kingdom Hearts, and also Final Fantasy XIII, although I never played that game. That said: I believe this is the best version of this kind of system. More on that later.
When I wrapped my head around this combat system, I became a maniac, switching from character to character to maximize the healing, the buffing, the debuffing, and the damage. Not doing this often led to characters dying. Although I rarely lost a battle, dead characters generally led to harder, more complicated battles due to ATB bars wasted on resurrecting said dead dude. The game isn’t ultra challenging, nor is it trying to be. But you will need to pay attention or dead will be an inevitability. Which I cannot say of any dang Kingdom Hearts nor Final Fantasy XV that I ever did play.
If the action did not pause while accessing the menus during combat, I think I would have died far more often. The amount of times I fumbled with the controller in these moments is quite embarrassing, thus I failed to count the amount of times. Oops! You’re gonna have to trust me on this one! Just know that I cursed myself several times pressing the wrong button while in the heat of battle, and if I didn’t have the option to pause whenever I wanted, I may have had a meltdown.
One bossfight had me throwing my controller *politely. On my third attempt I crushed him. I was only angry because I was on an all night bender trying to finish the game so that I could begin writing this review. I was up at five in the morning fighting this fool, and his bullshit really got to me, until I realized that if I just remained aggressive, he had no choice but to fall and lick my shoes.
And that felt pretty satisfying.
But like the old game, the one features mini games. Dart throwing! Squats! Pull ups! Wack a box! And primarily, the game has a motorcycle mini game that you play twice. The second time has you fight a boss that appears in the original game during the same sequence. The first time I fought this boss, it absolutely ate me. The second time, of which I had to repeat the entire sequence because I had gone to bed since it was five in the morning and I decided it wasn’t worth the pain staying up until seven just to finish this fucking game (that I really liked), I beat the boss with a f r a ction of health left to Cloud’s healthbar. Buster, that was a relief!
Although cool, and 90s as heck, the motorcycle segments are not exactly what I would call fun. If I had to play an entire game that featured nothing but the motorcycle minigame, I probably wouldn’t play that game. As little chunks to break up the rest of the game, they’re nice. They induce a quick pace that cuts right in between segments of either huge exploration or terrifying boss encounters. Otherwise, I could cut them off, and leave them in the dump.
*note, when you finish the game you may use the same save file to play a version of the game where you get to chose which chapter to play. You may also change the difficulty to hard, which prohibits item use and rackets up enemy hit points and I assume offensive capabilities. Apparently players can earn different manuscripts only available on Hard Mode. Another option, is players can skip the motorcycle segments as if they were cutscenes.
Oops!
This is what happens when you’re stuck designing a segment that you know isn’t going to be great, but you do it anyway just because it’s true to the spirit of the original.
Well not really–the first segment isn’t in the first game at all. It’s my belief that they wanted to add something before the giant scene at the end since players should be acclimated to the action of the motorcycle scene before they get to the real challenge. I guess.
What I’m saying is, the inclusion of this mini-game seems to have less confidence than most of this game.
For the most part I could SMELL how confident these developers were as I played through this game. Knowing myself, that’s not exactly a smell that I was used to. What am I talking about?
Have I told you that I bought a bass guitar recently? Yeah, that’s pretty cool.
The music in this game must be heard. The developers packed an incredible amount of tracks in this package–songs you would’t hear throughout the Midgar section in the original, remixes and renditions from different genres, the game is a true celebration of FF7’s original score, it’s a living memory of decades of rabid fans loving this soundtrack daily. Quite honestly, it’s the best feature of the game, and it’s not even close. This is a headphones kinda game.
That’s not to say that playing the game isn’t good. I loved playing this game. I loved watching this game. I loved listening to this game. I don’t normally consume 40 hours RPGs in three weeks. Some people beat it in a couple of days, and I fully understand how they did that. The pacing of this playthrough is rapid, and story treks along and before you know it, you’re watching the credits and bummed that it’ll likely be another decade at least before we see part 2 of this thing.
I HOPE that’s not the case. Because I NEED MORE. OKAY?
Most of the time in Final Fantasy 7 Remaked, the player guides Cloud through lavishly dressed up hallways. Sometimes those hallways are disguised with the clutter of human life. Other times, the hallways are presented as high altitude rafting, or underground sewer, or haunted train yard. The best hallways are disguised as cities.
Cities in the first game were very simple, occurring over a few screens on the PSX hardware, on that little fricken’ disk that bested Nintendo cartridges. They held few NPCs, and a few buildings, but they managed to really pack memorable moments and NPC dialogue within those limitations. Here, oh man. There are so many NPCs just walking around, animating, looking like dog shit, and talking. A lot! And one of the more interesting things about that is they talk freely to each other, and you over hear those conversations. This is in place to help contextualize the world without the player having to go up to each NPC and initiate dialogue. That never made sense. You mean to tell me CLOUD STRIFE is walking around saying “hey” to everyone in Midgar? Get out of town. He doesn’t even wanna call his Mom, let alone speak to some stranger doing squats in a gym. Okay? But now you get all that dialogue, which of course is necessary to build a world in a RPG, to immerse the player, and you get to just stand there and listen to people talk to each other, which is way more realistic anyway. But then they repeat themselves. Far too often. And way too quickly. You walk three steps after listening to a conversation about the sky falling, and you turn around to get to where you need to go, and the conversation restarts. And the default sound in this game–where Music, Sound, and Voice have a scale up to 10–strongly prioritizes voice. So If I’m trying to chill in a space and groove to the jams, which is the whole game especially ESPECIALLY IN Wallmarket that FUCKING BASS THOUGH, I get repetitive NPC screams like “YALL GOT THAT MADDEN” and I turn around and it’s some drunk garbage looking NPC with a washed out face texture from the PS2 SCREAMING into a hot dog cart, where the texture takes a few seconds to pop in. GREAT.
But I turned the Voice down to 7, the Sound to 5, and kept the Music at 10, and that helped me out there quite a bit if you know what I mean?
Please give me different sound options though. I played most of this on headphones, otherwise just my TV’s default speakers. My apartment is far too small to legitimize speakers or a soundbar. When the game isn’t leveled well for a TV, I loose sounds. Like THAT FUCKIN BASS at Wallmarket.
The hallway dungeons don’t really entertain me in the slightest. Each dungeon, which acted as traversal pieces between two areas, is a hallway you go down, you hunt for the lever which opens up a door you have to backtrack down the same hallway to go down another hallway with that door. It feels too constrictive, and way too tedious. If the combat wasn’t so fun, I might have quit the game, even!
You go down the hallway and enemies teleport into a squared off room. They don’t really teleport as much as they get rendered in, because the draw distance is much too close.
Can I say that I really didn’t like pressing Traingle on everything? That’s kind of a petty issue to bring up, but I’d prefer pretty much any other button. Triangle feels too out of the way. Also, why do I need to ever HOLD triangle? Every time you open a door, or push a lever, or press a button, you must HOLD triangle, and it never makes any sense. The animation doesn’t even complement the holding of the button. It’s not like how in God of War, the player must savagely mash buttons to open a door to simulate how Kratos is strength struggling the door open. Or the chest. Or anything. They do that in Darksiders as well which is stupid, but then again that whole effing game is stupid! Fuck, I bought that game….anyway, it’s not like that at all. YOu don’t get any real reason, no visual explination, no audio que, there’s not a single fricken’ excuse to make me HOLD the triangle button. It’s like the developers wished to impart the satisfaction of watching the little circle around the triangle icon to fill up, and that’s IT.
And that’s NOT satisfying!
What was satisfying was watching Cloud shimmy between walls instead of watching load screens. This game has barely any cutscenes. You get one when you load a file, and you get them when you die, and you get them when you quicktravel. They never felt too long, by the way. Noticeably shorter than Bloodborne, the greatest example of bad load times ruining a video game. But when you’re playing the game normally, you never see load times for battles, or in transitioning to the next area. Instead, you get these empty hallways, or you get cutscenes, or you get these little moments where you’re crawling through a space, shimming through a space, think whatever you like. It’s quite obvious that you’re being presented a hidden loading screen, but I like it. It keeps you in the game, and it keeps the playthrough feeling quick.
So I’m a huge fan of this. Because in many ways, the game is a technological marvel. It looks and sounds incredible, unless you look passed your character model and then you see washed out gravy textures all over the place, and the world kinda looks like it was soaking in the tub too long. They have all these really gamey things in the world. Like stores that sell you a CD which has on it a single track which you can then use at a Jukebox somewhere if you can find it. Or benches sitting beside vending machines that sell you potions, weapons, and oh yes: one track CDs.
Well. That’s all I think I can say about playing this game. I wanted to play it slowly at first; to soak in the game like I usually do. But knowing myself, knowing it took three years to beat Breath of the Wild, knowing that Yakuza 0 is still unfinished, knowing that Dragon Quest XI Echoes of an Elusive Age is far from finished, knowing that my love of a game does not mean I’ll commit, knowing that I was about to be spoiled on the ending, knowing that people had feelings about the ending that seemed opposed to other people’s feelings, knowing all of this propelled me to mainline the game straight into my veins. But I beat it. I did it, Dad. I beat a video game.
Look forward to my 2017 game of the year. But until then, here’s my actual review:
Chapter Three
The Review
Final Fantasy VII Remake is the Anime to the Original’s Manga
Back when JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 3, Stardust Crusaders was coming out, I quickly caught up so that I could watch the show with knowledge of the manga in mind. And then before Part 4, Diamond is Unbreakable, I read the entire manga before the anime came out. Doing so gave me this amazing experience: of seeing what I read fully utilized in exquisite animation. Although accurate, the adaptation wasn’t exact, however I always observed the changes as an interest, more so than an outrage.
I’m an adult who realizes that sometimes people wanna do something different.
And so when this game came out, and I started playing it, I immediately realized that what I was experiencing was familiar to watching those anime adaptations from manga I’ve read. Especially considering I went back and beat the original just in time to be ready for the remake. With that familiarity, I went into the Remake ready to have a good time, and oh boy did I ever, pal. Bud. FR I EN D.
FFVIIR is one of the best looking video games if you only stare at the character models of the main cast. The world looks like well conceived art designed with utensils that were slathered in petroleum jelly. The NPCs look like they fell out of a PlayStation 2 title, and wound up in a Xbox 360 home. The CGI cut scenes have never looked better, and for what its worth, the graphics are far, far closer from cut-scene to gameplay than they were back in the day. I do not hate this desperate variation between main character polygons and NPC/World polygons. I think it’s kind of hilarious, and presents the very real issue with Final Fantasy 7 reMake as an idea. It HAD to happen. It HAD to come out NOW. If it didn’t, it never would have. The team would have waited forever to come out with the game for the “right technology,” and we would have wound up with a game that may have been better pieced together, maybe, but by then we would have all been dead. With no one around to remember the old game, there would be no one around to appreciate the new game.
If you want a video game with sound effects, voice acting, and music, then this is probably one of the best ones around. I found no issues with the voice cast, barring a few NPCs that only got a few lines here and there anyway. The sounds do their job. I would have preferred to have a better setting to level the sounds how I’d like it: as it was, I had to lower everything down so that I could hear the music. The music is incredible, taking one of the greatest sound tracks of all time and elevating it with multiple versions and remixes taken from many different genres. They could have stuck to plainly orchestrating the old scores, but they went that extra mile, and now they’re all the way in fricken’ Texas. Ain’t never gonna escape that big ass place, pal.
But hey playing the game is fun too. You’ll spend a lot of it pressing triangle to talk to dudes or open doors in the hallways they decorated to look like ruined cities or sewer dungeons. Often combat occurs. No random battles, you always see the enemies on the map, although you won’t be able to avoid them like you would in other RPGs where battle enemies are sitting around. And you won’t want to avoid them, because the combat in this game is exquisite.
You take control of one character. You mash square to do basic combo moves, differing depending on who you’re controlling. Cloud has sword, Tifa punch, Barret is a shooting, and Aerith spurts magic. Each character has something going on on that there Triangle button. Cloud has a stance shift: where he rises a sword, and counters a melee move from an enemy. Barret charges up his kamehameha wave. Aerith charges her a big magics. And Tifa does a big punch or kick. Tifa’s is really interesting, because one of her actions allows her to charge up a stronger big punch or kick. You may charge up to two times, giving you three different kinds of big punch or kick. I believe this takes the place of her slot machine limit break or something. Every character has a move, either an ability or a core triangle move, that takes place of one of their limit breaks. Like Cloud’s Braver, which is now an action he may perform with one ATB charge. Characters charge ATB by doing damage and taking damage. ATB charges are spent on abilities, which spend no MP, or spells, which spend MP, or using items. Players bring up a menu to spend ATB which pauses the action, and they can switch to other characters to use their ATB or they can just bring up the menu for that non-controlled character to spend their ATB. Doing so is crucial to succeeding in encounters especially later in the game, as you’ll constantly want to execute critical strikes, heal, and apply the necessary buffs and debuffs. There are shortcuts you can set up for holding L1 and pressing different buttons to perform ATB maneuvers without bringing up the menu, however I never used this mechanic, preferring instead to pause the action and get my barring on things. Combat can be quite fast paced and chaotic, so its useful to look around from time to time. The most important element in combat is the stagger system. Every enemy has a bar of stagger, and filling up that bar is performed differently depending on which enemy you’re fighting. You may discover the way through trail or error, or by using the analyze ability, provided by a Materia. I found this useful throughout the entire playthrough. With her combo potential, Tifa became my primary stagger character, and Cloud did a good job supporting her as she combo. When the stagger bar has exceeded, it drains, giving you that much time to execute moves that do critical damage. It’s often smart to use high attack ATB abilities here, which will be heavy damaging spells and abilities.
In the original, characters felt too similar in combat due to the Materia system. Although important, the Materia system does not seem to matter nearly as much in Final Fantasy Seven Remade, except for times when it does matter. Like when you’re in the sewer and you’re taking too long to defeat the Sahagins who are weak to fire if you don’t have fire they kinda suck to fight whoops. But because of the action, and because of the abilities each characters has, characters all have a different feeling to them in combat, and a different role. Applied to classic FF Jobs, Tifa is a monk, Barret is a Ranger/Black Mage, Cloud is a Red Mage, and Aerith is a White Mage. Of course, you can still alter everyone to your desire: every weapon in the game has its own skill tree, making every weapon worth keeping around. You still earn AP to level up Materia in battle, meaning you’ll be swapping Materia around from character to character to maximize AP gain and efficient magic and ability usage. Intelligently, you’re always able to swap equipment and Materia around when characters are taken from the party for story reasons.
The game felt more active, obviously. However I was still making decisions the entire time I was playing; decisions about build, about development, about play style. That’s what makes this action RPG better than most others I’ve played. Although the combat is similar to Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts, I felt like I had to think, strategize, and play smart to survive, unlike those games where I felt like I could autopilot through nearly every battle. This system felt like it was fully realized. It was the best of both worlds, action and turn based.
The main events from the old game still happen here. They are expanded upon by further characterization, by longer more detailed sequences, and with new scenes that add more to the old. The new content is well done, and it doesn’t get in the way of what the old game was trying to say. One element, which I’m not going to spoil, had me frustrated throughout the entire experience UNTIL THE END, where everything fell in to place for me, and I completely came around and began appreciating the game’s execution in story telling. What I really loved was how this game prioritizes elements important to the story of the old game, that always felt a little too low key. For example, Sephiroth is introduced far earlier than in the old game. Characters important to the lore have a bigger role to play, and core themes that felt obscured are clearly presented with more importance and clearer purpose.
Importantly, the old game is still worth playing. If anything, this game attempts to accompany the old, rather than replace it. Especially since this game stops so early in the classic game’s timeline. Interestingly, it made me want to revisit that old game and play it all over again.
I did not come to this Remake with expectations. I came to it with curiosity. I wanted to know how they were going to adapt this well known classic into a modern video game. Now I know, and I’m in no way disappointed. Even though I had to get the old version and play all the way through it to be prepared. Even though I pushed myself to beat the game as quickly as I could given my pertinacity to leave things unfinished; to broaden my play over my precious free time. I went against type to get my gamer grub. And my gamer grub, gave me the gamer rub.
4/5
I was planning on concluding this piece by bringing in some common criticisms from other sources, and discussing those matters with my own criticisms. But this thing is already approaching 11,000 words (and now it’s surpassed 11,000 words). So I think I’d rather call it a day.
Also, I don’t really care what other people think about this game? I’m not going to war over this one. Just–they changed aspects of the game and if that bothers you then quit playing video games. Instead, stand in a bare room and stare at the concrete wall. That’d be more up to your speed.
If you want to read me go to war about a video game, look forward to when I write about Doom Eternal!
eternally a doomer crusader!
05/09/2020
firstdraftinthetrashblog 