Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Remake pt.2)

Necro

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121846152#Comment_121846152

Yeah the only carryover is that if it detects you've a completed Remake and Intermission save you get some summoning Materia. Plus a few extra potions and stuff from playing the demo. There's new materia you can get too like Fire and Ice, and Wind and Lightning which saves some space when assigning it. Levels up a bit slower though than the standard Fire, Ice etc.

But as one armed dwarf says you start at level 15 with the basics.

El Gato De Negocios

Just finished Remake last night and started intermission, gorgeous looking and fun combat but as many have said, an awful lot of bloat, those motor bike sections for example I HATED. I had gotten it via PS+ as generally I don't like paying top dollar for remakes but I'm really torn between not getting Rebirth and having a significant itch to play it following reading this thread.

McFly85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847448#Comment_121847448

I’m only on chapter 4 but Rebirth doesn’t feel as bad for bloat, although you will notice it. I find having open areas balances it out - story bits can drag on, so it’s nice to just hop on a Chocobo and go explore and do some side quests and mini games for a while. Or just play queens blood for hours and forget about anything else!

Sephiroth_dude

Was very happy with the Kalm flashback scene, thought they did it justice.

RedXIV

It arrived!

one armed dwarf

I generally disliked Remake aside from its combat and high points and Rebirth in comparison is close to one of the best FFs I've played. It's like a modern version of the 32 bit era games. Even the 'bloat' feels somewhat vindicated by the fact that there are 7 characters to play who all have different interactions with each other and impacts on party composition, and a lot of high difficulty summon fights to test that on should you want. As well as arenas etc, and then tons of minigames which impact progression

McFly85

I know they were made by different teams, but the improvement against 16 last year in all areas is significant.

Combat, exploration, side quests, are all significantly better. Really enjoying it!

Zero-Cool

It's gas when you meet Chadley and walk through all the combat simulations to think ah how bad could Titan summon be 😂 At least it looks like you can fight lesser versions of summons by exploring the open world which is a clever mechanic.

Sephiroth_dude

Some of the mini games are class, the card is brilliant, the fort condor game is class if a bit hard. I'm stuck on a combat challenge though atm where by you have to prevent two owls from healing, really annoying, think I'll skip it.

Necro

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121850921#Comment_121850921

Yeah just find the divine shrines and it lowers their power. I find two normally does the trick. Chadley also chastises you if you haven't done stuff in a previous region I found out this evening 😂

There's an impending apocalypse but no Chadleys research is more important apparently!

Retr0gamer

What the **** did they do to the moogles 🤮

https://twitter.com/tkn0801/status/1764858453984731640?t=SvbRn3l1ur8l2IGYZAJVCg&s=19

Zero-Cool

Yupp, original Sonic movie vibes.

RedXIV

Only had time to get into this properly last night for a little bit but I get the Queen's blood love now.

Also, I'm thoroughly enjoying myself and I'm only half way through chapter 2.

Zero-Cool

I can't seem to get out of chapter 2, keep going around doing Chadley busy work which I'm loving but hope i don't tire myself out. Not sure whether to clear out the region before moving on or push on with the story and come back.

Necro

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121855828#Comment_121855828

I'd say push on personally, you can always come back at a later date. I had to backtrack for a certain card game that will remain nameless and ended up finishing off everything in the region😂

RedXIV

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121855828#Comment_121855828

Makes me feel like I'll be there for a while, I only just got out of kalm before calling it a night :D

I can see myself following your lead

Necro

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121855848#Comment_121855848

Oh you'll 100% spend some sessions just doing some busywork in the regions, I think I advanced the story by about 5 mins in total the last two days😂

RedXIV

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121855878#Comment_121855878

I'm reading (in as spoiler-free content as possible) that the busywork in the regions is where all the fun is so I can see myself completely falling for this :D

brady12

Chapter 4- savage . Red XIV in chapter 5- hilarious 🤣🤣. Onto chapter 6 now . I think i'm loving this a lot more then remake !

RedXIV

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121859387#Comment_121859387

Aw shucks, I appreciate the vote of confidence :D

Sephiroth_dude

The "Busy work" is actually not at all that bad and same with the side quests, they did a better job than what they with did remake anyway when side content is concerned.

Necro

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121859924#Comment_121859924

No it's annoyingly addictive 😂 I'm loving it so far every bit of it

Underground

I’m on chapter 4 and the bloat is still there for me albeit not as bad as the first instalment, at least so far. I’m enjoying it.

The battle arena with the summons is still very enjoyable but after that the Chadley stuff is mostly not very compelling. It is side content fodder in fairness, most big games suffer the same problem. I haven’t tried the card game yet, must give it a go.

brady12

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121859915#Comment_121859915

🤣 you are welcome

brady12

I don't like card games . Iv skipped or bluffed every game so far in game . Can some one give me a guide for dummies to queens blood cos I want give it a fair crack of the whip . I don't not understand it at all!

Sephiroth_dude

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121865089#Comment_121865089

I'm in junon region now and I was bluffing my way through each player as well but now I can't beat 2 guys and I can't get past the fort condor level 3 game either.

RedXIV

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121865089#Comment_121865089

OK so you probably understand the fundamentals but just to be sure:

Three rows in play, and you need to get the most points on a row, for the points to get counted towards your total. So if the rows end up:

4====4

7====0

2====5

then the top row gets discounted on BOTH sides, on the middle row, you get 7 points, on the third row, the opponent gets 5 points, and the 2 for you are ignored as you didn't win "the row".

The real trick in the game is getting control of the squares so you can place your cards. you want to balance between extending your reach early enough to have options and to have a sneak attack or two so if the opponent stretches too far, one of your cards can cancel out the spot they've claimed.

This gets a bit more complicated with the idea of cards needing different amounts of pawns to place them. You generally need a bunch of single pawn cards to get going and you want the more costly cards to appear later in the game. To get them on the field, you need to be thinking about which combination of cards will leave a space with multiple pawns on it. And the other thing to be aware is the power of each card, that's what contributes to the numbers at the edges of the field.

This is the basics, if you get that you'll probably be ok for some of the games, where this gets more complicated is when you add in things like abilities that can add or subtract from power values.

Basically each time you take a turn, you're looking for one of the following:

Can I remove a spot the enemy can use?

Can I get control/Add a pawn to an existing square?

How many pawns do my cards need? Do I need to make sure I can add more pawns to squares to use them?

That last point is where the deck building comes in. I'm only a little into the game but if you're not really feeling it, go safer and have 70%/80% of your cards need 1 pawn, 20%/10% needing 2 pawns, and then the rest. The more pawns a card needs, the more you have to work to get it on the battlefield, and that usually means keeping multiple steps ahead of what you want to do and how to counter the opponent.

Not sure this helped at all, but thought I'd give it a stab :D

Necro

Tbh I have only a basic grasp of the fundamentals and have largely stuck with the same deck since the beginning (changed out maybe four cards in total) and have been able to beat most first or second go.

Only had one issue with one of the challenge games in Golden Saucer where I set up a second deck for it. It's not an essential part of the game but what I will say is that it's worth sticking with if you can at all, after you start rising a few levels it gets... Let's just say it gets interesting 😁

brady12

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121865288#Comment_121865288

Thank you

brady12

Christ almighty Tifa at the beach 😍

one armed dwarf

I beat this a few days ago. Without a doubt, I still consider this one of the best Final Fantasies. It has this moreish quality to it and feels like it was designed on purpose to capture a specific feeling present in late disc 1 FFVII where you wander around the world and get lost cause the next story quest is unclear. It engages in dialogue with that original game in a much more interesting way than Remake did, I find.

It has its issues though, there are some story segments which are done bad by Rebirth. Some embellishments and character interpretations are excellent enhancements, they are laying interesting groundwork for part 3. But the new stuff that isn't good tends to stick out. The ending is also terrible, I really hate it. It doesn't ruin the game for me but it made me feel very bitter and annoyed by the whole thing for a few days. Rebirth in general is hard carried by strong moments and memories of the original but they still don't have a good method for carving this game up in three and having these stories work independently. The more wanderlust middle chapter is supposed to complement the pressure cooker of the Midgar chapter, and the fallout and multiple crises of the last chapter. They don't work when you cut them up, and a lot of the new invented plotlines run roughshod over the themes of the original in a way that I find impossible to be ok with

So I have to compartmentalise my feelings about how poor a job they do with that stuff, and recognise that the other 95 percent of the game is an unmitigated triumph and the fullest, most complete feeling Final Fantasy game since the 32bit era and a much, much better game than Remake. It's what I wanted that game to be. Even though it's a fairly cookie cutter ubisoft template, the strength of the combat mechanics and the interweaved progression between its quests make it not feel like such empty calorie gaming, cause you're always going to get a new materia which introduces a new approach into your party compositions, or learn a new thing about the world or its characters. That said, it's easy to fall into a zombie mode spiral and clean up icons and feel bored by it, but even here the game's systems are so well organised to pull you from out of the Ubi-coma cause you can go play cards, which requires you to activate the brain cells a bit more. Or exercise a different skill entirely with the minigames, a lot of which I enjoyed (I'm not really on the same page as others wrt the minigames being excessive, though some are rubbish). 

I beat all but one of the queen's blood players last night. I'm not exactly sure what beating the last one gets you, but this player is the Emerald Weapon of card players, you have to really explore your options and do all those puzzles to get a strong deck to theorycraft a solution, which I love. I reckon I'll get it done tonight, then I guess I'll focus more on protorelic

brady12

Chapter 7 around the mines is a big step down from other chapters imo( The end of it is good fun though 🤣🤣🤣)

Necro

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121878881#Comment_121878881

Protorelic stuff drove me insane in Cosmo Canyon. Have left it for a bit as I was getting irrationally annoyed....

Spooch

Fort Condor can suck a ****. Dropped the difficulty to Easy to cheese it. Queens Blood however is fantastic. Nearly better than Gwent for me.

RedXIV

All ye folks miles ahead of me while running around like a hyper child still in the grasslands :D

I may have to up my playtime beyond the 3 hours a week I seem to be getting these days

Necro

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121886984#Comment_121886984

Hahaha just ever so slightly, my playtime is at 75 hrs at the moment 🤣

RedXIV

May be slow but my brother and I have been chatting and while he's flying ahead of me, he couldn't beat titan at full might. Which I couldn't either until last night, but I cracked it! The battle system really is a lot of fun in this game, finally getting my head around the synergy things.

Grasslands intel done, on to the swamp!

Necro

I've made it to the Temple of the Ancients. I remember it being infuriating in places on the original.

Spoiler Warning

The red dragon fight is bloody awesome 😎

Sephiroth_dude

The guy in green reminds me of Rick flair 🤣🤣

RedXIV

So I'm in Junon now and flying around doing world intel stuff. I remember someone asking about the differences between the junon area in the demo and the full game. Just to confirm that the difference is the area you see in the demo is about 1/5th of the size of the one in the game (which is bonkers in my mind already) and that the combat challenges have moved around, while most of the rest of the world intel options aren't present at all. So you don't miss anything by skipping the demo. But have to say, I am really enjoying this :)

one armed dwarf

Edge gave this a 9, the highest scoring FF since FFXII

They gave remake a 7, XVI also. X got a 6. I think these are all fair scores (X is a bit harsh, but I must admit I felt similar about it on release), I'm still doing post-game stuff and learning new materia and party compositions and strategies, and enemy interactions (I never carried binding materia in 97 FFVII, but I have to have it with me in this).

Between the combat and the huge sense of auxillary scope in its surprisingly in depth minigames (gears and gambits does something really surprising, I won't spoil it) it is very close to being the best Final Fantasy imo. Only thing holding it back imo, is it's got sort of a nothing story, and of course that ending. But if that's what it takes to get a good Final Fantasy again, I'll take the **** ending, thank you very much, because it's been so long since FF felt this complete. Tthe last one that felt this in depth with gameplay mechanics was XII, but that didn't have any of this game's side activities, just hunts

Zero-Cool

Peta are mental.

https://twitter.com/GenePark/status/1770174187421814932?t=zuqOWQvV2s1yNnj-Vmp2Uw&s=19

Vicxas

Ok so i've played this a good bit and gave it some time to reflect on this VS the original.

In some aspects the storytelling is great, fleshes out nearly all of the characters (including the dreaded Cait Sith), it actually feels like you're chasing the ghost of Sephiroth across the planet. Side quests for the most part interesting, apart from that Chicken one in Gongaga which ill never speak of again.

My biggest gripe is the whole Assassins creed/ Far Cry version of the open world. Go to this tower, unlock it. Go do the things it unlocks. I felt that it detracted from the game and made it more of a chore to progress the story as leaving without doing them would make you severely underlevelled. I hated the Whispers in Remake, thought they were bringing the game down a very bad path, but my opinion of them seems to have balanced out in Rebirth, but ill reserve judgement.

Sephiroth_dude

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121914914#Comment_121914914

What's this about?

Sephiroth_dude

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121915709#Comment_121915709

Ya I think just gonna finish the story and forget about the side stuff, I enjoyed it to a point but was trying to do a side quest last night that involved you trying to round up chickens with bucket on a string and I was like feck this and just gave up. I'm really enjoying the game though.

McFly85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121915900#Comment_121915900

Feel the same way. It’s great at the start but the longer I get into it the more I find myself pushing though areas because it just seems like a carbon copy of the stuff I’ve done previously.

If there was a bit more uniqueness to each areas quests , and maybe more hidden queens blood players I would probably be more inclined to explore.

Necro

I got pretty much all the side stuff done bar one protorelic in Cosmo Canyon cos that minigame drove me mad. Didn't do a lot of the Golden Saucer stuff either as it was a bit repetitive. Agreed on the chicken mission though I was rolling my eyes at how stupid and pointless it was and just wanted Red to eat the chickens tbh!

Zero-Cool

New patch.

https://twitter.com/Genki_JPN/status/1770650238161977440?t=9sKcTgisc1tuQrwIvLLSLQ&s=19

Underground

Yeah, I empathise with some of the frustration in the comments here. I'm generally enjoying the game but I'm not sure I'd be persevering here if it weren't part of the FF7 remake. Unfortunately I don't think the padding has improved all that much from the first instalment. I'm 52 hours in to my playthrough (fifty fcking two!) and I'm only at Cosmo Canyon, and that's after starting from Kalm!

Like others I'm at the point of tiring and giving up the side content (towers, enemy intel, divine intel, protorelic missions etc) and just ploughing on with the main story. My fear is that I might not be able to do this because I've been doing all the side content up to this point and am only 1 level above the recommended level for the main story mission.

The pros and cons here mirror the first instalment pretty closely for me. The visuals, the music, etc are all exceptional. I still have my gripes with the combat system but for me the pacing and the padding is just too much. We have the 97' original being stretched out into three games, and each of those three instalments are being stretched out to 60 hours+ to justify their own existence and their price. Everything is elongated, every little inconsequential mini boss from the original is stretched out to this bullet sponge 10 minute + battle.

One example that really stuck out to me this time is the Midgar Zolom (they call him something else this time around). Will spoiler just in case.

Spoiler Warning

In the original, the whole point of going through the Chocobo ranch rigmarole of learning how the chocobo lure materia works, buying your greens, learning about the tracks and how to catch a chocobo etc is to completely avoid the Midgar Zolom giant serpent guy. If you try take him on at that point in the game he wipes the floor with you, so you catch a chocobo to move quickly across the swamp. You go through the Mythril Mines and come out the other side and see the Midgar Zolom has been fckin impaled by Sephiroth. It's a cool way of telling the story and really builds up the Sephiroth threat nicely.

Contrast that with the approach in this game, whereby you go to the Chocobo ranch and get your chocobo (and probably spend 6+hrs on the filler side content) and go through the swamp only to be forced into fighting the Midgar Zolom at the end anyway. What was the point in getting the chocobo?? The answer was "to transport you around while you did the side content". There was no story reason to get the chocobo.

Also, not only does the zolom not wipe the floor with you like he would in the original, you go toe to toe with him in a bullet sponge boss fight for 10 minutes and then Sephiroth takes him out in a cut scene. This is so, so much worse than the original and it really annoyed me.

Sorry for the rant here so I'll wrap up 😝.

I'm seeing other comments about people not liking the ending which i haven't made it to so I can't comment. One thing I will say is that probably my favourite aspect of these remakes is the changes they make to the story and how they are playing around with timelines. It would have been very easy for them to do the normal remake thing of just making the game again in a shiny new engine and calling it a day like every other lazy remake. I like that they're taking risks here and changing it, even if it ends up not paying off I respect it.

Necro

I've finished it myself since last week but holding off discussing the ending as I'm conscious lots have yet to even get over halfway through given the sheer size of the game.

I've a funny feeling it's dynamic levelling so if you skipped side stuff you likely won't be under levelled if you wanted to just do the main story. What I will say is that in the main the busywork of each area has some payoff in most cases, it deepens your bond with team mates and also in some cases provides closure (or clarity, at least) on unfinished stuff from Remake.

There's never going to be enough Queens Blood though. I did the full quest there and I dunno if I really enjoyed the pay off as it meant I'd no new players left to play. I think I'd have preferred them leaving it as an open ended game where you find new opponents in each town/area.