#blackroseraven plays games

Uh oh so I finished the FF7 Remake.

The TLDR? I am displeased.

So let’s start where I roughly left off. Where they decided “we need more fight filler” and turned the climb up the plate into a fight up the plate. They also moved the Heli Gunner fight here and renamed it for some weird reason.

I mean, I guess if they’re going to have a fight up the plate thing moving the Heli Gunner to here makes sense. Annoying fight. Once again the cutscene phase-changes prove to be a burden rather than a blessing.

So we immediately screw up stealthing into the Shinra building and have to kill everyone in the parking garage. This makes zero sense as it would be a high-traffic area so even with someone turning off alarms and stuff for us inside the building it would still. Not work. And the fights get repetitive quick.

Also Soldier 3rd Class are annoying. And yet Crazy Motorcycle was a Soldier 3rd Class and he was super tough, while these guys are just “randomly counterattack with vacuum wave” and “spam magic.”

Get to the lobby. What do we find? An unnecessary interaction sequence. Also we know for a factthat Cloud and Tifa can definitely jump high enough to get on top of the open-ceilinged reception area. But anime rules, where the hero got no ups unless they’re in battle.

Tifa falling on her ass into the rear lobby is stupid. She’s a combat master athletic genius. I hatehow they did some very basic outfit changes to appease whiny people about the “depiction of her character” and then she’s constantlyin need of being saved or failing at life, which makes her appear far weaker than a lady in a skirt. It’s the same problem the RE3 Remake had, where they put pants on Jill and then made her cry and scream a lot.

Anyway. I of course choose The Stairs. Which they ruined the comedy of because part of the joke was Cloud getting to the top of the stairs and being fine and the others being exhausted. Also you can find secrets in the staircase in the original, but hey, we can’t have that.

I loathe the redesign of the Shinra building. It’s so lame and wastes so much time, and they clearly took things they wanted from the original game - the Cosmo Canyonesque theater, for example - and then just shoved them in here.

And the goddamn Sephiroth visions just giving everything away.

Also I disliked the Mayor. And how he was Briefly Important and central to the plot and then just completely forgotten about. He was much better as an honest asshole who wanted power but fell victim to it. I hate how much Avalanche has been expanded; it helps shift blame away from Barret but also creates a lot of questions about just what this rebel military-armed group was doingwhile Barret was accomplishing things in his messy way, even if him doing so was part of Shinra’s plot.

Also the fact that Avalanche exists only when convenient for the game’s plot and otherwise it focuses on the Avalanche that is you three.

Well, at least Hojo is still a lunatic asshole.

I did not like the Experiment boss fight. It literally just became a mock Resident Evil boss with too many phases. 

Well, we save Aerith. Which is followed by Armored Shock Troopers appearing, because they have to work them in, but they have lightsabers. They still explode - which does an idiotic amount of damage, and the character AI is too stupid to back off and thus DIES - and the skater bois that come out of them are obnoxious.

What the hell is up with Red XIII. With this whole sequence. Why is he in uncontrollable beast mode after clearlybeing calm and quiet. This wasn’t necessary.

More plot revelation. And Jenova. Including a full-on Cloud Meltdown.

Now we cut abruptly to the Turks and get their perspective for a bit and a touch of conscience. It’s ridiculous, though. Rude is again saying they did the wrong thing but he’s the one who hit the button when he had a great excuse not to. They did such a bad job with this part. Tseng also spouts some fake wisdom, because clearly Heidigger or the President wouldn’t have any guilt about dropping a plate. President Shinra wants to just abandon the whole city, after all!

This part just sticks in my craw because there was so much they could have done to help excuse what the Turks were forced to do, there were so many little outs to give them more conscience and character, and they keep fumbling the ball and making them “just following orders” guys instead, which takes away any redemption or humanity.

………….Whispers.

……………………….Aribiters of “FATE.”

What the GOD DAMN SHIT IS THIS.

Noooo no no no no noooo. This is something I hatebecause it’s second only to Time Travel in “Ways To Hide the Deus Ex Machina of Author Influence,” and it’s almost alwaysdone badly.

Guess what guys it’s done reaaaaal bad here.

First off the Whispers change destiny purely through their existence and interference. It’s ugly and unsubtle. Second there’s no explanation why “The Planet” wills this; it’s just a lot of “look we gotta do it this way guyz” to hide the fact that “The Planet” is “Sort Of the Original Plot of FF7.”

And yet there’s also been so many changes to that plot that the Whispers haven’t cared about! It also just erases the idea that your choices ever mattered throughout this whole game.

Avalanche HQ is coming to rescue us apparently. Have I mentioned there was no giant Avalanche organization before?

Aaaaaand of course they had to cram this infamous scene in of Sephiroth before Jenova. Because of course he’s here. In the flesh. We’re just going to meet him right now.

Cloud falls into. A mess. He’s also fine after his fall because anime.

Did I mention this game is a victim of filler over content?

What in the hell you can’t even use Red XIII he’s just a bot?COME ON. Like you were supposed to have him during the Experiment boss fight and I was like “oh they changed that oh well” but to not have him playable or even commandable at all? It feels so lazy and it feels like this ended up being a lot of messy rushwork.

My lord this whole section ends up feeling like a bad Resident Evil fanfic mashed into Final Fantasy world. We’re just murdering BOWs. Some of whom have extremely annoying attacks that they spam and made me really mad.

And then the Brain Pod. A completely unnecessary boss battle that went from “strategize” to “mash the attack button angrily while my PS4 gets angry at the crazy amount of slowdown from all of the Pods staggering at once.”

Anyway this was gross.

And it all just leads to Hojo letting us go once he has enough “data.” I hate this.

We find President Shinra dangling off the edge of the building. Why? No one knows. The girls cry that Barret is being too mean to the evil corporate capitalist. Barret somehow ends up alone with Shinra who turns from crying man to Bond villain, complete with Golden Gun, monologuing away until he gets backstabbed by Sephiroth. Who then stabs Barret. Who ends up being fine because Whispers.

Literally saying “hey don’t worry it’s fine if you die we’ll just fix it” making it feel as if everything is pointless.

Oh good, Jenova.

The fight wasn’t terrible. I am going to complain that Jenova Dreamweaver is not in the naming convention of the Jenova. It’s Birth, Life, Death; they couldn’t go with Embryo or something like that?

But again, the fight was. Longer than it needed to be but not awful. 

And then Sephiroth. Who. Just. Fucking flies away. TWICE. Pointlessly. Carrying the dead body. And yet another unsubtle reveal. 

Of course they made Rufus even prettier - also how did Reno and Rude get to that helicopter? - and of course he has a Coat of Many Belts.

And of course he’s an Anime Prettyboi now too. Sure, President Shinra was a Bond Villain but Rufus and his Doggo fight and Assess literally just gives you riddles instead of fucking telling you what to do I wasted an action for goddamn NOTHING.

I hated this fight. I hated that they made him apparently stronger than a soldier when he’s only been depicted as a dude with a shotgun, not a Trigun character. Like that was the point of Rufus; he’s ballsy and brash but he’s ultimately a corporate head. Now he’s Anime Bad Guy No. 1.

Anyway, Triple Slash him when he’s Leashed, then wait for him to reload and Braver him when possible to Stagger in the next phase.

Even though Braver has a garbage charge-up time and terrible accuracy and half the time he reloads too fast so he just counters you and then does random anime moves until he sporadically decides he’s out of ammo and reloads his gun(s).

The Arsenal fight that follows is very poorly designed. The Barrier phase doesn’t add much to the fight, and then it constantly forces you to target the wheels when you want to hit the Main Cannon. They also emphasize Red XIII as just a bot by the way he only Staggers barrier drones when you do a certain action, which is obnoxious, and then he might as well not exist otherwise.

This was a lot of just. Tanking and picking away. Also the fact that the Arsenal loves to corner itself and then use Homing Laser, meaning you can generally only hit the Laser Gun with Thunder-type spells to stop it. And sometimes even that doesn’t work.

“oh no what do we do it’s a Chargin’ its Lazers” oh it’s dead before you finished your gasp because of course we just FUCKING SHOOT IT.

Motorcycle Time. I guess the Whispers would have save Heidigger because “important” but who knows better luck next time, Cloud.

You know what really annoyed me here, though? 

They did Crazy Motorcycle Man before, and this is the perfect time for him to show up, especially since he promised a rematch.

And he never shows up.

All that potential. All that buildup. For nothing.

Anyway I died like four times on the Motorball boss fight because of control issues and a lot of frustrated mashing. Like actually Yes, this is something that was improved on: Motorball as a motorcycle boss makes sense.

Then. Sephiroth.

Who clearly just defies fate or whatever and opens a magic portal to. No Fate World or something.

frick.

Like a) this is dumb and b) this is clearly what Sephiroth wants and if they stopped to think for a moment they’d realize maybe his destiny is to be defeated which is why he’s doing this. Except c) Sephiroth clearly disobeys the Whispers whenever he pleases and they can’t do dick-all about it which MAKES NO SENSE.

and Zack. And the Crisis Core ending, no less. Just with Whispers now in the background because WHY NOT.

I hate this. I hate all of this.

Aerith wants to stop Sephiroth. Yes I would also like to stop the man I have visions of killing me and the planet. They like largely stopped writing her character at the end of the game, did you notice that? She becomes very flat apart from a few really stand-out moments and it bothers me a lot. I get that they’re trying to show “inner Aerith” and create pathos but all the lines she’s given are so flat. So stereotypical. It’s not like the good moments where she’s like “I don’t care, he sucks.” in response to Cloud warning her about fighting Sephiroth. 

And.

JUST A MINUTE YOU GUYS I NEED TO GO BACK TO THE VENDING MACHINE AND BUY SOME STUFF BEFORE WE BREAK THE BONDS OF DESTINY ITSELF.

oh my lordt this was so crudely done and absolutely just shatters the atmosphere. There were better ways to do this and time the Point of No Return than this. It’s like if you reached the Heart of the Planet in the original and then were like “oh wait I gotta go to the store” and you went five feet backwards to a random shop run by a moogle or something.

First we fight the Whispers. And they’re just Spammy Assholes.

The first phase of the fight was probably the hardest part because the mirrored Whispers were just. Jackasses, and Assess was useless as always.

It’s so messy. They crammed so much “action” together and the phases are badly thought out and long and aggravating. What the shit is “Whisper Bahamut” and why does he have unblockable high-damage energy balls he can just spam at you? Why does he randomly get to Mega Flare with like five seconds of warning? 

I didn’t even know whento summon because I thought “oh there’s gotta be something even worse we gotta fight the Big Guy, right?”

No we just break Bahamut up and then the rest of the phases are remarkablyeasy. Like they dumbed down the AI and even when they rage you can shred them pretty quickly.

Just a Bell Curve of Terrible.

And of course. We immediately follow up with a Sephiroth battle. SE PHI ROTH

I hate this. I hate all of this.

Punisher Mode to pressure and stagger Sephiroth. And that’s all I’ve really got for you until we get to the Stupid Phase where for some reason he starts using basic bitch elemental magic and charging himself with those element for Really Obvious weaknesses. This is like Magic Opposites 101 and you can’t do this for a final boss battle. The only time I’ve ever seen this really work as a final fight is in Lords of Shadow when you fight Satan.

Also. Scanning Sephiroth? UNKNOWN UNKNOWN.

You know what that reads to me like? They couldn’t be assed to put in any information.

Anyway, I get Sephiroth to his last phase - why is he using Supernova he DOES NOT HAVE THE BLACK MATERIA - and nuke him with Tifa and Cloud’s Level 2 Limits.

“Mwah I’m still here Cloud : ) you can’t beat me yet”

7 seconds. Is that supposed to be a reference?

Because guess what it makes me think of?

“SEVEN MINUTES. SEVEN MINUTES IS ALL I CAN SPARE…”

thanks guys great ending.

Also Zack is alive? Somehow we changed the pastby changing the future? 

I hate this different timeline bullshit. I really, really do. The only good thing about the final fight in this game is that I was able to get the Buster Sword stronk enough to use it instead of any of the other stupid weapons.

I am Not Happy. 

The worst part, though, was definitely how in the endgame phase I was having issues not because of strategy or even being underleveled, but because enemies just… spam attacks at you. There’s a lot of poor design choices too, like how Sephiroth purposefully chases and targets whatever character you’re currently controlling: it makes it extremely frustrating to get AI characters to disengage so you can heal and such. 

Also like. Sephiroth is literally just using his moveset from Dissidia for the most part. Again it gives that feeling of jankiness at times, and like things were rushed in development and production. Like there’s ways to pay homage to the style and keep the way he moves without seeming to copy directly; a lot of the time he doesn’t feel smooth but rather sudden and sharp, and there’s a big difference.

So yeah.

The ending is stupid. We broke destiny for the whole world?

This isn’t FF7 at the end of it all. It’s not even really a remake. It feels more like FF7 III, or FF7B. Not a retelling or reimagining, but deja vu, something happening all over again because I dunno, someone made a wish on a monkey’s paw for a chance to save the world.

Especiallybecause of the scenes where they have “memories” and visions of things that were really supposed to be huge surprises in the future. Does everyone know Aerith dies in FF7? Sure. Is it necessary to bring it up over and over again in the remake? Absolutely not. 

So yeah.

Finished the game. I might do one or two levels on Hard Mode just to see what these “manuscripts” are. I hate how it eliminates the importance of any choice or variance along the way with the destiny bullshit that then gets deus ex’d away anyway by Sephiroth. I hate the constantly feeling of authorial intent and interference, the plot holes and railroading. 

The game itself? It’s not terrible! It’s got a lot of good things going for it. It feels rushedat times and like there was a lot of quantity over quality. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t feel like a Final Fantasy game. It feels like an anime JRPG, like it would fit right in with the Tales series.

Here, freebie for you: rename it Tales of Midgard. The uh… Storm Discord, Diva, and Pin fighting against the evil Megami Corporation. And Storm keeps having visions of the former AGENT, Sefirah, and Neyhewh. Destiny says they will call a great Armageddon to the planet but they can break the bonds of Fate, blah blah blah, I’m not turning this into a Tales game for free hit me up Bandai.

Anyway I’m obviously bitter and jaded and probably being a little unfair, but these are my long and cranky thoughts. The ending of it all just ruined a lot of the game for me, as fun as a lot of it admittedly was, and when they did things well, they did things well! 

But they did so many of my unfavorite things and the quality just seemed to dropby the endgame, which really killed it for me. 

Especially that fucking ridiculous “pull up contest.”

Literally gave me a headache trying to do that minigame. But that might just be because of my brain problems, so. You know.

Okay. I am off to find some new thing to torment myself with.

I’ve been finding more time to continue playing the FF7 Remake and I have more thoughts.

Okay, so. Aerith remains my favorite character. They did such a great job with her personality and the way she’s almost childlike in her exuberance but never childish. She makes an amazing foil to the other characters.

Which helps dealing with all this filler, like this unnecessary travel through the side tunnel leading back to Sector 7. Which was also like a weird difficulty spike? It ends up feeling so unbalanced, at least for me, because you have these tougher fights, then Beck and his gang.

I got really mad at all the bandits stealing gil from me, though. Normally it’s just a nuisance but this game’s encounter system is so much more difficult to manage with how you can’t just run in a circle and get random encounters every five seconds, so it’s a lot harder to make that money back.

I was kind of iffy on the Tifa chocobo carriage thing. It seemed unnecessary again. Likewise the meeting with Sam the chocobo Texan was weird and felt a little too dramatic.

I hated Wall Market, though. The layout is terrible. Like, no, I get what they’re going for, but with how much running back and forth you end up doing, it’s really frustrating to navigate. 

I also wasn’t big on this whole “The Three” thing. Again, it felt like a lot of filler. And I wasn’t a huge fan of how they changed the mechanics of the Dress Quest, keeping references to it everywhere but it all ends up revolving around Andrea.

I hated the dancing minigame, on that note. It felt so out of place. The colosseum was annoying but at least sort of made sense, while the dancing with Andrea thing just felt. Badly timed? Like I even liked Andrea’s character and philosophy but I just felt that it was too expressive for Cloud, and the minigame itself relied a lot less on your skill and more on your reaction time against bad camera angles, which is honestly a really bad way to work any minigame.

Abzu. I liked Apps as a name better, not going to lie, but that might be my Classic bias.

The sewers also just felt. Very long. Although not as long or annoying as the Train Graveyard. We really had to Scooby Doo when the pillar is apparently under attack? Like, this was an entirely necessary chapter to the game, versus being an area to pass through?

Including two very obnoxious boss enemies at that.

And then the pillar itself. My biggest problem ended up being the problems with the characterization of the Turks. Both Reno and Rude have misgivings; hell, Rude purposefully interrupts Reno’s shooting so he doesn’t hit Tifa. And yet Rude is also the one to hit the button to disengage the plate and make the sector fall?

Really felt out of character. I get it “I just have to do bad things sometimes,” but this is a whole different level of “bad.” I think in this case it would have been better to have Heidegger disengage the plate remotely, since Reno already put in the code.

I also hate how there’s so many helpless pauses. Reno is tapping away at the computer and no one does anything. Sure, Rude’s in the helicopter, but there’s three of them and Rude can only target one at a time. Rude runs for the button and you just see Cloud standing dumbly off to the side.

The Mysterious Cloaks are also really obnoxious. I hate that they’ve been shoehorned in everywhere. 

The stuff with Aerith really didn’t build a lot of tension, either, but rather getting blown up by falling helicopters all the time is just annoying. But mostly I’m just mad that I lost Best Character from the party for now.

Okay, but here’s something that really annoyed me. Not the drama with Aerith’s mom, as annoying as it is, but going back to Sector 7. Like. There is no more Sector 7. The plate FELL. And yet walking around so much is visible in the Slums it looks like it was hit by an earthquake rather than an entire section of city collapsing on top of it. That, into the science lab, and randomly being forced to play as Barret for a while, then without Cloud for an obnoxious series of obnoxious battles through an entirely unnecessary section, really killed a lot of the fun I was having.

I mean, hooray for Wedge, but. 

And now it’s time to do all the sidequests before endgame, apparently.

The game has started to really flake and feel unwieldy here in a few ways. The lack of attention to details, the uncreative ways they “challenge” you, the unnecessary filler, and the random difficulty spikes. Plus the fact that it’s really hard to just wander around and level up, and the way enemies 

Again, there’s a lot of that feeling that this should have been a different game, you know? And there’s such a lack of variety. A few new bosses added but you’re basically fighting the same enemies over and over again, just leveled up. I dunno. A lot of it is just rubbing me the wrong way and I feel it could have been done a lot better.

But, hey, there’s still game left, so maybe it’ll surprise me.