Send help, I’m thinking about playing the big fancy Final Fantasy VII remake games! Now that I have a Steam Deck I don’t really have an excuse not to, even though I’ve never really loved Final Fantasy VII (chalk it up to when I first got obsessed with Final Fantasy as a series, FF6). But the new ones seem so well thought of that I feel like I’m just being a skeptic/contrarian/anti-gaming-monoculture activist at this point.
I think it also helps just how much I’ve been playing big ole RPGs in the last decade.
Haven’t played Rebirth yet, but regarding Remake, I personally wouldn’t play a AAA that new on Steamdeck. It’s not really what it’s good at, but I won’t try to talk you out of playing it. Lots of people say it’s full of filler. I say it’s packed with meaning character interaction that supports the story.
I think they look pretty good (on my desktop, dont know how well they work on the deck) and VII is just generally a cool thing but the combat is imo rote and burdensome and I couldnt hack it for that reason. TBF I only played part one of the remake dont know if it got any better but I doubt it bc it’s still the irritating chore sub-action system XV and XVI have. Ymmv on how much Aerith, cloud, etc you need in your life
There is something dismaying to me about wedging modern open world questing into something that was as if not tight, as on rails, as FF7 that just bounced me off remake
FF7 Remake has some of the worst side quests I’ve ever seen. Like, even FF16s added some world building but these were worthless and you lose nothing by skipping them.
I think the thing that in all seriousness brought me around to thinking about FFVIIR is that it seems as though it’s going to exist in conversation with the original, in a bunch of ways. That just seems to me like the sensible approach to a remake of the game equivalent of a 900 ton elephant, and I guess I was surprised that SE did something more than just remake the thing in ultra HD. Also, I have to admit that I’m interested in the battle systems more than anything else-- one friend of mine who has similar taste to me has really talked it up. Peer pressure!
Thanks everybody for the input and information! I will probably end up playing them.
I’m a big fan of Atelier Sophie 2! The systems all mesh together really well, the characters are good, and the alchemy is great. I played like 90 hours that flew by.
I think the combat slaps. Only issue is that the game does a poor job of explaining that you sometimes need to switch characters a lot depending on the battle to be effective. I’ve seen people say the battles take forever and then you find out they only played Cloud and mashed the same moves over and over.
I also wish it was a wee bit harder or let you pick a harder difficulty, but that’s the AAA way.
The whole thing feels like Squeenix applied lessons learned in 15 and finally figured out what a Final Fantasy action combat system looks like. I hear Rebirth fixed the issues that made others dislike it, so that’s cool.
I’m getting close to wrapping up Persona 3 Reload, which has genuinely been an absolute delight from start to finish. As I’m a Persona novice, though, I was wondering how important it is for me to play The Answer. The price tag for the expansion pass is annoyingly kind of high, and I hear it’s mostly just Tartarus? No school life and social links? If all of that’s the case, I’m leaning skip. Am I right to do so?
16 and Remake both had absolute garbage sidequests. I actually think 16s were more egregious because there were so many more of them, especiallt at the very end, which murdered the game’s pacing.
Rebirth’s are a lot better, because they realized the strength was hanging out with the main cast and doing something new with them, rather than the quest-givers and tasks being interesting.
Yeah, just skip it. Saying this as a diehard Atlus liker. I’m playing Episode Aigis right now and it’s pretty soso. I wouldn’t have got it if not for the fact it came free with Game Pass. It’s just as you said, all Tartarus no socials and little story.
This is precisely why I loved the side quests in Rebirth. A large part of why I ended up doing a relatively completionist run of the game was because I was craving more time with the characters, and I thought focusing the sidequests on them was brilliant
Eh, I didn’t mind doing a few in 16, but I stopped bothering once they started to affect the pacing like you say. They’re a good break if you don’t want to jump straight back into a linear set-piece style of level that’s going to last 1-2 hours, but still wanna play for 15 minutes or so.
The saving grace of both is that you won’t notice if you just skip them.
Countering the negative nathan energy in above comments: I love FFVII Remake’s sidequests. Hanging out with Sonic Adventure-tier NPCs makes me feel at home
Okay, I think that seals it for me: I’ll play through FF7 Remake/Rebirth once I’m done with the game I’m on now. If the side quests don’t end up being any fun I’ll just skip some of them.
About Steam Deck: allegedly SE is getting Rebirth verified (and Remake is already verified) so I suspect it’ll run just fine, especially if I mess with settings a bit. I’ve been playing exclusively Switch stuff for the last five years so I am fine with medium settings and moderate FPS.
