Well, I finished Final Fantasy VII Remake, and it’s on to the Yuffie Gaiden DLC. Overall I think it was a really well made and well considered thing-- it ought to be, given it’s cashing in on decades of peoples’ nostalgia in varying forms. I won’t generally dunk of Remake, because like I said, I mostly loved it. But the last chapter got on my nerves somewhat, just like I expected.
It’s pretty much because it throws boss after boss at you, which is fine, but the second to last one of these (the giant whisper, and specifically the Bahamut whisper) was for me a giant ramp up in difficulty. For one thing, it immediately hit me with an attack that did enough damage to kill two of my team and leave Cloud running on fumes. This happened every single time I tried the fight, and when you fail, you gotta start from the beginning. I don’t want to harp on my perennial issues with game difficulty, but if there’s one thing I hate more that 2012-style QTE insta-death, it’s when you run into a difficulty ramp that is so steep you need to try it like a dozen times and hope you squeak by somehow on accident.
I get that there are folks who love barely making it through after dozens of tries, but I always feel as though that’s what hard difficulty should be for. It’s ever so slightly disappointing, given how nicely tuned so much of normal difficulty had felt for me.
So for that second to last fight, I dropped difficulty to easy, and you know what? It wasn’t any less impactful for me. I was really hoping it wasn’t going to be the normal RPG thing of making bosses frustrating and impossible at normal and one hit kills them on easy. And it wasn’t, so that’s good. It was the one and only time I had to drop the difficulty through the whole game.
Bonus story: Back in 2015 my tiny games company started working on a motorcycle dueling game that in the end we had to cancel because we were just never going to be able to afford to make it (it’s a long story). But then, when I got to the motorcycle mini game in Remake a few weeks back, it was kindof amazing to see how S-E, a company with effectively bottomless resources, would approach a motorcycle dueling game. It was fantastic.
I finally got around to giving Portal 2 a spin yesterday. I’m on Chapter 7 at the moment, quite a bit of the way in, and I like this game a lot (mostly). The puzzles so far have been straightforward with only one or two of the ones with turrets being actively annoying with how much they slow down the respective levels. They’ve been breezy, concise and have a couple of fun ideas like the repellent gel. I imagine that these will be greatly expanded on during the coop campaign.
My only other real gripe though is that in quite a few areas, though mostly the massive open ones, finding the exact distant wall that you can shoot a portal at to pass a fence or cross a body of water gets pretty frustrating after the 10th time standing on a platform searching for the only square available to shoot a portal at. It’s a little baffling that this was thought to be a great idea at the time.
However, despite this I think that as a natural progression of the original Portal, the sequel nails pretty much everything else, and as much as I’m lukewarm on Stephen Merchant his Wheatley is a fantastic casting.
I beat Psuedoregalia—my total playtime was just shy of 5 hours. A good 40 minutes of that was dangerously close to “fuck this stupid shit” territory because I was wandering around looking for the wall run ability, but when I finally figured it out where it was, it was smooth sailing.
I still maintain that the game jank-baits a little too much. I’d often spend a few minutes trying to complete a complex jump before realizing the intended solution was much simpler. Part of the problem (or the fun, depending on perspective) is the low-poly geometry make certain features less visually distinct and exploitable.
That said, the game was awesome. I can definitely see a world where I replay it, perhaps even soon.
Deleted my first message because I mixed up games lol.
Probably Qol stuff is the first I’d think of. Like the GBA games had you buy gear during the battles and I really don’t like that. I remember the menu between battles in Radiance being nice and it had that cool EXP pool you could use to level characters who fall behind. I had used it to max out Sothe only to realize at level 20 that you can’t promote him in that game :(.
I suppose what I’m asking is, does it play as well as the newer games, or were there changes that make it hard to go back? IE the sprite based games had really snappy animations while Awakening’s 3D is way slower. There’s no way I could play that again without the fast forward. I don’t remember how it was in Radiance.
Pseuoregalia is so good, dude. I loved breaking the game and getting to areas I was not supposed to be. I almost soft locked often because of that.
Biggest complaint is I never had a goddamn clue where I was or where to go. I must have wandered the same areas dozens of times. I probably would have dropped it if I played before they added a map.
I’ll be keeping an eye out for that devs next game.
Yeah it’s an amazing game and a great example of something that is very familiar yet singular. I can’t imagine another game scratching that particular itch in its approach.
But since I love to complain I’ll also add that the map was as useless as a map could be while still being functional.
IIRC you have to watch every animation during enemy phase but it’s not that obtrusive in practice. Sure, late game maps tend to have a lot of enemies but you also want to know what they’re all doing and it gives you time to think about positioning. The issue is more that the camera bounces around a lot and takes a while to zoom in. Radiant Dawn has this a trick to make the camera speed faster.
Fastforward is of course nice to have but it’s not as essential as the NES games.
This in particular has a complicated answer, the short version of which is if you’re interested, try the game and see what you think. Whatever the failures of these games, they are outweighed by their successes. One thing that makes them a pleasure to go back to is how the story is presented. Very handsome character portraits and a good script go a long way.
nuts & bolts answer
Path of Radiance offers two options for character animation during battle, “on” and “off,” which are somewhat misleading.
On = usual FE thing where larger character models in a separate screen engage in an animated fight. The animations are not, to my eye, particularly attractive.
Off = the map models swing itty bitty swords at each other. Still takes more time than the GBA games when animations are set to Off.
Radiant Dawn is an improvement in both directions, and offers three options:
On = animations are better than PoR, and so is the music.
Map = similar to PoR’s Off setting
Off = all battle animations deactivated except movement and HP/EXP bars, but holding the Accept button acts as a fast-forward option
I prefer the GBA animations; tended to skip Awakening’s animations; played most of Path of Radiance with animations “Off,” and most of Radiant Dawn set to “On” (unless I died and had to restart from a save, in which case I set to “Off” and fast-forwarded).
All item shops and armories are accessed from base camp between chapters, although special items are still hidden in chests or held by enemies in maps.
To be clear, I don’t mind watching the enemy phase, it’s the fights between units that break me down over time. I start off loving to watch them swing their swords and such, but by the late game, I’m over it… Yet I feel some of the soul of the game is lost if you disable them entirely.
Appreciate the insight! It’ll be fun to revisit these games! This time I won’t completely screw up the teams when you split up in Radiant Dawn and soft lock myself.
Yeah same exact thing happened to me, I actually got close to cheesing it with some clever wall-kicks + backflip. I’m back on track now but have since been doing the time trails. I can’t remember the last time that I cared to do a time trial for a game, and I’m having a lot of fun in this one. Coming up with ways to go up tall walls using the different techniques is super fun.
Completely agreed. I haven’t messed with the time trials unless you mean those things where you collect the blue orbs, but now that I’ve beaten the meat of the game I’ll turn to those tonight. Maybe even a randomized run
I’ll clarify - so I did a lot of side content in Grassland and Junon. Then I started ignoring a lot of the open world side content after that. Story based side quest like the Costa Del Sol mini games, Junon Parade, and the Boat Card Tournament I participated in and tried to max out.
I’d complete a tower or a rock scan thing if it was on the way to an objective but I would not go out of my way to find them after that.
But yeah even just mainlining the game it’s still incredibly long.
@sapphicvalkyrja Okay I was curious about this. If Advent Children is still cannon I guess that would limit what they could really get away with in Rebirth or the third instalment (I presume it will be called Reunion?). I was expecting some radical changes in Rebirth but my expectations are a bit tempered for the third game - whatever major changes will just happen in some other dimension probably.
I’m playing Baldur’s Gate 3 again. I’ve made peace with the fact that I need to play this game with a high charisma character and I just don’t really want to be a dark urge. I know I’m missing a lot by skipping those things but every playthrough after my first (drow swords bard), I’ve just gotten so frustrated with my inability to pass charisma checks and I’ve just found the Dark Urge thing adds a heaviness that I don’t find makes the game more fun. Maybe some day I’ll just do pure evil and kill everyone, but for now I’m just doing what makes me happy. That is to say: tiefling oath of devotion paladin. Sword and board goody two shoes time.
Interestingly, I don’t really go for charisma if I’m playing in a tabletop setting. I certainly would if I felt the party was missing a face, but left to my own devices I like to play a socially inept spellcaster. I like druids who feel like they’re a fish out of water, and I like wizards who feel like everyone is too stupid to understand them. Maybe this is a sign to finally play a sorcerer next time I get to be a character in a DND game in real life. Probably won’t do it tho
This is the one I find myself re-installing most often, with IV a close second (and still probably the best overall game in the series). I think it’s the aesthetics of V that make it the most pleasant to come back to, it looks really good and the soundtrack is terrific. The folk music arrangements they put together for the game are great and then it’s got what feels like an endless amount of licensed classical. Just gliding through the modern age when it switches to John Adams and Steve Reich
I continue to play UFO 50 often. I have found over half of the games to be really thought-provoking, worthwhile experiences. Onion Delivery, Party House, and Rail Heist were some that I finished up recently and was pretty wowed by.
I’ve been playing two other games lately. Slice and Dice is incredible. It’s great to have a game I can play on my phone without having to put it in landscape mode or whatever. And once I got the weirdos in the green class unlocked, it was over. Yes, I want to roleplay as a housecat, coffin, shovel, coat and alien!
I also have started the new game Keep Driving. It’s from the crew behind Post Void and The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human. You are a young adult going on a road trip, picking up hitchhikers, dealing with unexpected road conditions and managing your limited resources (and trunk space!) It is an extremely clever transference of RPG mechanics to a very relatable and inspired world. The dreamiest parts of young adulthood are just as great of a place to hang out in as some fantasy world, it ends up.
Oh, I’ve also been playing a little Nethack most days for the monthly game club. It’s real easy to pop in and play for a couple minutes, and it’s free! Come join us!
I am having a strong taste for roguelike roleplaying with unique characters and situations this winter, probably because I really wish I could rearrange a few things in my own life and the world lately.
To go up, you answer the phone in the protagonist’s room. To go down, you answer the phone in your mom’s room. It took me an hour of trial and error to figure that out and they both lead to exactly the same place.
The final game probably won’t be called Reunion (if only because some other part of Square Enix gave that subtitle to the recent Crisis Core remaster / re-release). My guess is on something like Resurrection at this point. But yeah, I don’t expect major changes, excepting perhaps to the order of or way we experience some key events relative to the original game
They have some wiggle room with the dimension / timeline / world stuff but overall seem pretty committed to a faithful retelling of the story—just with some embellishments here and there. That, I think, is probably the Remake trilogy’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness right now. Which one it ends up being in the end depends on what they actually do with the third installment in terms of the narrative
