Final Fantasy 7 Remaster

[Mister Six]

Now ya tell me!

Can't believe I forgot the Chocobo music! I had the Chocobo tunes from FF7 and 8 on my Winamp playlist back in the day...

Anyway, trying to race my way out of Corel Prison now. It's not terribly fun, but I love how the race course looks in gradient-fill PS1-O-Vision.

[Mister Six]

The plot really goes screwy around the Golden Saucer doesn't it? First you happen to stumble across Barret's old town, then you go to an amusement park for no reason, then Barret's old, presumed dead, mate coincidentally turns up for no reason and kills a bunch of people at random, then you have a confrontation, then it turns out Sephiroth had passed by and was in the next town over. Felt like they had a backstory and some other ideas and nowhere else to put them, and now they're getting them out of the way in one go.

Anyway, after that was Cosmo Canyon, which was great, and now I'm in Nibelheim. I'd forgotten about the weird robed figures lurking in the houses, and how creepy they are. Plus, the stuff about Cloud and Tifa's false memories is bubbling up now. Hope I understand it this time around...

[Mister Six]

Man alive, the Yuffie quest in Wutai is pure bullshit. You're expected to just run around poking seemingly inanimate bits of pre-rendered scenery to continue, and you can't leave until you've found her? Bollocks! It's still a great game, but it wobbles every time it moves too far from the basic explore-fight-explore gameplay.

And then it ends with a comedy skit where Corneo decides whether to rape Elena or Yuffie, then dies like Wile E. Coyote.

The Turks are cool though.

Cheated a bit so I could see Aeris's ultimate limit break (another thing that would definitely require a guide) and now off to the Temple of the Ancients to get her skewered.

[Mister Six]

Got back to this now I'm done with Like A Dragon Gaiden. I think the game wobbles a bit after Aeris's death, but really picks up when Cloud is out of commission. Playing first as Tifa, then as Cid, really freshens things up, and the reveal of Cloud's backstory is a lot simpler and clearer than it seemed when I was an idiot teen.

I love the subversion there - that Cloud isn't the super cool SOLDIER dude, but a guy who couldn't hack basic training and was too ashamed to even show his face when he went home to Nibelheim (I was delighted that I'd forgotten the reveal about him being the carsick soldier, as it floored me). I also liked the little flashback that plays in the mansion's basement that shows Zack to be the traditional "I'm gonna be a badass, and you're coming with me!" hero figure right before he gets shot to bits in front of a weakened Cloud.

Cloud's also a lot more fun after he comes back, once he's stopped trying to be the taciturn badass and is having panic attacks in a submarine. Which is good, because I was enjoying Cid's "grizzled old hand" schtick and was worried I'd get bored when he went back into the ranks of the support characters.

The game also gets tons better around here, now they seem to have sacked off the shit minigames. The submarine game is actually pretty fun, and exploring the oceans is pretty cool, although god knows how you'd find stuff like the wrecked seaplane without a guide.

All this said, I'm absolutely playing with the cheats on because I cannot be arsed otherwise.

[Thursday]

I found that, just happened across it exploring the ocean.

[Mister Six]

Yeah TBF I probably found it myself doing the same thing when it first came out. I'm just hungry for the main story, so rushing through the side stuff at the minute.