Final Fantasy 7 Remaster

[Mister Six]

I dunno if this is worth a whole thread, but here we go anyway - I've just played up to the first arrival at the Midgar Slums, and my god I think this game had such an impact on my youth that it's actually in my DNA now. I know every note of this music, although given that I must have listened to it for hours, that's not surprising.

What is surprising is how funny it is. I remember a lot of the bigger moments, of course, but all the little bystanders are so charming and well-sketched, it's hard not to love them all.

This x3 speed mode is a godsend, mind you.

Hope I understand Cloud/Zack's backstory this time around!

[Mecha Rodney]

Looking forward to this thread.

[Pink Gregory]

surprised that no other game in the series gives you a button to show you where all the exits from any particular screen are

it's useful!

[madhair60]

fuck Chadley

edit: sorry i thought you were playing Remake

[Thursday]

fuck Chadley

Nonce!

[madhair60]

Not even with yours pal

[Mister Six]

It's a weird experience, this. I'd sort of expected playing FF7 again to be like revisiting your high school after graduating uni - a feeling of weird familiarity and displacement; all the things you remember but heightened, or seen from a new angle.

But I think it's been too long. All the stuff that blew my mind when I was 14 or whatever has been etched permanently into my brain with impressive fidelity, so the only mismatch between recollection and reality is a mild surprise about just how fuzzy those old-school FMVs actually were. And almost everything else is semi-remembered, but sheared of the associated emotions. So when the malfunctioning Item stall in Wall Market fires its machine gun at me, I think "Yes, I remember that" but have none of what I assume was the associated surprise, delight and confusion.

A few emotional memories are still there, but in odd places. I still get the tingle of excitement at spotting a materia lying around in the game world, and when I was reminded that I could change the colours of the menu screens, I suddenly recalled my youthful surprise and delight at seeing that level of customisability in a PS1 game. And I laughed out loud when I remembered how amused I was by the wonky dimensions of the game world after Cloud and Aeris escaped the church and sat on its roof, both characters suddenly 30 feet tall.

Actually, that's something I really appreciate about this game. From what I remember, from FF8 onwards there was a real effort to make the game worlds cohesive and, if not realistic, at least pretty consistent and plausible. But FF7 just does whatever it wants. Yeah, Aeris lives in a verdant little farm directly next to filthy, crime-ridden slums. Yeah, the buildings are almost always bigger on the inside. Yeah, there are steampunk cars and chocobo-pulled carriages and robots and ghosts and whatever, who gives a shit? Yeah, your mercenary hero has a sword and his mate has a gun arm and you'll be joined by a robot cat that's addicted to gambling and a vampire with a shotgun. Yeah, the lion can talk and he's from a Native American village a little ways from the feudal Japanese village and further on from the tourist attraction in the middle of a deadly desert. What of it, fucker?

Actually, that's something I appreciate more now than I did back then. Those robot arms lying around in the scrapheaps between sectors 5 and 7 (or whatever it is)? These days designers would probably feel the need to write some lore about how they were part of mechas piloted by revolutionaries that were destroyed by Shinra 50 years ago. FF7 just goes "What? Robot arms are cool. Who cares how they got there?" Love it.

[Mister Six]

One thing I had totally forgotten about are Cloud's migranes/visions early on in the game. It remains to be seen if I can make more sense of that whole subplot than I did the first time around.

Oh, and I found out there's a summon materia I totally missed back in 1997 - Kujata - so I'm gonna bag that fucker this time around.

[bgmnts]

I might actually dip into this in-between bouts of horror.

I think I got as far as getting that talking dog Red from the Shinra building, but it had aged so badly I did struggle. Might be worth powering through though it does seem an interesting game.

[Mister Six]

In the remaster there are quick-press shortcuts to speed up everything by 3x and give your health/mana/super attack an instant boost, so you could probably cheese your way through it if you just want to see the story.

[Pink Gregory]

One thing I had totally forgotten about are Cloud's migranes/visions early on in the game. It remains to be seen if I can make more sense of that whole subplot than I did the first time around.

Oh, and I found out there's a summon materia I totally missed back in 1997 - Kujata - so I'm gonna bag that fucker this time around.

was Kujata out of the way?  Think I just picked them up off the floor and, like all the other summons, barely every used them.

[Mister Six]

Apparently the materia runs around the forest. I must have jogged straight past him without realising.

[Pink Gregory]

Maybe I got lucky, I think it was just there on the floor as I went in.

Again, barely used it, assumed it was some sort of earth elemental thing but there's also a similar bull-like Esper in FF6 called Shoat that petrifies things?  Never really found out.

[Cerys]

Yeah, I think I've always found it on the ground in pretty much the same place each time I've played.  Either I got lucky too, or I'm misremembering.

[Obel]

Ah the old classic of naming Red 'Nanaki', so when the big reveal of his name occurs the dialogue is like "Nanaki you say? That's not his name. His real name is... Nanaki"

I'll never not love FFVII, it was a formative gaming experience for me. I have fond memories of renting that weirdly minimal and fat PS1 case from my local video store that let you rent games for £1 a day, getting home and obsessing over it, not even scratching the surface of it before I went to bed and going back to the store the next day to pay another £1. I remember being blown away by something so minor as a game having currency and the freedom to spend it on whatever you want at the shop. I never played an RPG before FFVII so I didn't understand what Levels were. I just remember seeing in the pause menu that I was now on level 8 but not being clear on when I completed a level, I just assumed it was some clever Japanese way of making games that my dumb brain didn't get. Then I was confused further when some characters were suddenly a different level.

Then I left Midgar and my mind blew again.

<3<3<3<3<3

I still haven't played the remake because my love for the game is so strong and steeped in nostalgia, I don't want to risk it being tainted.

[oggyraiding]

My childhood memory of FFVII was the week before Christmas, and my dad got me and my brother into his room and showed us a PS1 with FFVII we were getting for Christmas, it was just a taster, watching the opening FMV, but we had to wait a week to play it. When we got it, older brother played, I watched. He didn't cycle save games, we got to the bit where there's a disused rollercoaster (or was it mine cart tracks?), he saved with very little health and no means to heal, we were unable to survive any random encounter if we tried to leave the area. So the playthrough was dead.

I don't actually know how it's possible to even get in that state because when I revisited it recently there is very little challenge up to that point. Certainly not enough to be completely out of MP and potions.

[Consignia]

I deffo missed Kujata first playthrough. If you watch this:

You can see that if you are just pressing on, you might not be curious enough to hold back and follow the red dot in the side of the screen.

I missed loads on my first playthrough back in '97. But I was sharing the first playthrough with a friend as we rented it out and shared a memory card, but only got together twice month. Bastard got to do the motorcycle bit, and I didn't until a few years later.

[Mister Six]

Then I left Midgar and my mind blew again.

That was a properly mindblowing moment for me. There's so much in that first part (I'd forgotten how much, actually - I'd merged the initial reactor attack, the climb up the plate and the assault on Shinra into one event in my head... totally forgot that the first boss was some lame floaty robot that looks like an unloved 1980s toy) that the launch into a full-on world map had my mind truly boggling.

I think the other big moment that blew me away was in the race to stop the Weapons, and the realisation that it was now my little band of weirdos vs Shinra Corporation vs Sephiroth vs the planet itself. That shift in scale was something I'd never experienced in a game before.

[bgmnts]

In the remaster there are quick-press shortcuts to speed up everything by 3x and give your health/mana/super attack an instant boost, so you could probably cheese your way through it if you just want to see the story.

Yeah but that's cheating fuck that. I think I have had that 3x speed on every FF remaster though for about 75% of the time, it's a godsend.

[Waking Life]

This game is probably the ultimate nostalgia hit. Christmas '97, aged 13, knowing very little about it other than hype (also got Tomb Raider 2, which was more immediate). A couple of contemporary reviews in the UK downplayed it in the end, suggesting it was good, but not great. My parents had concerns about the title.

First playthrough was 120 hours - which at that time felt unprecedented for a story-driven game - with probably about a third of that grinding on some island to beat the underwater dude. I got the gist of it quickly and was at the Golden Saucer before New Year, but then crashed and burned on the last time you fight the scientist (Hojo?). I must have been underpowered and it took me a full month of trial and error to beat him, as there was no opportunity to level up from my save. Next time I played through I smashed him first time. Didn't even grind much that time.

All my friends scoffed at it, playing stuff like Syndicate Wars and the F1 games. No imagination. Fortunately my Dad was an early internet adopter, so was first time hunting for slow-load porn any scrap of info about the lore (and wider series) online.

Been meaning to revisit this for at least a decade and from watching YouTube videos, it is one of the few games from my childhood that makes me feel genuinely nostalgic. Music drives that massively.

[Cerys]

On the subject of YouTube videos, I've found that watching Magemasher22 playthroughs can be immensely satisfying.  The bloke has a talent for hurling abuse at both the games and himself.

Spoiler alert

#oneofus

[close]

[Mister Six]

Just got to the world map over my lunch break. The storytelling gets wonky as fuck around here. Sephiroth - who's only vaguely been alluded to before now, but not seen - kills Shinra's president offscreen, leaving his whopping great sword in the guy's back. Everyone apparently knows who Sephiroth is except Barret, and we get some information about Sephiroth being an Ancient. Er, great, but who is he?

Then after the Midgar chase sequence - which was kind of fun! - Cloud says he has a score to settle with Sephiroth. Barret says "And that'll save the Planet?" and Cloud says he thinks it will.

What?! I know we're getting some Cloud/Sephiroth flashbacks in a little bit, and Sephiroth is supposed to be a famous soldier, but it feels a bit too vague to hang a dramatic cliffhanger ending on, especially when the business about the Ancients and the Chosen Place or whatever it is is also so hazy.

Anyway, bollocks to that, off to pick up my first Summon!

[oggyraiding]

That bit where you escape the Shinra cells, and follow the blood trails to President Shinra's office, that's a cool introduction to Sephiroth. Made him seem like a right tough bastard.

[Mister Six]

In theory, I guess, but both this time and the first time around, I thought it was the trail left by Jenova (or whatever the headless thing in the cell is), not Sephiroth. Or did he break her out? I can't remember.

So when he sword turns up it seems more like a weird non-sequitur than a thrilling omen of the future.

You get Cloud and Sephiroth's backstory in a big infodump straight after at Kalm (one with a GREAT bug that forced me to replay all of the climactic Shinra tower battle all over again) but it needed seeding a little better before, especially because your first glimpse of Sephi is a little super deformed dinky manga lad in a truck. Would have been nice to have a moody FMV of him escaping the scene of the murder just before Rufus arrives in his helicopter.

[Mister Six]

Fuck me, Junon's a chore. It's got a really cool setting and some fun comedy moments with the soldiers (or SOLDIERs), but it's a right ballache to get through. I remember being annoyed by how slow and pointless the CPR "minigame" was when I was a kid, but I'd totally forgotten about the marching nonsense and the business about having to do a military salute. All back-to-back!

In happy minigame news, I remembered how to cheese the Condor reactor battle (just keep piling stuff down at the bottom to overwhelm the enemy as they spawn in) so I won that and got a new weapon for Red. :)

[Cerys]

I wonder if the remake will give you the option of letting Priscilla die.  I do hope so.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

The soldiers are just soldiers and not SOLDIERS

[Capt.Midnight]

Fuck me, Junon's a chore. It's got a really cool setting and some fun comedy moments with the soldiers (or SOLDIERs), but it's a right ballache to get through.

Ahh I remember spending HOURS grinding away (not physically) in that tunnel section, where you press the button and an alarm goes off. It made the rest of the game a lot easier.

https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasyVII/comments/bpdnyn/helpful_leveling_up_trick/

Consider this a TOP TIP.

[Mister Six]

Can't believe I forgot to mention the dolphin-jumping in my list of Junon crimes. Absolutely appalling "gameplay". The upper level of Junon is one of my favourite areas so far, though, so that made up for it. Packed with nook and crannies to explore.

And I finally found out what the 1/35th soldier figures are for!

Spoiler alert

Nothing.

[close]

Currently past the Costa del Sol, which had some top laughs, like Yuffie "helping out" at the materia shop then lifting all their wares when you leave the town. Have trudged up a scenic hill to find a ruined crater with a Mako reactor in it, which is a really nice bit of environmental storytelling that I didn't really pick up on before. I don't recall this reactor at all, but it connects to a rollercoaster-style train track that I vaguely recall. I think there's something about stopping a train at some point? Well, no spoilers please!

Ahh I remember spending HOURS grinding away (not physically) in that tunnel section, where you press the button and an alarm goes off. It made the rest of the game a lot easier.

https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasyVII/comments/bpdnyn/helpful_leveling_up_trick/

Consider this a TOP TIP.

Considered and filed away for future use! Cheers!

Ooh, nice one! Thanks! I forgot about the buggy.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

The dolphin jumping thing has an easy trick to it, which is: don't move anywhere and just blow the whistle twice