Playing the final boss and I'm pretty sure I hate everyone at Square Enix right now.
EDIT : Fuck it. I uninstalled. After a bullshit one hit kill from the final boss, I'm done with this thing. It's a little early but it's probably going to be my biggest disappointment of the year. I'm going to save the space on my PS5 ssd and play something that's actually fun. Fuck Nomura and co. they dropped the ball as far as I'm concerned. Whoever thought it was a good idea to force you to start from the VERY BEGINNING of the boss fight(which has several stages) after you die is an idiot. I'll just watch the ending on youtube.
Dude, I think there's an option to start at just the battle sequence that you failed on. I just completed it yesterday, and did the final final boss sequence a few times. If I remember it correctly, its always the first option to reload current battle, and the a new window will popup to ask from where to reload the current battle, I think its the first option. So you don't have to repeat the ones that you've completed.
1. Equip a wide range of elemental magic materia to Barret, Yuffie and Red XIII for their battle.
2. During the last phase of the final boss marathon (2 v 1 battle), save your limits and synergy attacks for when their HP drops to 10% and they start doing the ridiculous attack. Then unleash these quickly keep up the pressure to defeat them before the 1 shot kill move wipes you out.
3. If you get gameover, then it's the top option each time to restart the battle you failed on rather than from the very beginning.
Dude, I think there's an option to start at just the battle sequence that you failed on. I just completed it yesterday, and did the final final boss sequence a few times. If I remember it correctly, its always the first option to reload current battle, and the a new window will popup to ask from where to reload the current battle, I think its the first option. So you don't have to repeat the ones that you've completed.
There is, but it's always worded in a horribly confusing way. I accidentally restarted the Palmer desert fight that way lol. Thankfully it was much simpler the second time around for me.
Someone posted this to Reddit and it couldn't be more apt:
But yeah, as you said, always pick the top option to avoid replaying phases.
There's really no reason for the final fight to be so damn bloated, though. I mentioned this in the spoiler thread but the final boss in the original FF7 was TWO phases (arguably three) FFS. These devs need to learn what the word brevity means.
There is, but it's always worded in a horribly confusing way. I accidentally restarted the Palmer desert fight that way lol. Thankfully it was much simpler the second time around for me.
Someone posted this to Reddit and it couldn't be more apt:
But yeah, as you said, always pick the top option to avoid replaying phases.
There's really no reason for the final fight to be so damn bloated, though. I mentioned this in the spoiler thread but the final boss in the original FF7 was TWO phases (arguably three) FFS. These devs need to learn what the word brevity means.
Finally finished the game this weekend! What a great video game! Everything is top tier, excluding the box throwing segment. Amongst my top 3 of all time with Tears of the Kingdom and Elden Ring for sure.
My moment with this was in Mt. Corel before facing the robot.
I saved just before the battle but forgot to change up some materia.
Since the party menu didn't popup when I pressed start, I selected restart battle and choose an option that throw me to the very beggining of Mt. Corel.
I changed up all my materia and saved once again. Only after I noticed I was at the bottom of the montain, and not at the top, just before the boss battle
Its too bad because there was a reason to use a different amount of weapons. There wasn't really a best one, and they would all cap out at the same slots. Now, I think some are not worth it because having only a few slots for a good portion of the game and not even linked. I know they eventually gain slots, but this seems to take a long ass time for some.
Yes, you should absolutely link Elemental for the Fire & Ice and Lightning & Wind 2-in-1 materia. Auto targeting weaknesses is gold. Poison & Petrify is good for Warding obviously.
The one linkage I'd recommend over all others is Synergy and Comet. You're welcome.
Well...I freakin did it. It took me 200 hours but I platinumed rebirth.
No wonder it has a <1% platinum rate, I found it way harder than Demon's souls or any other plat I've done.
Love the game. It's not a masterpiece unfortunately, it's too messy for that, but the quantity of high quality stuff in rebirth is astounding, even though it's mixed with some dumb stuff.
For me, the game peaked around Chapter 4. I was loving the hell out of it, until they introduced Glenn Lodbrock. From that point on, the game just became a mess in a lot of ways. There are things for sure I like about the game. World Design of course is great. It was great seeing character interactions. The battle system finally won me over (after hating it in Remake). But I have some major complaints. For one, the soundtrack. They drowned out one of the greatest soundtracks ever made with less than memorable generic shit for a lot of it. Some of remixes, such as Temple of the Ancients REALLY suck. It's a downgrade, even from Remake. The menus are really bad too. How come I can't change my party from PARTY. How come I can't upgrade my Weapons from UPGRADE WEAPONS. Some very shit design work there. Anyway, it's probably best to give my opinion chapter per chapter
Chapter 1: Pretty good retelling of the Nibelheim incident. I hated the part where Cloud's mobility got reduced though. And there is something to be said for Sephiroth not talking about how Cloud and the other non-Ancients were "traitors". It felt like a key part of him Othering the world in the original. A key part of his motivation
Chapter 2: Loved it. At this point, I felt the potential for what I was going to be playing. Loved Kalm. Loved exploring the Grasslands and outside Midgar. Was pretty stoked and full hype mode
Chapter 3: Pretty straight forward chapter. I liked it well enough. Enjoyed the Mithril Mines theme quite a bit.
Chapter 4: Was enjoying it until they introduced Glenn... Parade was great. But then of course they have to make everything so over the top with the escape from Upper Junon, rather than them sneaking onto the ship.
Chapter 5: They turned the cargo ship into a cruise ship, which okay that's fine. I enjoyed the tournament quite a bit. But the lead up to the Jenova fight wasn't very cool. Lacked any tension or punctuation.
Chapter 6: Pretty chill. I enjoyed going around Costa Del Sol. However, I didn't like they turned Hojo being on the beach into a "thing". It was fun just having him chill there in the original. Probably shouldn't have been a chapter.
Chapter 7: Decent enough Chapter. Exploring Corel was nice, as was the climb up the mountain. Splitting the party kinda sucked on the mountain, but overall it wasn't bad
Chapter 8: Gold Saucer was hype... but why is it Silver? Felt like an odd change. The Dyne section was handled terribly. They ruined it by having his death go from being a suicide to a sacrifice. And then the Palmer fight and chase afterwards killed any sort of moment for reflection the scene could have had.
Chapter 9: God awful. Low point of the game. The reactor dungeon was fun but having to do it basically twice felt like a time waste. Gongaga sucks to explore. Story sequence towards the end was stupid. By this point they were starting to lose me pretty hard
Chapter 10: Pretty good. The Cosmo Canyon stuff was well handled. Enjoyed the Gi dungeon, though pairing red with barrett felt... arbitrary. The Gi village afterwards wasn't too bad. Sort of like the idea of it.
Chapter 11: They completely botched the Shinra Mansion. Any sort of tension that location had was destroyed by placing Dexter's Lab in the basement. And having Cait Sith be the party leader killed any tension. The whole reason for going in there was kinda dumb too, since they needed a computer was kinda silly, especially since they don't even use that information.
Chapter 12: Mostly okay. The date was pretty great (I got Tifa). However, the arena stuff was WAY too much. If it had ended with just Don Corneo it would have been whatever. But then having Turks and Rufus, it just became exhausting. And lacked any sort of subtly in the betrayal that happens there.
Chapter 13: Too long. Too exhausting. Lacked atmosphere. The Tseng scene sucked. The end of it was sanitized. The wheels started to come off.
Chapter 14: A big fucking mess. Besides the Aerith death stuff (or not death stuff? who fucking knows) it was just way too noisy and confusing. The final boss fights were waaaaay too exhausting. You have a multi-phase Jenova fight followed by a multi-phase Sephiroth fight followed by another Sephiroth fight. It was too much. Complimented by some really confusing and opaque storytelling that was non-commital as fuck and you get something unsatisfying.
There is not a single moment from the original game that was handled better in this game. Which is a problem. Everything was for the worse. They've turned FF7 into The Hobbit film trilogy of video games. There might have been a good game somewhere inside this, but it got lost along the way by noise. The new plot elements were not needed and are detrimental to the emotional core of FF7, without adding anything new or doing anything meaningful different. None of the Unknown Journey content really amounts to anything of value, other than setting up probably some last minute copout happy ending at the end of Part 3 a la Kingdom Hearts 3.
I think really the saddest thing about this is that FF7 was already a complex confusing game. They had an opportunity to elaborate on plot details that were vague or confusing from the original game but instead chose to double down by dropping another super complicated layer while pussyfooting around by being as vague as possible.
I sound like I'm being negative, and I probably am. I did enjoy myself. But this game is not a masterpiece, and if anything it is just more proof to me that I do not enjoy modern game design. Things were better in the 90s when design was more focused and restrained. No doubt when Part 3 comes out, I'll play it and then be done with the Remake trilogy. And in the future, when I want to experience FF7, I'll go back and play the '97 and not this. If anything, I think I'd like a fan retranslation of the original game.
Another lengthy gameplay session that was mostly just wandering around, cut scenes, and a like 30 minute QTE mini game that was mandatory to progress but not story related at all. And I didn't even get a date with one of the girls. Dunno if I'm gonna struggle through to the end on this one.
Another lengthy gameplay session that was mostly just wandering around, cut scenes, and a like 30 minute QTE mini game that was mandatory to progress but not story related at all. And I didn't even get a date with one of the girls. Dunno if I'm gonna struggle through to the end on this one.
Playing the final boss and I'm pretty sure I hate everyone at Square Enix right now.
EDIT : Fuck it. I uninstalled. After a bullshit one hit kill from the final boss, I'm done with this thing. It's a little early but it's probably going to be my biggest disappointment of the year. I'm going to save the space on my PS5 ssd and play something that's actually fun. Fuck Nomura and co. they dropped the ball as far as I'm concerned. Whoever thought it was a good idea to force you to start from the VERY BEGINNING of the boss fight(which has several stages) after you die is an idiot. I'll just watch the ending on youtube.
I've never purchased a full game OST before but will do for Rebirth cos it's too good and iconic. But it's sold out on the S-E webstore and I can't find it anywhere else.
Am I the only one strangely got addicted to the piano mini game? When I first played demo I thought to myself there is no way in hell I would try "A" rank with it.
But in the full game I'm spending good hours just trying get "A" Rank and it strangely addictive.
Am I the only one strangely got addicted to the piano mini game? When I first played demo I thought to myself there is no way in hell I would try "A" rank with it.
But in the full game I'm spending good hours just trying get "A" Rank and it strangely addictive.
Am I the only one strangely got addicted to the piano mini game? When I first played demo I thought to myself there is no way in hell I would try "A" rank with it.
But in the full game I'm spending good hours just trying get "A" Rank and it strangely addictive.
I did for a while and A ranked them all, except for the extra song you get as a reward for doing this.
I hate Two Legs though.
I put the speed on 2 or 3 which improved my Great amount with a ton. Because you don't really have to time your presses but rather just press on reaction.
I did for a while and A ranked them all, except for the extra song you get as a reward for doing this.
I hate Two Legs though.
I put the speed on 2 or 3 which improved my Great amount with a ton. Because you don't really have to time your presses but rather just press on reaction.
FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH Original Soundtrack https://www.play-asia.com/final-fantasy-vii-rebirth-original-soundtrack-regular-edition/13/70gx07 https://na.store.square-enix-games.com/final-fantasy-vii-rebirth-original-soundtrack...
I finally finished the game this morning. Easily over 100 hours playtime when all was said and done. I still gotta go back and finish the protorelic stuff though, because I just didn't have the patience for the last trials before going to the end.
I am still processing what the hell was going on during the last parts. In some aspects it's easy to understand, but I also have no friggin' idea what the hell is going at the same time. I think a lot of people are probably feeling that way. I love Final Fantasy, but I think I like it best when it's not too complicated like the last parts of this game are. Like the rest of the game is fucking fantastic for writing and character building. They take these beloved characters and just shine so much light on them, that it's hard not to be happy to experience.
As much as I love and prefer Japanese games, and JRPGs in general, the last few FF games have had some great writing. I feel like a fault of the genre in the past was often people not really talking like people sometimes, but between this game, Remake, and even FF16...I feel like the interactions between characters has just been so stellar. Makes me so much more invested, and I gotta hand it to Square for improving in this department as much as they have. Like all you gotta do is compare these games to something like Advent Children, and it's leagues better. Plus they got a great voice cast to deliver the dialogue too. We've gotten out of that age of stiff poor voice acting.
I'm not sure what would be considered spoilers, so i'm just gonna spoil tag the next part.
I still am so confused by what's going on with Cloud and Sephiroth though...maybe it's because it's been too long since I played the original, and need to replay it, but I didn't really know what Sephiroth was doing to have such a hold on him in this game. He made him act like a real dick in Chapter 13.
The fact that they made Tifa and Aerith so close in these games, I was actually feeling sad for her the most at the end of the game. Still not sure if Aerith is dead dead, but to Tifa she is, and she just looked so sad at the end. I mention this because even though Chapter 14 sorta turns Cloud's shitty behavior around, he is still VERY unreliable as a narrator, and I'm not sure if I want to be siding with him still. He still ends up secretly carrying away some form of black materia at the end, he's seeing things that no one else can...wtf is going on. It makes me question if he's even the hero, especially since even Sephiroth is just like "are you sure this isn't just a fever dream"...so yeah, Cloud could either be super powerful with perceiving the multiverse now, or...he could just be really fucked in the head. I don't know, but it's gonna drive me nuts waiting years for the next one now.
From a gameplay perspective, there are definitely things to complain about, like Gongaga, and Cosmo Canyon both being a bit of a pain in the ass to explore. I don't mind vast huge areas, but they just felt confusing because the map doesn't do a good job in telling what's high or low. Sometimes checkpoints in boss fights are annoying if you die because you still got unskippable cutscenes. But beyond nitpicks, I feel like this is a hell of game just from a production standpoint alone. Maybe people could say similar stuff for other games, but it's just impressive coming right after Remake which was so linear, to open up to this scale. I didn't think they'd be able to give you a sense of exploring a huge open world like OG FF7, but they actually did, and made it a hell of a lot better. Sure, it's not exactly open ended in the same way, but it was so dense and big. It didn't feel like an empty area, it felt like a huge lived in world.
Can't talk about this game without a nod to the soundtrack also. God it's so fucking good. If you've played it, you know. So many tracks that feel like they have no right being as good as they are.
Ok, I'm a little late to the party to post my thoughts because I just finished it, but FFVII is my favorite game ever, so I have some things to say about Rebirth. Then I'll browse through and see what others thought about it.
It was a really good game that I had a lot of fun with, but I hated the way it ended from Chapter 13 on. I didn't like some of the stuff they were doing with it throughout the game, but I didn't let it bother me much until the end.
First of all Chapter 13 and 14 are absolute fucking slogs. They take forever. The Temple of the Ancients is way too long and tedious and the end of Chapter 13 is soooo slow. The cut scenes just go on and on and then mix in you walking followed by more cut scenes. And it's convoluted bullshit. Different worlds and dimensions and Sephiroth is warping in and out and taking different forms, and Cloud is seeing him and sometimes they are seeing him but they aren't, and there's those annoying ass whispers that ruin every god damn scene they're in that reek of Nomura's ego trying to add some mysterious and mystical element to a plot that didn't need it. The end of Chapter 13 Final chapter took me almost 3 fucking hours. Completely absurd. It just goes on and on and on and on and on. It's so fucking pretentious.
And I avoided all spoilers to this point, but of course they ruined one of the most iconic scenes in gaming history. Cloud deflects Sephiroth's attack? But she ends up "dying" anyway? But she isn't really truly dead "bc different dimensions," and neither is Zack bc dimensions, because for once a JRPG had the balls to kill off characters, which like 1/1,000 have the balls to do and they're doing their damndest to undo it because god forbid we have main characters die in a game and everything doesn't end happy in a nice tidy little bow.
So they ruined that scene completely. Took all the emotion out of it, I found myself the entire end of Chapter 13 and 14 saying stuff at the TV like "Can we get a move on, already?" and "You gotta be fucking kidding me." The entire end had absolutely no emotion, it was completely sterilized. Then the boss fights drag on for like over and hour and certain parts of them are of course about as tedious as possible. Gotta disable X body part to be able to harm the enemy... multiple times, so pad the game out even longer than it already is.
I'm all for tweaking things here and there. The Last of Us TV show did it. But it's like bro... learn when to rein it the fuck in. My god. And maybe someone can answer this for me, since the end was such a convoluted mess that I can't even remember all of it because I lost track of the amount of times Sephiroth warped and puffed in and out on a cloud of smoke... did they actually ever show him summon meteor? Because at the very end Aerith says she'll stop meteor, but I don't actually remember them showing him summon it, unless I missed it. If they didn't show it and they decided to skip over that scene, then good fucking grief.
If you're going to change that much, at least explain how Sephiroth went from the super soldier he was in the Nibelheim flashbacks to this dude who can warp around and invade minds and take the forms of other people. Don't just keep throwing mysterious and cryptic shit at us thinking you're deep, because it doesn't make for good story telling. And I don't even see the point of any of the Zack stuff. Like, what is the point of even bringing him back? He serves no purpose really, he's just like an alternate version of Cloud. They could have cut every Zack thing out of the game and not only wouldn't it have been missed, but it would have been better off. Again, reeks of JRPG writers afraid to kill off characters.
So yeah, as you can probably tell I'm not happy. I mean, at least it's a video game so you can still enjoy gameplay, but I can't think of a way they could have made that ending worse, and I feel like going into Part 3 the same way I felt like going into Game of Thrones season 8. At least story-wise, there's no way in hell I can see this ending well. And if they do bring Aerith back it better be side quest/optional. Don't butcher the story more than you already did. But I'm not gonna get my hopes up. I expect the game will be vast and graphically amazing, and have good combat and stuff, but the story is such a mess.
Anyway, that's my rant. Looking forward to browsing and seeing anyone's takes. If you have any comments or clarifications, all are welcome.
Finished at 90 hours with only the desert proto relic left.
I beat the final boss in one try which means that in 90 hours I had zero deaths from bosses. Tip: stock up on giga potions.
This was way longer than Ii should be. The Remake had perfect length.
Now that I see the game as a whole I would:
-Remove the under Junon open world completely
-Cut Temple of the Ancients in half and also remove 30% of the other dungeons.
-Trim 20% of the open worlds (Mog, fountains, transmuter chips hunting and fountains)
That is 30 hours less and a much more satisfying game
Also not related to the length, but there was a lot of bloat in the game's systems. Crafting is pointless. Synergy skills, who uses them? Weapon upgrade, just put in on auto and never touch again. Most materia are useless, at least on normal.
This game can be trimmed a LOT.
Having said that, the game until the final part was amazing. The world is perfect. The Junon set piece was incredible. Cosmo Canyon gave me chills. Exploring Gongaga with the incredible music felt like a dream.
Even when I was tired of the length, I took a 1-2 days break and the game felt amazing again. I just finished it and I miss it already.
But the final chapter was shit story wise...
For whom the ending was for?
For a newcomer nothing will make sense.
For fans what is the meaning of Cloud saving Aerith only to be undone later? What was the purpose of the first game then if all realities can be mixed? The impact of the scene was destroyed. Just let it play like the original game and do your stuff at the end of the trilogy.
Zack stuff is pointless.
FF7's side games have been it's curse.
Also it would be better to add a couple of hours and end the game at the north crater with the weapon release.
I did find that one tricky...I don't remember much except that I summoned Ramuh and used lightning materia. But he took a couple of goes. Remember to use all Barret's tanky moves, barrier and bonus round. I think he was one where casting stop works after stagger for a long stagger too.
Not helpful for this fight but one thing I really found helpful for other big bosses in hard mode was using synergy abilities like Cloud/Tifa "synchro cyclone" that makes spells cost zero mp temporarily and then casting "reraise" on the whole party. Reraise normally costs 35 mp which is too much in hard mode but when it's free it's super useful against hard hitting bosses
My mind was blown thinking they made it in 4 years, but Kitase is saying 3. I hope Square stick to UE4/UE5 going forward and to this development approach of retaining as much staff as possible and efficiently moving them from one project to the next. From the Ultimania release...
Fully completed it finally so I can pop up in the OT
I had a great time with it, one of my favourites FF in a while. The OST is insanely good and they improved the fights which were already very impressive in the first game. I think in retrospective, I enjoyed Junon and the parade the most... probably also Nibelheim. Queen's Blood was amazing also.
Alto I think everything was great, I feel the ending is a bit too long and I still don't understand the need to include Zack, he is completely useless here and I would have much prefer he wasn't there same for the fake Wutai guy Glen.
They botched the tension in Aerith's death which is a shame. I got so excited when Sephiroth was falling down to cut her.
,
and how there is no deviantart of Barret and Yuffie sitting in the front having mad fun and Tifa in the back looking bored and disinterested I'll never know.
I wish I could draw.
I did find that one tricky...I don't remember much except that I summoned Ramuh and used lightning materia. But he took a couple of goes. Remember to use all Barret's tanky moves, barrier and bonus round. I think he was one where casting stop works after stagger for a long stagger too.
Not helpful for this fight but one thing I really found helpful for other big bosses in hard mode was using synergy abilities like Cloud/Tifa "synchro cyclone" that makes spells cost zero mp temporarily and then casting "reraise" on the whole party. Reraise normally costs 35 mp which is too much in hard mode but when it's free it's super useful against hard hitting bosses
1. Equip a wide range of elemental magic materia to Barret, Yuffie and Red XIII for their battle.
2. During the last phase of the final boss marathon (2 v 1 battle), save your limits and synergy attacks for when their HP drops to 10% and they start doing the ridiculous attack. Then unleash these quickly keep up the pressure to defeat them before the 1 shot kill move wipes you out.
3. If you get gameover, then it's the top option each time to restart the battle you failed on rather than from the very beginning.
Yes its advised to put all the elements on your characters so that every party has them. I'd also put magnify+cure on at least 2 characters, one that isn't in your main party.
I found Jenova the hardest, but its not too bad if you save your limits for the final phase with all the fireball spam going on. The rest of Jenova can be done with normal attacks and magic on the barrier. Or better yet, Spellblade.
Sephiroth: The solo parts with the core and Zack all you need is doing melee attacks and abilities. The wings is about cast the opposing color element. Perhaps cast barrier for Gigaflare.
The ultimate battle is very easy in fact. I guess saving your limit there helps, but what you want here is Spellblade. I lost it because of respec for level 3 limits and still made it, but Spellblade trivializes the final fight.
You can cancel Octoslash with Spellblade, by hitting both the Masamune and the Wing during his charge. Normally you need to fire off some magic spells on both, thus needed full ATB. But this attack costs nothing. This will pressure him. When he does his whisper beam, you only need to spellblade/magic cast the Wing. During the tornado you need to hit the masamune with magic/SB. For the rest all you need to do is evade his skewer and his grab projectile basically. And for his flurry hold block after the initial hits for perfect blocks. Magnify+Cura after heartless angel.
For the final part save up ATB, and spam focused thrusts. Then kill him with a limit when hes staggered.
I found this final battle easier than the Rebirth one. There really isn't much to it, save for some 3 or 4 attacks you need to evade and cancel him out by hitting his wing/masamune with magic during certain charges.
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