General Gaming Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Remake Part 2) - "An Excellent But Inconsistent Experience" (Digital Foundry Technical Review)

[MarSolo]

I love the mini games from a narrative standpoint.

 

Cloud: ”We’re going to catch Sephiroth!”

NPC: “Hey man, you want to play some cards!”

Cloud: “Sure… one game and then we got to get back to chasing Sephiroth!”

Chadley: “Cloud, can you do some research on this section of the grasslands for me by activating old Republic towers and scanning some crystals for me?”

Cloud: “Alright… you got it.”

 

*sees Sephiroth vanish into the distance*

[Xbob42]

Ahahaha, the chocobo ability in the

Spoiler

Nibel

region is great. So dumb, so fun!

[Xbob42]

Oh boy, just got the

Spoiler

HP<->MP

materia... time to become the ultimate glass cannon!

[MarSolo]

This third level of Fort Condor is HARD.

 

I was this close to destroying the main base but then the time ran out.

[crispy4000]

1 hour ago, MarSolo said:

This third level of Fort Condor is HARD.

 

I was this close to destroying the main base but then the time ran out.

 

The last one is harder.  Then hard mode is harder still.

[legend]

2 hours ago, MarSolo said:

This third level of Fort Condor is HARD.

 

I was this close to destroying the main base but then the time ran out.

 

Yup. It's the fucking timer every time!

[crispy4000]

Whatever those catapult things are, set those up in the above middle once you've broken through decisively.  If you can do it in enough time, it'll help you beat the timer.  I figured out that trick towards the end of hard mode, so it's still possible without for most stages.

[Biggie]

8 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

 

The last one is harder.  Then hard mode is harder still.

I just unlocked hard mode. I hope it is optional and not required. If it isn't I won't be doing it.

[Biggie]

7 hours ago, legend said:

 

Yup. It's the fucking timer every time!

Fort Condor is the absolute worst thing about this game. Maybe if you took away the timer it would be tolerable. Its not cute and its not fun.

[Spork3245]

I’m not sure why you guys are having such a difficult time with Fort Condor, I beat every one on my first try, including the hard modes. Are you not using the rock-paper-scissors mechanics for strength/weaknesses?

[Biggie]

Just now, Spork3245 said:

I’m not sure why you guys are having such a difficult time with Fort Condor, I beat every one on my first try, including the hard modes. Are you not using the rock-paper-scissors mechanics for strength/weaknesses?

I understand by creating certain units does add to bringing in the Heros quicker. I have no idea which units have what advantages over who.

[Spork3245]

Just now, Biggie said:

I understand by creating certain units does add to bringing in the Heros quicker. I have no idea which units have what advantages over who.

Green beats blue

Red beats green

Blue beats red

[Spork3245]

2 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

Green beats blue

Red beats green

Blue beats red

Also, for hard mode, the first group of units, IMO, gives the best variety. The trebuchet/ballista are only really good for taking out the towers and kinda useless when you’re trying to quickly kill enemy units to get to the towers.

 

The hardest mini game is the f’n frog one IMO. Going for the first or second time isn’t bad, but going for 1:20+ is fucking awful. It’s the only one I completely gave up on so far.

[crispy4000]

2 hours ago, Biggie said:

Fort Condor is the absolute worst thing about this game. Maybe if you took away the timer it would be tolerable. Its not cute and its not fun.

That part was better in Intergrade.  You won so long as you had more towers alive on your end.

[legend]

2 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

I’m not sure why you guys are having such a difficult time with Fort Condor, I beat every one on my first try, including the hard modes. Are you not using the rock-paper-scissors mechanics for strength/weaknesses?

 

No, the rock paper scissors mechanics are fine and I liked the game in Intergrade. Nearly every time I lost is because I was down the to final red health on the final building, but the timer ran out.

[Spork3245]

44 minutes ago, legend said:

 

No, the rock paper scissors mechanics are fine and I liked the game in Intergrade. Nearly every time I lost is because I was down the to final red health on the final building, but the timer ran out.

 

I always have like 30-60 seconds left on hard mode. I just keep putting down the higher ranked counters. and throw in the lower ranked ones when I'm trying to push. Also, I won't use the hero units until my units are hitting the base/towers (and the appropriate colored units are spawned by the enemy as the hero's initial ability usually one-hit-KOs them)

[legend]

24 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

I always have like 30-60 seconds left on hard mode. I just keep putting down the higher ranked counters. and throw in the lower ranked ones when I'm trying to push. Also, I won't use the hero units until my units are hitting the base/towers (and the appropriate colored units are spawned by the enemy as the hero's initial ability usually one-hit-KOs them)

 

Sounds reasonable enough. I also reserved hero units and didn't just dump them. But I think the game's timer is garbage because it means there is fewer viable strategies and the right one usually depends on what the order of units the enemy will use are and that's just not very interesting.

 

I think part of the frustration with the timer is also coupled with not having very great control over what your units do. On a number of occasions, I had my units targeting enemies that is less than ideal, and that just wastes time, but I had no real choice in that. You have to just choose the right order so that your units don't happen to fall into doing the stupid thing that slows you down.

[Spork3245]

1 minute ago, legend said:

Sounds reasonable enough. I also reserved hero units and didn't just dump them. But I think the game's timer is garbage because it means there is fewer viable strategies and the right one usually depends on what the order of units the enemy will use are and that's just not very interesting.

 

I noticed that the waves were the same each time, I played the hard mode twice on a couple.

 

1 minute ago, legend said:

I think part of the frustration with the timer is also coupled with not having very great control over what your units do. On a number of occasions, I had my units targeting enemies that is less than ideal, and that just wastes time, but I had no real choice in that. You have to just choose the right order so that your units don't happen to fall into doing the stupid thing that slows you down.

 

First time playing a tower defense, huh?  

 

Maybe I did well because I enjoy tower defense games as a time waster - Kingdom Rush, Defense Grid, SP Phone Destroyer, etc.

[Biggie]

3 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

Also, for hard mode, the first group of units, IMO, gives the best variety. The trebuchet/ballista are only really good for taking out the towers and kinda useless when you’re trying to quickly kill enemy units to get to the towers.

 

The hardest mini game is the f’n frog one IMO. Going for the first or second time isn’t bad, but going for 1:20+ is fucking awful. It’s the only one I completely gave up on so far.

Do you have to do this in hard mode or is it optional?

[legend]

2 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

I noticed that the waves were the same each time, I played the hard mode twice on a couple.

 

Oh yeah they are. Which is why I think it becomes more of a memorization game for working with the timer. Which I dislike.

 

2 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

First time playing a tower defense, huh?  

 

Maybe I did well because I enjoy tower defense games as a time waster - Kingdom Rush, Defense Grid, SP Phone Destroyer, etc.

 

Hah! Although I tend to not love tower defense games, I've played them before, and as I said, I played and enjoyed even this very mini game in Intergrade! I specifically dislike how they handled the timer in this. Get rid of it or make it much more lax and I probably would have enjoyed it here too!

[legend]

Just now, Biggie said:

Do you have to do this in hard mode or is it optional?

 

I think every mini game's hard mode is optional. (And certainly this one is)

[Spork3245]

1 minute ago, Biggie said:

Do you have to do this in hard mode or is it optional?

 

Optional.

 

1 minute ago, legend said:

 

Oh yeah they are. Which is why I think it becomes more of a memorization game for working with the timer. Which I dislike.

 

No need to memorize, the "track/bar" on the bottom right shows you what units are coming and their color so you can preempt. 

[legend]

5 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

No need to memorize, the "track/bar" on the bottom right shows you what units are coming and their color so you can preempt. 

 

It does, but when the game's clock keeps ticking down even when you're in the menu, that doesn't give you a lot of time to process the bar. I tend to be bad at short-term memory of facts in general. E.g., I would regularly need to re-reference the rock-paper-scissors guide they in the UI to make sure I had the right counter (partly because I always found their order somewhat unintutive   [and to be fair, in regular RPS, paper beating rock isn't exactly an intuitive rule either! We all just remember it.]). That also takes time. If you memorize everything in the game this becomes less of an issue, but there's the rub for me!

[Spork3245]

3 minutes ago, legend said:

 

It does, but when the game's clock keeps ticking down even when you're in the menu, that doesn't give you a lot of time to process the bar. I tend to be bad at short-term memory of facts in general. E.g., I would regularly need to re-reference the rock-paper-scissors guide they in the UI to make sure I had the right counter (partly because I always found their order somewhat unintutive   [and to be fair, in regular RPS, paper beating rock isn't exactly an intuitive rule either! We all just remember it.]). That also takes time. If you memorize everything in the game this becomes less of an issue, but there's the rub for me!

 

I mean, just look at the color and put the counter color down, that's what I did. I also ignored the timer completely.  

[crispy4000]

The timing is incredibly tight on the final stage in hard mode.  I had to switch from the default unit set to beat the timer.  If you’re going to do it, you need to have a plethora of ranged units at the end to avoid stop magic, which is incredibly hard because of what Rock Paper Scissors requires.

[Spork3245]

1 minute ago, crispy4000 said:

The timing is incredibly tight on the final stage in hard mode.  I had to switch from the default unit set to beat the timer.  If you’re going to do it, you need to have a plethora of ranged units at the end to avoid stop magic, which is incredibly hard because of what Rock Paper Scissors requires.

 

The default one was the easiest for me

[legend]

13 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

I mean, just look at the color and put the counter color down, that's what I did. I also ignored the timer completely.  

 

You realize this is not helpful, right?

[Spork3245]

12 minutes ago, legend said:

 

You realize this is not helpful, right?

[legend]

32 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

Naa. I only get good and things I enjoy.

[Spork3245]

4 minutes ago, legend said:

 

Naa. I only get good and things I enjoy.

In all seriousness, I think you’re overcomplicating it and that’s why you’re having a difficult/frustrating time  

[legend]

5 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

In all seriousness, I think you’re overcomplicating it and that’s why you’re having a difficult/frustrating time  

 

I really don't think so. Nothing you've said has been a surprising insight for me. The reality is when I played it, the challenge for me was the timer, not the combat and counters. You managed to slip into a mode where that wasn't an issue, and that's great if you enjoy it. It's great even if you didn't and had to optimize for the timer but enjoyed that process. I don't personally enjoy re-optimizing how I approached it for a timer. Timers are usually unfun to me except in very particular kinds of gameplay (like a race, where it's less about a hard timer and more about improving speed with core dexterity).

[crispy4000]

1 hour ago, Spork3245 said:

 

The default one was the easiest for me

I couldn’t shake the timer with the default set, but had 15 seconds to spare with the offense set, Barrett, and those ranged catapults to deal with the stop magic and stance shifting.  But whatever works.

[Spork3245]

8 minutes ago, legend said:

 

I really don't think so. Nothing you've said has been a surprising insight for me. The reality is when I played it, the challenge for me was the timer, not the combat and counters. You managed to slip into a mode where that wasn't an issue, and that's great if you enjoy it. It's great even if you didn't and had to optimize for the timer but enjoyed that process. I don't personally enjoy re-optimizing how I approached it for a timer. Timers are usually unfun to me except in very particular kinds of gameplay (like a race, where it's less about a hard timer and more about improving speed with core dexterity).

I don’t believe I ever said I enjoyed it. I said I didn’t have an issue beating it.
You keep focusing on the timer and have mentioned things about memorizing the enemy waves: neither should be a focus. Just put down what’s strong against whatever is coming up on that line in the corner; that’s all there is to it. Anything, literally anything else, is overcomplicating a ridiculously simple mini game. And you should pretty much always be putting units down, not waiting for them to die.
Fort Condor was better in the Intermission DLC because there was actual strategy involved, this is just overly simplified garbage.  

[best3444]

You guys and your damn mini games. I don't understand how you can stand them. 

 

I completely dropped this game because of them. I haven't played in days and hope to get the will power to beat this before the GOTY comes out in the 22nd. 

[legend]

1 hour ago, Spork3245 said:

I don’t believe I ever said I enjoyed it. I said I didn’t have an issue beating it.
You keep focusing on the timer and have mentioned things about memorizing the enemy waves: neither should be a focus. Just put down what’s strong against whatever is coming up on that line in the corner; that’s all there is to it. Anything, literally anything else, is overcomplicating a ridiculously simple mini game. And you should pretty much always be putting units down, not waiting for them to die.
Fort Condor was better in the Intermission DLC because there was actual strategy involved, this is just overly simplified garbage.  

 

I'm not debating whether you can do things differently to beat the timer. Of course you can! Of course it's winnable! But I'm not interesting in re-optimizing how I did it purely because I was losing to the timer.