General Gaming Final Fantasy VII Remake OT - Big Trouble in Little Midgar

[Keyser_Soze]

2 hours ago, SaysWho? said:

The good news is that the demo was great and the game is coming shortly!

 

Unless you're waiting for PC or Xbox or Episode X Y Z

[SaysWho?]

1 hour ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Unless you're waiting for PC or Xbox or Episode X Y Z

 

If you have no PS4, you silly

[Keyser_Soze]

6 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

 

If you have no PS4, you silly

 

[SaysWho?]

Just now, Keyser_Soze said:

 

 

I'll be the judge of wat  

[Keyser_Soze]

4 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

 

I'll be the judge of wat  

 

[legend]

5 hours ago, SaysWho? said:

 

I'm not familiar with maki.

 

[darkness35]

15 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

The only good news to come out of this remake: https://uk.ign.com/articles/final-fantasy-7-remake-producer-thinks-itd-be-a-waste-to-not-return-to-parasite-eve

 

Parasite Eve Remake in 20 years!

 

I have empty promises fatigue, and I hold this with significant scrutiny after what they did with 3rd Birthday.  I'm just not excited enough and I worry how worse they can make this.

[Dodger]

15 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

The only good news to come out of this remake: https://uk.ign.com/articles/final-fantasy-7-remake-producer-thinks-itd-be-a-waste-to-not-return-to-parasite-eve

 

Parasite Eve Remake in 20 years!

 

It's 40th anniversary remake is gonna be lit

[jaethos]

17 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

The only good news to come out of this remake: https://uk.ign.com/articles/final-fantasy-7-remake-producer-thinks-itd-be-a-waste-to-not-return-to-parasite-eve

 

Parasite Eve Remake in 20 years!

I don't know if they can, legally. The author of the books took away their rights after seeing what they were doing with 3rd Birthday,  thus why it doesn't have Parasite Eve in the title.

[ALIEN-gunner]

Thanks to this remake, Crisis Core is no longer canon. 

[Keyser_Soze]

26 minutes ago, ALIEN-gunner said:

Thanks to this remake, Crisis Core is no longer canon. 

 

What about Dirge of Cerberus?

[Nokt]

26 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

What about Dirge of Cerberus?

I'm assuming hes talking about the french article that said "Concerning Final Fantasy VII Remake, which is a title loaded with a lot of mystery for now, it will be different from the original Final Fantasy VII. If we make a compilation, these games will hardly have an overall coherence. It will be difficult because there is no more continuity between the Compilation and the Remake for the moment"

 

This was over a year ago however and they simply stated for the moment. I've seen a few articles that confirm some details between Before Crisis, Crisis Core, and the remake with details from the demo. 

 

Personally losing the Compilation is probably a good thing. Most of it is not great. 

[Xbob42]

Well, I just played the demo.

That was... sure a modern basic bitch action game. Lot of hitting one button and occasionally being allowed to use another button. Better than FF15's combat, I guess, but that's not saying much at all.

The real crime was the fucking dialogue. Holy shit I didn't realize they were going for the "terrible action movie" angle. Everything that came out of every character's mouth was both a cliche and embarrassing, and the mannerisms had that classic Square Enix "we don't know how actual humans move and gesticulate" feel that we first started seeing in FFX. Christ on a cracker talk about regression. And Cloud now knows how to do 20 foot super jumps off of falling rubble, but only in-between bouts of dramatic headaches that played a much smaller (or at least less obvious and less ridiculous) role in the original game.

 

On the plus side, it sure had graphics. Not much to actually do in the world since they don't even allow you the freedom to jump on your own, surprised the fucking treasure chests don't open themselves.

Goddamn, if this is what qualifies as a "good demo" then Square Enix fans really are desperate.

[Paperclyp]

1 hour ago, Xbob42 said:

Well, I just played the demo.

That was... sure a modern basic bitch action game. Lot of hitting one button and occasionally being allowed to use another button. Better than FF15's combat, I guess, but that's not saying much at all.

The real crime was the fucking dialogue. Holy shit I didn't realize they were going for the "terrible action movie" angle. Everything that came out of every character's mouth was both a cliche and embarrassing, and the mannerisms had that classic Square Enix "we don't know how actual humans move and gesticulate" feel that we first started seeing in FFX. Christ on a cracker talk about regression. And Cloud now knows how to do 20 foot super jumps off of falling rubble, but only in-between bouts of dramatic headaches that played a much smaller (or at least less obvious and less ridiculous) role in the original game.

 

On the plus side, it sure had graphics. Not much to actually do in the world since they don't even allow you the freedom to jump on your own, surprised the fucking treasure chests don't open themselves.

Goddamn, if this is what qualifies as a "good demo" then Square Enix fans really are desperate.

Just genuinely curious - did you like FF7 back in the day?

[legend]

I think we should remember that the majority of the beginning of FF7 was just selecting attack from the menu. I remember being deeply bored at the start because of that. It opens up as it goes.

 

Now maybe FF7 will screw it up even later in the game, but I think there is plenty of potential here. I much prefer dodging and positioning while I wait for the ATB to fill rather than literally waiting.

[Kal-El814]

4 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

Goddamn, if this is what qualifies as a "good demo" then Square Enix fans really are desperate.

Uh... yeah. 

[Duderino]

I've heard far worse criticisms of the original FF7 back in the day.  The player drop off rate after an hour or less of play was probably astronomical, at least in the US.

[Bacon]

1 hour ago, legend said:

I think we should remember that the majority of the beginning of FF7 was just selecting attack from the menu. I remember being deeply bored at the start because of that. It opens up as it goes.

I thought this too, but that just means the demo is lame. I heard Jim Sterling say this demo is the exact same  portion of the 199X demo of FF7 so maybe that was a reason the chose to do the beginning of the game again. But like, this demo isn't selling the game for me because they put you at the start. This part of the remake, as in the entire part 1, is the least interesting part of FF7 combat wise. You don't even get any cool materia at this part of the game. I think you mostly just get elemental magic and cures until you leave midgar. Maybe that will change in the remake so it is more exciting, but I don't have a lot of faith. 

[DarkStar189]

7 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

Well, I just played the demo.

That was... sure a modern basic bitch action game. Lot of hitting one button and occasionally being allowed to use another button. Better than FF15's combat, I guess, but that's not saying much at all.

The real crime was the fucking dialogue. Holy shit I didn't realize they were going for the "terrible action movie" angle. Everything that came out of every character's mouth was both a cliche and embarrassing, and the mannerisms had that classic Square Enix "we don't know how actual humans move and gesticulate" feel that we first started seeing in FFX. Christ on a cracker talk about regression. And Cloud now knows how to do 20 foot super jumps off of falling rubble, but only in-between bouts of dramatic headaches that played a much smaller (or at least less obvious and less ridiculous) role in the original game.

 

On the plus side, it sure had graphics. Not much to actually do in the world since they don't even allow you the freedom to jump on your own, surprised the fucking treasure chests don't open themselves.

Goddamn, if this is what qualifies as a "good demo" then Square Enix fans really are desperate.

I think it was the Kotaku Splitscreen podcast I listened to this week, where Jason talked about playing different parts of the game at a press event. I believe he mentioned being disappointed that some dialog later on in the game is still the same broken English as the original release.  I'm sure the game isn't filled with bad translation, but they didn't even go back to make sure it was all perfect. 

[SaysWho?]

3 hours ago, Bacon said:

I thought this too, but that just means the demo is lame. I heard Jim Sterling say this demo is the exact same  portion of the 199X demo of FF7 so maybe that was a reason the chose to do the beginning of the game again. But like, this demo isn't selling the game for me because they put you at the start. This part of the remake, as in the entire part 1, is the least interesting part of FF7 combat wise. You don't even get any cool materia at this part of the game. I think you mostly just get elemental magic and cures until you leave midgar. Maybe that will change in the remake so it is more exciting, but I don't have a lot of faith. 

 

I think it's already been confirmed that there are summons in part 1 since they've been shown in trailers.

[legend]

5 hours ago, Bacon said:

I thought this too, but that just means the demo is lame. I heard Jim Sterling say this demo is the exact same  portion of the 199X demo of FF7 so maybe that was a reason the chose to do the beginning of the game again. But like, this demo isn't selling the game for me because they put you at the start. This part of the remake, as in the entire part 1, is the least interesting part of FF7 combat wise. You don't even get any cool materia at this part of the game. I think you mostly just get elemental magic and cures until you leave midgar. Maybe that will change in the remake so it is more exciting, but I don't have a lot of faith. 

 

Since it's a self contained release I suspect they'll advance it faster but we'll have to see. 

[darkness35]

The FF7 Remake demo is leaving really conflicted as a whole. Not only am I expecting to play an incomplete game, but there are some changes with the narrative that will not leave the same impact as the original game. It is a game that is spiritually attempting to be FF7 but not FF7 at the same time. And that leaves me really concerned.

 

Aside from that, the camera issues with the demo is really atrocious, and the movement is really stiff at times. I don't even recall the camera and action was this janky in FF15. Those two are my biggest complaints so far in this demo.

[Xbob42]

9 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

Just genuinely curious - did you like FF7 back in the day?

I was disappointed in 7, especially after 6, but it never put me off as hard as this demo put me off, I still played and enjoyed it for the most part. It's just modern Square Enix trying SO damn hard to be cool instead of interesting or telling a good story. The pacing feels off and strange on top of all that.

 

To be fair, I remember intentionally misreading Cloud's name as pronounced like "Claude" because even at like 10 years old I couldn't imagine someone having a name as dumb as "Cloud Strife." So it's not like the dialogue was incredible back then, but man, this thing was rough.

 

Now I'm wondering if the real reason they expanded Midgar so much is because it was the "cool" area of the game, and not the more typical JRPG adventure of later on. Why waste time with anything that isn't cool dudes grunting and pointing guns at each other?

And the combat issue isn't specifically that there's not a lot of commands, you've got multiple abilities and spells as well as the ability to switch characters in the demo, but the fun shit's only available after spamming the attack button. I guess the triangle abilities could prove interesting if there's more than one of them per character, Cloud getting several stances could be fun, for example. But it's like there's this ceiling for Square Enix action combat that they hit over a decade ago and just can't surpass, they can only polish it up a little bit. They don't seem interested in pushing the envelope of gameplay, only visuals.

[crispy4000]

You do know you don’t have to spam attack?  There’s a combo chain that happens when you simply hold the button.  Does an aoe finisher.  Plenty of variety between that, triangle attack stances, atb meter, party member swapping, etc

 

I feel like they’re striking a good balance here.  It never needed to reinvent the wheel, but it does feel distinctive enough IMO.

[Xbob42]

20 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

You do know you don’t have to spam attack?  There’s a combo chain that happens when you simply hold the button.  Does an aoe finisher.  Plenty of variety between that, triangle attack stances, atb meter, party member swapping, etc

 

I feel like they’re striking a good balance here.  It never needed to reinvent the wheel, but it does feel distinctive enough IMO.

The combo and finisher happen regardless of whether you hold it or tap it over and over, but holding it down just reminds me of FFXV combat. If that's what counts as plenty of variety to you, well, that's good and all, but good lord it doesn't for me. At the very least if you're going to have low variety, the base attacks need to be supremely fun, which is how Platinum games do things. This is not the case with FF7. I was bored of the combat before the 30 minute demo was over. I can't even imagine the 30-50 hours for a full game. Unless different weapons have different attack sets/triangle moves and stuff, which could at least change things up a bit. The ATB stuff just seems lame, building up to being able to use an item is dumb. It just feels silly. Gonna have the opposite problem of FFXV where you could pop items nonstop.

 

It's not so bad that I'm baffled anyone enjoys it or anything, I just find the praise its getting to be bizarre given how stock standard it is for Square Enix. I'm especially amazed that no one else seems to be put off by some of the worst voice acting and dialogue I've heard from a AAA game in decades. They did better with FFX, which was their first voiced Final Fantasy title.

[crispy4000]

41 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

The combo and finisher happen regardless of whether you hold it or tap it over and over, but holding it down just reminds me of FFXV combat. If that's what counts as plenty of variety to you, well, that's good and all, but good lord it doesn't for me. At the very least if you're going to have low variety, the base attacks need to be supremely fun, which is how Platinum games do things. This is not the case with FF7. I was bored of the combat before the 30 minute demo was over. I can't even imagine the 30-50 hours for a full game. Unless different weapons have different attack sets/triangle moves and stuff, which could at least change things up a bit. The ATB stuff just seems lame, building up to being able to use an item is dumb. It just feels silly. Gonna have the opposite problem of FFXV where you could pop items nonstop.

 

It's not so bad that I'm baffled anyone enjoys it or anything, I just find the praise its getting to be bizarre given how stock standard it is for Square Enix. I'm especially amazed that no one else seems to be put off by some of the worst voice acting and dialogue I've heard from a AAA game in decades. They did better with FFX, which was their first voiced Final Fantasy title.

The combat finisher is different if you hold the button or not.  Or whether you are in a different stance or not.  Or heck, if you decide to use an ATB block at the end of your string.  Maybe you see an attack coming and try to pull off a counter instead.  Which again, you’d set a stance for and hold a button in preparation.  I don’t mind that; giving this too much of a twitch based vibe would feel like a further departure from the original, and frankly, be less interesting.  I’d rather have it be what it is now that feel a Platinum game, which is its own cliche.

 

You’re also underselling the options, dismissing the variety that’s there as dumb, while simultaneously complaining about singularly mashing attack.  Just pick one story and stick to it.

 

Oh and I think using the ATB bar for items is great.  Creates a healthy tension between healing or using a harder hitting attack.  Just like turn-based FF, which is absolutely appropriate to invoke here.

[Xbob42]

4 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

You’re also underselling the options, dismissing the variety that’s their as dumb while simultaneously complaining about mashing attack.  Just pick one story and stick to it.

Why would I need to pick one and stick with it? The variety on display requires button mashing that isn't fun and is incredibly limited. It's bad, it's boring. It's basic. It's not worth defending, let alone praising. There's so many games that do this kind of combat leagues better. Talk about underselling, "I wouldn't want it to play like a GOOD game because then it'd be less like FF7!" like what?

[crispy4000]

31 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

Why would I need to pick one and stick with it? The variety on display requires button mashing that isn't fun and is incredibly limited. It's bad, it's boring. It's basic. It's not worth defending, let alone praising. There's so many games that do this kind of combat leagues better. Talk about underselling, "I wouldn't want it to play like a GOOD game because then it'd be less like FF7!" like what?

The only element of variety introduced that soft-‘requires’ button mashing is charging up Barrett’s gun.  Otherwise, you can beat enemies with Cloud by holding buttons to initiate combos or counters.  And switching stances, dodging, and making menu selections, of course.

 

You’re not accurately describing what the combat is.  I’m becoming a broken record trying to set it straight.

 

If you want to play a twitch action game, go play a twitch action game.  If that defines what is good real time combat to you, I won’t try to convince you that your tastes aren’t broad enough.  Enjoy what you want.  I’ll continue to find fun in other approaches too.

[Bacon]

So like, Combat is just pressing square. Maybe triangle. This is outside of the command options. The major gameplay loop is pressing square. There isn't much difference. Holding Square is for AOE as it says in the tutorial. Counters are preformed just by holding L1 in triangle mode. And the dodge is a joke. This ins't Dark Souls or even Kingdom Hearts. 

 

When you say 

20 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Otherwise, you can beat every encounter on the demo with Cloud by holding buttons to initiate combos or counters.

Are you saying other than mashing square, you can also hold Square and Hold the Block button? 

 

You also say switching stances like it means something in this game. It is like Nioh where stances are actually important. These things exist, but that doesn't mean there is actually variety. I fail to see what you are setting straight. The main thing you do in combat in this game is pressing square by a large margin.

 

Edit: Dark Souls kinda has all the same functions as FF7R, but Dark Souls is a helluva lot more fun to play. 

[crispy4000]

29 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Are you saying other than mashing square, you can also hold Square and Hold the Block button? 

Yes, those are the ways to do damage other than selecting specials/magic from the ATB bar.  Though countering (with Block) requires a stance with limited mobility, is slow to switch out of, and doesn’t work against ranged attacks.  And probably doesn’t do as much damage as trying other things.

 

I don’t see the big problem here.

 

 

29 minutes ago, Bacon said:

You also say switching stances like it means something in this game. It is like Nioh where stances are actually important. These things exist, but that doesn't mean there is actually variety. I fail to see what you are setting straight. The main thing you do in combat in this game is pressing square by a large margin.

 

It means more damage vs less mobility.  How important that is will depend on the game’s difficulty overall.  It’ll certainly be part of fighting efficiently with Cloud.  That goes for atb bar management as well, on the whole.

 

And if you’re going to go there, most melee action games and action rpgs have you pressing a basic attack button more than anything else. It’s either that or dodge.

[Bacon]

8 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

And if you’re going to go there, most melee action games and action rpgs have you pressing a basic attack button more than anything else. It’s either that or dodge.

Yeah, and if you do it right it isn't bad. In my edit I said Dark Souls has all the same functions as FF7R. Despite that, I don't really like FF7R combat and it lacks variety when compared to a game where all I do is mash R1/RB, dodge, and drink estus. 

[Xbob42]

Know what really annoys me? Cloud can now jump 20 feet in the air for no reason, and will even do so sometimes in combat to reach a flying enemy, but you can't jump manually, unless I missed something huge. Just being able to jump at will and air juggle enemies would be a big step up, and would alleviate a portion of the huge disparity between cutscene Cloud and gameplay Cloud while making the game more fun, it wouldn't fix it, but at the very least the concept of air juggling on its own is satisfying and looks cool, and usually requires some mastery over the combat system to pull off.  It would even fit with their theme of trying desperately to make these characters seem cool and making flashy combat.

[Bacon]

I do hate that there are enemies that I can literally only be hit by Barret, who has even less moves than Cloud. I hate that I have to switch characters at all. I would have hated if I had to play as Donald or Goofy in KH. 

[crispy4000]

19 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Yeah, and if you do it right it isn't bad. In my edit I said Dark Souls has all the same functions as FF7R. Despite that, I don't really like FF7R combat and it lacks variety when compared to a game where all I do is mash R1/RB, dodge, and drink estus. 

Fair point if you enjoy Dark Souls for what it does best and want it here.  It’s not trying to be Dark Souls, clearly.

 

In the long run, I expect it to be more about issuing party commands, character swaps and managing stances than action rpgs typically are.  I’m cool with it.  Seems varied enough to me.

[crispy4000]

10 minutes ago, Bacon said:

I do hate that there are enemies that I can literally only be hit by Barret, who has even less moves than Cloud. I hate that I have to switch characters at all. I would have hated if I had to play as Donald or Goofy in KH. 

That could be one of the biggest flaws in this remake.  The ‘part 1’ of it means only 4 playable characters.

 

I don’t mind switching as much as you, but we won’t really get much choice in who to pick yet.