Yeah, in Japan it's pronunced/spelled "Tida" (it's Okinawan, like a lot of FFX's names). And it was originally planned to carry that over to it's western localization.
But according to James Arnold Taylor (Tidus' english VA) in THAT japanese commercial (which for some reason had english narration for some reason) the narrator accidently added an S to his name, so Square just rolled with it and localized his named as Tidus
I remember something about the game going into Zidane's origin. I think he has a crisis about it. I don't remember what happens. Don't spoil it for me.
At this point in Japanese culture, I just assume that if your character has a tail and even remotely has any passing resemblance or trails of a monkey, then you're just referencing Goku. Maybe the original Journey to the West... but let's be honest it's most likely Goku.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
I remember something about the game going into Zidane's origin. I think he has a crisis about it. I don't remember what happens. Don't spoil it for me.
This emulator I am using to play FF9, Duckstation, has some audio glitches. It is really mild. Not enough to ruin the game. I am curious as to what is causing it.
This emulator I am using to play FF9, Duckstation, has some audio glitches. It is really mild. Not enough to ruin the game. I am curious as to what is causing it.
The Steam version of FF9 also has a ton of audio problems that I had to download a mod to fix.
Finished FF7 Remake a couple days ago. My opinion remains about what it had been throughout: great gameplay, not great plot/writing. The stuff at the end was completely ridiculous.
It felt like the finale of a Kingdom Hearts game. Don't get me wrong, I like those games, but the giant fate monster felt very out of place in this. Also, I'm entirely convinced that they're setting up Aerith not dying, which is heresy.
In terms of the core gameplay I really love it though. One of the best action RPGs I've experienced. The materia, ATB, and stagger systems combine to make really engaging, deep, and challenging combat. I'm replaying it on hard now, just finished chapter 4, and I'm having so much fun skipping all the boring and cringe-inducing cutscenes to mainline the fighting.
New thread?! But I’m still only on page 45 of the old one. I’m encountering some forum glitch where it doesn’t save my place in threads until after I post in one.
Back before the pandemic I went to a pop-up cafe in Akihabara for FFVIIR which sold incredibly overpriced food and drinks. Behold:
Vaccinated, and with the state of emergency ended, I was finally able to go back into Tokyo proper looking for new merch, but there isn’t much of anything. Not that I need more junk to collect, but it’s nice to window shop.
飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
+7
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Finished FF7 Remake a couple days ago. My opinion remains about what it had been throughout: great gameplay, not great plot/writing. The stuff at the end was completely ridiculous.
It felt like the finale of a Kingdom Hearts game. Don't get me wrong, I like those games, but the giant fate monster felt very out of place in this. Also, I'm entirely convinced that they're setting up Aerith not dying, which is heresy.
In terms of the core gameplay I really love it though. One of the best action RPGs I've experienced. The materia, ATB, and stagger systems combine to make really engaging, deep, and challenging combat. I'm replaying it on hard now, just finished chapter 4, and I'm having so much fun skipping all the boring and cringe-inducing cutscenes to mainline the fighting.
I really disliked the stupidly-abstract portion of the final fights as well, but I can live with them because a) they're basically just some extra stuff tacked on to what is a 95% of the same story the OG FF7 covers plus we get a lot of other details filled out, b) it's only the first third of a three-part story so it's a long way off from blowing the conclusion of the series, and c) both what they keep from the original and what they add on are good enough that I'm far, far happier with those than some 10-15 of annoying fight at the end. And almost entirely, everything we get in Remake was part of the story of the original but expanded, which also means it's only a small chunk of the overall story anyway.
As far as
Aerith potentially not dying
I'm kinda conflicted on that.
Obviously everybody wanted to revive or save her back when the original released, but it would've undercut one of THE big tragic character beats in gaming. And because of how the time travel works, even saving Aerith this time around won't undo that original sacrifice; she will always have died in that original timeline. But what if the cost is something else? What if they show us Zack survived so that it ends up being Cloud who dies saving Aerith, then Zack steps in to fill the space? That could be an amazing bit of symmetry, seeing as Cloud stepped into Zack's "life" when Zack apparently died.
I'm very interested in the potential for the story going forward and thus far I feel like they've generally done far, far better than the recent FF outings as far as writing and characters. Even the voicework was pretty darn good, and I was definitely worried that it would be third-rate stuff.
I agree that the voice acting was better than expected. I've switched to Japanese for my hard mode playthrough just out of curiosity, and the Japanese actor for Barret is hilariously goofy.
While I really enjoyed the Shinra HQ portion of the game, one change I initially disliked was the replacement of the blood smears everywhere with blue glowing Jenova goo. I had always assumed the blood in the original was from all the Shinra employees Sephiroth murdered. But someone on Reddit said they thought it was Jenova's blood in the first place, which I had never considered. I do think the feeling of horror and dread that made that area so memorable in the original was largely absent from the remake, though.
And while others have mentioned this, I feel that the game was way too Sephiroth-heavy for this early in the story. The power of his initial appearance in the Shinra tower was weakened by him showing up every two hours. Felt fanservicey to me.
Finished FF7 Remake a couple days ago. My opinion remains about what it had been throughout: great gameplay, not great plot/writing. The stuff at the end was completely ridiculous.
It felt like the finale of a Kingdom Hearts game. Don't get me wrong, I like those games, but the giant fate monster felt very out of place in this. Also, I'm entirely convinced that they're setting up Aerith not dying, which is heresy.
In terms of the core gameplay I really love it though. One of the best action RPGs I've experienced. The materia, ATB, and stagger systems combine to make really engaging, deep, and challenging combat. I'm replaying it on hard now, just finished chapter 4, and I'm having so much fun skipping all the boring and cringe-inducing cutscenes to mainline the fighting.
I really disliked the stupidly-abstract portion of the final fights as well, but I can live with them because a) they're basically just some extra stuff tacked on to what is a 95% of the same story the OG FF7 covers plus we get a lot of other details filled out, b) it's only the first third of a three-part story so it's a long way off from blowing the conclusion of the series, and c) both what they keep from the original and what they add on are good enough that I'm far, far happier with those than some 10-15 of annoying fight at the end. And almost entirely, everything we get in Remake was part of the story of the original but expanded, which also means it's only a small chunk of the overall story anyway.
As far as
Aerith potentially not dying
I'm kinda conflicted on that.
Obviously everybody wanted to revive or save her back when the original released, but it would've undercut one of THE big tragic character beats in gaming. And because of how the time travel works, even saving Aerith this time around won't undo that original sacrifice; she will always have died in that original timeline. But what if the cost is something else? What if they show us Zack survived so that it ends up being Cloud who dies saving Aerith, then Zack steps in to fill the space? That could be an amazing bit of symmetry, seeing as Cloud stepped into Zack's "life" when Zack apparently died.
I'm very interested in the potential for the story going forward and thus far I feel like they've generally done far, far better than the recent FF outings as far as writing and characters. Even the voicework was pretty darn good, and I was definitely worried that it would be third-rate stuff.
My big idea is:
What if the time travellin' Sephiroth tries to fool Cloud into altering history, by claiming that he's in fact trying to stop the plans of the version of himself from this time? The characters have seen contextless visions of future events (such as the final scene of the original game), so it could be interesting if ACSephiroth showed Cloud a vision of Aerith's death, without giving him the context behind it. That way it would look like only the tragedy, which Cloud would want to undo, not realizing that if Holy is interrupted, Sephiroth would be free and clear to use Meteor. And I could even imagine doing a callback to some lines in AC. Have Sephiroth ask Cloud why he's hesitating; does he want Aerith to become just a memory?
Issue with that idea is that it relies a lot on dramatic irony. The player would know that he can't be trusted, but Cloud wouldn't, so it might feel like a railroaded plot point.
0
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
While I agree that part was a bit too Kingdom Hearts I wonder if folks played the same original FF7 that I did.
Cause I will say overall the character writing is a lot better in remake.
Barret was very good in Remake. He starts out making these ridiculous wrestling promos, but that's totally appropriate for his role and you get to see him in more natural settings later on.
Playing FF12 for the first time (off of Gamepass so Zodiac edition) and whew, so many of these systems feel like early iterations. I'm 14 hours in and just got to Raithwall, I'm betting it opens up some once I get a second class, but right now there's almost nothing interesting to script outside a mage. You can't even do something fun like burn all your LP rushing a cool ability because you can't even buy the ability yet. It leaves most of the classes feeling samey and auto-attacky.
Story and characters are good so far though. I know a lot of people don't like Vaan but he's been fine so far although I can def see the complaint that he's extraneous to the setup and we should be following Ashe or Basch.
I liked how XII's story started, but around the halfway point it went off the rails and never came back in my opinion. The adventuring/dungeon crawling was great in that game though. Characters feeling samey in their builds was a big problem in the original, but I had thought the rerelease was supposed to ameliorate that.
+3
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Barret was very good in Remake. He starts out making these ridiculous wrestling promos, but that's totally appropriate for his role and you get to see him in more natural settings later on.
Yeah, I was worried that Cloud was gonna be dull grim, Aerith a creepy waifu-type trope, etc, and instead they developed everybody just as much as the whole of OG FF7 and then added more. Hell, they even made "extra" characters feel really important and developed. Even Barrett, who I was really concerned about, turned out pretty well. The guy is just really really into what he believes and that's part of his "show", and he's even aware of it. Not at all a bad piece of character writing.
The whole thing with
Aerith don't
was hard enough the first time around, and you had like 60% as much characterization then in terms of story. Now it might be with something like triple the story time PLUS good VA work PLUS fantastic characters models with excellent emoting. That could be really really rough if they don't screw it up with more Kingdom Hearts style nonsense.
I was worried that I'd missed all the FFVIIR discussion, but of course that's silly as we'll be talking about it for years to come. I thought it was the best action RPG combat I've ever played. The system really gelled for me and I was able to beat all the combat challenges. My only complaint was not being able to use items in Hard Mode; I would have preferred increased difficulty that highly incentivized using items since that would increase the tension knowing that you have to use limited resources.
As far as the world building goes based on their prerelease comments I was just expecting more Midgar. What's in the game is great, don't get me wrong, but it's a pretty small game by either RPG or Open World standards. The linear chapter progression with occasional stops in hubs that featured some optional quests was just not enough. I was expecting a small slice of Tokyo that I could explore; what we got was something on-par with a modern final fantasy town hub (i.e. FFX Besaid) with a little extra window dressing.
Full spoilers below;
Story-wise I'm not going to say anything that hasn't already been said. While I understand and slightly appreciate the idea of the Whispers, it's a heavy-handed and unnecessary way of telling that story. Ultimately it made the experience disjointed, and fighting the god of fate/Kingdom Hearts boss at the end made for a tonal mismatch: I just had trouble running away from some kind of Shinra superweapon... I'm not ready to take on god at this point. Similarly, while I think introducing Sephiroth via flashback earlier is a good choice, fighting (and especially beating him) at the end was a poor one. I was left wondering "what was the point of all that?" and I raged at the cryptic "7 seconds till the end" nonsense quote.
Overall the experience reeks of project mismanagement and short-sightedness. I can't help but draw parallels to my experiences working with the Japanese government: corporate demagogues issuing overly vague and poorly thought-out directions to subordinates too timid to innovate and/or too disenfranchised to do good work. My biggest worry with modern Squareenix is that the senior developers have forgotten how to tell a story. Or maybe they just never learned and leaned on their mentors during their formative years between 6 and 10. I really hoped that by returning to FFVII they would relearn the basics, but the Remake shows a lot of the same missteps in it’s storytelling structure. I’m really looking forward to FFXVI to see what Yoshi-P’s team can accomplish.
All that being said I really did enjoy FFVIIR, and I’ll play it again on the PS5 once I get one, and maybe again (depending on the timing) before the next installment releases.
I liked how Remake had these special versions of enemies that you had fight. Like you would have these regular soldiers and a special one mixed in with them.
About halfway through the hard mode so far, enjoying it a lot. Spoilered in case people don't feel like reading me nerd out about the combat:
I expected the lack of ethers/no MP recharge at benches to be a pain, but so far it's been easy enough to ration it for the boss fights. The rate at which I need to cure seems to be about equal to the rate at which I find little chargey things in boxes, now supplemented by Aerith's Soul Drain and the occasional Prayer in some fights. I expected to have to abuse Chakra, but aside from a couple fights I haven't been using it; can't sacrifice a valuable Materia slot for that. Prayer is nice even though it takes two ATB to use, since it's like cure+magnify in one slot.
When I have a three person party I have Cloud magic nuke everything (Mythril Sword + 2 Magic Up materia is obscene) while Tifa staggers and then ruins enemies. While hasted my Tifa flow is something like True Strike -> Rise and Fall -> Omnistrike -> True Strike, if their stagger lasts long enough; it brings the damage modifier up high enough that that + Cloud casting basically kills anything. I have yet to really maximize Barret; he cures, otherwise supports, and Overcharges, but I need to do better at integrating him into my play.
Haste is incredibly useful, as it is in many FF games. I like First Strike too; starting out with Haste (sometimes partywide Haste if I've got it paired with Magnify) is very beneficial. Haven't really made use of Barrier spells yet, maybe later in the game I'll find a place for them.
I like that Cloud and Aerith get a couple chapters as a duo; it forces you to establish a new playstyle after getting comfortable with the trio. Aerith's Arcane Ward ability is awesome, especially if Cloud is in caster mode too. I haven't figured out if Fleeting Familiar is useful yet; generally I would rather use the ATB for spells or something else. The ATB Ward ability doesn't seem useful either, I'd rather have Aerith keep the ATB, although I don't know if it's a 1 to 1 transfer or if the beneficiary gains more than Aerith loses. And Lustrous Shield seems good in some cases.
So far I haven't had too much difficulty with hard mode, but I'm right at the point where the game starts throwing harder foes at you (Corneo Colosseum, Hell House, just unlocked the Bahamut fight), so I think that might change.
Absence any evidence at all I don't think it's fair to conclude that these directors are taking a hands-off approach and letting subordinates pick up the pieces. Nomura has turned out plenty of Kingdom Hearts games in the past and their storyline nonsense is fairly consistent in its nonsense style and its manifestation here. Most of the team is from FFXIII (hell the stagger/pressure mechanics are basically FFXIII 2.0) and they made another highly linear game, under a scenario writer who thinks that non-linearity compromises storyline and wrote the OG Midgar section as highly linear too. Nojima is also quoted as explicitly wanting to fit the compilation into this remake and all the writing was done by just four people. In other words there's good odds this kind of mess is exactly what they wanted and the team was on page with delivering it. Just because maybe it wasn't the best ideas or execution doesn't mean the senior devs weren't highly hands-on with it. (Unless you are expecting all the juniors to shout down and somehow overturn their bosses' ideas.)
Brief comment on one ending detail:
In the final phase of the FF7R Sephiroth battle, he starts a long countdown from 10. At 0 he uses the skill "Divine Proclamation" where a burst of fire re-energizes a mini-meteor in the sky and then it heads to the ground and TKOs the party. The time between the burst of fire and the damage numbers popping up is about seven seconds. There's also an entry in the chapter description that confirms that the seven seconds is the countdown to the end of the world.
Now that doesn't really quite explain everything since all these references are probably symbolic of some other event, but I thought it was worth pointing out. In the OG FF7 once Meteor is summoned, at some point Red tells the party they have 7 days till meteor lands. The 7-second meteor fall might be referencing that fact later, i.e. its forshadowing the feeling of having to live under Meteor's impending approach.
rahkeesh2000 on
0
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Absence any evidence at all I don't think it's fair to conclude that these directors are taking a hands-off approach and letting subordinates pick up the pieces. Nomura has turned out plenty of Kingdom Hearts games in the past and their storyline nonsense is fairly consistent in its nonsense style and its manifestation here. Most of the team is from FFXIII (hell the stagger/pressure mechanics are basically FFXIII 2.0) and they made another highly linear game, under a scenario writer who thinks that non-linearity compromises storyline and wrote the OG Midgar section as highly linear too. Nojima is also quoted as explicitly wanting to fit the compilation into this remake and all the writing was done by just four people. In other words there's good odds this kind of mess is exactly what they wanted and the team was on page with delivering it. Just because maybe it wasn't the best ideas or execution doesn't mean the senior devs weren't highly hands-on with it. (Unless you are expecting all the juniors to shout down and somehow overturn their bosses' ideas.)
Brief comment on one ending detail:
In the final phase of the FF7R Sephiroth battle, he starts a long countdown from 10. At 0 he uses the skill "Divine Proclamation" where a burst of fire re-energizes a mini-meteor in the sky and then it heads to the ground and TKOs the party. The time between the burst of fire and the damage numbers popping up is about seven seconds. There's also an entry in the chapter description that confirms that the seven seconds is the countdown to the end of the world.
Now that doesn't really quite explain everything since all these references are probably symbolic of some other event, but I thought it was worth pointing out. In the OG FF7 once Meteor is summoned, at some point Red tells the party they have 7 days till meteor lands. The 7-second meteor fall might be referencing that fact later, i.e. its forshadowing the feeling of having to live under Meteor's impending approach.
When I went back and checked cutscene video from the original game
it's seven seconds between when Sephiroth appears above Aerith and when he kills her. My personal bet is that Sephiroth is trying to taunt Cloud with that so that once that scene plays itself out again, Cloud either sacrifices himself or freezes up because Sephiroth says something like "seven seconds".
Odin destroyed Cleyra. Steiner and friend break out of jail in an annoying swinging mini game. I don't know if the swinging thing was inspired by the movie Time Bandits or not.
Posts
*turns to dust*
Yeah. These are pretty old video clips. Pretty pixilated. From the old internet.
Edit..
And his tail I can't believe I'm just catching that.
I think he supposed to be a humanoid monkey. It is a world with humanoid animals.
Yeah, in Japan it's pronunced/spelled "Tida" (it's Okinawan, like a lot of FFX's names). And it was originally planned to carry that over to it's western localization.
But according to James Arnold Taylor (Tidus' english VA) in THAT japanese commercial (which for some reason had english narration for some reason) the narrator accidently added an S to his name, so Square just rolled with it and localized his named as Tidus
Yes, where Zidane comes from is explored.
I made it to Disc 2.
I met
Edit:
The Steam version of FF9 also has a ton of audio problems that I had to download a mod to fix.
In terms of the core gameplay I really love it though. One of the best action RPGs I've experienced. The materia, ATB, and stagger systems combine to make really engaging, deep, and challenging combat. I'm replaying it on hard now, just finished chapter 4, and I'm having so much fun skipping all the boring and cringe-inducing cutscenes to mainline the fighting.
Back before the pandemic I went to a pop-up cafe in Akihabara for FFVIIR which sold incredibly overpriced food and drinks. Behold:
Vaccinated, and with the state of emergency ended, I was finally able to go back into Tokyo proper looking for new merch, but there isn’t much of anything. Not that I need more junk to collect, but it’s nice to window shop.
I really disliked the stupidly-abstract portion of the final fights as well, but I can live with them because a) they're basically just some extra stuff tacked on to what is a 95% of the same story the OG FF7 covers plus we get a lot of other details filled out, b) it's only the first third of a three-part story so it's a long way off from blowing the conclusion of the series, and c) both what they keep from the original and what they add on are good enough that I'm far, far happier with those than some 10-15 of annoying fight at the end. And almost entirely, everything we get in Remake was part of the story of the original but expanded, which also means it's only a small chunk of the overall story anyway.
As far as
And while others have mentioned this, I feel that the game was way too Sephiroth-heavy for this early in the story. The power of his initial appearance in the Shinra tower was weakened by him showing up every two hours. Felt fanservicey to me.
My big idea is:
Issue with that idea is that it relies a lot on dramatic irony. The player would know that he can't be trusted, but Cloud wouldn't, so it might feel like a railroaded plot point.
Cause I will say overall the character writing is a lot better in remake.
Story and characters are good so far though. I know a lot of people don't like Vaan but he's been fine so far although I can def see the complaint that he's extraneous to the setup and we should be following Ashe or Basch.
Yeah, I was worried that Cloud was gonna be dull grim, Aerith a creepy waifu-type trope, etc, and instead they developed everybody just as much as the whole of OG FF7 and then added more. Hell, they even made "extra" characters feel really important and developed. Even Barrett, who I was really concerned about, turned out pretty well. The guy is just really really into what he believes and that's part of his "show", and he's even aware of it. Not at all a bad piece of character writing.
The whole thing with
As far as the world building goes based on their prerelease comments I was just expecting more Midgar. What's in the game is great, don't get me wrong, but it's a pretty small game by either RPG or Open World standards. The linear chapter progression with occasional stops in hubs that featured some optional quests was just not enough. I was expecting a small slice of Tokyo that I could explore; what we got was something on-par with a modern final fantasy town hub (i.e. FFX Besaid) with a little extra window dressing.
Full spoilers below;
Overall the experience reeks of project mismanagement and short-sightedness. I can't help but draw parallels to my experiences working with the Japanese government: corporate demagogues issuing overly vague and poorly thought-out directions to subordinates too timid to innovate and/or too disenfranchised to do good work. My biggest worry with modern Squareenix is that the senior developers have forgotten how to tell a story. Or maybe they just never learned and leaned on their mentors during their formative years between 6 and 10. I really hoped that by returning to FFVII they would relearn the basics, but the Remake shows a lot of the same missteps in it’s storytelling structure. I’m really looking forward to FFXVI to see what Yoshi-P’s team can accomplish.
All that being said I really did enjoy FFVIIR, and I’ll play it again on the PS5 once I get one, and maybe again (depending on the timing) before the next installment releases.
When I have a three person party I have Cloud magic nuke everything (Mythril Sword + 2 Magic Up materia is obscene) while Tifa staggers and then ruins enemies. While hasted my Tifa flow is something like True Strike -> Rise and Fall -> Omnistrike -> True Strike, if their stagger lasts long enough; it brings the damage modifier up high enough that that + Cloud casting basically kills anything. I have yet to really maximize Barret; he cures, otherwise supports, and Overcharges, but I need to do better at integrating him into my play.
Haste is incredibly useful, as it is in many FF games. I like First Strike too; starting out with Haste (sometimes partywide Haste if I've got it paired with Magnify) is very beneficial. Haven't really made use of Barrier spells yet, maybe later in the game I'll find a place for them.
I like that Cloud and Aerith get a couple chapters as a duo; it forces you to establish a new playstyle after getting comfortable with the trio. Aerith's Arcane Ward ability is awesome, especially if Cloud is in caster mode too. I haven't figured out if Fleeting Familiar is useful yet; generally I would rather use the ATB for spells or something else. The ATB Ward ability doesn't seem useful either, I'd rather have Aerith keep the ATB, although I don't know if it's a 1 to 1 transfer or if the beneficiary gains more than Aerith loses. And Lustrous Shield seems good in some cases.
So far I haven't had too much difficulty with hard mode, but I'm right at the point where the game starts throwing harder foes at you (Corneo Colosseum, Hell House, just unlocked the Bahamut fight), so I think that might change.
Brief comment on one ending detail:
Now that doesn't really quite explain everything since all these references are probably symbolic of some other event, but I thought it was worth pointing out. In the OG FF7 once Meteor is summoned, at some point Red tells the party they have 7 days till meteor lands. The 7-second meteor fall might be referencing that fact later, i.e. its forshadowing the feeling of having to live under Meteor's impending approach.
When I went back and checked cutscene video from the original game
A god tier summon rather than just a rando schlub like Fenrir or Bismark.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
I am just past saving Terra at the beginning. I have restarted FF6 so many times.
FF11 really builds on the job system from FF5 and FFT.
The queen does lots of horrible stuff in FF9.