Final Fantasy VII Rebirth - coming to PC on January 23rd

[Haplo]

I can't remember the last time I played a game where I wanted it to end so badly. Despite the metric fuckton of filler crammed into every orifice, they still managed to rush the endgame and fuck up the forgotten city, and everything else. Great job.

For what it's worth I don't think there's a multiverse, I think everything that they dicked with the story was an elaborate fakeout. Not that it matters. I was reading comments from players who never played the original asking WTF happened and what it's all supposed to mean, so the game is a double fail. Pissed off old and new fans alike! Even Cid's comment at the end, "What did Aerith even do?" That has always been the question Cid, and the closest he came to even being 5% like his original self. Cid's personality is the most tragic death in this remake.

I keep thinking if someone remade Shawshank Redemption, but put in a bunch of scenes with Andy talking to his wife, who may or may not be dead, and maybe Tommy doesn't die or maybe he does, and there's flash forward that shows Andy escaped from prison or maybe he's dead and maybe it's all a dream. What a pile of trash.

Basically, this:

R. I. P. FFVII

You are fondly remembered from my youth.

 

[Ash]

Well said. There are sane people still left in the world after all, though you forgot the part where all the dialogue and voice acting is now massive cringe, Andy walks down long winding corridors and does pointless busywork for hours. Any nuance, style and intelligence whatsoever is replaced with tasteless idiotic theatrics or simp bait, and lastly the entire film is set in one cell, as that would be the relative downscale.

 

[Yosharian]

I replayed it recently with NT2.0, it was pretty fun

 

[Infinitron]

Coming to PC on January 23rd:

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

So, uh how far in the story will this episode take you? How many more episodes to go?

 

[Yosharian]

After finishing Intergrade I can't possibly see how I could enjoy Rebirth

I'll pick it up in ten years when it's on sale for 5 bucks

 

[ADL]

I wonder how much of that 155GB file size is uncompressed audio in half a dozen languages.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

90%?

 

[Necrensha]

So, uh how far in the story will this episode take you?

It ends around the first visit to the city of the ancients...

 

[mediocrepoet]

Man, what the fuck is wrong with all these devs and their fucking file sizes? I'd like to have more than 3 games installed on a drive, you fucksticks.

 

[catfood]

Man, what the fuck is wrong with all these devs and their fucking file sizes? I'd like to have more than 3 games installed on a drive, you fucksticks.

We're going back to the good old days where you could barely keep half a dozen CD-ripped games on your HDD's.

 

[MasPingon]

Coming to PC on January 23rd:

Nice price for such a good game. I wish they wouldn't drag out the story and some gameplay bits so much, otherwise I would gladly replay it. I got a strange approach to this remake series. It's like you know someone who you like and appreciate. This someone got an accident, he fell into the elevator shaft and now his brain is damaged. He is still the person you knew for the most of time, but sometimes he is doing some stupid shit, reminding you he is retarded now. You ignore those moments knowing it's only one of those short circuits he got from time to time and in about 5 minutes he will get back to normal.

 

[Jinn]

I'll definitely play it if something akin to the Enhanced Difficulty mod for Remake comes out for this one. That mod really made the gameplay way more engaging, forcing you to use pretty much everything at your disposal in even some normal encounters. Took what probably would have been a snoozefest button mash into a legitimately fun gameplay experience. Something tells me the "adaptive difficulty" option for Rebirth probably doesn't even come close to an actual challenge. Plus, fuck level scaling.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I'll definitely play it if something akin to the Enhanced Difficulty mod for Remake comes out for this one. That mod really made the gameplay way more engaging, forcing you to use pretty much everything at your disposal in even some normal encounters. Took what probably would have been a snoozefest button mash into a legitimately fun gameplay experience. Something tells me the "adaptive difficulty" option for Rebirth probably doesn't even come close to an actual challenge. Plus, fuck level scaling.

They actually jacked up the difficulty in Rebirth quite a bit. Most characters have problems building ATB with the hyper-aggressive enemies, so getting hurt easily puts you into a doom spiral where you can't heal because it's nearly impossible to build ATB without risk. It makes Yuffie a better mage than Aerith because she can build ATB with much less risk and has a far more effective dodge.

I didn't find it fun because it goes past "use all your tools" into "abuse the characters who can easily gain ATB" and "spam character switching to cheese the AI." Which is a legitimate mechanic, but plays like crap.

 

[Jinn]

They actually jacked up the difficulty in Rebirth quite a bit. Most characters have problems building ATB with the hyper-aggressive enemies, so getting hurt easily puts you into a doom spiral where you can't heal because it's nearly impossible to build ATB without risk. It makes Yuffie a better mage than Aerith because she can build ATB with much less risk and has a far more effective dodge.

I didn't find it fun because it goes past "use all your tools" into "abuse the characters who can easily gain ATB" and "spam character switching to cheese the AI." Which is a legitimate mechanic, but plays like crap.

Interesting. Did you play with Adaptive difficulty?

 

[Grampy_Bone]

All adaptive does is scale the enemies to your level.

 

[Jinn]

All adaptive does is scale the enemies to your level.

Yep, I know. I was wondering if your experience was based on playing it that way.

 

[cruel]

I can confirm that Rebirth is significantly harder than Remake, I played on normal but still died 15-20 times, maybe more. A lot of people were actually angry at normal difficulty being too punishing, but let's take into consideration this is reddit of course

https://www.reddit.com/r/FF7Rebirth/comments/1cxo312/why_is_rebirth_normal_mode_so_hard/
https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemak..._rebirth_really_hard_or_am_i_doing_something/
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/371123-final-fantasy-vii-rebirth/80710188

 

[Grampy_Bone]

All adaptive does is scale the enemies to your level.

Yep, I know. I was wondering if your experience was based on playing it that way.

Partially. I toggled back and forth but I didn't notice a difference. The end boss is actually brutal but it checkpoints between forms so it felt both overly hard and yet too forgiving. If you want the final fight to be really nasty, don't throw 12 mid-battle checkpoints in. That's just lazy. Commit to mastery or balance it better.

 

[MasPingon]

I can confirm that Rebirth is significantly harder than Remake, I played on normal but still died 15-20 times, maybe more. A lot of people were actually angry at normal difficulty being too punishing, but let's take into consideration this is reddit of course

https://www.reddit.com/r/FF7Rebirth/comments/1cxo312/why_is_rebirth_normal_mode_so_hard/
https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemak..._rebirth_really_hard_or_am_i_doing_something/
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/371123-final-fantasy-vii-rebirth/80710188

Absolutely not true, Remake got a lot better and memorable encounters in terms of music, difficuly and variety. I guess it's because it's easier to polish it in more linear game, but for sure challenging level of difficulty is what Rebirth was lacking.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Remake was designed so that poor play could be mitigated by burning resources, while hard mode locked out most resource usage forcing you to master the game. I felt this was a fun balance and enjoyed both playthroughs. Rebirth however is balanced so that mastery is essential for normal play. This isn't entirely a bad thing, but the rewards of playing well are a lot less this time considering this is just the boring middle portion between anything interesting happening, while the spectacle of seeing old blocky PSX graphics recreated in modern style is no longer impressive.

There were a bunch of specific bosses that stood out to me that would make me rethink any second playthrough:

-Vincent: He's aggressive in all the ways that play badly, but he is punishable with normal strategies. The issue is you're forced to use Cait Sith for this fight who may as well have been designed for an entirely different game. I know a lot of people were wondering if and how they would implement Cait Sith, and the way they chose works about how you would expect. But the enemies in Rebirth are all from a DMC game and he's just not designed for that. The entire Shinra manor sequence made me loathe the character and this was just the kidney stone on top of a turd sandwich.

-Odin: He's optional, to be fair. The way the fight works, he kills your whole team if he ever hits you once with any of his attacks. That is a mighty slim margin of error in a game with this much attack spam. And to make it worse, you can't even perfect guard his attacks. A block still counts as a hit and you get Zantetsuken'd. So you can either learn every one of his (large) moveset and then perfect dodge everything, or just... aggro switch. As long as he doesn't hit the character you're controlling, you're fine. So use Barret/Aerith/Yuffie and plink at him from range, switching every time he turns on your current character. It feels so dumb to play this way, but the alternative is bananas.

-Roche's final fight: The first point where the game really says "You must master this one mechanic or you fail." Roche counters everything unless you perfect guard him, so I hope you've been practicing. I had the perfect guard materia maxed and had been practicing perfect blocks the whole game, but I still had a hard time consistently guarding his attacks.

Roche is a good example of the death spiral problem. If you mess up a block you're going to eat a lot of damage and need to heal. But to heal you need to deal damage, and if you had the ability to deal damage to him you wouldn't need to heal. There's no shortcut here, you have to learn his timings. There are a couple materia that can help (Item economizer and the one that gives you ATB for blocking). It also bothered me that even when you managed to score a hit on him he would shrug off the combo after 2 attacks, meaning you can't even get one full combo on him. You have to get multiple perfect blocks in a row to even get to the point where you can punish him (I guess that's what a True SOLDIER is like) This fight would really be improved if Cloud had some kind of charge or Taunt move that let him get ATB without attacking.

-Rufus: The great filter. So many people quit on this boss. You just mastered perfect block, and he ignores it. None of his attacks can be countered. Instead, you have to hit him when he reloads. It only takes him a second, so if you try to attack on reaction to reloading, it's already too late. The trick is he reloads after every gun-based special move, so you attack just before he finishes the move. I actually found this fight pretty fun, but it's another DMC fight--in fact I would say most DMC bosses have more flexible strategies than this guy. It really is just doing that one thing over and over again. However, the big Fuck You was his stagger resistance. I actually killed him before he staggered, despite using Focused stab exclusively whenever I could. So even when I had it down pat the fight just dragged on forever.

-Final boss: As I said, it's a many staged affair and it has mid battle checkpoints. I view this as a tacit admission your combat system is broken and you can't be bothered to fix it. May as well just give the player unlimited HP at that point. If the final fight is an elaborate cutscene of kingdom hearts bullshit, there's no reason to try to pretend player skill matters. I kept thinking of FF3 on the NES, which places its final boss at the bottom of two final dungeons in a row with no save points, filled with one brutal encounter after another. Even when you excuse "nintendo difficulty," that's what it means to commit to your game design.