Final Fantasy 7 Remake's Upgrade Details

[CriticalGaming]

So they finally revealed the details for the upcoming PS5 version of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade.

The core PS5 version will be free to anyone who already owns a digital* or physical copy of the game. You'll be able to just download the PS5 version for free without issues. For those players who upgrade for free, the Yuffie DLC episode will be available to purchase on the main menu for $20 which will contain a two chapter story section that is supposedly around 5ish hours long.

**For anyone who got the PS+ Free version of the Remake these digital copies will NOT get PS5 free.

Those who just outright buy the Playstation 5 version for $70 will get the yuffiee DLC included for "free". So technically cheaper than if you have bought the original launch version.

Some additional cool gameplay details are here https://press.na.square-enix.com/FI...INTERGRADE-VOICE-CAST-AND-GAMEPLAY-DETAILS-RE

I hyped of course, and Yuffie's mechanics seem unique which is something that they've been able to bring forth with every character in the Remake. I was worried that they'd run out of ways to make all the characters feel and play differently, but I don't think that's going to be so much of an issue as I thought.

Additionally considering this new character and scenario was put together in a year on top of the revamp graphical overall of the full game, it gives me hope that the Remake sage wont take 20 years like Kingdom Hearts did.

 

[Alienware]

 

[Dreiko]

I guess in one sense shelling out for a ps5 for Yuffie is fitting. She does take all your stuff when you first run into her after all.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Will they make the materia system less shit? That'd be nice.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Will they make the materia system less shit? That'd be nice.

Are you basing that off the original game or the remake?

 

[Casual Shinji]

Are you basing that off the original game or the remake?

Remake.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Remake.

What's wrong with the Materia system in the Remake?

 

[Dreiko]

I guess you can screw yourself if you don't level materia as you go or something? Like if you run into this one thing that needs thunder but you were not leveling it up yet because most other things were weak to ice or fire or something and you may not even have it equipped at all for that one thunder fight.


I just kinda go into it like it's pokemon when equipping my materia, go for type coverage and assign elements to chars to make switching them around more intuitive in the heat of the moment. Also level ALL the things, not just your starting pokemon (materia).


But yeah the new remake only materia that reward things like blocking or enhance your triangle moves and what have you, those were a lot more interesting for me than the basic nukes. Like for example the casters like Aeris and Barret need lots of ATB to work with so for them stuff like the guard ATB materia is super useful.




Btw something else I was wondering about, in the Yuffie remake we see this other dude with the pole, I wonder if he's gonna be playable too. He looked pretty cool.

 

[Casual Shinji]

What's wrong with the Materia system in the Remake?

It's counter-intuitive. You want to have the right materia slotted in for the right enemies, but you don't know exactly what type of enemies you'll be fighting next, and you can't change materia in the middle of combat. It's even worse with Boss fights, where the first thing you'll wanna do is use the assess materia to give an overview of weaknesses. Hopefully you're then lucky enough to have the corresponding materia in place, otherwise you'll have to reload out of the battle, slot in the materia that you need, and then use the assess ability again for the info bonus. It's the most inorganic way they could've implemented this system.

 

[Dreiko]

Ha, called it above! XD

It's counter-intuitive. You want to have the right materia slotted in for the right enemies, but you don't know exactly what type of enemies you'll be fighting next, and you can't change materia in the middle of combat. It's even worse with Boss fights, where the first thing you'll wanna do is use the assess materia to give an overview of weaknesses. Hopefully you're then lucky enough to have the corresponding materia in place, otherwise you'll have to reload out of the battle, slot in the materia that you need, and then use the assess ability again for the info bonus. It's the most inorganic way they could've implemented this system.

Basically what you wanna do is always have all the elemental materia on at all times. It's really like pokemon, you gotta have your water types cause you never know which next trainer is gonna throw an earth type at you.


Also yeah you want an assigned scanner that checks enemies and they should be your party leader since that's the first thing you wanna do in any new fight (also giving them a fight starting ATB boost helps too). The idea is how to equip best after you allocate all of the above stuff as a given but yeah you gotta have this much on at all times just on the baseline.

 

[Piscian]

Kinda keeping an eye on this. I skipped out on the first launch because everything I heard about what they changed about the story and the plotting was exactly why I havent really enjoyed Final Fantasy since FF9. My friends have been breathing down my neck to give this game a chance so maybe I will when this thing comes out. Rather wait til the whole game is done, but I probably only have another 40 years to live.

 

[Dreiko]

Kinda keeping an eye on this. I skipped out on the first launch because everything I heard about what they changed about the story and the plotting was exactly why I havent really enjoyed Final Fantasy since FF9. My friends have been breathing down my neck to give this game a chance so maybe I will when this thing comes out. Rather wait til the whole game is done, but I probably only have another 40 years to live.

They really didn't change much of anything, just fleshed out things more to make it more impactful.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Btw something else I was wondering about, in the Yuffie remake we see this other dude with the pole, I wonder if he's gonna be playable too. He looked pretty cool.

You cannot control him. You will be able to issue him tag team commands using Yuffie where she will jump off his spear and whatnot, but otherwise he controls himself. Later in FF7 there is a spear wielding character that joins the real party named Cid and this character in the DLC is likely Square beta testing his combat to see how the spear guy should be handled when the real party member shows up.

's counter-intuitive. You want to have the right materia slotted in for the right enemies, but you don't know exactly what type of enemies you'll be fighting next, and you can't change materia in the middle of combat. It's even worse with Boss fights, where the first thing you'll wanna do is use the assess materia to give an overview of weaknesses. Hopefully you're then lucky enough to have the corresponding materia in place, otherwise you'll have to reload out of the battle, slot in the materia that you need, and then use the assess ability again for the info bonus. It's the most inorganic way they could've implemented this system.

I have a couple of problems with this statement.

First of all, there are plenty of materia slots across all the characters you have at any given time that having at least ONE character with strong materia for whatever you're fighting is highly likely. Unless you are making everyone Fire-wizards for some reason. So unless you are deliberately setting up your party with nonsensical materia loadouts, this shouldn't be a problem.

Second of all, every area of the game throws enemies at you which have some linked weaknesses to the boss of that given area. With the exception of maybe the first fight with Aps, though his weakness is also the weakness of most enemies from the previous chapter so it stands to reason you'd still have that equipped. Otherwise throughout the rest of the game you have fodder enemies that share weaknesses with the boss so if you pay attention and use the right materia for the trash enemies, then you'll be fine for the bosses.

Finally, the game isn't that hard. You aren't required to ever have any specific materia on your party in order to defeat any one enemy. While some enemies do require some sort of magic attacks, eventually those physical barriers go away if somehow the player decided to not equip materia at all. Additionally the game's design grants lots of stat bonuses without penalty for equipping materia so if the player isn't using materia, then that isn't the game's fault.

While some materia load outs work better for specific fights, they aren't required and the player isn't held back by not using optimal set ups. If you think it is bad design because the games doesn't tell you what the best loadouts are while you play, then I dunno what to tell you. No game does that. And there is no point in the Remake where you are screwed for having the "wrong" stuff equipped.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I have a couple of problems with this statement.

First of all, there are plenty of materia slots across all the characters you have at any given time that having at least ONE character with strong materia for whatever you're fighting is highly likely. Unless you are making everyone Fire-wizards for some reason. So unless you are deliberately setting up your party with nonsensical materia loadouts, this shouldn't be a problem.

Second of all, every area of the game throws enemies at you which have some linked weaknesses to the boss of that given area. With the exception of maybe the first fight with Aps, though his weakness is also the weakness of most enemies from the previous chapter so it stands to reason you'd still have that equipped. Otherwise throughout the rest of the game you have fodder enemies that share weaknesses with the boss so if you pay attention and use the right materia for the trash enemies, then you'll be fine for the bosses.

Finally, the game isn't that hard. You aren't required to ever have any specific materia on your party in order to defeat any one enemy. While some enemies do require some sort of magic attacks, eventually those physical barriers go away if somehow the player decided to not equip materia at all. Additionally the game's design grants lots of stat bonuses without penalty for equipping materia so if the player isn't using materia, then that isn't the game's fault.

While some materia load outs work better for specific fights, they aren't required and the player isn't held back by not using optimal set ups. If you think it is bad design because the games doesn't tell you what the best loadouts are while you play, then I dunno what to tell you. No game does that. And there is no point in the Remake where you are screwed for having the "wrong" stuff equipped.

It makes it harder by making it less efficient, when the materia system is designed to give the combat more efficiency. It's not something that's there for yucks, it's an intergral part of the combat - there's even a materia that allows you to sync elemental attacks with another team member, which encourages you to match up similar materia across the characters - yet it's designed so that you CAN'T adapt in the heat of battle. That's bad design. If the game gave you the ability to switch materia during combat this wouldn't be a problem.

 

[CriticalGaming]

It makes it harder by making it less efficient, when the materia system is designed to give the combat more efficiency. It's not something that's there for yucks, it's an intergral part of the combat - there's even a materia that allows you to sync elemental attacks with another team member, which encourages you to match up similar materia across the characters - yet it's designed so that you CAN'T adapt in the heat of battle. That's bad design. If the game gave you the ability to switch materia during combat this wouldn't be a problem.

It's not bad game design. It's just standard RPG combat design. Character loadouts rarely, if ever, can be changed on the fly during combat. Most games in general give you set tools and expect you to deal with and use what's given to you at the time. This system rewards player skill, rather than doing an aribturary check "Does the player have X-equipped? If yes, win. If no, lose."

The desire for it to be more efficient doesn't make a lot of sense, because efficiency rarely comes on the first playthrough for any player. You build towards efficiency, you earn it. It isn't just handed to the player, otherwise their is no point.

 

[Casual Shinji]

It's not bad game design. It's just standard RPG combat design. Character loadouts rarely, if ever, can be changed on the fly during combat. Most games in general give you set tools and expect you to deal with and use what's given to you at the time. This system rewards player skill, rather than doing an aribturary check "Does the player have X-equipped? If yes, win. If no, lose."

The desire for it to be more efficient doesn't make a lot of sense, because efficiency rarely comes on the first playthrough for any player. You build towards efficiency, you earn it. It isn't just handed to the player, otherwise their is no point.

The ability to switch materia to your liking IS the tool FF7R gives you, but then takes away from you during combat. The materia and the ability to switch it is there expressesly to fight better against particular enemies, yet when you run into those enemies without the materia that is best at defeating them the game requires you to just bite the bullet and better luck next time. Or to just restart the encounter, which is horribly pacing wise.

This system does not reward skill at all, because skill in FF7R is tied enirely to the materia and weapons (which you also can't switch during combat). Even the skill trees are tied to your weapons. Without the materia and weapon specific skills this combat is just shallow button mashing. It's the materia that allows you to give this combat depth, yet the materia gets hard locked during combat without being able to foresee what enemies you'll be fighting from one moment to the next.

The game encourages you to be efficient, to find the most efficient load-out, but then springs enemies on you with weaknesses that you can't properly anticipate, and then DOESN'T allow you to change your load-out to account for that as it's happening. Again, just allow materia switching during combat and this issue is solved. As is it's needlessly frustrating and badly designed.

 

[CriticalGaming]

The ability to switch materia to your liking IS the tool FF7R gives you, but then takes away from you during combat. The materia and the ability to switch it is there expressesly to fight better against particular enemies, yet when you run into those enemies without the materia that is best at defeating them the game requires you to just bite the bullet and better luck next time. Or to just restart the encounter, which is horribly pacing wise.

This system does not reward skill at all, because skill in FF7R is tied enirely to the materia and weapons (which you also can't switch during combat). Even the skill trees are tied to your weapons. Without the materia and weapon specific skills this combat is just shallow button mashing. It's the materia that allows you to give this combat depth, yet the materia gets hard locked during combat without being able to foresee what enemies you'll be fighting from one moment to the next.

The game encourages you to be efficient, to find the most efficient load-out, but then springs enemies on you with weaknesses that you can't properly anticipate, and then DOESN'T allow you to change your load-out to account for that as it's happening. Again, just allow materia switching during combat and this issue is solved. As is it's needlessly frustrating and badly designed.

How many games allow you to completely change your loadout and tactics in the middle of combat?

The game does reward skill, I don't see the difference. It doesn't just "spring" enemies on you, you can see enemies on the battlefield most of the time and those that do surprise you are of the same type that you've fought previously. The game's skill come from being able to utilize the materia you have equipped to the best you can, as well as the ability to combine and build your characters the way you deem fit.

Materia is also not the entirety of combat, it is HEAVILY skill based.

for example here is the hardest fight in the game on hardmode defeated with NO MATERIA even equipped on the characters.
So saying it is just a button masher and solely reliant on materia is easily proven false.

You don't like the game or system fine. But saying it is a bad system is just ignorant because everything you've said as a reason is provably wrong.

 

[Dreiko]

You cannot control him. You will be able to issue him tag team commands using Yuffie where she will jump off his spear and whatnot, but otherwise he controls himself. Later in FF7 there is a spear wielding character that joins the real party named Cid and this character in the DLC is likely Square beta testing his combat to see how the spear guy should be handled when the real party member shows up.

Bro did you just explain to me who Cid fucking Highwind is? XD



And yeah I saw that one bit where he boosts Yuffie with his pole. I guess he'll be like Red XIII here. Maybe with some contextual stuff on that note. But yeah he's more like an eastern themed lancer, Cid has the typical dragoon loadout with a few explosives thrown in for that mechanic flavor. Not really the same thing. Ah well, he'll prolly have some cool cutscenes at least.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Bro did you just explain to me who Cid fucking Highwind is? XD

Well I couldn't be sure you knew. I dunno.

 

[Gergar12]

How many games allow you to completely change your loadout and tactics in the middle of combat?

The game does reward skill, I don't see the difference. It doesn't just "spring" enemies on you, you can see enemies on the battlefield most of the time and those that do surprise you are of the same type that you've fought previously. The game's skill come from being able to utilize the materia you have equipped to the best you can, as well as the ability to combine and build your characters the way you deem fit.

Materia is also not the entirety of combat, it is HEAVILY skill based.

for example here is the hardest fight in the game on hardmode defeated with NO MATERIA even equipped on the characters.
So saying it is just a button masher and solely reliant on materia is easily proven false.

You don't like the game or system fine. But saying it is a bad system is just ignorant because everything you've said as a reason is provably wrong.

I just made sure my characters had multiple types of attack Materia so that I didn't get caught off guard. It worked for most of the game. But I despise using poison, don't know why.