Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Full Review (spoilers)
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
- Start date
Well, generally speaking when people talk about the "Gold Saucer Date", they'd be referencing the second visit where Cloud gets on the ferris wheel with a character and a date scene plays.
My problem with Chadley is not about Chadley but about the game's interface and how it handles interacting with its activities.
After I scan a lifespring or some such I have to watch Cloud pull out his tablet and have an absolutely pointless conversation with Chadley and MIA (who is way more annoying in that annoying-on-purpose JRPG girl character thing, like Yuffie), where I'm smashing the button to get it over with and the animations are slow.
You know what else? I was doing the last few divine intels, the Simon Says game, and I actually got stuck on one because I wasn't paying attention so I wanted to just leave and come back later but I COULDN'T. There was no option to do that. So I was stuck there until I solved it. This should get the game deplatformed for anti-accessibility.
You know... I know I'm bitching a lot but this is how I am. I am genuinely enjoying the game but these little things keep stacking up. This really shouldn't have been an "open world" game at all IMO.
On the flip side is just how fine the character animations are and enemy designs. At its best I feel like I'm playing the best anime. It just makes the confounding interface, pacing and navigation decisions or limitations that much more frustrating.
Today I will likely have time to play a nice big chunk of main story. Despite my earlier frustration I managed to clear all of the open world intel crap because I had to listen to a bunch of useless sort of work related webinars and it was something to do during. I think today I should be able to get through chapters 11 and 12 and up to the point of no return and I'm looking forward to not circling around a mountain endlessly with a chocobo.
After playing through the game another time, I feel like I can now talk about the game more critically now that my "honeymoon" phase is somewhat over. Though admittedly that's difficult because I still can't stop thinking about the game.
What remains impressive is how big the game is, though not particularly physically. I think there are other open world games that technically have bigger maps but as we all know there is more to the size of a game than the physical space in which your character's traverse. On first appearances the game is broken up into fairly decent sized chunks, Grasslands, Junon, Corel, Gongaga, Nibelheim, and Cosmo Canyon, each zone separated by a story segment like the Shinra-8 cruise ship that takes you from Junon to the Corel region, or the Mythril Mines that connect you from Grasslands into Junon. Every area feels like a zone rather than a world itself.
Until you unlock the Tiny Bronco boat in Chapter 12 and you gain access to the ocean. It's then you realize that if you fast travel to Kalm in the Grasslands, you can actually walk from Kalm, through the Grasslands, into the Mythril Mines, to the Junon region where you can then get on your boat and boat your ass over the Costa Del sol, hop into your buggy, drive to Gongaga all without a loading screen. In fact it's only Nibelhiem and Cosmo canyon that require an airplane ride that physically blocks you from 100% of the world travel.
Again though the size of the game isn't really the size of the map. But it's side quests that unlock, and through those side quests mini games unlock and through those mini games, harder versions of those mini games appear. Then in Chapter 12 every zone gets more quests to do just because. On top of that the proto-relic quest line finishes with another big story beat in a secret area as well. Oh but let's also not forget that Chadley has a VR combat sim, which he develops challenges not only based on doing the world intel activites, but also assessing all the enemies in a zone will unlock a special VR mission in which you gain Enemy Skill abilities. And on top of that there are Brutal and Legendary hard mode challenges available at the end of the game including some where you can fight as Zack and Sephiroth again.
But wait, there's more. Corel Prison has a combat arena that gets more fights near the end of the game, The Gold Saucer also has a monster arena with more fights unlocking later. There is also a Queen's Blood challenge arena with special matches that have completely different rule sets than the rest of the mini game. Costa Del Sol also has puzzle challenges for Queen's Blood.
Everytime you think you've completed something, more unlocks, there is more to do. It's honestly pretty wild and very few open world games do that. Most games of the GTA or Ubisoft variety, shit out everything there is to do on the map at once, and progression in the story rarely doesn't anything but lock you in and out of side content.
I mentioned this about the Spider-Man games, and how much I enjoyed their open worlds. Spider-man would unlock a set of challenges or a collectible set one at a time. Allowing the player to complete each individual component without being overwhelmed by a shitload of icons all over the map (unless you ignored everything until the end of the game or something). But to further promote their open world checklists, Spider-man had the added benefit of a wonderful traversal mechanic. Web swinging was a blast and so it was fun to just web swing around without any real purpose other than heading to grab the next collectible item or whatever. FF7 does not have nearly as good traversal, but it's made up for by having interesting side quests that get you around the map which let's you grab a ton of fast travel points, and because of the PS5 the fast travel is fast and makes jumping around the whole world a breeze so doing all this content all over the place has no friction. Go here, go there, do this, do that, it's seemless and painless which makes it all encouraging to do.
Now all of that sounds like more praise so I'm sure you might be wondering where the problems in Rebirth lie.
Well it's the dungeons again. For some reason this dev team has a hard time with level design because each dungeon arena is really rather bland. Thankfully there aren't very many dungeons in the game consisting of only the Mythril Mines, Cave of the Gi, the old Corel Mines, and Temple of the Ancients (which is the worst one by a mile because it also drags on for a long time to fill all the story moments into it). That isn't really to say the dungeons are outright bad, because the story and events they contain are pretty great. However they do come across as a series of boring fights and climbing mechanics to get you to the next big moment. Maybe it's a problem of the big moments being so good that when you are forced to sort of calm down and make progress it feels bad. I don't really know, but the levels aren't impressive either way.
I mentioned above about the lack of dynamic dialog, which admittedly isn't uncommon in open world games. The RPG-style Assassin's Creed games were also bad at this, but they also only had your character alone most of the time so it made sense. Horizon tries to avoid this by having Aloy be annoying to herself which....I guess also isn't great. Interestingly enough though FF15 did this well enough in which the character's chattered enough as you ran around to make it feel like a party of people doing things. Noctis would complain about the heat and Gladiolus would tell him to take off his jacket. Even if the dialog repeated a lot throughout the game, I think I would have preferred that to nothing. Aerith could make comments about the weather, Red could make observations about being a dog, Barret could complain about Shinra, Tifa could think up ideas for drinks at the bar. Whatever, just some sort of banter that allowed the characters to have life outside of the main story and specific side quest stuff. Remake had the characters talking all the time, but of course everything in that game was a linear path so it was probably far easier to script out.
Chadley, this little robot fuckwit has more spoken dialog than anyone else in the entire game. And that sucks. Not that Chadley himself sucks, he's fine, but he gets more spotlight time than your major characters and it just feels very off in the grand scheme of the game as a whole. Chadley is the most important character in the game by the nature of his quest for world intel and what he intends to do with it (which is explained if you 100% it all). It's a noble goal, and it makes sense, but having it be a bigger part of the game than the main cast whom you actually like is suite dumb.
Combat is much improved in the game but I feel like Hard Mode is incredibly unbalanced. There are many enemies that will simply 1-shot you with their attacks and you MUST parry or avoid them. The problem their is that your AI companions aren't that good at the game and most of the time those attacks will just kill your party immediately. Which makes the best solution to Hard Mode as a whole, is an obliteration tactic in your Materia set ups. Meaning you set your party up to basically cheese or 1-shot everything in the game because just having a standard fight like you've done for all of your first play through is not possible in hard mode. It requires perfect play which I frankly think is far too overtuned for the general audience. Especially in sections where you'll have to fight 4-8 bosses in a row non-stop. I simply don't think it's a reasonable request of the playerbase at all.
Most of the mini games are fine, but there aren't any GREAT ones beyond the card game, and there are more than a few that are just bad. Cait Sith throwing boxes is terrible, in controls like shit and the gameplay section drags on for far too long. Dog soccer is pointless. G-Bike controls like shit, but thankfully it's easy regardless. The Moogle game can be tedious. Shooting crystals in the Mythril Mines or boxes on the mine cart are just dumb and offer nothing to the experience.
Crafting is also kind of meh. It's fine in principal based on the open world formula. I would much rather have crafting than a bunch of vending machines everywhere, and gathering materials does promote exploration. But why do they lock material gathering automatically to the NG+? It adds nothing to my game running over material's mashing triangle, there is no reason they couldn't be auto-pickup and would have made the game just a little better from the gate.
Other than that I think this is easily a 10/10 game for me, none of my problems with it are enough to take away from the great experience it was all the way through. I fully expect to play this game several more times in the coming years especially once the lead up to Part 3 starts to come down the pipeline. My guess is it'll be 4 more years until that releases in early 2028 and it'll be one of the final PS5 games to launch.
What remains impressive is how big the game is, though not particularly physically. I think there are other open world games that technically have bigger maps but as we all know there is more to the size of a game than the physical space in which your character's traverse. On first appearances the game is broken up into fairly decent sized chunks, Grasslands, Junon, Corel, Gongaga, Nibelheim, and Cosmo Canyon, each zone separated by a story segment like the Shinra-8 cruise ship that takes you from Junon to the Corel region, or the Mythril Mines that connect you from Grasslands into Junon. Every area feels like a zone rather than a world itself.
Until you unlock the Tiny Bronco boat in Chapter 12 and you gain access to the ocean. It's then you realize that if you fast travel to Kalm in the Grasslands, you can actually walk from Kalm, through the Grasslands, into the Mythril Mines, to the Junon region where you can then get on your boat and boat your ass over the Costa Del sol, hop into your buggy, drive to Gongaga all without a loading screen. In fact it's only Nibelhiem and Cosmo canyon that require an airplane ride that physically blocks you from 100% of the world travel.
Again though the size of the game isn't really the size of the map. But it's side quests that unlock, and through those side quests mini games unlock and through those mini games, harder versions of those mini games appear. Then in Chapter 12 every zone gets more quests to do just because. On top of that the proto-relic quest line finishes with another big story beat in a secret area as well. Oh but let's also not forget that Chadley has a VR combat sim, which he develops challenges not only based on doing the world intel activites, but also assessing all the enemies in a zone will unlock a special VR mission in which you gain Enemy Skill abilities. And on top of that there are Brutal and Legendary hard mode challenges available at the end of the game including some where you can fight as Zack and Sephiroth again.
But wait, there's more. Corel Prison has a combat arena that gets more fights near the end of the game, The Gold Saucer also has a monster arena with more fights unlocking later. There is also a Queen's Blood challenge arena with special matches that have completely different rule sets than the rest of the mini game. Costa Del Sol also has puzzle challenges for Queen's Blood.
Everytime you think you've completed something, more unlocks, there is more to do. It's honestly pretty wild and very few open world games do that. Most games of the GTA or Ubisoft variety, shit out everything there is to do on the map at once, and progression in the story rarely doesn't anything but lock you in and out of side content.
I mentioned this about the Spider-Man games, and how much I enjoyed their open worlds. Spider-man would unlock a set of challenges or a collectible set one at a time. Allowing the player to complete each individual component without being overwhelmed by a shitload of icons all over the map (unless you ignored everything until the end of the game or something). But to further promote their open world checklists, Spider-man had the added benefit of a wonderful traversal mechanic. Web swinging was a blast and so it was fun to just web swing around without any real purpose other than heading to grab the next collectible item or whatever. FF7 does not have nearly as good traversal, but it's made up for by having interesting side quests that get you around the map which let's you grab a ton of fast travel points, and because of the PS5 the fast travel is fast and makes jumping around the whole world a breeze so doing all this content all over the place has no friction. Go here, go there, do this, do that, it's seemless and painless which makes it all encouraging to do.
Now all of that sounds like more praise so I'm sure you might be wondering where the problems in Rebirth lie.
Well it's the dungeons again. For some reason this dev team has a hard time with level design because each dungeon arena is really rather bland. Thankfully there aren't very many dungeons in the game consisting of only the Mythril Mines, Cave of the Gi, the old Corel Mines, and Temple of the Ancients (which is the worst one by a mile because it also drags on for a long time to fill all the story moments into it). That isn't really to say the dungeons are outright bad, because the story and events they contain are pretty great. However they do come across as a series of boring fights and climbing mechanics to get you to the next big moment. Maybe it's a problem of the big moments being so good that when you are forced to sort of calm down and make progress it feels bad. I don't really know, but the levels aren't impressive either way.
I mentioned above about the lack of dynamic dialog, which admittedly isn't uncommon in open world games. The RPG-style Assassin's Creed games were also bad at this, but they also only had your character alone most of the time so it made sense. Horizon tries to avoid this by having Aloy be annoying to herself which....I guess also isn't great. Interestingly enough though FF15 did this well enough in which the character's chattered enough as you ran around to make it feel like a party of people doing things. Noctis would complain about the heat and Gladiolus would tell him to take off his jacket. Even if the dialog repeated a lot throughout the game, I think I would have preferred that to nothing. Aerith could make comments about the weather, Red could make observations about being a dog, Barret could complain about Shinra, Tifa could think up ideas for drinks at the bar. Whatever, just some sort of banter that allowed the characters to have life outside of the main story and specific side quest stuff. Remake had the characters talking all the time, but of course everything in that game was a linear path so it was probably far easier to script out.
Chadley, this little robot fuckwit has more spoken dialog than anyone else in the entire game. And that sucks. Not that Chadley himself sucks, he's fine, but he gets more spotlight time than your major characters and it just feels very off in the grand scheme of the game as a whole. Chadley is the most important character in the game by the nature of his quest for world intel and what he intends to do with it (which is explained if you 100% it all). It's a noble goal, and it makes sense, but having it be a bigger part of the game than the main cast whom you actually like is suite dumb.
Combat is much improved in the game but I feel like Hard Mode is incredibly unbalanced. There are many enemies that will simply 1-shot you with their attacks and you MUST parry or avoid them. The problem their is that your AI companions aren't that good at the game and most of the time those attacks will just kill your party immediately. Which makes the best solution to Hard Mode as a whole, is an obliteration tactic in your Materia set ups. Meaning you set your party up to basically cheese or 1-shot everything in the game because just having a standard fight like you've done for all of your first play through is not possible in hard mode. It requires perfect play which I frankly think is far too overtuned for the general audience. Especially in sections where you'll have to fight 4-8 bosses in a row non-stop. I simply don't think it's a reasonable request of the playerbase at all.
Most of the mini games are fine, but there aren't any GREAT ones beyond the card game, and there are more than a few that are just bad. Cait Sith throwing boxes is terrible, in controls like shit and the gameplay section drags on for far too long. Dog soccer is pointless. G-Bike controls like shit, but thankfully it's easy regardless. The Moogle game can be tedious. Shooting crystals in the Mythril Mines or boxes on the mine cart are just dumb and offer nothing to the experience.
Crafting is also kind of meh. It's fine in principal based on the open world formula. I would much rather have crafting than a bunch of vending machines everywhere, and gathering materials does promote exploration. But why do they lock material gathering automatically to the NG+? It adds nothing to my game running over material's mashing triangle, there is no reason they couldn't be auto-pickup and would have made the game just a little better from the gate.
Other than that I think this is easily a 10/10 game for me, none of my problems with it are enough to take away from the great experience it was all the way through. I fully expect to play this game several more times in the coming years especially once the lead up to Part 3 starts to come down the pipeline. My guess is it'll be 4 more years until that releases in early 2028 and it'll be one of the final PS5 games to launch.
> Then in Chapter 12 every zone gets more quests to do just because.
It's because yesterday morning I posted that I planned to get through chapters 11 & 12 that day. Will, lol, f*** me I guess. Not only did chapter 11 have the box part, but then all the side quests appeared. And I was going to wait until after chapter 12 to do it but when I was about to advance the main quest the game gave me essentially a warning about spending time with a character which to me implied that the result would depend on my side quest completion.
The boxes were infuriating. I actually was in the mood for some puzzling and was into the idea of it! I liked playing as Cait Sith and that it was an opportunity to dig into his combat mechanics a bit (his synergy attack animations are the best). I was glad that it wasn't just going to be combat arena after combat arena. But then actually lining up the box throwing meant the camera would just fly up the moogle's asshole and I was staring at a zipper guessing where to throw the damn box most of the time. Once again, the game sets up a promising situation then throws obstacles in the way of me enjoying it.
So now I'm out there doing side quests and they all pretty much suck. They're a lot of back and forth bullshit and repetitive combat.
One such quest has you luring a beast with some special bait you have to craft with materials you get from other world completion objectives. I already completed those but I did not have the materials so I had to do them again, which is some bullshit. One quest has you literally just going back and forth from a lookout spot in the most infuriating area to navigate, the one with the jumping mushrooms. And yet another has you playing hot and cold with a device that does not actually tell you which way to go so I was running around in circles for half an hour.
This game continues to find ways to not let me play it. Or rather, play it so much that it's killing its best part- the character interactions in relation to the plot and each other. Not that the plot is interesting or the characters that great, but the way it's done at its best is. In fact, part of the frustration of the bullshit parts of the game- like, most of it- is that it takes me away from the characters.
The only interesting side quests IMO are the prototype intel and the card game. The former is the best kind of side quest- they have some unique or differentiating circumstances, some story, some character moments, some lore. Good stuff. But then in one of the later ones they drop a whole new strategy game on you! And you know how we were earlier lamenting you can't save materia/equipment loadouts for your actual characters- well apparently you can in this robot fighting mini-game. Unbelievable.
Not only was I not in the mood for yet another tutorial-learning-strategy process for a whole new game, but I was invested in Tifa and Barrett's processing for their lost comrades.
The last side quest on my docket is freaking chocobo racing. *sigh* Yes, I know, I know, I don't have to do it. But, dammit, it's the last green exclamation mark left! (for now haha). I will be listening to stuff and trying to get through them.
I also kind of regret not just doing everything to ensure a Tifa date. I didn't care at first but Tifa and Barrett are, IMO, the only two characters in the game that have some arc, some development, and the most personality. Yes Red gets his own arc and a couple moments were affecting but it's kind of separated from everything. Barrett dealing with all the regret and morality of violence and Tifa's entire arc of being a naive young person consumed by anger and joining a resistance movement is inherently interesting. In fact I really would like to see some conflict between those two- I mean did Barrett take advantage of her, as is often the case in violent resistance movements? I don't trust these games to go there but it would be cool...
Re: the way side content is dished out- I mean at this point, it's so much that the main quest and story feels like the side content. Multiple battle arenas in various locations in addition to the VR ones from Chadley feels like a self-parody of all of video gaming or something.
I agree with you about dishing out side content in waves. In Spiderman 2 I did mostly complete each one at a time. The fun of these open world games for me is when I can choose to have a for-real-serious gaming session where I have to pay attention and care about stuff, using headphones and turning down the lights and just focusing (main story and important side quest) or just turning on a podcast or webinar and just running around doing whatever (repetitive map icons, grinding/farming, mini-games).
Queen's Blood freaking rules. I just beat the ghost and I felt like a god- it took a few tries, I tried going with a pre-made deck but ended up winning with when I came up with. It's better than Gwent- yes, I'm actually liking something in a game that isn't in The Witcher 3 more than The Witcher 3. Sure it's likely inspired by gwent- not the game rules itself but the whole thing of applying the Magic the Gathering style mechanic of winning cards with each win and building better decks to play better players throughout the world, advancing in both games together, and having cards themed after characters in the game (that last bit is still better in W3 as they also used actual characters but that is just a style thing). Adding this whole plot about an evil queen or whatever in it is great, I love it. But no I'm not going to bother with any extra super-duper extra special double challenges or whatever- I just wanna face this queen!
It's because yesterday morning I posted that I planned to get through chapters 11 & 12 that day. Will, lol, f*** me I guess. Not only did chapter 11 have the box part, but then all the side quests appeared. And I was going to wait until after chapter 12 to do it but when I was about to advance the main quest the game gave me essentially a warning about spending time with a character which to me implied that the result would depend on my side quest completion.
The boxes were infuriating. I actually was in the mood for some puzzling and was into the idea of it! I liked playing as Cait Sith and that it was an opportunity to dig into his combat mechanics a bit (his synergy attack animations are the best). I was glad that it wasn't just going to be combat arena after combat arena. But then actually lining up the box throwing meant the camera would just fly up the moogle's asshole and I was staring at a zipper guessing where to throw the damn box most of the time. Once again, the game sets up a promising situation then throws obstacles in the way of me enjoying it.
So now I'm out there doing side quests and they all pretty much suck. They're a lot of back and forth bullshit and repetitive combat.
One such quest has you luring a beast with some special bait you have to craft with materials you get from other world completion objectives. I already completed those but I did not have the materials so I had to do them again, which is some bullshit. One quest has you literally just going back and forth from a lookout spot in the most infuriating area to navigate, the one with the jumping mushrooms. And yet another has you playing hot and cold with a device that does not actually tell you which way to go so I was running around in circles for half an hour.
This game continues to find ways to not let me play it. Or rather, play it so much that it's killing its best part- the character interactions in relation to the plot and each other. Not that the plot is interesting or the characters that great, but the way it's done at its best is. In fact, part of the frustration of the bullshit parts of the game- like, most of it- is that it takes me away from the characters.
The only interesting side quests IMO are the prototype intel and the card game. The former is the best kind of side quest- they have some unique or differentiating circumstances, some story, some character moments, some lore. Good stuff. But then in one of the later ones they drop a whole new strategy game on you! And you know how we were earlier lamenting you can't save materia/equipment loadouts for your actual characters- well apparently you can in this robot fighting mini-game. Unbelievable.
Not only was I not in the mood for yet another tutorial-learning-strategy process for a whole new game, but I was invested in Tifa and Barrett's processing for their lost comrades.
The last side quest on my docket is freaking chocobo racing. *sigh* Yes, I know, I know, I don't have to do it. But, dammit, it's the last green exclamation mark left! (for now haha). I will be listening to stuff and trying to get through them.
I also kind of regret not just doing everything to ensure a Tifa date. I didn't care at first but Tifa and Barrett are, IMO, the only two characters in the game that have some arc, some development, and the most personality. Yes Red gets his own arc and a couple moments were affecting but it's kind of separated from everything. Barrett dealing with all the regret and morality of violence and Tifa's entire arc of being a naive young person consumed by anger and joining a resistance movement is inherently interesting. In fact I really would like to see some conflict between those two- I mean did Barrett take advantage of her, as is often the case in violent resistance movements? I don't trust these games to go there but it would be cool...
Re: the way side content is dished out- I mean at this point, it's so much that the main quest and story feels like the side content. Multiple battle arenas in various locations in addition to the VR ones from Chadley feels like a self-parody of all of video gaming or something.
I agree with you about dishing out side content in waves. In Spiderman 2 I did mostly complete each one at a time. The fun of these open world games for me is when I can choose to have a for-real-serious gaming session where I have to pay attention and care about stuff, using headphones and turning down the lights and just focusing (main story and important side quest) or just turning on a podcast or webinar and just running around doing whatever (repetitive map icons, grinding/farming, mini-games).
Queen's Blood freaking rules. I just beat the ghost and I felt like a god- it took a few tries, I tried going with a pre-made deck but ended up winning with when I came up with. It's better than Gwent- yes, I'm actually liking something in a game that isn't in The Witcher 3 more than The Witcher 3. Sure it's likely inspired by gwent- not the game rules itself but the whole thing of applying the Magic the Gathering style mechanic of winning cards with each win and building better decks to play better players throughout the world, advancing in both games together, and having cards themed after characters in the game (that last bit is still better in W3 as they also used actual characters but that is just a style thing). Adding this whole plot about an evil queen or whatever in it is great, I love it. But no I'm not going to bother with any extra super-duper extra special double challenges or whatever- I just wanna face this queen!
To be honest, this game is about the side content. Like the whole purpose is to make it a time in which you spend time with these characters.
In the original game, not a lot really happens in the entire section in which this game takes place. It's sort of a trip from one location to the other with little more than "keep following the black robed guys" at each stop. Costa Del Sol is 30 seconds long, as you enter the town and immediately leave to head to Coral. Coral itself, only exists to briefly shit on Barret and then off the Gold Saucer with you.
Story in the OG game doesn't really continue until the second visit to the Gold Saucer which is the final 3 chapters in Rebirth. They did a lot with making the adventure feel fuller and it's through side content that it does exactly that. Even side content that's mostly talking or fetch quests have character moments that build on relationships.
For example Gongaga has a side story with Barret where they stumble across the author of Marlene's favorite bedtime story. The author asks you for inspirational photos to help her craft a new kids book. But there is a moment in which Barret talks about pizza and Cloud mentions the same toppings that Jessie was going to put on the pizza she promised to make for Cloud in Remake. Barret looks at him and goes, "You know that stuff is for love potions right?" Which means Jessie was going to drug Cloud in order to sleep with him in Remake.
Honestly to your gripe, I feel like most of the main story is about the events of the world and the villains more than it's about the characters of your party. Where the side stuff is where you get to know who your party is, if that makes sense. There are a few exceptions of course because character moments are going to be sprinkled throughout. But the Main story gets really meta about stuff and it is deeper than just having a laugh with Red or Yuffie or whoever.
Yeah I played that quest. It was fine.
Once I got the jist that the greeen ! quests centered a character in my party I made it a point to play them all. Even the goddamn chocobo races I completed today was a Tifa quest. And I generally like them, I just thought it was silly how they dumped a bunch of them all over the world in chapter 12 (reminded me of FInal Fantasy 16) and the way some of them were structured, with the constant back and forth while the characters weren't saying anything interesting.
All to say my gripes are with like a dozen details not the structure. I know I signed up for a mixed bag of experiences with bold strokes and that's what I'm getting.
Once I got the jist that the greeen ! quests centered a character in my party I made it a point to play them all. Even the goddamn chocobo races I completed today was a Tifa quest. And I generally like them, I just thought it was silly how they dumped a bunch of them all over the world in chapter 12 (reminded me of FInal Fantasy 16) and the way some of them were structured, with the constant back and forth while the characters weren't saying anything interesting.
All to say my gripes are with like a dozen details not the structure. I know I signed up for a mixed bag of experiences with bold strokes and that's what I'm getting.
Nibelheim has a seaport that can be accessed with the Tiny Bronco and I believe I ran across a port somewhere deep in a cave in Cosmo Canyon as well.
So you could take the Tiny Bronco from Junon and McBoat yourself all the way to those locations.
Although I had already discovered it when flying around on my Chocobo in Nibelheim, I also stumbled across it with the Tiny Bronco when you first get to control it as a boat.
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At the risk of tempting fate since I'm still not done with the game (I'm right at the chapter 12 date night and I'm gonna do that tomorrow, and likely finish the game over the weekend unless it drops another side quest dump at the end), there's something really important I wanna praise about the game:
it works.
No crashes. No stutters. No assets phasing in and out. Well, at least not that I noticed because I don't really have a good eye for things but I have not noticed any performance issues or anything like that. It's a new game and it freaking works.
Now, I think it's just because they erred strongly on stability over mechanics. What I mean is like this.. when I'm walking around and have to climb on or jump down from a rock, the game removes control from the player to show an animation of the climb or jump with a weird camera change. The result is that it feels jagged, and it's where the ambition of the design and the nature of the game clash. But the advantage is that it never crashes. That is to say- it slows things down on purpose.
The Witcher 3 lets me do whatever I want but then it means Geralt dies after falling 10 feet or, even after almost 10 years, I still might get crashes. And it's a trade-off but having stable performance is a successful quality control issue that deserves praise and notice.
I've never had to restart a long boss fight because the game crashed and it's something I fear whenever I risk buying a new game, so kudos.
it works.
No crashes. No stutters. No assets phasing in and out. Well, at least not that I noticed because I don't really have a good eye for things but I have not noticed any performance issues or anything like that. It's a new game and it freaking works.
Now, I think it's just because they erred strongly on stability over mechanics. What I mean is like this.. when I'm walking around and have to climb on or jump down from a rock, the game removes control from the player to show an animation of the climb or jump with a weird camera change. The result is that it feels jagged, and it's where the ambition of the design and the nature of the game clash. But the advantage is that it never crashes. That is to say- it slows things down on purpose.
The Witcher 3 lets me do whatever I want but then it means Geralt dies after falling 10 feet or, even after almost 10 years, I still might get crashes. And it's a trade-off but having stable performance is a successful quality control issue that deserves praise and notice.
I've never had to restart a long boss fight because the game crashed and it's something I fear whenever I risk buying a new game, so kudos.
There is one side quest that is bugged though, namely the Party Animal one you get in Chapter 12.
At least, on my version the game won't let me register my G-Bike score as being better than the resident Party Animal one. I hope they patch this soon and hope that it's retroactive...
At least, on my version the game won't let me register my G-Bike score as being better than the resident Party Animal one. I hope they patch this soon and hope that it's retroactive...
There was a Patch that upgraded the graphics in performance mode that broke G-bike. Supposedly another patch is being worked on to fix it. This makes completion impossible for digital owners. But if you have the physical game, you can delete and reinstall the game but block the update so you can complete the G-bike course then just let the game update again.
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There's no version locking of save files? That's neat.There was a Patch that upgraded the graphics in performance mode that broke G-bike. Supposedly another patch is being worked on to fix it. This makes completion impossible for digital owners. But if you have the physical game, you can delete and reinstall the game but block the update so you can complete the G-bike course then just let the game update again.
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I am not sure. If nothing else you can just wait for the patch to fix it. And then you dont have to buy a physical copy for 1 trophy.
Reaching the end of the two side quest chains last night was everything I dislike about the game coming together in all their glory.
- Finishing the protorelic chain requires fighting an enemy that literally just one-shot kills you. So after some meta-gaming futsery with gear and items I killed it and then you have to fight it again but with buddy that also can almost one-shot kill you and when I tried to back out of that to reconfigure I lost the save from the first fight and called it quits. I wanna finish the game and I'm sure there will be a shit-ton of combat and I'm already sick of it at this point thanks to me trying to explore the game as much as I could.
- Playing all the Queen's Blood players and seeing the absolute beautiful cheese of the related "story" has been a joy... until the actual final match where the game strongly implies a strategy to use which actually doesn't work. Some google-fu reveals a completely opposite strategy that did work, killing the momentum.
Also there's now a boat you can sail around to get lame treasures to waste more time.
The rest of chapter 12, however, was an absolute delight. The.. you know, actual game. Yes I got Tifa as my date but the ridiculous musical and arena fight and all of that- what wonderful nonsense, loved it.
- Finishing the protorelic chain requires fighting an enemy that literally just one-shot kills you. So after some meta-gaming futsery with gear and items I killed it and then you have to fight it again but with buddy that also can almost one-shot kill you and when I tried to back out of that to reconfigure I lost the save from the first fight and called it quits. I wanna finish the game and I'm sure there will be a shit-ton of combat and I'm already sick of it at this point thanks to me trying to explore the game as much as I could.
- Playing all the Queen's Blood players and seeing the absolute beautiful cheese of the related "story" has been a joy... until the actual final match where the game strongly implies a strategy to use which actually doesn't work. Some google-fu reveals a completely opposite strategy that did work, killing the momentum.
Also there's now a boat you can sail around to get lame treasures to waste more time.
The rest of chapter 12, however, was an absolute delight. The.. you know, actual game. Yes I got Tifa as my date but the ridiculous musical and arena fight and all of that- what wonderful nonsense, loved it.
I meant Odin. First you have to beat him in the VR thing to get his materia/summon, then you have to beat him with Alexander.