Normally I hate Monday's, the weekend is over and I have to be up at 4am to go to work.
Today.....I woke up and twitter was screaming at me about a very special game. I jumped up at 3:30, started the download, and played it.
This Monday has started off pretty damn good.
After the Demo originally leaked on December 31st, we thought it was going to drop any day. By "we" I mean of course people who give a shit about the Remake. But when the leaks of huge sections of the game started coming out, we also feared that Square would just ignore the demo and decide to not drop it ever. Since then there have been constant rumors about when it could possibly drop.
Gamespot.com ironically had to take down an article about the Remake that stated the Demo would release on March 3rd. Turns out, they were pretty close, even if it was on accident. Especially considering at the time the article was before the release delay of the full game. So we all assumed that the March 3rd date for the demo was them getting the demo and the full game release date mixed up.
Nevermind all that bullshit though, because it's March 2nd and the Demo is OUT.
I played it. It's good as fuck. That's all.
Okay I'm not stopping there, obviously. But I have a problem in that I'm a bit unsure of how to begin this Impressions post. So let me say this up front. I am incredibly Bias towards this game. Honestly it could be a steaming pile of shit and I would still eat every last crumb of this thing. So please take that into consideration when reading this and when you ultimately see the post on the full game I'll be making in April.
So let's start with combat. In the other News thread, people have been concerned about the combat. For me, the combat is great. It looks great, it feels great, and surprisingly enough....It's kind of hard. There is a lot to manage even at the start of the game which is kind of crazy.
Every character has two attack modes which toggle with Triangle and these affect what your basic Square button attacks do. Cloud for example can run around fast and swing is weapon in sweeping slow combos, but pressing Triangle changes Cloud to punisher mode which makes him move slow but drastically speeds up his weapon swings and deals more damage. These modes serve two purposes based on what the enemies are doing.
The basic attacks serve to primarily build up ATB charges, of which each character can store up to two of them. You use ATB charges to do special attacks, use items, or cast magic, and in combat you can't do any of those things if you dont have the meter. If you find your characters at low health with no ATB, you can't heal until someone builds at least 1 charge of meter to use a potion or other healing ability.
Special attacks don't automatically hit either. So don't think you can just spam attack and then spend meter and automatically win. No no, if you activate a special attacklike Braver, and the enemy moves out of the way...you miss. Positioning Matters! Which is why the basic attacks and combos are important because you can use these to build up a stagger meter on the enemy and slow them down so that your skills don't miss.
A lot of the enemies require tactics too. The Scorpion boss we've all seen in the E3 trailer, and various demo footage all over the place, has multiple body parts you can attack. You can beat down it's legs and make it collapse to the ground for a short period of time. It has a shield that protects it from all damage except the core in it's butthole, so you have to position both characters around the back to hit that part. Meanwhile the scorpion jumps around making that a much harder task than it sounds.
Speaking of difficulty, the demo only has Normal difficulty available and it's kind of hard. With so much to look at and manage, your characters can get beaten down into yellow or red health without you even realizing it. And if you get caught in a healing loop, you can find yourself on the back foot of combat situations pretty quickly.
Between managing your basic attacks, your atlernate battle modes (triangle), dodging, blocking, using the ATB meter for skills or magic, and doing this for two or even three characters later. It actually is quite a lot to get a hold of. With practice, and used to menu and shortcut navigation I'm sure it will get easier, but for the first few hours you are going to trip up for sure. I knew about the combat systems based on my study of the trailers, but getting your hands on it for the first time is a totally different experience.
However I will say that combat feels great, Cloud's sword feels heavy and it fucks dudes up, Barretts gun has power and weight behind it's shots, the skills feel impactful and powerful. It's very very responsive, things happen exactly when I want them to happen. So overall the game feels great.
There are a couple of issues with the camera, in that during combos that push the enemies backwards, you can accidentally push into a corner that makes the camera move behind clutter or something, but it's very fast and not super annoying, it is noticable though.
The music is incredible, the voice acting is actually pretty good. i know Voice Over is a sensitive subject for people, and there are some who just hate dubbed stuff, but I feel like the performances here are really great. The demo has a lot of character to it too. There is more chatter with the small characters of AVALANCHE, Biggs, Jesse, and Wedge, where you are given a bigger picture to who they are and what their goals are. It's really great because in the Original game they are very much throw away characters (literally). And even though they are expanded upon here, none of the expansion goes against what you think their characteristics and personalities would be. I really really like that, it's just more characters to love.
The environments look great, the reactor is detailed and there are lots of flushed out scenes that interconnect the reactor very well. They've done a good job filling in the gaps from the original game in ways that make sense and don't feel jarring or even padded. There are chests to find, and boxes to break that refill small bits of HP and MP, and even though the path is linear, there are enough little side spots that have a chest or whatever in them to make it feel like a real place.
Bottom line is....I love it. I fucking love it. I mean beyond my fandom and most of my bias. I love this game, and i think it only gets better from here. More abilities, more magic, more party members, I can't wait for more. And I'll probably play the shit out of the demo for the next few weeks.
Today.....I woke up and twitter was screaming at me about a very special game. I jumped up at 3:30, started the download, and played it.
This Monday has started off pretty damn good.
After the Demo originally leaked on December 31st, we thought it was going to drop any day. By "we" I mean of course people who give a shit about the Remake. But when the leaks of huge sections of the game started coming out, we also feared that Square would just ignore the demo and decide to not drop it ever. Since then there have been constant rumors about when it could possibly drop.
Gamespot.com ironically had to take down an article about the Remake that stated the Demo would release on March 3rd. Turns out, they were pretty close, even if it was on accident. Especially considering at the time the article was before the release delay of the full game. So we all assumed that the March 3rd date for the demo was them getting the demo and the full game release date mixed up.
Nevermind all that bullshit though, because it's March 2nd and the Demo is OUT.
I played it. It's good as fuck. That's all.
Okay I'm not stopping there, obviously. But I have a problem in that I'm a bit unsure of how to begin this Impressions post. So let me say this up front. I am incredibly Bias towards this game. Honestly it could be a steaming pile of shit and I would still eat every last crumb of this thing. So please take that into consideration when reading this and when you ultimately see the post on the full game I'll be making in April.
So let's start with combat. In the other News thread, people have been concerned about the combat. For me, the combat is great. It looks great, it feels great, and surprisingly enough....It's kind of hard. There is a lot to manage even at the start of the game which is kind of crazy.
Every character has two attack modes which toggle with Triangle and these affect what your basic Square button attacks do. Cloud for example can run around fast and swing is weapon in sweeping slow combos, but pressing Triangle changes Cloud to punisher mode which makes him move slow but drastically speeds up his weapon swings and deals more damage. These modes serve two purposes based on what the enemies are doing.
The basic attacks serve to primarily build up ATB charges, of which each character can store up to two of them. You use ATB charges to do special attacks, use items, or cast magic, and in combat you can't do any of those things if you dont have the meter. If you find your characters at low health with no ATB, you can't heal until someone builds at least 1 charge of meter to use a potion or other healing ability.
Special attacks don't automatically hit either. So don't think you can just spam attack and then spend meter and automatically win. No no, if you activate a special attacklike Braver, and the enemy moves out of the way...you miss. Positioning Matters! Which is why the basic attacks and combos are important because you can use these to build up a stagger meter on the enemy and slow them down so that your skills don't miss.
A lot of the enemies require tactics too. The Scorpion boss we've all seen in the E3 trailer, and various demo footage all over the place, has multiple body parts you can attack. You can beat down it's legs and make it collapse to the ground for a short period of time. It has a shield that protects it from all damage except the core in it's butthole, so you have to position both characters around the back to hit that part. Meanwhile the scorpion jumps around making that a much harder task than it sounds.
Speaking of difficulty, the demo only has Normal difficulty available and it's kind of hard. With so much to look at and manage, your characters can get beaten down into yellow or red health without you even realizing it. And if you get caught in a healing loop, you can find yourself on the back foot of combat situations pretty quickly.
Between managing your basic attacks, your atlernate battle modes (triangle), dodging, blocking, using the ATB meter for skills or magic, and doing this for two or even three characters later. It actually is quite a lot to get a hold of. With practice, and used to menu and shortcut navigation I'm sure it will get easier, but for the first few hours you are going to trip up for sure. I knew about the combat systems based on my study of the trailers, but getting your hands on it for the first time is a totally different experience.
However I will say that combat feels great, Cloud's sword feels heavy and it fucks dudes up, Barretts gun has power and weight behind it's shots, the skills feel impactful and powerful. It's very very responsive, things happen exactly when I want them to happen. So overall the game feels great.
There are a couple of issues with the camera, in that during combos that push the enemies backwards, you can accidentally push into a corner that makes the camera move behind clutter or something, but it's very fast and not super annoying, it is noticable though.
The music is incredible, the voice acting is actually pretty good. i know Voice Over is a sensitive subject for people, and there are some who just hate dubbed stuff, but I feel like the performances here are really great. The demo has a lot of character to it too. There is more chatter with the small characters of AVALANCHE, Biggs, Jesse, and Wedge, where you are given a bigger picture to who they are and what their goals are. It's really great because in the Original game they are very much throw away characters (literally). And even though they are expanded upon here, none of the expansion goes against what you think their characteristics and personalities would be. I really really like that, it's just more characters to love.
The environments look great, the reactor is detailed and there are lots of flushed out scenes that interconnect the reactor very well. They've done a good job filling in the gaps from the original game in ways that make sense and don't feel jarring or even padded. There are chests to find, and boxes to break that refill small bits of HP and MP, and even though the path is linear, there are enough little side spots that have a chest or whatever in them to make it feel like a real place.
Bottom line is....I love it. I fucking love it. I mean beyond my fandom and most of my bias. I love this game, and i think it only gets better from here. More abilities, more magic, more party members, I can't wait for more. And I'll probably play the shit out of the demo for the next few weeks.
