Final Fantasy VII Rebirth - PS5

[Finsbury Girl]

Lucky I was working late last night and noticed this bad boy was unlocking in 10 mins I had no idea

Anyway I thought to myself I'll only play the first little bit, 2 hours later managed to get to bed.

I'm playing performance, not sure how everyone is saying it is blurry, it looks good to me. I might test out quality tonight.

One tip is to play until you get to

->Open Spoiler<-

Chocobo Bills Ranch

as that is when it really turns "open world" I wasted about 30 mins travelling around seeing stuff /activities that hadn't "spawned" yet.

I am absolutely loving it.

insert Tom Cruise Taps ItsBeautifulMan.gif

[Tobal]

Played about an hour up to where the you get to the Bridge, enough to remind me of how the controls work and to switch back and forth between graphic modes.

Performance is disgusting to look at, it's such a low resolution it's making me for the first time choose the ropey frame-rate of graphics mode, and this coming off playing FF16 dlc and FF7r intermission dlc recently which had a decent resolution to performance mode makes this look specially poor, i wonder if a PC could even run this fine about 1440p.

[Finsbury Girl]

Tried quality mode, I forgot how much I am used to 60fps so had to turn it off after about 5 seconds.

About halfway exploring the grasslands region there are some tough challenges already, the game is very generous you can retry things easily and without penalty. It does warn you in places where it needs to as well which is a nice touch. I started out exploring like in Elden Ring this is a mistake I think.

The combat is really really good. I had lost my touch but it is slowly coming back to me, I still have a long way to go though. The

->Open Spoiler<-

Titan summon fight in Chadley VR is totally kicking my butt

I think they may have gone overboard with the crafting system but it is not something that bothers me. Why not have more shops and be more generous with GIL? Some gameplay tropes are not necessary in every game.

Music is dope and there are just really silly things here and there that can only be in an old skool JRPG. Some of the party banter has been hilarious.

Some will definitely not get on with this game but I am absolutely loving it so far.

[Tobal]

Graphics are a real mixed back, close up stuff looks really good, the character models look fantastic, there are tons of objects densely packed all over the environment, however the water which i'm surprised you can jump and swim in is just flat with a pretty poor effect on it, looks like it belongs from the ps2 era, and there no splash interaction either, or interaction with grass, brushes and flowers in the open world. Then the other strange thing is how really bad the shadowing is for anything in the distance, it just doesn't exist giving the game this look like it was from Dark Souls 2, brightly lit up mass of polygons.

As for the gameplay they have the layered a new team-up mechanic from the FF7r DLC into the game which now acts as a 3rd experience bar to raise, the others being materia and weapons which do exactly what they did in the last time, use them to level them up faster, and yet again having to unlock all the weaponskills you unlocked in the previous game, so it'll be alot of tinkering around with bad weapons to get the weaponskill unlocked for general use.

I agree the crafting system is another unneeded system, which im sure they'll eventually force you to craft weapons at some point to get some worth out of it.

The mini-card game is alright from 3 games i've played with it, won the 3 matches in town and laughed abit at how weird they made all the players in there introduction and lose dialogue.

[Tobal]

Spent about 3 hours in the beginning open world, it's strange to see Final Fantasy go full ubisoft slop, crafting, radio towers to climb to show nearby interests, busy body work all over from the side quests to completing 'intel' list on the area. Problem is you really can't avoid doing it as it's the only way to get large amounts of party experience used to pick upgrades now they have moved the ability tree off the weapons and into a personal levelup book which can only be accessed from a vending machine. Weapon levelling still unlocks the attached weaponskill but also new type of red materia which can be slotted in, like 5% damage to clouds punisher mode or more ATB on block.

Combat mostly ok, i still really don't like that Block won't cancel your on going normal attacks to guard or parry leading to alot of pauses waiting for the enemy to finish charging their named attacks. Alot of upgrades give a character free magic use which i guess opens ups more materia slots for ability types and the new team up attacks which mostly build alot of ATB bar and provide one of 3 types of buffs, seem to be the key to taking on 'unique' monsters which are usually above your level.

[Finsbury Girl]

Valid criticisms, in the old ones you'd just wander around to find stuff, these days the kids expect towers, icons and quest markers. I'm ambivalent, after all I fall for these things in every game that has them - I'm an easy mark it seems and it makes my completionism easier.

At least the success of Elden Ring has opened the eyes of some game devs. We will hopefully see less of these systems going forward.

There is a lot going on and I struggle to recall how to do some things, I'm not convinced we need a skill tree either, but again it's all the rage with the kids these days. I like that it will give us a lot of flexibility later to tackle different bosses.

I'll be honest none of the negatives are bothering me yet, I'm about 15ish hours just made Junon and looking forward to finding Yuffie at some point. I loved playing her in Intermission her combat style is absolutely dope - or fire as my son would say

[Tobal]

At least they kept up with the wackiness of the previous games sidequests, the protorelic quest for the junon area had me surprised and laughing, and few of the other quests in the area have been quite different with the frogs and dog stuff. Just alot of mini-games all over, usually with a reward for doing them well, however whoever came up with the piano mini-game needs lining up against a wall, trying to play a rhythm game by pointing the analogue sticks in the right way just doesn't work, it registers as soon as you push in the direction, so the slightest touch trying to line up one of the 8 angles on each stick ends with butchered music, there is a reason it's always buttons you press.

Also really don't like how horrible the chocobos feel, really sluggish to turn, to get moving, to climb, to swim... just feels wrong, frustrating and you need to use them alot.

The more boss fights i play, the more i remember why i disliked parts of the combat, mainly about trying to get ATB on fast moving enemies, especially birds which seem to be 60% of the enemies in the first 2 areas. For all the character that aren't Barret, it's just whiff, whiff, whiff and when you're up again a time limit to get a good reward it can get real frustrating, and then they throw in birds that can only being pressured/staggered from behind.... it like they haven't played their damned game, you just can't attack anything from behind as the monster A.I. without fail always turns toward the character the player is controlling even if you don't take action on them.

I'm spending to much time doing all the sidestuff for party exp and it's starting to get to me, i need to force myself to stop riding out to every climbing tower/interest points, fighting all the unique monster with increasing horrible stagger conditions. 15 hours in and i've felt like i've barely touched the main story, i should just stick to the sidequests before i burn out.

[Tobal]

Finished with the parade section and i'm having fun again and getting alot of chuckles from the daftness of it all and way the gang interact with each other and the situation with a seriousness rather than nod and wink toward to the player, which endears their actions to me. It feels so much like a Yakuza game, serious plot with silly moments and alot of wackiness in the sidestuff, but this time with a budget slapped on it to make nearly every action and cutscene have some sort of minigame complete with it's own visuals, music and pad haptics.

[Finsbury Girl]

I just finished that chapter as well. It was an awesome chapter with much silliness but there is also that serious element with the main story. I really enjoyed this chapter.

I am also finding myself sucked into all of the side activities - I still haven't managed to beat Phoenix full strength, I got sick of trying so will try again after I've levelled a bit and may try Yuffie when she comes available.

Geez that piano is bloody hard - one stick I can manage but two at once ; getting an A rank on all of these will be way harder than the damned pull ups

[Tobal]

I was not expecting that ending to the queens blood card tournament on the boat...

->Open Spoiler<-

pure yakuza cringe-kino played straight, Reds movements absolutely horror worthy and the Michael Jackson intro *chef's kiss*

[Finsbury Girl]

Some of the mini games in Costa Del Sol are frustrating......though my ineptness doesn't help.

How this game blends the seriousness and silliness is just sublime

Edging closer I hope to Yuffie joining the party

[Finsbury Girl]

Just made it to the Golden Saucer last night. Haven't had a chance to wander around yet. But all I can say is WOW.

I'm a little over 40hours in I can see quite a few spent here on mini games

It was a little disappointing that the Corel region is semi-gated in that you cannot visit everywhere all at once. Also I need to ascertain good areas to grind AP for materia, a hard run is going to need A lot of fully levelled materia. I am hoping closer to end game this will be possible.

I am still a little underwhelmed with the skill tree. Some of the bonuses are so small and ****e it hardly seems worthwhile.

Oh and as suspected based on Intermission, Yuffie is a beast. She is shredding some enemies

[Tobal]

Just started Golden Saucer, wasn't expecting Dio to be quite like that for an intro, also hope i can just refuse to let Cait Sith into the party.

Reached 26 hours in, with nearly everything done that can be (cough S rank piano) and few new stretch goals in the Costa Del Sol mini games after you finish up the quests there. For aRPG i haven't done much fighting which i thought would be easy to filler like the previous game did, but you rarely get more than 4 or 5 fights in any quest before you hit the next the end or next mini boss, even the main quest line is lacking in fights.

Right now the Zack stuff still doesn't make any sense to me in relation to where it starts

->Open Spoiler<-

in the other timeline. I assume for whatever reason Barratt, Tifa met Red, Aerith and did the bombing mission (or sector 7 plate thing, can't remember what they showed in the intro) without a merc, ended badly and then Zack/Cloud turn up after escaping, but there should be 5 years inbetween.

[Finsbury Girl]

Yep I have no clue what's going on re: Zack and I just finished Crisis Core a couple of weeks ago!

Up to Gongaga now, starting to get into a groove combat wise but I'm sure the game will bite me in the arse again soon. The exploration can sometimes be annoying as some of the animations are SO SLOW (looking at you climbing).

Was very surprised to see

->Open Spoiler<-

Cissnei in Gongaga. I did wonder whilst playing Crisis Core why she didn't appear with the other Turks in VII. It will be interesting to see where her story goes

I still need to find somewhere to grind. Hopefully it won't mean me spending hours in the Chad's VR ; but I'm guessing that's where I'll end up doing it.

[dazza_cole]

Quick question - finishing up on chapter 2 with only a couple of activities to complete. If I move on without doing these can I come back to them later?