What Games Are You Playing?

In the last couple of weeks I've been on a mission to complete two games ahead of Dragons Dogma 2 and Rise of the Ronin both arriving on the same day.

Unicorn Overlord

This game was awesome and I highly recommend it for people who enjoy tactical RPG games. Vanillaware animations are top tier and the story and action have a good pace of delivery to ensure you're never bored. The game introduced some new systems and mechanics slowly and this allows even novice players of this genre to grasp how the game works without needing to read lots of instructions.

There is like a 6-7 hour demo you can try as well before buying it, they are that confident in the demo that they are willing to give you plenty of time to try it out.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

I've not played the OG FF7 games so hard to get nostalgic about things here, but I have played FF7 Remake part 1, the Intergrade DLC, and the Crisis Core one so I did enjoy seeing some throwbacks to events/places out of those.

With that said, I think that for the most part the story elements here were very good, I'll add some comments/issues I had in spoilers here as I don't want to spoil anything for people who haven't reached the end yet. I have a fair bit to add here so this will be quite long.

There are quite a few issues I had which stop this game being as good as it really should be. I could probably write more, but you guys may get the idea.

In no particular order:

Open World

Open world traversal was largely a pain and the open world locations were copy/paste objectives. Poor map design meant that there was usually only one route to get to something, and it could be that you need to traverse from elsewhere, or find a cave, or a hidden path or similar. I wish they made the map traversal a bit more open, more than one route to places to discover.

Gongaga jungle was the worst zone of them all. Nibelheim was the most fun to traverse as your chocobo could practically fly.

Chocobo bouncing off the smallest thing you bump into was meh as well, and the car driving into anything instantly stopped it dead as well. Physics engine not really at work here.

I hated how involved Chadley was as I don't like his character really, and every time you did something he'd give you a little video message and a chat. I did joke with him at the start and said I didn't remember him :D

Side Quests

A lot of side quests were kind of boring and simple. Side quests such as find ingredients for dinner, or go rescue some chickens, are simply lazy quest design. I wish they took a leaf out of Witcher 3's book and made each side quest interesting so they were always worth doing. I started skipping the later ones.

I feel like this game doesn't necessarily really respect your time, so it's happy to add filler to slow you down.

Example of a quest which just wasn't fun was the one where you had to rescue to bird in Corel. You have to visit 3 different bird cages and lay bait, and then re-visit all 3 locations again to complete the quest.

Mini Games

There are far, far too many mini games, and some of them were really not fun at all. It was almost a game of "what can become a mini game?". Highlights for worst mini games include:
  • Moogle babysitting
  • Cactuar protorelic (esp as Aerith)
  • Glide de Chocobo (which for some reason had no inverse ascend/descend control - every single flight based game I've ever played you pull down on the stick to go up!).
I quite liked Queens Blood but I had to change up my deck that I had been using to reach the end totally for the last fight.

Enemies

There were a lot of annoying enemies to fight to be honest, the combat in this game isn't that amazing to me to begin with, but when you throw in:
  • Flying enemies in general
  • Enemies that turn you into a frog
  • Enemies that petrify you
  • Enemies that become invincible (jellyfish)
  • Enemies that are hard to hit (cactuar)
  • Enemies that one shot kill you (or your whole party)
These kinds of things don't really make for fun or engaging fights.

I wish they transplanted the combat from Granblue Fantasy Relink into this because that had way more fun combat (to me).

Levelling Systems

They've turned everything into a levelling system, there is:
  • Your level
  • Your party level
  • Your crafting level
  • Your weapon level
  • Your relationship level with characters
  • Your Queens Blood level
  • Your Moogle vendor level
  • Materia levels
It felt like they just wanted to gamify everything. The weapon level/SP stuff really sucked from a visual point as well, I was mainly just putting points into whatever because trying to optimise this for all of your characters was just a chore I didn't want.

As a general note, the lack of continuation of your character from the 1st game kind of makes all of this levelling pointless as well, I suspect we'll get a brand new character set in the 3rd instalment as well.

Main Story

The main story was the best of the game really, but was probably 25% of my actual playtime, the rest was spent on sort of filler open world and quests. I completed this with an 82 hour save file, and with some stuff left not done still such as Gilgamesh island, because the thought of fighting two bosses at once instead of one was enough to put me off.

I tried to do basically everything I could though, some of the mini games I liked so I went for higher scores, some of the open world bits were OK so I didn't mind them, though it got a little zzz after the first 2-3 zones.

My least favourite main story bit was probably the Cait Sith section. I liked the boat section and the bit leading up to it where you get your own little squad of Shinra troops from the seventh.

The ending sequence was a little too long winded for it's own good I thought, with multiple phase/character Sephiroth battles, and the final move he does (the end is nigh) was a totally out of the blue thing which is a DPS check, if you fail, you have to start that bit of the fight again. I wouldn't mind but you also get no opportunity to swap gear or materia etc after this like 2 hour long battle starts, so if you get here and you can't finish it, you have to accept going quite far back or retrying this fight at least a few times.

As for the actual ending itself, honestly mostly just confusing, Aerith died, but she didn't, and then she is there helping you, but she's not there at the end, and only you can see her. As a general rule I dislike multiverse stories unless they can make it coherent enough to follow what is going on, here the "is this real?" vs "is this imaginary" played a little too often for me, this takes away impact of things as you're second guessing yourself as to whether it's a real event or not.
 
I have been playing Clash of Clans from last two years
At start It was very interesting to play but now it is becoming bore day by day
And thinking to some other game from now
 
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (PS5)

After 103 hours I finally beat it and did almost everything in-game and I've got to say I loved almost every second of it, GOTY for me so far and will likely stay it.

There is so much to say about this game due to how big it is so I will share my full thoughts at a later time but this was a beautiful game, so many great moments as well as fun gameplay (for the most part).

The wait for Part 3 is going to kill me but I still have a lot of other entries in the FF series to tide me over until then.
 
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (PS5)

After 103 hours I finally beat it and did almost everything in-game and I've got to say I loved almost every second of it, GOTY for me so far and will likely stay it.

I'm really glad you liked it so much, I documented some issues I personally had with it but this is all subjective, and maybe I'd have liked it more if I had more nostalgia for the OG version.

I heard there is a patch today that improves performance and presumably some of those awful looking textures we had occasionally, especially on rocks.

In general news, I've bought a few games ready for some point in the future when I'm out of new releases to play, based on some conversations we had a while back in this thread.

Purchased The Surge 1 and 2 (double pack on Steam was about £5) and Nioh 2 which was in this months Humble choice for £9, can't really complain at these prices! Humble one also contained some other games, will keep Citizen Sleeper as that looked pretty cool.
 
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
I finished it yesterday with almost 124 hours on the clock. I often start to lose interest in long games around the 50-hour mark, so it's testament to how good this was that it held my interest throughout. I'll be surprised if anything due out this year tops it as a potential Game of the Year contender.

That's not to say it's perfect. There was far too much copy-pasted map-marker-chasing filler from the Ubisoft school of open world design (I groaned when I saw the first radio tower). On the other hand, while Rebirth has vastly more side content than Remake, much of it is a lot better. The major sidequests are generally more varied and interesting than the ones in Remake, a few duds aside (that one with the damn chickens...). Chasing random map markers wasn't all pure busywork either, with the protorelic ones leading to some of the most entertaining moments in the game, and even things like accessing item caches and radio towers increasingly becoming environmenal puzzles that reminded me of pre-reboot Tomb Raider at times.

Combat has been developed and fine-tuned even further than Remake. Each character plays differently, keeping things interesting throughout. It's on a par with Bayonetta at this point, and makes a mockery of the simplistic combat that used to typify action RPGs.

Some of the minigames are as feature-rich and polished as standalone retail games. Chocobo racing is a massive upgrade over the original FFVII, now playing like a competent Mario Kart clone. I spent a ridiculous amount of time in the piano rhythm-action game. The real star of the minigames is Queen's Blood though, the first FF card game I've really enjoyed, and with a large amount of opponents, chess-style puzzles and gimmick-based challenges to keep things interesting. It even has its own storyline.

As for the main story, I loved almost all of it. A typical playthrough of the original FFVII takes me about 35 hours, with disc one being about 15, so one of the main things I wanted from the remakes was a chance to spend more time with the characters. The first two remakes have offered that in spades. It's great that it continues to lean into the quirkier moments of the original too.

Aside from some excessive open world bloat, my only real complaint is the last few hours of the main story.

Aerith's death is a scar that 90s gamers have carried for decades. Remake teased that things could be different this time, so I expected to come away from Rebirth's version of the Forgotten Capital scene either relieved or heartbroken. I didn't expect to be confused and frustrated. It's never a good sign when I immediately have to hit the internet to read up on conflicting theories about what the hell just happened. As far as I can tell, there are a few possible interpretations:

1) After entering the portal of light, Cloud becomes untethered from reality and is essentially choosing his own version of events from a branching multiverse of possibilities. Aerith simultaneously dies and doesn't die, becoming a Schrodinger's cat who is observed as alive by Cloud, but dead by everyone else. I think Sephiroth is the only character who has been mentioning the multiverse though, so it's possible his talk about that is just further attempts to mess with Cloud's head. This version also doesn't track with the clash between Cloud's borderline cheerful demeanor at the end vs Aerith being more sorrowful as they part ways.

2) After entering the portal of light, Cloud enters a realm that overlaps with the lifestream, enabling him to see spirits of the dead. In this interpretation, the world(s) where Zack survives aren't other dimensions, but rather dreamworlds within the lifestream (ie. Zack didn't actually survive). Aerith dies, but Cloud's already broken mind can't cope, so just like his memories of the Nibelheim Incident changed, we see him altering his perception of what's happening to Aerith in real time. Cloud is then seeing Aerith's spirit. She knows that she died, but Cloud thinks that he saved her, which explains the disconnect between their moods in the final scenes. When Cloud asks "Can you find your way back?" and she says, "It's like a second home", Cloud is referring to the Forgotten Capital, but Aerith is referring to the lifestream. This would act as pay-off for the earlier talk about death being a homecoming. Advent Children supports this theory, since Cloud sees and hears Aerith and Zack's spirits at times.

3) In the original FFVII, the Sephiroth who appears in disc 1 is his spirit that's infected the lifestream. It's possible this is still the case, but Rebirth also introduces the idea that "Jenova can imitate people you hate, people you love." Sephiroth uses this line to attempt to turn Cloud against Tifa multiple times, but we never get a real payoff for it in Rebirth. Perhaps the Sephiroth we see in Rebirth is Jenova, and so is the Aerith that Cloud sees after her death. If Jenova is also the one altering Cloud's memories of his past, this theory would track. Sephiroth being Jenova in disguise in Rebirth seems a possibility, but I'm not sure about this theory for Aerith though, since I would have expected a more sinister twist on her in the final scene instead of her somber farewell.

4) The worst option is if the writers might just be hedging their bets and there is no real explanation yet. Either they didn't want to lock in a definite answer about whether Aerith lives or dies until the final part of the trilogy or part 3 will remain equally ambiguous about her fate in an awkward attempt to appease both people who want her to survive and those who want an accurate retelling of the original.

Theory 2 makes the most sense to me, but the execution of that final chapter is so confusing that I just don't know if it's likely.
 
I've been trying out a lot of bullet heavens and have been really into Picayune Dreams lately. An interesting and surreal postapocalyptic sci-fi story, music that gets your blood pumping and fun bullethell bosses make it a winner for me:)
 
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