Final Fantasy Omnibus

[NoFistsJustFlips]

Took a little materia leveling up but beat the secret top monsters fight in Remake after a handful of trys. I'm on my way to my first Platinum trophy ever. If I can get past Arsenal on hard that is. And figure out the stupid motorcycle mini game.

[Craig H]

I beat Rebirth.

I’m so fucking confused. And this is coming from someone who has a pretty good understanding of the movie Primer.

I really don’t know if it was massively poor writing or what, but I’m towards poor writing.

[odessasteps]

The actual plot points or how they did them? 

[Craig H]

I really can’t say. I’ve never been so confused by a game before and honestly, it has really, really soured my entire experience.

Here’s the problem - You can do what this Remake trilogy is attempting to do, and right now what Rebirth did, in a movie or TV series because you can easily rewatch scenes or the whole thing to pick up on the little giveaways or indicators for where you’re at or to know what’s going on. I looked at my final play time in Rebirth and it was 150 hours or so. That’s probably on the high side for this, but that is a lot of fucking time. I can’t hit a rewind button to go back and try to make sense of anything. You can’t even really save scum to replay things differently because the game only allows 10 save slots and you never know when or where to save in a new slot.

I watched maybe an hour of ending explained videos today from folks with the ability to just go back and rewatch everything. So here’s kind of what’s going on…

Spoiler

In chapter 13 and chapter 14 there are something like 8 different timelines or universes that are introduced and when you’re playing you never quite know or understand what timeline you’re playing in, what’s real, what isn’t, etc.

Ultimately, the only thing that is clear is that Cloud isn’t a reliable narrator, duh, and he’s fully lost it. But again when you’re doing that, you don’t know if anything they’re doing or seeing is real. And the game ends without a clear indication for what in the fuck just happened. At its simplest, it just kind of mirrors some of events of the original game, or in other words…

Spoiler

More of Sephiroth’s clones lose, the good guys kind of win, and they head north to the crater.

I sort of appreciate what was attempted here, it was just done poorly at worst and confusing at best.

My biggest takeaway is that I really wish the Remake trilogy sought to completely redo the entire FF7 continuity, like all 9 games or movie or book tie ins, instead of this, which is something akin to Crisis on Infinite FF7s. By going the route they took, they could have made things clearer to players and fans other than relying on…

Spoiler

Different variants of the Shinra dog.

 

[NoFistsJustFlips]

Got my first platinum trophy ever today. Remake overall was an excellent game. I do find it interesting that some of the battles I had the most trouble on in normal mode were much much easier on hard mode. The Arsenal & that Jenova boss kicked my ass in normal. On hard beat them both on second try. The whisper harbinger & Sephiroth gave me no trouble at all on normal. Beat them both on the first shot. On hard tho it took several times each and looking up guides to beating them online. Weird dichotomy.

I'm trying to catch up with yall so I can talk about Rebirth. I'll be there in a few more weeks lol.

[dogwelder]

I've put myself on an extended hiatus with Rebirth.  That one cheese fight in ch 12 pissed me off so much that I need to take a break.  Thankfully Stellar Blade is proving much more enjoyable than Rebirth has been.

[NoFistsJustFlips]

Enjoyed the Yuffie dlc more than I expected. This Fort Condor game sucks tho. I'm starting to see why everyone says those additional mini games in Rebirth are a chore. If it's more of this kind of stuff, yikes.

[Craig H]

8 hours ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

Enjoyed the Yuffie dlc more than I expected. This Fort Condor game sucks tho. I'm starting to see why everyone says those additional mini games in Rebirth are a chore. If it's more of this kind of stuff, yikes.

So my advice to my daughter and to everyone is unless you’re a total completionist, just do the absolute bare minimum on any of these minigames. I don’t think any of them matter in the end. And yeah, there’s a whole lot more of them.

I just think of all the time I could have saved by basically speed running every time you go to the Gold Saucer. And not getting every single Queens Blood card even though I liked playing Queens Blood. 

[Craig H]

I did indeed reinstall 16 and…I’m liking it much more than I did before. It’s almost comforting that it’s as focused as it is after playing Rebirth. 

I think I’ll bounce between this and maybe Witcher 3 so I can finally finish that.

And then at some point get back to Ghosts and HZD:FW.

[NoFistsJustFlips]

I watched a video explaining the fort condor mini game and ran through all 14 matches in a row. Hard & easy. I was probably helped by the fact I did a full story play through on normal and had a bunch of the pieces you find later on when I went back to do this. I didn't lose a single match. It's as easy as placing a guard dog that moves the line, use your materia on the condor, place another guard dog in front of their condor / add any extra pieces you need to keep the line all the way up / game over.

I never once paid any attention to defense at all. The video I watched said Chadley on hard mode is almost impossible to beat and your best bet is to try for sudden death. But I beat him easily on easy & hard.

I've now beaten everything on the Yuffie dlc except the Weiss fight. One trophy away from completion and moving on to Rebirth. I read that you get bonus items if you played the demo first so I guess I should probably start with the demo for that reason when I do start up Rebirth?

[Craig H]

5 hours ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

I watched a video explaining the fort condor mini game and ran through all 14 matches in a row. Hard & easy. I was probably helped by the fact I did a full story play through on normal and had a bunch of the pieces you find later on when I went back to do this. I didn't lose a single match. It's as easy as placing a guard dog that moves the line, use your materia on the condor, place another guard dog in front of their condor / add any extra pieces you need to keep the line all the way up / game over.

I never once paid any attention to defense at all. The video I watched said Chadley on hard mode is almost impossible to beat and your best bet is to try for sudden death. But I beat him easily on easy & hard.

I've now beaten everything on the Yuffie dlc except the Weiss fight. One trophy away from completion and moving on to Rebirth. I read that you get bonus items if you played the demo first so I guess I should probably start with the demo for that reason when I do start up Rebirth?

The items don't matter. My reaction was, "oh cool, I get shit to start the game with" and then within 30 minutes never used it again.

[NoFistsJustFlips]

Looked it up and you just had to have a save file to get the items. So booted up the demo, skipped the cut scenes, saved once and bailed. Rebirth recognized the save file and got the items.

I have only just begun Rebirth. Still in the Niebeheim flashback. But I looked at a few videos to see if there's any mistakes to avoid. And holy shit. I see exactly what everyone means about the sheer amount of excess on all the side quests and fetch quests. I also am not a fan of the menu redesign. Remake had such clean menus. I'm sure I'll get used to it but seems like a downgrade in overall appearance and functionality.

Story wise starting with a prologue where Zack...

Spoiler

...survives the events of Crisis Core and the rest of the party besides Cloud all died in the Shinra building collapse is perplexing as hell. I'm gonna assume there's an alternate time line and worlds collide at some point. But really weird to see since I'm coming in so fresh of finishing Remake.

 

[Craig H]

6 hours ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

Looked it up and you just had to have a save file to get the items. So booted up the demo, skipped the cut scenes, saved once and bailed. Rebirth recognized the save file and got the items.

I have only just begun Rebirth. Still in the Niebeheim flashback. But I looked at a few videos to see if there's any mistakes to avoid. And holy shit. I see exactly what everyone means about the sheer amount of excess on all the side quests and fetch quests. I also am not a fan of the menu redesign. Remake had such clean menus. I'm sure I'll get used to it but seems like a downgrade in overall appearance and functionality.

Story wise starting with a prologue where Zack...

  Hide contents

...survives the events of Crisis Core and the rest of the party besides Cloud all died in the Shinra building collapse is perplexing as hell. I'm gonna assume there's an alternate time line and worlds collide at some point. But really weird to see since I'm coming in so fresh of finishing Remake.

 

Insert Raziel and me laughing our asses off here.

[Raziel]

I should probably circle back and finish Rebirth up, but I got sucked in by Deliver us The Moon and it's Mars sequel, and along with The Show, I figure I'll get there eventually.

 

I did spoil myself and looked at the story (more to see how much actual game I had left), and yeah, just 2 big boss gauntlets and 1 dungeon left, but as for the story, man that got fucking weird and I thought I was following it ok.  

 

There's a lot of good in the game, but there's enough that wasn't good that I'm really unsure they're gonna stick the landing, but we'll see.  I've invested enough time to see the trilogy out, but I'm not looking forward to the prospect of finishing everything off with another 120 hour game.

[dogwelder]

I'll eventually also get back to finishing Rebirth, but I'm having too much fun playing Stellar Blade right now.

I think they really need to cut back on stuff in the third game because there's way too much going on that it's easy to get overwhelmed and lose track of what's going on with the plot.

Like, are they saying that

Spoiler

there's only one Sephiroth that's jumping between different timelines trying to find the "correct" one

?

[Craig H]

4 hours ago, dogwelder said:

I'll eventually also get back to finishing Rebirth, but I'm having too much fun playing Stellar Blade right now.

I think they really need to cut back on stuff in the third game because there's way too much going on that it's easy to get overwhelmed and lose track of what's going on with the plot.

Like, are they saying that

  Hide contents

there's only one Sephiroth that's jumping between different timelines trying to find the "correct" one

?

To explain without spoiling the ending, well, I mean, some of this you already assume is his goal, but...

Spoiler

I am under the impression that there is a Sephiroth prime, likely the version from Advent Children, but much like the original, there are still Sephiroth clones that mutate and shit into the ugly Genova creatures. And then on top of that there's all of the dudes that Hojo injected with Sephiroth DNA.

As for his goal, he's not trying to find the correct one. In the original, his plan was to become a god and destroy Gaia to absorb the lifestream into himself...I think. And much like the original, no amount of reasoning with him that it's not worth being a god over nothing really matters. In the Remake trilogy though, via manipulating Cloud, he broke the timeline so now we have multiple timelines/universes. Sephiroth's goal is now to essentially become the god of the multiverse as opposed to just one world.

If you're an MCU fan and watched What If, it's a little similar to Ultron's plan to destroy the multiverse and rule over nothingness by himself believing no one else was worthy to live. Sephiroth doesn't give a shit about a correct timeline. He's the one, well, with Cloud's help, that broke the timeline.

 

[odessasteps]

I swear, I must have wished on a monkeys paw in the mid 1980s about wanting multiverses in popular culture and now you can’t swing a dead Schrondingers Cat without hitting one. 

[Craig H]

Woah. Woah. FF16 just hooked me big time. I’m not that far in, but the story all seemed kinda vanilla even if the writing and voice acting has been solid. And then I get to the WTF moment where…

Spoiler

Clive steals Benedikta’s Dominant and no one knows WTF is happening or why. On top of that, Benedikta nearly gets assaulted/raped/kidnapped and turns into the fucking Dark Phoenix except with wind powers instead of fire.

Holy shit. This rules.

[Craig H]

Man. FF16 keeps getting better and better. I’m still not totally thrilled with combat. As invincible as I felt in Rebirth, I’m even more godlike in 16 and that’s without any of the dodging aides. It’s at least a little more open at times so it doesn’t feel as on rails, but it would have been awesome if there were some kind of middle ground between Rebirth’s open world and the experience 16 gives you.

[NoFistsJustFlips]

I'm about 30 hours into Rebirth and just landed in Costa Del Sol. This game is great. I've been 100%ing every area before I move on. Only thing I've skipped was hard mode for Fort Condor. I'll come back to that. I had a hell of a time getting the trophy in Remake for the dance mini game. It took me a bunch of attempts. The Junon parade march, I jumped right to the hardest formation to try for the trophy here and boom got it on the first attempt.

I'm loving this game. Just the weird quarks and moments like Barret in the navy outfit and Red dressing up to enter the Queen's Blood tournament. Love it. Love Queen's blood too. Really getting the hang of it. If I have one gripe about half way (ish) through the story it's that... well... there hasn't been that much story. Essentially the story so far has been quick confusing prologue, flashback, let's follow the guys in the black robes, Yuffie attempted murder. That's it. We're six chapters in and as far as the main story that's all I've gotten.

Don't get me wrong there's all kinds of great side stories and moments. Just as far as the over arching narrative, it's pretty thin so far. Overall loving the game. Loving the combat. Loving the mini games Ive gotten to so far. It's great stuff. Scrolled back through to see some of Craig's & Raziel's thoughts on the first half of the game and got a good laugh that you guys were just as confused as I was on that prologue.

Edited Wednesday at 01:19 AM by NoFistsJustFlips

[Ramo2653]

On 5/13/2024 at 3:08 PM, Craig H said:

Man. FF16 keeps getting better and better. I’m still not totally thrilled with combat. As invincible as I felt in Rebirth, I’m even more godlike in 16 and that’s without any of the dodging aides. It’s at least a little more open at times so it doesn’t feel as on rails, but it would have been awesome if there were some kind of middle ground between Rebirth’s open world and the experience 16 gives you.

I felt like the combat opened up for me once I could swap out Garuda's Ikon, just never meshed with my style.