Final Fantasy Omnibus

[Raziel]

Man,  I really want to love this game.  But I'm like, 75 hours is, and maybe? at the end of Chapter 11.  This game is crushing itself under it's own weight.  It's too big.  And given how some of these fights went in Chapter 11, It's gotta suck for people that just went for story and didn't do everything leading up to it.   It's not even that everything looks teh same, it's that... EVERYTHING IS THE SAME, for 75 hours?  If you veer off to the side stuff, you lose track of the story because the story beats are too short and far apart. Especially with rolling back to the Zack side to advance what the hell is going on there.   It really needs to be tighter, and about 50% of the side shit cut out wouldn't hurt.  I'm hoping they correct for Part 3, because This game went from sucking me in to now I just really want to be fucking through it but I know I got at least 3-4 more chapters left.  

[Craig H]

3 hours ago, Raziel said:

Man,  I really want to love this game.  But I'm like, 75 hours is, and maybe? at the end of Chapter 11.  This game is crushing itself under it's own weight.  It's too big.  And given how some of these fights went in Chapter 11, It's gotta suck for people that just went for story and didn't do everything leading up to it.   It's not even that everything looks teh same, it's that... EVERYTHING IS THE SAME, for 75 hours?  If you veer off to the side stuff, you lose track of the story because the story beats are too short and far apart. Especially with rolling back to the Zack side to advance what the hell is going on there.   It really needs to be tighter, and about 50% of the side shit cut out wouldn't hurt.  I'm hoping they correct for Part 3, because This game went from sucking me in to now I just really want to be fucking through it but I know I got at least 3-4 more chapters left.  

Preach dude. I found myself in the same boat last night after trying a bunch of ways to beat King Mu. I sat there thinking, "I'm 95 hours in...what the fuck am I even doing at this point?" Shortly after getting to chapter 11 this sense of dread hit me. The sense of, fuck, ok, I have to do ANOTHER Moogle minigame, there's going to be ANOTHER minigame tied to the protorelic in this area along with a nearly nonsensical story tied to whatever the fuck is going one with the protorelic, there's going to be even MORE bullshit menial tasks to do, in this case, collecting Chocobo feathers, and I bet Chadley is going to have me backtrack to other areas of the game to complete other minigames there, and sure enough, yep, I do need to now go to a couple areas elsewhere to complete some minigames there. The one plus side to the area in chapter 11 is that I cleared all of Chadley's intel stuff really, really fast.

Still though, everything you said is right. The story beats that are there, and I'll put them in spoilers, are really fucking good, great even:

Spoiler

There's no particular order, but I'll just rattle off...

• Cloud seemingly struggling with this game's equivalent of Foxdie and it or Sephiroth fucking with his head enough to take action against Tifa
• Tifa nearly dying and seeing black AND white whispers fighting with each other in the lifestream
• The completely unexpected fleshing out of the Gi and how much more important they are here than they were in the original
• Zack beginning to find out that he, Biggs, and potentially Cloud, Tifa, and the rest were whisked away from one timeline/universe to another
• Everything betweem Dyne and Barrett obviously feels so much heavier here than it did in the original just because of voice acting, the ability to have the characters on screen express emotions, etc.
• Rufus seemingly not giving too much of a shit about Tifa and the rest of the gang anymore, presumably because he'll be focused on finding the Promised Land
• The pain of Tifa and Cloud's relationship where they're probably meant for each other, but Cloud is way too fucked in the head at this point
• The pain of Aerith revealing to Cloud that she is mad because she never got to grow up with friends or be close to anyone and really the one person she was close to died
• Which leads to the heartbreak of Cloud remembering Zack is dead
• Knowing what is probably in store for the guy the runs the hotel in one of those areas that was a former soldier and is pretty fucked up in the head
• That moment where Chadley asks Cloud what is going to happen to him should the lifestream die out

And sadly, I know there is more to add to that list, but it is buried underneath a mountain of endless minigames and bullshit. The excellent storybeats are there, but they're so fleeting because you're back to just doing all of this other goofy stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I love the open world aspect, it's just that I hoped there would be some smoothing out where the main minigames would be Queen's Blood and, I guess, Chocobo Racing. Instead it has been just the most Japanese shit you'd even imagine. Like you, I hope they course correct a little bit for 3. They can keep it open world, just cut down on some of the endless chores.

It sucks. I was really loving the shit out of this game where it was scratching a ton of itches and over time it eventually started drawing blood with how much it was scratching at me. I was for sure ready to say that this was my game of the year, but now? Man, there's no way in good conscience I could say that. Not that this is the best place for GotY discussion, but tonight I passed on playing Rebirth more to go and play Helldivers with my friends where one of us is at the level cap and the rest of us are just trying to farm samples. It's just so much fun and such an incredible experience. And had Rebirth not taken forever, I might have tried out WWE 2K24 or Dragon's Dogma, but there's no way I'm buying those when I'm probably not close to being done with Rebirth.

And my other hope remains the same - that we get part 3 within 2 years. There's no reason to drag this out to another console generation. They expanded on Remake enough to make it more of a complete experience, now they just need to keep everything else in the game and pare down the amount of fuckery you have to get through to get to the end. Even Elden Ring didn't turn into this much of a slog.

Now I'm just venting...One other thing is that I'm essentially fighting on autopilot. Aside from King Mu and Odin, the fights have become brainless. I'm completely OP just because by this point in the game you're given so much materia and so many abilities and you've racked up so much experience and you've leveled up all of your materia that you're essentially a god. I probably need to nerf myself, which is kind of ridiculous. Alright. Venting done. I like the story, I just want more of that and less of, well, everything else.

[odessasteps]

I’d much rather watch someone else play it than slog through of it myself. Or just watch a video after the fact. That’s how I ended up feeling about Tears of the Kingdom. I think I ended putting in maybe 10 hours in the end. 
 

and a5 least twice, seeing something in this game made me go back and watch the video of the original game.

[Raziel]

Got to the date.  Didn't get what I wanted...

 

Fuck, now I'm gonna roll back to before the Saucer and clean out few side quests first.

 

Loveless almost made up for all the bloat... almost.

[Craig H]

I feel like the game is trolling me. So I got to chapter 12, but only the start of it. Before that I did Chadley's protorelic quests and that was by far the most aggravating set of them. To just follow the shambling dudes in black, very, very slowly, to their destination, and you can kind of speed them up by hitting L2 to shove them forward, was something else. To say I was annoyed is an understatement and it was also the very next segment I played after my long rant on here.

[JLSigman]

You get Clive's outfit as a reward, which can be dyed, so if you'll excuse me I need to go run it for all 8 of my alts...

[Cliff Hanger]

Aside from 3-4 months of intense FF14 play early in Covid, I haven't really played an FF since 10. But I love music games and Theatrhythm is half off on PSN (for the regular and premium versions; the middle-of-the-road one is still $80, making it effectively an IQ test) so let's fuckin' go.

[Raziel]

Getting nearly burnt on Rebirth's massive amount of sidequests, then just get to Chapter 12, when after a certain event, the game pulls a Billy Mays with "WAIT, THERE'S MORE!!!"

 

[Craig H]

6 hours ago, Raziel said:

Getting nearly burnt on Rebirth's massive amount of sidequests, then just get to Chapter 12, when after a certain event, the game pulls a Billy Mays with "WAIT, THERE'S MORE!!!"

 

It feels like that’s every chapter and chapter 11 is the one where it really starts piling on. Hey, you just did this thing, now there are jobs and quests EVERYWHERE!!! 

I'd be fine with chocobo racing at the Gold Saucer if there weren’t a million races to go through and if there AI weren’t the cheapest and most bullshit AI ever. Getting bumped by literally every other racer and knocking your speed from 10 to 0 is the new blue shell.

[Cliff Hanger]

Having a blast with Theatrhythm and, while I had planned to finally make a run at DQ11 after Infinite Wealth and Spidey 2, I'm leaning toward an FF instead now since most of the modern ones are on PS+ and I have 7 Remake PS5 but never got far into it.

 

Also, I have finally opened the copy of Dissidia NT that I bought like 6 years ago on Prime Day and never took out of the wrapper.

[Craig H]

WTF is wrong with me. I did it. I wasted hours winning every fucking Chocobo race. It was worthless.

[dogwelder]

I've come to the realization that I've been spending way too much time on the pointless minigames in Rebirth and need to finish the story before Stellar Blade comes out in two weeks.  Especially since I wasn't planning on even trying to get the Platinum.

 

[JLSigman]

The benchmark itself will be released for download in a couple more days, which'll let you put your own character or roll a new one (including the new Hrothgals) to insert into it.

So far I'm still conflicted on Viper - a lot of it looks like what Ninja is/should have been. And I'm still crossing my fingers that this computer is enough like a PS4 to still run it at lower end graphics.

[Craig H]

Oh. My. God. I took a break from playing just because I felt like shit after my accident and then we went to see the eclipse and the next day we went to one of those water park hotels. The rest of the week last week was spent going to rehab and searching for a new car. So it felt nice to have a break from the game.

Then I come back to it today and just when I think it can't get any more annoying, and I'm in chapter 12...

Spoiler

All the shit with Cait happens where he steals the keystone and then you have to search around the Gold Saucer for him. Slowly. It's shit like this that could have been handled via cutscene. Or just not at all. Whatever. It's done now.