Lurker > Kotetsu534

Going from peak GameFAQs to the mess of Fandom wikis in 20 years as the main point of user-maintained written guidance for video games is quite the decline. And now we're being absorbed into the Borg. **** me.

And yes there's Reddit and Youtube now, but for a lot of games written stocks of easily referencable info are very useful.

I was going to compliment City on how well they've managed getting rid of players who just aren't good enough, past their prime or cause dressing room issues, but of course its much easier to do that when the bosses have essentially infinite money to sign anyone they like. Sends the right signal to the likes of De Bruyne and Bernardo - no one's above being moved on. Barca hung on to several players too long, and Man United's late 00s team likewise.

I'm also pretty curious what they'll do with Vincent's gameplay. I'd guess they'll put his transformations behind limit breaks and when he casts them he goes outside player control for 20-30 seconds while doing OP stuff (the choice for the player being what limit level to reach), while his base gameplay focused on being a squishy high damage gunslinger (compared to Barret) with some support magic. They've done a good job with the first 7 characters so I'm hopeful they'll do something fun with him too.

I do think they should have been a bit clearer why he was tagging along and not helping. It would only have taken two or three lines!

I was extremely good at a competitive puzzler about 15 years ago (basically a competitive form of Puzzle Bobble), winning several events with in game prizes that I sold for chunks of cash. I also got to high diamond in League of Legends in 2014, and I reckon I was the best player in Europe on my not very popular main champion (I was certainly in the top 10).

In terms of single player games, probably getting the platinum for Crash 4. Very long with a lot of tough time trials and all boxes/no death gems.

Yeah it's pretty poor, even compared to something like God of War (or FromSoft's games), never mind the likes of Bayonetta or Devil May Cry. There isn't much encouragement to engage with what (limited) depth it offers either: in the vast majority of fights you can just spam the same routine of cooldowns over and over again to win efficiently (ok, someone's going to say "you can do this in God of War too!" - and I mean, you could, but most players won't because there's clear inefficiencies to doing so; choosing between range/melee or quick-but-weak/slow-but-strong techniques etc. is natural in different scenarios). I think the only set of moves I found had any real dynamism were Garuda's.

I didn't hate FFXVI. But it produced no reaction in me at all (other than maybe a bit of astonishment at how they wrote Jill), I just went through the motions, beat it, and moved on. I can't really imagine many thinking about it constantly like I did with the classic FFs and Rebirth.

XVI is a better comparison than Remake (Covid + different install bases distort comparisons between 2020 PS4 with 2024 PS5 releases), not that that's good either. I really don't think splitting a single game up into multiple releases is a great idea in general - who wants to spend $80 to play the middle of a story? I mean, I'm happy they've done it as a big FFVII fan, but I would never have thought it was great business sense.

Worth noting the Japanese market for these games has fallen off a cliff even since XV (Rebirth and XVI are the highest/fastest selling PS5 games but in the low 100ks, whereas XV was over 1M, and obviously X, XIII etc. were in that ballpark). I have to imagine they will try releasing it on the Switch 2 and PC to try to rebuild the home audience. The game's the best (non-MMO) thing they've done for the franchise in the west in well over 20 years, but they need it on PC ASAP.

That said, Spider-Man 2 has blown past 10M as a PS5 exclusive, so the right single player game can still go very big as a console exclusive. God of War Ragnarok did similar/greater numbers (albeit across PS4/PS5). FF just ain't in that league any longer.

Gongaga
Grasslands
Cosmo
Corel
Nibel
Junon

All of them were good but Nibel was on the small slide and Junon's chocobo mechanic was quite poor. Corel's first area (west of Costa del Sol) is beautiful with probably the best set of quests in the game, but the desert does feel a bit rote, and I didn't enjoy using the buggy. If I split it into two regions the coastal bit would be up there with Gongaga and the desert would be below Nibel. The other three are all excellent, some of the best areas in any FF, but Gongaga having more complex design and beautiful background music push it over the top (also it's just a nicer place and town than Cosmo). Also has a good set of quests, certainly stronger than Cosmo's.

Gilgamesh is a great inclusion is only because it gets us some Battle on the Big Bridge arrangements.

And I liked Chocoglide once I spent 10 mins getting used to the uninverted controls. Good sense of momentum when diving. Think I got a bit lucky nailing the last bit of the 3rd set in about 5 goes at it.

Wordle 1,029 4/6*






I was quite lost after the 1st guess and took a while to find any word that could fit on the 2nd.

Damn the praise for the DLC in this thread is enough to make me go back and try it. I got the plat in Bloodborne last year then put it down and moved on. Great game but felt like I'd had my fill after all the chalice dungeon runs.

My enjoyment of the exploration jumped up massively when I turned off as much world map HUD as I could and just started running around looking for things. I did this when I got to the southern part of Corel with the buggy and I was engrossed when I got to Gongaga. Which is a way of saying that while I liked the Renmawave towers I think the exploration could have be tilted a bit more towards letting the player find their own way (with fallback/reveal the answers options for players who want that).

Leapfrog was quite fun to master, but then I like platformers in general.

Vader
Scar
Hans Gruber
Hannibal Lector

The version I'm talking about is this one:

Brave Leader Yuffie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pcn95uz777E

Compared to Intermission's Descendent of Shinobi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9IA1bXlm3U&t=1995s

And it'd be great if Stamp's themes are on there - I'd just seen several reports from people with the OST that they are not (although they are on the bonus physical CD...). E.g. This post at Resetera from a guy who seems to know his stuff:

https://www.resetera.com/threads/final-fantasy-vii-rebirth-ost-discussion-soundtrack-available-now-39-99-on-itunes-amazon-music.807642/post-121512318

I'll just quote it for ease of reference too:

"- The popular Stamp theme, among other's such as Kyrie's theme and the remix of Beck's Badasses, are not on the digital OST. They are on the bonus disc of the special edit version, which going by Remake, will never be released to digital platforms at all. The tracklist for that can be found here under disc 8.

- Aside from those, you're not going crazy if you still feel there's a ton of other missing tracks. These have a chance to appear on the Original Soundtrack Plus, which going by the timing of Remake's, should release around the end of this year. Remake's included a bunch of cutscene themes and variations on existing themes, but honestly Rebirth's has way bigger shoes to fill as there's a ton of essential tracks just straight up not here, imo. Nevertheless, here's Remake's just for comparison. This should also come to digital platforms, going by Remake's.

I'm really hoping that *maybe* that bonus disc makes it onto the OST plus, as Stamp's theme has become incredibly popular as well as the fact that Remake's bonus disc was just the jukebox arrangements whereas Rebirth's feels much more essential to the overall OST, but I don't wanna get my hopes up."

Quite awesome seeing a 17-year old centre-back casually starting in a CL QF for Barcelona. Feels like something you'd read about from 50 years ago.

Used to be legs for years but now it's probably biceps/back as I've been doing long pull-up sets for about six months.

My MVP materia for Hard mode were Magnify, Elemental, Magic Focus, MP Absorption and Swiftcast (plus multiple copies of all the elemental materia). I think I just did a lot of more magic-based builds and play than most people did.

And yeah the OST selection is pretty disappointing in many respects. Where's Salmon's theme? The piano/strings version of the Cosmo Canyon theme? The version of Yuffie's theme when climbing Corel? Gah.

There's a guy putting a playlist up on Youtube of the great majority of songs here that's worth a listen too:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqoNvBHIgpJF3bPBOVLGTeXaHtvLGe7-w

And a version with only unreleased tracks below. The range and quality of this soundtrack is a marvel for the ages. I doubt I will listen to many better in my life.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqoNvBHIgpJHQGIQwOF6t4ZQfnUWOnqcI

I enjoy Corneo as a villain: a nasty piece of work who lives to exploit people for his gain and satisfaction. His appearance in the Corel protorelic quest was a bit weird though.

Wedge was great in Remake but I more or less blanked over his brief showing in this. I think he was taken out by a Whisper? Ugh.

I think the problem is that both Atletico and Real Madrid were drawn at home in the 1st leg, so they have to play on different days. Once you pencil that in, you have to either have Madrid and Barca playing at the same time or Arsenal and Man City... and I guess they decided that Madrid and Barca were more important commercially to keep apart.

I tried to jump between both games and to be honest it kind of damaged my enjoyment a bit. Still a great night of football but there was just too much going on!

Totally with you on Aerith's mechanics being way too slow - just let me run near the spirit energy or w/e and be done with it! But at least it's nothing more than a time waste...

Ah that's a good trick. Missed that.

Super Mario World
Donkey Kong Country
Super Metroid
Zelda: A Link to the Past

ctesjbuvf posted...

I finished level 50. Would you grind before hard mode or is that unnecessary?

I'd get to 70 while maxing some materia. It really doesn't take too long - post-game the Musclehead Coliseum fights give you enough XP to get to 70 in a couple of hours. Hard mode isn't that hard in itself, but some of the sidequest fights (e.g. the Mandrakes, White Terror) can be a bit ridiculous, and you might well want to do them to unlock more manuscripts.

I don't really care much for Sephy (or Jenova) in this game, but perhaps he'll be better in the 3rd game when it's clearer what's going on. His great moments from the OG (blood on the floor in the Shinra tower, Midgar Zolom, Shinra mansion flashback, Nibelheim flashback, Forgotten Capital are universally worse here. Rufus and Hojo make better villains.

Enjoyed the Corel section. The music that plays as you climb is an absolute banger - when they have the confidence to throw something offbeat and different in it tends to work (see also "bow wow wow" and Kyrie's theme). The version of Yuffie's theme that plays when she's the leader is great too.

Leonhart4 posted...

Keep the inputs invisible the entire time, including when you need to press extra hard to complete an input

Argh. Yup that would be a natural escalation for the last challenge - force the player to memorise the animations.

Toads

I think there will be quite a bit of general disappointment if R3's map/exploration element is substantially scaled back. If anything expectations will be heightened because of the Highwind (and apparently they've given interviews suggesting they are going to focus on it in part 3). They have at least the northern continent, the Wutai continent and Mideel's island chain to work with (plus Rocket Town if they want), setting aside that several locations will be returned to (Junon, Midgar, probably Corel + Saucer and Fort Condor), and they'll want to work in the Weapons and the underwater sub I'm sure.

Drop Resident Evil.
Add Gran Turismo 1.

Sorry for the double switch!

Drop Gran Turismo 2.
Add Resident Evil.

Ultimaphazon posted...

Heidegger is pretty disappointing, honestly. In the OG, he and Scarlet always felt pretty equal to me, but Rebirth and the Remake DLC have made Scarlet so much more prominent in the new games, while Heidegger just gets nothing interesting.

Yep. I have literally nothing to say about Heideigger because he really is just 'there' while Scarlet gets major rivalries with party members (I enjoyed Yuffie and Barret starting to bond over their shared hatred over her).

Loved Gongaga, probably my favourite area, but it could definitely have used some mechanics to make the exploration a bit less frustrating for players who don't enjoy getting lost. Personally I quite enjoyed the winding paths and having to do some backtracking to figure things out. The environment and soundtrack though? Out of this world good (n.b. the background theme developing as you unlock towers is a beautiful touch). One of the bits of the game that felt truly next gen, with the detail and verticality everywhere. Cissnei's one of the few things I liked in Crisis Core so seeing her was good too, and Aerith meeting Zack's parents was a good character moment.

And Gongaga's a nice and relaxed area to be in - Costa del Sol has a busy party town vibe, as does the Saucer, so it's the first genuinely restful place since Kalm (so of course Yuffie hates it and starts singing her theme tune...). Quests stronger than Cosmo's or Nibel's too (although weaker than Corel).

And I enjoyed the mushroom mini-game! Quite creative and mercifully only used once in a low pressure way. Damn this game just had so much in it.

FFVII
Metal Gear Solid
Gran Turismo 2
Crash Bandicoot 2

First two obviously defined the console and the focus on plot and characters in PS1 games. GT2 was the iconic "simulator" racer of the era, a big step up from the original, sold extremely well and established a different vibe, focusing on high end visual/audio production. Crash 2 was the big first party leap into 3D platforming, which was a bigger part of the PS1 than tends to be remembered (Crash and Spyro were both big). Racers and platformers are a lot less important today than they were then.

I was considering RE and RE2 (an exceptional game) for the 4th spot though, but RE never felt as huge as Crash during the era - it exploded among my friends with RE4. But I can see why you might want an action/horror game rep there as that genre was part of PS1's identity.

I am genuinely afraid of what they will do with that mini-game in part 3. Probably mix up shoulder and face buttons in the same set.

Super Mario 64
Ocarina of Time
GoldenEye
Mario Kart 64

Three mortal locks and pick your fourth. Feel like the 4th spot needs to be something to capture the family friendly local multiplayer influence of the N64 and MK64 strikes me as more definitive than SSB or Mario Party in that regard.

I liked the caches and was pretty surprised they weren't required for 100%-ing each area. Would have felt more rewarding if there were better rewards to be found in chests and if there were fewer free fast travel spots. I especially liked the one you needed to drop into from above in Cosmo Canyon.

Wordle 1,022 6/6








TARES
GHOUL
NYMPH
CINCH
WINCH
FINCH

Almost missed it. 4th guess was bad.

It made "all we had to do was follow the damn train, CJ" a meme and lost to Golden Sun.

But seriously, the scale, setting and characters in that game had a style and influence of their own. 3 and Vice City drew on crime stories like Miami Vice and The Godfather, centred mostly on the mafia - basically games riffing on iconic late 20th century films. SA was something quite different, centred on (black) gangsters in poor neighborhoods. And were there all that many games before SA which combined large, dense urban environments and remote countryside, which wouldn't become standarised until much later?

That said, I totally get the case for GTAIII and personally found it more significant - I could probably hand draw most of the maps of Portland and Staunton, which I certainly couldn't for Los Santos. But I can see more SA inspiration in the GTA6 trailer than I do III.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Metal Gear Solid 2
Final Fantasy X
Kingdom Hearts II

Gran Turismo 3 has a good argument to be there based on sales but I never saw the hype for it in real life or online (felt like GT was a bigger deal in the PS1 era than the PS2, even if it sold less). Went with SA over 3 because it seemed to have a bigger cultural impact and was huge in scope even if I preferred both 3 and Vice City to it. FFX and MGS2 are obvious. Then KHII as the most significant representative of a huge franchise with a style that was specific to the PS2 era than games like God of War (which was more like a prelude to the sort of AAA-action adventure game which would become dominant next two gens).

I got a laugh out of him walking up to Aerith and blithely asking how Ifalna is doing, and generally enjoyed his vibe, especially noping out of setting one foot inside the Temple. But yeah he's basically a bystander compared to everyone else (except perhaps Vincent).

G&G did a good job of reminding me why I didn't enjoy FFXII very much. Spending time in menus setting up conditional moves just isn't something that appeals to me very much. Preferred Fort Condor. And probably preferred Pirate's Rampage to a lot of the other mini-games, but then I like FPSs in general.

If you aren't absolutely blasting through every fight, you are probably nearer 8-10 hours from the end. Chapter 13 is long.

One of the craziest I've ever seen. I think one of the Chelsea bench got booked for running on to celebrate LOL. Cole Palmer is a special player but both these teams are a mess.

Waluigi1 posted...

I abused the shit out of pausing in 3D Brawlers and I have no regrets.

How difficult in general is the platinum?

Not extremely difficult, especially if you use the best builds around online for the harder VR gauntlets, but still substantially harder than the average AAA game's. Hard mode itself is easier than the gauntlets (assuming you are level 70 with mostly maxed materia). Some of the mini-games are a bit of a pain too, but tbh apart from 3D Brawler, the 3rd Chocobo Gliding trial, and the hardest piano song I didn't find many took more than a few attempts.

Yes you only need A-rank for the piano songs to get the Johnny item and the trophy. I'd still put getting A-rank on "Two Legs? Nothing To It" as one of the ten or so hardest plat-required tasks in the game though. Only mini-games I found tougher were 3D Brawler's last two matches, Glide de Chocobo's 3rd set, and the first frog mini-game.

Also the piano scoring is super-weighted towards Great over Good or Fine, so focus on maxxing your Greats.

Neville remarked at the start of the game that both teams were essentially playing with traditional back 4s but with all 8 members being 6ft or taller (Akanji, Ake (replaced by Lewis early, who obviously isn't 6ft I know), Dias, Gvardiol; White, Saliba, Gabriel, Kiwior). Think that contributed to neither team being able to exploit the width on offer with a packed midfield through overloads in high wide positions, although both Gvardiol and White did threaten a bit. Proper width/getting to the byline is really necessary to create chances in open play when the game is congested in the middle, no one makes positioning errors, and everyone is super fit & strong. Grealish and Doku were pretty ineffective when they tried in the last 20 minutes too (Grealish because he cut inside almost every time, Doku because he was wasteful).

But both teams will probably be happy enough, especially Arsenal. A loss would have been a huge blow.

I spent about 45 minutes running around the grasslands (and the desert) searching for excavation areas to get its PLAY ARTS object. It appears to be random which item is in which spot, and it doesn't change when you reset (i.e. you can't just find a spot and save/reload until it gives you what you need), so until someone maps all the spots this will annoy a few people.

That said I quite liked the mechanic in general, at least once I figured out the controls.

And yeah my traversal approach was always run until I unlocked the chocobo, then chocobo everywhere to unlock a gazillion fast travel points (caches and chocostops useful for this purpose if none other), then fast travel. So on hard mode I basically only fast travelled. Driving the buggy off cliffs was fun, but that's all I have that's nice to say about it!

Bugs Bunny
Easter Bunny
Rabbit (Winnie the Pooh)
The Hare (Aesop's Fables)

I think the Gongaga Chapter 12 Quest is probably the most worth doing for plot/character reasons. Cosmo Canyon's has the best reward (a Magnify materia), but is completely throwaway and somewhat annoying to do. Corel's/Costa Del Sol's is fun, especially if you are a Kyrie enjoyer.

Selena is the most broken chocobo because her ability is basically a blue shell.

The Chocobostops are useful in Hard mode becase cushions restore HP/MP. And I found the fast travel points quite useful and preferred using them to resting in towns as it's quicker (I just transmuted 40 cushions at some point).

That said it is pretty clear they were playing around with quite different ideas for how the main world should be traversed until quite late on and their role got downgraded substantially.

I quite liked the monster tracking sequence in the Beneath Still Waters sidequest. It takes you right across the Junon area, which is quite a nice way to return to an area you explored 30 or so hours ago (and breaks up the fast travel spam that's easy to fall into when you return to areas).

Curious how you rank the mini-games!

The metacritic summaries probably represent the consensus as fairly as you're gonna get, but it's worth noting that a decent chunk of the reason Rebirth is higher is because its combat system is substantially fleshed out, it has much bigger (beautiful) environments with a lot of typical "AAA" open world elements, and it's packed full of mini-games. It also has a *lot* more content - it's probably 3x the size of the Remake. If you're really just here for the story and characters (and less so the world/locations), and you don't really value the additions and expansions to the combat system*, then I could see why you might prefer Remake.

For me, Remake is a solid game, and Rebirth is the best game Square has made since the early 00s and the first time since I've felt like they're taking me on a grand adventure like the PSX FFs did. I kept thinking "this is amazing but why wasn't I playing it 15 years ago?" as I played. Both games have insanely good OSTs (two of the best I've ever listened to).

*It also generally moves the combat a step towards action and away from slower, positioning based play. Which again is probably a popular move in general but not one I personally liked. Remake had better bosses IMO.

The Boss

I mean the war will no doubt happen, but if it's essentially downstream of Sephiroth (or Jenova) machinations to factilitate his ends then it isn't really going to form a distinct story arc from the main narrative. At that point in the game it sounded like it was an independent action being pursued for Wutai's (or Shinra's) own interests. Could still be like that of course, but that wasn't what I took from the ending scene with Rufus.

I loved the variety, but it's so out of step with modern AAA design that the critical reaction have been qutie interesting to see.

Edit: One thing to consider is whether to turn off some of the HUD elements when you're in the world map to make it a bit less "gamey" and more immersive. I did this about half-way through and really started to enjoy the exploration a lot more afterward. Found the radar quite distracting.