I'm about to start Chapter 8. My biggest annoyance with Corel has to be starting quests or investigations and then not being able to finish them because most of the map is still quietly locked.
It’s love hate for me. The good stuff is great- but it’s separated by tons of filler and mini games. I can see where a replay of this would be 15-20 hrs. I’m starting chapter 9. Pretty sure I’m at 100% so far.
> I suck at Chocobo gliding on chapter 10. I hate the controls.
I’m not sure what happened last week, but I went to bed and the controls were not inverted, next day they were. That whole desert level is pretty rough imo.
I beat remake last night. Now I just need to acquire a copy of Rebirth.
Not only have I beaten the original and remake, but now I just wanna play rebirth. Who'd have thought I'd play 2-3 Final Fantasy games having never played one before.
After rebirth I'll take a break for a while. Then I'll give one, not related to the VII universe, a try.
I just beat the nightmare survival queens blood with 110 pts… and my power went out about two minutes later…. The save was before I did it. Yay. I get to try to do it again.
>> I only need the last 3D brawler fight to have finished up everything - then start
>> the brutal chadley stuff.
>
> Every time you think you've got it all done... More comes at ya, haha.
Some of these mini games are frustratingly bad in parts. Even the Chocobo racing is awfully unfair on the last few races. One of them is a 6 minute race with 3 instances of pure luck you gotta get through. Still, the worst by far was the sit ups for me. That really messes with my senses.
Yah I took a break on the final sit up challenge after failing a dozen times. Went back a couple days ago, knocked it out my second try. Sometimes better to just leave it be for a bit.
I still have to go finish the chocobo flying fiasco to get those dark ores.
I'm so close to the end though, I debate just finishing and bailing on the handful of small things left. I really want to do the island challenges but ugh, so many other games I need to get to!
The flying chocobo is not too bad once you figure out the pattern. Learning it is the hardest part- then finally nailing a run.
Those cactus gates on the chocobo races are trash- riding up on them when they are closed on a tight corner… is just bad luck. Which is like a coming flip- It has to go right for 3 laps to realistically stay in front- 3-4 coin flips.
Similar experience with the sit up challenge. As soon as I saw it was a thing again, tried a handful of times, and said NOPE, I'll come back later. I beat the game, went back and pulled it off in 2-3 tries. I honestly think one of the hardest minigames will be beating Sephiroth in 3D brawler...that game is brutal. I also hated the cactaur horde mode in Corel....never even tried hard mode on these.
These things + hard mode all the chapters and finish all of the Chadley battles/materia were a no go for me. I should have paced myself better. That many hours in that short amount of time did start to burn me out.
I was pretty surprised at the brawler games. After a couple rounds it becomes like Tyson's punch out you just memorize the behaviors. I did them all relatively easy but I haven't gone back and done the ultimate party animal version yet.
100 hours and 34 seconds, done. Didn't do the final summon, nor the final saucer stuff. May go back later (doubtful), as I need to get moving on a few other games.
Overall, loved it. Still a bit confused on some of the story (time to go watch some YT videos), stoked we still have a lot more content to cover, mini game burnout is real, the English voice acting should have been better, but all in all, a fantastic 100 hour investment!
Switching all my Materia around whenever the game forces me into a specific party makeup is getting really tiresome. Did Remake let you copy your entire Materia loadout between characters, or am I dreaming that up?
> Switching all my Materia around whenever the game forces me into a specific party
> makeup is getting really tiresome. Did Remake let you copy your entire Materia loadout
> between characters, or am I dreaming that up?
>
>
No don’t think so. After chapter 11? You can quickly level common ones in the golden saucer battle arena. You need a chocobo armband from the quest in Nibel. I maxed out all of my important ones when I started hard mode.
On vacation this week. Got the portal to connect pretty solidly with my phone hotspot. Just dinking around here and there I’ve managed to max every materia I have. Hopefully I can try the brutal sim for the gotterdamerung in the next few days.
Yikes. These brutal challenges are nasty. They take 10-20 minutes to finish 10 rounds and there is a gimmick / single hard round in each. Often it’s honestly which way does a monster zig or zag that kills you. Not loving these but I’m on the last one now.
I haven't gone all fanboy/excited with character introductions since landing in the church at the beginning of Remake, but I was pumped when Cid finally showed up. Dude's character model has a few more degrees of Bradley Cooper than the OG, though, for better or worse.
I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the navigation during the open world hubs. Coming off of Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom's "you can climb anything you can see" feel makes being unable to reach a tower 12 feet up really discouraging.
Back home so I got to give the last brutal challenge a go. O wow. This is one is nuts. Took me most of the day just to see the last fight- which is a totally unique fight and takes like 10 minutes plus of perfection to reach. My god it’s cheesey / cheap. I’m going to need some help with strategy here- it seems like he strings ultimate attacks and the only way to win is to stun lock or something. I didn’t come this far to quit- but it’s definitely a morale crusher.
Got passed all simulator challenges except the final two legendary ones. Haven’t tried them yet but I’m seeing the one with Zack is the platinum killer. I’m gonna try them tomorrow.
I normally am not a graphics snob, but I had to tap out of Rebirth. Lots of pop-in, bizarre lighting, super fuzzy/pixelated textures in performance mode and a baffling lack of motion blur in graphics mode (moving the camera felt like a slide-show). It's kind of shocking after how good Remake looked even on a base PS4.
That, the general fuzziness, and how close the camera was just hurt my eyes. It felt like I had astigmatism or something. I tried to play through it, but I I couldn't adapt to it. I was really looking forward to it, too. Maybe the eventual PC release will correct it.
Can confirm the simulator challenge “the bonds of friendship” is the most difficult thing ever in final fantasy. I’m so close to beating it. Terrible luck on the last round keeps killing me. Literally crap I have never seen in over 50 fights against Odin…
Your nuts Feeb. I want to go back and do everything but does the time investment pay off? I'm guessing no. I'm still in the post game itch of what next. I think I'm gonna go play Elden Ring again!
> Your nuts Feeb. I want to go back and do everything but does the time investment
> pay off? I'm guessing no. I'm still in the post game itch of what next. I think I'm
> gonna go play Elden Ring again!
Honestly it’s fun. A challenge to work on. It’s the closest thing to sekiro NG2+ last boss I’ve played. I notice myself steadily improving each run. So it’s not unfair just really highly tuned. For me, that’s the whole point- something that challenges me and feels like an achievement. Sure I could play 4-5 other games front to back but that feeling of accomplishment is rare for me.
Just like remake- the last few battles really let the complexity of the combat systems shine. The materia and individual characters / accessories provide for so many ways to work through it. It’s a bit too overtuned for mainstream (for a trophy) but it’s really brilliant.
The last legendary challenge was not too bad after all the practice I had. Basically solo’d it and let sephiroth tag along. Hard mode is pretty much a victory lap compared to those. I’m ready for some dragons dogma now.
The last chapter gauntlet is insane on hard mode. That final round was so intense. Some of these boss moves are just plain unfair. You have to plan a whole build / run just to survive a 5 second sequence. Now I just need a few more hard mode chapters and it’s over. This crap just keeps on coming. And whoever decided you can’t skip all the cutscenes during the boss retries- You’re a cuntface butt-hole.
I finally equipped wind materia and used aerogas to hit both of them. You can get those spells pretty crazy with magic up, efficiency up, magnify, hp and or mp absorbs. Once you can craft genji gloves in hard mode- they unlock the damage cap. I’ve seen 56k from my Aerogas on weak and staggered enemies.
>> Finished platinum tonight. 199 hrs 33 minutes. On to DD2 now!
>
> Wow, congrats, 199? Jesus. Worth it? I tapped out at 100 and went back to elden ring.
>
Yeah totally. It’s the most satisfying plat aside from sekiro and monster hunter series. Sekiro I screwed up and had to NG 2 to compete- so it wasn’t near as hard as rebirth. Rebirth- I also spent quite a bit of idle time- used the portal for lots of it and I tend to let it set until ps5 sleeps- which is 5 hours. Probably at least 40 hours was that.
Gripes- the walking sim crap / turning gears, crawling, climbing etc are not needed at all. This game is long enough- unlike remake. The inability to skip cinematics for harder bosses is terrible. Not allowing use of items in hard mode is a bad decision- I may have used an ether through both gameplays- all of those items they spent time putting in and I spent time finding- useless except Gil fodder- which is useless too. The cheap way they made the endgame stuff difficult- requiring 10-20 minutes of effort to get a shot at what is basically a dice roll on a few bosses / challenges- that’s disrespectful of the players time imo.
Normal mode I’d give 7/10 Hard mode including sims 9/10 simply because the combat system is unbelievably deep and fun when you need to use it. Unfortunately you do not really need to use it fully until hard mode and late sims. Another terrible design decision to lock hard mode behind an entire playthrough of dozens of hours long game. FFXVI did the same- it’s absolutely better on the second playthrough. Most players will see the single run and that’s it. I can’t stress enough- if you like the battles try hard mode in remake and rebirth. For rebirth hard mode you can keep all completion and just speed run bosses mostly. Or you can do it all again.
The plethora of minigames honestly feels like a trifling inconvenience once you finish the harder battle stuff. I’d advise skip all that stuff until you see if you’re going to go through with the sims and hard mode. If not, you should absolutely hard pass on this platinum.
I started up Final Fantasy 16. Still not crazy about the performance, but at least it doesn't have the bizarre lighting problems that Rebirth has (I don't know why Squaresoft can't optimize games this generation). The game is fun enough, but I do worry about how simple the battle system is. I also feel like they went a little overboard trying to make this a "mature" entry.
Finished the Rising Tide DLC. It’s good stuff. The eikon fight is one of the most fun yet and the music is, once again- great. It is way too short for the price however. If this would have been two new zones or a whole new continent with two eikon fights- great. As it stands I really enjoyed it but it was maybe 1/2 day worth of content. Wait for the complete / goty edition to hit the bargain bins.
Haven't touched XVI since release and binged it in the first couple weeks. Be fun to go back if the DLC is worth it. May check it out after this latest Elden Ring playthrough as I'm not sure where to go after this.
