The Tiberium Dawn/Red Alert remaster is actually looking pretty good so far. With a lot of the original staff at Petroglyph working on it, I'm actually feeling hope for this one. If EA ends up making good on their promise, they will upstage Activision-Blizzard.
Either way, looking forward to this in June as kid me never could get through the GDI campaign so it's up to present me to show myself how it is done.
The PS5 only having about 100 PS4 games backwards compatible instead of the whole library might make me get a Series X instead. It'll come down to price for me, but Games Pass makes a good case while PS5 is mostly for potential future first party things.
The PS5 only having about 100 PS4 games backwards compatible instead of the whole library might make me get a Series X instead. It'll come down to price for me, but Games Pass makes a good case while PS5 is mostly for potential future first party things.
I felt similarly to you upon the first reveal, but a friend sent me this article that clarifies it a bit further.
I probably still won't be rushing out to trade in my PS4, but it definitely sounds better than it did initially.
So here I am, casually playing my nuzlocke of PokeMMO in Hoenn. Haven't been online in a while, figured "I'll go train up on some trainer rematches"
Never really had any issues with those, as the trainers are always at reasonable levels, so off I go. I'm up to the 5th gym so the mons are anywhere from levels 18-21 to 26-30 depending on how tough the trainer is, which is perfect, as I'm levelling my newest member after a death in Norman's gym.
For anyone who doesn't know, pokeMMO has a level cap system. After every gym it goes up, and it determines how high your pokemon can level before it stops registering the XP. The level cap was 38.
I rematch a cooltrainer.
Starts off with a level 38 Camerupt.
"wait what"
I immediately nope out of my Combusken lead into my Azumarill, tank an earth power for half its health, and then
level 40 Manectric
Cut through my team like a hot knife through butter and I lost the nuzlocke on the spot.
Persona 5 Royal was easily the best $50 I've spent in 2020. I'm having so much fun with the game and it's already well worth my money.
I'm also enjoying RE3 Remake quite a bit, but I don't think it's worth the $60 given how little content it has relative to its price (even despite the rather shoddy multiplayer)
RE3 was always a bit shorter than RE2, even back in the old days. They did seem to cut an entire level (the clocktower area) and just decided to do a spectacle boss section for... reasons. Weird writing choice. I wouldn't have made it, personally, but it is what it is.
FF7 Remake was not the game I wanted personally to come out really, but I need to check out Persona 5 royal. Seeing people play RE3 remake is actually good for getting the heart going at night.
Eh Jill's new voice actress is kind of bland. Not as bad as Claire's in the last remake, but its pretty off. Face model doesn't give me Jill vibes either. Lot of design/casting choices I don't vibe with.
I told myself I wasn't gonna get Persona 5 Royal because I played Persona 5 already but I'm only human and did it anyway. It's easier than vanilla and also they made it way easier to make money (even without the skill to rob enemies), the only downside is that it's in Mementos and that's still fucking Mementos.
Took about four months but I've kind of lost interest in the new MW.
Damascus grind is annoying; I was going to go for it and already have a decent amount of golden weapons but the amount of challenges, the type of challenges (looking at you mounted and longshot kill camos) and the kills required for some camos is just tedious as fuck. On top of that there's like 40-50 guns in the game and you have to level them to max level to even start unlocking some camos, which is dumb.
Gameplay is half/half. It's a mix of campers, sweaty tryhards dropshotting your ass every time they see you, and being blasted from corners you literally just checked or from some hidey-hole across the map. Maps are horrid e.g. Picadilly outside a select few (like Shoot House) and I have no idea why they decided to make the majority of the maps just absolutely huge and with dozens of doors and windows. The teams are usually 6v6 or 5v5; why do we need a map the size of the United States? Gunplay is fun though, and I do dig the gunsmith feature. And before I forget--for the love of god just give us back prestige; these officer ribbons are tedious and boring to complete.
Campaign was meh. Shout out to Activision for saying the Highway of Death, an American war crime IRL, is the Russians fault lmao. But yeah, didn't really care for it and only played for the operatives you get from beating the game. Honestly wish they just gave us MW4 instead of this rebooted story line nonsense. The darker moments and the night time missions were cool, though. Would kill for a Clean House-like Spec Ops mission, where the building is randomly generated and you gotta clear it with your buddies.
Coop is something I want to get more into but the AI difficulty is waaaaaaaaaaay too hard. Every time I've tried it my team always gets wiped the fuck out in the coop missions, so I've mainly stuck to multiplayer.
Can't judge Warzone/BR yet because I haven't played it and I've never really played BRs so I'd probably be useless in that game mode.
Anyway that's everything I can think of off the top of my head. I don't think the game is necessarily bad, but there are a lot of glaring issues that Activision seems loathe to fix, especially when they either are silent and don't say anything or take several weeks to even reply to someone, which by then they've either fixed the problem or can't do anything about it because too much time has passed (like what happened to me with s1 and the juggernaut officer ribbon). They do need to stop the shadow changes and report everything in an update log, though. The massive patches that literally break your system or force you to delete shit to even download the update need to stop too, especially when they hardly have actual content in them. Don't get me wrong, I love getting content updates, but there's hardly anything worthwhile that drops. Like c'mon, we're still rotating roughly the same map pool as we were when the game launched.
Okay okay okay RPG peoples, I need to rant about FF7R and this seems to be the place to do it. I mean, I doubt anyone gives two craps what some random dude that barely interacts outside of RPs thinks, but whatever. I spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday pretty much playing the game nonstop, completing all possible sidequests, doing all but 2 battle reports, getting all "normal" summons outside of 1 secret summon, getting all but one of the weapons in the game, mastering all abilities and...a lot of stuff.
First off, please take everything I say with a grain of salt. And by that I mean, understand that it is practically impossible for me to talk about Final Fantasy 7 objectively. It was a game that I purchased on my own during a very messy family divorce. It was a game that I sunk so much of my time into as I was a voracious reader so a game that was practically a book was great for me. I spent months of my life playing that game. I would go on to play every numbered final fantasy game, spin-offs, you name it. I was a bonafide fanboy until XIII, and I have struggled to enjoy Final Fantasy release since. (I mean XIV is awesome now, I just have no one to play with and thus am stuck in that fucking stupid dragon dungeon halfway through the base game).
Let's get into it.
OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
I liked it.
Yikes! Okay, let me explain myself. The game is gorgeous. The gameplay is excellent. A lot of the dialogue and characterization is great, and I love the expansion for Biggs, Wedge and Jessie. The avalanche dorks are a wonderful team of weirdos and I felt the time spent going into their backstories, why they like Cloud, why they hate Shinra; it's all purposeful and good. It's not fake padding.
BUT! There IS padding. Jesus, some parts are a SLOG because of the padding. Walk here, press triangle here, listen to boring exposition here. This isn't a perfect game people, and there are warts. But the warts are on a supermodel, and she has a great personality.
Where was I?
Oh yeah.
The gameplay.
You got a choice at the start: Classic Mode, Easy Mode and Normal Mode. Classic is "turned based" in a sense that the battles play out with AI and you decide what moves everyone does as their ATB bar fills up. Easy mode and Normal Mode give you control the team, you press square for an attack or hold square for a heavy attack. Circle is for dodge or parry once you get the material. Every character has a specific role: Cloud is an all rounder, he can deal damage, cast magic, and brood. Barret shoots gun, does small damage numbers, does okay casting and acts as a tank/support. And Tifa...oh my beautiful Tifa. DPS and Stagger increase abilities. She's able to do dastardly damage to enemies and it feels good. Oh yeah Aerith is there too. She's magic and support like always. (But now she's ranged!)
So as Fabricant said above me, STAGGER is here. You know, from XIII. The game that I hate a lot! Except here Stagger is good. It's fun. And the first time I did 9999 damage to an enemy made me clap my hands and say hell yeah.
So that's gameplay. It's solid, but it's not for everyone. It's NOT an action game, so if you expect to do cool Devil May Cry level shit in this, you will hate it. If you want a classic FF7 turn-based style, you may not like this. It's a more grounded, adult Kingdom Hearts style. Because Nomura is directing this shit.
THE GRAPHICS
Graphics look AMAZING. Character models are incredible. When this game gets ported to PC in a year or so it's going to be a BEAST on hardware that can handle all of these textures. My PS4 standard old manbaby could not handle all of those textures. Mouths move weird, especially NPC mouths. Characters have weird modern haircuts. Doors don't load in textures all the time.
But the world is absolutely gorgeous.
LOOK AT THIS PICTURE. YOU GO HERE. IT LOOKS LIKE THIS. IT IS GORGEOUS.
The Music
The soundtrack is over 7 discs long. It is over 150 songs. The battle and boss themes are remixed multiple times, and you will never grow tired of hearing the same theme because the theme changes for different areas. It's amazing. This is the best videogame soundtrack since Nier Automata and I will wrassle anyone who says it sucks. There is music for everyone.
EVERYONE.
Sidequests
Sidequests are hit and miss. Mostly miss. It's go to area X, kill monster Y, get Materia/Weapon/Armor/Item. Sometimes plot developments are locked behind sidequests, like determining which sexy dress Tifa will wear. Or what sexy dress Aerith will wear.
Or what sexy dress Cloud will wear.
Sorry that last pic was from my twitter. I was very proud to look so good.
THE STORY
Oooh boy.
NON SPOILERS TAKE: The story follows the same path as the original FF7! Several key moments change, several places are changed around. Several characters have different events they do! There's a character with the same name as someone from Chrono Trigger! You go to new places! But ultimately, the game ends with you getting out of Midgar and fighting the Motor Ball.
And then things get weird.
I liked the story. Except when these weird ghosts appeared and started acting all weird and ghost-like. I needed Danny Phantom to help but that dude was busy being back in the mid 2000's. So I had to deal with them myself. I will say nothing more of them.
The story...makes some very brave but very dangerous decisions in the end. And since Tetsuya Nomura is directing it, and the guy that wrote the FFXIII games is helping write it...
I'm a little scared for the future. I want to see Yuffie be a dork. I want to walk in a parade in Junon. I want to visit Wutai. I want to see Cid and drink his GODDAMNED TEA. But things may not be the same because of implications at the end. And some events happened that really change the power gap and balance for the next game. And all I can do is speculate what will happen, what will change, and if this will be a good or bad thing.
OKAY SO YEAH SPOILERS IN THE HIDER BELOW.
WE OFF THE RESERVATION PEOPLE. BOY THE PRICE OF FREEDOM WAS NOT VERY STEEP. By defying the spooky ghosts, or as RedXIII calls them, whispers, who control the destiny of the world, the rest of the FF7 games are NO LONGER REMAKES, but WHATEVER THE FUCK NOMURA AND FRIENDS WANT THEM TO BE. We could ride chocobos with Reno and Rude. We could play cards with Palmer. We could brew our own Goddamned Tea and have Cid die of being only 32 and thus YOUNGER THAN BARRET. Sorry that part isn't really a spoiler it's just something weird I found out.
The final battle in the game is a 1 v 1 Cloud vs Sephiroth battle in the mind. It looks like the ending of FF7 Original, except it's a draw, and Sephiroth tells Cloud he now has 7 seconds to try and change someone's fate. Spoiler alert, in the OG PS1 game, the animation of Sephy stabbing our flower girl is exactly 7 seconds long.
Aerith may live. And I don't know how to feel about that.
Oh yeah and Zack's alive. In an alternate timeline.
That's right, by saying suck it to destiny, Zack now survives the fight outside Midgar in another timeline and carries Cloud with him. This is the ending video, showing his visage walk past the heroes as they move towards Kalm. Will Zack Kingdom Hearts himself into this timeline? Will Aerith survive Sephiroth? Will we see the Midgar Zolom and Chocobo Billy? Will I ever not be obsessed with this stupid ass game series?
FIND OUT NEXT TIME IN FINAL FANTASY 7 Z. I mean that's what they should name the next game. Why the hell not.
FINAL (Fantasy heehee) THOUGHTS
Final Score 8.7 out of 10. Great game. Great soundtrack. Weird ending.
Apologies for the ramble. I really did enjoy the game, and I will go back to play more on Hard Mode, because there are special things that only appear in that mode. Also the music is fucking incredible.
