So I wasn't sure if I wanted to power up really hard or just go kill Sephiroth. I knew that a piece of materia I needed for twinking out was found in the final dungeon (it would let Yuffie morph all enemies with one attack which is useful for maxxing speed and luck) so as soon as I got to disk 3 I went into the final dungeon. I figured when I found the master all materia I'd decide what to do at that point since I'd need it for either of my paths. And then I ended up running into Sephiroth before finding the materia. I guess I missed a turn or something. At any rate, despite him using the most over the top move in the history of over the top moves, I won easily. Yuffie attacked for 20k each turn. Since it turns out he only has 80k health the fight didn't last very long. Pretty sure the animation on super nova was longer than the rest of the fight combined. And yes, the move super nova does cause the sun to go super nova and destroy the solar system. I don't know how we keep fighting at that point, but fight on we did.
I guess I had twinked out a little since I did farm up 50ish power sources for Yuffie and got her ultimate weapon but it's nothing like what I could have done. I didn't even get enough AP into my 2-cut materia to turn the ability into 4-cut! At any rate I beat the final boss so I guess I'm done? I still had a bunch of stuff to write about, but I guess that's what a conclusion post is for, eh?
I did manage to date Yuffie in the amusement park. She was so cute... And Cloud was such a jerk. Made me feel bad for her. Yuffie is awesome, though. Tifa would be awesome if she wasn't so... disproportioned? I've never been a fan of Aeris but maybe that's just because I know she's going to die so there's no need to get attached? Also she's terrible at beating down and my default mode in these games it to attack first and cast spells later.
I didn't get around to raising or racing chocobo. I didn't play in the battle square. I only got one ultimate weapon and didn't learn any of the level 4 limit breaks. I didn't kill ultimate weapon, emerald weapon, or ruby weapon. I hardly did any of the fort condor battles. I left a lot of stuff on the table here, and still got a lot of play-time in on the game. Around 29 hours worth. That's a fair bit more than I put into either IV, V, or VI and I did practically everything in all of those games. I'm sure I had at least 10-20 more hours of other stuff I could have done in VII.
Of course, you didn't need to do any of that stuff to beat the game... But they put in challenge bosses to make powering up mean something. That's always been one of the annoying things about IV and VI. I could get to max level and manage my stat growths and such but at the end of the day it didn't matter. Tight play could beat Zeromus and Kefka at practically any level and they were pretty much as good as it got for bad guys in those games. The same is pretty much true of Sephiroth in terms of how easy he is to beat but not in terms of the side bosses. Emerald and ruby weapons are hard. If I hadn't beaten them the first time I played I'd feel more obligated to reload before I went into the final dungeon and go beat them up. As is, I think I'm ok with skipping them.
As far as the ending goes, I remain convinced after beating it again that the humans actually lose. I don't know how Red XIII's race manages to come back to life and regain control of the planet but I don't think any humans survived the clash between planet, holy, and meteor. I wouldn't be surprised if the planet needed to kill all the humans to generate enough spirit energy to beat off meteor. The humans could then all go to the promised land and live in the lifestream of the planet where they couldn't build any more mako reactors going forward.
The question of where to rank this game on my list is a tricky one. I feel like FFVI did absolutely everything it could have done with the constraints of the SNES hardware and cartridge. I feel like FFVII did some things less well than FFVI did. But I feel that the extra power from the switch to the PlayStation really helped it out. I prefer the music in VI to VII, but it sounds better through the PS. The addition of FMV sequences really made my day, but I think I would have preferred FFVI FMVs if they'd existed. The skill system in FFVII is awesome, though having some materia be missable sours me a little bit. I never could get the added effect materia because I missed it the one time I was allowed into cosmo canyon's dungeon. The plot and bad guy in VI were better than the ones in VII. But VII has so many extra things! It's a longer game just in terms of the game itself and then it has all this extra stuff you can go do. FFVI couldn't have had minigames the way VII did. But is it fair to take that into account? I feel like I should be looking at the game as a whole here and that includes all the stuff VII could do that VI couldn't.
I never really liked VII in the past, but I think that was my contrarian behaviour shining through. I was living with a house full of people who loved VII and found VIII annoying. I saw VIII before VII, liked it, and therefore took the opposite stance. But when it comes right down to it VII is a pretty fantastic game. There's a reason VII remains the highest selling game of the Final Fantasy series. 14 year old Nick is really mad that I'm putting any newfangled PS game ahead of the awesome FFIV and FFVI, but I think I'm going to have to. Welcome to #1, FFVII. I don't know how long it's going to last, but you've earned it for now.
Next up, Final Fantasy Tactics and then whatever this Ehrgeiz thing is. I don't own that second one yet, so I guess I should probably get searching.
Showing posts with label Final Fantasy VII. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Final Fantasy VII. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
Friday, December 28, 2012
Final Fantasy VII: Mini-Games
When someone asks me what actually links the Final Fantasy games together I tend to answer with a list of similarities. Turn based combat systems. Magic. Summoned monsters. An epic storyline. A guy named Cid. Chocobos. Challenge bosses. Side quests. Mini-games. Magical crystals. The same sets of spells. While playing Final Fantasy VII recently I've been thinking about the mini-games part and how there seemed to be an awful lot of them. And then I tried to think of mini-games from any other game I've played so far in this marathon and only managed to think of a single one: the sliding tile puzzle in the original Final Fantasy which was more easter egg than legitimate mini-game. (It turns out there's a memory game easter egg in FFII as well?) Maybe you could count the battle arena and the multi-party Mog combat in FFVI but those feel more like extensions of the regular combat system than an actual mini-game.
Why would that be? I think mini-games are a fundamental aspect of Final Fantasy games but they didn't even exist at all until FFVII? What happened? I think the big revolution that let them start happening was the switch by Square from the Nintendo series of consoles to the CD based PlayStation. The Nintendo 64 (the comparable system at the time) had a cartridge size from 4MB to 64MB. A CD for the PS could hold 700MB and games could easily span multiple CDs. FFVII came on 3 disks. FFVIII and FFIX each had 4 disks. You can have a lot more stuff over 2800MB than you can have crammed into 4MB. This is what made the awesome FMV sequences possible but I'm thinking it's also what allowed mini-games to flourish as well. FFII was going to be ported from Japan to the US but they couldn't find space in an NES cartridge to fit an English translation. They were having to rewrite from scratch when the project was cancelled in order to do FFIV instead. I can't imagine them finding space on the FFVI cartridge to fit in a snowboarding mini-game when they couldn't find space to include vocals for their opera scene.
FFVII has been absolutely inundated with mini-games. It certainly helps that there's an actual arcade in the game that could be used as a logical place to replay the mini-games but it's felt like I couldn't go a dungeon or two without hitting one. Snowboarding, motorcycle combat, attack subs, rock-paper-scissors boxing, basketball, whatever the heck Mog House is, tactical combat at Fort Condor, triangulation digging, a shooter roller coaster, the battle arena, and most importantly chocobo raising/racing. On top of that there's a ton of one-shot mini-games where you have to press buttons at the right time in the right sequence. Also body heat management, kicking barrels at Aeris, a lot of the cross-dressing stuff, the Shinra parade, and CPR.
The sheer number of such mini-games has felt a little jarring at times, especially compared to the none at all from previous games, but they give a ton of diversions along the way. I'm on disk 3 and close to finishing the game except I haven't done anything with chocobo racing or the battle arena. I haven't yet decided if I want to just go kill Sephiroth soon or if I want to do the chocobo stuff first. I've raised a gold chocobo in the past so I don't feel a pressing need to do it, but I remember it being fun...
Why would that be? I think mini-games are a fundamental aspect of Final Fantasy games but they didn't even exist at all until FFVII? What happened? I think the big revolution that let them start happening was the switch by Square from the Nintendo series of consoles to the CD based PlayStation. The Nintendo 64 (the comparable system at the time) had a cartridge size from 4MB to 64MB. A CD for the PS could hold 700MB and games could easily span multiple CDs. FFVII came on 3 disks. FFVIII and FFIX each had 4 disks. You can have a lot more stuff over 2800MB than you can have crammed into 4MB. This is what made the awesome FMV sequences possible but I'm thinking it's also what allowed mini-games to flourish as well. FFII was going to be ported from Japan to the US but they couldn't find space in an NES cartridge to fit an English translation. They were having to rewrite from scratch when the project was cancelled in order to do FFIV instead. I can't imagine them finding space on the FFVI cartridge to fit in a snowboarding mini-game when they couldn't find space to include vocals for their opera scene.
FFVII has been absolutely inundated with mini-games. It certainly helps that there's an actual arcade in the game that could be used as a logical place to replay the mini-games but it's felt like I couldn't go a dungeon or two without hitting one. Snowboarding, motorcycle combat, attack subs, rock-paper-scissors boxing, basketball, whatever the heck Mog House is, tactical combat at Fort Condor, triangulation digging, a shooter roller coaster, the battle arena, and most importantly chocobo raising/racing. On top of that there's a ton of one-shot mini-games where you have to press buttons at the right time in the right sequence. Also body heat management, kicking barrels at Aeris, a lot of the cross-dressing stuff, the Shinra parade, and CPR.
The sheer number of such mini-games has felt a little jarring at times, especially compared to the none at all from previous games, but they give a ton of diversions along the way. I'm on disk 3 and close to finishing the game except I haven't done anything with chocobo racing or the battle arena. I haven't yet decided if I want to just go kill Sephiroth soon or if I want to do the chocobo stuff first. I've raised a gold chocobo in the past so I don't feel a pressing need to do it, but I remember it being fun...
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Final Fantasy VII: More Awesome Cutscenes
As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I didn't recall ever being terribly impressed with the FMV scenes in Final Fantasy VII in previous plays. Be it some function of playing it after FFVIII, or playing it after FFX, or initially playing it on a really old CRT tv I just never got what other people would get excited about. But man, playing it on the PSP has been pretty awesome. The screen resolution is apparently only 480x272 and a whopping 4.3 inches but the videos come out without any pixelation or anything.
I just watched a couple FMVs in sequence near the end of disk 2 which were pretty amazing. The music in the second one was really great at setting the mood, too. They're so good I wanted to share them here, though it turned out when finding them on youtube that the picture quality isn't quite as impressive. But still pretty great and worth watching.
For those who may not have played the game, and who don't mind spoilers from a 16 year old game, or who may just need a refresher...
There are 4 main groups in the game. My party is a group of eco-terrorists trying to save the planet from a corporation (Shinra) which is making a profit by mining the life force out of the planet. Sephiroth is an alien zombie thing which is trying to merge himself with the life force of the planet in an attempt to become super powerful. In order to do that he's summoned a giant meteor to plow into the planet which the intention of making the planet gather a ton of life force in one spot to heal the wound. Shinra is fighting Sephiroth because his plan will wipe them out. We're fighting both of them because they're both killing the planet. The fourth group is the planet itself which has summoned up some ancient robot weapon things to defend itself from Shinra and Sephiroth. But it's not really sentient so it doesn't know we're trying to help it out so we end up having to fight these weapons too.
This scene comes about right after my party wounded Diamond Weapon, the giant robot thing that was trying to destroy the Shinra capital. Meanwhile the Shinra people have cobbled together a huge weapon and intend to shoot Sephiroth with it...
We head off to check out Sephiroth now that his big shield thing got blasted away when we get some bad news... With the Shinra president dead his underlings have started to do crazy things. One of them has decided to help Sephiroth out by shooting more lifeforce at him from the cannon which hasn't had time to cool down. It's going to overload and blow up the city killing a ton of people. We want to go in and stop this from happening but another underling would rather let Hojo destroy the city and kill us himself than let us through. So we've got our work cut out for us getting in... The result? We're going to parachute in! (This video is longer than just the parachute bit, I couldn't find a good video with just the jump lead-in.)
I don't really understand how either Red XIII or Cait Sith can use a parachute, but whatever. Suspension of disbelief!
These videos are one thing that really makes FFVII stand out from the rest of the games I've played thus far.
I just watched a couple FMVs in sequence near the end of disk 2 which were pretty amazing. The music in the second one was really great at setting the mood, too. They're so good I wanted to share them here, though it turned out when finding them on youtube that the picture quality isn't quite as impressive. But still pretty great and worth watching.
For those who may not have played the game, and who don't mind spoilers from a 16 year old game, or who may just need a refresher...
There are 4 main groups in the game. My party is a group of eco-terrorists trying to save the planet from a corporation (Shinra) which is making a profit by mining the life force out of the planet. Sephiroth is an alien zombie thing which is trying to merge himself with the life force of the planet in an attempt to become super powerful. In order to do that he's summoned a giant meteor to plow into the planet which the intention of making the planet gather a ton of life force in one spot to heal the wound. Shinra is fighting Sephiroth because his plan will wipe them out. We're fighting both of them because they're both killing the planet. The fourth group is the planet itself which has summoned up some ancient robot weapon things to defend itself from Shinra and Sephiroth. But it's not really sentient so it doesn't know we're trying to help it out so we end up having to fight these weapons too.
This scene comes about right after my party wounded Diamond Weapon, the giant robot thing that was trying to destroy the Shinra capital. Meanwhile the Shinra people have cobbled together a huge weapon and intend to shoot Sephiroth with it...
We head off to check out Sephiroth now that his big shield thing got blasted away when we get some bad news... With the Shinra president dead his underlings have started to do crazy things. One of them has decided to help Sephiroth out by shooting more lifeforce at him from the cannon which hasn't had time to cool down. It's going to overload and blow up the city killing a ton of people. We want to go in and stop this from happening but another underling would rather let Hojo destroy the city and kill us himself than let us through. So we've got our work cut out for us getting in... The result? We're going to parachute in! (This video is longer than just the parachute bit, I couldn't find a good video with just the jump lead-in.)
I don't really understand how either Red XIII or Cait Sith can use a parachute, but whatever. Suspension of disbelief!
These videos are one thing that really makes FFVII stand out from the rest of the games I've played thus far.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Final Fantasy VII: Morph
I've reached the point in the game where I've acquired the submarine and can go exploring the ocean floor. One of the things down there is an airship containing powerful monsters which are the primary way to completely twinking out your party. Each of the monsters that can spawn down there can be killed with the morph skill (does 1/8th attack damage but if it gets the killing blow the monster turns into an item) to obtain stat sources. Drinking these sources is the way to max out your stats. I vaguely recall finding this place the first time I played the game way back in the day and then just sitting around morphing them for days until I was awesome. I get drawn to being awesome so I found myself doing that on the bus yesterday despite it being pretty difficult at this point in time. (Pretty sure last time I did it was later in the game so I was higher level.) Of course, it's one of those things where the more I do it the faster it will become since Yuffie will start hitting harder with her morph and everyone will be higher level so they'll have and easier time surviving the brutal enemies.
I'm pretty sure going to find Yuffie's ultimate weapon would be a good idea since it does a bunch of bonus damage that I think works with morph. (Turns out it's actually in the sunken plane... I guess I missed a room or something and need to head back!) But beyond that, I was wondering if there's anything else really worth morphing. I morphed pretty much everything I could the first time I played (including killing Sephiroth solely with morph damage... He didn't turn into anything which made me really sad. Come on, Square... Turn him into a potion or something!) but that gets tedious. I want to skip that tedium by using the power of the internets...
Unfortunately the internets are failing me here. Surprisingly it would seem no one has bothered to make and analyze a list of morphable items. I did find what purports to be a list of items and I guess I can go through the list to see if any of them are interesting...
Escort Guard - interesting armour item with 6 linked slots and good elemental defenses, morphed from iron man who appears to only exist during the end game sequence
Guard Source - gives you 1 permanent stat increase, can be morphed from 4 monsters (in Mount Corel, Gelnika, Mideel, or the final dungeon)
Guide Book - used to get the underwater materia and morphed in the underwater tunnel which I've already passed and therefore might not be able to get? Apparently it might also spawn in the battle arena?
Luck Source - gives you 1 permanent stat increase, can be morphed from 1 monster (Gelnika)
Magic Source - gives you 1 permanent stat increase, can be morphed from 2 monsters (Temple of the Ancients, Gelnika)
Mind Source - gives you 1 permanent stat increase, can be morphed from 3 monsters (Whirlwind Mazex2, Gelnika)
Power Source - gives you 1 permanent stat increase, can be morphed from 3 monsters (Gongag Reactor, Mount Nibel, Gelnika)
Ribbon - makes you immune to negative status conditions, can be morphed from Master Tonberry in the final dungeon
Speed Source - gives you 1 permanent stat increase, can be morphed from 1 monster (Gelnika)
So really it looks like morphing isn't much use except maybe at the end of the game to finish up some gear, to make killing emerald weapon easier, and to twink out your stats. So I'm not missing much, except that thing I probably already missed. Oh well! Tomorrow on the way to work I'm definitely going back to see how I missed Yuffie's ultimate weapon and then probably morph some dudes. Or maybe I'll just continue the plot because I've already done the morphing a ton of dudes thing in the past? I donno.
I'm pretty sure going to find Yuffie's ultimate weapon would be a good idea since it does a bunch of bonus damage that I think works with morph. (Turns out it's actually in the sunken plane... I guess I missed a room or something and need to head back!) But beyond that, I was wondering if there's anything else really worth morphing. I morphed pretty much everything I could the first time I played (including killing Sephiroth solely with morph damage... He didn't turn into anything which made me really sad. Come on, Square... Turn him into a potion or something!) but that gets tedious. I want to skip that tedium by using the power of the internets...
Unfortunately the internets are failing me here. Surprisingly it would seem no one has bothered to make and analyze a list of morphable items. I did find what purports to be a list of items and I guess I can go through the list to see if any of them are interesting...
Escort Guard - interesting armour item with 6 linked slots and good elemental defenses, morphed from iron man who appears to only exist during the end game sequence
Guard Source - gives you 1 permanent stat increase, can be morphed from 4 monsters (in Mount Corel, Gelnika, Mideel, or the final dungeon)
Guide Book - used to get the underwater materia and morphed in the underwater tunnel which I've already passed and therefore might not be able to get? Apparently it might also spawn in the battle arena?
Luck Source - gives you 1 permanent stat increase, can be morphed from 1 monster (Gelnika)
Magic Source - gives you 1 permanent stat increase, can be morphed from 2 monsters (Temple of the Ancients, Gelnika)
Mind Source - gives you 1 permanent stat increase, can be morphed from 3 monsters (Whirlwind Mazex2, Gelnika)
Power Source - gives you 1 permanent stat increase, can be morphed from 3 monsters (Gongag Reactor, Mount Nibel, Gelnika)
Ribbon - makes you immune to negative status conditions, can be morphed from Master Tonberry in the final dungeon
Speed Source - gives you 1 permanent stat increase, can be morphed from 1 monster (Gelnika)
So really it looks like morphing isn't much use except maybe at the end of the game to finish up some gear, to make killing emerald weapon easier, and to twink out your stats. So I'm not missing much, except that thing I probably already missed. Oh well! Tomorrow on the way to work I'm definitely going back to see how I missed Yuffie's ultimate weapon and then probably morph some dudes. Or maybe I'll just continue the plot because I've already done the morphing a ton of dudes thing in the past? I donno.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Final Fantasy VII: Curse Ring
I just stumbled across an item in Final Fantasy VII called the curse ring. I'd been working on turning the cursed shield in Final Fantasy VI into the paladin shield but didn't quite get it done. So I was wondering if this item would work the same way and, if so, if I should be working to uncurse it. It turns out to not be something you can uncurse. Instead it's an accessory that adds a massive amount to all stats but inflicts you with death sentence at the start of every fight.
Fortunately it seems there are a few ways to deal with death sentence. I guess the easiest is to just win the fight before it kills you which is great for random encounters but not so much for boss fights. Then you could always just die and cast life on the person in a long fight but that seems dangerous and costs you your limit meter. Apparently there's a blue magic spell 'death force' that makes you immune to death for the rest of the fight. I haven't learned that (I haven't learned very much at all in fact) but it could be useful. Finally you can use the 'added effect' materia and Odin/destruct in armour to give the person immunity to death permanently. That seems like the best way to go, but I don't think I've picked up an added effect materia at this point. Where would I find one of those?
Turns out it can only be found in the cave of gi way back in cosmo canyon. Huh. I wonder if I can still get in there to pick up the treasure I somehow missed the first time around. I did just get the airship so I guess it's easy enough to find out! Definitely my goal for the bus tomorrow morning!
Fortunately it seems there are a few ways to deal with death sentence. I guess the easiest is to just win the fight before it kills you which is great for random encounters but not so much for boss fights. Then you could always just die and cast life on the person in a long fight but that seems dangerous and costs you your limit meter. Apparently there's a blue magic spell 'death force' that makes you immune to death for the rest of the fight. I haven't learned that (I haven't learned very much at all in fact) but it could be useful. Finally you can use the 'added effect' materia and Odin/destruct in armour to give the person immunity to death permanently. That seems like the best way to go, but I don't think I've picked up an added effect materia at this point. Where would I find one of those?
Turns out it can only be found in the cave of gi way back in cosmo canyon. Huh. I wonder if I can still get in there to pick up the treasure I somehow missed the first time around. I did just get the airship so I guess it's easy enough to find out! Definitely my goal for the bus tomorrow morning!
Monday, December 03, 2012
Final Fantasy VII: Golden Saucer Date
One of the things I find so interesting about playing a game again years after I last played is how the information available about how the game works has advanced. The first time I played FFVII I played almost entirely in the dark. The second time I made liberal use of gamefaqs. This time around I am digging even deeper into the stuff on there. It may seem like I'm just finding new guides that already existed years ago, but no... There are guides with new information since I last played. For a game that's over 15 years old. That's pretty impressive I think!
At any rate, there's a scene near the end of the first disk of Final Fantasy VII where the main character chooses one of the other characters to go on an amusement park date. He'll choose between one of the three female characters or possibly the Mr T friend character. Not based on your choice at the time. Instead there are internal affection meters for each of the four characters that change as you make decisions throughout the plot. Be nice to someone and they like you more. Diss their world view and they like you less. Whoever ends up liking you the most when you get to the amusement park a second time goes on a date with the main character. The odds are stacked very heavily in Aeris's favour. It seems plausible that Tifa might get chosen if you're actively rude to Aeris at every turn but without really trying hard it's very unlikely to end up with Yuffie or Barret. I'm pretty sure I ended up with Aeris the first time I played and Tifa the second time. The second time I was trying to get Barret and failed because of faulty info in the guide I was reading...
You see, it turns out the game actually tracks two affection values for each character. One is used for the date, the other is used for nothing at all. But the first guy who took a hex editor to the game didn't figure that out. He just saw that some numbers were going up when you did all kinds of weird things so the first guide I read talked about doing crazy things. Like having Cloud attack Aeris in combat or using healing spells on Barret. Doing those things would adjust some internal numbers, but it wouldn't actually do anything.
It looks like there's a guide that got updated in 2009 that dug even deeper and worked that little difference out. I'm currently angling my way to meet up with Yuffie. I actually had to reset the game and replay about an hour or so because I forgot to recruit Yuffie in time to give her a tranquilizer on the boat for 4 affection. I messed up the meeting with the fort condor guys but I think I didn't have Aeris or Tifa in my party at all when I went in so I'm hoping it won't be too bad.
At any rate, there's a scene near the end of the first disk of Final Fantasy VII where the main character chooses one of the other characters to go on an amusement park date. He'll choose between one of the three female characters or possibly the Mr T friend character. Not based on your choice at the time. Instead there are internal affection meters for each of the four characters that change as you make decisions throughout the plot. Be nice to someone and they like you more. Diss their world view and they like you less. Whoever ends up liking you the most when you get to the amusement park a second time goes on a date with the main character. The odds are stacked very heavily in Aeris's favour. It seems plausible that Tifa might get chosen if you're actively rude to Aeris at every turn but without really trying hard it's very unlikely to end up with Yuffie or Barret. I'm pretty sure I ended up with Aeris the first time I played and Tifa the second time. The second time I was trying to get Barret and failed because of faulty info in the guide I was reading...
You see, it turns out the game actually tracks two affection values for each character. One is used for the date, the other is used for nothing at all. But the first guy who took a hex editor to the game didn't figure that out. He just saw that some numbers were going up when you did all kinds of weird things so the first guide I read talked about doing crazy things. Like having Cloud attack Aeris in combat or using healing spells on Barret. Doing those things would adjust some internal numbers, but it wouldn't actually do anything.
It looks like there's a guide that got updated in 2009 that dug even deeper and worked that little difference out. I'm currently angling my way to meet up with Yuffie. I actually had to reset the game and replay about an hour or so because I forgot to recruit Yuffie in time to give her a tranquilizer on the boat for 4 affection. I messed up the meeting with the fort condor guys but I think I didn't have Aeris or Tifa in my party at all when I went in so I'm hoping it won't be too bad.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Final Fantasy VII: Cutscenes
In my youth I was a Nintendo kid. We had a SNES and then a Nintendo 64 in my household and I don't recall even thinking once about getting a PlayStation. As such, when Final Fantasy VII came out in 1997 I didn't have a clue about it and certainly never played it. It wasn't until Josh joined the group of people living in Comfy Prime (and brought his PS with him) that I had a chance to play it at all. And by that point Final Fantasy VIII had come out and I'd watched many people playing that game. I only played FFVII to differentiate myself from everyone else who was playing FFVIII.
By this point I'd heard such good things about the graphics in FFVII but I remember being pretty unimpressed with them. People who had played it at launch would have been comparing it to the 16 bit era FFVI at best. I was comparing it to FFVIII and it wasn't spectacular at all. It probably didn't help that our collection of televisions was pretty low grade since we were poor students and all. At any rate, my memory of FFVII's graphics was that they distinctly mediocre.
When I hit the first FMV cutscene the other day on my PSP I was blown away. The PSP has a pretty high resolution screen for a portable device which I'm sure helps but I'm now in a position to compare this to FFVI. A remade PS version of FFVI mind you, but one that tried very hard to keep the 16 bit look and feel. I am now very impressed with the FFVII graphics. Combat and stuff is pretty good, but this FMV was awesome. I guess this sort of thing is why the game was 1.3G, eh?
I love how Da Fool and Ubu jump into the back of a pick-up!
By this point I'd heard such good things about the graphics in FFVII but I remember being pretty unimpressed with them. People who had played it at launch would have been comparing it to the 16 bit era FFVI at best. I was comparing it to FFVIII and it wasn't spectacular at all. It probably didn't help that our collection of televisions was pretty low grade since we were poor students and all. At any rate, my memory of FFVII's graphics was that they distinctly mediocre.
When I hit the first FMV cutscene the other day on my PSP I was blown away. The PSP has a pretty high resolution screen for a portable device which I'm sure helps but I'm now in a position to compare this to FFVI. A remade PS version of FFVI mind you, but one that tried very hard to keep the 16 bit look and feel. I am now very impressed with the FFVII graphics. Combat and stuff is pretty good, but this FMV was awesome. I guess this sort of thing is why the game was 1.3G, eh?
I love how Da Fool and Ubu jump into the back of a pick-up!
Friday, November 23, 2012
Final Fantasy VII: Versions and Plans
Next up in my marathon is the best selling game in the series: Final Fantasy VII. I'd remembered hearing something about a recent PC re-release of this game so I figured I should go looking for information on what may have changed to see what version I wanted to try playing.
It turns out there have been surprisingly few version of FFVII over the years. Considering how many versions keep popping up of FFIV, for example, I would have thought there'd be more FFVII running around. I guess FFVII is the first game of the PlayStation era and therefore the original version was playable in more places than the old ones thanks to the backwards compatibility of the PS2/PSP/PS3. As best I can tell there have only really been 2 relevant releases. PSX and PC. The game changed a little between the initial Japanese release and the subsequent NA port, and a little again when the NA version was ported back to Japan, but they're essentially the same game. It was also released on the PS Network for PSP and PS3 but that is also a straight port. The PC version apparently was built off of an old branch of the PSX code and as a result ended up a little different. And by different I mostly mean incredibly buggy. But because it was on PC it was relatively easily modded. The new PC release a couple months ago is essentially just the old PC version with the better mods applied which fixed bugs. And some easy to obtain achievements.
The new PC version doesn't sound like it's really any different from the old PSX version. As such, it's really not worth my while to pick it up. But for someone who wants to play the game in one location the new PC version sounds like a perfectly reasonable way to go. At any rate, I still want to play on the bus so I decided download the PSN version on my PSP instead of getting my PSX copy back from Andrew. I have to go through the hassle to set my router up each time I want to download a game on the PSP so I decided to buy FFVII and FFVIII at the same time. I went to start the downloads and ran into a bit of a problem... My PSP came with a 1G memory stick. FFVII is 1.3G and FFVIII is 1.8G! Those are huge! As Andrew pointed out, it's these sizes that took the Final Fantasy series away from Nintendo. The N64 could apparently hold 64M on a cartridge... Assuming this download is the same size as the initial game it would have taken 21 of those to hold the game. Yikes!
So I ended up having to go buy a new memory stick. It doesn't seem like they're really sold much anymore but I found a 4G one at The Source. I wanted a bigger one but if I need to offload games from the stick to my laptop in the future (or even just buy another 4G stick) it won't be the end of the world.
Now that I have the game the question is do I want to do anything wacky... Apparently the game is considered to be pretty darn easy and there are a lot of people coming up with all kinds of crazy challenges. For example, single character, initial equipment, no materia, no accessories, no running from fights. SCIENMNANE for short. The fact that this is even possible should be a clue as to how easy the game is when you use three characters, gear, and abilities!
On the other hand I've only played this game twice. The first time I did pretty much everything. I killed Sephiroth entirely with morph damage! The second time, during my first FF marathon, I think I just plowed through to the end fast. But while I remember a bit about the plot and mechanics I don't feel like I know the game very well. Not like FFIV or FFVI where I could rattle off pretty much the entire game if I had to. So I think I'm just going to play the game normally, be overpowered, and smash things. And then complain about how easy it is later.
Oh, and I'm going to date Yuffie this time. Honest!
It turns out there have been surprisingly few version of FFVII over the years. Considering how many versions keep popping up of FFIV, for example, I would have thought there'd be more FFVII running around. I guess FFVII is the first game of the PlayStation era and therefore the original version was playable in more places than the old ones thanks to the backwards compatibility of the PS2/PSP/PS3. As best I can tell there have only really been 2 relevant releases. PSX and PC. The game changed a little between the initial Japanese release and the subsequent NA port, and a little again when the NA version was ported back to Japan, but they're essentially the same game. It was also released on the PS Network for PSP and PS3 but that is also a straight port. The PC version apparently was built off of an old branch of the PSX code and as a result ended up a little different. And by different I mostly mean incredibly buggy. But because it was on PC it was relatively easily modded. The new PC release a couple months ago is essentially just the old PC version with the better mods applied which fixed bugs. And some easy to obtain achievements.
The new PC version doesn't sound like it's really any different from the old PSX version. As such, it's really not worth my while to pick it up. But for someone who wants to play the game in one location the new PC version sounds like a perfectly reasonable way to go. At any rate, I still want to play on the bus so I decided download the PSN version on my PSP instead of getting my PSX copy back from Andrew. I have to go through the hassle to set my router up each time I want to download a game on the PSP so I decided to buy FFVII and FFVIII at the same time. I went to start the downloads and ran into a bit of a problem... My PSP came with a 1G memory stick. FFVII is 1.3G and FFVIII is 1.8G! Those are huge! As Andrew pointed out, it's these sizes that took the Final Fantasy series away from Nintendo. The N64 could apparently hold 64M on a cartridge... Assuming this download is the same size as the initial game it would have taken 21 of those to hold the game. Yikes!
So I ended up having to go buy a new memory stick. It doesn't seem like they're really sold much anymore but I found a 4G one at The Source. I wanted a bigger one but if I need to offload games from the stick to my laptop in the future (or even just buy another 4G stick) it won't be the end of the world.
Now that I have the game the question is do I want to do anything wacky... Apparently the game is considered to be pretty darn easy and there are a lot of people coming up with all kinds of crazy challenges. For example, single character, initial equipment, no materia, no accessories, no running from fights. SCIENMNANE for short. The fact that this is even possible should be a clue as to how easy the game is when you use three characters, gear, and abilities!
On the other hand I've only played this game twice. The first time I did pretty much everything. I killed Sephiroth entirely with morph damage! The second time, during my first FF marathon, I think I just plowed through to the end fast. But while I remember a bit about the plot and mechanics I don't feel like I know the game very well. Not like FFIV or FFVI where I could rattle off pretty much the entire game if I had to. So I think I'm just going to play the game normally, be overpowered, and smash things. And then complain about how easy it is later.
Oh, and I'm going to date Yuffie this time. Honest!
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