well I finally went and finished it. I've started this game probably a dozen times in my life, as far back as borrowing a friend's copy to play on my psone (the lil round one, not the big original kind) in 2001. And to no one's surprise: it's really fucking good! It's a classic for a reason.
Over the years I had already had a lot of major story moments spoiled and so I was expecting the game to not quite land or not really hit as hard as it did but it turns out that the execution is so strong that it didn't really matter that I went into a scene and said "Oh, this is the part where [redacted] dies" because that scene still Fuckin Hits!!
And there was still stuff I hadn't heard about! The submarine! Playing as Tifa! So there was still fun surprises for me here, too. And that moment when I finally got Cloud back after he's gone for a while? Hit so fuckin' hard!! The boy!!! He's back!!! Love him. Love it. Love it all.
I don't have many complaints about this game but one of them is all the little minigames you have to play. I think it is an interesting/cool idea to say "your character is going to perform an action that we can't really make work with turn-based combat so instead we'll do a lil bespoke minigame so the player isn't just watching a cutscene". I do, generally, like that idea. But so many of the minigames it has you do feel like unresponsive shit-garbage to control and frequently have little to no feedback to if you're even doing them correctly (or if you are doing things wrong, what it is you're doing wrong). So many frustrating moments that really feel like they should just make them more lenient. Just let me get through your story!! Don't be super strict about making sure I perform CPR correctly or am good enough at a military parade or raced a dumb bird or whatever else. I think the only one I really liked was the snowboarding but even that was kinda fucked up because of the Steam version's love/hate relationship with my controller.
My only other big complaint is Cid because, wow, that dude sucks ass. No wonder I've never heard anyone really talk about him when they talk about the characters in this game. His whole thing is really just he's an angry misogynist and I guess I'm supposed to think he's... cool? Because at the end he realizes he was mad about something he was wrong about? Fuck off into the sun, Cid. This is maybe the only FF I've played where I disliked a party member to the degree that I found him actually repellent. When I got to the section where I had to play as him I looked up a walkthrough to figure out how long I was stuck in that hell and what the quickest way through it was. Luckily, it was blessedly short.
Red XIII's line "It's hard to stand on your own two legs" has really stuck with me, maybe more than any other individual line of dialogue has in a long time. It's just such a succinct summation of part of this game's theme, y'know? You can't do it on your own, you have to be ready and willing to not just ask for help but also to accept it. You need people around you because life is hard and we can't make it on our own. Also, if you're an alien dog in disguise pretending to be a human solider it is literally difficult to stand on your own two feet.
At the start of the game I was a staunch Aerti shipper but the relationship that builds between Cloud and Tifa throughout this is so sweet it got me dangerously close to becoming a Cloti shipper. Although in my heart of hearts I know the real answer here is Claerti.
One last thing: like I alluded to above, the Steam version is super fucked! It didn't properly recognize my controller and had no way to rebind them so my only option would've been to do it via Steam's controller shit but that would've messed it up for every other game I play! It sucks! And if you use a controller the button prompts don't update correctly so you have to the keyboard binds and how those map to your controller! It sucks! Bad port! I think the only advantage this has is that it's easier to plug into a cheat engine table if you want that for any particular reason, y'know.
Over the years I had already had a lot of major story moments spoiled and so I was expecting the game to not quite land or not really hit as hard as it did but it turns out that the execution is so strong that it didn't really matter that I went into a scene and said "Oh, this is the part where [redacted] dies" because that scene still Fuckin Hits!!
And there was still stuff I hadn't heard about! The submarine! Playing as Tifa! So there was still fun surprises for me here, too. And that moment when I finally got Cloud back after he's gone for a while? Hit so fuckin' hard!! The boy!!! He's back!!! Love him. Love it. Love it all.
I don't have many complaints about this game but one of them is all the little minigames you have to play. I think it is an interesting/cool idea to say "your character is going to perform an action that we can't really make work with turn-based combat so instead we'll do a lil bespoke minigame so the player isn't just watching a cutscene". I do, generally, like that idea. But so many of the minigames it has you do feel like unresponsive shit-garbage to control and frequently have little to no feedback to if you're even doing them correctly (or if you are doing things wrong, what it is you're doing wrong). So many frustrating moments that really feel like they should just make them more lenient. Just let me get through your story!! Don't be super strict about making sure I perform CPR correctly or am good enough at a military parade or raced a dumb bird or whatever else. I think the only one I really liked was the snowboarding but even that was kinda fucked up because of the Steam version's love/hate relationship with my controller.
My only other big complaint is Cid because, wow, that dude sucks ass. No wonder I've never heard anyone really talk about him when they talk about the characters in this game. His whole thing is really just he's an angry misogynist and I guess I'm supposed to think he's... cool? Because at the end he realizes he was mad about something he was wrong about? Fuck off into the sun, Cid. This is maybe the only FF I've played where I disliked a party member to the degree that I found him actually repellent. When I got to the section where I had to play as him I looked up a walkthrough to figure out how long I was stuck in that hell and what the quickest way through it was. Luckily, it was blessedly short.
Red XIII's line "It's hard to stand on your own two legs" has really stuck with me, maybe more than any other individual line of dialogue has in a long time. It's just such a succinct summation of part of this game's theme, y'know? You can't do it on your own, you have to be ready and willing to not just ask for help but also to accept it. You need people around you because life is hard and we can't make it on our own. Also, if you're an alien dog in disguise pretending to be a human solider it is literally difficult to stand on your own two feet.
At the start of the game I was a staunch Aerti shipper but the relationship that builds between Cloud and Tifa throughout this is so sweet it got me dangerously close to becoming a Cloti shipper. Although in my heart of hearts I know the real answer here is Claerti.
One last thing: like I alluded to above, the Steam version is super fucked! It didn't properly recognize my controller and had no way to rebind them so my only option would've been to do it via Steam's controller shit but that would've messed it up for every other game I play! It sucks! And if you use a controller the button prompts don't update correctly so you have to the keyboard binds and how those map to your controller! It sucks! Bad port! I think the only advantage this has is that it's easier to plug into a cheat engine table if you want that for any particular reason, y'know.
5 Comments
nothing is capable of removing my aerti brainworms, but og ff7 really does sell you on cloti by the end, i love how genuinely caring and reciprocally supportive their relationship becomes by the end. really good review!!!
me, i cheat engine mememememe i used it and it was awesome. I totally forgot about Cid's storyline, but the great thing about forgetting what he is like I can just think he is hot and imagine him being a wonderful nice yaoi guy.
I'm a big clarret fan (love my boy barret)
Yeah I recently found out the hard way how fucked the steam port is, that I bought years ago at this point. Shame on me for legally buying the game. Thank god for Duckstation. cloti all the way.
poyfuh
2 months ago