There are times in your life when you realize just how awesome it is to be alive in this time period. Here I am standing in a random game store bored out of my mind looking for a new PSP game to kill time with when out of nowhere the sales clerk started putting these on the shelf....

I nearly sqeeed in pleasure.

Anyway as some of you may know this is the official prequel to Final Fantasy VII possibly the best RPG in existence, my opinion. You play as Zack, and for the first time learn about this man that so shaped Clouds character.

The time period is right at the end of the Wutai/Shinra war, again they finally flesh out why they were fighting in the first place, and you even get a cameo of a young Yuffie thats so small and cute it makes your teeth want to fall out.

You also see close up good 3d rendering of several people like Tsung of the Turks and a new. or old, turk member that was really easy on the eyes.

The fight system is made of pure win and if they use it for the mythical remake of FF7 then I will be pleased. I like the character design and voice actor for Aeris, I am an Aeris fanboy in exile and I always feel the need to murderize anybody calling her Aerith.

Interestingly enough we also see a younger Cloud still in the Shinra military and working his way up into the Soldier ranks, apparently its not that he was not fit for soldier he just hadn't made it in by the time Nibelhiem happened.

You are also introduced to two other first class soldiers, of the two one of them ties into Dirge of Cerberus, but thats all I'm saying

rating: 5/5

Fanboy bonus +1

Aeris Fanboy bonus +1

Cooky villain names -1

Bad ass Sephiroth fight scenes +1

Over all 9/5

 

Prettiest game the PSP's ever had and possibly ever will. Square-Enix maxed this system's capability in the game, it even rivaled the art in Advent Children. That being said, while it completed the background for the game I desperately wanted, it left a few things to be desired.

A) 300 missions. 200 of which were cookie cutter missions that didn't explore much of the story at all aside from the opening paragraphs about it. It becomes extremely monotonous and frustrating completing all of them.
B) The battle system was too easy and too simple for a departure from Final Fantasy's battle systems. If I actually got hit during fights, except by a spell, then I wasn't paying much attention.
C) The materia fusion system requires hours of grinding to be very useful. And when you want to overpower a certain materia that isn't of the highest rank, you find it near-impossible with some (such as graviga, very hard to power up while retaining its function)
D) At the end of the game, to be as functional as possible in hard fights, you spammed one attack (Costly punch). There's not much room to work (such as focusing on being a mage more than brute force fighter) while still dealing as much damage.


Even with all these flaws, the game's background, fanboy exploitation, art and overall design makes this one of the most enjoyable PSP experiences I've had to date. It was definitely worth the purchase cost.
4.5/5 For fanboys. 4/5 for the standard gamer.

 

I saw all of that too, but you have to take into account that since this is the first FF7 game that followed the original as an RPG they were obviously going for experimentation by adding in the new things.

Battle system = win

Materia Fusion = fail

summon system....eh it was alright.

But if they do remake FF7, which i think they will, we may see some of these concepts in it, but let it be known that if they fuck up the ability system like they did in FF 12 then I will be pissed off.

 

Why do they think they'll make a remake? I read the article at IGN, and Square soft kind of avoided the question.

 

All signs point to a remake, that's why.

Demand is there
Square loves to remake their FF games for new systems.
They've already technically remade the first ten minutes of the game (PS3's release party was the in-game video from FF7) so they've obviously thought of it and were working on it at some point.
FF7 is a cash cow. Quite literally. The could slap a price tag on a pile of garbage and if it somehow involved FF7 someone would purchase it.

It's been talked about for years and now that they've explored other avenues concerning FF7, a remake is about all that's possible for them. If it does happen/is announced, it will likely be after this next franchise series of games come out. FF13 has quite a large chunk of video-games under development (three different games, I believe), thus a large portion of Square-Enix design team's time. After its release, these developers will be free since they've begun this standard of waiting a number of years between new FF's.

 

Ya what he said. The only thing thats going to piss me off is that I know they are going to call Aeris Aerith in the remake and thats going to make me homicidal.

 

Enix absorbed Squaresoft and somehow the name became Square Enix. Eh, the money's too tempting, they'll eventually succumb to their dark desires and put one out.

I used to enjoy the FF's but then I lost interest after dedicating months to grinding out characters to make them lvl 99 all the time. Might pick this one up, thanks for the heads up on the game.

How about th Chrono games? Any chance of a continuation there? I haven't checked on it in a few years, but last I heard was that it was a no go.

 

I want them to remake it and actually make the story make more fucking sense!

Every FF after 7 felt off. 8 wasn't bad, but I didn't care for it for some reason. 9 sucked. hard. 10 I couldnt be fucked with. 11.. no. 12 pathetic. Story took fucking forever, too drawn out, I couldn't give a damn about the characters, especially considering Vaan was what.. like 14? Bossing around adults.. nope.


Give me a damned adult FF, adult themes, and decent battle system. Stop making it so childish. It's funny FF7 looked the childish for awhile there, but it still had appeal to adults.

And Chrono Trigger was awesome for what it was. And then already did a remake and a sequel. I couldnt bring myself to finish the sequel for some reason =/

 

If your talking about Cloud's fit of temporary insanity well...thats really all Jenova's fault. You see when Hojo put both Cloud and Zack in the Mako shower chambers Cloud didn't take too well to it, add in the injection of Jenova cells and he was all kinds of fucked up. Well after Zack died Cloud, with the help of Jenova, somehow imprinted Zack's ability's, and some of his memory's, into his brain and from there we get Soldier Cloud however because of his Jenova cells good old Sephi had a way to control him and thats what was up with the whole Black Materia thing.

On a side note to those who think that Cloud's ability's are a perfect copy of Zack's, they are not. As of Crisis Core it has been revealed that Cloud knows all of two limit breaks that Zack had, Meteorain and Omni, but to be fair Zack's version is called Octa Slash and its nowhere near as bad ass or as sophisticated as Omni Slash is so you can argue that Cloud defiantly improved the move.

 

Frankly, I wish they'd just let FF7 DIE already. Wasn't that great of a story to begin with...still, eh, money talks I guess.

 

HERETIC!!! I would KILL you right now if I could only reach through this screen and strangle you

 

I'm going to have to open this game one of these days.

But first, Symphony of the Night.

 

Which is entirely too convulted and confusing. The whole game's like that, you really have to play it multiple times to understand just what the hell's going on.

 

True, but I can tell you right I didn't mind that one bit

Also I have noticed that most things worth seeing or playing or reading are like that....the other day I saw the first Ghost in the Shell movie for the first time in I think four years and I could finally understand what hell was going on.

 

I finished it twice in my mid-late teens. There's so much boring content in the game (grinding battles and slow to complete run-around quests) that there's just no way I'd have the patience to ever play through it these days.

I loved the characters and story at the time tho. Now? Meh.

Yak.

 

Yep same here Yak. At the time I loved it. Played through it on PC not too long ago.. I was totally ing the whole time.

 

You should see my little brother! he fought monsters in the northern caverns, right before Cloud gave Sehpiroth the Black Materia, until he was level ninety nine...

 

Just a prediction on my part:

Expect a PS3 remake of FFVII. >_> Square is playing with too much shit with the game for it just to be a "Tech Demo."

As for Crisis Core; Meh.. I dont like the battle system at all, but the story aint all that bad from what I've played of it. I like it, but then, I like FF7 still.

And Final Fantasy 9 was way to fucking childish-looking for me to like or take serious. God I hated that game.

 

I'd agree with that prediction, there's just a little too much behind for not to be revived in some way and no possibility of turning down the revenue it would generate. Expect a long wait though

On an FF/random encounter related theme, I've managed to snag an original copy of FF7 in a car boot sale (garage sale) a fortnight ago. REJOICE!!!