The Shrine

So, summer 2022 I’m basically playing old games before jumping into Xenoblade Chronicles 3.

Skip the next paragraph if you don’t care about what other games I’m playing.

Witcher 3 I began early in the year, and I’m still playing, it’s a game that takes me about 200 hours to do all the stuff I want. I’m also playing through the DKC trilogy, after crushing SMB3 (well, I did struggle on world 7, but world 8 I have etched into my memory, and I might have died 4 or 5 times total on it). DKC1 is easy, I died 5 or 6 times on the Minecart level, and everything else has been mostly 0 deaths, this game is the easiest of the DKC trilogy. Romancing Saga 2 I’m about 40 hours into, longer than I spent on FF7, which took me 30 hours to finish, and I did it across the last 2 weeks or so. Granted, FF7 is a game I’m highly familiar with, Romancing Saga 2 I just learned this year.

FINAL FANTASY VII

I love the opening parts of FF7 from the Avalanche missions, the idea of playing a militant environmentalist has a lot of appeal to me. The bloody assault of Sephiroth in the lab, the escape from Midgar, Kalm, the Midgar Zolom demolished, the Turks, Junon Harvour, and all the way up to Costa Del Sol. That’s my favourite part of the game. I like the next stretch, from here until Rocket Town quite a lot too, as some of my favourite parts of the game are here, but the constant enjoyment is broken. In the middle stretch, there’s stuff I don’t care a lot about, and parts that aren’t as interesting as I remember. But there are the flashbacks in Nibelheim, some of the Gold Saucer Stuff… that I love (along with other bits).

The last stretch of the game, Temple of the Ancients, the glacier, Cloud stuck in the lifestream, all that stuff just bored the shit out of me. Although, I did like some of the towns (the Winter town, and the one where Cloud sleeps in his coma). The rest of it didn’t interest me a great deal. The end battle with Sephiroth was kind of annoying, I ended up making my way down the crater, and then forgetting to use the Save Crystal item, and got wiped out by Jenova, sending me back like 1.5 hours—I forgot when games did this shit. Anyway, that last part of the game always left me with a sour taste.

The ending with the Meteor, Holy, and the Lifestream was still brilliant. Really great and emotional ending.

UP NEXT

Now I’m going to do FF8. Traditionally, FF8 is my favourite game alongside FF6. I mostly love both games all the way through - though I hate the prison section in FF8 at the start of disk 2, but it’s very short—maybe 12-15 minutes, so it’s not a huge deal. FF6 has no section of the game I dislike. I recently bashed FF9, because I don’t particularly like the game, especially after the first 8 hours or so, when the Life Tree part, the Moogle Town, the Dwarves, and all that stuff happens. But I’m probably going to do FF9 just for completion’s sake before pushing into the much more exciting and interesting FFX. FF9 is much less painful playing with X3 speed. FF12 is a possibility, but probably not, IMO, FF13 is the next really “FF” feeling Final Fantasy, FF12 is a failed Matsuno game that had a lot of potential, but feels much less complete than even Xenogears.

Now, I can only hope that the Pixel Remasters and a Chrono Trigger Remaster comes out soon, because IMO FF6 and Chrono Trigger have more akin with FF7, 8, X than with FF1-5, as FF6 is where story in FF games really took off, although FF4 was good too… but playing FF4 and 6 back to back a while ago really showed how big the gap between those two games actually was. FF6 felt much more cinematic, and every part of the game felt like it was trying to be the best part of the game.

Anyway, I’m rambling again

The greatest FF of all time.

It feels like the game should've ended when Aeris died and you're just going through the motions to catch up to Sephiroth after that other than resolving the plot point of Cloud's past. It didn't drag out needlessly but they sure used up all the good stuff early on, which isn't a bad thing but it's a very high bar to meet for the rest of the game.

I think most people generally remember the earliest parts of a game the best. At least, that would explain the popularity of a lot of RPGs that have really lacklustre second halves. This includes Xenoblade Chronicles, which is now counted among the best RPGs of all time, but isn’t all that great in the second half. Still, Xenoblade and FF7 are two games I’m always happy to play - and FF7 I find is still a fairly satisfying game even after quitting after Costa Del Sol or rocket town (both of which I’ve done before).

And Eric, I don’t disagree, FF7 brought RPGs into the mainstream more so than any other game. It’s not my favourite FF game, but it’s among my favourites. And if it stopped around Aeris’s death as Don suggested (or shortly thereafter) I’d probably like the game as a whole as much as I do FF6 and 8.


Anyway, with FF8, I’m currently at the prison section… then the hurricane hit

If you can only get something right some of the time better to get it right earlier than later. Besides I can't think of too many examples of a game that started out badly that turned out to be quite good. I mean you can try something like the game doesn't make a whole lot of sense early on and only after you get to the end or even on a replay do you see all the details, which is sort of what FF7 did with the whole Cloud's past but it's just not that interesting even when you do figure out why things are that way. I guess something like Terranigma works where a lot of what you're doing doesn't make sense early on, but then it started out strong anyway and it should have always dawned on you that there's something wrong going on when you started in a world with lava rivers that things aren't what they seem. I think too many game demand too much where it starts off slow or even terrible on the premise that it'll turn good, but that's not enough. Most of the time it never turned out to be good anyway.

Terranigma is an example of a game that starts off fairly good, but then becomes fantastic getting into the civilization era and bringing all the pieces together.