Board 8 > oh hell yeah ffvii is on switch (playthrough?)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Never finished this game (or disc 1, even). With the quarantine, I was browsing what was on Switch and discovered this!

Let's mosey.
---

aw yeah FFVII

I'm here for this

(get FFVIII Remastered too)

---

LeonhartFour posted...

aw yeah FFVII

I'm here for this

(get FFVIII Remastered too)

will do, if i can get through this, this time!
---

hype
---

Anddddd that's a tag

nice

---

It was late last night, so I just got past a short intro.

- The cinematic sense of this game is fantastic. Starting with the pan from Aeris's face up and out until you capture all of Midgar; the various camera angles for each setting (isometric for most scenes; up-close for an elevator; forward/backward for train scenes) are all creative and unique. Love the shot of the reactor being blown up. Love the cyberpunk setting and the conceit of helping the environmentalists, who have to use insurgency tactics.

- The tradeoff for this is that (and I remember this from before) - the controls aren't always intuitive, for moving around. In this, it's so much better to have a joystick compared to the original game, which only let you use the D-pad. I also realized that you don't need to hold the run button if you tilt the joystick. Small quality of life improvements!

- Barrett talks like every line of his is supposed to be quotable. It's easy to think of FFVII as the first "modern" RPG due to its graphical direction, but the dialogue still reads very 90s.

- For some reason, when I fought the scorpion boss, some sort of glitch let Cloud use his limit break like three times in a row. That can't be right, right? I literally killed it the moment Cloud mentioned its tail being up.

- In a side-section at the save point I wound up going to, a rando dude is looking up at a very impressive Midgar Tower. Cloud experiences some sort of PTSD before he looks through it. His story right now is almost comically opaque, but I am looking forward to exploring it.
---

SeabassDebeste posted...

- For some reason, when I fought the scorpion boss, some sort of glitch let Cloud use his limit break like three times in a row.

There are triggers in the FFVII HD versions that let you have instant limit breaks and turbo mode. You must have accidentally hit one of those triggers.

---

pressing right stick activates infinite limit mode
left stick is triple speed
both sticks toggles encounters on/off

---

Tag, why not!

---

what does triple speed mean?

i thought right-stick changed the camera or something, based on something from the intro. obviously not true!

i probably want encounters on (that's how they are in the normal game, right?) - that's the symbol with the sword with the slash through it?
---

SeabassDebeste posted...

what does triple speed mean?

exactly what it says

everything moves at 3 times the speed

everything

---

triple speed means battles and the field screen play at triple speed, but cutscenes do not.
moving the right stick controls the camera, pushing it in toggles cheats

you definitely want encounters on


---

Okay, so picking things up! We're out in the slums, where opinion on AVALANCHE is mixed. It turns out that Tifa is the one who requested that Cloud join AVALANCHE. She reminisces a bit about the good old days, though Cloud resolutely maintains a stick up his ass even when he agrees to go on another mission.

Pushing through this second mission doesn't go as well. There's a dramatic train escape (complete with me almost getting a dope item from someone, but accidentally picking the wrong dialogue option because of time pressure). Since she's already the weakest character, I hand Tifa the Restore Materia, which further makes her worse in battle. (Gimme some offensive spells, would ya?)

(At this point, I begin to realize that judicious use of the speed-up function was very useful in the random encounters.)

Sector 5 is a surprisingly long dungeon with a bit of non-linearity, but we meander through it. Cloud remembers Tifa's family being butchered and that it was blamed on Sephiroth, who's starting to build himself a nice off-screen presence.

Before we can escape, we're ambushed by SHINRA - in fact, by President Shinra himself. We easily dispose of the boss (though it does cause me to use my first-ever in-battle Cure spell on Tifa).

A break in the ground results in a splitting of the party, and I'm suddenly waking up in the care of Aeris. She's got a different attitude toward Cloud - more withdrawn and lighthearted than Tifa's reminder of Cloud's responsibilities and apparently of his childhood desire to get the hell out of their small town. The flower-girl also represents life here.

After getting run out by Reno and the Turks (what a fantastic theme song!) we wind up escaping near Aeris's house. Aeris shares that she was being recruited for SOLDIER, and Cloud manages to... poke fun at her... and laugh a little. Apparently she's more his type. But this feels like Cloud beginning to turn the corner.

Some notes:
- Regular battles rarely stretch long enough, but deep into the music it's really great.
- Boss battle music is also energetic and strong, though this boss itself was bland in design. Scorpion-dude was more interesting.
- President Shinra's finger-snap is fantastic.
- Reno and the Turks are so damn cool.
---

Regular battle theme is fantastic, and the Turks are great, yeah.

---

Definite tag

---

SeabassDebeste posted...

I hand Tifa the Restore Materia, which further makes her worse in battle. (Gimme some offensive spells, would ya?)

you passed a shop selling all the offensive spells already!

---

Oh yeah, that's true! If you want to cheese Midgar, get three lightning materia. Not quite as useful once you leave Midgar, but still!

---

Dont take the kids 5 gil.He gives you an item later that is worth way more

---

Updates on last night:

One thing that I guess eludes me when I'm a kid that is more striking to me now is the depiction of poverty. FFVII's is pretty striking - with Aeris, we're again stuck in the slums, moving back and forth. Lots of distrust and attitude, even from the shopowners. One dude's house looks like just a large industrial pipe. Before heading to Sector 5, we pop out the back end of Sector 5 and look out into the world beyond the city walls. It's shot at a massive distance, emphasizing how much is outside of Midgar.

On to Sector 6. This time, I find the Materia shop and load Aeris with Cure, Fire, and Lightning. Cloud gets to keep his Lightning and Ice.

We state our intent to find Tifa (which for some reason actually surprises me; Cloud seems pretty apathetic so far), which results in some teasing. Aeris is insistent on escorting us (isn't Cloud the bodyguard??) so we stay with Aeris's mom, who begs Cloud to leave alone. Not like we need her help anyway ("Help from a girl?" Give me all the toxic masculinity!) At first I don't realize it, but apparently we have to sneak past Aeris... who nonetheless waylays us on the way to Sector 7.

And it turns out... that she was actually right from a utility perspective. Aeris is insanely weak physically and is stuck in the back row, but I overcome my reluctance to waste MP because the enemies are pretty tough - the house (lol wut) has a lot of HP and deals big damage later, and these four tentacle-dog things strike really often at rates that add up pretty quickly. Big fan of the Healing Wind limit break (though I wish I could time it better), and I now gain Cross Cut as well. I'm also vaguely surprised to find out Cloud's magic is considerably stronger than his regular attack, which... well, it makes sense.

In Sector 7, we think we espy Tifa on the back of... a circus cart? We wind up tracking down a nightclub but are denied entry. Oh the shenanigans.

The music walking between sectors is CHILLLLLLL af.

(also i didn't steal the kid's money. i hadn't seen the post yet, but i felt bad, and it was only 5g!)
---

there's very few missables and one is the poster in that kid's room, make sure to look at it

---

is that kid in sector 6 or 7 again

because i've already passed sector 6
---

Sector 6. You make a return visit there a little later so dont sweat it.

Edit: Sector 5 is actually where Aeris' home uh, city area is. Sector 6 is that small ruined area where you saw Tifa.

---

Yeah, I love Midgar's design, just the striking disparity from area to area.

Have fun with this next part. There are a lot of different ways to tackle it.

---

oh wait so i'm currently in sector 6 - don't think i've moved past that yet, cool

also didn't mention this but the one screen comprising the path between sectors 5 and 6 was super annoying to figure out, graphically. chrono trigger had similar 2-tier areas but being 2D i was never as confused about how to get somewhere
---

Yeah, that area is tough to figure out at first, but I've played FFVII so much that it's second nature now! There's another part in Midgar later on that's kind of the same way.

---

Midgar's visual design is so good

though yeah, I remember having issues figuring out paths sometimes
---

The only way to get cute is if you can beat BIG BRO

---

three point squats

---

well i didn't beat big bro

This runaround has been pretty interesting. Aeris wants Cloud to dress in drag, and then... abandons him? We wind up going to the love hotel alone and taking a peep into two of the occupied rooms. One of them is two old people going at it thanks to their son (thanks, son...?) and the other is... some dude who's obsessed with enacting some sort of roleplay ritual where he pretends to be a god. WHAT.

Takes me a while to figure out where to go, but the clothesmaker finally sends us on a fetchquest to the bar and then to the gym, where Big Bro wrecks me at squats (to be fair, I didn't successfully complete a single squat for about 20 of the 30 seconds...) They don't even let me retry it because someone KOs him! Blah. Anyway, jokes about cross-dressing are kind of passe in 2020, but the hilarity of seeing Cloud prettified isn't.

Haven't managed to get any further just yet, but looking forward to it!
---

SeabassDebeste posted...

One of them is two old people going at it thanks to their son (thanks, son...?) and the other is... some dude who's obsessed with enacting some sort of roleplay ritual where he pretends to be a god.

You can look in on those rooms multiple times and you can deduce who those people are.

SeabassDebeste posted...

(to be fair, I didn't successfully complete a single squat for about 20 of the 30 seconds...)

how is this possible

---

LeonhartFour posted...

You can look in on those rooms multiple times and you can deduce who those people are.

fuuuuuu well it looks like that chance has ended. the two guys in the baths mentioned that they worked for president shinra i think? don't think i have a guess for the dude with delusions of grandeur though!

LeonhartFour posted...

how is this possible

was hitting the 3 buttons way too fast for them to count. i didn't even realize i wasn't scoring points for them :(
---

Tag

---

SeabassDebeste posted...

One of them is two old people going at it thanks to their son (thanks, son...?)

Their son works for Shinra. You can also actually move the camera around and find something that will tell you who their son is.

SeabassDebeste posted...

don't think i have a guess for the dude with delusions of grandeur though!

It's President Shinra himself.

---

This entire mansion is a fantastic sequence of physical comedy. After getting admitted to Don Corneo's mansion, we surprise Tifa, who leaps up in shock after realizing she's been talking about her jealousy of Aeris right in front of Cloud himself. When she wants to discuss AVALANCHE activities without Aeris, she walks to the side and squats and puts her hand over her ears. Later, after Cloud dispatches the six dudes who want a piece of his action, we go back and find Aeris being chased by one dude, running in circles like a chicken with its head cut off. She winds up pushing him down the stairs and apologizing. And then when we go to Don Corneo's bedroom, he literally tries to jump on Tifa but does a belly-flop on his bed. We wrap this up with everyone, in turn, putting on leg up on the Don's bed to threaten him with slicing off, pulling off, or smashing "it."

After Don Corneo informs us that even scum like him isn't so eager to help good guys without having a trapdoor up his sleeve, we witness a short sequence in SHINRA headquarters. I absolutely love the aesthetic of the evil corporation here, complete with dramatic music, the malicious Heidegger, the amoral President Shinra, and the ineffectual Reed, who shows you that not everyone who works for Shinra is completely evil. Nonetheless, we must try to stop them from leveling Sector 7 in an effor to stamp out AVALANCHE (and also blame it on us.)

Back in our world, we're cast into the sewers and immediately beset by a boss who... well his main attack appears to be "Sludge," which... does a lot more damage to himself than to the party of Cloud/Tifa/Aeris. After dispatching him, we find ourselves on abandoned railroad tracks. Navigating them seems to take kind of a long time due to their taking multiple screens, and since (as with most dungeons) they look kind of monotonic, any interruptions in navigation (such as by temporarily taking a break from playing, or even just due to battle) set me back through some backtracking a few times. Nonetheless I enjoy the aesthetic here and also gain a materia that lets me use Steal, which I hand to Tifa. Tifa now mainly Steals, since she has no space for magical materia (lol) and her physical attack is kinda weak. Mostly she nets me Ethers, effectively Tents at this time since Cure works so well. In the best case, though, toward the very end, she actually snags a Combat Staff or something. I equip it to Aeris, and it boosts her attack from like 13 to 32??

That's actually the last I get to use Aeris, though. Once we reach the tower to climb Sector 7, she stays back to help Barett's daughter Marlene. Poor Wedge, Biggs, and Jessie. I suppose they never last long in FF, huh... I get stoked because I love the regular battle music, which plays the entire race up the tower. The best part of it is the end part of it, which rewards you for having longer battles that could otherwise be tedious - playing it straight through the entire sequence means you always get to hear it!

The sequence terminates at the top, where Barett is holding off choppers alone (lol). We accept him into the party and face off against Reno... who freezes Cloud first, then Tifa, and then kills Barett, handing me my first Game Over. Wut. I restart and this time actually equip people with some upgrades (Titan Bangles! Lightning Materia! Cure spell via Aeris!). It doesn't protect me against Reno, but this time I try attacking my own party members when they get pyramid'd, and that seems to work (without incurring friendly fire damage). Reno doesn't die but rather runs off, and someone named Tseng appears in his stead? He's got Aeris, and he reveals she's the last of the Ancients.

Sector 7 gets annihilated and we fall. Again. Is this a recurring joke in this game? I guess with its literal system of height representing social castes, it makes sense! Started from the bottom now we here again. In the striking ruins of Sector 7, Cloud has a flashback of Sephiroth's bragging about Ancient blood. We resolve to save Aeris and take out Shinra. This requires several runs of backtracking, during which we revisit Tifa's bar, and a little kid gives me some mega-ether. (Maybe we should've robbed him instead.) Aeris's mom reveals she has Marlene in her house, still a sanctuary compared to everywhere else. She also gives us a rather rote Aeris backstory flashback, involving a dead husband and an adopted kid. (This flashback does give us a great visual gag though - one soldier returns home and swings his wife; the next soldier comes off the train, big and fat, and his wife picks him up and swings him.)

We finally wind up trying to climb up Shinra's tower via a crazy wire, with the help of some batteries. The controls here are annoying and I waste time going up and down seeing if some events need to trigger before Cloud finally says "Hey, I can put a battery here." Glad for 3x speed here.

Looking forward to storming the tower!
---

The pillar sequence is so great

Also Corneo can pick any of the three depending on how much extra stuff you get for Cloud

---

With the right items you can get Corneo to pick you instead of Aerith or Tifa.

---

i think my first time through i actually did get picked by don corneo

you get a flower or something right? was that where "let's mosey" came from?
---

Let's mosey comes much later

---

i just wound up with the "four slot" and i really shouldn't have

but i have no recent save points

(edit) found a save point on the very next floor

damn you square
---

Did you charge in through the front or take the stairs?

---

Leonhart4 posted...

Did you charge in through the front or take the stairs?

i charged. cloud berates barett for it afterward, lol
---

Taking the stairs feels like it takes forever, but it gives you some great banter to make up for it.

---

now i'm bummed!
---

Productive day. Let's pick up right where we left off: by storming the Shinra HQ. We immediately fight our way into the elevator, which makes a few haphazard stops on the way to floor 59. We quickly go from a classic dungeon to corporate lounges, gyms, and the like. There's a brief cameo from the mayor; I don't entirely understand the puzzle (I'm able to get a few of the letters, but not all of them), but enough to see there are two B's and an O or M, so I guess BOMB and it's right and hey, a Materia!

It's unclear why you have . I enjoy the breadcrumbing at the 66th floor hinting at how to infiltrate the conference: amid a secretary who just enjoys meeting the men on the floor, we discover that a smell has been emanating from the conference room, and that in the bathroom, you can hear voices. Turns out... the smell has been going from the bathroom through the vent to the conference room, while the voices were traveling in the reverse direction. Nice. Anyway, more evilness is being broadly discussed (with Reed providing another rare source of "hey, we're not all THAT flagrantly evil?" - poor Reed.) Most notably, we latch onto Hojo the mad scientist, who's able to prevent us from killing him with leverage. Cloud catches a glimpse of Jenova which triggers another episode.

In something of an awkward sequence, Red XIII joins us, Aeris is rescued, we have a quick boss battle, and then President Shinra imprisons us. (Shoutout to Tseng and Rude.) That's followed by us getting out immediately. It's really cool the sense of dread from the trails of blood, but I can't help felling that being randomly captured at the last moment took some of the wind out of the sails of this rescue mission. In any case, the death of Shinra is obviously a game-changer, and choppers have arrived.

This next sequence gives me my second game-over. Aeris, Barret, and Red XIII manage their way through some consecutive boss battles without too much issue (though the second time through, I give them better Materia for their troubles). It's the fight with Rufus Shinra (who's pretty great, stupid cliche talk about ruling thorugh FEAR aside; I like his character design a lot) that gets me. That stupid dog puts up barriers right away while I'm trying to use the Sense attack, and it winds up with me unable to fend off the both of them. The second time around, though, I equip Cloud with the Restore Materia (much more efficient than Potions!) and immediately blast the dog with two magic spells, taking it out, and then calmly dismantle Rufus. Love the Shotgun attack still though!

Incredibly, this fight doesn't wind up with Cloud taking a huge dive - we're able to leave via the elevator - but that doesn't mean we don't have an inexplicable motorbike sequence, followed by a final boss fight at the precipice of a cliff. The style of FFVII continues to impress!

Beating this boss leaves us with nothing keeping us Midgar, where Shinra PR ensures that AVALANCHE is persona non grata. So it's off to the World Map, with a promise to meet in a little town to the northeast. There, at an inn, Cloud tells a story about his hometown, Nibelheim, and how Sephiroth develops a serious Oedipus complex with a mix of god-assertions. Also Tifa wears a fun hat.

But seriously, it's nice getting this background characterization of an iconic villain. Having Sephiroth in the party in the flashback is really entertaining. Nothing does damage to him, he has 3000 HP, and his Masamune allows him six Materia. He slaughters a dragon in two hits and reduces all other enemies to rubble with spells like Bolt3 or Quake3. He's menacing at first, and it's pretty damn debatable whether SOLDIER is heroic or villainous, but it's interesting that Cloud appears to be present for Sephiroth's actual descent into pure, chaotic evil. We also of course witness that iconic walk through the fire. Meanwhile, the wide-eyed kid version of Cloud is really fun, too.

After that, I'm really lost as to where to go. I go down, catch Chocobos, get slaughtered by Midgar Zolom, find a cave where Sephiroth has killed a Zolom... but I can't figure out where I have to go to trigger more plot events. The only accessible territories seem to be Sephiroth's slaughtered Zolom, the Chocobo Farm, Midgar (which I'm locked out of now), and the little town where I'm pretty confident I've talked to literally every person. This is the type of thing that makes me either consult guides or just quit. I'd love to figure it out on my own, but the only clue of "He went east into the grassy lands" or whatever doesn't seem to be helping.

---

* Midgar's Science department is full of very ominous-sounding titles. Lots of experimenting on live subjects and the biology of Ancients. Ick.

* Didn't get a great look at Jenova. Oh well.

* Hojo really seems like one of the most depraved characters in the story.

* Why does Sephiroth leave the Masamune just sticking out of people? Is it not a big deal or what.

* So... why does Sephiroth have a weird relationship with Cloud? He obviously frees Cloud intentionally, and Cloud doesn't even understand how he survived fighting Sephiroth the first time.

* Hunting Sephiroth seems distinctly unwise given the power differential, but hey, whatever drives the plot!

* I am actually enjoying the little snippets of Ceta/Ancients lore. The backstory of this game has a lot in common with FFVI (magic is ancient; materia/espers; the like) and I'm enjoying the parallels and differences.
---

Yeah, I got stuck there my first time through the game, too. You can enter a cave on the other side of the swamp that lets you access a new area.

also yeah Rufus is awesome

---

I have to say that I absolutely love that part of the game - from Shinra tower through the flashback and Zolom - for how effectively it builds up the threat of Sephiroth.

Obviously the iconic fire scene and descent into madness is great, but the way the mechanics of the game build him up as something so far beyond the team. The flashback has him casually killing monsters that Cloud can hardly touch, while the Zolom reveal tells the player that - despite all their work to safely cross the swamp and avoid the Zolom - Sephiroth can make short work of it in a seemingly theatrical fashion.

From the atmosphere when we see the carnage in the tower through to the Zolom reveal, I really can't think of a stretch in any game that builds up its villain the way FF7 does through that part of the game. Nothing is in the present and on screen, and yet the player and every character has been humbled by the sheer power difference.

I love this game.

---

LeonhartFour posted...

Yeah, I got stuck there my first time through the game, too. You can enter a cave on the other side of the swamp that lets you access a new area.

also yeah Rufus is awesome

i'm really stupid

i assumed the area with the dead midgar zolom was the cave

turns out you can go into it if you disembark the chocobo

whoops
---

yeah I made the exact same mistake when I first played

---

LeonhartFour posted...

yeah I made the exact same mistake when I first played

I think it's a rite of passage for lots of FF7 players to miss that cave the first time through. It certainly happened to me on my first playthrough.

---