Board 8 > final fantasy vii remake playthrough topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

roche is a fucking goober

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finally got 7 darts

eat shit wedge

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Chapter 7

after two chapters of relative downtime, here's the real stuff. I spread this out over two days so my memories may not be 100% here.

chapter 7 is the 5th reactor, which is extremely straightforward. nobody is here. you walk right in, plant the bomb and walk away. interestingly, Cloud has a flashback here -- it's Tifa in Nibelheim, picking up Sephiroth's sword and charging in. good stuff.

you're about to walk out of the reactor when they literally pull a ladder in front of you and you end up on some kind of shinra tv, with the president talking to you/taunting you. they're about to kill you on live tv using the airbuster, the boss here. however, the airbuster isn't full operational so you're able to fight through the enemies here.

the level here is very linear, which is probably good given where we are. the gimmick here is that you have to get to the top floor to escape, and on each floor there are guards trying to stop you. these guards drop id cards which lets you activate terminals to disengage parts of the airbuster, which you'll eventually need to fight. you can choose to slow it down, remove some of its firepower or even get some bonus items if you're feeling adventurous. you don't have nearly enough cards to really disable it so you do the best you can. I ended up going for disabling it a little to everything which probably wasn't the best idea, but eh.

when you finally get to the top, there's a puzzle to get all of your rewards that you pulled from the airbuster. it's the goddamn button timing puzzle from the shinra building! you have to do this stupid thing four or five times, with hilarious dialogue from barret abound. this thing is maddening and I cannot imagine what it's like for a new player coming to the game for the first time. but I love how bad it is.

the airbuster kind of destroyed me. I needed like 10-15 hipotions to get through it. I realized about 80% of the way through the fight that I haven't been really learning how to battle at all. I forgot completely that there was a block button and a roll button, so whoops. I still managed to win by force of will. Airbuster explodes, the bomb goes off (I think?), and Cloud gets separated from Barret and Tifa, falling into the church.


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7 darts on like my 7th try

aw yeah
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so this Roche guy is basically Genesis on speed
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I said the same!

I'm a ways into chapter 8. not sure I want to keep writing about it though. my initial feelings have cooled a bit and I kinda just want to see where it goes.

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(just passing by here to say that I started celeste a few days ago and goddamn this game is great. not sure i've ever played a platformer that made passing almost every single screen so rewarding. every time i feel like i've gotten vaguely decent at the game - the most i'll ever achieve, my strawberry count is low - the next chapter introduces something new that fucks me up all over again. and the story stuff is super endearing and refreshing too!)

feel free to back to your regularly scheduled programming now!

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(game of the decade)

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(i've probably only played about ten games that came out last decade, so... maybe!)

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forget hip hop de chocobo, stamp is my new jam

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Stamp is so damn good

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Stamp is a very good doggo

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finished reactor 5

not going to lie, some of the fights, air buster in particular, have really started testing my patience

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The Mana Sword posted...

finished reactor 5

not going to lie, some of the fights, air buster in particular, have really started testing my patience

I'm not done yet (chapter 11) so I can't say for certain but to be honest that was one of the hardest fights I've had all game, but it probably has to do with what you choose going into that fight (trying to be vague). But I still beat it first try whereas I've had to take multiple tries on some other stuff, so steel yourself for that

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yeah, I got wrecked there too. I like this game the best in the town areas.

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I honestly might just drop difficultly to easy

conceptually I like the combat, but in practice I find it sort of frustrating. I dont think the party AI is that great, and it feels like things just do so much damage. I realize there is a guard button, but its kind of hard to react when theres so much going on at once, especially when there are multiple enemies.

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I dont think itd be any worse on easy. maybe do classic

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Later battles only get harder tbh. I haven't struggled for RPG bosses like this in a looooong time (although most don't require more than 1 try). Each boss and even miniboss feels like a serious puzzley battle like I haven't seen since FFX. Maybe a handful of Xenoblade bosses did it too. But this is every, single, one. I can see it getting tiring, but it's definitely a really good thing.

The only frustrating part to me is disables like sleep/stun/bound. There's usually ways to avoid it though, sometimes not. Everything else has various strategies to deal with things. It's just really different from other ARPG systems so the learning curve is steep.

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If you're having trouble with the combat, make sure you aren't just trying to play as one character. This isn't Kingdom Hearts, your teammates won't back you up efficiently. Think about it like original FFVII where you directed every member of your team. It's the same here. They won't act unless you tell them to.

The best pattern to fall into is regular attack string to build ATB real quick and use whatever skill is necessary for the situation, then immediately switch to the next character to do the same thing and so on. Fall into that type of pattern and soon enough you'll learn to switch and use abilities a lot more consistently without missing a beat.

This might not help everyone since obviously playstyles can be different but I just thought I'd throw out some advice that worked well for me.

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