hogso

March 17

13 hours ago, villa4europe said:

Interested by that, horizon has the thickest open world I've ever seen if that makes sense, it has the densest grass and bushes and trees etc doesn't necessarily feel alive in the villages and towns but the detail in between is crazy, I know that game also has some of the wildest face and hair animations, would say as a world horizon works really well buts it's not an RPG

Played the witcher on PS4 so can't really compare it but where cyberpunk ended up is the benchmark for me, that's an incredible city, but it's not a world so hard to compare it with FF (said in the cyberpunk thread it sets the bar for rockstar and GTA 6 to try and beat)

It's a little hard to explain spoiler free, but in short, Rebirth feels like it wears it's influences on it's sleeve - FFXV, Horizon, Witcher, AC/Ubisoft open world games, Ghost of Tsushima, MGS V...which is a statement that would have struck fear in to fans before release, probably.

The game is all the better for taking all that inspiration though, as it's absolutely still a Final Fantasy game, seeing as the series has tried to reinvent itself umpteen times in the last couple of decades to degrees of success ranging from fine to failure.

The comparison with 16 is a good example, the level design in that game was just fine for an FF, but Rebirth is on another level. The difference between areas like the Grasslands and Gongaga is absolutely staggering and as far from a copy and paste texture swap of areas that you can get.

The towns are awesome, the dungeons are great...it's not quite a 10 out of 10 game though, as some of the lighting issues are annoying. The low quality textures and issues in performance mode don't bother me, but you'd have to acknowledge them when considering how good it is objectively. Some of the mini games, as I've mentioned before, are annoying, but they're mostly optional and even if you do try them all once as most players do I imagine, you can score a 'pass' score with relative ease, but getting the top score for the best prize can be difficult, and it shouldn't be right?

March 16

3 hours ago, jjaacckk91 said:

This game is so good, feels like gameplay wise they've really spent time refining everything from FFXV and hit the mark everywhere so far for me. Biggest compliment I can give is how lived in the world feels, I don't think any game I've played has managed it quite this well.

Yeah, only really Witcher 3 is on the same level I think. The devs took a lot of inspiration from Horizon, and it blows that open world out of the water.

March 13

So the route to the platinum trophy has now been, uh, revealed and it was something I had every intention of getting as I really enjoyed getting it for Remake.

But OH **** it is going to be so tough. So so tough.

Light spoilers below for chapter 8 related to the completion of a side quest in Costa Del Sol

Spoiler

You have to get all of the collectibles for Johnny, there are three or four trophies associated with it, including getting every collectible, and believe me when I say, we're talking FFX 200 lightning dodges / FFIX 1000 rope skips levels of difficulty

If I do go for it, I can see my play time going 200 hours+

March 9

Is this the best FF game ever...? I think it has to be top 5 for me at the moment. Granted I'm not finished with it yet, but good lord. It's an excellent game.

March 8

Chrono Trigger the other biggy I guess

Was impressed by the time given to his death on the news this evening. Why didn't they do the same for Miura? Oh, wait...

March 8

1 hour ago, HKP90 said:

For those who have played the remake, how open world is it? Is there a map to explore?

Short answer, yes there is an open world map to explore.

Longer answer is there are 8 maps in total spread across the world, covering the regions of Grasslands, Junon, Corel, Gongaga, Cosmo Canyon, Nibel, Meridian Ocean and Northwood.

On top of that you have places which are independent to those regions, for example Golden Saucer. That's where I am at the moment, so anything after the Corel region I can't comment on, but they are big.

Doing everything in the Grasslands region for example, the first area you have access to, took me about 10 hours. In terms of the original game, that's the period of time from where you leave Midgar until you enter the Mythril Mines. Rebirth still follows that general route - Kalm, flashback, Chocobo Ranch, acquire a Chocobo, cross the marsh, enter the mine, but of course there are collectibles, optional mid boss encounters, side quests and so on. Saying much more than that would be venturing in to spoiler territory I feel, as there are umpteen little bits dotted around to find and be surprised by.

The game does feel massive, and really fleshed out, with things having meaning behind them rather than being a mere tick box exercise towards completing a region. Dared I say it feels too big, daunting almost, especially as a gamer whose gaming time is now limited. At the same time though, I'm loving it, and don't want it to end.

Considering the vertical slice of the game as a whole, there are few other games I've played which come close to troubling the content available, the amount of systems, side activities, mini games...it's almost unbelievable. The obvious comparison would the Yakuza/LaD, I guess.

March 5

Hope you're enjoying it my dude.

I've just left Junon. The game is everything I had hoped for, and more.

And how's about this for a nifty little QoL feature (well I think it is) - the clock on your playtime pauses if you idle on the menu. Amazing.

Oh, and Queen's Blood is really growing on me! A big advantage it has over Gwent being that with that game, once you got to a certain point, you just couldn't lose if you knew what you were doing. This game really requires a lot of strategy and deck building skill, depending on who you're playing. The story to the game, as much as I've seen so fa anyway, is curious too.

March 5

13 hours ago, Mozzavfc said:

Is there a way to watch in the UK, or do you have to hit the high seas like the Daryl show

Nope - BT don't carry exclusivity anymore, Amazon have some stuff, as do Disney, but there's currently no official carrier of the series for the UK.

Ratings wise it's done really well (relatively speaking) so hopefully it'll pop up somewhere soon officially.

It would be the high seas unofficially, I'm personally loving Stremio and Torrentio plus Real Debrid for my streaming needs at the moment.

March 4

So, The Ones Who Live is the first worthwhile viewing in the Walking Dead universe for years. Genuinely good TV, although I do wonder if some of the context will be lost on those who haven't watched the post Rick stuff, specifically World Beyond.

March 2

It was only a matter of time before someone made a decent, high budget, Earth Defence Force clone I guess.

EDF! EDF! EDF!

March 2

21 hours ago, mjmooney said:

(Look away now, Bicks). You have to remember that in the 60s We Had The Beatles. At any point between 1963 and 1969 we could have put them into Eurovision (if they'd agreed to it, which is admittedly doubtful) and won by an embarrassingly huge margin every time. Of course we didn't, but it's like we had the nuclear option, and magnanimously chose not to use it.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we'd entered (say) Oasis in the 90s?

I'm not sure. Even if the committee (or sometimes the public via vote) responsible for choosing the act chose a massively popular one, would they do it? I don't think so. They'd have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Why expose yourself to potential humiliation when you already have adoring fans across the globe?

March 2

10 hours in, not gone through the mythril mines yet They've done a good job with the side content, there's a lot of world building done in stuff that is completely optional, clearly taking a lot of inspiration from Witcher 3 in that regard.

March 1

5 minutes ago, Mic09 said:

I am not much into pop/electro/eurodance music, I appreciate some good tunes.

I actually like this song.

But it makes me wonder; you have some rock/metal/blues/jazz groups meeting together, jamming, playing local gigs, real musicians and artists who come up in the scene. The classic rags to riches stories of bands becoming great overtime.

How does a band like Windows95man make a name for themselves?! And what is the artistic thought process behind the music? Did a 16 year old Windows95man meet the other dude and thought 'I know what music we should play, let's try it in the local pub'?

NO RULES

March 1

@Chindie hasn't been online for a week. Don't suppose anyone has a route to contacting him outside of VT?

March 1

I managed to put about 3 hours into Rebirth last night, having been able to finally sit down with it at 9pm. I skipped the flashback bit you can.

The opening 5 mins had me grinning like a baffoon, whilst also being kind of shocked that they went there so early. Fascinated to see where that goes.

The opening Grasslands area just feels huge, and alive, and lived in.

Oh, and Queens Blood is not better than Gwent.

Should also mention I'm finding the game unplayable on performance mode. It just looks way too rough. Graphics mode is fine though.

February 29

Right, how did I do these....

Hogso's 'Sequential Numbered Final Fantasy Series Playthrough Retrospective Reviews' (HSNFFSPRR) PART VII

It is impossible for me to talk about Final Fantasy VII to XII without indulging in a heavy dose of nostalgia. I'm sure the same is true for a lot of you as well. For me, those games represent anchors to points in my life which few other things do. I suppose when it comes down to it, that's why I like the series so much. With that in mind, I'm going to break down this one in to segments, and probably will for VIII - XII too (and VII Remake for different reasons) because to me, the context of my life at the time I first played these games feels as important as the game itself...which some people may have no interest in! That'll be in spoilers. I'll follow that up with something more in line with the previous format for the I-VI Remaster release on PS4.

Part I - Nostalgia - The Year 1998

Spoiler

Villa were pretty decent in 1998 weren't they? Maybe not hitting the heights of 1996, when I was 10 and thought they were the best team ever, but if not for that run of cup wins and 98 team I may just have fallen out of love with football. The Euro's in 98 helped too, of course. My first recollection of football, in general, was of a cousin having a Euro 92 Panini sticker book, and I was emphatic in telling him I didn't like football. Handy then that at a time my Villa supporting family were pushing me towards supporting the club they 'got good', and at the same time my Grandad would take me to many many non-league matches at Manor Park to see Nuneaton Borough who were legitimately one of the finest non-league sides in the country at the time. How could I not like football after that?

I consider my love of the FF series as far surpassing my love of football. So which family member pushed me towards it, as they had with football and Villa? No one. It was an accident, I guess.

I got a Game Boy in 1994 and mostly played Zelda (I sucked), Kirby's Dreamland (sucked), Kirby's Pinball (my favourite but sucked) and a couple of others. I got a SNES in 1996 and mostly played things like Super Star Wars (sucked), Mario Bros 3 (also sucked), FIFA 98 (my favourite and I didn't suck! Cos I always played on Amateur), and a bunch of other games which I sucked at. I still suck at video games, as much as I like them, I've never really been good at them. I think it helps that the FF series is generally easy, and that would have helped me stick with it as a kid. I also had this odd game on the SNES called 'Mystic Quest Legend'. Unknown to me until many many years later, this was my first FF game, a game made specifically to be easier for western audiences. It as a rock soundtrack which is just awesome too. I liked that game, but couldn't say I loved it.

In Nuneaton we had an independent CEX, I guess you could say? I know CEX actually existed then, but our version was simply called 'Entertainment Exchange'. We also had an Electronics Boutique and Gamestation somewhere down the line, but mostly anyone who liked video games spent their money in EE. It was like walking in to a bazaar of gaming, music, and film, and I spent many hours in there perusing the stock, and playing the consoles on display. I played a Gamecube, Dreamcast, Xbox OG, PS2, and maybe others for the first time ever in that shop.

During Summer 1998 with hard earning (or not so hard earned) pocket money in han- err, in my pocket, I burst through the doors of Entertainment Exchange. I could get whatever I wanted for my PS1. Well nearly anything. My budget was £20, and it felt like I held the whole world in my hands, all of that potential laid out in front of me, how on earth would I pick?

Looking at that same copy of Final Fantasy VII I picked up that day, I remember my thought process - 3 discs?! Must be massive. That's good value for money, and I don't have much money, so it would be good to have the cost go further. 120 minutes of FMV cutscenes?! That's like a whole movie, plus the game you play! It's got demons, magic, snowboarding?! Wow...how can I not buy this. If you still have a physical copy of FF7 on PS1, go and look at the back of it and consider the words and pictures to the mind of 12 year old boy. It's pull was impossible to resist.

I booted it up when I got home and I liked it - for about an hour and a half, after that I got stuck. Was it a boss, misunderstanding the materia system, not buying equipment? No. My nemesis was this:

That little metal plank thing. Yeah. I've explained a little about the games I'd played up to this point, and it meant that running around with a 3D model in pre-rendered backgrounds like this was completely foreign to me. I loved the way it looked, but I just COULD NOT understand how to get up past this bit. I switched the game off, played something else for a while...probably Destruction Derby (I sucked) or FIFA 98 PS1 (my favourite?). Fortunately I did go back to it, and got pretty far after that. I found that school mates were playing it too, and I made new friends in other kids who were also playing it. My two best mates, twins, shared a save at their house and were way further forward than me. I THINK I was at the escape from Junon section when they brought their memory card round, and showed me some late game stuff which was cool...and then by default they went to save their game, and overwrote my save on card 1, and of course I only kept that one save file. And you know what, as apologetic as they were, I wasn't even mad bro. It just meant I had to go back and play it through from the start - no worries.

By then I knew a lot more about the game, but felt like I wanted to know more, given what I'd seen on my mates' save. So I bought the guide. I still have it now, the original 1997 (3rd printing to be precise) Bradygames version. There was a later version that says something like 'a million copies sold!' or something where they changed some info. This guide allowed me, a 12/13 year old kid crap at video games, to understand materia combinations, how to beat the super bosses, how to breed Chocobo's and get everything the game had to offer.

If my intention was to get my money's worth that day in Entertainment Exchange, then hoo boy did I ever. I would have to ball park it at 12 full playthroughs of that PS1 version of the game, 40 hours each on average maybe?

And for me and the Final Fantasy series, that was that. Here were characters that lived in this alien world, who cared for it, they had to save it - they had to save each other. And me, as the player, where there with them every step of the way. I just couldn't get over that investment, and still can't. I suppose that's what nostalgia is about really isn't it, that emotional attachment to...something, a smell, a sound, a memory, whatever it may be...and knowing you can't go back to that point, but you can try an emulate it, holds a certain melancholy or bitter sweetness. I'll ponder my life through FF's VIII, IX, X and XII in those reviews, and hoo boy do I have a doozy to share with you for IX.

Part 2 - Emulation of Past - Replaying FFVII HD on PS5

I'll kick this off in reverse, as the thing that struck me about playing the game again now, following I-VI is just how close a call it is to say which FF I think is better. Not my favourite - better. Objectively, not subjectively. That's not at all an easy thing to do, but my god I tried. I do rank VII above VI - just. And I mean just. I believe VI beats VII in a number of really key areas, soundtrack, late game, and some of it's key scenes out do VII. However...I think the Materia system is great, the pacing of VII is just awesome, and few gaming moments from a gameplay perspective live longer in the mind for me than leaving Midgar. That whole world out there, not just the city you've been in - wow. Storywise, they're pretty evenly matched, as are Kefka and Sephiroth in the Villain stakes. But when you consider the role of Hojo in FFVII, the true Villain of the game, VII starts to take the edge, and the reveal of Cloud's true role in the Nibelheim incident (especially when you see the photo for the first time) plus that bit with Aerith...yeah I think it's barely, barely a better game.

Now, as you wouldn't be surprised to hear if you've read the whole of this post, this is a game I know inside out. The quickest I've ever played it through is about 15 hours, nothing to trouble speed runners obviously, but I can fly through it if the feeling takes me. This run was 24:12 which is a little shorter that VI was, and for reference I did not do the Materia caves, Chocobo Breeding, Ultima, Emerald or Ruby Weapons...this was very much a 'story playthrough'. If you're curious my save file at the end of the Northern Crater when I did platinum FFVII HD and did everything was 48:55.

As I spoke about it in my other reviews, I will mention the trophies here even if I had no others to get - it's a really decent list which pushes you to do a few bits and bobs which some playthroughs might skip, specifically doing things like getting all the level 4 limit breaks (it's so easy not to ever see Aerith's for obvious reasons), some mini game related stuff, getting the master Materia...and dating Barret! You love to see it. The worse one is grinding not for levels, but for gil, 99999999 is an insane amount.

Total playtime for this series so far is 122:45. I think my last FFXII playtime was about that one it's own. And as for X, well...let's not go there just yet.

Rolling ranking

7 just

6

5

4

3

1

2

Next up at some point in the future will be VIII, and perhaps an even sterner test for me to play through and consider it's place in my own personal ranking objectively rather than subjectively than VII was.

And in case you are reading this the day I post it, no, Rebirth still hasn't arrived. Cry.

February 29

February 29

10 hours ago, GarethRDR said:

Denis don't miss.

Praying he does Rendezvous with Rama next.

February 28

Course not!

February 27

3 minutes ago, sheepyvillian said:

Didn't the "Come on Irene" song by Dexys have some dodgy lyrics?

Yeah the fact it's called cum on irene

February 27

My Sharona.

February 27

Remake got a patch yesterday to change the final line from Aerith which was I miss it. The Steel Sky , referring to finally seeing the real sky and not the underside of the plate in the Midgar slums, to This Sky...I don't like it

Weird. This new line was in a Rebirth trailer, so it seems for consistency they've gone back and changed the four year old line to match. It's worse though, right?

48 hours-ish from Rebirth, unless my parcel turns up early (it won't!). I'll have my FF7 retrospective posted tomorrow, I think. I managed to finish that playthrough, but didn't even get started on a FF7 Remake one.

February 23

1 hour ago, villa4europe said:

im guessing that because of the way they've done it nothing from the demo will carry over to the game when you start it? and for that reason im not really interested in it

You get an accessory, and can skip the flashback sequence in the main game if you've already done it in the demo. Other than that, no carry over.

February 23

13 hours ago, villa4europe said:

Gamespot gave it an 8 and said the ending is a mess

I imagine it'll be broadly equivalent to Remake, as @Dante_Lockhart says. If I had to guess, it'll involve something turning up that begins with the letter 'Z'...

February 23

2 hours ago, jjaacckk91 said:

Interested by mini game being as good as Gwent, I'll believe that when I see it.

I thought the same thing! I really can't see it myself, we'll only know once we get hands on with it though I guess. Although Gwent did have some proper story side content in the DLC, it didn't really have a story as such attached to it, right? Queen's Blood seemingly does, with 'boss' characters to be beat and stuff. Even if that's simply a modern emulation of the CC Quest in FF8, I'll be happy.

And for anyone playing the Junon demo, make sure you don't sleep on Red XIII. His abilities are great, and once you get the Materia level up thing from Chadley you can slap that on his Comet Materia to enable the Cometeor spell, which is wild - looks like something out of Dragon's Dogma

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Posts posted by hogso