hogso

Reviews are now out there. Appears to be 9s across the board, potentially the best ever FF game, blows Remake out of the water, and Queen's Blood is as good as Gwent?!

Negative comments appear to be limited to some of the mini games not hitting the mark, and it could be too long for some. I would hope for most FF fans the latter won't be an issue at all!

The Rebirth demo has been updated and now includes the special Junon area, ie. not the full game version, but a diverse little area to run about in for the demo. You can then progress in to Lower Junon to do the 'Bottomswell' boss battle. Takes maybe 2 hours all in, less if you're rushing it, more if you do all of the combat sim stuff with Chadley, which isn't all that interesting. 

I really like the item transmutation stuff, synergy abilities are fun, and there's a decent sense of challenge. Good luck to anyone trying to button mash through the game, it is not going to get you far. 

What I can say gameplay wise is that Barret is left in the lurch a bit. Cloud is your DPS, Aerith your magic and healing obviously, Red is buff/debuff and has a pretty sick tanky special ability, Tifa is your pressure/stagger gage builder...Barret is just, long range? I dunno, didn't feel the need to use him at all. Aerith is clearly the most potent damage dealer used properly as using elemental weaknesses is key, but she's really squishy and gets messed up easily by stronger enemies - there's also the issue of materia management, meaning you can't just load her with all the magic and healing stuff. 

Basically, the balancing feels really good. 

On a side note I've been reading Nojima's Traces of Two Pasts novel, which puts the spotlight on Tifa and Aerith, whilst they give some back story to themselves. Tifa does this as the group leaves Kalm, and Aerith on the boat trip from Junon. Tifa talks about her childhood in Nibelheim, and then how she ended up in Midgar, joining Avalanche, and owing the bar - and Aerith's bit is about growing up in Shinra HQ with her mom and then escaping. It's never going to win any awards for writing, but it's all canon to the Remake, and I'm finding it a worthwhile read for some juicy lore and world building. 

Also, as she's mentioned in it, it got me to go back and revisit Before Crisis, and the story of Elfe, former leader of Avalanche. That's some decent lore and I'd love for at least some of it to crop up in the Remake trilogy, in the form of Jade Weapon, Elfe and her dad (who was a Turk), or even that ultimate summon materia she had, with some mad FF name I can't remember (not KOTR). 

Reviews for Rebirth tomorrow, and then it's a week until release. Phew. 

6 hours ago, Dante_Lockhart said:

I'd love a remake of the Shadow Hearts games.

Throw in Koudelka too which is perhaps my pick for most underrated PS1 era RPG, really unique survival horror, turn based JRPG vibe. 

I can't quite recall how it links with Shadow Hearts...I think Koudelka herself turns up in the first game, or her kid is in the game or something...? 

And yeah @villa4europe Octopath had a great rep, I've never played it though. Perhaps one of the best looking examples of that style. 

SE very recently disbanded their Tokyo RPG Factory, which was originally set up to produce RPGs in a classic style - they did that to moderate degrees of success (I Am Setsuna and Lost Sphear are probably 6 or 7 out of 10 games for me), but even they changed tact and went more action based with their final game (Oninaki). 

There are some really good examples of modern turn based RPGs, the likes of Chained Echoes, Cosmic Star Heroine, Sea of Stars, Astlibra...but the king in the modern era is almost certainly Persona, BUT  RGG's move to make Yazuka / Like a Dragon 7 turn based was a fascinating move, as it doesn't really seem to have done their sales any harm. I do find it makes the older games a bit more difficult to go back to though. 

I can't shake the feeling though that all of them are simply emulating what has come before and there isn't anything particularly interesting going on that has been able to keep my interest. At least with the stuff I've tried. 

I do like the move to giving some of the older games in the genre a fresh coat of paint though, Live a Live and Radical Dreamers / Chrono Cross are good examples, and the upcoming release for Suikoden I+II. Long time readers of this thread will know how much I pine for Xenogears to get the HD treatment. 

There's almost certainly a reluctance from the top JRPG producers at various developers to 'go back' to turn based, as it feels like  they are innovating anymore. It's the same reason that FF7 wasn't a remake that matched the story beats exactly, the devs just had no interest in doing it (I think Kitase said if they did do that it would be the last game they ever made, as it would only happen if they had run out of ideas).

As for summons in FFXIII @HKP90, yeah there is a lore reason, your mileage will vary on what that reason is. I can't remember the in's and out's of why the characters in XIII have been given a Focus which means they are L'Cie, but once they have that brand, the goddess Etro sends 'messengers' to aid them in accomplishing their Focus, in the form of Eidolons which they can summon. 

5 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

And covers it in gold leaf which adds nothing to the flavour 

You can't digest it either, which at least does mean you'll have gold poo

2 hours ago, Dante_Lockhart said:

Reviews for Rebirth should be coming in later this week shouldn't they?

This Thursday at 2pm GMT. 

@Chindie

You are not alone

I always liked this theory, not that I agreed with it, but it's a good one. 

Can be debunked really easily by considering that certain enemy cards can be obtained on disc one which you wouldn't otherwise have knowledge of until after Squall's 'death' - ergo, he can't have died then. 

The real question for me has always been is Squall alive at the end? I have appreciated that ambiguity in FF endings though, as well as the many bittersweet endings the series is (or should be) famous for. 

Man, if I ever get round to finishing up my rolling ranking of FF play throughs in that thread (picked my 7 play though up again the other day), some of you are not going to be happy 

What I will say on the subject is that XIII-2 and LR:XIII are good games, and I will die on that hill

On topic, I fired up NFS Heat yesterday as felt I needed a bit of a palette cleanser. It's OK, but nowhere near as fun as I remember the Underground games being. 

I do play the Tales games, they're decent JRPGs, but have always been a rung or two below the likes of FF, DQ, and Persona. 

Arise is a good recommendation though as they made a lot of positive changes to the format. The games are very 'anime' though, and if that's not your bag, they probably aren't worth trying. 

2 hours ago, jjaacckk91 said:

After a few years hiatus from the villatalk final fantasy chat, its brilliant to see the same names still getting incredibly excited about the new final fantasy releases.

Looking forward to rebirth, I hope it's as good as you're all making it sound.

I'll be here forever!

1 hour ago, villan95 said:

Second yellow card on YouTube has been very successful at these 'building a nation' type saves. He's trying to take the Maltese league to the top of the rankings/coefficients this year.

I enjoy his saves of that manner, get a loan farm going when you have the funds! 

1 hour ago, sheepyvillian said:

I'm glad no - one commented that it reminded them of X Files before I watched it, because I wouldn't have bothered. 

Fringe?

Banishers is reviewing really rather well. I've been a long term fan of Dontnod's work, and this seems to be another step in the right direction for them. Hopefully I get to play it before the end of the year to consider in GOTY lists. 

I'd be surprised if the announcement isn't relating to Sea of Thieves, possibly Starfield, and maybe some older legacy Xbox titles becoming multiplatform, but I do wonder if they will also announce the new discless Series X too.

I'm enjoying it, perhaps because it's my bag (X files, lost, from, etc. I like em all) or maybe cos I didn't watch it hoping it'd be a 'proper' true detective series. 

Finland's entry

You need to watch this. 

I finally managed to get some hands on time with the demo this morning, so feel I can comment on it now. 

The state of play was obscenely good, the scope of the game is incredible - and it appears as though they've managed to capture that feeling of a world being beyond the walls of Midgar which players experienced in the 90s, and (hopefully) done the same for the current gen. There could be many things I pick out from the various things shown, but typing the following sentence sums up how crazy this game is potentially going to be.

It has a mini game in which you play football as Red XIII, which basically looks Rocket League. I mean...COME ON! How did this game not take 20 years to develop, and what on earth are they preparing for Part 3? Fingers crossed for Earth Defence Force inspired Weapon battles...

As for the demo, the Nibelheim section is great if you're a fan of the original, not sure what new fans would make of it. It seems it's an old build as the performance mode has some rather crappy textures, as it happens I played on graphical mode and the drop in frames didn't really bother me - and it did look great. What I really loved was seeing Nibelheim realised as a real town, in a similar way to Sector 7 Slums and Wall Market in Remake, 

The demo will be updated within the next couple of weeks to include the Junon section, which is more of a large area to traverse and explore, quite different to the more story focused section which is available at the moment. No date for that yet. 

Rebirth review embargo is 22nd Feb at 2pm GMT, a full week before the release. 

Reeks of confidence in the game. I'm a little concerned about spoilers being in the wild after that, but I'll just have to try to avoid anything that looks suspect. 

The end of Feb can't come soon enough! 

I probably should also mention for anyone who cares that the trophy list is in the wild. Mild spoilers follow, as in, don't look if you want to be completely fresh going in, but OK for the merely curious, although I won't list them all just give some tidbits:

8 hours ago, villa4europe said:

What did you make of SB? Couldn't work out if it was a bit like nier, for as much as they showed it was still hard to pin down exactly what it was 

I thought it looked at lot like Nier Automata for, uh, a number of reasons... 

You're right though, there really does seem to be a lot on the way - with LAD 8, Granblue, LoU 2 Remaster, Tekken 8, Persona 3R already reviewing well this year. 

A new Action Espionage game/movie from Kojima huh? Pretty cool. 

Was hoping for the Rebirth demo today, guess I'll have to wait a week for the special state of play... 

Silent Hill 2, Death Stranding 2, FF7R2, Until Dawn remaster, Concord, and Metro 2033 VR are what the usually reliable leakers are saying. 

Strong rumours of a State of Play taking place 31st Jan, which is also the anniversary of the release of Final Fantasy 7

8 hours ago, villa4europe said:

Finished true detective 1 and 3, part of me thinks 3 is better but for as good as the final twist is I think the case itself has a poor conclusion 

Started 4 and it's overly weird so far, has more in common with that sky arctic circle murder mystery show that I cant remember and had a shockingly bad ending 

  Reveal hidden contents

Where ancient wasps from outer space were driving people insane 

 

Fortitude. Can't remember them being from outer space though.

Going to be a looong time until I play it, similar to the time it took me to play LAD 7 I guess. 

Be nice to pick up Gaiden in a sale down the line, and then move on to LAD 8 after...maybe next year?