I’m offering a special discount right now on toad king jobs.
Only three years too late, but I finished FF7 Remake! Now just working my way through the wee Yuffie episode; it’s so nice to be back in Sector 7 pre-plate drop and just be seeing all the lads again.
Some miscellaneous thoughts I had while playing through (mostly just enthusing about all the characters I love):
- Aerith is done so well in this – just the right blend of sweet, sassy, and slightly unhinged. I realised this at the exact moment she said “shit” while she and Cloud were climbing over the rooftops. Perfect.
- Wedge is also excellent, and it’s so great how everyone just respects him so much. Another iconic line, of course: “Sorry about your ass.”
- I love how the plot point of the Wutai war is emphasised in this. In Crisis Core it sort of comes out of nowhere, and then you think back to the Wutai section in FF7 and think “oh, these guys were at war with Shinra just a few years ago? Why is there no evidence of this?” In Remake it felt much better integrated, especially the way Shinra were trying to connect Avalanche to Wutai and use that to dismiss Avalanche’s actual goals. I love the whole messy politics who’s-good-who’s-bad element of it (see also: FF12).
- The worldbuilding!! It’s so cool looking at all the posters around the slums and hearing all the conversations among the NPCs and just chilling under the plate (as circumstances allow, of course). I particularly enjoyed the slang they used, like “platies”; really felt like their lives had been properly fleshed out.
- I’ve never been a Reno fan, and yet after his fight with Cloud in the church, the scene where he’s injured and frustrated and the Shinra guys are calling him sir and he’s just snapping at them even while he can’t walk without their help … damn.
- As I previously said, I fucking love Cloud, and I especially love the bit where he’s being all serious with the kids about how he does the odd jobs For A Price, and then very carefully considers theirs and tells them with an entirely straight face that he’ll do it for three gil (from 3:56 in this video). Adorable. I literally clutched my hands to my chest.
- I have a note on my phone whose entire contents are “Biggs/Wedge/Ms Folia”. Honestly amazed that nobody has written anything for this yet.
- I wonder if anyone seriously uses the weapon upgrades screen; I just set every piece of equipment to balanced as soon as I got it. A few times I pressed cross instead of triangle by mistake, and ended up having to watch the unbelievably long sequence of the actual upgrades interface opening up, which gave me very strong vibes of the Crystarium in FF13, and became a big and very stupid personal inside joke as I found myself desperately mashing circle to try and get out of it without wasting time having to see the whole thing (which never worked).
- Loved Scotch and Kotch’s vibe. Excellent patter.
- Also, Reeve ❤ Still my favourite character in the FF7 universe, the one morally decent guy staying up late and getting stressed so he can bring down Shinra from within. Everyone talks shit about the part where Cait Sith sees the plate drop and does a dramatic clenched fist beat ground gesture, but the fact that It’s Actually Reeve just sustained me.
- Red XIII is also great. I love his banter with Barret, what a brilliant friendship. I didn’t mind that he wasn’t playable – I think it would have been too late in the game to add someone to the party properly – but I hope we get to control him in the next one.
- More in iconic lines: Barret’s “Up your ass!” Perfect.
- Hardest fight in the game: the fucking six-wheeled vehicle in the last chapter. I looked up some shitty corporate-website-hosted walkthrough (the downside of playing a game that came out in the 2020s) and it was like, “Don’t worry! This is much easier than the boss fights in chapter 17! 🙂” and then it took me about twenty attempts to get through it. Sephiroth was actually very easy in comparison: I just kept slapping Regen on everyone and Focused Thrusting him, and that was us.
- Very much support the scene where Heidegger approaches Rufus and says “Mr Vice President,” and then Tseng comes up on his other side and says, “Mr President”. So predictable but so great – I actually clapped my hands together and said “yes” out loud. Really I just like seeing Heidegger get rekt while Tseng comes out on top, because Tseng is my second favourite Shinra employee and Heidegger is a big bastard (although beaten to the Worst Shinra Executive prize, of course, by Palmer).
- Everyone talks about the implications of Zack apparently being alive in this timeline (on that note, I was honestly so delighted for Zack that he managed to fend off all those Shinra troops, that’s a guy who’s completed all the Crisis Core optional missions right there), but why is nobody pointing out that there are now two Clouds?! Isn’t that a bigger issue??
In conclusion, I’m looking forward to seeing how the unknown journey continues! Pretty much anything at all could happen now, so it’s going to be really interesting finding out where it all goes, especially with such excellent characterisation all round.
We also watched Advent Children last night; I’d seen it before but I was about fourteen and had no idea what a final fantasy seven was. I found it quite entertaining. I think it works best to perceive it as “here are some events that could conceivably happen after the end of FF7” rather than “this is the way things go after the game ends, this is the main set of circumstances affecting these characters’ lives”. Still on the lookout for Advent Children Complete, because I feel very cheated by not having had the pleasure of seeing the Turks with visible injuries.
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