FF7 REMAKE. IT'S A THING.

author=Sated
Tbh Blitzball was a better mini-game than either card-game. Loved that shit.

This, pretty much. I stayed as far away from the card games in FF8/FF9 as much as possible, but, usually played enough Blitzball to earn at least one of Wakka's overdrives.

You break FF8 via using the junction system to crank your stats while keeping your level down. You use the Monster->Card ability to avoid getting EXP while still getting AP if you want to grind, otherwise once you get No Encounter you equip it and never take it off except for bosses. Convert all those cards and items into magic spells to junction for stats. There's a few standouts here like Fish Fins early on to get stacks of water which is a good STR junction spell. You can convert Tents into Curaga which you can equip to MaxHP which is usually enough to get you into yellow HP so you can spam limits (and if you get healed just unequip then reequip to get back to yellow). The Tonberry GF + Shop command lets you get the aura spell in mass in the lategame so you can spam even more limits. Never draw magic except for GFs or fighting Diablos (draw blind->cast basically makes him unable to kill you).

The exception is Omega Weapon which is cheesed via Holy Wars which afaik you can only reliably get through the Gilgamesh Card and that means the card game sidequest. There's a few good cards that you can convert for good items too, like Zell's and Quistis' cards which you can get easily early on in the game, but it's hardly required to punch Ultimecia in the face.

Ultimecia, like almost everything else from FF8, is completely devoid of any sort of engaging character personality, motivation, or arc. The fight has some mechanics that are completely unsuited for the game they occur in (random party members and destroying junctions). Besides that, I'd agree the Ultimecia fight is way cooler than Sephiroth and Kuja/Necron and The Extreme is kickin' rad final boss music.

Neat aside: When Ultimecia's final form hits zero HP the fight doesn't end! Instead that's when she starts talking to you ("Reflect on your childhood", etc.). Each hit after that deals >100HP or so advances to the next line until she runs out of lines and dies and you can advance to the ending where Zell finally gets all the wieners he craves.

author=LightningLord2

author=LockeZ
Well it's "in celebration of the 20th anniversary of FF7" but that is a year and a half away. That's way too long to just be FF7 HD, this is a legit remake.

Here are the changes that I 100% guarantee will happen:
- All dialogue will be voice acted
- The graphics will look phenomenal
- The story will be translated properly, yet somehow make even less sense
- Combat will not include any menus and will instead just rely on pressing X to attack
- Enemies will be fought in the dungeon while exploring, not in a separate battle screen, and you will be able to move around the environment as you fight to avoid attacks
- Cloud's skillset will consist of Attack, Braver and Omnislash, nothing else
- Cloud will be able to equip only one materia at a time
- Weapon upgrades will no longer exist; Buster Sword for entire game
- Cloud will have highly cinematic combat movements, swinging his sword around in all kinds of patterns that look like they should be based on the player's attack timing and positioning and what direction they're pushing on the joystick, but actually it's all 100% automatic, like in Kingdom Hearts and FF15
- All other party members will be completely AI controlled
- Many locations will be removed from the game, and 75% of the game will take place in Midgar and Junon
- Everyone's outfits will be redesigned by Tetsuya Nomura to be 1000% more emo, even though he was the one who designed the original outfits in the first place

Wait, the original wasn't a mash A to win game? I'm being honest when I say most of Final Fantasy - I tried out every game from 1 to 7 - plays exactly like this. Not gonna bother playing a 40 hour snoozefest to fight the one and only battle that requires any form of thinking.

Final Fantasy was always turn base classic jrpg style of battle until 13 which screwed it up It never was quite a button mash up I am really dreading what they think is an improvement of battle system when in reality realistic stylebattle systems have no place in jrpgs nor do their core fans welcome them You may as well play a fighting game

Pdr313
Plus face it 5 had a more coherent & epic storyline which if threshed out in hd could easily make over 100 hours of play Much more epic in keeping with rpg tradition

I know I should bite the bullet and get into it here, but I'm guessing you've never played FF5 or clocked how long an average RPG takes? (~30 hrs). I would loathe FF5 if I had to play it for 100+ hours on a single file. That game takes like 30 to beat at most.

Seriously, I have NO idea where critics of modern RPGs got the idea that they "should" be 100+ hours long. Final Fantasy 7, one of the go to examples of a "classic JRPG" is 21 hours long. The longest RPG that I can recall playing (as in, from the beginning to the end of the main story) off the top of my head is Tales of Symphonia, and that was around 40-48 hours, and it had a metric shit load of content that could have been cut or toned down.

The only times I've ever cracked the 100 hour mark on an RPG were Skyrim (4 runs, one was basically a 100%) and Pokemon White (Complete Pokedex, ages of dicking with optional stuff).

tl;dr RPG fans and devs need to give up the goose on this length = quality shit. Stuffing a game with 70 unnecessary hours of cutscenes, backtracking, and filler dungeons/towns isn't the answer to any of the problems facing the genre.

Yeah, when I quote ~30 hours those are some of the longest RPGs I can even think of. The more honest average length without any optional messing around would probably be 15-20 at most.

I'd much rather play a <10 hour game that completely rocks my shit (a la Mass Effect) than a >30 hour game that I can't stand a good half of.

kentona
E:
now imagine if I devoted 300+ hours to gamedev since 2012 instead of SWTOR?

You might have been able to finish, what, 30% of a "truly epic 100 hour RPG"!

author=Pdr313

author=Pizza

Pdr313
Plus face it 5 had a more coherent & epic storyline which if threshed out in hd could easily make over 100 hours of play Much more epic in keeping with rpg tradition

I know I should bite the bullet and get into it here, but I'm guessing you've never played FF5 or clocked how long an average RPG takes? (~30 hrs). I would loathe FF5 if I had to play it for 100+ hours on a single file. That game takes like 30 to beat at most.

Seriously, I have NO idea where critics of modern RPGs got the idea that they "should" be 100+ hours long. Final Fantasy 7, one of the go to examples of a "classic JRPG" is 21 hours long. The longest RPG that I can recall playing (as in, from the beginning to the end of the main story) off the top of my head is Tales of Symphonia, and that was around 40-48 hours, and it had a metric shit load of content that could have been cut or toned down.

The only times I've ever cracked the 100 hour mark on an RPG were Skyrim (4 runs, one was basically a 100%) and Pokemon White (Complete Pokedex, ages of dicking with optional stuff).

tl;dr RPG fans and devs need to give up the goose on this length = quality shit. Stuffing a game with 70 unnecessary hours of cutscenes, backtracking, and filler dungeons/towns isn't the answer to any of the problems facing the genre.

Im sorry 5 was a typo I was referring to 6

An I was referring to an hd remake keeping up with the spirit of the game by fully realizing everyones storyline but this time in hd I play rpgs primarily first & foremost for it's story ( which is why I on't think 7 is as good as 6) I like to immerse myself into living the story like an epic book or series of books or ongoing epic story arprograms like Game of Thrones ( more the books) So I actually do enjoy a longer more immersive game experience I think that shows more depth

Pdr313, please don't double post or triple post. It's against the site rules.
Use the Edit feature at the bottom of your messages instead.

EDIT: To be fair, most of the playable characters in FF7 have a healthy amount of development and back-story to find out about, sometimes through optional quests. Only Cait Sith (and spoiler: the guy who controls him) has a single scene that reveals a more intimate part of its personality.

In FF6 there really isn't much to say about Mog, Gogo, Umaro and Strago. Gau has one interesting scene in the World of Ruin but otherwise has no character development either. That's 5 poorly-developed playable characters out of 14.

Oh yeah, forgot about The End. I'd put that in halfway territory unless you can manipulate the slots like in FF6/7 though, save scumming for something is iffy in my books for "how to break a game".

So back on topic, how about that Final Fantasy 7? Will we collect posters to get a grab bag of semi-okay items in Wutai? Will Wutai be more interesting?? Will there be more realistic NPCs, and by more I mean more... like city more! Like full streets of people doing things. What about traffic? There was only traffic in the opening FMV of FF7. After that... nothing. No moving traffic aside the shinra helicopter...