True, but even Nintendo has missteps, like Pokémon scarlet and violet, I’m sure there’s more but my mind is focusing on tacos
Final Fantasy VII Remake Trilogy - Rebirth February 29, 2024.
- Thread starter karmakid
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For once, US boxart looks better than Japan
Yep, don’t get me wrong I still like the Japanese one, first one feels more like a movie poster, but I feel like there may have been at least one other NA cover that’s better….
I wish I could get into these games again like when I was younger. It looks amazing, but I just can't get into them anymore. I bought FF7R at launch and didn't open it up until late last year to check it out on the PS5.
If anyone is interested, they now have the ce back up again….
na.store.square-enix-games.com
FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH
Buy video games online at the Square Enix official store. Shop our top franchises including Final Fantasy, Nier, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest & more.
na.store.square-enix-games.com
For once, US boxart looks better than Japan
These are two extremes. Can we get a third option?
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is getting Previews this week, beware of possible spoilers below
I rode a Chocobo and befriended a dolphin in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
After a hands-on demo of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, I finally have some answers. Well, sort of. My preview highlighted how both combat and exploration have evolved while showing me new playable characters and locations like Junon for the first time. Even after one hour of playtime, though, its approach to story remains a bewildering mystery … and that's exactly what I was hoping for.
Team synergy
The first piece of my demo takes place in a flashback. A young Cloud, Tifa, and Sephiroth find themselves in Mt. Nibel, climbing through a dark cave. While there's a little dialogue, this chunk mostly served as a reintroduction to Final Fantasy VII Remake's excellent combat system. The fundamentals remain the same, as players can attack in real-time and slow the action to a near standstill to navigate menus. What's new, though, is a greater emphasis on team attacks.
Expanding on Episode Intermission's combos, Rebirth introduces Synergy Skills, a new combat layer that emphasizes party team-ups. When holding down the block button, I can press a face button to perform a duo attack with my party members. Even more devastating Synergy moves act as two-character limit breaks that can really turn the tide of battle. A climactic boss against a hulking monster would end with Cloud and Sephiroth pulling off a dazzling Synergy attack with more sword slashes than I can count.
Click to expand...
And yes, that means Sephiroth is a playable character this time.
Staying unpredictable
While the first demo focused on combat, the second was entirely focused on exploration. Here, the team finds themselves in a small open-world area outside of Junon. Before walking into the fishing town, I have some time to wander around on a Chocobo and do a few open-world-style activities. Scattered combat trials would have me trying to beat a pack of enemies within a time limit while completing a checklist of tasks in battle. I could follow Chocobo chicks to discover fast travel markers and get plumes that could be traded in to customize my bird's armor. I could even find a wealth of materials, which I could use to craft items and in turn complete micro-objectives for a bit of experience.
It's not a full open-world pivot. The area I explored was probably comparable to some of Final Fantasy XVI's wide fields, but it already feels like there's significantly more to do and see in those spaces. That should come as great news to those who took issue with Remake's corridor-like level design. Just as the original Final Fantasy VII opens up once players leave Midgar, so too does Rebirth. That's great news considering that iconic areas like the Golden Saucer are making a return here.
While all of those changes are exciting, I wouldn't call them surprising. Rebirth looks and plays like its predecessor with some new touches that align with a lot of its modern peers. What I was hungrier to see is just how much the sequel would be willing to get weird, adapting some of the oddest parts of the eclectic original. And the end of my demo would assure me that Square Enix isn't holding back.
Upon entering a small town south of Junon, a local would immediately beg for my team's help. She'd lead us to a lake where we'd find Yuffie in a boat, being hunted by Bottomswell. It's a boss fight from the original game but naturally recontextualized to act as a new character introduction. All hope seems lost for Yuffie until Rebirth finally gives me the kind of bizarre moment I craved: A dolphin pops out of the water to lend a helping fin. It's a hilariously left-field moment that confidently preserves a piece of the original game.
My battle with Bottomswell is as thrilling as any fight in Remake, with my party peppering it with spells and long-range attacks while dodging watery whirlpools. When I land the last strike, I transition into a ridiculously enjoyable cutscene where my dolphin pal helps Cloud finish the massive water snake off. It all ends with a picaresque parting shot as Cloud poses with the dolphin, rainbow overhead.
It's that moment that sells me on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth more than anything else I played. Sure, it's always nice to revisit Remake's ingenious combat system, and the extra duo system brings even more personality and party interaction to it. The semi-open-world pivot is a nice touch too that I'm sure will give me a lot of good reasons to marvel at Square Enix's meticulous world design. But what I love about Remake is its entirely unpredictable nature. The way it takes ideas from the original, brings them to new extremes, or subverts them, is what makes that experience so special. Rebirth's retooled dolphin sequence has me confident that it has the same wild energy in abundance.
At Final Fantasy VII Remake's conclusion, a title card teased its sequel by calling it an "unknown journey." I can already see why after a bit of playtime. I still feel like I haven't even seen 1% of what Rebirth will have to offer — even I was shocked watching its recent State of Play trailer despite having actually played it by then. I'm ready to grab that dolphin fin and let it take me as far out into the ocean as it can go.
I rode a Chocobo and befriended a dolphin in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
After a hands-on demo of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, I finally have some answers. Well, sort of. My preview highlighted how both combat and exploration have evolved while showing me new playable characters and locations like Junon for the first time. Even after one hour of playtime, though, its approach to story remains a bewildering mystery … and that's exactly what I was hoping for.
Team synergy
The first piece of my demo takes place in a flashback. A young Cloud, Tifa, and Sephiroth find themselves in Mt. Nibel, climbing through a dark cave. While there's a little dialogue, this chunk mostly served as a reintroduction to Final Fantasy VII Remake's excellent combat system. The fundamentals remain the same, as players can attack in real-time and slow the action to a near standstill to navigate menus. What's new, though, is a greater emphasis on team attacks.
Expanding on Episode Intermission's combos, Rebirth introduces Synergy Skills, a new combat layer that emphasizes party team-ups. When holding down the block button, I can press a face button to perform a duo attack with my party members. Even more devastating Synergy moves act as two-character limit breaks that can really turn the tide of battle. A climactic boss against a hulking monster would end with Cloud and Sephiroth pulling off a dazzling Synergy attack with more sword slashes than I can count.
Click to expand...
And yes, that means Sephiroth is a playable character this time.
Staying unpredictable
While the first demo focused on combat, the second was entirely focused on exploration. Here, the team finds themselves in a small open-world area outside of Junon. Before walking into the fishing town, I have some time to wander around on a Chocobo and do a few open-world-style activities. Scattered combat trials would have me trying to beat a pack of enemies within a time limit while completing a checklist of tasks in battle. I could follow Chocobo chicks to discover fast travel markers and get plumes that could be traded in to customize my bird's armor. I could even find a wealth of materials, which I could use to craft items and in turn complete micro-objectives for a bit of experience.
It's not a full open-world pivot. The area I explored was probably comparable to some of Final Fantasy XVI's wide fields, but it already feels like there's significantly more to do and see in those spaces. That should come as great news to those who took issue with Remake's corridor-like level design. Just as the original Final Fantasy VII opens up once players leave Midgar, so too does Rebirth. That's great news considering that iconic areas like the Golden Saucer are making a return here.
While all of those changes are exciting, I wouldn't call them surprising. Rebirth looks and plays like its predecessor with some new touches that align with a lot of its modern peers. What I was hungrier to see is just how much the sequel would be willing to get weird, adapting some of the oddest parts of the eclectic original. And the end of my demo would assure me that Square Enix isn't holding back.
Upon entering a small town south of Junon, a local would immediately beg for my team's help. She'd lead us to a lake where we'd find Yuffie in a boat, being hunted by Bottomswell. It's a boss fight from the original game but naturally recontextualized to act as a new character introduction. All hope seems lost for Yuffie until Rebirth finally gives me the kind of bizarre moment I craved: A dolphin pops out of the water to lend a helping fin. It's a hilariously left-field moment that confidently preserves a piece of the original game.
My battle with Bottomswell is as thrilling as any fight in Remake, with my party peppering it with spells and long-range attacks while dodging watery whirlpools. When I land the last strike, I transition into a ridiculously enjoyable cutscene where my dolphin pal helps Cloud finish the massive water snake off. It all ends with a picaresque parting shot as Cloud poses with the dolphin, rainbow overhead.
It's that moment that sells me on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth more than anything else I played. Sure, it's always nice to revisit Remake's ingenious combat system, and the extra duo system brings even more personality and party interaction to it. The semi-open-world pivot is a nice touch too that I'm sure will give me a lot of good reasons to marvel at Square Enix's meticulous world design. But what I love about Remake is its entirely unpredictable nature. The way it takes ideas from the original, brings them to new extremes, or subverts them, is what makes that experience so special. Rebirth's retooled dolphin sequence has me confident that it has the same wild energy in abundance.
At Final Fantasy VII Remake's conclusion, a title card teased its sequel by calling it an "unknown journey." I can already see why after a bit of playtime. I still feel like I haven't even seen 1% of what Rebirth will have to offer — even I was shocked watching its recent State of Play trailer despite having actually played it by then. I'm ready to grab that dolphin fin and let it take me as far out into the ocean as it can go.
We Spoke To Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's Lead Developers About Crafting A Bigger, Better Second Chapter
We Spoke To Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's Lead Developers About Crafting A Bigger, Better Second Chapter
press-start.com.au
Speaking of that world map and that expanded play space, is that something that’s all interconnected or is it more of a world map system where you can travel to different regions at any time?
Hamaguchi: That’s a great question, that’s something I really wanted people to ask me. What we’ve done is we’ve taken the world map from the original Final Fantasy VII, but we’ve created it all in a one-to-one real scale. So all of the dungeons, all of the cities, everything in that world is now included in the same space. One seamless map.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has a tough job, not only following up what was a very well-put-together reimagining of the opening act of one of the most important RPGs of a generation, but blowing the whole thing wide open with a freely-explorable world and a much meatier chunk of story to re-tell.
I recently was able to get my very own hands on a lengthy preview build of Rebirth, which you can read about here, but first I was also able to chat to the game’s Producer, Yoshinori Kitase, and Director, Naoki Hamaguchi, about the processing of crafting a worthy second chapter in an incredibly ambitious remake project as well as some of the bonkers stuff going on in the game’s shiny new release date trailer:
Now you’ve just dropped a brand-new trailer for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and I’m about to get my hands on a preview demo which I’m very excited to play, but first – what was the intent behind the new trailer that you’ve debuted? What message did you want to convey with this?
Hamaguchi: What we paid close attention to when we were making that trailer is, obviously in terms of the story, we wanted to give an indication of what the story in the game is. So obviously you’ve got Cloud and his friends are traveling across the world map, chasing after that Mirage, that illusion of Sephiroth.
And that’s going to form the main part of the story. So we wanted to give an indication of that and show that a little bit. Really what the focus on was was not so much on the main storyline, but more on the side content, because that’s one of the big differences between Rebirth and the original Remake is that we’ve added in so much more side contents and side quests and things to do to explore the map.
So really, that’s what we wanted to focus on more in the trailer. So we put in lots of shots of the different vehicles you can use to travel around the world in the game, the different towns and places you can visit. Just give that give the impression, to communicate that the breadth of the game is now that much bigger and you’ve got that much extra side content to play.