All you need is due Recompense on repeat

So I've just done

Did all the side missions. I enjoy them myself, the fights got quite challenging. I do wish I could grind out some stuff, even if it's just SP to level up my weapons more.

Thing is, knowing where the original story went

I finished this just before teatime and have been watching Digital Foundry's stuff on the original and this remake after that while I digested my feelings.

I think the increased length started to feel like a bit of a slog towards the end of the game? Early on, OK it's longer but things keep moving, you're being introduced to the world and characters, they're taking more time with that aspect, it feels kinda legit. In the middle of the game you have sub-quests, OK, they're obvious padding but you make an active choice to do them and they also flesh out the world slightly. An occasional part of the story feels a bit long, like the gameplay is taking longer than the in-universe event would - the second reactor mission, for example, feels implausibly long for a terrorist attack, like hours and hours.

I think the entire end sequence from the first point of no return on feels a bit over-extended, everything seems to take ages, every big enemy is a damage sponge. Perhaps it's because the game becomes linear and the characters have already been developed throughout the game - there's no real justification for things to take longer to play out at this point.

I'm tagging the next paragraph for ending spoilers but it's not ruinous mega spoilers.

A big chunk of it is very pretty, especially when you compare it to the original and Crisis Core. I think Part 2 will be better - this often looks great but is constrained by covering just a dystopian city. I wanted it to be like a big RPG Uncharted but the natural and diverse scenery to do that just isn't in this segment of the story.

The combat worked out quite well. I like that the difficulty has some bite. It reminded me of playing Final Fantasy IV at the original difficulty level. I do think the system can make it too difficult to recover once things start to go sour - it's not a huge inconvenience as you can continue from the start of any fight but it feels like weird design to allow an unrecoverable death spiral. Also, it leans into difficulty at times when you only have two characters in the party which was somewhat unwelcome for me. Lay off and hit me with the hard stuff when I've got the full party the gameplay was clearly balanced around!

Overall, I moderately enjoyed it. The general approach they're taking is broadly fine and I hope a lot of my niggles are due them to extending the Midgar section and won't recur as much in the later parts. So a tentative thumbs up on this remake business I guess but I will be disappointed if Part 2 doesn't improve on the formula.

Not really. You can reset them with a particular character if you like. And anytime you get a new weapon that weapon has all the points available you've earned so far.

Hard to say really. I don't think it's as big a deal as some make out, but ideally I'd prefer to experience it first hand.

Without giving away actual plot details, the basic result of it is that

I finished the remake today.

I started to like it a lot more from meeting Aerith onwards, but there were still a few missteps - anything that was a flash forward to future plot events felt unnecessary, all the stuff with the spooks felt really clunky. Then we hit Shinra tower, and i’m back in love again. It’s exactly what I wanted from it, bringing a great part of Midgar to life and greatly expanding Hojo’s role to be more in line with what the later parts of the original set him up to be.

But they still couldn’t help themselves - in the Shinra Theatre It really jars with the rest of the story. Any fan knows where things are aiming, but Midgar is about Avalanche. The game does a really good job making Midgar feel like a believable place, and Shinra feel like villains... a taste of what’s to come is already there with so the rest feels a lot like gilding the lily.

I also didn’t actually mind the boss fight before Rufus as it felt like it was a natural place to have that encounter if you had to have it (plus the music was banging)
Everything up until the end of the bike chase is again, really great (although fuck that bike chase boss, the mechanics are wonky as heck) but then... we get the end of chapter 18.

Ah man, where to start? It’s such a jarring shift from the preceding 30 odd hours.

This is all a big ramble and I could probably do with making it a bit more coherent, but suffice to say although I enjoyed playing the last hour, I felt like it was was transposed from a totally different game, and I don’t really like the direction they’ve decided to take the story in. I guess we’ll see how later chapters play out, but I think they should have had confidence in the story, and their audience, instead of doing what they did with it. If they continue with the story as is, it will feel undermined by the ending of this part. If they don’t, then why remake VII? The story was one of its greatest strengths. A confusing, but gorgeous experience.

Once Nomura was asked about how he writes story, and he said something along the lines of 

"When I write a scenario, I try and anticipate what the player thinks will happen next, and then do something different." 

Like... uh, quite.

Hahaha yes.

I’m starting playing ffxiii - I thought hope was annoying but snow is such an idiot.

I'm still playing remake. Think I'm at chapter 13

Couple of things for me:

1) I actually want more fights. There are barely a handful between sections so you don't get much use out of your skills, then it's fairly intense stuff against bosses and the like. So I'd like more monsters, or those that are there to respawn more often.

2) Side quests. I know they've been slated already but I'll say it again, not sure why they put them in to pad out the game when there is already a lot of content.

Arenas... I've only had the option once so far and it was the same set of monsters over and over (beyond the story one). Assuming I get more later

Haha some of the music in ff13 is bananas

Sahz talks about how

Perhaps a tiny bit harsher than me I feel

Ha I can’t believe how much snow lays it on when he meets back up with hope!

I'm not sure if that's my brain, the game, or *waves arms* this