After clearing my Hard mode playthrough of Final Fantasy VII Remake, I was keen to try out “the Yuffie DLC”, also known as Episode INTERmission.
After my initial annoyance that Square Enix didn’t bother to include the damn DLC on the disc for the “Intergrade” PS5 version of Final Fantasy VII Remake — “Project Ten Dollar” is alive and well — I settled down to enjoy this additional episode, with absolutely no idea what to expect.
The entire thing took about 10 hours or so to play. You can extend that a fair bit if you do a Hard mode run through it and are a bit more fastidious about clearing up side activities, but the whole thing felt like it was a good length — and it left things on a nice teaser for Rebirth. So let’s take a closer look.
In Final Fantasy VII Remake Episode INTERmission (Episode INTERmission hereafter), you take on the role of Yuffie Kisaragi, a teenage ninja from the far-off land of Wutai. In the original Final Fantasy VII, Yuffie was an optional party member that it was possible to miss recruiting completely. Most people didn’t miss her, because she was a good character and had some worthwhile sidequests that were dependent on her presence, but it was, in theory, possible to go through the entire game without adding her to your squad.
In the continuity of Final Fantasy VII Remake, meanwhile, it looks like she may be set to play a bit more of a prominent role in proceedings. While she doesn’t directly cross the paths of the main Final Fantasy VII Remake cast in Episode INTERmission, she does provide an interesting new perspective on certain events that transpire, as well as giving us a brand-new “evil” to contend with.
There are two chapters to Episode INTERmission. This might not sound like much, but both are fairly substantial. The first is set in the Sector 7 slums and has plenty of side activities to take on, while the second unfolds in the Shinra building and is a tad more linear — though there are still some optional activities to engage with if you are so inclined.
Like the main game of Final Fantasy VII Remake, there’s a main story quest to follow, and while “important things” are happening, you’re not able to wander off and do your own thing; the game will forcibly turn you around and get you back on track if you attempt to do so.
However, in contrast with the main Final Fantasy VII Remake scenario, it’s much more obvious in Episode INTERmission when you’re about to enter such a situation — someone will generally state outright “we might not be able to come back here for a while, are you sure you’re ready?” It’s blunt and to the point, but it works, and it minimises frustration.
Episode INTERmission also has a lot fewer sequences where you’re forced to a walking pace instead of being able to run normally. The theory behind this is that while Final Fantasy VII Remake was designed with the PS4 in mind — and these “slow walk” sequences were in place to allow the game to catch up with loading in scenery and other game elements — Episode INTERmission is only available for the PS5 version of Final Fantasy VII Remake, and as such can take full advantage of that machine’s additional capabilities. It’s not obviously more “impressive” than the PS4 version of Final Fantasy VII Remake, but little things like the lack of “slow walk” sequences are definitely noticeable, in a good way.
In the first chapter of Episode INTERmission, we begin by being introduced to Yuffie, who is dressed, in the words of my wife, “like a homeless moogle”. This tatty disguise is intended for Yuffie to disguise her Wutaian origins — Shinra propaganda as well as lasting scars from a past war means that the average Midgar denizen doesn’t like Wutaians much — but also to act as a signal to her contact with Avalanche, the group attempting to “save the planet” from Shinra’s mako-sucking reactors and general unpleasantness.
Interestingly, though, the branch of Avalanche we meet in Episode INTERmission is not the one we know and love from both the original Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VII Remake’s main storyline. A narrative element that was added to the latter was that Barret and company were actually a radical splinter cell from the main Avalanche organisation; we get a hint that “Avalanche HQ” is actually rather large and powerful, particularly when they show up during one sequence in large numbers brandishing a significant amount of military-grade hardware, but from what Barret says, they are also quite hesitant to do anything as drastic as, say, blowing up a mako reactor.
The “Avalanche” we meet in Episode INTERmission is a fairly small group that hole up in the basement of a clinic building in Sector 7. It’s clear that they’re organised — they have hints of a uniform, even — but there is still a slight feel of “kids thinking they can change the world without actually doing it” to the group.
Yuffie, of course, who, in keeping with her representation in the original Final Fantasy VII, has a considerably inflated opinion of herself and her importance to the world, is having none of this, and has come to Midgar in the hope of stealing a “powerful new materia” that Shinra is supposedly developing. The members of Avalanche HQ that she works with are willing to help her get into the Shinra building, but outside of that one gets the distinct impression that they want to try and keep their hands fairly clean. It’s an interesting contrast to the down-and-dirty nature of Barret and company in the main game.
Before Yuffie sets off on her mission, she has the opportunity to hang out a bit in Sector 7’s slums. While initially repulsed by the squalid living conditions and perpetual rotten egg stench from the polluted water, she soon finds a fun sense of community among the people of the undercity. She even has the opportunity to briefly interact with a couple of the secondary characters from the main game, though she’s kept well clear of the main cast, since her story is set during the period between Cloud falling into Aerith’s church after the party’s fight with the Airbuster, and the dropping of the Sector 7 plate.
One of the main activities Yuffie can partake in prior to setting off on her mission proper is a new minigame known as Fort Condor. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it was also a minigame in the original Final Fantasy VII. The difference here is that in the original game, it was a strategy game where you were commanding “real-world” Avalanche troops in an attempt to resist a Shinra invasion; in Episode INTERmission, it’s a tabletop game that has been taking the slums by storm. Cloud just… didn’t notice, apparently.
Fort Condor combines elements of collectible card, real-time strategy, MOBA and tower defence games. Your aim is simple: defeat the enemy base. You can achieve this by destroying it outright, or you can also win by having destroyed more of the enemy’s outposts when the game timer expires, or being the first to destroy an enemy outpost or tower during “Sudden Death” after the time has expired and players are on equal standings.
There’s a “weapon triangle” at play with the units you can place on the field: Vanguard beats Ranged, Ranged beats Defence, Defence beats Attack. There are also ground-based and aerial units, and it’s not only the explicitly “Ranged” units who can attack from afar; in fact, melee units are something of a minority.
To play Fort Condor, you have to wait for an “Active Time Battle” (ATB) bar to fill at the top of the screen. The gauge is divided into a number of sections, with its maximum capacity and fill speed determined by your choice of “board” you are playing on. Each board also has a “deck limit” of units you can field, as well as inlaid materia crystals that either buff units passively or allow you to cast spells during a match.
You have a “hand” of units available to deploy at any time, and each unit costs a certain number of ATB bar sections — more powerful units, as you might expect, cost more ATB. Units can be deployed anywhere on the field up to your side’s front line, defined by either the halfway point on the map or the furthest one of your currently active units has advanced. There are two chokepoints in the middle of the map, but the field is otherwise fairly open.
For the most part, success in Fort Condor is about looking at your opponent’s “deck” of units, which you can see before the match starts, and then picking a deck of your own that will counter them nicely. Do this and you’re pretty much guaranteed to win — right up until the final match against the “Grand Master” of the game. This guy uses a frankly unfair board that charges rapidly and allows him to churn out units at a rate considerably exceeding your own, making him near-impossible to beat. I must confess I gave up before actually beating him, but I did beat all the prior opponents on their own terms without cheesing things.
As you beat opponents, you’ll earn new boards, units and Condor Coins, the latter of which can be spent at a special vendor to purchase even more boards and units. There are also a few units hidden in treasure chests throughout the main scenario, allowing you to come back and play the minigame again after you’ve beaten the main story, and Hard mode actually makes Fort Condor more difficult as well as the actual game content.
It’s a bit of a shame that the difficulty from the Normal mode Grand Master onwards into Hard mode effectively comes from your opponents “cheating” — or at least having a significant advantage over you — because up until that point, Fort Condor had been a fun little diversion.
The reward for persevering is reasonably worthwhile — it’s an “AP Up” materia, which allows materia to level up quicker — but not essential by any means, and as I’m not a trophy whore, I didn’t mind not snagging the trophy. Pro-tip to anyone struggling to enjoy “modern games”: just play the bits you are actually enjoying, and know when to walk away from a side activity you are no longer having fun with. But do finish your games.
Anyway, outside of Fort Condor, you’ll be spending time wandering around as Yuffie and, of course, fighting as her. And thankfully, given the amount of fighting you’ll be doing in Episode INTERmission, battling as Yuffie is super-fun.
Episode INTERmission also makes the interesting decision to take out the opportunity to switch characters mid-combat, instead giving secondary party member (and original new character) Sonon a supporting role, albeit one where you can still issue orders to expend his ATB charges and cast spells. You can also tell Yuffie and Sonon to “synergise”, which causes them to coordinate their attacks and opens up the opportunity for more powerful variations on certain character abilities, assuming both characters have ATB charges available.
Yuffie fights with an oversized throwing star, and can use this as either a melee or ranged weapon. While fighting melee, tapping the square button causes her to unleash rapid strikes, while holding the button causes her to zip in for a hit then hop back to (hopefully) get out of the range of enemy attacks. Pressing triangle, meanwhile, causes her to throw her star at an enemy, which means it will be lodged in them for a short period. She can either immediately follow this up with a gap-closing melee attack to retrieve the star or cast ninjutsu magic on the star while it’s embedded in an enemy’s face.
Yuffie is excellent at taking advantage of elemental weaknesses, even without magic materia. This is because her starter weapon has an ability that allows her to infuse her ranged ninjutsu magic (which doesn’t cost any MP) with fire, ice, thunder or wind. This means hitting an enemy’s weakness is a matter of throwing the star, casting the appropriate elemental ability when she has an ATB charge, and then just pelting them with ninjutsu magic.
It’s a fun and different twist on the other characters’ combat found in Final Fantasy VII Remake, and gives Yuffie’s combat a markedly contrasting feel. It’s very enjoyable, too, as the way her basic attacks work give her a ton of mobility, which means she’s pretty good at dodging out of the way of powerful abilities — useful for some later boss fights, for sure.
Sonon, meanwhile, feels a little under-utilised, both narratively and mechanically. In mechanical terms, he’s certainly useful, as he has several abilities that make him very effective as a “tank” to support Yuffie’s ranged “DPS”, but the fact we never get to play as him directly means that you’re constantly left feeling a bit “detached” from how some of his moves distinguish themselves from one another. He does have some sort of self-sacrificing move that lets him immediately revive Yuffie at the cost of all his remaining HP, which is a nice addition to the mechanics, but aside from that it’s hard to feel too attached to him as a party member from a mechanical perspective.
Narratively, we don’t get to learn a lot about him over the course of Episode INTERmission, but we do learn that he trained under Yuffie’s father, and he appears to have a bit of a “sister complex” towards Yuffie, who he seems to think resembles his late sister, who was killed in Wutai’s war with Midgar. There’s a lot of “I’m not your sister!” from Yuffie throughout Episode INTERmission, culminating with a rather emotional scene during the finale, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see if that narrative thread goes anywhere in Rebirth.
The second chapter of Episode INTERmission unfolds, as previously mentioned, in the Shinra building. Rather than retracing Cloud and company’s steps up the tower, Yuffie and Sonon instead descend into the basement, which is Scarlet’s territory. You’ll face off against a lot of mechanical foes in this section — a stark contrast with the primarily organic enemies that come your way courtesy of Hojo in the main Final Fantasy VII Remake scenario — and have some great boss fights, including a fantastic one against Scarlet herself in a giant mech suit.
The route through the Shinra basement is mostly fairly linear and straightforward, but there’s a nice sense of exploration created through a bit of verticality. It’s not just running through corridors from one room to another; there’s a fair bit of climbing, too, and checking things a little off the main path will reward Yuffie with her favourite thing: materia.
There’s a minigame in the Shinra building chapter, too: a variation on the “Whack-a-Box” game from Final Fantasy VII Remake’s main scenario. Positioned as a Shinra training exercise, Yuffie is challenged to clear a course of boxes against the clock, with some boxes being weak to physical attacks, others being weak to magic attacks.
In theory, this means that you should use a combination of melee and ranged attacks, but in practice the ranged attack works well for everything; instead, successfully clearing the courses with the best score is about plotting an efficient route and making good use of Yuffie’s ATB abilities. Notably, her “Windstorm” ability, which conjures a tornado wherever her weapon is, is extremely useful for breaking the tough, high-value boxes, and in the hardest difficulty course, obtaining the top score is pretty much dependent on using her “Banishment” ninjutsu magic, which becomes more powerful the more ATB charges she’s spent prior to casting it.
While the minigame is simple enough to clear with a decent score, it’s very tricky to master the top score on the harder difficulty. Unlike Fort Condor, however, the minigame’s final challenge doesn’t feel outright unfair; instead, it’s about mastery of the mechanics and making creative use of abilities you might not have thought to make much use of prior to this point in the game. This, in turn, has the convenient side-effect of demonstrating just how useful those abilities you might not have thought to use really are!
Episode INTERmission ends a little abruptly, if I’m honest. There’s a build-up to a pair of new villains, one of whom is fought as the DLC’s “final boss”. And then it just sort of stops, with one of the last shots in the scenario being Yuffie seeing the Sector 7 plate being blown from above, rather than below as we see it in the main game. It’s a powerful image to close on, but it does leave lots of unanswered questions; I guess as a teaser for Rebirth, that’s sort of the point, but it would have been nice to have a little more closure.
All in all, Episode INTERmission is a solid addition to Final Fantasy VII Remake and I’m glad I played it. I wish they’d actually included it on the PS5 disc, as otherwise this part of the story is going to end up lost in the years to come, but while the Final Fantasy VII Remake project is still “current” it’s definitely worth experiencing as part of the unfolding grand narrative.
Now to begin the wait for Rebirth… only a couple of weeks to go, and thankfully I have plenty to keep me occupied in the meantime, some of which you might hear about very soon!
More about Final Fantasy VII Remake
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