Tag Archives: Final Fantasy VII Remake

Did Final Fantasy VII Rebirth need to be a humongous, obscenely long open-world game?

I’m not going to bury the lede here: yes, I firmly believe that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth did need to be humongous, obscenely long open-world game. So let’s spend a bit of time talking about that.

It’s become fashionable to bash open-world games in the last few years, at least partly because for a good long while now, big-budget developers and publishers have been using them as something of a crutch. Rather than providing a carefully structured, well-paced experience, a lot of developers seem to believe that offering the player what they consider “true freedom” (which in practice is rarely anything of the sort) will make up for the game’s shortcomings in other areas.

While there are a lot of companies out there who are very much guilty of that, when Square Enix has made an open-world game — particularly, but not exclusively, one in the Final Fantasy series –it has usually come out rather well. And Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the best to date. Let’s take a closer look.

Continue reading Did Final Fantasy VII Rebirth need to be a humongous, obscenely long open-world game?

Some spoiler-free early impressions from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

I’ve been eagerly awaiting Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and it actually arrived at my house a couple of days early! As such, I’ve been playing it for the last couple of evenings, and wanted to share a few initial thoughts.

I’m not going to spoil anything about the plot in this piece, because I’m not very far into said plot, and there are seemingly some very interesting things going on. We’ll talk about all that another time; today I wanted to focus particularly on the gameplay that unfolds after about two or three hours: the point at which the game properly “opens up”.

And yes, in a marked contrast from its predecessor Final Fantasy VII Remake, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth really does open up. So let’s take a closer look at that.

Continue reading Some spoiler-free early impressions from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII Remake Episode INTERmission: short and mostly sweet

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.

Continue reading Final Fantasy VII Remake Episode INTERmission: short and mostly sweet

Reflections on Final Fantasy VII Remake Hard mode – a solid New Game Plus implementation

“Back in the day,” as those of us of a certain age tend to say, it wasn’t unusual to replay a favourite game to see everything it had to offer.

Sometimes you’d play the game again immediately after finishing it; at others, you’d leave it a while and then come back to it fresh. Sometimes the game had additional things to discover when you played it through after clearing it once; at others, it was just a case of enjoying a story again, like re-reading a book or watching a film multiple times.

These days, meanwhile, there are so many games available that it’s relatively rare that I take the time to replay something I’ve already beaten to my satisfaction. But I made an exception for Final Fantasy VII Remake, so let’s take a look at that.

Continue reading Reflections on Final Fantasy VII Remake Hard mode – a solid New Game Plus implementation

Revisiting Final Fantasy VII Remake ahead of Rebirth’s release

At the time of writing, we’re counting down to the long-awaited second part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake project, which we now know is called Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

That’s not all we know, in fact; we know that this second game is going to conclude in “The Forgotten Capital”, which is where the first disc of the original game ended. Yes, with that scene — though as we’ve previously discussed, Final Fantasy VII Remake took great pains to point out that “the future is a blank page”, and that game’s final encounter was literally facing down the concept of “Destiny” itself.

Anyway, long story short, I’ve been revisiting Final Fantasy VII Remake ahead of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s release, so I thought I’d talk a bit about my experiences so far.

Continue reading Revisiting Final Fantasy VII Remake ahead of Rebirth’s release

The MoeGamer Top 10 of 2020

It’s New Year’s Eve! In fact, as I type this, it’s New Year’s Day in some places around the world, so if that’s the case, uh, happy new year, and I hope 2021 looks better than the rancid 12 months we’ve all just endured.

As is tradition for video gaming-related websites, it is obligatory for me to declare some sort of “game of the year” before 2020 ends, and as I’m someone who likes to be awkward and do things differently, I am counting “games of 2020” as “games I played and/or covered on MoeGamer in 2020” rather than necessarily “games that released in 2020”. My site, my rules — but hopefully you’ll find some fun things to check out along the way!

Hit the jump and let’s get started then — and note that these are (probably) in no particular order; I’m just noting them down as they come to mind!

Continue reading The MoeGamer Top 10 of 2020

Waifu Wednesday: Jessie Rasberry

Final Fantasy VII has always had popular female characters in the form of Tifa, Aerith and Yuffie from the playable cast, as well as Scarlet and Elena from the extended cast of NPCs.

But I remember being intrigued by Jessie back in the original PlayStation release… and it seems I wasn’t alone, as judging by reactions on social media a lot of people are absolutely thrilled with the much more substantial role she has in Final Fantasy VII Remake.

With that in mind, then, let’s take a closer look at this thoroughly charming character that we finally have the chance to get to know a bit better.

Continue reading Waifu Wednesday: Jessie Rasberry

The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 37 – The Art of the Remake

Coming at you live from the continuing lockdown situation, it’s a brand new episode of The MoeGamer Podcast, featuring my good self and Chris Caskie of MrGilderPixels!

The MoeGamer Podcast is available in several places. You can subscribe to my channel on YouTube to stay up to date with both the video versions of the podcast and my weekly videos (including the Atari A to Z retro gaming series); you can follow on Soundcloud for the audio-only version of the podcast; you can subscribe via RSS to get the audio-only version of the podcast in your favourite podcast app; or you can subscribe via iTunes and listen on Spotify. Please do at least one of these if you can; it really helps us out!

Or you can just hit the jump to watch or listen to today’s episode right here on MoeGamer.

Continue reading The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 37 – The Art of the Remake

Final Fantasy VII Remake: The Future is a Blank Page

To say that the Final Fantasy VII Remake project was hotly anticipated is something of an understatement.

Ever since the run-up to the PlayStation 2 launch, where one of the promotional videos showed a cutscene from Final Fantasy VIII apparently being rendered in real time by the new system, fans have been wondering what would happen if one of the world’s most beloved RPGs were ever to get remade.

Well, we’re starting to get some answers now… and a whole bunch of questions, too. Let’s explore!

Spoilers for both the original FFVII and FFVII Remake (yes, there are differences) ahead.

Continue reading Final Fantasy VII Remake: The Future is a Blank Page

Waifu Wednesday: Aerith Gainsborough

While her castmate Tifa is arguably a more popular character — primarily due to her more obvious “sexiness” — I’ve always been an Aerith man, myself.

At least part of this may be down to the fact that on my first playthrough of Final Fantasy VII on PlayStation I changed her name to that of someone I really fancied at the time, but there was definitely a lot about the character that appealed to me.

And that appeal has successfully transitioned from the questionably translated, text-only dialogue of the original to Final Fantasy VII Remake on PlayStation 4, too. So let’s take a closer look.

Continue reading Waifu Wednesday: Aerith Gainsborough