meltykarasu

[meltykarasu]

FFVII Advent Calendar 3: Finale Update

Merry freakin' Christmas!

So I'll bet you're wondering if I did it — and the answer is yes, and with far more time than the thirty seconds to spare from last year's Remake Advent Calendar.

I cleaned out (and I mean cleaned out WAY more thoroughly than I ever have in one of these playthroughs) the final dungeon all the way on Sunday the 22nd, leading into early the 23rd, and I came back on the 24th at about 10:30 PM.

Builds for the final battle were pretty complicated. Yuffie wound up getting the nearly-completed Enemy Skills materia, trading with Cloud, who got a slightly less full one. Cloud was also kitted with a four-hit counter combo — attack, attack, deathblow, Comet2 if the RNG all hit just right. Cid wound up lumped mostly with the white mage set, but he got Knights of the Round just in case. Yuffie got the most complicated setup, with Contain linked to both MP Turbo and level 2 Quadra Magic, plus the W-Magic from earlier in the dungeon allowing her to cast any one of those spells EIGHTFOLD. She also got Comet linked to MP Absorb.

Almost wiped to a Dragon Zombie on the way into the Planet Core because he cast Pandora's Box on everyone at death but Yuffie survived and revived everyone when the battle was over. Jenova-SYNTHESIS was a cakewalk — Yuffie's octuple Freeze destroyed all the individual parts and then Cid's Ultima, mimed by Yuffie, and Cloud's Pandora's Box (learned upon him dying to said Dragon Zombie) nuked Jenny 'til she started counting down to Ultima. I made sure everyone got Big Guard and was at full health before Jenny fired.

Bizarro Sephiroth also went well — I'd been raising an extra set or two of materia to give to the other half of the party — Vincent, Barret, and Tifa — for this. Tifa came in clutch, being COMPLETELY immune to the Gravity magic Sephiroth threw out. Barret served as the main healer while Tifa and Vincent pelted each part of Sephiroth with attack magic. They struggled only a little more than the main party — did I mention the OCTUPLE FLARE YUFFIE COULD DO???

As for Safer Sephiroth, he did wind up killing Cid for a minute there and I completely spaced that Angel Whisper is just a better Life2. Sephiroth only got one Super Nova off — which brought everyone's limit gauges to full. I threw both Cid and Yuffie's limits at him.

So it turns out, I'd forgotten that Cloud had the Cover materia on. With all the group attacks, it had never procced in the entire full three boss run.

So that's Sephiroth doing a single attack that Cloud takes on the chin and in response he smacks Sephiroth with a sword and then a bunch of meteors with about twenty-seven minutes on the clock.

Merry Christmas! Happy holidays! Thank you for joining me once again for a wonderful playthrough of Final Fantasy VII. Thank you for reading, and see you next year!

[meltykarasu]

FFVII Advent Calendar 3: Week Three Update

Happy Winter Solstice! I'm back with week three's update.

As you can see, I'm at Disc 3 with three whole days to spare. This is the fastest I've gotten to this point, and to be honest, I don't have anything major in the sidequest territory I want to do — I got a gold chocobo and all the materia from that, I did the Battle Square for long enough to get Cloud's Omnislash, I have everyone's best weapons including Cloud's from defeating Ultimate WEAPON and all the goodies from the Ancient Forest. I've actually gotten two copies of the Contain materia by mastering the first one and the second one almost has Flare thanks to keeping it in Cid's triple growth Scimitar.

As for builds, Cloud has been built out with the Deathblow materia linked to Added Cut and HP Absorb with a side of Enemy Skills and Comet for fun. Cid is mostly a black mage with Contain linked to MP Turbo doing crazy damage — I may also hook that up to Quadra Magic and W-Magic for octuple damage. Yuffie has been lumped with most of the white mage materia since she and Cloud have the ribbons. She also has Mime, meaning I can dupe any given spell or attack with her. I've also got a backlog of good materia to give to a second party during the Bizarro fight later on.

I'll post again early-early-early on Christmas morning, hopefully victorious!

[meltykarasu]

FFVII Advent Calendar 3: Week Two Update

Welcome to week two’s update!

First off, where am I? I’ve finished Disc One and I’m at the end of the Northern Crater. As I write this I am actually watching the FMV of the WEAPONs emerging. This puts me a couple hours ahead of where I was at this time last year (which was just entering the crater from the cliffs). Fun facts: Tifa forces her way into the party for the crater segment, something I did not know because I always had Tifa in my party at this point! (Except maaaybe my decade-ago first playthrough?)

I did complete most of the Wutai sidequest before the end of disc 1; once again Aerith (who I continued to use up to her departure) was in the party and once again her without materia is not the best. But I did get the date (as pictured above) with her.

Of course, I had Aerith as my white mage mostly, with support spells, and those really didn’t find a solid home when she left because nobody had the materia slots. Most of it ended up with Cloud and some with Cid. I’ve been religiously cycling my materia into double growth slots and we’re working with a whole heap of third level spells now, but Cloud’s Enemy Skills continue to be the all-around MVP. 

I’ll see you next week, right around the assault on Midgar (depends on if I go for Chocobos and the Ancient Forest at all, and when I do them)! 

[meltykarasu]

FFVII Advent Calendar 3: Week One Update

Well, this is out late because I attended Dragonsteel Nexus; I’m gonna be juggling reading Wind and Truth and playing FFVII for the remainder of the calendar.

Basically me:

Expect future updates on Saturdays as outlined in my earlier post. 

So, I asked a friend while voice chatting during the first couple hours of gameplay who I should aim for dating, and he said to roll a die, and it came up Aerith. I’d already decided to use Cid, and she leaves not long after he joins, so I decided I’d be using her in my party until then. Yuffie is my other pick for party member — these are both characters I’ve brought to the endgame in prior playthroughs, but I like them and I knew this year I just wasn’t using Tifa. (Maybe next time I go all guns with Barret and Vincent?)

Anyway, as for where I am, I’m about caught up with prior Advent Calendars (I have not done a session today) as I’ve just done my usual backtracking to get Beta from the Midgarzolom and the defensive Enemy Skills and I’m heading towards Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon. I’ve been loading Aerith up with white magic materia and Cloud has gotten the Enemy Skill materia, Yuffie is a thief and general caster right now but that might change as I grab more command materia — I’ve gotten Deathblow combos set up on her that are vicious with her high-accuracy weapons. 

See you next Saturday where I hope to be done with Disc One!

[meltykarasu]

Revenge of the Final Fantasy VII Advent Calendar

Happy holidays!

You may ask as we go into this for the fourth year in a row, “Zero, why are you doing this?” 

Long story short: The Final Fantasy VII Advent Calendar has officially become a holiday tradition for me!

Last year we did the FFVII Remake, which was a ton of fun and my second playthrough (and first on my PC, which had been upgraded specifically for the Remake. Well, also Resident Evil 4 Remake, but that’s neither here nor there. I played a LOT of that last year).

Eventually in the future I would like to expand the games I rotate through to include some of the Compilation titles like Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core. God willing, we’ll have some sort of option to emulate Before Crisis one day. And I REALLY want to play through the Famicom/NES version some bootleggers put together.

This year we’re doing the original FFVII again. 

As with any legacy title there are a lot of different versions and once again I am not using any of them and going with the original Playstation version. I’ve done this twice now and maybe if I do the original FFVII again I’ll play it on modern consoles with the fantastic abilities of “speed the game up and turn off random encounters.” The first Advent Calendar I used a Playstation 2 (for the CRT aesthetic), the next year I used a Vita, and this year I will be using a MiSTer. It is a nifty little FPGA device whose specific intricacies I am not equipped to fully outline but trust me when I say that it is really neat and I’ve enjoyed tinkering with it (and playing Tony Hawk on it.) Check it out! There's some informative YouTube videos on the subject.

Anyway, given this is a game I’ve done twice now on this blog, I’m not posting daily updates. Every Saturday and on Christmas itself you will receive an update on my progress through the game. This will probably give me a little more time to actually play!

See you next Saturday, where I hope to be somewhere around the Gold Saucer!

[meltykarasu]

I Am Sakuya review

It's not another light novel review. Sorry if you follow me for that.

Basically at the start of December one of my friends was like "I should make a spreadsheet of my backlog." I had actually made a spreadsheet of my backlog back in 2018 and never followed through with beating about half of the games on the list, mostly JRPGs, before I began buying and playing other games. I happen to also compulsively purchase Metroidvanias and not complete them and instead decide to play Super Metroid for the fiftieth time.

I went back through and made a new spreadsheet of my current backlog; there are around 80-90 entries (some are doubled) and now I'm dedicating myself to beating at the least the majority of that before I buy another game.

As of writing I am five completions deep — some of which were just polishing off games I hadn't finished but had put substantial hours into. I thought it might be fun to log these with reviews. They're gonna hopefully be short. We're starting with I Am Sakuya, available on Steam.

I Am Sakuya is a Touhou Project game that manifests as a Doom engine shooter. It's got a pretty threadbare plot retelling this sort of fanon explanation for the employment of Sakuya Izayoi, human head maid of the vampire-filled Scarlet Devil Mansion.

As for the game itself, it's a heavily projectile-based Doom with a visually bright coat of paint. None of the enemies have hitscan weapons and you only have one with a maximum ammo count of 50. If you've played any classic shooter like Doom, Quake, or Marathon, you'll be right at home. The projectile-based shooting makes every encounter a little 3D bullet hell, which is quite fun. The weapons are fun and funny — the hitscan weapon is a plushie, and the shotgun is a four-barreled monstrosity, and the throwing knives bounce off walls to create a functional blender. And most interestingly of all, there is even a watch that stops time completely.

I really dug this. It's not long but it's got a fair amount of charm. My favorite part is the penultimate level of Episode 1, which is an elevator stage from a beat 'em up — enemies board your elevator and you gotta survive the whole way up. Second place goes to filling the library of knives and watching the boss's health deplete chunk-by-chunk.

See you next time!

[meltykarasu]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Advent Calendar — Dec. 24

Cloud and company ascend into the executive suites pursuing the trail of alien blood and eventually he wanders into President Shinra's office, where the man himself has been thrown out the window. He's offering anything. Money. Power. Anything you want.

"I want my father back, you son of a bitch," Barret says.

Nah, just kidding. Barret does tell him to clear AVALANCHE's name and then the President pulls a hidden gun on him—

And then is immediately killed by Sephiroth, who also stabs Barret.

Sephiroth mutates into Alien Freakazoid JENOVA Dreamweaver with one of my favorite battle tracks in the entire game. See, it's an arrangement of the original JENOVA theme but it doesn't hit you with it at once, subtly working in the layers as the fight progresses until you hit the last phase and the iconic synths start in and you're like "Now! That's What I Call Boss Music!"

Anyway, you gotta cripple its tentacles or somethin' like that. I just really dig the music.

Anyway then the illusory battlefield it's pulled Cloud's party into fades. Barret's life is saved by one of the Whispers and Cloud chases after what appears to be Sephiroth, hauling the black-cloaked corpse of what had been Jenova until it was beaten and reverted to seemingly being human. The Sephiroth he's pursuing is ALSO a man in a black cloak, who leaps from the building to parts unknown.

AVALANCHE's helicopter descends to the heliport but is promptly blown up by an arriving Shinra helicopter. It's Rufus Shinra, everybody! [APPLAUSE]

Cloud says he'll delay Rufus if Barret gets Aerith out and then comes one of my favorite boss fights in the entire game — a solo fight between Rufus and Cloud, guest starring Darkstar, Rufus's pet guard hound. Rufus is just a really dynamic fighter and the entire fight is really fun. I don't know how else to describe it.

After the fight Rufus escapes via helicopter and attempts to blow Cloud off the side of the heliport. He's saved by Tifa at the last second.

Barret, Aerith, and Red XIII descend down the elevator but are waylaid by The Arsenal, another Shinra mech. This is not one of my favorite boss fights, mostly because I like playing as Cloud and Tifa a lot more than Barret and Aerith. I blew a lot of Aerith's MP early and it was a lengthy fight because he would not do the thing that let me stagger him.

Meanwhile, Whispers throw Wedge out a window.

Barret's group heads down to the lobby where they are met with Shinra infantry and Heidegger, but then Cloud appears on a motorbike at the last second and does some sick moves to defeat the troops while Tifa pulls up in a dinky pickup truck to grab the rest of the gang. They leap out a window and head down the incomplete expressway.

Whispers swarm the Shinra Building, covering it completely.

Shinra pursues the escapees, throwing a bunch of soldiers and mecha at them including the Motor Ball, an interesting boss which is now fought entirely on the bike, involving repeatedly staggering it by crippling the wheels, and then racking up over 500% damage by doing this several times over. It's interesting.

The gang pulls to a stop because Cloud saw Sephiroth and the Whispers, which is an awful band name. They confront him and he vanishes into a portal and Aerith makes her own portal. Inside, they are confronted by the massive Whisper Harbinger and its gang of Whispers, and basically you have to fight a bunch of the little guys to destroy the big guy. It's an okay boss fight but it's barely about the big guy except for thirty seconds at the end.

Then Sephiroth shows up!

This is a GREAT final boss fight. Sephiroth is in top form here — fast, agile, lethal, he swaps between different elemental weaknesses and affinities at points. He puts a lot of pressure on the currently controlled character, which makes switching pretty necessary. That said, I kept whacking him with Cloud's counterstrike, which is basically how I cheesed most of the bosses tonight. All those Whispers? Counter. Jenny? Counter. Rufus? Counter, and his dog too.

It starts as a solo fight but then you get Aerith and man, when I said he pressures the fuck out of your controlled character, he could NOT stop stabbing Aerith! Eventually Tifa also shows up and throws down and thank god because she has the Cure-All setup going.

I wound up beating Sephiroth with about 30 seconds to spare before midnight.

Anyway, Cloud pursues Sephiroth into the edge of creation and Sephiroth implores him to join him. They duel but Cloud is outclassed. Meanwhile Rufus takes control of Shinra and the people of Sector 7 begin to rebuild.

I did not edit this screenshot to make it look like it was snowing.

Cloud and company stand outside Midgar. Cloud knows that Sephiroth is still out there and wants to pursue him and the rest join in for the sake of the Planet's ongoing health. It begins to rain.

And I, personally, thank you for reading. See you next year!

[meltykarasu]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Advent Calendar — Dec. 23

Cloud and Tifa sneak through airducts to spy on the Shinra board meeting, where Reeve is really unhappy with the President's decision — as they have Aerith, she will lead them to the Promised Land (which the company assumes is a mako-rich land) and they will build a new Midgar there. Hojo talks about her viability as a test subject a while but is otherwise pretty checked out.

The party follows Hojo up into his lab and hold him hostage. After a quick boss fight and combat encounter, he looks closely at Cloud, realizing he may have been a SOLDIER but after a second recognition strikes his sunglass covered eyes. No, you weren't, he begins — but then is whisked away by ghosts before he can finish.

The party unlocks Aerith's cage along with another test subject, a lion-dog who attacks Hojo on sight. His name is Red XIII. Aerith calms him down after a moment but then Cloud has a compulsion to head for the elevator and faints.

Meanwhile the Turks chill in the basement and chat about their part in Sector 7's fall before Tseng gets an email — the Vice President needs them.

Aerith takes Cloud to her old room from her days as a child test subject. She discusses her mother and the Ancients (aka the Cetra) and their Promised Land, but when Barret indicates he is going to kill the Shinra board, the ghosts reappear. Red XIII and Aerith reveal their name and purpose: Whispers, the arbiters of fate who seek to correct destiny every time it goes wayward.

The party is then contacted by Domino and a somehow-got-inside Wedge. The main branch of AVALANCHE is bombing the tower and will evacuate them via helicopter if they can get up to the roof. They gear up and prepare to head out.

Finally, they go up the elevator and into Hojo's expanded laboratory, where they discover Jenova, Hojo's favorite test subject. Sephiroth appears and Cloud attacks, separating the party.

In true Kefka's Tower fashion, this dungeon requires switching between two parties. Red XIII spends most of his time with Cloud and Barret as a guest party member, attacking but not able to be controlled. The party switching is pretty seamless but it does require you having raised a good amount of materia to fill out the ENTIRE party's gear. You also get the last few weapons around this time, including Cloud's super cool magic-focused Twin Stinger with a dedicated counter ability.

Eventually they reunite and make their way upstairs to where Jenova and Sephiroth were, only to find her missing and a trail of blood leading away...

Tomorrow is the finale! I'm gonna be streaming on Twitch that night and we will hopefully get through the last boss gauntlet before midnight!

[meltykarasu]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Advent Calendar — Dec. 22

Here we go — the climb up the Sector 7 wall was a prelude, but the Shinra Building is the final dungeon proper and consumes three entire chapters of an eighteen chapter game.

Cloud and company emerge onto the catwalks before the building. Security is tight, and Barret suggests a suicidal charge straight through the front. Cloud spies a rear entrance and the party slips aboard a cargo truck that slipped into the parking garage. They carve their way through the security in the garage and head up to ground level.

In the lobby the group is immediately stymied by doors requiring keycards. Cloud spies one in the reception desk — which is currently closed off by a force field except through the top. Tifa leaps and monkey-bars her way over to it and secures the card.

I went up the elevator, incurring a few combat encounters and a scene where Tifa watches a man who calls his mother to find somewhere safe given the danger in the city over the last few days. The group also scares a woman half to death.

The elevator lets out at floor 59 — six shy of Hojo's laboratory on floor 65. The group signs up for a self-guided tour up the next few floors. Floor 60 is a museum extolling the virtues of Shinra and displays images and exhibits about the various departments and the president.

Meanwhile, in a series of asides, we are introduced to the unfolding intrigue of Shinra. Scarlet, the domineering head of Shinra's Advanced Weaponry Development, is in the midst of overseeing the development of new materia when an experiment goes wrong. Hojo of the Research Division menaces Aerith. Reeve Tuesti, the head of Urban Development, displays his distaste for Shinra following the collapse of Sector 7. President Shinra and Heidegger of Public Security discuss their PR narrative tying the troubles in the city to AVALANCHE and further out to Wutai.

And finally, Palmer of the Space Program is enjoying a cup of tea in the hall when he is passed by a familiar man in a black cloak...

Cloud and company watch a video presentation discussing Shinra and their view of the Ancients, who apocryphally sought a "Promised Land". Shinra believes it is a place rich with mako energy. As the presentation wraps up, it glitches out to reveal—

A meteor hangs apocalyptically over Midgar, windstorms and tornados buffeting the town. People flee in terror.

And Sephiroth appears once more to menace Cloud.

The presentation wraps up and a man opens the door. His name is Hart and he leads the party up into the archives at the behest of the Mayor of Midgar, Domino. He reveals: He is AVALANCHE's man on the inside and has been hiding the party from the wider Shinra security intranet — and he can get the party up to the next couple floors, updating their keycard and pointing them towards another collaborator who will provide another keycard, should they respond with the proper countersign — "The Mayor is the best."

So they head up into the employee recreational area and find the collaborator beside the Shinra VR simulator. He tells them to fight a simulated fight in order to get the keycard which is definitely not the devs realizing there hasn't been a fight in like twenty or thirty minutes depending on if you chose the elevator or the emergency staircase.

You can stick around and fight for some armor and Gil Up and Exp Up materia. I did so and it took like an hour or so?

Cloud heads back to the stairs and is interrupted by a pair of infantrymen. One of them prepares to call intruders but the other says, no, this is Cloud, my old buddy from basic training. Cloud grasps his forehead in pain. The infantryman says wait here and he'll go grab Kunsel (applause from the Crisis Core players in the audience for mention of a side character).

Tifa shows concern and Cloud brushes it aside and sets off for the stairs.

[meltykarasu]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Advent Calendar — Dec. 21

For the shortest day of the year, I sure had a packed schedule. I'm actually only just starting my session for the night about forty minutes before the date change, so it makes more sense for me to wrap aaall that up in the 22nd's write-up.

Have a leftover screenshot that didn't make the post but which I really liked from last session and the promise of a lengthy discussion of the first leg of the Shinra Building tomorrow (i.e. in a few hours).

[meltykarasu]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Advent Calendar — Dec. 20

Cloud and company ascend the wall and make their way up through the ruined Sector 7 plate. Shinra is patrollin' and monsters are riflin' around. I loaded Cloud up with Aero-Elemental and Tifa up with Lightning-Elemental on their weapons and went to town.

Cloud uses a freshly dead SOLDIER's radio to respond to a call and the other end bitched about AVALANCHE, so Barret swiped it and barked out threats only to discover they'd already hung up.

The party was discovered by Shinra moments later.

It's a neat dungeon that really delivers on the promise of grappling guns and precarious heights. Lots of the industrial machinery made me think of NieR Automata. Man, NieR owns.

The group ascends a crumbling building only to come face to face with the Heli Gunner — okay, I reflexively call it that because of OG FFVII. It's "The Valkyrie" now. It pelts them with machine gun fire until they reach a point where they can confront it and then the fight is on and by that I mean Cloud and Tifa beat the shit out of it because their weapons are elementally imbued with what it's weak to.

That's what we call Chekov's Gun. Kinda.

Its destruction and ensuing fireball causes the platform to give out and the party nearly plummets to their doom. Cloud grabs Tifa and she grabs Barret with her own grappling gun. They arrive on more stable ground and prepare to head for the Shinra Building.

[meltykarasu]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Advent Calendar — Dec. 19

We're pretty much done with side stuff! I wrapped up the last of it (the Whack-a-Box Hard Mode) at the start of this session. Now back to regularly scheduled Plot Focus until basically the end of the game!

Cloud and co. barge into Don Corneo's mansion only to discover his lieutenant Leslie, who had previously helped Aerith and Tifa by delivering their gear during the previous visit to the mansion. He's in the middle of preparing to go after Don Corneo, who has fled into the sewers.

And he knows a way to get up to the plate, so he offers the group a trade: they help him get through the monster-infested sewers to Corneo's hideout, he gets them up there.

The sewers are marginally rearranged and midway through split off from the original trek, and there's an entire detour when a creature grabs the key Leslie needs for the door. Once they catch up and defeat the monster, turns out, it's not a key, it's a pendant from his fiancée. He's going after Corneo out of revenge, as she had been chosen as a bride and vanished.

They catch up to Corneo, who once again unleashes Abzu on the group. During the chaos, Corneo slips away, Leslie is knocked out, and the party beats the monster's ass again.

After Leslie awoke, the party comforted him over Corneo's escape, and Tifa reminded him the flower depicted on the pendant was one of reunion. He vowed to seek out his wayward fiancée and gave the party new grappling guns to ascend the wall between Sector 6 and 7, along with a warning to finish what business they have in the undercity before ascending.

[meltykarasu]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Advent Calendar — Dec. 18

I said I was wrapping up side stuff yesterday but guess what! I forgot all the coliseum challenges to do, which earn you bonus SP and the level 2 limit breaks! I did all of them in one go because to be quite frank I'm very tired from work today!

Again: better post coming tomorrow! For real!

[meltykarasu]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Advent Calendar — Dec. 17

I feel like most of everything relevant for today was covered in yesterday's post. I just did more sidequests and finished the pedometer materia, netting me the AP Up materia! This functionally replaces the double AP weapons and armor of the original, but only works for a linked materia.

I only have one sidequest left (grabbing the last of Corneo's vaults, which is gated behind main story progress) so we'll talk more tomorrow! Sorry for the short post!

[meltykarasu]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Advent Calendar — Dec. 16

Cloud awakens to footsteps. Tifa can't sleep — broken up about the the destruction of her home at Shinra's hands for a second time. She cries into Cloud's shoulders, but Cloud's mako-enhanced strength causes him to hurt her by hugging her too tightly.

In the morning, Elmyra relents and allows Cloud to rescue Aerith. The group thank her and embark. But without trains or leads on ways to get topside, Tifa suggests a hail mary play: ask Corneo, the most connected man in the undercity.

At the heart of the Sector 5 slums, a young woman named Kyrie is offering news of AVALANCHE — but twisted by Shinra's biases. Tifa stops Barret before he can make a scene: the people here need hope, not anger. The group prepares to help everyone they can before ascending to the plate.

That leads us into the last major sidequest section of the game!

These sidequests wrap up most of the loose ends of the game's secondary plots and are intensely connected. Johnny's wallet is stolen, leading the party to Kyrie, who stole the key to Corneo's stash, which is also being pursued by the Angel of the Slums. In order to get both, the party has to go to Wall Market, where Madame M tells them that Corneo's thugs are heading back to Sector 5. Meanwhile in Sector 5, a doctor needs medicinal herbs and other ingredients, and in Wall Market, a little girl from Sector 7 wants to gather music to reinvigorate people and Andrea Rhodea from the Honeybee Inn is training at the gym! Plus, Chocobo Sam's stablehands are looking for wayward chocobos, which open up further locations to fast travel to!

It's a lot.

The game also provides a pedometer materia at this stage which, like a Pokemon egg, will one day become something neat, and running around for all these sidequests is the perfect way to do that. Just equip it and resist the temptation to use the new fast travel system until you hit 5000 steps.

I got a good chunk of the sidequests done today including the remaining gym challenges — pull-ups as Tifa, this time — and I should finish it off tomorrow. Then it'll just about be main quest straight through the endgame!

[meltykarasu]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Advent Calendar — Dec. 15

Yeah, we're getting buckwild with the posting times. And despite what the screenshot implies, I am using a controller to play this (a Dualshock 4, what God intended) but my screenshot button is bound to F12 by default and I can't be assed to setup a rebind on the DS4's Share button.

What a stupid idea, the Share button in place of a Select. Tim Rogers said it best when he said the touch pad has been nothing but the world's largest Select Button. I mean, how often are you actually using it for touch padding? I basically only use it for typing because it's marginally faster.

I think this post is running away from me. We were playing a video game or something, right?

Cloud, Tifa, and Barret traverse the collapsed expressway Cloud and Aerith had just gone through hours before. It is now even worse in terms of being collapsed, but they eventually make it to the edge of Sector 6 and the park. Barret bought a new gun-arm from the weapon vendor there and the group slipped into the access tunnel between the Sectors.

In Sector 7, the neighborhood watch was busy searching for survivors. The group visited the ruins of Tifa's bar before being led over to Wedge's home by one of his many cats.

There was a brand new sinkhole in the front yard which the cat leapt down into. It led directly into an underground Shinra laboratory. The party spotted Wedge and immediately fell deeper into the facility.

Unexpectedly, you take control of Barret, who can machine gun apart solid rock obstacles. Amazing. Eventually you catch up to Tifa in the maze of corridors and walkways and take down a nest of bugs. They proceeded up and out of the laboratory, eventually circling around to where they had spotted Wedge. They confirmed his wellbeing and, hearing an impending threat, throw him outside the blast doors as they seal shut.

A bunch of once-human experiments crawl out of the vents at Barret and Tifa. They fend them off until they are menaced by a massive one, which they defeat handily through judicious usage of bullets and fists. Tifa got a new weapon!

Cloud arrives at the end of the fight to stun the monster so Barret can finish it off. They break open the wall behind it to reveal rows and rows of tanks with listless human forms inside. Cloud confirms: human experimentation. He suffers a hallucination of himself in the same position.

Then the entire group is spirited away by the ghosts and deposited outside the dungeon, Wedge included. They take him back to Elmyra's home.

Cloud entreats her once more: Let them rescue Aerith, as they have just found evidence of Shinra's human experimentation. She denies once more and asks them to just rest for the night for now.

I mean like I don't mind the Share button! It's just that it's where you WOULD put the Select button. I think it has value but, like, the Switch has a screenshot button AND equivalent Start and Select buttons. And those controllers are fucking tiny! Have you ever held one of the Dualsenses? I mean, like, we're not quite at Xbox Duke territory in terms of big, large, huge controllers, but hot damn are we getting there.

[meltykarasu]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Advent Calendar — Dec. 14

Shorter posts for the next few days! And this one's mostly just story.

In the aftermath of the collapse, Barret is furious with grief. Tifa says this may have been their fault but Barret denies it — Shinra pulled the trigger.

Cloud reminds them of Aerith's parting words about Marlene's safety and then begins to head for Sector 5. Barret and Tifa follow. On discussion of the Ancients, which Tseng had mentioned, Cloud has another hallucination of Sephiroth.

They pass through Wall Market and witness the displaced Sector 7 inhabitants and Shinra infantry combing the streets for them and quickly shuffle out of the district to the road that leads directly to Sector 5.

When I got there, I stopped to check in on battle intel with Chadley and wrapped up the last of the latest batch by battling the Fat Chocobo again. Tifa's triangle attacks provide additional stagger damage percentage and I racked up to 300%, netting me a trophy. I also got the Enemy Skills materia, which is a little less useful in this than the original but still useful. I put it on Cloud. I also tried the Leviathan battle but wiped quickly and decided it could wait until the big sidequest dump in the next chapter or so.

Barret barged into Aerith's home, with the others following shortly behind. After checking in on Marlene, Aerith's mother told of her daughter's childhood. Elmyra discusses how Aerith had come into her life — at the train platform, a dying woman told her to take her daughter somewhere safe.

Aerith was a little psychic child who grew up in a facility and knew things — such as when people died. The Turks had previously attempted to grab her, but if she wouldn't return willingly, whatever Shinra wanted with her would not work. So they kept an eye on her for many long years.

Cloud prepares to go, but Elmyra entreats him to not make things worse. They decide, first, to head back into Sector 7 to search for survivors.