828: REVENGEANCE

Hey, everybody, it's you Thursday for Bong Cast Revengeance. I'm your host this time, Jeffrey grub I have an all star cast here to discuss Final Fantasy sei Rebirth. I believe that is the TM trademark name. No two's in there, no remakes in there. It's a rebirth to talk about this game. I've assembled Mike Manati, who's looking bright eyed and bushy tailed. How are you feeling? Happy fortieth birthday to my older brother aj I am so surprised, but that's okay. Got the job done, Sean Turbo,

Sean mcdal, How are you doing? You finished this a couple of days ago, right, so you're sweets okay. I got some sleep last night. I'm still gonna hit you with the uh, with the wark wark and not the quick because I'm wild and none tam today baby two more Hussein five thousand words. Huh. Yeah. You know, sometimes you start typing and then you never stop, and then you're like, this is a bad idea, but I don't care. Lucy James is here, Lucy. How far

are you into Final Fantasy seven Rebirth? Thirty five hours at the end of chapter ten. It's a big beefy game and to help us figure it all out. Emma five, Emma, how are you doing? In Final Fantasy? You were just laughing so hard because Lucy said thirty five hours end of chapter ten. At the end of chapter ten, I think I was at sixty five hours. Yes, it's that kind of game that was traveling. It's that kind of game which just tells you how much of my life I

have spent activating Remna Wave towers and mostly playing Queen's Blood. We will talk about Queen's Blood and whatever activating a tower is in Final Fantasy seven Rebirth. I have not spent really any time with this game. I'm gonna facilitate this conversation. I think maybe let's let's just start off. Let's start and everyone's just going to give you your basic overall opinion to let people know we're not

going to get into spoilers in this episode pretty much at all. We are prohibited from doing that under the agreement of our embargo, but we wouldn't do that for this episode anyhow. It doesn't make a lot of sense. No one's had the chance to play it, and there's enough different here that it's going to be surprising. We want everyone to be able to experience that themselves. But let's start tell me how you're feeling about it. Let's start with

you, Emma, how did you find Final Fantasy seven rebirth? I have to preface this with saying that Final Fantasy seven, the original game, like literally made me the gamer I am today. I love, love, love JRPGs. I didn't have a Super Nintendo. We were a Sega household. So Final Fantasy seven nineteen ninety seven was the first JRPG I ever played. I was eleven years old when that game came out, and so it was

a very impressionable age. And it's difficult for me to be critical of this game, just because of the nostalgia factor and for me the way that the story has unfolded thus far, and I'm about three quarters of the way through, I'm a bit I'm a bit further along than Lucy has been thrilling.

I have cried a lot. This game is attempting to destroy me emotionally, and I will say though that I as as much as I am really really enjoying it, there is an aspect that does kind of annoy me, which I'm sure we will discuss in greater detail as we get further into this, but overall, and it's difficult for me to say it at this point whether I would like deduct a point from the game given that, But then I think about games like, for example, in twenty twenty, when Final Fantasy

seven remake came out, that was not my game of the year. Haites was so yeah. I mean again, it's like, I absolutely love this game, but there is this one like standout thing that is definitely a little annoying. It's not ruining the game for me by any stretch of the imagination. I'm so so enjoying myself. But uh yeah, that's that's my complex diatribe on how I'm feeling about Final Fantasy seven Rebirth thus far. If you did have to give a score right now of five, and obviously it's preliminary

and it's not like the score is going to some arbiter anyhow. So where are you landing right now? You think between between a one and a five? Yeah, four out of a five star system. Yeah, I would

say like four point seventy five. Sure, okay, fantastic, Yeah, okay, And I know what you mean that when you say it's like when it's something so nostalgic, it kind of lives in this other zone for you, which is like how I feel about a lot of the old like Star Wars movies, where it's like it's right, I don't even think about them critically, but that's not what they're there for me for. So I know

exactly what you mean. And having something new presented to you that you now are like an adult and engage you with in a different way that could be a little bit off putting sometimes or confusing, but it sounds like you're having a great time. Yeah, Lucy James, how are you finding your time? Okay? So also the preface with my history never played the original played remake back in twenty twenty. Also Kingdom Hearts Fan, which I think helps

because sometimes the right seems like it might help here. Yeah, the writing kind of goes a little weird and like it kind of really wants you to be I think if you suspend the fact that sometimes things just don't make sense or aren't explained perfectly. There is also a complete joke that Square is saying that each game is standalone. That is a lie. That is a lie. Double checks. I even went on the website, and still that's my

background of it. I'm really enjoying it, despite the fact that I think some of it is very messy and I haven't got to the end yet, and I know a lot of people have said that the ending does get very, very messy. We're not obviously going to spoil any of that, but like, there are some parts where the open world stuff I really love. I think the combat is absolutely fantastic and it is probably my favorite combat system. That's a big bull gate claim. I will come back and reevaluate that,

but I think it's fantastic. I absolutely love it. Performances music all great. I also think that it's done a really incredible job of like actually making me care more about these characters. But I will say pacing wise,

it's it's it's tricky. It kind of has that. It has the problem that a lot of big open world game have where it's like, hey, there is a world ending thing that we have to do, Bud, wouldn't it be cool if we, you know, went up some towels or find some stuff and then so kind of it kind of suffers from that a little bit. Also, some of the missions are definitely padded I think there is a great side mission with some chickens though, which I would love to talk

about. Overall, I'm really enjoying it. I do not know how on earth I could put a score on it, because it is such a I don't know what you'll you'll hear as we as we talk about it. It is such a wild, a wild thing. Mike, Tim, I'm gonna come back around you. I think we're gonna use you to jump off into something else. So let's go to Mike first. Mike, how are you finding it? You actually reviewed this game. You did stay up to beat it last night and finalized review. I think you said at six thirty am

this morning. First of all, how are you feeling? And second, how do you find the game? Got a bit of sleep, so that's nice. I am in the completely adore side of things. I am super thrilled with this game. I didn't think we would ever get a single player

Found Fantasy game like this. Again, I think that trying to make a single player of Found Fantasy basically since the PS two era even kind of then, it has meant a lot of compromises because they still want to keep up that ridiculously high production value, but then other things kind of need to get cut, like well, you're only gonna play as one character, or we didn't really finish the final act, there's not gonna be much many side activities,

or it's not like, you know, this big world to explore. This game has all that stuff and is bigger even than those classic games. My final runtime was like seventy hours, and that was doing for a while everything because I loved all the side missions, all the mini games, all the open world stuff. I only stopped and blined it when it was like two days ago. I was like, ah, I gotta be this game.

No more sleeper side activities for me. Even then I was kind of mount myself, like oh, but I kind of want to play more Queen's Blood actually, So yeah, I am definitely on the you know, five out of five beyond my expectations. Absolutely love this game all right, Sean and Tam, I know you guys have pretty similar feelings about the way the

game wrapped up. Again, we can't talk specific we can't talk spoilers, but I think people are going to be very curious to hear the gripes because I think when I see a review score like Metacritic ninety three, ninety four. It's in that range, and then I owe, I do the thing I go look for like some of the lower reviews, the lower reviews here are still very high scores. It doesn't have anything below an eighty as far as I saw on Metacritic, or an eight out of ten or whatever.

And so it's like, okay, so what are the gripes. I guess you guys want to talk about how you feel. Sean, you can go first, and then maybe we can start getting into some of those gripes just so we can get them out of the way and kind of get back to gushing about some of this stuff. Shuan, go ahead. Yeah, So I promise peopled the Jams spiel and I'm gonna give the shortest version of that I can because I gets important to contextualize my feelings like Emma did. The

difference. Our stories are pretty similar, but mine is. I was eleven when compilation of Final Fantasy Set was happening, so I was introduced to the world. It's a hashtag. I'm not gonna say. How with the different babies, Yeah, Advent Children Crisis Court. Unfortunately, dur To Serbers none of that stuff is particularly great by the way, I don't think it is, but seeing the world realize in that way and the characters, that's what I fell in love with. And so I went back to the original game

on the PS one. I was like, oh, this really is an early PS one RPG, okay, And so I kind of put it down

and absorbed the story through other sources. It wasn't really until like the HD release on PS four and you know, twenty fourteen or whatever, where I really put time into it, into a full complete play through myself, and that's where I fall in love with it, and the systems and the characters, the word everything, And so that leads us to Remake coming out in twenty twenty, and that is one of my favorite games of all time because

it is the realization of what I pictured Midguard in my head as a kid. It is what I always wanted that world to be, the characters to be. I thought that game has its issues, but what it executes on in terms of bringing that world to life is perfect. And so that brings us to Rebirth here now, and that means that I'm kind of of two minds here. My expectations were going to be really high, maybe unreasonably high

going into this. And when I think of the game, it's hard for me to separate how I feel about it as a video game and how I feel about as the second part of the Remake trilogy. And I think I almost have to talk about it separately because I think as a video game, it does what Remake does. It perfectly realizes this world. I was even better than I think I was expecting, and we get things Like we've mentioned the mini games. There's a lot of them, but they are very good

when they hit. There's some of the sequences are just some of the most incredible things I've ever witnessed in a video game, and just had me crying with laughter, crying with sorrow. My emotions were all over the place. They came for me like they came for Abba. They're just trying to destroy

us FF seven fans. It's amazing. I'm not a huge open world guy, and I thought that the open world stuff is really good too, Like there's a good loop there that keeps you going, even if it gets a little long in the two sometimes, and even if some of the stuff in the middle is a bit drawn out, I think is generally well done. My issues with the game mostly come down to these story elements that are new

to it. A lot of the remake trilogy specific stuff I think is handled poorly, and it feels a little cathartic to say out loud, but I'm just gonna say it. I think they messed up with the ending. I think they mangled it and we're not good again. We're not gonna talk specifics of what happens, and please don't misconstry our words here. We're gonna say what we say exactly as we mean to say of them. Look, yeah, and just to be clear, like, do you think the ending is

what most people think is happening. I'm not gonna say. I'm not gonna say anything about that. Yep, all right, fair enough. I'm just gonna say I don't like that, and so it show up. So it puts a damper on my feelings out of the game as a whole. But I think that everything else that is there is fantastic, and if we are doing scores and everything like that. I put in about fifty three hours that

was doing mostly mainline stuff with some side questing. I basically only side quested to get Chokobo's and points with a certain character in the relationship stuff, and I think like on a ten point scale or you know, stars with half points, I would give it like a nine out of ten. Is where I'm feeling right now. Damn. How about you? You can visit GameSpot dot com to read my full review, spot too is there at the top

and everybody if you actually want to. Yeah. So the history part of it is, Final Fantasy seven is one of my favorite games of well time. The Final Fantasy frontranchise is one of my favorite franchise of all time. I spent most of my childhood and teenage years obsessively playing and replaying them,

so I know them fairly well. And that extends to pretty much all of Square Inex's major RPGs, Like I love all the Kingdom Hearts games and I reviewed while I was at game while I've been at GameSpot three is the only one that came out and I reviewed that, and I have a lot of tolerance for the weird things that Squares Square Inxes RPGs do. And when Remix came out, I gave it a ten out of ten, which I don't give very many games ten out of tens. They have to be significant.

They have to be significant to me or to the kind of like overall industry in terms of what they bring to the table. The people have disagreed with some of my ten a halt of tens. They disagreed. I mean, they always disgreed with my ten out of tens. They've disagreed when I gave Final Fantasy a ten out of ten. They've disagreed when I gave elder Ring a ten out of ten. They disagreed when I gave Definitely a ten out of ten. But I don't give a shit what anyone thinks. This is

how I feel. I really really love Final Fantasy seven Rebirth. I think it's a phenomenal game. Mechanically speaking. It is such a smartly designed and more importantly iterated game. It does some really interesting, really astute and sharp things with how narrative and themes are used to reinforce gameplay and vice versa.

And I think I said this in my review, but I think one of the most kind of unique and remarkable things about it is it takes the open world Ubisoft formula that is so boring and so tired, and everyone is kind of like Pavlovian condition to hate at this point, and it makes it meaningful by tying it intrinsically to the nature of the star and the overall task that you're embarking on. That is to say, this is a game that needs

you. Finant seven Remake was a game that showed you why Chener needs to be brought down because people are suffering and you've got to speak to the people. This is a game that needs to show you that needed to tell you why does Chiner need to be brought down for the sake of the entire world. And the way it does that is it takes these menial tasks and makes you engage with them in a way that shows you why the planet is important

and what it means to individual characters. And because of that, it renders these quite plain side questions, side activities with way more emotional and narrative heft than they would probably deserve and probably most people would think that they're capable of on paper. And I think that's like I described it as a stroke of genius, and it is incredible and I never got tired of it because the way they do it is like they make every system just bump shoulders with another

system, so you never feel like you're doing something empty. If you do a boring side quest, it raises a level of your party, your character, gives you access to more information that Chadley is going to use to develop materia that will give you more abilities. And it's a cyclical, sticky kind

of system. That is it is close to perfection, like it is amazing, and then the character stuff is incredible as well, Like they did what they did in remake and they made those characters important, but more on. In remaking it was quite surface level. In this one, it's like, oh, you understand why they are the way they are. You get Barrett being the boisterous kind of like leader, but then you see him as the complete opposite of that character, and the game shows you why, and it's

like really interesting. You get like Tifa's kind of trauma brought out, but it's never done in a way where it completely compromises her as a character. I mean, like, I'm not the right person to speak about how it presents women, but from my outside perspective, the thing I loved about it is like I have this image of Tifa where she's extremely strong and she's extremely

short of herself, especially through remake and this game. I think, I mean, I can be I'm willing to accept that it's not the case because I don't have the proper perspective. But I think that they explore a trauma that she has without making her feel weak, and I really really love that.

There are definitely moments where she shows emotion and she breaks down and you can tell that she doesn't have that confidence in herself that we perhaps have in her, but ultimately it always ends in a way or like she always finds that strength, and it's the same for every character. They kind of break down but rebuild themselves up again, and it's fantastic. As Sean said,

the issue I have with it is one the pacing. This is lucidly mentioned this, but like the pacing's not good, and it's because I said it in my review. It's two much like the original Final Fantasy and many games of that era. Like they speak to people who make games and they'll tell you this. There's a lot of games, especially Japanese games, where the

gameplay dictates the story. Like you have an idea for a gameplay, you have this mechanic, and then the story bends to fit that mechanic, and Final Fantasy seven very much was a kind of like a game that did that. The whole Gold source a bit. It was made a part of the story, but it was not even back then. It felt like superfluous. But we just didn't care back then because that's what stories were, that's what games were. But we were just like, Okay, cool, I'll play

this, and they made it work in the story. We are way more sophisticated with storytelling in video games now, so when you're in the middle of a save the World kind of scenario and like thementum has built up, and then you have an extended section of mini games that are kind of clear that are being justified as a story, it doesn't work and it disrupts it. I love mini games, but the problem here is they force you to do it and that breaks the pace up, which I think is a major issue.

And it does it back to back with three separate locations in one big stretch. It's I think it's like ten hours, which is like rough or probably less than that, like five hours. It felt so long. And then the final issue for me was the way it ends. Again not going to talk about what happens. But I will say what I said in my review. I like what they're going for. I understand what they're going for. I think the delivery of it was a complete mess. And again I

love Kingdom Hearts. Even I was like, what is going on? I had to sit down and think about what was happening, piece the bits together, and then when I was done, I was like, Okay, I get it, but I don't know if a lot of other people will get it like it is. Is why it is. Having said that I finished the game, I spent eight eight hours in there. I still I'm playing

it every night because Hell Divers doesn't work and I love it. Like I said in my review, that stuff is not enough for me to completely like, for it to completely ruin my experience, and that's why. Yeah, that's why I gave it an AF ten, which means great. It's a great game. Yeah, that is. I think reading a lot of the

reviews this morning, that is definitely the since I got that. It's like even the people that ended up feeling similar to you, Tam, everyone agreed that they are not going to throw out the baby with the bathwater, and like the majority of the game where they were unabashedly loving It is definitely all

still there and all still easy to enjoy. I wonder if you guys feel like it's one of the struggles here is that you know, in the time since Final Fantasy seven has come out, the game has sort of been turned into sort of like this holy object, Final Fantasy seven, And so when they go I could try to recreate it, the kind of everything becomes holy and you kind of can't cut any everything, and if you're gonna do anything with it, you got to make it bigger and more in depth. And

does that contribute to this pacing issue or to any issues anyone's opinion? I think like so yeah, Like I think an example of what Tam is talking about, like in the original fan Phasty seven, when you get to June and there's a sequence where you dressed up as a soldier and you have to do like a drill march, and it's this famous mini game, and like the way they try to justify that in the story here is pretty much complete nonsense. It's like straight up a bad idea. Actually what they're doing,

it makes their plan even works, and it's a very bad plan. And then're like oh no, the plan worked basically, So I get that, but that to me, that mini game, in that whole sequence was so ridiculous, silly, endearing, entertaining, and just so wild. Then like again I get that, like, oh yeah, this is this is this really serving the story? Is this like too goofy? But ultimately I was like, and I don't care. I am like actually straight up laughing and

smiling at an idiot at the ridiculousness of this. Like at one point, you have to like summon your the people in your troop and you have to like look through the city to get them, and then they like start marching around as you get more of them, and they're following you around this town like all of the marching. If you go inside a store and come back out, the leader will be like, hope you found what you were looking for, sir. Then everybody else will like, oh's too sorry, Like

there is like a dragon levels of goofiness in this game. Like this game will get incredibly goofy, and it can be so surprisingly funny. Now, sometimes that can mess with the pacing and the tone of the story because we'll have moments like oh no, a mass shooting happened, and now there's a big muscle man in a in a diaper standing next to the corpses, and isn't he kind of a funny character. It's like, yeah, right, you'll have that problem times. But the problem exactly, it's like I don't

even think, like I know that this is like not ideal. Uh, I don't know. I'm just kind of all bored on it. But you know, part of it is all these mini games. I really did like almost all of them, and I really missed kind of the glutt of mini games that used to just be given the foul fantasy. I mean, that was so much of fun Fantasy seven's original identity. It's something that the series

definitely kept up in the PS one era. It's something that we lost, right, Like, there aren't a lot of mini games and Final Fantasy sixteen really there's a few in fifteen, so I was kind of glad that they went. And that's what even remake didn't have that many, So I was kind of glad that there was. It was almost like they did have a mission statement of the there's gonna be more mini games than you've ever seen. Buckle up. Yeah, can we talk about Queen's Blood. Yes, yeah,

that was my question. Someone Queen's Blood to me, We'll try it even it was possible. I think it's better than tad Unbelievably, here's here's a thing. Uh so, uh oh my gosh, why am I completely blanking on the not Nomura director. I literally went to dinner with him. So Hamagucci son has been very open about the fact that he loves the Witcher three. So this is like Gwent level good card game. It is so

much fun. So basically you get introduced to it almost immediately as soon as you're like in the present timeline, once you get out of that flashback and uh. And it is one thing that that, weirdly enough, you are not actually forced to play all that often, whereas like a lot of other mini games, there's a lot of you being forced to play it. Like with Queen's Blood, basically they go okay, here's an intro to the game, and then you're kind of on your own to do with it what you

want. But like shops around town sell booster packs, so there's a deck building aspect to it. You win cars off of people when you're playing against them. There's a whole Queen's Blood tournament that you don't actually have to participate in, but I participated in the entire thing in one obviously. It's just like the deck building for me is so much fun because there's so many different

sort of like strategies in terms of how you can play it. You're basically looking to get board dominance with your own color and to like block your opponent from stealing spaces from you. And then different cards have different values in terms of like how many ponds you have to have on them in order to play it. And then different cards have different abilities. I mean, you can even make the choice to like eliminate some of your own cards and reclaim those

spaces to play other cards. It's oh my god, it's so much fun. Yeah. To be clear, what it is is it's a three vertical of Biblie six horizontal playing field, yes, and you start off with the side your side. You have a plawn on any space that allows you a place a card that has a cost of one pond, and when you put on there, the cards are all unique and you will claim other spots around

it. And when you claim a spot, you put pawns on it, which means that like, if there's one pawn on it, you'll play additional pond. If there's no pawns on it, you'll place one pawn and from there, you know, that plays into the cost of Well, okay, I can either expand outward in the battlefield into my opponents area and like you know, put one keep playing weak cards, or I can power up the

same spots over and over and that way I can play stronger cards. And that's it's it's really appealing to me because it combines board games and card games. It's just insanely fun. I must say. You don't really have to touch it. There's one segment of the game where you are required to play high level matches of it that felt weird. You know, you can actually really weird. You can. Yeah, in that section, it doesn't make clear that you have options, and it funnels you towards that. But you

don't have to. Okay, So I did one of the things, thought that was all I needed and was told I needed to do more. So I assumed it was you have to do three, I believe, And there's like you would have to do two out of three then any time, but well, yeah, you'd have to do the Yeah, yeah, I'm not gonna anyways, but anyways, Yeah, mostly it's a side thing that sorta gets out of your way and it is just a fun thing to do in

the world. I did before we get too far away from it. I did want to mention what brought us here, which is like the mini games and the pacing and everything like that, and what what Final Fantasy seven is and why all that is in here, because that's why the mini games are abundant, that's Final Fantasy seven. Those are just littered throughout the original game. And it goes at what you were saying, Jeff, is is seven almost like two sacred in a way where they can't strip anything out to account

for modern gameplay sensibilities and everything like that. I think that's kind of a problem. It's a problem that people had with remake, and I think they knew that going into rebirth is that, Okay, we changed too much. If we strip out too much to adjust for pacing everything, that some of these hardcore fans are going to be pissed at us. And so I think that ultimately does mean that some of the segments are worse for it, because it means that they go on too long, or that's some things that we

we could have done without. Just there's so much that where like Cosa del Soul is five minutes in the original game is a place you visit, and that's it. In this game, it's like a chapter or two. I forget, like, but you spend a lot of time there, and I think payoff that you'll there to get is five minutes. It remains that five

minutes. Yeah, but those five minutes is Tifa in a bikini. So I mean, like that's that's what happens in the lead up to it, like they you kind of you, we do all those minigames and stuff to get those companion tickets and then everyone everyone changes into that. You will never

catch me complaining about Tifa. You will very obvious once you've reached there that oh, this whole the narrative weight and the forward momentum is in this moment right at the end, and everything up until that point was just a series of hoops that you had to jump through for no real reason. They kind of like carry on the stick then like wave hand in another direction with Tita, Tifa and the gang being in bikinis. But like ultimately at the end

you're like, but you that was a lot of waste of time. The way they sold me on that though, was when you go on this and again you have to play so many minigames and it's so frustrating. One of the minigames in Costadel Saul I just loathe with my entire being. However, I will say that they they sold it as Earth and Tifa were on a

date and so I was. So I was on hundred percent. Let's just gonna say about those minigames, and like some of the sections where it definitely doesn't feel as cohesive, but you do get the positive of like taking the gang out and it's like you'll be like Tifa and Earth going out together, or Barrett and Right going out together, and you know, like I love the way that they do that because Cloud is great, but I definitely want

to understand. I want to see more of the interpersonal relationships between the rest of the team rather than Cloud and everyone else. So I really like that part of it. Yeah, it does. It does make me think about, uh, like to put it in the way of like both Sean and Mike have where like, oh they're being very they're honoring what the game used to be and that could sometimes be a problem, but it also seems like an opportunity where it's like, hey, we don't get to make Final Fantasy

games like this very often anymore when we are making a new one. And that's a really worried about Yeah. Part of why this game is three parts because yes, you know, people people were freaking out about that was now that'd be episodic, as they originally called it, and now we know, no, it's three It's not independent games like let's serial here, but it's three parts of a trilogy. It is Star Wars like these. Sure you can do one of these things by itself. I don't know why you would.

I will say they have a weirdly good catch up video at the beginning of this that I wasn't spited. I was like, oh, that actually does summarize the story of remake pretty well. But like, you can't make something You can't make the vision of Final Fantasy seven with modern sensibilities and have it be as big and grand as you would think with that PS one game

without spliting it up into these chunks. And even if I do think it goes long, I think it needed to be in these three parts so that they could properly delve into all these stories of the characters, like make the world as big as you would want to be in all of that. There is the best part of kind of it could because you could see it that as stretching out but expanding it is how many more character mons we get and

how much more character development. I mean characters like UFI and the original FI Phantasy seven was an optional character, so that as basically no impact in that story, right, she is just kind of a party member who fights and will maybe get a line of dialogue here or there. Here there's a ton going on. She's got this whole arc. They made Kate Sith an interesting

character in this game. Kate Siff didn't do Jack in the original FOMP Fans sixty seven really, And each character also gets like tons of moments to shine at least one moment where you were actively controlling them, all sorts of story beats, and not just like moments where they're interacting with Cloud, interacting with the other party members. You begin to sense a lot of relationships developing.

I think that's one of the things I do like about this as opposed to Remakers, and I liked that smaller scale of remake where often, hey, there's only a few playable characters, and a lot of times it's just gonna be even one and two of you here. It does again feel like that classic RPGA. You have this whole party of adventurers. It does feel like a party, like in a lot of times the open world, even if it isn't your three characters, your friends will still kind of be there,

shooting off pop shots and things like that. So I just love that sense of Okay, yeah, I really do get to make a part here, but there's still tons of reasons and opportunities to learn every character and to play with all of them and to really grow to love them. Question go ahead, please, because I can't stand you Fie except the comedic release, She's the most one dimensional out of all of them. The only game she likes

is Materia and she gets motion sickness. Anything meaningful happen with those her defining characteristics in the original game, to be fair, And I have a lot

of friends who's one characteristic is they get motion sickness. So, Lucy, you haven't played the original f seven, That's that's I feel like the whole of this conversation is, you guys have all played the original F seven, and I genuinely feel coming into Rebirth less remake, but coming into Rebirth, I feel like I'm on a backfoot because I do not have that connection to the restaurant. Yeah, specifically with UFI, she becomes extremely plot relevant in

what will be the third party. The way they have formatted it is like there's a core group of characters that they explore, and then towards the end of that game there's like a secondary group of characters that they tease they're going to explore. And in remake it was Red and Kate, where you know, they just pop up for a second. You Fee is more prevalent, but she got some time in intermission. Her moment where it's like, oh, there's more hair happens very late into Rebirth. She is going to be

a big part of the next game as well. Other characters that are like just more in the periphery for now. So she is undoubtedly annoying, but she does become interesting much later. So mechanically, she's one of the most I was gonna say, and she is the most fun character, like so much. She's so fun to play in back so strong. I wanted to play her Overcloud most of the time. Every time you're in a combat simulator and you get to choose your team, I always do the girls. Like

the three women are far and away the best team in my opinion. The Red's pretty fun to play too. I have to say, like, once I figured out some stuff with Red, I was like, yeah, this is kind of fun. That speaks to how good this system miss. I think maybe we all have slightly different characters that like to Like I really like playing as Barrett. I like the active road in an action RPG. That was a cool thing that that was great in the original how each character felt

unique and was fun to play. And there's way more characters here and that still carries on each Each character is a ton of fun to play. I mean, this is the best battle system in a final action RPG or RPG is probably ever had. It was true in remake, and there's some expansions here, like the team attacks one nothing like shattering. It is mostly just that biole system. Still, God, I love that battle It's so fun.

So I think, like what we're getting at overall here is like with with the mini games with exploring the characters, exploring the story, expanding on everything, maybe having some too much of it at some points, is the game is maybe a little bit indulgent or self indulgent because it's the one game that maybe Square feels they can get away with that, Like Final Fantasy seventeen is not gonna look anything like this because it does have to abide by those

modern sensibilities, so like, well, we can get away with it here, and a lot of the fans are gonna want a lot of this stuff, Like dam we know this. We write reviews for games, and the review is gonna kind of come and go a little bit, and then two to three, five years from now, there's gonna be the hardcore, die hard fans who are gonna ignore all that this conversation and they're gonna have completely different feelings that have nothing to do with how people felt on day one.

But it's like, if you're trying to like give people advice about going in how you might feel about it, it's like that's still important. But I think what this game is, it's like it can only be what it is because it is Final Fantasy seven remake. Now I'm curious about the open world. You guys seem universally to think it's pretty good or even great. Mike, You've played a lot of like games that we describe as map games.

Is this one of those? What is the open world here? It kind of is, yeah, like there are towers and you activate them and then like you know, map icons will show up on your screen. It's more it's more like Sonic Frontiers open zone, right, although tam use that term is review. I was like, somewhere, Mike, yeah, that's a maniculture there. Well done, Tam. But but it's like all these zones

are kind of centered around one of the iconic mom Fantasy seven locations. Some will have a couple of them, but then like, yeah, between these sort of story locations or cities, there is a larger map and that's where you're gonna do things like Okay, find towers or go here and fight these enemies, but make sure that you stagger them properly. Or hey, look

at some moughle houses. There's a mini game there. And then some of them start like longer question chains that are really wacky and a ton of fun, maybe feature a beloved character that I don't want to spoil. But oh my god, is he so good in this and the minigames you'd count here are wild, Like one of them is a long sequence where you are just playing a clash of clans like or Class Royal, whichever one of those.

I guess put one of those in here. So yeah, it's like it is kind of that map bar thing, but one it's all fun, and two mostly like ninety percent optional, probably more than that. Think of this as kind of what you do instead of grinding in the original like in Last Game, if you wanted to maybe like, oh, I gotta like beef up a bit, just go walk around getting random battles here, it's like, ah, I just kind of want to take it easy or relax or

get stronger. Then go knock out some map icons so you're getting next p oh, yes, you're getting items. You're deepening bonds with characters, or it's an incredible loop. You're unlocking stuff so you can make more material with the Chad Schadley it's tons are and I will see that. Like Similarly to games like say which are three When you do side quests, even if they don't involve fighting, they do sometimes or often result in you gaining party experience

like I just did. I just completed a side quest that had no fighting whatsoever, and I had characters level up, So it is it's it's very The side quests, honestly, are pretty rewarding in terms of I just completed a quest line in an area that I was not expecting to dig so heavily into some character stuff, and it was devastating. It was beautiful. And I'm with you, Sean. I don't love open world games. I like

to have a little direction. But I think that for me, where this really works is again the fact that the open world and the way that you interact with it is so baked into the actual storytelling in the game. And so that to me is why it's really successful. Yeah, and I think, not to evoke its name unnecessarily, but Tire's of the Kingdom. There's a little bit of that here. Where it's not a map game in the sense that here's a crap ton of icons, go take them off the map.

It's kind of the reverse of No. You add icons to the map and you find things to do, and it is optional to the point that you don't have to do any of it. Essentially, in my playthrough, I did any of the stuff that got me Chokobo's for traversal, and that's literally it. Unless something was right in from me, I heard like, oh yeah, there's the life spring or whatever. I'll just walk over here, grab and walk out. Otherwise, literally did zero open world stuff,

and I loved it. And now I'm excited to go back and keep playing because there's all this stuff that I didn't do, Like I keep going with these mechanics and eying you didn't do the summoning stuff. Nope, I just I just didn't, I know, without getting them Sean, Sean is here. He wanted to get to that end that member like it was the most important thing to me, is I need to see the ending of this.

But also I don't love the way summons are implemented in battle because you have to spend your ATB gauges to have them do anything more meaningful than just basic attacks. So that that was kind of a weak point for me in the system in remake, it's not changed a ton in rebirth, and so getting those summons to become easier through the open world stuff, that's how you like make the fights more manageable and Chadley simulator. That whole loop just never really

appealed to me. That's something that I might do later on when I'm like a little higher level and I'm like, Okay, I can do this a little more easily, and it's kind of just fun stuff for me to see. But yeah, all this stuff I just didn't even do, and now it's just you know, it's just icing. It's just all this stuff I can go back and have fun with afterwards. We have some questions before we get to that, though. One of if there's things that you guys have

been bursting to talk about and now it's your opportunities. There something you've really

wanted to call out. I just wanted to a while ago. Tam started off a lot of this discussion discussing the characterization of the women in this game, particularly Tifa and Eris, and I just want to echo that that has always been one of the things that I've loved about Final Fantasy seven and about a lot of Final Fantasy games in general, is that they often have these very complex women characters who are strong characters without having to sacrifice the things that

make them feminine. That's something that you know, we see with Tifa in particular where you know, you look at her in combat and obviously like she's stupid fun to play in combat. She's as much as I love you,

Tifa is still my favorite to have on my party. But you know, I think the thing that really appealed to me about that character as a young woman was the fact that she did present this front of being very capable but also and you know, very nurturing, which again is all very feminine, but like having those insecurities that don't undermine her but are realistic and relatable.

And another thing that I absolute and I loved it, and I loved it in remake, and I love it even more in Rebirths because they go even deeper into it is the friendship between Tifa and Eris is one of the standout points for me for this game, is the two of them and the way that they support one another, I mean, they're and the way that Tifa shares everything with Erth like it was not made clear in the original game whether she did or not, but you know, if you've played the original game,

you know you know what's going on with a certain individual, and Tifa shares that with Erith like immediately in this game, and just the two of them and the way that they are trying to support one another through their individual journeys. It's just it's so so well done. I just love to see these really wonderful friendships between women portrayed in a video game and women who are

really like women. And I've always loved the dichotomy between Tifa being the one who's like really tough and capable in battle and she can run up a mountain no problem, yet she's the one who's a little insecure, and Erith is the one who's very flirty and forward, and yet she is the one that would appear to be more delicate. So yeah, I really and oh my god, Barrett's characterization in this I just love like the way that we really see this soft and caring side of him. Yeah. Again, the everything

with the characterization in this game is just fantastic. And yeah, that that to me is just really really one of the strengths. Yeah, I mean, I think it's what a lot of people come to the genre for. I'm finding I've been spending a lot of time in Like a Dragon, and I'm like realizing, oh, this is actually why people always like these games.

They just like to see friends being friends, and I think the I think the people responsible for the genre are also realizing that more and more with every game, and about how important that is to the people who play these games, and seeing the relationship that then the players build with those characters, and so taking that stuff seriously and executing on it. It's like that you say, you saying all that has to be more excited to play this game

exactly ahead. I was just gonna say, like, that's kind of one of the things that you need to kind of accept to when appraising or even experiencing the tonal shifts, the tone itself, and the writing itself. People would just describe it as very any but anime writing is incredibly powerful for specific reasons because they they kind of often forgo subtlety to evoke the most powerful version of the emotion that they can. That's that's what the shown in genre is.

The reason Goku is screaming so loudly isn't because he's just they're trying to show you he's powerful. It's because they want you to feel that power and feel like it's being evoked in the same way in you as it is him. So when Barrett is like making these grand gestures about bringing down Chinra or how they changed his life. And it seems borderline comical, it's not because

it's poorly written or delivered. That was the intent. The intent was to kind of push past the natural defense mechanisms people have with modern media around being subtle and being sophisticated, to invite and accept you to be as like over the top with it and as enthusiastic as you want to be and not hold back that passion at all, and that kind of like you know, making these caricatures happen so that they are the message isn't lost is a big part

of the way the Final Fantasy works, that anime writing works, and the way this game works. They're not trying to be subtle because they don't want you to miss what they're trying to tell you. They want you to walk

away feeling good about it. So when you see like Tifa and Erth, you know, together and like they they are like they're two friends who come together closer because they're worried about their third friend in a lot of ways, So when they're showing that emotion of like being worried and it's like calm down, ladies, it's like no, because they want you to know how it feels, and they when Cloud is being melodramatic, they want you to feel

how he feels in that moment, and sometimes subtle he doesn't work because you know it's sometimes subtle he won't get you to the level of emotional reaction that day you want. And that's what Yakuza does as well. It's so melodramatic. People are grown men crying all the time, and it's just like they want the people playing to be on that verge of tears to feel that emotion, so you don't forget the game, you don't forget the moment, you

don't forget the character. And that's why people are so obsessed with anime. They're so obsessed with final, fancy characters. It's like there's no filter, there's no kind of roadblock to the way people express emotions in that. Yeah, I think there's a whole class group of people in the world that have their emotions right there under the surface all the time and who experience a medium

and genres of storytelling that are very similar. It is very like it calms them and say, oh, there's something out there that is for me, and it expresses emotions in the same way I do. Sean, you were going to say something, Yeah, two things. One quick thing I want to get in there is that while I was playing this game and we were talking about the relationships and the characters and everything like that, and that's whay.

I was like, Man, people not super familiar with the original game are going to see the relationship system and think, oh, they added Persona's relationship system, and that's gonna drive me insane because I'm like, it's there in the original, it's just not visible in any way and is there for

a reason. And it's there for a reason this one as well. But it's what made me fall fall in love with the original is why I'm in love with this one is the characters and their relationships and the way that they interact and sort of spring boarding off of Tam said though, like with it being a quote unquote anime, with it being over the top in general a lot of the time, the one thing that I did want to talk about coming in is that I was like, I just want to get this out

there. I'm not going to spoil anything. I'm not going to say what any of these things are but I want to I want to excite Final Fantasy seven fans because there are moments in this game you think they're not going to do it from the original, and then they do it. They do you know the hell House, Remember the hell House. We all thought they're not good do the Hell House in file Fancy Sound remake. That's such a stupid idea. Why would they play it? And then the way they pulled it

off was incredible. There are moments like that lettercut this game. Yes, there's I'll say, is hey, you know the boat. Something really good It happens on that boat. Literally, one one jan that something happens on the boat that it's specific for him, and he's very excited about it. I don't know if we're talking about the same thing, but if we are, if we are, it is literally my favorite thing I've ever seen in a video game because it's just so ridiculous. It's so well done and I

love it. And there's other stuff too, like I won't say too much, but Emma, there's a scene you haven't gone to that is not in the original. I'm and it will destroy you like it destroyed me. Sorry, Like literally I was talking with somebody else who I knew was playing the game. Obviously none of us could publicly discuss that we were sure. And I was like, I had texted her and I was like, oh my god, Final Fantasy seven Rebirth is trying to kill me. And she was

like, girl, have you played chapter nine yet? And I was like no. She's like, let me know what. You finished chapter nine and she was not, Yeah, but that keeps going and it's just incredible. Every single time. I was just in tears. There is so much that I want to talk about but that we cannot talk about yet. Yeah, well we'll come back around spoilers will yeah, because there's stuff we need to

talk about some point. Yeah. Hey, the music forget It one of the all time great soundtracks, and yeah, look it's based off of another soundtrack, so it's a lot of arrangements. But oh my god. And just the amount of music again, like so much of this game is just I can't believe just how much of all of it there is. There is so much music, so much of it hits incredibly hard. There's still a ton of new music that's so good. When you get it to that open

wal for the first time, it's playing the classic Found Fantasy seventh. Then you get into your first like open world fight and that just seamlessly transitions into a battle version of that song. It was chills. It is good. So every zone has like that, right, Like, each zone has its own battle song based off of like that zon's theme, which is usually a rendition of the fum Fantasy seventh theme. Just insanely good music in this game. I could just listen to this for the rest of the year. That

would be all the music I would need, Dude. I said this on Twitter earlier day. If y'all can recall the climb of Mount Carrel. I got to Mount Correl at like two am. I was like starting to not off a little bit, and then the music there kicks in and just slapped me awake. I was like, why is Mount Correl such a banger? That makes no sense? But I love it? Hell yeah? Soundtrack is a is your audio mixing bucket? Though? Yes, to turn down everything

except voices? Oh yeah, yeah yeah, I always do that immediately, So I was like, what do you mean in the audio mixing is bad? I fixed it? Must they change it? Yeah? I mostly changed it before release. I recommend I think voices at ten, sound effects at eight, and everything else at seven. You definitely need to adjust it every every single thing on like all that armor and weapons. You can hear the little tinkling every time the characters move, but it's so much louder than like

sometimes speech. Sometimes it's very strange. But yeah, and there's scenes where I couldn't hear people talking or the music. Yeah, and the music starts kicking and there's much less less prominent if you're wearing headphones, which is what I did, But even then it requires a little bit of adjusting. Yeah, the chat did have a bunch of questions. One it was about the music. Uh, they said, or there any specific bangers that you like, Mike, Are you going to answer in the form of a song?

No? But look, Cosmo Canyon still good. They do this one so good. I got my ting listen right here, I'm coming for you. Oh you're scene with an instrument and okay, so you're gonna pay. Yeah. Gonaga is great. Also, there's a region that you go to where when you do a certain quest line, it reuses the Promised Land theme from Advent Children, which is beautiful. Yeah, they do that quite a lot.

They they take a region that they know is going to be like quite character specific or has an iconic theme, and they use the most recognizable motif as the center point for a bunch of different songs that are a bunch of different genres, which is a really cool way to do it. And also they are very good at taking the tone of a side quest and creating music

that specifically accentuates it. And when you're doing one of these dumb, goofy side quests that has built for laughs, they will put in a stupid sounding song that will like make that emphasize that a lot, and the soundtrack is phenomenal. It's really good. Huh. Let's see here some questions. Ny Lock says, does your party start with levels, weapons, skills, and summons from remake? How does the reset work? What is that like everything? Yeah, and you start with some stuff. Yeah, it's like an

artificial start basically, like you're basically kind of at a level one. But they just like, i'm sorry, made it reflect that the team has experience at this point. If you have a safe oile, not like a completed save file. You have a safe file of seven remake and of the intergrade, you get a kind of bonus summons. So if you don't have those safe files even but you have those games or something, just like do what

I did. Because I actually never played Integrade. I got the Cloud version, went in, did the intro, just saved and left and then I got that summon. So you did it. Look, I know, I know, imp the story, some incredible game. I blew it. I was always like, I'll get to that, I'll get to that, I'll play it before h Rebirth came out, and then I woke up when Dan

and there was a code for Rebirth in my emails. I wis that explains why UFI surprised you so much, because yeah, this is she references specifically that is very important. From that, let's from using the important word what's important, what's not. So I just wanted to interject though, in regards to that specifically. Yes, episode intermission plays into this directly. So again, this is going back to this idea of this being a standalone game.

So scores like, this is a standalone game, but also you need to have made sure that you played the whole first game. You also played the DLC and you read the tie in novel, which is extremely important. It is so funny to see them like the Mark be like completely standalone. You don't need to play the other ones, and like, sure, maybe go watch a really good YouTube video. But I'm like, honestly, if I would play remake, if I could give a piece of advice, uh to

the listeners at home. If you have not read Trace of two pasts, read it. It's not very long and it is wildly important. All right, slame gossip says, is the party still locked at three characters? Someone else also asked, are the the teammates helpful when they're controlled by AI during battles? Yeah, you could get you know, there's certain materia, Like one of the more useful ones is like automatic action, which lets characters use

their main action without you having to. So for example, if you put that on Barrett, he will like kind of automatically shoot out that sort of the triangle like weapon attach things like that. It's still I kind of like that. They're only so effective because it is an incentive for you to switch around and control characters at specific moments. But yeah, it's still three characters is the max. But again, in certain areas, there's other characters will

be in the field with you. Kind of shooting off some basic attacks. I don't really doing much, but it's nice to see him there. There is a mechanic in here I didn't not. I did not realize. Yeah back why I did not get to until I think the final battle. It was where like first segment, I was like, this tutorial message popped up.

I'm like, wait, is this the game? That is such a flex because it only comes up if if you're in you're like some of you just super late, And I was like, do I even include this in my review? It's probably not about how good he is at the game. But I only knew about it because when I went to the final media preview, I tried to just continue with the story right away and I was ill

prepared and I got absolutely stomped by the boss. So the mechanic for people who are wondering is the as well as your main three characters, the rest of the group are like in the background. They are like fake fighting just

to make sure that they look like they're not just watching you fight. But every now and then, if it requires, if you're in a specific like dire straight situation, it will let you pick someone from that background to do an attack to help you out that actually does like decent damage and get some pressure off you. It's like a final Gambit type of thing. And know it comes into play like very rarely and you normally use it once per battle.

It's like when you can summon Mickey Mouse the Kingdom Hearts too. I think answer if it's locked the three characters, you are only ever three people at a time. Yeah, but you will have like basically everyone else in

a ring around the battle like helping out. And I think that's very smart because it's always whack as hell in an RPG when it's like we're gonna bring a couple of people in a battle when your team is like ten, it's like no anyone who is traveling with you will somehow spa in battle if they're not part of the three you can control. They also make it very easy to set up party kind of load outs like who who, what characters you

want, and then in the field outside of battle you can. It takes like two button presses to switch between the party, and they like the ones that are removed will run back and the others will come forward. And it's not you don't have to for the most part, going to menus. You can just hit X to bring up the the kind of like command menu and impress L two. I believe it's or or two and it will just flip and crew. Come on. Oh that reminds me. Okay, so this

is a huge problem I had. I don't think I was missing anything, but that reminds me of something. Material you. I thought there were I thought there were going to be material sets in here. I thought that was going to be a thing. I didn't see any way to do that. You can easily move materia between people more easily than ever, but you have to manually do it. I was like, oh, well, I'm usually

rotating between I usually like rotate my material sets. So it'd be cool if you could like select all move to this person that you are required to play through for part of the story, and then like move all of it back. That was kind of an annoying thing. I actually spent a shocking amount of time and he's doing that. That's like the one. Yeah. I got to a point where I got round that by just creating like duplicate or

getting duplicates of the material. I knew that I was going to be moving around one of the things I do, like which I can't remember if it was in remake, is like when you move from one weapon to another, it does its best to transfer all of that material over. But yeah, that was not in the original, and I guess we didn't even talk about that. Like the the weapons and the essentially bring it back. The sphere grid of Final Fantasy ten is such a smarter way to do the thing that

this game is all about. Lady power and sphere grids. Is this Final Fantasy ten three, maybe it should be. It's it's not quite the sphaere grid. It's it's not quite the same, but it doesn't happen. The freedom of this or like the kind of depth of figride is that kind of like it looks like this fag grid, but like what you get out of it is marginal increases to various stats as well as a few abilities, but primarily the synergy stuff where you know you do these super moves together with another

character. It's all in there. The most important stuff in there is the which is completely new is they have now created a way for everyone to do elemental spells without using MPs. And the reason they do that use an atb bar The reason they do that is you have to exploit weaknesses in this game. It is much harder and the only way to get pressured or staggered is

to exploit that weakness. If you're just trying to like brute force your way through it, you can get through some of them, but some of these enemies will just destroy you immediately, and particular enemies in the field too, not just polight. So that's the other thing that I really really think is

super smart. The way they slow down the at bar atb bar as well quite significantly, so it takes a really long time to get a usable atb bar unless you use one of the synergy moves, which is a quick move that you do by holding like are one and pressing a deserted button, which when you connect that it gives you a quick super boost in the atb BA. So the game is basically forcing you to rely on your teammates and when you do, you get rewarded with it by using bigger abilities, and also

you're in a better position to exploit weaknesses. It's a very smartly designed, like cyclical system, I will I do like in general, the audio system is the state right, Yeah, yeah, I was going to say also in terms of the like combat of it all, Yeah, you're definitely rewarded for cooperating with your team and uh yeah, it's just like again that like

staggering becomes so so important in this game. Oh but what I wanted to say was that with with the slower ATB charges, I know, one of the things that some people had issue with in the original game was that you have to have a full ATV in order to use items. There is materia in this game that you can equip that will give you like limited item use

without having to spend an ATV charge. So again, and there's also like materia accessories, so you can like have a particular materia equipped without actually having it take up a material slot. So there's a lot of really interesting builds that you can create using materia and accessories. Yeah, I I, you know, Tam was kind of talking about how importantly the elemental Weaknesses is. That's a change from remake that I like so much of pressuring people in remake

was kind of about countering and parrying. That was fun, but it did kind of make it feel like primarily in action gaming a lot of ways. I like that it is more about those elemental weaknesses, and again they give you ways of doing that. Even if MP is a concern, it just makes it feel more like a kind of classic RPG to me. We have some more questions here. Let's see, so a lot of people are asking about Chadley, mostly how does the game explain Chadley's godlike power? Not a

few others remake you kind of know what is it? The chad the chad combat system or something which made me laugh so hard. Yeah, God, there's a lot of Chadly in this game. Female Chadley. We'll say, Chadley is so annoying, I know, but May is so awesome. That was constantly just like dumping on Chadley. It's great. Chadley is that friend that will phone you instead of sending you a text message italy Like he will be like you do something and I'll be like, hey, I know that

she did this thing. Nice work. Bye yea. By the way, there's like I got fan theory here. Chadley totally has a crush on Cloud and so the fact that he made an anime Wi Fi version of himself to appeal to Cloud is just the funniest fucking thing in the world. Yeah, probably works. That is one thing like if I had like a bigger complaint, and I probably don't, and I think it's something I would drive Jeff

crazy. There is like some of that dare I said, red Dead redemption to this here where we're like, yeah, oh they we're gonna just completely stop me so that Charlie can talk to me or push this lever, kind of taking a while to pull this lever for some reason, or even things like oh yeah, we're gonna shim me across this sledge. I know we're shimmying, boy, sure are shimmying slowly. There's like a bit of that. It was like everything here needs to be baby picked up a little bit.

I'll wait for the Integrade version of this when they fix all that stuff. That's what I'll play it. Winship asked about the difficulty and specifically asked about a hard mode for like a second playthrough. But how would you, guys say the difficulty is on your first playthrough? And for those that you who have beaten it, did you go to a new game plus are or did you just go back to your save file? How are you still going back and playing it? Now, so you can actually from the very jump

of the game make it more difficult for yourself if you like. There is what is called an adaptive difficulty mode, so that the enemies all level up with you. There is no set you must be. You know, we recommend you be this level to proceed, but I assume I have not finished

the game. I don't think it's any more difficult than remake was. I just think that the approach to combat with the added elements and like Mitch was talking about, with the exploiting weaknesses versus you know, countering and punching things, that it's just it's a slightly different approach. I found it to be challenging in a way that was engaging but didn't make me want to rip my

hair out. Yeah. I think it's going to also scale based on how much open world stuff you do and how much bonus experience you get, because you know, me not doing any of the open world stuff, I was always a little bit under the level that they recommend it, like, never too much, like usually about two levels below. And so I found the boss fights in particular, like the grunt fights are what they are, but the boss fights in general, I actually found like particularly like a good challenge,

never like too difficult. I was never beating my head against the wall, but I was like, oh I did game over because I screwed up. Okay, you know, yeah, like let's let's run this back. I'm learning here, and so I think there's there's a good challenge to be had there. Definitely, Yeah, I think the normal mode is no,

you go ahead, Lucy. I was gonna say if I ever was in struggling, the fact that they make it so easy to swap between pre set up parties made it really actually kind of fun for me because I'd like, my typical party is Cloud, Barrett, Tifa and then sometimes be like, oh what if I was doing this with Red and Eric instead, and like I would I kind of enjoyed messing up because then I would just try a

different configuration. Sure, And the fact that yeah, you can like everyone has I really love the way you can dip between everyone and it's just so easy and set up for you because they're all so different to play. And I think I definitely in RPG's get to a place where I'm just like, oh, well this is my party. I'm never swapping anyone in and out, and so I kind of liked messing up. Oh good, yeah, sorry, real quick, just yeah, you know, I really want a

well balanced normal mode, and this game definitely has that. I think it was a very good balance of difficulty on normal, and it's something that some squaren of games I've struggled with. Sixteen on base normal was way too easy, Keen of Heart's three on base normal was way too easy. So I'm glad that here it was a good challenge. You can't just like spam auto attacks. You do have to engage with all the systems. There are going to be some boss fights that are going to take you a little bit to

get through. So I was I was really happy with the kind of difficulty balance in this. Thanks for the ray, Kyle, we really appreciate that. Let's see. Uh yeah, so a couple more questions. Mustache Walker says, how does Rebirth compare to Infinite Wealth? If I'm hungry for more RPG with compelling story and good combat slash game played, Mike, you were talking about this earlier. I look, I haven't actually played for Wealth.

I've just got through Osmosis, but you want playing and it was like, this is kind of a lot like that is, and it's in terms of like there's all this it's very goofy. There's just a ton of side activities. You kind of have that like, oh, look at all these these these these wackos, and they're all friends and family. But yeah, maybe I'll leave with somebody who's played more Infinite Wealth Team. But at least that's

my base level impression is I think these two games are very similar. Actually, let's see here our Woolves says, does it seem like they left room for DLC similar to the first game. Yes, I mean they can always find something to do DLC. That's how That's how Integrade worked. It was the inter mission DLC which told what was UFI doing. Everyone else was off doing their things. So there's a feeling we're also avoiding the potential spoilers,

so we don't get a shot by squaring INIX. So I'm going to move on from that. Alistair Kat says, is there anything omitted in this from the original game that you miss It seemed like you guys were saying, no, everything's here. Yeah, there's more, there's everything and then more. For the most part, I'm trying to I would have to think of there's

something. There's one thing that I was kind of expecting based on some knowledge we going into the game that I won't say because there's a bit of a story spoiler there, but I was expecting something minor that wasn't in here that I think will be in the third game instead, because how they've changed some

of the story. Okay, yeah, I know, yes, Oh that is I know exactly what you're talking about, Sean, And yet I think something's maybe happening out of sequence so that it can be saved for the third game. And it's kind of a location and character specific stuff. Yeah, yeah, I know, that's right. That was the one that was the one that I did notice our wolves asks does Red thirteen dress up as a

human sailor? I don't think we could talk about specifics. Hey, I know we said Queen's blood is optional, but maybe maybe join that tournament on the boat. Okay, let's see Cloud and address again when she wants to know. It sounds like there's plenty of opportunities for fun stuff to happen in this game. And see anything else from the chat for questions, there are outfits, like multiple outfits that you can get in Costa del sall and maybe

beyond. Yeah, and then Lord Grand says, is the Crisis Core remake important to the story in Rebirth? I've played the original, but not the remake. The Crisis Core remake is identical. To see, It's literally the same. They didn't change anything except they just updated the models right now and the gameplay to be more similar in ways to the like remake like sort of approach to battle. Yeah, the battle systems more modern, but that's it.

They didn't change this story at all. That being said, if you haven't played any Crisis Core in any iteration, yeah, I think, yeah, I think. If you've played remake, you know how Crisis Core plays in everything going forward. But don't worry. We've got a video coming to game spots YouTube explaining a little bit of that. Oh. I don't know if you were going to get this one, Jeff, I did see one

pass by that I do want to address. Please. Someone asked, how's the open world, Jank, I will say, to evoke Tears of the Kingdom again, I don't think I encountered a single major bug in this video game. Oh wow, Okay, yeah I had one now. Granted again, I didn't do a lot of open world stuff, but just traversing around the battling indoors. There's a little bit of like weird unreal engine stuff where it's like, oh, this collapsed item is like flickering around over there.

But in terms of actual like bugs, that would say, I don't think

I can't think of anything. Yeah, you can make it crush. Oh yeah, if you certain setups for characters that we should get Max still certain Sadley Kiss can't handle it like some So what I would say is one of the things I would recommend people do is use the enemy ability material as much as you can, and then go to the combat simulator and do the biological or whatever they called intel uh missions there, because then you get some absolutely

ridiculous abilities in there, and if you combine them with other characters properly, you can make the PS five struggle, like really really struggle, and if you keep pushing it it will break. But I think most people won't do that Otherwise five, I'm curious what did everyone play on? Yeah, that was going to be my question. PERF. The way I was graphics,

I was I was I was great your graphic because I get graphics. No, but the performance, I found that it looks slightly blurrier is blurry, and I'm the amazing publicly addressed They publicly addressed bugs in the demo that they are they fix for the demo and will be trickling down to the final The trade off is the the the performance version for me was blurry, but the graphics version it looks so nice. But because of the way my eyes wig the moment I moved the camera, it starts to hurt my eyes. My

eyes like have trouble tracking stuff. But that's not a game problem. That's my eyes problem. That's a thirds. Yeah, it's fps six fps. I like a locked thirty fps over a jank performance mode. That's how I play Foul Fantasy sixteen as well. Like these games are designed for that. That's the way you play them. And my recommendation is move the camera like it's an actual camera. Do not do with jerky moments like adjust your sensitivity

on your cameras. That way, when you move it, it's a smooth movement and then you'll have a good time with the graphics my thing, or play on performance mode because the option is there for you. Like Mike and Lucy did I don't know, man. I look. The only bug I had is that every time if you got on a chocobo, she would sing

a song. But it was every single time she got on a chocobo that did not endear her to me. I will say, I will say, after playing these games, I am a little bit sick of herring coming, I'll show you what I can do coming, I'll what will be free That

all sounds, the efforts and everything do you tend to repeat? It's and it's when you're when you're like, I micromanage battle so much where I'm switching between people nonstantly, So it's like times where I can just hat air going coming, coming, coming coming, I'm like, I wish Tifa was here. Okay, it is, yeah, fantastic, man. I don't know what it is. I could. I couldn't stand to look at the thirty fps option. I don't know why when I'm playing, Yeah, I don't

know. The one thing I did have that was like a bug. Towards the end of the game, there's like like twenty bat enemies and I managed to kill all of them at the same time. For some reason, it amplified the noise yeap so that a sound came out of my speakers. I didn't know it could just get that loud without my permission, And actually it was like that staggering sound. It just was like on the top of top of top, and I was like, it was like back to the future.

I was, yeah, activated you, yeah, I know the exact thing happened. I know exactly what you're talking about because that happened to me too. I thought I blew out my headphones. I was worried. Oh my poor Penny was freaked out, like what was that? All right? The two things before I have the one big question before we wrap things up. Dan has been playing. He really likes it. He just didn't finish it. He didn't want to come in here to talk about it before he

finished it, but he really likes it. He's been playing on the PlayStation portal a lot. He said that has worked well. Jan has been playing on CHIACKI four deck on Steam Deck and that's been working very well for him. The little bit I played, that's what I did as well. It works really well with that stuff. The big question that we can only barely talk about, but I do wonder, like where you guys stand today, how much are you looking forward to Final Fantasy remake three. What are your

hopes and dreams as much as you could say them? Oh man, I just I'm on board. I know, you know, again not talking specifically about the ending, and I get what Tam and Shawn is saying about it. It didn't bother me that much. It's definitely a little bit of like, hey, yeah, there's some Kingdom Hearts sort of bullshit, just in terms of, okay, this is a bit It's all a bit much, right. There's definitely that classic Nomora access right and it it's the most excessively

at the ending. It didn't bother me at that much. I don't want to blame Nomura for this stuff. I feel like anything that screening do get Namura some shit, Like Namura is genuinely one of the best developers of our time, and like just because a team had like a bad story making, it's not his fault, but it is. I feel like the thing that I said in my review was the delivery is not good. The idea is still super interesting, and my criticism is the delivery is bad enough that people

might not see the potential of what they're doing. So I am definitely excited for the next game, and I'm excited about what they potentially are setting up. I'm not super excited by some of the decisions they made, but if they do what I think they're about to do and do it well, it could be very, very very cool. They just need to not get in their own way, which is what they did. And also I think they need to admit to what they want to do and how they want to tell

it, instead of trying to do stuff that might placate the audience. Like I feel like there's a little I can feel a bit of that happening constantly in Rebirth and with the ending especially, But I just want them to be like, this is what we're doing, this is how it's going to end. Lean into it, and if they do that, I think it could be really cool. I'm excited to see it. Don't rise at Skywalker,

that's my ye, don't don't do that. But yeah, placating the audience, as you were saying, Tam like that, that is the thing that I want all creators to stay away from when working with a legacy title, like tell the story that you want to tell. Again, I have not gotten to the ending of this game yet. I am so so curious just based on all the feedback I've been hearing from people who have completed it, and so to me though again this this in some ways isn't an ending,

because this is Empire strikes back. This is you know, setting us up for whatever the future is going to be. And if they leave it in a place where there is an interesting idea, even if you don't like the way it was executed, then they are still leaving it open for them to

deliver on a third part. Yeah, I think with the third and final entry in the trilogy, I'm incredibly excited for as a video game because if they just do what they did here and what they did remake and just realizing what the finality of the Final Fantasy seventh story is, seeing that with this fidelity and with these relationships that we built up with these characters now better than

ever, I'm super looking forward to that. That being said, that basically is the one problem I have with this game is when I got done with the game and after I saw the ending, granted it was way too late at nights I need a data process it, but after I did that, I was like, I have lost faith in their ability to do the Remay trilogy stuff, and like Ham said, what's there? The idea is good, the idea I like, but the execution is fumbled so hard that I

was just like devastated by the end. I was like, I can't believe that's what happened. And so going like, is there a chance they could like clean some in your guys opinion, and as much as we could talk about it, clean some of that stuff up in DLC? Do you think they could wreckcondes in any way that would satisfy you guys? I will say, Jeff, I don't think that's what DLC for this game would be. No, no, no, yes. Regardless of that, do you think

they could do it? And I think it was like something they would try. And again, it's it's not just what is happening, it's the way

it's happening. It's like if we had to create an analogy to writing the words are confusing, that is the yesue sure, okay, and it's and it's kind of like, uh, it kind of accentuate again all it's emphasized and put into a weird position because the stuff from the beginning of the game leading up to it has a part to play, so it would have to be quite a significant overhaul of the narrative to really make it ideal, and

I don't think it's worth their time to do that. I feel like they made their bed and they kind of have to just see who wants to, you know, get on board with that and who wants I don't think everyone's gonna have an issue with it. This is gonna be like a remake.

It's gonna be divisive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, just to close out my thought there, I think that after I sat, I thought about for a little bit, I thought back to you, Like I mentioned a moment on a boat, and that was the moment where I literally said aloud to myself, this team gets it. They understood the assignment, they know what they're doing, and so to see them fumble at the finish line surprised me. And I think, Okay, if the idea is

good, as the execution that's bad. I think that they can fix that. I think the feedback that they receive on this game, they receive feedback on remake that they took him to rebirth, and I think that if they do listen to what reviewers are saying, what the people who play this game are saying I think they can sort of correct the path a bit so that with three, I do think that they can finish strong. I'm just not

as confident in that as I used to be. And I know I said them more on like the hit, I was fine with it kind of side things. I don't want, you know, people saying this with thinking like dreading now like oh no, I'm playing this thing and I'm just going to get this this what this bad ending. It's not like a mass effect three thing. I think where that's going to be the dominant part of the conversation.

I think plenty of people are going to be fine with the ending or even straight up like it, So I don't and I don't want people to go and kind of with like this sense of dread about it. It's going to be an interesting conversation, and I think, you know, we're definitely going to see how it all plays out in three. I think that's where I was with it was more than they think, like, Okay, I'm excited to see how this plays out in the next one. Yeah. I

think the thing about what I'm saying really hard. Thing about what TAM's saying, we loved playing this game. Is just one thing about it to throw us off of it. That's it. And the reality is, if you're gonna go online and yell anybody about anything, Sean doesn't like Super Metroid, So just go find Fine, I'll take that one because I'll own that one, you know, all right, I think that's gonna do it. For this podcast of where we discussed Final Fantasy seven Rebirth on BombCast Revengeance, Thank

you everybody for your input. Really a really good episode, really good discussion. We'll be back with a regular BombCast next Tuesday. There's plenty more happening on giant Bomb this week. Be sure to check out giant bomb dot com for for Mike, Seawan, Tam Lucy and Emma. I'm Jeff Grubb. Thanks for listening, Thanks to Jam for producing. Until next time, everyone, have a good one, take care of yourself, and good bye. To be clear, everyone, I just like the later Metro games matter.

Don't don't let this man drag me like this.