Final Fantasy 7 Remake Analysis and Critique

[Music] the following video is going to be a full critique of the Final Fantasy 7 remake that means I'll be going through almost everything the game has to offer only skipping over some things that I don't have a lot to say about this video was coming from someone who never grew up with the original Final Fantasy 7 but has played it twice once last year and a second time in preparation for this video I have no nostalgia for the original game but I respect it in the cultural impact surrounding it this video will not be a direct comparison between the two games but I will draw comparisons where I feel they are needed I will mainly be focusing on Final Fantasy 7 remake as a game in its own right and since this game is still pretty new this will be your spoiler warning now I know it may sound a bit strange to put up a warning for a story that is over 20 years old especially since it's only what's amounted to the first 5 hours of the original story but while this game still is a remake and there was plenty of original content here that well we'll get to that when we get to that Final Fantasy 7 remake starts off by showing us the evolution of the city of Midgar the game's main location think of Midgar as an oil platform but instead of digging for oil it digs deep into the planets so it can suck up energy from something called the lifestream or ma co energy Midgar also functions as a massive city divided into eight layers with an upper and lower layer each layer having their own maka reactor for sucking up energy on the top layer of each sector we flash-forward an unknown amount of time to where the city has been fully completed and immediately thrown into action a train pulls up in a group of people take out the surrounding soldiers before were introduced to our main character this is Cloud Strife cloud is a mercenary and an ex-soldier that was hired to help the resistance fighters called Avalanche to a system and a mission to blow up one of the Mokka reactors a soldier in the world of Final Fantasy 7 is someone who was injected with the macho energy that is being sucked up from the planet macho energy can alter a human and grant them superhuman abilities making them a deadly fighter we get some gameplay here but I'll talk about that later to not overload you with information the entire point of this opening is to set up and explain the character motivations and relationships were introduced to avalanche in their leader Barret avalanches against the company known as Shinra Shinra is the company in charge of collecting macho energy from the planet and distributing it as electricity to the city of Midgar going off what is explained to this opening Shinra has been sucking up too much macho energy from the planet and that will cause problems in the near future as without mokou energy the planet will die Barret is taking a stand against the Shinra company and we see his passion towards his cause he hype sup not only itself but his teammates with his speeches compare this to cloud who is very clearly only in it for the payment and doesn't care about the planet these contrasting ideals make for an interesting partnership even if it's only temporary we also get some really good banter between the two men no the pump would suck us back up this opening also presents us with our first choice you need to decide to set the bomb to blow up in either 20 minutes or 30 minutes I'll talk about the choices and their attire t real quick because they don't have a huge impact on the game overall just like in the original Final Fantasy 7 there are dialogue options or decisions you can make to alter your playthrough slightly most of this was to aid the hidden relationship system where he can potentially go on dates with any of the female party members nor buried the spirit behind this system was kept for the remake but has expanded ever so slightly to briefly jump ahead a bit setting the timer to 20 minutes will show Jessie that you're brave and she'll reward you with some items there was also question the character teef will ask that will affect the dress she's wearing in a later chapter of the game the most substantial differences will appear in chapter 9 where by picking certain dialogue options you can alter which side quests will appear I'll go into more detail later but I thought it was worth mentioning now with the bomb set the group escapes the factory with little time to spare it's a real that shinra has been spying on avalanche since they entered the factory and they order their own machines to fire at the Mokka reactor causing the explosion to be much greater than what Avalanche intended this version of the bombing mission was a great update to the original and managed to recreate some of the iconic energy while not being too self-indulgent in its own past glory which is why it pains me to say that the pacing of the following chapters kills this excitement that's not to say that the pacing immediately grinds to a halt at the start of chapter 2 chapter 2 is fantastic because it adds to the world building it really makes avalanche question if what they're doing is right we as cloud have to go through the destroyed streets of sector 8 Claude himself doesn't care about the effects of the sector a bombing he only cares about getting paid so this is more so for the player to question the morals of Avalanche sure they operate for a force of good but Barret describes the collateral damage as a necessary evil to take down Shinra in a later mission we even have to disable the Sun lamps above sector 4 slums these lamps are what simulates sunlight for anyone in the slums Tifa expresses her concerns for the people but Barrett says that it doesn't matter since they're going to be blowing up the reactor anyways this shows that he's willing to get his hands dirty for the cause regardless of Shinra trying to put the blame on them but that doesn't mean that I think Barret doesn't care about the people around him he genuinely cares about his small team and even gets word when Claude as show up to the rendezvous yeah for a minute it's important to mention that just because we know that shouldn't are purposely sabotage themselves that doesn't mean the characters have this information Jesse puts the blame on herself for what happened since she used a stronger blasting agent than necessary so the characters seeing the damage that they potentially caused themselves as a good job at humanizing avalanche there's a lot more content focused on the Avalanche members later so I'll save most of my thoughts until then as for the rest of chapter 2 it sets up a few key elements to the story the first one meet clouds visions of a man named Sephiroth even if you haven't played Final Fantasy 7 before this remake you most likely at least have heard of Sephiroth that's something that Square also must think because they certainly play upset Ross appearance not much has explained to the player about who he is however other than some implied history between the two and he vanishes as quickly as it showed up only giving vague advice to cloud cloud makes his way through the burning city and comes across a woman who was chased out of an alleyway by some invisible force before cloud can do anything he startled by another vision as Sephiroth taunting him that he can't save anyone clouds migraine stops when this flower girl begins to speak to him this is Aerith from the sector 5 slums and she's grateful to cloud for scaring away the things that were chasing her cloud has no idea what she's talking about and warns her to leave him alone the conversation is cut short however when Aerith grabs clouds hand out of fear and we are shown the strange entities at Aerith was mentioning earlier not only that but shinra's soldiers also arrive on the scene but they don't seem to react to these creatures Aerith decides to make her leave and the cloaked creatures follow suit leaving cloud to deal with the Shinra soldiers since the remainder of chapter 2 was all game play I believe it's time to talk about the combat for a bit modern Final Fantasy games have been wanting to be anything but turn-based and I have no doubt that he way that the remake of Final Fantasy 7 will also be ditching the turn-based combat system probably made some people worried but I think that this combat system has successfully reached a happy medium of being an action RPG while incorporating strategic mechanics by pressing the square button you are able to attack with your basic strikes as you attack the enemy your blue gauge beneath your health bar will increase this is the ATB gauge from the original game when you're a TV gauge reaches one threshold you're able to spend it to do an advanced action using an item casting mad and using your characters special abilities will cost at the very least 180 Beave are some of the more damaging abilities such as clouds' infinities and attack will cost 280 B bars because of how devastating the attack is how you manage your 80 B meter is one of the most important factors in the combat system there's inherently more of a risk factor now when performing actions because they are successful to being interrupted magic especially now is a greater risk but the payoff can be devastating you need to spend 180 B bar in the required MP in order to cast a spell of your choice but at the same time at the level of spell that use will determine the casting time a very powerful magic spell like thundaga will require a few seconds of charge up before the spell is even casted which means they need to be absolutely sure that you can fire off the spell so you don't waste the MP little consequences like this make you consider actually using weaker magic instead of only relying on your heavy fire every character also has a faster way of filling a CB with their unique abilities for cloud he enters an alternate fighting stance called Punisher mode his attacks are much quicker and do more damage alongside filling up his ad be faster instead of guarding he now counter-attacks if attacked when holding the r-1 button the downside to this mode is that clouds movement speed is slowed down significantly and there's a long wind-up to his attacks this is also a good way to pressure enemies and increase the small orange cage beneath their health bar the meta goal in a sense for every battle is to fill this bar enough so the enemy becomes staggered when you stagger an enemy to receive 160 percent damage for a short period of time this works wonders against bigger enemies as they take very little damage when they aren't staggered the best way to fill up the stagger meter is to take advantage of an enemy's elemental weakness as well as using specific attacks that will fill the stagger meters faster when the enemy is pressured pressuring an enemy varies between specific enemy types some may only need to take a certain amount of damage before they enter the pressured state while some others need to be hit with certain kinds of magic or even attacking specific points of their body that doesn't mean that pressuring an enemy is the only way to quickly fill up their staggered meter as some of them are less resistant to specific types of melee attacks making them easier to sager in general most of the smaller enemies don't need to be staggered at all to finish them off such as the basic Shinra grunts that you fight in the early chapters the battle system quickly becomes a balancing act of both managing your ACB meter as well as filling up the enemy's stagger meter it's all about knowing when to spend you're a TB to lay on the attacks to stack are the enemies while at the same time not using too much of your ATP's so you don't miss the opportunity to do some serious damage this is where your party members come into the picture cloud isn't the only one that is capable of standing up against shinra's army as he's joined by a few other controllable characters as you saw in Chapter one the leader of the Avalanche group Barret Wallace is the first party member you use he specializes in long-distance combat and he uses a Gatling gun attached to his arm to deal light damage from safe zones you can switch between who you control the party with the d-pad it's important to switch to different party members because whoever you're directly in control and will gain their ATP faster you also need to be controlling the other party members use their special abilities Barretts overcharge move can't be used unless you are in control of them over charges a forest fire that deals greater damage and significantly fills is a TB you have to wait until the overcharge meter fills up again before you can use it but you can speed up the process by using the charge command if one of your party members is a filled up a TB meter but you don't want to be a control of that party member you can issue commands through the tactical menu the tactical menu slows down time to a near crawl to give you a lot of time to think about how you want to spend your a TB meter you can select actions for any characters that has at least one a CB bar filled and tell them to a specific movie you're choosing remotely controlling party members can prove to be much more beneficial than constantly switching characters because enemies tend to target the character you were directly control of so if you want to use any magic that has a long cast time and may be in your best interest to save it until you know the party member is in the clear to use it the basics of the battle system comes down to switching between different party members to fill up their ATB meters while at the same time a staggering enemies so you can deal massive damage there's a lot more to manage than initially expected and that's not even going into what roles you can customize your party members to be such as making Barret your damaged absorbing tank so everyone else can take a beating without much worry as of right now the battle system may take a bit to get the hang of but this comes with the benefit of always being on your toes and constantly thinking even smaller enemies can give you troubles if you're unable to adapt to their unique traits not every encounter is stellar however as some can be downright tedious or clunky such as when you're forced to fight flying enemies with characters that specialize in close range attacks chapter two finishes with cloud narrowly avoiding the Shinra soldiers chasing him by using the terrain by two escape I can only assume that this was intentional by cloud because this was the same train that he and Avalanche were supposed to rendezvous at the remainder of this chapter is meant for contextualizing some information stuff like what the Mokka reactors are used for and how people who live in the slums don't have the luxury to leave Midgar if they wanted to it shows Barrett's more sympathetic citing cases around the edge about him being a maniac I briefly alluded to this earlier but Chapter three starts the trend of some chapters being dedicated to little story content and a lot of busy work the amount of story in this chapter is very minimal cloud and the rest of avalanche meet up at a bar called the seventh heaven which is run by another major character Tifa Lockheart this is also where were briefly introduced at Barrett's daughter Marlene when cloud request Tifa for his payment she hands in five hundred Gil which is only a quarter of the money promised to him apparently most of the money that was supposed to be going towards clouds payment was used to get supplies for the bombing mission itself she assures him that she'll have the remainder of the money the next day once she collects payments from the water filter replacements from everyone in the small town Seifer requests clouds assistant but then she realized that she would owe and more money for his services cloud interrupts her with this no mm enough that's what we agreed on so that'll be the price with what you gave me at least fifteen hundred this aloneness is a lot about clouded tifa's relationship there's a lot of implied history between the two adults cloud is willing to give an extra hand at Tifa because the two grew up together and our close friends we don't see him in chapter 3 but Siva even made cloud promise or something back before he left to join soldier when he was younger she wanted cloud to come back and save her if she was ever in any danger those who've played the original game know that there's a lot more history between these two characters shown later in the game since the remake only covers the Midgar stuff we sadly only get the basics of it though there is some foreshadowing two events that I can only assume later Final Fantasy remake parts will address I'll go into more detail when this becomes more relevant in the story because there was one drastic change later on that will have a major effect on the story going forward cloud is awoken by his neighbor groaning about something and when he goes to check on him he's greeted by Sephiroth Sephiroth tackles cloud to the ground and he struggles to get him off Tifa rushes out after hearing the commotion and cloud warns her to stay back cloud readies his sword and before he instructs suffereth he grabs clouds leg and he hallucinate we're shown a vision of an army of cloaked figures marching towards something while chanting about the reunion when cloud snaps back to reality Sephiroth is gone and a cloaked man is in his place Tifa tells cloud that this cloaked man is named Marco Marco isn't a bad guy but he does have some problems it's implied to be maka poisoning which is this world's version of radiation poisoning the following day cloud and Tifa make their way around the sector seven slums that collect payments this is supposed to be a bit of a guide to show you where the different shops are for buying weapons and items I don't really think this is necessary as a sector seven slums are already pretty compact and just by looking around you find any shop you need in no time during this tour Tifa introduces cloud to the neighborhood watch run by biggs and wedge from avalanche cloud and Tifa end up taking on a job for the two so cloud to get his name as a mercenary out there since no one will hire and nobody for work it's a nice piece of world-building actually explaining clouds mercenary job cloud was also a mercenary in the original game but it didn't matter much to the overall plot other than just being a fact about his character so in an attempt to expand clouds character and provide more context to the remake side quests have been added to specific chapters in the game chapter 3 chapter 8 and chapter 14 have dedicated hubs for side missions chapter 9 features side missions as well but the ones you get depend on certain choices you make during the chapter so you won't get all of them in one playthrough I don't have a lot to say about the side quests individually so I'll just give my thoughts on them now without a doubt these side quests are the most underwhelming part of the game there are 25 side quests in total and I only think that three of them are what I'd consider to be good the rest I would lump into being uninteresting or just plain boring the term I would use to sum up these side quests would be busy work both figuratively and literally most quests end up just being an excuse to get into more combat scenarios and I enjoy the combat but there's a lack of any interesting stories or character interactions there's only one cyclist I can think of what we get to see another side of cloud there's a quest where the children of sector 5 slums complain to cloud that there's a toad king and their hideout the kids want clout to kill the toad king for them but cloud says it's gonna cost them a lot of guilt the kids don't want to ask the other adults for help because if they do they lose their hideout if anyone else knew about it cloud sees that the kids are distressed about their situation and he says this Reagle I'm offering a special discount right now on toad king jobs looks like it's your lucky day we see a new side of clouds character that isn't relevant to the main plot it's a real bummer because this is the only time of the game we get something like this from a quest the rest of the quest can be boiled down to going to location in fighting the enemies that's there or just glorified fetch quests neither of these are particularly hard or engaging there's two exceptions however and they are my favorite quests in the game in chapter 14 there are two side missions that introduce new enemies that serve as some of the most engaging and fun encounters in the game both of which were a pleasant surprise there's one more you have to backtrack through the sewer system that you needed to explore for a main quest to fight a monster this one was great just from the build up alone the closer you get to the destination the louder you can hear it roar you even get a warning before squeezing through the door you get to fight this game's version of a behemoth and it's actually a really good challenge the Hemus are large and super aggressive the best way to stagger behemoth is to weaken both its upper and lower body I highly recommend that you don't cast any magic on a behemoth because it will always counter with the flare spell which does massive damage of your conv blast the other one was great just from the surprise alone cloud Tifa and Barret encounter a group of hoodlums that are working under the mob boss don khone oh cloud had a previous trap with these goons and they're satisfied to unleash the brand-new weapon of destruction of avalanche this little guy is called the tonberry and it's one of the most infamous enemies from the original Final Fantasy 7 Tom Berry's main gimmick in both the original game and the remake is that it's a slow-moving creature with a devastating attack once the Tom berry is in melee range we need to watch out because it's little knife is able to instantly kill anyone who's hit by it just like the behemoth the best way to take care of the Tom berry is to stagger it the method involves a lot of risks to it as you need to make sure the Tom berry misses his knife strike by hanging around him to bait it out if the Tom berry misses it becomes pressured making it easier to fill up its stagger meter the Tom berry isn't a pushover either because it has many counter-attacks for trying to choose it if you try using ranged attacks if the Tom berry will freeze you in place and slow it makes its way towards whoever did the attack it's honestly terrifying having this guy waddle towards you sadly and no other quest compared to these two since the majority of them are about as interesting as looking for cats for girl this sucks the last question I enjoyed is link to chapter 9 so we'll talk about it later because having context is important for that one another decent chunk of game time can be dedicated to Chad Lee in his research I don't really count this as a side quest but more so as tutorial that has some really cool rewards that you can earn sadly here once cloud to collect combat data for him and in return he can develop material that you can use in battle this combat data can be as simple as staggering enemies a certain amount of time assessing when an enemy is weak - or even fighting simulations of different summons to unlock them for yourself I think that this is great because the shadley requests are something you can gradually pick out while you play the game plus the rewards you get are significantly better than the side missions you can get some really powerful magic and passive skills from filling out these requests it's even how you get the enemy skill materia one of the more iconic abilities in the original game though I didn't really find it super useful this time around because there's only four enemies skills to learn instead of the 24 crazy skills from the original game I guess I may as well talk about it now since I'm on the subject material is a very important aspect of Final Fantasy 7 both in the original and in the remake materia is an equippable item that grants the character you equip it to the abilities tied to the materia think of it like this every spell in the game has materia associated with it it smells like thunder blizzard cure and so on all have their own piece of materia associated with them you need to equip materia to your weapons or armor in order to use their effects equipping materia will also give you small stat boosts such as giving that character one extra MP or raising their defense slightly if you want to use a skill like SS so you can fill up Chad Lee's requests you need to make sure that you have at least one person your party with the assessment Iria just like the rest of the combat system it requires you to use at least 180 be meter with the character that has the materia on them for the person to use that ability whenever you defeat an enemy you earn a small amount of AP as well as the usual XP AP is the main source of growth for the materia that is currently equipped to the party you see materia can also level up just like your party whenever a mysterious level increases and different things can happen for attack spell such as Thunder fire Blizzard and arrow the second tier magic is learned so the Lightning materia will have both thunder and thunder and eventually thundaga you can switch between the tier spells with the deep the tactics menu for more situational material such as time and barrier leveling up those materia will grant you new skills for that particular tree time starts off with haste a spell that can speed up the rate your party members can fill their 80 B meter but once you level it up you can get magic skills like slow and stop the former slowing down an enemy of your choosing so it doesn't do any heavy duty attacks as often and the latter freezing the enemy in-place barrier will give you magic that raises physical defense briefly then it gives you a spell to raise magic defense before giving you a spell that raises all defenses so it's less about getting more powerful skills and moreso getting skills that can be used in different situations the more passive materia when leveled up mostly just increases the potency of the buff HP up materia when leveled up just gives you more HP before go figure the most unique material in the game has to be the blue materia the big difference in blue materia is that its potential is unlocked when paired with another piece of materia certain weapons and armor have these linked materia slots on them when you play something like the element materia in one slot and the fire materia in a connecting slot on the weapon you now do a bonus percentage of fire damage to that enemy leveling up the element material make the effect of the paired material more potent however you can also pair element materia on armor making so you take reduced damage from the paired element using a mastered element materia on armor will make it so you absorb the damage into health from that element you only have a limited amount of materia slots at your disposal depending on your equipment there are some pieces of armor that don't offer a lot in terms of improving your overall stats but they make up for that by giving you extra material slots that could possibly be linked this makes you think a lot more about what you want to bring it to battle how you manage your materia is important making sure you pick materia that fits well with your party composition is important the materia system is a huge part of the combat system in both original Final Fantasy 7 and the remake but if I'm being honest I think that the materia system has done a little worse in the remake since there's one key feature that's missing the original Final Fantasy 7 had a very similar material system though there are some features that separate the two for starters when you equip materia to a character you do get the stat boosts but there's also a slight stat penalty when you quit magic most of the penalties are very negligible unless you are equipping something like knights of the round which takes a big chunk of HP away from you because of how powerful it is I don't think that we lose out on much by removing the system and having material only provide positive buffs but it was something featured than the original game mechanic I am very sad got cut however is what happened when you master a materia when you mastered a material that meant it was the stronger as you could possibly get so earning experience wouldn't matter anymore so as a reward from mastering the materia you get a brand new duplicate of the materia just mastered this new material is set back to zero ap so you're able to repeat the process as many times as you want to effectively get as many copies of the material that you want want to have multiple copies of knights of the round or double cut you can but it's gonna take a lot of grinding this feature is completely absent in the remake and I don't quite understand why that is I only think that this is something worth mentioning because there's only one copy of the magnify materia magnify is a piece of blue material that can be paired with any magic skill to give said magic skill an option to target all enemies it's essentially the remakes version of the all materia but with a few changes all materia in the original Final Fantasy 7 let you target all enemies or allies a set number of times per battle and weakened the effect of the spell being cast the more you level up the all materia the more times you're able to target multiple enemies per battle once mastered the all materia will allow you to target multiple enemies with that spell five times per battle you even get the benefit of having that all materia the magnify materia that's featured in the remake has the benefit of being able to target multiple enemies or party members an unlimited amount of times for battle magnify starts off with a harder nerf than the all materia had because it makes it so that spells are only 40% effective when casting on multiple targets leveling up magnify will eventually make it so that the parent material will be at 75% potency which I believe is slightly better than what the all materia would give you but here's the thing you're most likely going to pair magnify with healing materia above all else for a few reasons curaga on everyone in your party during the normal game will heal everyone to full HP except maybe Barret it isn't until postgame when curaga on the party isn't a full heal because at that point your max HP will be over 7000 with the proper materia there's a dedicated ability materia called prayer that costs 280 B bars to activate it heals the party but the kicker with that one is that your only it to use that in battle you would have to rely on using cure multiple times to heal everyone outside a battle or using items which would be fine if you're playing a normal mode where MP doesn't matter hard mode is a different story when playing through hard mode you're not allowed to use items rest spots that used to restore HP and MP now only restore HP so the only way to restore MP is by getting lucky and getting sent back by breaking the Shinra boxes or waiting around in battle this makes the prayer materia super useful in combat since it doesn't eat up any MP but outside of combat you're going to be relying on cure materia to restore health if you happen to have taken a big beating so it's essential to keep the magnify materia on healing so you don't have to waste the MP to heal everyone of course you could just swap materia after every fight but would you actually want that I did find some places where is beneficial to pair magnify with other materia especially when grinding for endgame content but for the majority of the time magnified was glued to healing my second favorite combination with magnify was pairing it with the time materia casting haste on my entire party made a counters go by much faster I don't really understand why there was only one copy of magnify materia in the entire game even in the original Final Fantasy 7 it was possible to get three all materials before the end of the Midgar section I don't think it would have been overpowered if we just got one more magnify materia since it needs a lot of AP to be mastered it's not a huge deal but I do think that it's a bit limiting the materia system is very robust it may seem a bit daunting at first but it's pretty easy to understand once you get your feet wet while the remake has a very similar material system to the original game I actually prefer the system in that one that's not to say I dislike the materia system in this game I just think that the copy system from the original game is [ __ ] brilliant and rewards you for grinding the reason why I wanted to talk about the materia system now is because of how uninteresting chapter 3 actually is if you do complete all the side quests in chapter 3 T full of icloud back to her apartment when the two arrives she asks him what happened after he left their hometown when they were kids well when we were kids everybody wanted to be a soldier right yeah I remember they were on the news every day during the war thing is by the time I finally made it in they didn't need heroes anymore there was nothing like what we drugged off was just working for Shinra just it's a very touchy subject for cloud and in the context of this game it isn't explained and nor do I think it's necessary to do this just works as planting sees what happened in the later half of the original Final Fantasy 7 Tifa while trying to change the subject suggests that her and cloud go out for a night on the town she asks cloud what kind of outfit with suitor for the occasion and you're presented with a choice as I said earlier this choice has an effect on what dress she'll wear in Chapter 9 you can end chapter 3 by returning to the bar once you complete at least one side quest the members of avalanche all attend a meeting and their hide Oh underneath the bar cloud is excluded because he's not officially part of the team Jesse tries to assure him that he'll be hired again for the next job because she feels safer with him rather than having Tifa on the team Tifa while agreeing with the intentions of avalanche isn't a fan of their practices there's not a whole lot to this site i Tifa and has only brought up a couple times and not much is done with it we do get to see that she wants to keep the casualties as low as they can be during a later point in the game but that's the last time we ever see something like this even after a huge tragedy happens much later in the game all it does is reaffirm her grudge against Shinra I find this less of a flaw moreso of a missed opportunity for some compelling discourse between Tifa and Barrett the meeting is concluded and Barrett lets cloud know that he's not going to be needed for any more services Barrett pays cloud the money owed to him and even there was in a little extra when cloud leaves seventh heaven he runs into Jesse outside of his apartment she cuts right to the chase and wants to hire him to go to the sector 7 play with her so she can get a different blasting agent for the next bomb she's going to make as a down payment she gives him an Ifrit summoned materia when cloud and Jesse go to the train station at night they're greeted by biggs and wedge it turns out that the train times have changed and they had a hunch that jesse was going to the sector 7 place and she was acting strange they assumed it was because she wants to go see her parents and jesse rolls with it this is one of the two times in the game where you need to do this motorcycle minigame the second time is at the end of chapter 17 the motorcycle was also a minigame in the original Final Fantasy 7 that appears near the end of the Midgar section and I honestly preferred a lot more there this action set piece goes on for a bit too long in my opinion in the remake and it's also pretty repetitive you drive next to the enemy on any of your sides and flak them with your sword it takes a couple of hits to knock them off their bikes there are some special attacks you can perform that function off of a cooldown timer it's a pretty shallow piece of gameplay that is functional if somewhat boring we get to see a glimpse of another member of soldier this is Roche he's brand new to the remake and just by looking at the way he rides his motorcycle he wouldn't be out of place and devil may cry cloud manages the best roach at this roadside duel Roche retreats with excitement as he wants to battle cloud again another day something interesting is that depending on how well he do in this action set piece Jessie will give you a different reaction she'll either make fun of your driving or she'll give you a kiss on the cheek as a job well done the sector 7 plate is a brand new location the remake which is pretty cool according to Jessie this is where the people who work for shinra's stay in our provided housing Jessie's parents live here because her dad works for Shinra but he's suffering from maca poisoning has been in a coma for an unknown amount of time Shinra overwork - Jessie's dad to the point where he passed out inside that maca reacted next to the Makos storage he was apparently left in there for hours before anyone found him and the fumes from the MCOs storage gave him maca poisoning this was a shock to Jessie because she heard the news on the opening night of her first play at the gold saucer she ended up abandoning her dream of becoming an actress and became interested in planetology which is how she discovered avalanche most of this information comes from biggs and wedge during chapter 4 when Jessie goes on ahead since this is a touchy subject for her you even see Jesse's dad in a comatose state when cloud has to sneak into Jesse's mom's house to steal her dad's Shinra ID card this is a good reminder of how Shinra is not only destroying the planet but they're also damaging innocents so we as cloud have even more incentive to strike Shinra down even if cloud says it's just for pay something that the remake does a little bit is showing us a different perspective of the effects of shinra's practices at the start of chapter 3 someone tears down avalanche propaganda because they believe what jenna is doing is necessary for progress you can even overhear conversations people hold up Oh avalanche and if what they're doing is right or not it's not super deep or changes the plot in any way but it worse is a neat piece of world building since chapter 4 has a heavy focus on Jessie I think it's time to talk about the massive overhaul that her character got I've heard some very mixed things about Jessie's new characters so before I give my opinion I'll give a brief rundown what's changed Jessie in the original Final Fantasy 7 did it get a whole lot of dialogue because she was very unimportant to the story that that game was trying to tell her whole character was that she was the one who makes the explosives avalanche uses on their missions since the remake dedicates more screemed time to avalanche the group's personalities were flushed out Jessie was giving a backstreet of her wand to become an actress at the gold saucer which is an amusement park that exists outside of Midgar her personality has been altered to be a lot more flirtatious towards cloud and only rarely do we get to see the more serious side of her this is something I have a problem with because most of the time her character is treated as a OneNote gag I guess her flirting is an endearing trait but I got old really quick and should have been reeled back so we get to see what Jessie thinks about the current situation very rarely do we get to see that hell it's the whole reason chapter 4 exists but chapter 4 is the last time we see Jessie before a major event involving these characters I feel more disappointed with her than I do big sin wedge because jessie was clearly intended to be the Avalanche member you're supposed to care about the most all three of the members are supporting characters but there was a bigger focus on Jessie than there was with bigs in the wedge who I ironically ended up connecting with more hell we even learn about wedge more than we do Jessie that doesn't mean that I think avalanche fails as a group as when all three of them are together their interactions are pretty good there's a lot of implied history between the small group from what biggs and wedge tell cloud while they make their way to the Shinra storage area the friendship this group has is very believable which i think is much more important than the individual characters but Jessie being the most OneNote of the group is disappointing cloud hands off the should ride to card the Jessie and she splits up from the rest of the group to get what she needs cloud of biggs and wedge are going to be the diversion for the Shinra guard so Jessie can get what she needs from the warehouse cloud and the others Russian once Jesse shoots her signal into the sky this is the first battle in the game that lets users summon materia that you got from Jessie each member of your party has a dedicated material slot for one summoned materia but only once someone can be used for battle you can only activate summoned materia during certain battles but when you do you have a new ally on the battlefield someone's attack on their own but you can spend any members ATB gauge to get the summon to do their unique abilities once the summon meter depletes or the summoner is defeated and the summon will use its ultimate attack that cannot miss or be blocked every summon has their own defining attribute that makes it stand out Ifrit focus is on fire chocobo mag focuses on win and is great for staggering enemies summons aren't overpowered either but they can greatly swing the battle in your favor if you know how to take advantage of their abilities once you destroy enough at the Shinra troops roche will arrive on the scene and challenge cloud to a battle this is the first one-on-one battle and I think it does a pretty good job at getting the player you said these types of encounters Roche will leave himself open whenever he does his forward stat which is one you should lay the damage on him after doing enough physical damage Roche will become pressured so you can easily fill up his stagger meter Roche is also weak to fire damage which is an easy way to interrupt his attacks with Roche taking out a commission once again he makes a retreat sadly this is the last time we see rush in the game I'm serious after this Roche is gone from the game so this feels like it's meant to be a setup for future installments I think that this is fine here since he isn't important to the overall story and serves as an interesting character that I wanted to see more of though this trend of introducing characters before they're dropped is something prominent in the story more on that later the group makes a hasty retreat when members of another Corps of avalanche arrive and things start to get a little bit hairy cloud biggs and wedge meet up with jesse and it turns out wedge was shot the s a little exchange happens that I think is pretty entertaining your ads is fine maybe singed but the only casualty is your underwear this is like a bruise or a mild burn at worst now that was a gunshot we see that cloud is starting to warm up to this little group even if he is in it for the money this isn't just a sudden shift either because he still has his own priorities but nevertheless it's cool to see this mission help club become more comfortable around his comrades because when he gets back to his apartment and talks to Tifa he's much more open to having her talk about anything that's bothering her there's this interaction with Jessie where she invites cloud to come over for dinner for the following night and you can make it so cloud is somewhat open to the idea it's a bit of a pointless decision in the grand scheme of things because this is the very last time cloud is in the sector seven slums for the rest of the game but if you happen to take any interest in Jessie from what you saw her the choices there cloud sleep is interrupted suddenly by those strange creatures that appeared when he first met Erath Tifa quickly gets clouded of bed in the to make their way to the seventh Heaven bar where Baron and Jesse are fighting off the creatures while cloud atif were fighting these invaders jesse is knocked down and swarmed by a group of them suddenly the spectres are no longer hostile and leave the area as fast as they arrived pod hubs dusting to the bar and it turns out that her leg got messed up in the attack rather than calling off the mission Barrett decides to hire cloud once again to join them cloud agrees but makes it clear that he wants a bit more money this time even though the team is slightly different the plant is still the same Avalanche will infiltrate reactor 5 employ it to high heaven just like they did the reactor 8 the following chapters are mostly just gameplay so I'll quickly mention some things that I haven't talked about yet this is where you really get a chance to test out teef as a party member she's a physical attacker much like cloud but the difference between the two is vast while cloud is a medium speed heavy hitter Tifa focuses on doing quick combos and buffing herself up with her unique abilities I'd say it's Heath his greatest strength is how she can fill up the stagger meter on enemies quickly while also providing some good damage with their special attacks her unique ability changes based on how many times she buffed herself up when an enemy is staggered and she uses her unique ability she can increase the stagger damage multiplier so if you do this while also issuing commands to other party members you can decimate foes with good ATP management having three party members is when the combat system shines the most because you're always actively picking things for your teammates to do while switching between characters it's at this point where you might realize how the areas you chat with you were expanded when you run through the train tunnel in the original game before passing the underside of the sector forward play it only takes about a minute to do with no random encounters this was expanded in stretching to being at least an hour and a half that doesn't mean that it was stretching the way of being repetitive as they either offer interesting encounters and have some opportunities for exploration to find goodies whether that's just some items armor or even some material that can only be found once like magnify however there are some pacing issues with the level design there are multiple sections that have you slowly shimmy your way through cracks walk slowly over planks of wood or even just slow your movement down to a crawl I believe this has to do with technical limitations of the PlayStation 4 the environments usually look gorgeous and run on a locked 30 frames per second which is really impressive for something of this scale but there are multiple times removing is intentionally slow to recrawl the mask loading screen and it gets very annoying because this happens more frequently than you think it's not enough that it kills the game flow but it's annoying enough that I felt the need to mention it clouded Tifa and Barret managed to get inside to reactor 5 with only some hang-ups though for cloud can plant the bomb he begins to have another flashback to an unknown time where Tifa is sobbing over the death of her father cloud is brought back to reality and decides not to tell DPhil what he just remembered the difference in this bomb is that its remote detonation rather than a timer as the group attempts to leave through the way they came they're stopped by a small drone setup that reveals a hologram of Heidegger Heidegger explains that shinra is broadcasting this Macha reactor raid to the citizens and framing it as a terrorist attack which is true abut Shinra is purposely leaving out the context of this situation Heidegger also lets Avalanche know that they will be marching out to their deaths as they will be using their latest machine at the air Buster to execute the group on television Barret decides that this is actually a blessing in disguise because if they're able to take down the air Buster live then Avalanche will also have the opportunity to spread their message to the masses cloud and Tifa agrees so they all make their way to the reactor entrance along the way you'll have to go through different control rooms with a pretty interesting gameplay opportunity to weaken the air Buster you find key cards around the area that can be used to delay the shipment of components so the air Buster will be weaker when you fight the boss it's a pretty interesting mechanic but you have a limited amount of choices you can make I feel as though if you're going to invest any cars into getting rid of the components you may as well just invest all of your cards into one component type from testing I didn't notice a difference between taking away only some of the components rather there was only effect if you took away all of one type of component the boss battle against the air Buster is what I'd consider be the first major boss battle in the game their air Buster's only weakness is lightning magic which also feels a stayer gauge faster than any other attacks the most annoying part about this boss battle is when the air Buster flies very far away from the platform you're supposed to be fighting it on at that point Barret is the only capable member of the team that can do constant damage due to his ranged attacks sure you can use lightning magic with any other party member because the range doesn't matter with magic but that drains MP very quickly and the ATB meter charges slowly when not laying on damage with characters physical attacks sometimes the air bus will fly and close enough for party members to deal damage but it doesn't happen all the time the fight becomes very tedious at that point but at least the effort summit can help alleviate this a bit because his ultimate attack does some decent damage the air Buster explodes after being defeated causing Tifa and Barret to get thrown back cloud isn't as lucky as he's in a sticky situation cloud tells the others Alleva behind because he can take care of himself Barret drags tief away and cloud falls off the sector 5 plate when an explosion from the Mokka reactor makes him lose his grip cloud awakens in a church somehow surviving his fall and is greeted by Aerith from chapter 2 it turns out that the flower bed cloud landed on is Aris hobby garden as the two begins to talk cloud is a strange vision what seems to be Aerith praying and the materia falling into a lake if you've played the original Final Fantasy 7 then you know exactly what this scene is supposed to be clouds and arrows conversations cut short however as a red haired man with a bunch of Shinra goons enters the church this is Reno he's a member of the team called the Turks think of the Turks as shinra's version of the Mafia the Turks are contracted into doing any sort of job from Shinra whether that be big or small Reno here has been contracted into securing Aerith and bringing her to Shinra HQ that alone doesn't sound good Aerith wants cloud to be her bodyguard and says that she'll go on a date with him if he does cloud scene that the Turks are only for important missions decides to keep her away from Shinra cloud manages to be a Reno but before he can lay the killing blow the mysterious specters from earlier suit Louden Aerith away from Reno and into the back of the church this is where some questions were raised for me when I was playing the game for the first time the specters at this point seem a lot less hostile than they were before in fact they're actually protecting Aerith this time which buys it to enough time to escape through the top of the church cloud and Aerith make their way across the rooftops run into more Shinra security including another member of the turks named rude error suggested the two take the back streets even though there's a risk of monsters this is where you get a good feel as how Aerith plays as a party member arif is the best magic user in the game her magic attacks stat in mp is the highest out of every party member in the game era this trade-off is that she has low HP she's essentially the glass cannon of the group a lot of her unique abilities are bused to the other party members such as speeding up the ATB charging rate for anyone in the ward circle she does have some damaging attacks though such as ray of judgment which is a constants from a magic that builds up the stagger like crazy Aerith can be really good if you load her up with the right materia and is the go-to healer of the group Aerith has the unique property of her basic attacks always counting as magic damage this can be both good and bad depending on the scenario if an enemy is immune to magic of an era this' essentially out of the picture and will be dedicated to purely healing her basic attacks are also the slowest in the game having the most wind up Aerith can be very powerful if you know how to use her correctly but that doesn't mean that she'll always be the most powerful party member she just has the potential of being one of the strongest Aerith gets a lot of characterization but lacks any sort of arc this is fine because the story doesn't draw attention to any sort of inner struggle she's very snarky and has made it known that she's a very independent woman despite her looks one of the things I was worried about when it came to the remake was how they would handle Aerith there was this problem with a lot of Final Fantasy 7 extended media where the writers sort of romanticizes Messiah like figure earth was and her personality was completely sucked out of her character getting aerith's personality right was one of my biggest concerns but I think they nailed it here you worry too much I'm not some princess who needs to be coddled [ __ ] the remainder of chapter 8 is very uneventful cloud and Aerith returned to her house and cloud has offered housing for the night because if Aerith were to help him find his way back to sector 7 now it would be dark by the time Aerith got back so it's pretty much just an excuse to give chapter II its own help for side missions depending on how many side missions to accomplish there will be effect on something relating to chapter 9 like I said earlier I don't really think the side missions are worth going to detail about so I won't waste any time here there is something interesting that happens after cloud and Aerith rescue some kids however cloud and Aerith stumble across a cloaked man that cloud thinks is Marco from earlier but upon getting a closer inspection he realizes that this man isn't Marco but he looks very similar Marco had the number 49 branded on his arm while this stranger has the number 2 branded the man grabs clouds arm and said stuff to be revealed as Sephiroth Sephiroth tells cloud that there's no reason to be afraid of the reunion cloud has another mind green in Sephiroth has once again disappeared leaving the cloaked man in his place it was at this point I started to get annoyed something that Final Fantasy 7 remake loves to do is teased events that are important to the full plot through clouds visions this doesn't mean that we're shown plot elements that are important to this game but it foreshadows events that'll have lasting effects on this story showing teases of stuff like tifa's grudge against Shinra and soldier I'm okay with it's not super important to the story this game is trying to tell mLT's events later to come what I do have a problem with however is Sephiroth being such a key player to the story of the remake but we know nothing about him in the original Final Fantasy 7 sepharose backstory and motivation is explained not too long after he becomes relevant to the story he's first introduced near the end of the Midgar section of the original game and is the driving motivation for the game to even leave the city jumping ahead a bit Sephiroth is still the driving force to get the group to leave Midgar - but there's a big difference Sephiroth is actually one of the main antagonists in the story along with Shinra and disappointingly we learn next to nothing about who Sephiroth is and what exactly his deal is and for how often we see him throughout the game I think that at least having some of his backstory revealed now what at the very least make what's going on less confusing we don't learn about what the reunion is or why Klout keeps seeing Sephiroth or even what his plan is as a fan of the original game I already know all of this stuff because it was explained James story which was all part of the package so when I see Seth in this game I know why that's happening but if this is your first time playing anything Final Fantasy 7 related you're going to be super confused this isn't the last time I'll be complaining about this trust me I'll get to it when cloud and Aerith return to her house aerith's mother Elmyra sends Aerith upstairs to talk to cloud alone she noticed right when cloud walked in that he was a soldier Cod makes it known that he's an ex-soldier but Elmyra doesn't care he doesn't want anyone with any association with Shinra around her daughter and requests cloud to leave the house at night when Aerith is asleep cloud respects her decision and sneaks out of the house in the middle of the night he doesn't get far however as he runs into Aerith who seemed to have expected cloud to try a pole stunt like this cloud had begrudgingly lets Aerith guide him back to sector 7 chapter 9 does a great job of giving us some bonding time between cloud and air as I travel to sector seven cloud slowly opens up to Aerith about what he did after he elicited into soldier and she begins to ask him more personal questions stuff like if he had any war buddies ever this bubbly personality slowly melts clouds rough exterior there are sections where you need to solve environmental puzzles with this robotic arm you can pick up and place these still crates as well as moverá the round the goal is to get her to the ladder so she can lower for cloud these puzzles aren't really remarkable but I only mentioned them because after cloud solves each puzzle Aerith attempts to celebrate with a high-five cloud dismisses the idea at first but the moment he does try this happens [Music] [Music] then at the end of the section you have to hold down the triangle button in order to high-five Aerith it's just a cute scene between the two that really adds to the characters the four cloud can take the sewer shortcut back to sector 7 his attention is grabbed by a chocobo carriage he notices that Tifa is in the passenger seat wearing a rather risky dress this is the payoff for the choice are given in Chapter three once you finish all the side missions the dress changes depending on the answer you give Tifa cloud reasonably runs over to tea foe to see one on earth she's doing Tifa tells Claude not to worry about her because she could take care of herself it turns out that she's going to go see Don Cornero at his personal mansion in woolmarket Don Cornejo is bad news he's a mob Busta has his grimy fingers all over the wall market think of the wall market like an entertainment center but instead of being just one building the entirety of sector six is the party area apparently it was originally built for workers to unwind while the construction of the place was going on eventually it attracted the wrong crowd and more illegal activities went around there rather than dealing with the problem themselves a shin road just walled off the area so it's all contained claude was going to get tea for the benefit of the dough and just let her handle her job but Aerith convinced him to go after Tifa because she assured him that the Don was bad news cloud and Aerith were able to find out where corn AOS mansion is but they need to get approval from one of the coordinator Scouts in order for Aerith to go inside eventually they managed to track down one of the scouts Madame M she agrees to let Aerith inside cornero's imagine as long as cloud and earth win a tournament to pay for the dress she has to get for her tournaments are about as simple as they sound you go through multiple rounds of enemies after each round is cleared you regenerate 50% of HP and MP the catch is that you can't use any items in the tournaments so you have to be wise with how you spend your MP and minimize the damage taken there are different tournaments you can enter after this mandatory one that can not use some rewards such as new Limit Breaks which are your ultimate attacks and armor there are some tournament challenges you can only do after you've not only finished the game but I've also done all of Chad Lewis requests the final challenge is probably the most difficult part of the entire game but I'll get to that later when you bring Aerith back to Madame M she requests cloud to leave while air it's her dress stuff sorted out it's at this point in Chapter nine where things can diverge a bit depending on what dialogue choices you made throughout the chapter you will unlock unique side quests one of them is pretty boring all you do is fight off some goons who so shipment of supplies for an orphanage once you take them out everything is settled the other quests however will be very familiar for those who played the original Final Fantasy 7 there's an old man in a bar that runs the dress shop who's lost his inspiration and a bet with another guy this is the start of a cyclist and involves you to go to different locations around the wall market and interestingly enough you were required to use materia during certain parts as sort of a stat check such as when you need to get the sauce from wanting the vending machines and need to use the assessment iria to find a secret button you need to do stuff like this a couple of times and it's interesting to say the least it's the only time we need to do anything like this in the game - I'm not sure what happens if you don't have the stat requirements for this mission and I was struggling to find any information on it if anyone knows please leave a comment cloud heads over to cornero's mansion to drop off Aerith this letter of approval he's told by one of the bouncers Leslie that he has to wait outside when Aerith goes in it because there's no men allowed Claude wasn't comfortable with the idea of Erath being and they're all alone so he lets her know when he finds her outside of the mansion Aerith had a feeling that cloud would say something like that so she devised a plan apparently cloud caught the attention of one of cornettos Scouts on TRAI if cloud manages to impress andrea he'll write cloud a letter of recommendation the dress that Aerith is wearing depends on how many SciQuest he completed in chapter 8 cloud heads to the honeybee in to meet with aunt Raya in order to get the letter of recommendation cloud is going to need to match on TRAI in the art of dance it's a pretty simple minigame and moreso a glorified QuickTime event the most difficult part however is actually keeping your eyes on the button prompts because holy [ __ ] look at cloud go [Music] this game is so [ __ ] good cloud manages to impress entry enough for him to give cloud a lovely makeover what this new disguise acquired cloud and Aerith make their way to the cornero's mansion and surprisingly cloud manages to blended perfectly he and Aerith are able to find Tifa in this underground room or she tells him why she's even at cornero's mansion it turns out that after Tifa and Barret got back from the reactor five bombing mission that there were goons trying to get some information on avalanche Tifa decided to get herself into the auditions so she can ask cornell why exactly he was trying to figure out things about avalanche everyone has called up to the front just a few moments later whoever Cornejo picks is going to be his girl the night which doesn't sound good at all Tifa seems like a shoo-in for carne of his choice but before he says who he picks cloud scoffs at him since core neo seems to be into a lady with a mouth he ends up choosing cloud as his girl for the night much to everyone's surprise you know there's something that I find pretty disappointing about the way the scene was adapted in the remake in the original Final Fantasy 7 the general beats of the wall market content is the same sefa goes undercover so she can see what Kirino has planned for avalanche and cloud and Aerith decides that would be a good idea to follow suit because they don't understand what tifa's deal is at this point cloud has suggested was a woman so we can accompany earth into cornero's mansion but ends up being roped into the auditions here's the key difference cloud himself has to go around the wall market to collect any of the materials needed to pull off the disguise all he really needs to get is the dress in the wig then you can enter cornero's mansion but here's the thing if you really want you can go out of your way to make cloud as attractive as possible sure you can get by with just a cotton dress but it would look much better if you had a silk dress instead a diamond tiara would also fit well with the outfit just by going around the wall market before cloud gets changed you can find all sorts of neat ways to make us cross-dressing that much more convincing but you know how I mentioned that in the remake chapter 9 as a quest sees you going around the wall market and doing favors to get the dressmaker's inspiration back while in the original game that was all stuff that was optional to get cloud extra goodies for when he dresses up as a woman if you manage to get cloud pretty enough for one en dressed cornero's match and the Dom will pick cloud over Tifa and Aerith but if you just go on with the bare minimum cornea we'll pick T for air--the for his girl the night you have to work for cloud to be best girl the group which I think adds to the humor of the scene a lot more it's kind of disappointing and the remake that no matter what you do no matter what dress combination you get for him or the other girls cloud will always be picked as cornero's girl cop can even get super into his role in the original game he flirts with corny oh and it's all ruined before the big reveal hell you can even say straight to cornettos face that your one true love is Barrett which is something that you don't get in the remake I don't think that this interpretation is bad but it's much less exciting since it's more scripted than before eventually Tifa and Aerith will come in and stop whatever the hell tornado had up his sleeve the group interrogate scorn air with the threat of those threats he spills the beans Shinra hired Cornero to find out where avalanches set up because they had a planet getting back at them for blowing up two of their reactors since cornero's men have narrowed it down to the sector seven slums Shinra has a plan to take out the support beams that are holding the sector seven plate up in the sky this will cause the sector seven plate to crash down and crush anything beneath it chrono activates a trap door after spilling the plan and the group falls into the depths below cloud Tifa and Aerith come to and before they know it they're attacked by Kronos pet Abzu absolute was weak to fire magic so if it is your best summon with this battle at this point in the game you should also have at least tier 2 fire magic so this fight isn't going to be too bad these next two chapters have a much greater focus on the core gameplay rather than the story content and since there isn't much in terms of gimmicks to discuss there isn't much for me to say chapter 11 does have the group leave the sewers and go through the ghost train yard which is visually pretty interesting the ghosts here actually try to communicate with the group by drawing these strange neon images over the environment it's mostly to help guide the player through the level once you're more than halfway through the chapter you can see Shinra began their assault on the sector 7 support beam at the end of chapter 11 you fight the boss eligor it's interesting to note that this is the only enemy in the game that has a weapon that you can steal from it by using the steal materia if you get lucky you can steal Aris blade staff which comes with the ability olestra shield I may as well get into the weapons really quick since the only thing I haven't brought up about the combat system every weapon in the game has its own unique ability that can be used when that weapon is equipped however if you use the ability enough times you can permanently learn that ability mean that you can equip any other weapon you want while still having access to ability you can also use SP to upgrade your weapons to not only improve their stats but also give them some extra abilities like being able to survive a fatal blow once per battle and even extra material slots this doesn't mean that every weapon when fully upgraded will play the same however they will still specialize in specific roles clouds hard-edged has the highest attack stat of any of its weapons so if you want cloud to be only doing physical attacks then you should always have priority and upgrading the tree for that weapon it's nothing too crazy you should always be putting points into your weapons whenever you do get SP from either leveling up or finding manuscripts it adds to the total of every weapon so there's pretty much no point in not upgrading them you know cloud at Tifa and Aerith make their way back to sector 7 but are interrupted by the mysterious specters once again the group tries to fight off the threat but can't seem to make it den for some strange reason the spectre has become very passive towards the three and fly off towards the tower the three make their way to the base of the support pillar and see the avalanches knee-deep in their battle with Shinra wedge falls off the side of the tower but manages to catch himself by using his grappling hook this doesn't save him for long because he loses his grip and plummets towards the ground what survives his fall but seems to be in bad shape cloud tells the others to stay with wedge when he sees the spectres fly up towards the tower and chases after them on the way up the tower Clarke comes across Biggs who after fighting off a bunch of Shinra guards lays on the floor wounded he tells cloud to make sure that what they're fighting for doesn't die in vain and the future is in his hands Biggs passes away it's upcoming to his wounds Tifa and Aerith patch wedge up enough so that he can move on his own Tifa tells Erik to get Barrett's daughter Marlene from the seventh heaven a mover somewhere safe sefa quickly gives chase to cloud leaving Erath and wedge to try to get as many people out of the slums as they can and find Marlene Tifa eventually catches up to cloud and the two make their way up the support pillar while avoiding renown routes helicopter fire eventually we see a scene where Jesse takes out Shen regards to some homemade grenades she's about to throw another one at the Shinra guns in the helicopter but the spectres appear behind her as she throws the explosive we're not exactly shown what happened but we know that it's bad news when cloud and Tifa make it to Jessie they find her covered in debris and surrounded by the specters they managed to get her to safety but at this point the damage has been done Jesse believes that this is her punishment for making the bombs level of the Mokka reactors her only regret is that she couldn't have cloud and the others over her mother's how for dinner one last time she dies after giving cloud a fist bump cloud and Tifa make it to the top of the support beam and find Barrett shooting at the Turks helicopter Reno jumps down and quickly rushes to the detonation device but cloud stops Rina before he can activate it cloud at Tifa and Barrett ready themselves for another battle against Reno something interesting about this battle is that Reno has access to a few new moves one of which being his pyramid move from the original game Reno will trap a party member inside a pyramid and the only way to free them is to break the pyramid by doing enough damage about halfway through the battle brood will get out of this helicopter to join Reno in a 3 vs 2 battle we know one route on their own may not have anything that you can't handle but when they work together they're great at tag team your party members if you're not careful once the remaining members of avalanche take down Reno and rude Tifa quickly rushes over to the detonation device to figure out how to disarm it Ruud makes a mad dash over to her but Behr opens fire on the Turk suddenly the spectres show up once again and block any of the bullets that would hit rude rude manages to make it over to the device and knocks Tifa that of the way des starts the bomb it was at this point when I finally understood what the spectres were doing but I'll reveal that later Ruud manages to get Reno and the two escaped on helicopter the group is unable to find a way to stop the detonation of the sector 7 plate but are contacted by the leader the Turks Hsiang Hsiang shows the group that the Turks are holding Aerith captive at the Shinra HQ he mentions that Aerith is the last of what's called an ancient Aerith willingly surrendered herself to the Turks in exchange for Marlene safety saying cuts the call before Avalanche can ask any questions and it's at this point when the destruction of the support pillar begins cloud Tifa and Barret and managed to escape the destruction through a zip line inches narrowly escapes the collapse were shown an overhead shot of the destruction of the play but our immersion is broken when the small cat looking [ __ ] just shows up outta nowhere distraught spoiler alert this is Kate's if one of the major party members in the original Final Fantasy 7 this is also the only scene where he appears in the game so I guess this is supposed to be fanservice I mean he looks as good as I imagined he would but nevertheless this will leave newcomers super confused and it doesn't add anything to the narrative there's also another complaint I have with this scene and from what I've gathered it's a pretty common one the collapse of the sector 7 plate looks really good and it's treated like an action set piece with our heroes narrowly escaping death but this interpretation honestly lacks a lot of the shock value that the Sene did not just because we already know that the plate was going to collapse but because of the way the scene is framed in the remake of this scene as bombastic music guitar solos explosions everywhere and so on this is how it looked in the original game [Music] [Music] you see what I mean it's cold and deathly quiet the only thing you hear are the screams of the citizens who were too unlucky to get out of the slums in time we see the plate just crushed everything beneath it before exploding in a fiery blaze and worst of all president general watches from the top of his tower with the music playing this meant nothing to him and he was willing to kill hundreds of people just to get back at avalanche were destroying his reactors I don't find this new interpretation to be bad but I think the original version had this sense of dread that just wasn't recaptured cloud and Tifa wake up surrounded by debris and make their way to find Barret the to find him grieving over the loss of his comrades cloud and Tifa sure Barret that Marlene is safe and back at Aaron's house so the group makes her way there along the way we get to see the reactions of the sector 7 plate collapse from not only the sector 6 citizens but also the lower ranking Shinra officers I had no idea what was going on it shows another side of The Electric Company as not all people agree to their practices it's a very minor and not much is done with it so I assume it's just sowing the seeds from when the story is continued in the next game the three arrival elmyra's house where we find out that Marlene is safe but the group has to break the bad news to Amira that her daughter was taken by the Turks Amira explains that Aerith isn't her biological daughter many years ago a Mira's husband are listed in a war against the land called Wutai apparently Shinra wanted to set up a mockery actor in Wutai and the residents disagreed which ended up escalating in a war between the two powers a Mira's husband was on the front lines of the war and Almira prayed every day for his safety one day when Almira waited at the train station for her husband's return she spotted a sickly looking woman in a young girl the woman told Almira to take care of Erath before passing away in front of her child Elmyra took Aerith in not just because she was requested to but because she felt lonely from the absence of her husband Aerith got along with her new adopted mother in a short amount of time she told all my restore ease such as how her and her mother escaped the Shinra facility and that she wasn't too saddened from her mother's death because she returned to the planet one day Aerith told Elmyra out of the blue to not feel sad she told her that someone she loved dearly has passed away and that their spirit had to return to the planet before they could say goodbye Elmyra didn't believe it until she was sleeved a letter saying that her husband killed in action not too long after that sang from the Turks came knocking on a Meyers door asking for her to return ere the Shinra because she's an ancient an ancient or the official term etc are like regular humans but they have a deep spiritual connection to the planet this means a lot of things but primarily cetera can quite literally speak to the planet general wants Aerith because not only is she the last living cetera but because they want to use her to find the promised land Shinra believes that the promised land is an area filled with mokou energy and knowing Shinra they plan on setting up shop there and sucking the area dry Shinra even plans on building a second mid yard known as neo Midgard to make this possible they needed Aerith to go with them willingly for their plan to work and since Eris surrendered herself to keep Marlene safe their preparations are complete elmira begs cloud not to do anything when he's about to rush over the Shinra HQ because she believes that the company gets what they want Aerith will be returned safely klodin the others respect her wishes much - clouds obvious discomfort and head back to sector 7 to try to find any survivors they managed to get into sector 7 thanks to the super shortcut that Eris showed cloud back at the start of chapter 9 the group manages to find a few survivors while in Sector 7 and spot wedges cat the cat guides the group down to a tunnel system where they come across a wedge who's in terrible condition before the trio can reach them the floor beneath them crumbles away and they all get separated interestingly enough we take control as Barret when he regains consciousness for this chapter bear has some unique aspects to him as a leader he can use his gun arm to blast hole and piled up debris as well as destroy any objects have a specific reticle I think that this is a nice shake-up from the formula because up until this point cloud has been a mandatory party member for almost the entire game - one or two fights in cornero's mansion so getting a whole chapter we have to play as Barrett with Tifa being the second party member is refreshing if you only relied on cloud it's also a good opportunity to Rifa miliar eyes yourself with Barrett's play style since he's been absent as a playable character for a large chunk of the game Barrett and Tifa eventually make their way back to wedge and are thankful that he's still breathing before they can leave the two are ambushed by these unsettling looking creatures Barrett and Tifa fight off a seemingly endless amount of these creatures before a creature that the game refers to as the failed experiment shows up it's functionally the boss battle of this chapter cloud shows up just before the end of the fight to stagger the creature long enough for Barrett to blast with one of his strongest attacks the creature leaves a crack in the while behind it and when Barrett blasts a hole into the wall to investigate the group is greeted by one of shinra's hidden labs it turns out that the swarm of creatures that attacked fom Barrett are actually people who have been experimented on to the point where they've mutated cloud as a mine green and imagined himself inside one of these incubation chambers before the group can investigate any further a swarm inspectors throw the group away and somehow end up back into the soit's sector septum with wedge it's not clarified why everyone ended up here exactly but it doesn't really matter to the plot and I just think it's a little strange cloud at Tifa and bring wedge back to Elmira's home because it's the only safe place that could think to take him thankfully she's generous enough to let him rest up in the guest room until he recovers cloud Reza's convinced Almira that shinra is bad news and that they'll try to experiment on Aerith if they don't go to save her cloud seems to have a grudge against a specific scientist named Hojo and trust me it's for the right reasons Hojo was a cause of a lot of [ __ ] that happened in the original story but only has a brief appearance in the remake even from the first scene with Hojo you get a glimpse of what this sick bastard will do the say she had is curiosity what a terrible tragedy to lose the last of the pure blooded angels though not completely would you like to see your mother I'll be it through the lens of one of my microscopes did you really think we leave such a precious specimen to rot in the gutter we collected and catalog every last bit of her pair skin organs every fragment of every bone as breathtaking in death as in life as you my dear they found that was elegance I guess since al maraa doesn't know the full extent of what will happen to Aerith of avalanche doesn't do anything she tells them that she'll need time to think about her answer this intro to chapter fourteen depends on the hidden relationship mechanic whoever you have the highest relationship with will talk to cloud outside of Elmira's house in the middle of the night this can be Barret who talks with his fellow Avalanche members that are in another branch and how he wants to introduce them to cloud when this is all over Tifa who after keeping her emotions pent up finally releases them on her childhood friend increase over what Shinra has taken away from them all or Aerith who cloud interacts with in his dreams she tells cloud to live for himself and not take his life for granted she thanks cloud for all the things that he did for her while also capping this off with a warning to not fall in love with her even if he thinks that he does it may not be real this is some heavy foreshadowing to a few things and plant seeds that Aerith knows more than what she's letting on all of these scenes have one thing in common this is where I believe clouds character arc is completing the story that they're trying to tell in this game we start off with a man who was only doing things for the good of himself only working so they can get cash before moving on to another job cloud was willing to sell out Barret at the start of the game for the right price until he was threatened cloud gradually shifts him to be able to enjoy himself around these people while still having priority with the getting the mission done and in return paying the bills by the time this scene rolls around cloud has transitioned from the Graf mercenary that kept to himself to a true friend that's not afraid of showing emotion anymore that's what makes the start of chapter 14 one of my favorite parts of the game chapter 14 used her last chance to do any side quests or prepare shops until you finish the game I believe that this might be the best time to talk about the postgame content since there won't be any room to do this after this chapter once you finish the game you unlock the ability to revisit any chapter in the game or do any side missions that you may have missed pick different dialogue choices to have different effects on other chapters and most importantly you unlock hard mode hard mode is the pseudo new game+ and Final Fantasy 7 remake the enemies stats have all been raised to match endgame levels and some enemies even have brand new attacks to keep you on your toes the main challenge of hard mode comes from the penalty of not being able to use items so you have to rely on the MP you get at the start of the chapter and the some you may find when breaking Shinra containers hard mode will give you manuscripts whenever you do a specific thing in the chapter such as when beating a boss you may get a manuscript for someone like Tifa as I said earlier manuscripts are essential we're getting SP to upgrade your weapons because once you hit the level cap you have to earn manuscripts again SP I would say that getting manuscripts is a good enough incentive to go through hard mode since the extra SP you gain is pretty much required for some of the last arena battles in the game the last two arena battles are available once you've done all of Chad Lee's requests and once you finish all the other arena battles before those these can only be taken on hard modes to the odds are stacked against you the first one isn't so bad you have to fight the more unique enemies such as the tonberry and the fireball I'd say the hardest part about the Scotland is the rematch against the behemoths because in hard mode he does a lot more damage not even the usually infamous malboro is that challenging its signature move bad breath inflicts whatever gets hit by it with every status ailment in the game at the same time but it's very easy to avoid since it has a pretty short range and there's a lot of light up to the move the final challenge however is a completely different story this is a five round tournament against every summon in the game followed by a brand new bus at the end of the gauntlet you battle through the summons in this order Shiva fat chocobo Leviathan and Bahamut the first three while requiring you to pay attention isn't super difficult sometimes they can catch you off guard with their ultimate attacks but at this point in the game you'll have the required HP to survive the unavoidable moves the battle against Muhammad is without a doubt the hardest encounter in the game bahama has a unique attribute to his attacks compared to the other summons his attacks are all classified under being non elemental magic meaning if there's no way to resist the damage bahama has the most aggressive mu set of all the summons as well as the most annoying attacks to deal with one being his umbral strike ability umbral strikes makes muhammad throw two massive balls of energy at whoever you're fairly in control as and cannot be blocked the only way to avoid taking damage is by somehow evading both attacks with well-timed dodge rules I have never successfully avoided both energy balls after multiple attempts the thing that makes Muhammad such a pain in the ass is his ultimate attack Mega Flare before Mega Flare is fired off Bahamut will count down from five this doesn't mean five seconds but it means five rounds of charging if that makes any sense once Muhammad reaches zero he'll use Mega Flare which is an unavoidable unblockable attack on the entire party this is the move that makes or breaks the fight Bahamut has the capacity of annihilating everyone in your party unless you make sure that the weapons you have equipped on your team have the reprieve skill reprieve makes it so that you can survive an otherwise fatal blow once per battle Muhammad also has one more trick up his sleeve once he's below half health he'll perform a summon of his own and bring her into the battle with him this pretty much makes giving you're up close attackers of the materia combination to block fire damage a requirement this makes it frataxin pleat joke since you block all of his attacks Mohammed has the capacity of using Mega Flare multiple times in the fight but you can interrupt him if he tries to do it again by staggering him it's impossible to stagger Bahamut before he does make it flare for the first time this fight alone took me hours of preparation and I was absolutely afraid to see what the secret boss was going to be just because if your party is knocked out in the tournament you have to restart from the very beginning so you should have seen the look on my face when I got to the secret bus to find out that this is one of the easiest encounters in the game I'm not kidding I think that the pride and joy prototype is actually very easy comparison to most of the battle since he uses fire attacks a lot I just so how and be immune to fire because of my materia so we didn't do any damage unless it was a physical attack sure pride and joy has a move that can deal 9999 damage to a single party member but could be interrupted by crippling his legs so if you ask me the true super boss was the Bahamut rematch and pride and joy it was more of a victory lap the accessory you get from being in the final tournament is super cool this thing makes it so that you always start the battle with a full limit bar and you fill your limit bar much faster than normal it's a bit of a useless reward because there's no challenges after finishing this battle other than doing hard mode which you probably already finished by the time you got to this fight but hey it's a cool reward at least chapter 14 features the most egregious form of filler content the group heads back to Don cornero's mansion to try to wrangle a way to get on top of the sector 7 plate but they run to one of his lackeys lesly lesly says that Cornero isn't here but he'll how about avalanche if he doesn't mess solid Leslie wants to find and kill cornell because he chose Leslie's fiance as his girl the night Leslie never saw her after that night and now he wants revenge what Cornejo did it's an interesting story but we don't exactly get to know much about Leslie besides his motivation it also doesn't help that you mainly travel through the sewers of chapter 10 again with very little changes hell we even fight absolutely again without any game changing differences I think that this was probably the lowest point in the game when it comes to pacing as well it's a pretty irrelevant chapter to the story that's being told and while I think Leslie's story is fine I just want to get to the finale at this point you know Leslie supplies the group with grapple guns so they can scale the destroyed sector 7 and makes his leave everyone has gotten the supplies they need they begin their ascension up to the collapse sector seven plate the group runs into a few complications on the way but they eventually make their way to the Shinra HQ cloud at Tifa and barrett hide on top of one of the supplied trucks that's heading towards the garage barrett and Tifa fall off the truck when they are almost side so the group has to take the head-on approached again side shinra's lobby there's an interesting choice you can make once the trio manages to grab the keycard from the reception desk either you can choose to take the elevator up to the 59th floor or you can take the sneaky backdoor entrance the floor 59 the former is much faster but the elevator will be stopped by Shinra guards causing you get into some encounters before reaching the top while the latter will be the safest option but we'll take the longest since you need to climb up all 59 flights of stairs this is a choice that is directly adapted from the original game picking the stairs is definitely my preferred choice since it's one of the best jokes in the entire game I wasn't lying when I said you have to climb up every step of the way you've really have to the group starts off at a full sprint and it's sort of a mini race as well right next to their names on the bottom right of the screen it will list the current floor that each party member is on the further on you go the more exhausted everyone will get you go from max speed to a medium jog all the way down to a slow stumble once you're at the top if you pay attention to each floor you can even see that Tifa takes breaks once she's far enough ahead the best part has to be Barrett's dialog the usually tough as a brick leader slowly crumbles as he realizes how far he actually has to climb up hill even starts swinging out of misery once he's near the top of the stairs [Music] it's really great to see that this scene was kept intact the three make their way through the Shinra building trying to find out where Hojo is keeping Aerith and pass through a holographic tour guide on the way the group is shown much generous plans for finding the centrist promised land are and how they want to use the Mach o energy to build a more advanced Midgar the tour ends with the group is suddenly shown a vision of the city of Midgar being destroyed by a giant meteor cloud sees both FIFA and Barrett being killed by Sephiroth before we cut to black I believe that sefa and Bharath only saw the meteor falling but didn't see the vision of Sephiroth because the only question the former when the group comes to it's never brought up again so it feels like a bit of loose storytelling just for the case of showing iconic imagery maybe this will be followed up in another game but as of right now it feels very awkward cloud Tifa and Barrett eventually find out that president Shinra and other representatives will be holding a meeting discuss Aerith very shortly so Claude does some recon work by sneaking through the air vents cloud manages the spot hojo in the meeting room and overhears his plans to have Aerith reproduce at first Hojo suggests that they use candidates from soldier before becoming infatuation with the idea of a crossbred specimen like I said hoja was a sick bastard the group tails Hojo until he leads the maltsters laboratory Barrett puts him at gunpoint and forces Hojo to take them to where he's holding Erath Hojo contemplates that using the corpses of her friends will do the trick and emotionally scarring her before the group in question what he means by that Hojo sticks his creations on them and makes his escape the group eventually finds Eretz holding cell as well as Hojo up inside his observation chamber it's at this point where Hojo recognises cloud at first he believed that he was in Soldier because of the maca poison in his eyes but after getting a better look at cloud Hojo drops the biggest truth bomb out of all of them he reveals to everyone in the room that cloud was never a part of soldier this causes cloud to have a migraine before the spectres show up once again and forcefully drag Hojo away from the group this revelation is [ __ ] huge and has the potential to greatly alter the story from here on out I won't get too much into a here because there's a lot of context that's needed in order to fully grasp how exactly this will change the story as a whole no one else in the group questions with Hojo meant by cloud never being in soldiers so I can only assume that this will be addressed in future in Stallman's that's one of the biggest complaints I have with this finale there's a lot of things that are introduced to the story that doesn't have an effect on the current plot but will be important in future installments I don't mind one or two things being foreshadowed or introducing some concepts that I'll work as a hook for future installments but there are a lot of things that make their first appearance near the end of the game without much explanation such as this guy right here this is red 13 red 13 was captured and experimented on by Hojo and holds a grudge against the scientist before red 13 can attack the group Aerith places her hand on him and seems to calm him down with a spell or maybe something else red 13 says that he got his nickname from Hojo who branded the number 13 on his body Tifa questions if red 13 has another name but he doesn't seem to want to talk about it cloud begins to walk uncontrollably towards the elevator and this is done in gameplay no matter what direction you point the analog stick cloud will move towards the elevator we're shown flashes of some parasitic creature inside a test tube and cloud begins to mutter the name Genova to himself cloud reaches the elevator but passes out when you're first the creature as his mother when cloud comes to he finds himself with the others inside a room that Aerith and her mother stayed in while being held by Shinra Barrett says to everyone else to take Aerith and get out while he stays behind and tries to take down Shinra on his own Aerith warns Barrett not to do that and suddenly more specters arrive inside the room this is where the truth of the mysterious creatures are finally revealed red 13 says that these spectres are called whispers the whispers are arbiters of fate you see the planet has a destiny already set in stone and the whispers Duty is to keep everything in orders the planets destiny is fulfilled this means everything from cloud a meeting Aerith in the slums cloud going on the reactor five bombing mission the death of avalanche members all of that and more our events that are set in stone this explains why whenever something is about to happen in the remake that will deviate from the original it is interrupted and corrected by the whispers remember back when cloud is about to kill Reno after their first fight before he can land the killing blow both cloud and Aerith are dragged away from the fight because Reno isn't supposed to die there depending on how you interpret what the whispers represent you can come to some interesting conclusions the most popular theory is that the whispers are a meta commentary for fans of the original Final Fantasy 7 who don't want to see anything from the original story changed this also tells us more about Aerith and the secrets that she intentionally kept from the group I believe that era --then knew about the whispers the entire time and knew what their purpose was she is a cetera after all and can communicate with the planet this is why when she touches red 13s forehead suddenly he knows all about the whispers as well Aerith transferred the knowledge onto him the general idea behind the whispers is clear but what exactly constitutes is a big deviation from the original plot is pretty ambiguous the biggest one being wedge surviving when wedge fell off the sector seven support beam in the original game that was it he died right there and then but on the remake he doesn't die so there's already a difference but what I personally think is that whether or not wedge lives or dies doesn't matter to the planets predetermined fate because wedge stays in a comatose state for the rest of the game until he shows up again near the end when he says that he's getting help from other Avalanche cores to flush president shin rat of the building functionally this is still the same destiny that the planet has in mind because wedge isn't changing much of anything in fact he's keeping things directly on course because wedge is the reason why the group has to go to the rooftops like they do in the original game so I feel as though death means less the planets plan unless it's necessary to keep everything on the proper course something that I believe supports this theory later on is when president shinra's hanging off the edge of Shinra HQ it doesn't matter if he falls to his death now or as killed later what matters is that he dies at all because that's when shinra's son Rufus takes over as president for the company which is why we don't see any whispers in this scene wedges fate by the end of the game is left ambiguous because he seemingly throw another Shinra HQ window when the game cuts to black and we hear glass shattering I believe that since wedge fulfilled his purpose in correcting destiny him being alive any longer could cause some problems this theory of Mikey could be completely wrong and it's not a good thing that I have to think of a conclusion of how something specifically functions in a story when the information seemingly contradicts itself I believe that not explaining what exactly counts as a deviation of fate makes a wedge living much more confusing and that's not okay when this is one of the core reasons as to why your story happens anyways wedge gets in contact with the group and enforces them that he managed to get other cores of Avalanche to raid the building to try to flush Shinra out he also lets them know that they have sent a helicopter extracted group when they make it to the rooftops since the building has gone under lockdown the five need to cut through Hojo's laboratory so they can make it to the roof as the group makes her way through the lab they come across Genova in a capsule suddenly cloud is another migraine before Sephiroth appears before the group cloud rushes towards Sephiroth out of anger but it's unable to land a blow on him and it's thrown down into the depths below cloud comes to and realizes that he was separated from the others during the fall this is probably the second worst example of having filler during a point where the action is supposed to be high it was at this point where I just wanted the game to end not because I was sick of it but because the story was at its climax so it's pretty draining to have to go through another hour of regular gameplay there are some interesting things here though that make it at least memorable Khan will eventually reunite with both Barrett and red 13 red 13 isn't exactly a fully fledged party member in this game he is more so just an extended cameo he's entirely a eyed control so he'll fight on his own and has his own materia equipped it's more so just a quick taste of what he'll have to offer when we get the chance of control min later installments kind of sucks but I understand why they did it the other unique aspect of this section is the fact that you switch between two parties you play as cloud and Barret for a bit before switching to Tifa and Aerith an attempt to help each other progress it's a lot less interesting than it sounds because it mostly just amounts to playing as one team for a bit before having to switch to another team to just pull a switch or something red 13 goes from cloud and Barrett's team to Tifa and Aerith after he gets knocked off of a platform it's not that this section is terrible but it's pretty annoying considering how long it goes on for there's even a boss battle that attempts to take advantage of the fact that you have two teams in different rooms but it dies so quickly it doesn't leave much of a lasting impression the group is able to meet up and take the elevator back up till they were before only to discover that Genova is missing from her test tube with a stream of purple blood making a path they follow the trail until it's cut off right at president shinra's office the group finds Shinra dangling from the top of the tower and begs a Vilanch to rescue him Barret grabs Shinran saves his life but he intimidates him to get on TV until the truth that shinra was responsible for the sector 7 plate collapsed and Avalanche is a force of good trying to save the planet Barret gets too caught up in his own speech the notion or pull a gun on him before he could pull the trigger he's stabbed in the back by none other than Sephiroth suddenly whispers flood the room of tried to prevent Barret from attacking but Sephiroth manages to get past the whispers and stab Barrett right through the chest the pure horror on clouds face cells the scene perfectly Barrett is caught by the whispers and is instantly treated by some sort of magic suffer us suddenly transforms into a form of Genova creating an illusion of an arena in the process to properly damage to Nova you need to cut off both of its tentacles because they swallow you when you try to apply pressure once the tentacles are gone that doesn't make Genova defenseless esse can still do some attacks as the fight goes on Jenova will pull some nasty tricks such as having tentacles spread out from the ground to attack as well as spatting of some acidic black gunk once Genova is defeated it transforms into Marco before dying leaving the body of Genova behind before Klout can reach Genova Sephiroth appears again it takes her away cloud gives chase but is unable to catch up to Sephiroth before he escapes through the whispers blocking clouds path as Sephiroth falls he briefly turns into the cloaked man that cloud and Aerith found earlier as I said earlier if these cloud characters are never explained in this game so their purpose or what exactly they are will come across as confusing for those who haven't played the original in fact this information is kind of overwhelming since there's already so much going on in this finale and as I mentioned before that's the weakest aspect of these last few chapters I get that this is all consequence of cutting up a complete story into multiple parts but nevertheless it's still a problem avalanches extraction helicopter arrives but is shot down by missile from a Shinra helicopter this is Rufus Shinra the former president's son and heir to the Shinra company seeing that this will probably be the best chance the Barret suggests that they all take on Rufus right now to end the Shinra family the cloud requests Barret and everyone else get out while they can cloud is putting the safety of his friends above himself so that they at least had the chance to escape if he's unable to defeat Rufus bear reluctantly obeys clouds order and everyone takes their leave Rufus is unique encounter in the sense that for the first half of the fight you're recommended to fight his companion Darkstar whenever Rufus receives damage a dark star will cast Caraga on Rufus leaving him open to attack once you manage to defeat dark star it will be a one-on-one encounter with a new president reverse will reload his weapon once he spends enough shots doing his special abilities he's essentially a glass cannon Bruce can output massive but if you're able to land any powerful attack on him he goes down really easily Rufus manages to make his escape on helicopter and cloud is shot at by the pilot the platform beneath him breaks and cloud ends up hanging for his life as he loses his grip Tifa comes in in the nick of time saves cloud from falling Aerith barrett and red 13 make their way to the bottom floor but our hard-pressed to find an escape route as there are too many Shinra guards outside for all of them to take care of Heidegger comes in taunting avalanche he commands the guards to kill Barret and red 13 but to leave Aerith alive just before they get their hands dirty however cloud surprises everyone by jumping from one of the upper floors with a motorcycle and takes us some of the Shinra guards with it Tifa also arrives in a vehicle of her own with the escape plant hatch the group makes her way through the Shinra HQ before coming across their exit that's when cloud does the sickest [ __ ] ever the group stops when they noticed that the Shinra HQ was surrounded by whispers everyone questions what they're trying to do and not even Arif has the answer the group isn't able to think about it for too long since before they know it more Shinra guards make their way towards the group with vehicles of their own thus the iconic chase scene begins the motorcycle set piece here is a bit better than the one in chapter 4 for the sole reason that there's a lot more enemy variety as well as different obstacles that you need to avoid there's even a boss fight this time around which is pretty basic you have to do enough damage to its wheels to stagger it that's when you're able to wail on it with your spinning slash attacked and deal as much damage as possible though I think that this set piece worked better in the original game because it's significantly shorter and funnily enough it controls better I have a harder time in the remake moving the motorcycle forwards for some reason it's as if there are invisible barriers so you don't go too far ahead I can't be the only one that feels like this right the group manages to outrun Shinra but the celebration is cut short when Sephiroth appears at the end of the road causing the group to stop everyone approaches Sephiroth and he says that everyone born to the planet is bound by its fate suddenly the whispers rush away from Shinra HQ and awards our heroes some whispers surround the group and they're suddenly shown a vision in this vision we seen midgar's surrounded by whispers and are shown a mysterious soldier wielding the same Buster sword that cloud has been using for years this is Zack fair Zack is one of clouds buddies back when he worked for Shinra to pull back the curtain a bit what we're seeing now is actually Zacks fate because this is his final battle which results in his death we even see that the whispers were in the area because Zacks death is very important to cloud and by extension the planet's destiny this finale relies heavily on knowing the original game's story inside and out it rewards old fans who've been playing the game since they were kids but this comes with the price of being very unaccessible to newcomers before we can see the battle were brought back to the current time and see Sephiroth cut a hole through the whispers inviting cloud to battle him on the other side cloud rushes in almost instantly but a stock buy Aerith because of fearing the unknown Aerith warns everyone a Sephiroth power and that he's the planets biggest threat she implies a Sephiroth has some sort of immunity to the whispers power so it's going to be up to them to stop Sephiroth from destroying the planet this will come with consequences however because if they all go in battle suffer off they'll be defying the fate the planet has in store for everyone if everyone joins in and destroys fate they have a chance of beating Sephiroth and saving the planet from its own demise it's important to know that the characters have no idea what fate has in store for them throughout the game cloud was giving glimpses into the future it's why we're shown things such as the reunion of the cloaked figures aerith's death and even a giant meteorite crashing directly into the planet these visions paint a very bleak future with the death of everyone the best course of action would be to literally destroy this prophesized future in attempt to save the world from Sephiroth who is seen as the cause of all this with everything decided the group heads into the portal after Sephiroth on the other side other greeted by this Titan known as the whisper harbinger think of it as the collective hive for the whispers that's taking the shape of a giant monster the battle against fate is an interesting one in the sense that you don't directly fight the whisper harbinger you mostly fight these whispers that have forms inspired by Cloud Tifa and Baron the red one uses a sword the blue one uses fists and the yellow one uses guns if you analyze these creatures descriptions say that they're entities from the features that manifested on the present day to fight and preserve the future that came from this has implications that were fighting Cloud Tifa and Barret from the future as they want to preserve the original faith for the world every time the group defeats one of the entities they're shown a glimpse of what the future has in store for them such as seen cloud and Sephiroth battling each other aerith's burial and red 13 running through the world with his children with their combined effort the group managed to take down the whisper Harbinger and are brought to a mysterious area it's at this point where Sephiroth reveals himself to everyone Sephiroth uses his power to throw a building at the group forcing them to separate Sephiroth and cloud both land on a piece of rubble and the final battle commences with a one-on-one fight Sephiroth is very aggressive and will leave himself open to attacks if he ends up missing any of his hard-hitting moves as Sephiroth is in attacking it's best not to be aggressive yourself because he's able to defend against all your sword swings and will not take any damage because of it what's interesting about this battle is that every time you make it to a new face of a fight a team member will join alongside you what team mate you get is based on a hidden score value that was tallied up in the fight before whoever has the two highest scores will be your partners in this fight I personally got Tifa and Barret for this battle Sephiroth has an instant kill move near the end of the fight it's shown that he seemingly has some sort of control over the whispers and uses that power to summon the meteorite from the visions when this happens you need to defeat him before the counter hits zero if you run out of time the meteor will crash and that's an instant game over no matter what team you get the group manages to overpower Sephiroth everyone acts as a support by taking down the whispers surrounding Sephiroth while cloud charters at him to deal the final blow Sephiroth is strangely enough let's cloud attack him causing a massive explosion of light cloud and Sephiroth are teleported to what is known as the edge of creation cloud begins to have a migraine because this whole scenario was giving him deja vu Sephiroth offers cloud one more chance to join him in defied destiny together the cloud is firm in his stance to kill Safra with that the two begin their final battle Sephiroth manages to overpower cloud after toying with them claiming that it isn't time for them to end this yet Sephiroth taunts cloud one more time before disappearing leaving a single black feather in his place with the whispers officially destroyed a new detail is revealed the vision that we were shown of Zacks last battle was actually from an alternate timeline symbolized through the logo SHINee's mascot stamp being a different breed of animal since the whispers are destroyed across all of time and space in this reality Zack actually manages to survive as a counter against Shinra he takes the alternate reality cloud back to Midgar that's not the only thing that's shown however it's heavily implied that these two timelines have been merged into one with the defeat of the whispers we're shown that bigs actually survived the sector 7 plate collapse and is also implied that Jesse did too because we see her gloves on the dresser the game ends with cloud deciding that he needs to leave Midgar because Sephiroth is still out there somewhere the other members all agree that they need to take him down for the sake of the planet and they all begin their journey the credits even state the fact that they're unknown journey will continue and that is the end of the first part of the Final Fantasy 7 remake there is a lot to unpack with this ending while at the same time there is plenty of things that were intentionally left ambiguous of Square Enix could hook players into checking out how the story will continue the biggest thing to take away from this ending is the fact that with the destruction of the whisper Harbinger not everything will play out the same as expected this is to open up new opportunities of storytelling on the developers end but this also has some big ramifications on the game world itself I believe that this was sephiroth's plan all along it's very clear that Sephiroth knows something that we as the audience don't he is somehow able to resist the whispers power and even control them in some cases I think that Sephiroth was manipulating the group into destroying the whispers because he used his control over the beings to selectively show events as if the planet was doomed which is why we only see events such as aerith's death and the meteor wiping up the planet this was to convince everyone that Sephiroth needed to be stopped right away and the only way to do that was to destroy fate what the characters don't know is that Sephiroth was actually destined to lose so they inadvertently opened up the opportunity for him to win in the end since they introduced the fact that there are multiple timelines I think that the Sephiroth we fought at the end of the game is the same one we've been seeing up until that point I believe the final boss Sephiroth is from another time line where he lost in the end so he traveled to this new time line and along the way discovered what the whispers were so he managed to manipulate everyone into killing them so he had a new chance at winning my theory could totally be wrong but that's the thing now this story has become unknown there's now room for speculation in theory since because things can be different there's now stakes in the story again let's face it everyone knows that Aerith was going to die it's the video game death but now it's left up in the air whether or not you'll meet our tragic end hell if they really want to throw a curve ball Tifa could be the one who gets axed off character safety isn't guaranteed anymore that doesn't mean that I think the plot going forward is going to be entirely different I just can't see square-enix going without adapting more iconic scenes from the original game even the end of the remake ends the same way the original Midgar section ended with the group going out to find Sephiroth the first thing I'd want to see in part two would be some clarifications and explanations in the more ambiguous parts of the ending well I think that this ending is great it relies too heavily on knowledge from the original game to be accessible you pretty much have to play the original game to fully understand what exactly happens a lot of things are also just left unclear for the sake of expansion and sequels I also feel bad for those who just wanted a one-to-one remake with updated visuals I can see why there's disappointments surrounding the fact that there will be deviations now but I think writing them all off is terrible without even seeing what they'll do what the idea is just silly that original story still exists and it's easily accessible I appreciate the fact that Square is willing to take big risks with their most popular game while others would just play it safe sure the remake isn't perfect far from it there's some things that I prefer in the original game and the pacing could use a lot of improvements but I think that the remake excels in so many aspects and even surpasses the original in a lot of ways that doesn't mean that the original game is obsolete there's still plenty of reasons to go and play that one too Final Fantasy 7 remake is just an adaptation of the original game and both stand on their own as solid RPGs I for one am very excited to see where this new journey will take us all eyes are on you Square you better not [ __ ] this up hey thanks for watching please like and subscribe to you're a fan of this type of content this video took a lot of time and effort to make so any feedback would be appreciated if you're a fan of these long-form reviews I have one for the ps2 game persona 3 fess up on my channel as well also thank you to everyone who's been sticking by me for a while I'm almost at 800 subscribers at the time of this recording which is pretty insane to think about I'd also like to thank you the viewer for getting this far into the video it means a lot that you'd stick by my side for this long I'd also like to thank my good pal Nolan or that boy aqua for the assistance with this video he makes really good videos on Ubisoft games primarily the Assassin's Creed games a link to his channel will be in the description this video has gone on for long enough so thank you for watching and take care [Music]

Channel: Nam’s Compendium

Views: 34,509

Rating: 4.8798699 out of 5

Keywords: Final Fantasy 7 Remake Critique, final fantasy 7 remake analysis, nam12399, ff7 remake critique, ff7 remake analysis, final fantasy 7 remake story explained, final fantasy 7 remake ending explained, final fantasy 7 remake review, final fantasy 7 remake ps4, final fantasy 7 ps4, that boy aqua, Ff7 remake review, critique

Id: x1D98Rntm2M

Length: 98min 34sec (5914 seconds)

Published: Thu May 21 2020