After I finished last week’s post I also finished the base game of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. It was a wild ride with a lot of emotion, as is usual from modern Square Enix, and especially the final battle sequence against what is essentially fate and then Sephiroth was incredible. Square Enixe really did kick the cradle and told us to expect the unexpected with this remake of one of their most beloved games going forward. Even though I never played the original game, I’m very much in love with the story of this remake and I can’t wait to see where it takes us next.
Which brings me to the topic I want to talk about…
Right after finishing off the base game I dove into the Yuffie DLC that was announced later and I think is a PS5 and PC exclusive. I bought it on sale to play after I finished the main story since I owned the game from PS4 and thought it was silly to just buy the entire game again for PS5 while I got an upgrade for free. And I think that is where I made the mistake. See I already burned out pretty hard on a DLC last year when I finished Horizon Zero Dawn and immediatly did the Frozen Wastes DLC after. I just got off the main story high and after that the DLC story just seemed… Less. I understand that, for people who actually finished the game on time getting a new snippet of story about a year later and getting to go back to a beloved game must’ve been epic. For me though, I burned out on it, didn’t like the new machines and basically only put in the effort needed to finish the main story content and I ignored most of the side stuff.
The same has kind of happened in my Yuffie DLC playthrough. The tone of the story, especially in chapter one, is completely different from the maingame and I had a hard time adjusting to it, aswell as the gameplay of Yuffie herself. Not to mention that I didn’t get complete control over Sonon and that really bothered me after being able to switch freely between all characters in the FF7R maingame.
This made me almost game over on the very first fight I had both of the characters in the party. Granted it was the Ramuh summon fight and that isn’t the easiest to complete but still. I couldn’t position Sonon and just had to rely on the AI to not be dopey and accidentally keep him in bad stuff. Which is exactly what happened and what caused him to die midway through the fight. Luckily I could solo the rest with Yuffie but it did annoy me.
I feel like the story only really came alive in the second chapter which, because of the lack of sidecontent, was way shorter than the first. I also gave up doing the stupid timed box killing challenge for the trophy because I just couldn’t get Yuffie to target the things I wanted to and the moment you’re not perfect in your run it’s impossible to get that 50k points done.
Perhaps it’s also to do with just coming off the epic story that was the Final Fantasy 7 Remake into a two chapter mini story that may or may not have significance for the next installment. I didn’t really get to bond to these characters because I was done so fast. 6 hours and I spent at least an hour or two trying to do all the Fort Condor sidegame stuff, and as such my overal feelings have just been “meh”. Which is rather a waste of what is supposed to be a fun little step back into the world of FF7R after finishing the game at an earlier point in time. Maybe I just need to learn to play games on time and then maybe I can enjoy stepping back into the world I so loved for a small story. I guess I can test this theory with the DLC for Final Fantasy 16 that has come out and which I bought with funds from my work Christmas gift. I haven’t touched the game since I played it back in June/July last year and I’m actually quite eager to dive in and play as Clive a little more and see what content they added to the game. I’m planning to do that somewhere this month so I guess I’ll let you guys know how that turns out.
As far as plans for gaming the rest of this week. I’m working on the current Disney Dreamlight Valley season pass as well as poking around in Persona 4 Golden and Sea of Stars. I’ve taken a little break after FF7R though so I can reset my brain for the next epic story to settle in and I don’t think I’ll get that much gaming done since I will be gone for most of the weekend. Anyway I’m happy that I managed to tick a game off my backlog and hopefully this is the first of many this year!