Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Final Fantasy VII Remake Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 15

Episode Date: April 6, 2020

Tim, Greg, Blessing, Imran, and Andy review Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Time Stamps - 00:04:30 - How far are you in the game? 00:06:00 - Personal history with with FFVII 00:11:45 - Our impressions! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys? Welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Getty's joined by one of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller. Oh, hi, Tim. How are you? I'm doing fantastic. Can't wait to talk about this with you? What's you playing right there? Can I take one guess? Sure, go for it. The original Final Fantasy 7 on the Nintendo Switch. No, you idiot. I'm turning in some fossils to blatherers.

Big moon foothos. Go chop your goddamn trees. We also have the former, informer, Imron, Khan. How are you doing? I'm doing good. I was playing the original. I just have it on Switch earlier today. A man with taste, Greg Miller. Maybe you can learn a thing or two. Blessing, Adayahu, Jr., the new face of video games.

What's up, Tim? Making the debut of his new beautiful face with this new setup, man. Yeah, new setup. Yeah, Kevin came over yesterday with a hazmat suit on, got this new desk set up, and so now I'm, like, facing the window. How much of that is true? He was not wearing a hazmat suit on. Guys, who here?

If we were to take a vote on, was it? or was it not true? I feel like we'd be pretty split. No way. I told me Kevin showed up all sweaty and actually found in the street. I would have believed that more than the asthma. Let me chime in for a second.

Kevin was so sweaty when he was here. And I knew this was what you were about to say and that's why I wanted to chime in. You keep that room easily 85 degrees. And I was doing manual labor, putting this desk together. And yeah, I got a little sweating. The door is all.

The door is open. Not enough, you know what I mean? It was coming in. We need a fan on that bitch too. It was a breeze from outside the hallway. And joining us for one of our very first five-person kind of funny games cast, Andy. Who, the Twitch streamer himself,

Nitro Rifle, Cortez. It's been a while, guys. First off, let me just say this, all right? Outer Wilde was my game of the year. I knew he was going to do this. Number two. Number two is control. Number three is Apex Legends, guys.

Thank you for watching. You just disconnect. I would have so much, I would be so proud. It would destroy the entire template Kevin's made. But if you were like, you're like, I'm just gone. You gotta love it.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every week right here on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. We get together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them. You can get the show early by going to Patreon, not really, ad free, by going to Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games with the exclusive post show, just like Muhammad, Mohamed, Al Tradsman, James Hastings, Sancho West Gaming, Agent Cody Banks himself, Trent Barry, Julian, the gluten-free gamer,

Joseph Rusef, and joining for the first time on this show, Scott Radloff. Whoa. That's almost a really funny name. Yeah. Almost is. You know what I mean? Thank you all for your support over on Patreon. If you don't have the dollars, that's totally cool.

You can watch this show for free on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, roosterteeth.com, or you can listen to it as a podcast and your favorite podcast. I service to search for. Kind of Funny Games cast. Today we're brought to you by Quip, but I will get to that later. For now, let's get into it, baby. Final Fantasy 7 remake.

We're reviewing it. This feels unreal. The game is out, Imran. The game is done. We have completed the game. First off, actually, let's go around. It will be out. Well, it's semi out.

Well, it's out of those countries. Also, you know how this goes. Are we spoiling it? Is this a spoiler for your review? To make this clear, this is a, all things considered, spoiler free review. What that means is like we're not going to,

like any big reveals or stuff, we're not going to talk about. This is like, it's like reading any review that you would see on a, okay, on a site. So if you're being super sensitive

and you don't want anything spoiled, maybe come back to this later. But we're doing a spoiler cast next week that we'll really be getting into, to everything. So Patreon.com slash kind of funny games with your questions. I feel like you shouldn't worry about this episode if you're concerned about spoilers.

but where have all of us been with this game Greg Miller So how do you want me to answer that? Where have I been with this? In your business? No, in terms of like how far are you? Oh, I've beaten this game. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I beat Final Fantasy 7 remake. I think it took me on the game clock 35 or 38 hours somewhere in there. I forget which one. Bless. I've also beaten it at around 36, 37 hours. Copy can't. Amrod.

I beat it. I'm in the, I nearly don't. with my hard play-through right now. My initial play-through was about 45 hours. I think I'm at 65 now. Oh, wow. I beat it. How's that possible?

When you skip cut scenes and go through, well, like, I'm pretty well-versed in the game now, so it's not that hard to get through even on hard play-through. Okay. That's insane. Because I beat it about 38 hours,

and then I went back to hard to try, and it was not only kicking my ass, but frustrating as well. And then Andy? I don't trust my game clock. All right. Fair enough. Thanks.

I also, give trouble number two. We got it. I'd say I'm about like in, in all honesty, maybe 25 hours in. But I mean, I don't really even want to say a chapter number because I don't want,

is that too spoilery? Chapter numbers are fine, I think. You're probably halfway through. Yeah. So I think I just started chapter 12. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. So that means that all of us have beat it except for Andy. We wanted to have him here as well just because he has never played Final Fantasy 7 before except for the one Twitch stream that we did that you can watch on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. But what about the, what's our history with the game otherwise, the original game? Greg. I have, you know, obviously been in video games for a while now.

And so obviously I know how beloved Final Fantasy 7 is. and JRPGs are a special case with me where there's something like persona four and persona three that I can't put down that I get into and I'm just all about and I want to be a part of it. Final Fantasy 7, I came to it super late. It was already on that pedestal.

It already was, you know, so many people's game of a lifetime kind of thing. Obviously the big death is spoiled for me by that point and all that jazz. And so I want to say, yeah, I don't even think when I had my PS1, like when it was mob, that I was playing it on that. I think it would be years later after hearing so much about it that I finally double-backed

and tried to play it. And I've tried multiple times to play the original Final Fantasy 7 and it just doesn't work for me. And I don't know if it's a JRP thing, if it's a dated thing, if it's a graphic thing. But I totally get what that game is, why it matters to so many people, but I've never been able to get into it. Bless. I'm pretty much the exact same as Greg, where I've heard all about Final Fantasy 7.

I mean, I've had friends growing up that we would have like the back and forth of like what's what's better Final Fantasy 7 or Ocknode of Time right? I've had all those conversations and I similarly to Greg I've tried to play Final Fantasy 7 the original one multiple times and it's always one of those things where I have a similar thing with JRP is where some click for me and a lot of them don't depending on I guess context or when I'm playing them or whatever it may be like random RPGs I can get into like the last story on Wii I absolutely loved. Persona 4 Golden is like my second favorite game of all time. Pokemon in general, like I really like. And I can kind of go down a list of JRPs that I absolutely love. And then JRPGs that I've tried and just haven't gotten into. And that includes like pretty much every Final Fantasy that I've tried. I've never been able to get into a Final Fantasy game for the ones that I've tried being Final Fantasy 7

and Final Fantasy 13 and 14, which is a different thing. But yeah, I've never really been able to get into a Final Fantasy game. And so for Final Fantasy 7, the original, I want to say I've tried it probably like, three or four times and I've gotten I gotten past where we did that uh the first impressions with or the stream with Andy uh where Andy played the original Makkah Reactor mission I've gotten a bit past that point I think I've gotten even past like where you land in the flower bed in the original game and you beat Ayrth and all that stuff um but not too much past that so I've only gotten like a couple hours in to foul fantasy seven the original whenever I've tried to play it

and then Andy any other history there uh Yeah, if you all watch that Let's Play, it's a game that I just never got into, but I totally, along with Greg, understand the history, understand why everybody holds it on such a high pedestal. I just never, I was always, it's similar to me in Sonic, where I loved the Sonic universe. I loved drawing these things as a kid. I had so many Final Fantasy fan arts that I would just draw from my GamePro magazines.

And I would sketch whatever character was on that GamePro magazine. But I never played the games because Turnbase just was never quite my jam except for Pokemon back in the day. So yeah. Yeah, for me, I played Pokemon when I was like eight or whatever in 98. And that kind of like introduced me to RPGs. And by the time Final Fantasy 10 was coming out, I was super excited for it.

And it was definitely a game that I was like, it was being so hyped up by all the magazines and stuff. And it's like, it's going to be a graphical masterpiece and all this. And it looked cool to me. Like it had just that aesthetic. It was very blue. And I fell in love with 10.

And Curran's favorite game of all time has always been Fall Fantasy 7. So we kind of had this rivalry of like, what's better 10 or 7? And I hadn't even played seven. So I was just talking my shit. But she's talking to shit, but you blindly. Oh, yeah. Totally. Totally.

I mean, that was same for me in Zelda. Yeah. And then it wasn't until, you know, a couple of years later after that. I got probably when I was in high school that I was like, I need to go back and play of this. And then I just absolutely fell in love. And that was leading into the, compilation of Final Fantasy 7 stuff that they put out in around 2007.

And that included the Advent Children movie, which I loved at the time. Yeah, about that shit too. The crisis core PSP game and even like the shitty ones like Dyrgy of Seravis, the PS2 game with Vincent or whatever. But I like was all in on the Final Fantasy 7 world. And I've now played through seven probably like four times. Amron. What about you?

I remember it being the very first game I ever like really hotly anticipated. Like I, there was a Game Players magazine headline once that was like, it's going to be the greatest game of all time and it's only a PlayStation. Remember showing that to my mom saying, we need to get a PlayStation. He said, you've chosen as before then. But I did imagine her and I remember ordering or pre-ordering that game with my dad and EB games and getting that placed on the underground disc.

You know what I'm talking about, Tim. Oh, yeah. I played that a thousand times. I played the game itself probably, honestly like 15 to 20 times over my lifetime. I didn't realize, I like, that game

was very, very important to me, but over the years I let so many, the fan response and like my own, I guess, contrarianism kind of color how I felt about that game in the last two decades. I did not realize how much nostalgia I had for it until

like this past week. Yeah. All right. So now let's just get into it, man. Final Fantasy 7 remake. What do we think? Can I start with that? I want to start here.

No, go for it, Mark. Go for it. I think this is one of the best games I've ever played. Me, too. Straight up, like, I don't think I've enjoyed the game this much as Breath of the Wild. And before that, I don't think I've enjoyed a game that much for the last, like, 10 years. Like, this is, I think, it's not a perfect game, but it's one of the, it's a video game that does everything is trying to do as perfectly.

as it can possibly do. Every step of the way I was playing, I was like, this is so much more than I ever imagined it to be content-wise. I was engrossed the entire time, and I did not want it to end. We had to beat it for the review, and I feel like all of us were constantly surprised at how much more content that was.

Like, every time we would text each other like, oh, where are you at? Oh, I'm only this much farther than you. How many hours ahead is that? Ten. And you're like, what? Like, how is there 10 hours from here to there? because, everyone, like, we know the original game.

Like, we know, like, what the A to B to C. And it's like, they somehow filled all that out with meaningful content that feels just as good as the original stuff. It just feels so jelled. It didn't feel like filler. Like, one or two exceptions aside, it all felt like, oh, this is what you would do with a new Final Fantasy7, which is shocking.

Like, they nailed this game so perfectly. I genuinely cannot believe it. Yeah. The entire, last year, playing, Resident Evil 2 remake, I was just so blown away. I was like, how is this real? Like, this is a game of dreams. And playing this, Final Fantasy 7 being a game I was much more attached to.

It is just amplified where I'm just like, there was so much more pressure for them to nail this. And I just really think that from all angles they did, looking at the combat, specifically, I feel like they took everything that I liked from Final Fantasy 13, from Kingdom Hearts, and just from Final Fantasy 7 in general, and mixed it together, cutting out all of the bullshit crap and just made a super fun battle system that honestly if I had criticisms of this game one of the things is I wish there was more postgame stuff to be able to use that that combat system yeah I agree like that's my thing is after after finishing the game that was kind of the thing for me

where I've been going back and replaying side quests because I skipped a lot of the side quest because I wanted to make sure I had this game done by the time we're reviewing it and going back I'm like man I wish this game went on forever that's how much I enjoyed this game like for me halfway, it was about halfway through playing this game, about halfway through where I was like, man, this, this game is like going from a game where I was like, this is a pretty excellent game to now me falling in love with this game. And then maybe three, fourth sin, I came to realization that like, okay, yeah, this is my favorite JRP that I've played since Prisona for Golden. And now that I've beaten it and now that I've had time to sit on it, I'm like, yeah, this might be one of the best games I've ever played. Like, I absolutely love this game. I'm in love with the story, the characters. Like, there are so many characters in this game that have so much personality. And, their own arcs, their own stories, and all of them feel fully realized, and all them have great personalities. Like Barrett, for example, a character where in the original game, whenever I've tried to play the original Final Fantasy 7, I would get to talking to Barrett, and I'd be like, man, this guy seems like a caricature of himself. This guy seems like,

over the top, cartoonish. It was a racist Mr. T. stereotype. Yes. Yeah, and I didn't really like him that much for that reason. But in this game, toward the beginning, they kind of acknowledge how goofy he is, Like there's a in the demo, right? There's the elevator sequence where it's him giving a speech about Mako and about the world and about how Shiner is bad and all this stuff. And I think it's Jesse and Cloud in the elevator looking at him like, what's this guy on? But like even that speech itself was heartfelt and honest in a way where I was like, I kind of like this guy. And then as the game progressed, dude, like halfway through the game, I was like, shoot, man.

Barrett is awesome. Like Barrett is great. the way he delivers his lines, the way, like the way he's acted, but then also like a lot of his motivations, a lot of the characters that he attaches himself to and his whole cause, I felt, like I felt for him. Like I was behind him 100% of the way. And that's kind of reflected through all the major characters for me, where I could look at a character like Jesse who, talking to Tim, somebody who's played the original final

fantasy seven, like talking to, talking to Tim about Jesse, Jesse, apparently in the original game, wasn't really that much of like a, like, a, fleshed out character. But in this game, like, dude, I had a connection with Jesse. I was like, man, this Jesse character is awesome. Same with Ereth. Same with Tifa. Like, all the major characters, I absolutely loved. The combat system is one

my favorite combat systems in the game. I absolutely love it. This is going to sound like a dated thing, but the materia system, man, that thing is awesome. Like, I don't know how similar it is to the original, but I love, love, love, material. Yeah, it's very similar. When they thought, like,

when they first announced the new system, I was like, there's no way they're going to do like support material or luck up or anything like that. And they managed to fit in almost every material that was in the original game, like at that part of the game. The material system was something for me where I was like every, every JRP or every RPG should do something like this where you're not just leveling up your characters, but you're leveling up abilities. You're able to switch those abilities between characters. You don't have the thing where it's like, okay, well, I don't want to use FIFA because like Tifa's level down or whatever. No, you just switch those abilities over and it just boom, it works. the soundtrack, the world, the visuals, everything.

Everything is just incredible to me. I absolutely love this game. So, Greg, I'm really interested to hear your thoughts because I feel out of all of us, you're probably the one that not only was least interested in this game, but I feel like you'd be the hardest to win over for this. That was the thing I wanted to start with you. I thought it was interesting last week at the end in the post show for the Resident Evil 3 review, right, where you asked, oh man, that means that up next is, you know, Final Fantasy

and what's everybody's hype level and everybody was the various degree of like i can't fucking wait and i was like i'm interested to see what it's like i you know what i mean like i've never ever like i phrase my original answer around final fantasy seven in my history there outside of that removing from that right like i've never connected with a final fantasy and that you know i remember i always fuck it up but it tends the blitzball one right where i'm yeah soccer underwater i remember getting that and i'm like i have a PS2 this is launching bought it at launch jumped into it and it just didn't work for me and so even for us, you know, when we hosted the Final Fantasy 15 reveal event. And it was, hey, they want me, you and me to be a part of this. I remember multiple times you and I talk, or me, mainly me,

being like, are you sure you guys want me on this? Like, I'm a good host. Yeah, but like, I don't have a love affair with Final Fantasy. And they were like, no, no, that's the point. We think this game's going to get in old fans like Tim and new fans and people who could be new fans like you have never touched it. And I was like, okay. And I played, what, three or four hours of Final Fantasy 15? I'm like, this didn't work. Sorry, this is still for me. Like, it just It wasn't my thing. Like I didn't connect with those characters. I didn't connect with that world.

It was this weird mashup of, I like the idea of, hey, we're this group of dudes going out and like this one last hurrah, but then mashed up with this weird world. It just didn't work for me, right? And so to be here last week,

talking at the end of the Resident Evil thing and be like, all right, yeah, I guess I'm the odd pan out again. I'm just like, this isn't my thing. Who knows if I'll beat it? I thought maybe I'd come in

and be more in the chair of like, you know, I went and I try, but I just don't like it. So it's not that thing. That's what I thought it would be. I was surprised that you were going to be on this review. I thought this was going to be a Gregel played for two hours and then move on back to Animal Crossing or something.

Yeah. And so like Final Fantasy 7 remake is phenomenal in every aspect of being a video game. Full stop. Like I think, you know, we've already touched on all of it. We're going to get into it obviously way deeper in this. But like I'm right there with you with gameplay, right? I didn't. I, in the beginning when I first started getting into taste and getting into taste and getting into,

to it. And I was like, oh my God, I want more. And in the beginning, they're, they're a bit more frugal with it of giving you these little tastes of it before you really get going and really get into battles. I was so anxious for more fights. I was so anxious for more stories. I mean, the game is just stunning, both in cutscenes, and then as it transitions into regular game play in the way it handles itself. Yeah, to, you know, Blessings Point, which you already brought, like the entire soundtrack slaps. Like the entire entire soundtrack, like being there and having these epic fights and having this orchestra behind you as you go off and do this was insane. And again, like, I, in some respects, I guess, you know, I'm lucky or at least naive to come

into this game and not know what to expect at all from the story, let alone really the gameplay where like, when it was like, oh, now you can have this thing, you can summon. I was like, oh, yeah, I've heard of summons. I vaguely remember all my final fantasy knowledge is either Tim or Clements. I'm like, I remember Clements talking about summons in some aspect of the city of Dukakum or whatever on the PSP. And so, like, the first time I unleashed my summon, like, I don't know if I've had a similar moment in video games, modern video games, where legitimately as I did it, like, I had this shit-eating grin and I was like dumbfounded of like, this is insane. I can't believe what I'm seeing. I can't believe this way, the way this is just dropped into the middle of fight and isn't that big of a deal that they're making out of it. Yeah, material system's great. The cores you're upgrading for your weapons are great. Like, there's so much choice in this that. it's this interesting thing where I think the game is

so linear in terms of like point A to point B what you're doing where you're doing. The way they give you, you know, they give you side quests in not the hey, it's totally blended into the world witcher way, right? It is very much like, hey, like here's a menu of side quests you can only do here. So enjoy them if you want to or don't do them. I wanted to do them all. I went and did most of them all with the exception of the end where it was like, we got to make sure we hit this review embargo. I'll come back to these and do it later.

Like the game is just incredible. Just incredible. in every sense of the word. And I, it was completely caught off guard by it. You know, again, having no fandom for it, it was that is this going to work for me? And as I told Tim, like, I think at the end of chapter one, like, when the intro finished and it was like time to start playing, I had goosebumps. And I was like, why the fuck do I have goosebumps? And that's because it's that well done. Like, again, the orchestra and the visuals in the world they're setting up.

And then getting you into that world and having that be believable. And even though, and I know we'll get into this way more on a spoiler cast next week. But by the time the game ends and I was just like, all right, I don't understand anything, but I had fun. Like that, that, I didn't feel like the train got away from me. And not even got away from me because it's, you can, even if you didn't have Final Fantasy fans around you, there'd be message boards to go discuss what you just saw, right? It is a water cooler thing.

But it wasn't until, yeah, the late teens where I felt the story all of a sudden left turned into now we're going to get some real nerdy fucking Final Fantasy shit and I was just like he's a bad guy all right that's a bad person okay I get what's happening but like up until that run of just what avalanche was and who Cloud is and what's going on and to your point yeah like Barrett pops up and he is over the top and I was like oh is this what it's going to be the entire way the way they humanize Barrett the moments they give him the moments they give you that are just him doing a tightrope walk and suddenly being scared it was like oh fuck and the characters they surround everybody. with them. I can go on rambling. Long story short, this game is fucking phenomenal. Barrett has great relationships with all of the characters. It feels like, and in that way, I found that he was probably, probably one of my favorite characters in the game, if not my favorite character. But yeah, to like what you're saying about, like, getting goosebumps at that first scene

when you start playing the game, right? A thing I noticed, this is the thing I picked up on, like, towards the second half of playing, was that it seems like the camera work, camera work in this game is just phenomenal in a way where I've not really like picked up on in any other video game is actually maybe like out of war or something like that. Final Fantasy 7 I feel like has a similar level of yeah they like really took note or not even took note but they really paid attention to the transitions

from Cutsina gameplay and the way the camera will zoom back. I don't know the actual technical term but the way the camera will pull back and do that in dynamic ways or ways that feel interesting each time. Dolly would be the term. Yes, Dolly. Yeah, like the way in which the camera would do that, every time I found myself being really into it, being like, wow, this is actually, this is these little details, the way they are, they're painting this picture here is incredible. So I forget the name of the cutscene director, but they basically made a change from Kingdom Hearts 3 to the new cutscene director for this guy.

And you can tell it's a huge difference because it is film like in quality in a lot of, not only does it help like actually facilitate gameplay, it makes the cutscenes. to look better. Like, there's a specific scene I'm thinking of where Tifa is talking to a dressed up cloud in the, I guess, dungeon. This is the best way to put it. And she's like, oh, wait, are you cloud? And she's still, like, questioning it. And then, like, it just goes to cloud, like, zooms on his faces, nailed it.

Yes, moving on. And, like, that's a funny scene, but it's a funny scene because they directed it well. Yes. That's the sort of thing that if you put in Kingdom Hearts 3, it would not have been nearly as good. No, it would have been corny and weird. Like, this is the craziest thing having just played Kingdom Hearts 3 last year and now playing It really feels like just totally different experiences where I would have never believed a team with as much overlap as these have to be able to create things that are of such radical difference in quality. Yeah, this is by and large the Final Fantasy 13 team, which is shocking.

And that as well, right? I feel like they, I said this earlier, but like I really do feel like this took all the elements that I love so much, the staggering system that was like really kind of introduced in Final Fantasy 13. I feel like never really got its dues in that game for many different reasons. But I feel like in this, it just, it seamlessly works with the more action-based things of Final Fantasy 15 that we saw. But even being able to kind of like link your face buttons to like different abilities that you have and making it play more like Kingdom Hearts, but just better than Kingdom Hearts has played since too. You know? Like to that point, I didn't actually do that.

I've used the menu the entire time even though like never been on the classic difficulty. but like I use that for everything and it just feels good even still doing that. Mm-hmm. Game rules, man. Yeah, I want your thoughts. Yeah, the game's great. I immediately you can see why this took so goddamn long to make. Like I feel like every aspect of it is so well thought out and so well realized.

I will say that just like from an artist's perspective, I can't wait to play this on PS5 because I want to see the environments run it higher resolution. You can load better. You could tell all of the all of the resources in this game are going all towards the characters because they are the most important thing on screen and they're gorgeous and they're so high fidelity

and high res and their textures and everything is incredible about the characters but sometimes the textures of the background can look a little janky at times. Are you playing on a PS4 or pro? Pro. Oh, interesting. Me too. Yeah, there's some moments where like in cutscenes you could just like it looks like this texture

hasn't popped in but it has that's just how it looks you know I've had that too flowers don't didn't look great whenever they were close up but it's one of those things where it's like I don't think like it's still always looked good you know because I feel like the art direction was so sure that

it didn't like this game didn't feel like it had technical faults you know what I mean it has it's on running on 7 to 8 year old hardware at this point and like it shows yeah it reminds me of near Altamata where the characters are so gorgeous but the environments are kind of lacking at times.

Yeah. But, I mean, aside from that, that's, I'm trying to think of like little things I can nitpick on or whatever, but the game's great, man. The combat's phenomenal. I, there, I didn't feel like until, because I'm about halfway, I'd say, maybe, like, 65% of the way through, maybe, maybe 60, I don't know. But it took a while for me to even use an ether to bring up my MP. And it was during a really important boss fight towards the middle-ish of the game.

but it's so engaging. And once you find the rhythm of noticing the weakness of this bad guy, and when you mess up, it's always your fault. That's one thing I really enjoy about the combat and appreciate about it, where you can easily use your assess material move or whatever to see what the bad guy's weakness is and all his stats about the bad guy. But if you don't do that, yeah, it sort of gives you. you really good hints of, hey, I'm invulnerable to this right now, so don't try this.

Hey, you know, it does a really good job of illustrating, you know, what's its weakness is or what its strengths are. And it's just so, it's so well thought out, man. I'm totally digging this game, dude. So what you were talking about, right, of like, you know, noticing this or noticing that, that was why I thought the combat was so engaging because it was in the beginning, I was never switching off of cloud, right? And then it was this like, oh, okay, wait, I should be doing this or I need a healer.

I'm going to be able to switch with my shoulder buttons over and give these people. Okay, cool. I've been using the hot keys, right, where you hold L1 and use a face button. Yeah. But, oh, I can completely stop. It was getting up to running to where it was at the end of the game that it was, it was problem solving. But it wasn't.

It was problem solving. Yeah. Getting in there. And then, yeah, even if I assessed, it'd be, I think of like, fuck, nobody had, I didn't, you know, my material has been reassigned so that nobody has ice right now. Well, let's try it this way. And even if we fail, we start right outside. and I get to put it in and do that.

So jumping around and doing it, you know, okay, in this battle, I'm just going to mainly use TFA for heels. So Barrett and Clatter over there, and Barrett gets his, you know, AP meter filled up so quickly just by shooting at a distance and using someone to draw attention so then you could come in from behind with whatever attack you wanted to, let alone limits, let alone summons, which I didn't, even like being slackjod, watching, you know, summoning my first dude or whatever, right?

And having this giant creature there, it wasn't until embarrassingly like probably three-fourths of the way through the game that I was like, oh, summon abilities for everybody. And it makes him, oh, shit, I'm an idiot. I thought he was doing that automatically going in there and then watching those attacks hit and those attacks fucking melt people. I was like, oh my God. Yeah. Once you feel, once you see the stagger, once you see the critical hits, like it just feels so damn rewarding. And then when the enemy staggered, all let's all unleash.

Oh, shit. We all have our abilities ready to go. Let's fucking. Like it's just so goddamn good, dude. So, Tim, real quick, if I was watching this and I hadn't already played it, and I'm, you know, talking as somebody who doesn't play Final Fantasy, explain Stagger. What is going on with that?

How does that work into the gameplay system? Stagger's kind of just like, so there's the HP meter of the enemy. And then under that, there's another meter that's kind of like if you're, it's a pressure, yeah, you pressure them up. So it's just like, it just keeps going. Then once it gets full, they're staggered. And then the enemies are kind of down. And then you can just go in, like, totally unleash on them.

And they're not going to be attacking you during. that point, they're usually weaker to different types of attacks. So it's kind of the main strategy of the combat system is focusing on staggering the right enemies at the right time, especially when there's multiple people you're facing off against, which is majority of the battles in this game. So it's staggering someone over here to be able to deal with them there and taking them out accordingly. Yeah, and how every enemy gets staggered or how they take damage is honestly like a puzzle.

And the solution is like you have to figure out each individual enemy and then remember that for the next time. And that's where it's that's material I can come in handy. But I didn't do a good job my first time through of actually understanding how that game works. And how, like, I didn't have to switch off, like, every two seconds, how I need to, like, focus on using their actual things that make them stagger.

And hard forces you to do that, which I kind of appreciate. But it's such, it's actually so satisfying to figure out, like, this is what this enemy is not only weak against, but just how to really make them trivial. It's that light bulb moment. Like, oh, yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, because it's not necessarily like a character action game in that sense. It's more of a not a puzzle game, but it's a thinking man's game at that point.

And something I appreciate with that is there are multiple instances, whether it was a big boss or just kind of like common enemies that just happened to me kind of kicking my ass. Like there are times where I know I need this material, but I didn't have it equipped. And I'm like, this is going to be real difficult because I don't have the thing that I need. But it was like, but I feel like I can take this guy down. And it's that fun video game feeling of, David versus Goliath where it's like, okay, I could just lose right now, set the material I need and come back in and fuck him up. But I'm going to take a what should be a two-minute battle and extend it out and do a 10-minute thing of me trying to cheese him, trying to just run around and like desperately do it as your HP and like MP is just getting like check down.

And you're just like on your final final breaths, you can take him out. You're just like, yeah, it was fucking worth it. The video games are cool. I never had to do a battle more than twice on normal. The balancing in this game is so excellent. I had that thing where I don't think I fought a boss more than twice because after you lose, you can't go back into the menus and re-equip things however you went. And so you know, like, okay, this guy is weak to Lightning, for example.

I'm going to take Lightning off of Barrett, who's not even in this fight, put it on Tifa and figure it out from there. But then also, like, once you're in it and once you're like, say you're fighting a boss that's like a 10-minute boss or whatever. Once you're five minutes in and you're in the flow of it and you realize the cycle you need to go through in order to take this guy out, it's just like a fun mind game of like, okay, cool. I'm going to pause. I'm going to, or I'm not going to pause. I'm going to switch over to Barrett here. I'm going to command Cloud to use lightning over there. Then I'm going to command Tifa to cure everybody else. And so Tifa, you're on cure duty while I'm over here firing from afar. Like the way you can set up strategies feels so brilliant and feel so open and

free and you feel like you have so much choice in the combat. Airbuster is a good example of like how necessarily they expand. Because Airbuster in the original, he was like this joke fight. Like you were on both sides of him. You could easily beat him in the first turn. In this game, he is a 10-minute fight. With the most epic boss remix I've ever heard. When the boss theme for Final Fantasy 7 plays in this game for the sixth time,

but it is the sixth, the new version. Like, we keep talking about the music in this game, but it's like, Falun Fantasy 7 has some of the most iconic music, like sounds, songs, like just sound design, all of it of all time. And there's so much care put into this feeling dynamic where they just don't reuse it. They like actually remix it. They arrange it. They do it with big orchestras.

It's not just like, oh, here's a theme for five and six seven, more expensive. It's that combined with the like theme of the area you're in. It's like, oh, it's not just bombing mission theme and it's not just battle theme. They're interwoven so beautifully that when it ramps up when you get to the Airbuster fight and you hear the boss theme with the guitars and the choir and shit. It's just like, holy fuck, I am so hyped up right now. Like, this is so incredibly cool. When you're just in the lab and you're just

walking along, you hear like the first five notes of Genova's theme. Oh, my God. Oh, shit. Like, if you've never played 557, that doesn't mean anything to you. But if you have, you're like, oh, shit, I recognize this. I know what's coming up soon. Yeah. That's one thing I'm excited to be on the spoiler cast with you all

because I'm so excited to see what has been added, what elements have been stretched out, what elements have been cut. All that stuff is so fascinating to me because like, every critique that we heard before this game came out was,

how is this game going to just be this area, this portion of the original Final Fantasy 7? How could they possibly make a full campaign out of this? There's no way. It's got to be $40 because it'll probably only be like five hours, maybe at max. And this game is meaty as shit, dude. one more than that

I think a big criticism was it's going to feel incomplete and it's not going to feel like a complete story Greg and Bless what do you guys think about that I thought it felt I thought I felt super complete like I thought by the time I got maybe halfway through or a three fourths of the way through

I was like man I can't believe that they're actually like going to be more parts of this because this does feel like it feels like a full game not only from the sense that the story arcs feel like they have a beginning middle and end but from the sense of I remember Tim, me and you, we did the preview event where we got, we had to go through chapters one and then I believe like seven one one two seven 10.

Yeah. And it was like like the parts we saw, the parts we had to kind of go through were both, they were like make a reactor levels. And so it felt at a certain point, I think we both had the fear of like, oh man, is this what this game is going to be? Are we going to be going through the same corridors over and over again in similar looking areas, I was surprised by how much each of the chapters felt unique, different, and also like have their own moments to shine.

Like each chapter kind of took place in their own environment, aside from like maybe actually one in seven, but still even even those two chapters had their own big moments, even though they're in certain environments. In the context of playing them in the order that the chapters play out and not how we did, where it was jumping from one and two straight to seven, it does feel like by the time I got back to it in this, I was like, oh, I'm excited to be in this environment again and not the ones that we've been in the last couple chapters. So many chapters feel like they were made by different directors and writers.

And that's not a bad thing. It just they feel so different in terms of, in terms of mood and tone, where one, one chapter, it's, it could be depressing and horrifying. in the next one, it's quirky and weird. And like, I don't have a whole lot of experience with the Yakuza franchise, but a lot of these, there's a lot of very, very Japanese Yakuza moments in this game. I mean, this game is a whole, honestly feels kind of inspired by Yakuza, especially like there are certain chapters where you're just kind of walking around,

helping people and doing side quests. It feels a lot like a Yakuza game, which kind of probably why it appeals to me that much. So the thing that impresses me the most about this game is that, We always talk about like when there's remakes or when there's kind of like rebooted franchises where we say like, wow, this looks and plays like I remember the original being. This to me is something I've never experienced before that takes that to such a new level where it's this plays like my imagination filling in the gaps, but it shuts that down and is even better than that.

The way that they explain, they commit to the vision and the weirdness and the quirkiness of Final Vancey 7, but they explain it for the first time. Why were we facing cars as bad guys in Final Fantasy 7? Why did these guys have weird helicopter arms? This game explains it all in a way that I'm like, oh, that's why there's monsters. Like, I understand why in this world I'm facing off against the things I'm facing off against here.

And sure, it's a robot that's shaped like a car fighting you, but I'm totally, totally in where I'm like, I get it. And I buy it. Fucking everybody up, bro. And they give context to it all. And towards the end of the game, like there's this. so many reveals of things that were talked about in the first game that were just one line in the in the original game that never actually paid much sense but now I'm like oh that's

what they were trying to get across but with the limited graphics and just the limited capability of that and not hearing things just reading back then like now you're like oh my god like there's a whole with that's point in things like museum-esque part of this game that has so much lore and so much like very cool moments that make final fantasy seven better to me and like that's super cool and super impressive and it goes all the back down to we've been talking about um how all the characters are fleshed out yeah barrett sounds less silly now he feels like a more real character but jesse and bigs and wedge like they were totally just like let's get the plot going in in the original game it was kind of just like to call them side characters is like i feel like

even being generous like they were there but they weren't really good yeah story fodder that's and oh my god i cared about each and every one of them in this and like the biggest accomplishment that this game has for me is i spent the last 20 years being like is it team airth or is it team tifa and it's like this game somehow added a third option where i'm just like how do i care and want cloud to be with jesse just as much as i want him to be with either of them i think a lot of it's just like the quarantine horniness we're just desperate man uh i do want to go really quick uh to the combat go back to there really quickly. Before you do, I can kind of say one thing.

I want to chime in and all that. So if somebody brand new to it, yeah, to Tim's point, I never, I never questioned any of the stuff. They've made a fully realized world here that is weird and, you know, the big corporation that's ruined everything and that's why this is happening and that's why these people are motivated and that, like all that made total sense to me. You asked early, you know, and Blessing ticket of like, is it a complete game? like does it feel like a complete game it totally feels like a complete game i think the

last chapter is when things really get kooky and weird and they bring in and like sepheroff is you know doing stuff or whatever that's when i was a little bit more like i don't fully get that but i think that number one that was made to as it would have as i immediately did call to him my friend who knows final fantasy and have those questions and even if you didn't want to get in it's it does the same thing of getting me interested for where this franchise series whatever you want to call it Final Fantasy 7 Part 2 is going to go. That was my thing too. If I had any complaint about this game,

it would be the last few chapters, feeling like they just went, took a left turn in a way where the whole game for me as a newcomer felt like it made sense. It didn't feel like Kingdom Heartsy in the way that Kingdom Hearts gets nonsensical. Like Final Fantasy 7 remake makes total sense in the world. I felt like I could follow everything that was going on.

But those last few chapters, I was like, I'm very lost. And it wasn't until I texted Tim where I was like, hey, or text of Tim and Imran be like, hey, like, I don't get what's going on here. Am I supposed to get what's going on here? And then you guys explained it to me. And I was like, all right, cool. I'll let that slide because that then makes sense.

We'll talk about all that stuff next week in the spoiler cast section. Andy, what's up? Oh, no, I was just going to say, Greg said you're his friend. Are you his friend? I am. Cool, man. Fuck you, Andy. Really back to the, going back to the combat really quick.

There are some mechanics that I wasn't a, or rather, issues with the combat that I had where sometimes you would dodge and you would still get hit and I feel like... There's no eye frames on it, period. It's just only to get out of the way of something. And I think that that's partially my fault for, you know, again, we've been talking about bloodborn so much, bless and I,

but there are sometimes where I feel like a dodge is still ineffective and it sometimes feel like it's just there to move faster to a, to another area as opposed to actually dodging an attack. And I feel like that's where the remnants of turn-based combat are still there. Like, you're still going to get hit by this fucking thing regardless, no matter what you try. Yeah, block is usually a better strategy. Yeah, that's what I've been noticing. Yeah.

So I feel like, you know, Dodge works a lot better with some of the smaller enemies, but really just to get behind them if you want to kind of, you know, catch them off guard. But there were some boss fights where attacks would. come at you and it's like, all right, I've dodged four different directions and nothing's working. Should I try to just keep blocking? But, you know, I'm not, I don't know, it could get, it got a little bit frustrating in some moments for me there. I will say the game is not that hard necessarily, but it is relentless.

Like, if you are under back heels during a fight, it is a very hard to recover from that. It's unlikely you will die, but you will have a hard time getting back on your feet. And that's, it can be very frustrating, especially when you don't quite understand, like, what a boss is like doing yet. And like the game has the, one of the things I will knock against the game is it has the red filter when things are going wrong and like you're losing health or your set characters dying.

When bosses are color-coded or just like doing shit that you need to see, it's very difficult to like read all that and also heal at the same time. So I do want to talk about the things that we don't necessarily love about this game. And before we do that, let me tell you about our sponsors. This episode of the Kind of Funny Games cast is brought to you by Quip Makers of the quip electric toothbrush want you to know the single discovery that matters most for your dental care. It's simply this that you have good habits.

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plus Quip delivers fresh brush head floss and toothpaste refills to your door every three months with free shipping. So your routine is always right on the daily, on the weekly, on the monthly, on the yearly. They're there for you, man. If you go to getquip.com slash KF right now, you'll get your first refill pack free. That's your first refill free at G-E-T-Q-U-I-P.com slash K-F. Quip, they're the good habits company. You can go to getquip.com slash KF now. really feel like the the pacing of the chapters is off entirely yeah i think the game it has such a

great pace overall like when you're just playing through it it's fantastic but the the chapters are so uneven in terms of not only how long they are but in terms of what they might have within them that now that i've beat the game um when you beat it you're allowed to go back to it it's like new game plus but it's chapter base so you can just jump up into any chapter you want. But the flaw of that is you have to beat the entire chapter in order to gain any of the things that you do in that chapter. So you can't just go, oh, I'm going to do this one side quest and then back out and have completed it, which is how it should function. Because that's frustrating just because the side quest are often featured in chapters that are

three plus hours. So to get to the side quest takes an hour to even get to them. Then you have to do them and then there's more hours after that to be able to save. And I just feel like that is, it could have been remedied by just having the side quest be their own chapter. Yeah. And getting like to Wall Market, for example, you have to go through an entire dungeon to just get there. And then you have to do this. Like I had to do two side quests at the end of Walmart because I just missed them the first time. I had to do everything up until that point, which is at least like an hour and a half to two hours, which is insane. Like they should have separated that out a bit better. I want to go do some like combat simulator stuff at the end of the game.

You have to do an entire like a dungeon size chapter before we can just go back and do it. And it just seems like a silly mistake to have it function that way, especially because even when you are playing through, I'm thankful that you can skip cutscenes, but when you skip a cutscene, it reloads everything. Yes. So when you're going through, like let's just say you're going through a chapter to get to the side quest, then if that chapter is an hour and that hour,

and that hour has 30, 20 second cutscenes in it, right? Every time you hit one of those, you need to load, which is sometimes longer than the cutscene. It's a good every time for the PS5. The entire game is, honestly, like, it doesn't take that long for someone to, for someone to, like, hold a switch down, but it takes five seconds in this game,

and that adds up over time. The amount of things you have to crawl through. Oh, the amount of holes in small little areas. It's crazy. I really can't wait for part two to just see how they fix that with, like, a new hard drive and things like that. I'm a, I,

when it comes to like small quality of life improvements and things that kind of frustrated me that felt inconsistent, uh, in just the design is like when you finish a boss fight, I want to be re-heeled. And I want all my shit to be. I hate finishing a boss fight.

And it's, it's this big triumphant moment and everybody's still fucking weak. And their screen is still flashing red. And my MP is still hell of low. It's like, first thing I do is open the map and look for a bench to sit down. I'm like, so, so I, I have yet to really fall into that rhythm yet, Greg. So I, so I, so I cure everybody and I fucking MP and then sometimes there's a bench and sometimes

there's not. And, and, and that gets kind of annoying where I, I, I guess I need to fall into that rhythm of looking for the damn bench. It's like, the amount of times I've limped on being like, there's no bench behind me. Hopefully, oh, fuck, there's another fight right now. Yeah. I got to go and throwing out cures and stuff. And then, yeah, that fight's easy. And then sure enough, then to the bench right there. Come on, man. That's the thing that sucks is when you, like, use a bunch of ether and then use a bunch of potions to heal your party and then you walk forward and there's a bench right there.

And it's like, cool. I just wasted everything. Yeah. Yeah. There are some weird moments also, just like technical hitches where I will, I've encountered it about over a handful, maybe like seven times, seven or eight times where I walk up to an MPC and I hit triangle and the MPC turns and looks. It waits a second.

Yeah, yeah. Hey, yeah. Yeah. That's having you got a bit. The game overall is kind of slow in parts. And like what I was talking about the loading, that's the main part of it. But it's things like that too, like needing to talk to someone. It takes a little while or just needing to get somewhere.

There's like no fast travel until like the very end of the Midgar section. Yeah. And just like how fast his run speed is. Yes. So like that's pretty good. But it is weird because like I feel like that's at odds with all these like little things that slow you down. This game has the same problem. Final Fantasy 15 did of getting the triangle, like getting your character lined up how they want

you to press triangle to open the chest. I don't think I've ever nailed it on the first try. It's always kind of like, uh, trying to get it. It's weird how long you have to hold triangle in many instances. It's digging for me in Animal Crossing. I can't fucking dig the right hole. Yeah, the seams show, I feel, on this game, right? And I know we're talking about loads and we're all around.

But yeah, that was the thing of like, what stands out to me, everything we're talking about. But yeah, like, oh, it's time to throw this switch. And Cloud puts his hand on it and I have to hold triangle and fill in this little circle. And it's like just, you know what I mean? Why? Why? Why? Things for so long.

And I understand that's a load. You're doing this. You're hiding that. You're prepping the next thing. But it's like, that's a weird way to break me out of the experience, right? Yeah. Okay. I'm playing a game.

The other thing that I mean, Bless for Tom, about having issue with when we went to go play the demo about a month ago was that here we have these beautifully realized worlds. And when you look at the map, there's a ton of places to go. However, 90% of the time, if there's like a random hallway that you go around, there's nothing at the end of it. Yeah, that is weird. There's no incentive to explore. Majority of the time when there is a treasure trust, it's just a little like a potion or an ether. It's nothing too exciting.

I still want, it's set up to make me want to explore and to make me not want to miss anything. But it does the anti, like we've all seen the videos of like, Mario teaches you how to play and all that stuff, the Gumba. I feel like this game does the opposite. opposite of that where it's like it does a bad job where it teaches you hey look you should go everywhere but then there's no incentive to do it i feel like it's i feel like it's i feel like it was a half measure like i think they i think um studio i think studios nowadays when they're making a single player sort of campaign they feel the pressure to add those elements to these games because every game does it because for the most part every game is going to have like we we started sort of falling

into that like I feel like in 2016 2017 where everything needed to be an open world thing and like being linear was like a curse you know and so now there I feel like it's been kind of worth it but you know you just

you turn around a corner and some boxes to chop down as a stupid little fucking chest it's not it's not great but it's something I think it's weird to me though because they have the CDs that you can collect which are a great collectible because the the music that are there with the CDs.

They all have like individual vinyl art, which is insane. Yeah, which is awesome and great. And it's like you guys could have used that as the thing to put at the end of these alternate routes. But instead, the way in which you collect vannels is like you go to like the vending machines or whatever. I mean, like a lot of the game feels focus tested in that way of like, oh, well, people had problems finding this thing. So we'll just put it somewhere obvious. Like a good example is there's a part near the end of the game where you have to go talk to people. and say like a certain secret catchphrase or pass phrase and then they reply back

or you can just open the map and it shows the objective marker right there and that's it like why not let me do the thing and then show like don't put the objective marker exactly where I need to be and it's the fact that this is probably playtests to the hell and back because it's an expensive ass game and one they have a lot of expectations for but the few parts where you do get open exploration they kind of cut off the knees yeah and then another thing that I really just didn't enjoy. I appreciate that they really kind of held to the original and like tried to make these old elements new again, but all the mini games are trash.

Like, I feel like the push-up challenges, the pull-up stuff. They're exactly the same as they were, though. I like the darts, man. Darts is sick. Darts was, Darts was okay. Like, that was probably my favorite out of all of them.

But I just feel like anytime that the gameplay, like, try to switch up on you, it just, it felt slow and clunky. Like, there's the part with robot hand stuff. or I'm like, that was really way too slow. Yeah. It's tedious. It's not fun.

I know exactly what I need to do. I just now doing it to move on instead of like accomplishing something. Yeah, it's like a way to break up the monotony, but not in a fun way. Like they, they're going for something that's like, well,

the player's been fighting things for X amount of time. Let's throw in something else to kind of change the pace, but it's rarely ever good. Yeah. Like it's always that tedious bullshit. Yeah, the arm bullshit. Did you ever?

ever do like the pro difficulties for like the sit or the pull-ups and stuff like that? I was just about to ask you everyone. I'm trying my damn best. It took me an entire morning. You cannot mess up once. You have to do like everything exactly perfectly and you have to pick up the pace as much as possible. It's insane. And my problem with it is I did the training both pull-ups and the squats.

I'm trying to do the pro stuff. And it's, I feel like I give up. I can't do it. And that's where the loading I think sucks the words because there's no just easy give our like retry option. it's give up, go back to the load back to the main scene, talk to the guy again, load back in the game. I put my stopwatch on it now. It's about 40 seconds

between give up and restart. Damn, it's unfortunate because that's one of the trophies for you to get is to accomplish that. And I want to platinum this game. I'm very close to a platinum actually. I just got to, I think, do a couple of more things. I'm done. That's so crazy, man. Because those,

there's multiple, like, rhythm-based sections in this game, and they're presented as rhythm game. But they do not match the music at all. Yes, no. And I'm like, what, why? Why? Why have this amazing? But it's no funny. It looks amazing. I'll say this. What are you going to say, Andy? It looks incredible, Tim.

And holy shit, the HDR is phenomenal. It's beautiful. Like, here's beautiful. I'm playing on a non-OLED television, right? This game looks fucking phenomenal on just my $800 VizioP series. There are there are certain moments where you're walking through areas and then you get to a darker area of a map and it is like pitch black but where it needs to be bright really shines through it's it's fucking it's gorgeous dude this game rules so speaking

of that rhythm section that is one of the examples of things they've changed in this game and it's one of those changes for the better because that original scene was like this kind of weird broadly gay panic scene that would not play in 2020 at all but they had to keep that in because it's a beloved thing so they changed it up and then like a very not only progressive but really smartly written and fun section.

Totally agree. Yeah. Yeah. When all that started, that's when I was like, I was kind of worried, this can go bad real quick. And they fucking planted.

I'm like, holy shit. All right. Yeah. Yeah. I do appreciate that how early on I am in the game. I know you all mentioned,

I guess Blessing Greg mentioned that towards the end, it does get kind of confusing. But I do appreciate how straightforward everything has been so far. far story-wise. There's been some weird, I don't want to say supernatural elements or just like weird shit. That's kind of like story B, story C sort of stuff that those questions have yet to be answered for me yet. But I do love kind of, it's a really cool story. It is,

we are taking down this giant conglomerate that is ruining the earth. And I think it's, I think it makes a lot of sense to, especially nowadays. It's sort of an important thing. know. I think the character writing is like the writing nails it. Honestly, like, I don't know what necessarily I thought the personalities of the characters were, but this fits with that the old F-O-7 perfectly while actually expanding on them and giving them arcs like, 557 since, or the compilation of Fyni-17, the series of the, like, that game, since that original game has always kind of made Ayrrith seem demure and shy when she wasn't really like. Like an email little bitch in a way that, like, like,

Like, he isn't fully that. Let's not say it doesn't come off like any mode. No, no, no. No, he does. There's a difference, though. Yeah. But there are. There are times, though, where it's like they push Cloud to 11 just so his character

turn seems more meaningful. But there are times where it's still over the top where Bear will just be like, oh, man, I hate heights. And then Cloud would be like, shut the hell up and keep going. It's like, I did. But that to me, that is Cloud from the original game. It's like, that's not emo. He's kind of a dick. He's a bitch, yeah.

Yeah, it's like, but in the other stuff, they just make in this like brooding dark, like, I'm just so pretty. It's so hard to be pretty. I love it. It's like, that's not supposed to be cloud, though. So. Yeah, this one, like, they made Eryth like these. She's a dick to cloud.

She's fun. She's happy. And like, she enjoys needling him. And that's like, that's a thing you don't see that often because that's not the flannization of the character in the last 20 years. But they, they nail it so well here. And I don't know that I necessarily like the voice of the characters, but the acting is, great.

Like they enjoy their roles and they enjoy, like that voice and that cloud, like that acting for cloud is now cloud to me. I will say that for people that are sort of newer to JRP's because I consider myself newer, but I sort of get him. I understand the vibe that they're going for. If you're not really into anime,

this will probably be a little bit jarring because just the characterization, the acting is very, very anime. very over the top. It's usually very overacted. This is like, don't, for anybody coming into this that is used to a naughty dog type of experience,

like this is not that. This is not that level of acting. This is very. I also don't think it goes so far as to push you away because I don't, you know, I'm not an anime guy and I've tried and there's, I mean, my hero, right?

Like I get it. I like what I see, but not to turn it on my own. Whereas this, I feel like it has that, don't even wrong. It definitely is going towards that. But for me,

is just like a, somebody who does love a naughty dog or an Assassin's Creed, right? I didn't think it pushed it so far where I was like, I roll, I can't get over this, especially as you learn about the characters and not only learn to love them, they start letting their guard down and everything starts, you know, coalescing into like, oh, this is what this is and why, you know, this team makes sense by the end of it. I'm in the similar place where by the time I finished the game, I was like, man, this story isn't, this story isn't just good for a GRP.

It's like, I think this story is an iconic video game story. And I know that's already been the case with Final Fantasy 7 the original. But even with the remake still, I feel like this, this version of the story is going to go on as like, hey, this story is up there with whatever you consider an iconic video game story. I prefer this over the original. Already. I would say so too. Like, it's obviously much more expanded and much better written. Like, there's side characters that I like end up liking towards the end.

Like characters that weren't, were not even. in the original or like maybe we're played very small parts like Leslie is a surprisingly good character in this game. I really, I fucking love this game. It's so hard to not like, not just ran for an hour about how greater it is. There are so many great villain characters in this game too. Like so many that are introduced that might show up for maybe two scenes that still have such personality and have such presence.

And every time they introduce even a new villain character where I'm like, I don't think I've seen that guy before, but he's seen him. school because how he's dressed and how he looks. All the Shinra people like seem like have have their own personality that carries and that has has weight. Like everybody seems equally treated in terms of, hey, we're going to give this character, these characters style and presence and personality and motivation and you get all of them, which is.

They talk to like senior executives that like their primary character personalities where they laughed weird and they made them actual characters. It's insane. They definitely went the distance at this game. I love seeing characters from the DVD from the movie. Oh, yeah. Like when they popped up, I was like,

shit, I remember the, I remember the Turk. Yeah, yeah. That's super rad. One thing I want to say, going back a little bit to the animaeness, animaness of the dialogue and all that, I was playing this game simultaneously while watching Code Giaz with Gia,

which is one of my favorite anime of all time. Season one's really good. And season two is good, too. Okay. We'll talk about this offline. But I freaking love it. But rewatching, I haven't rewatched it in over a decade probably. And my God, it is so anime.

It's so corny. It's so over the top dialogue that like no one would ever speak this way. Like this is insane. I love it. It's super fun. But playing it with this, I'm like, wow, this game is really mature anime. Like this game's really well written in a way and it's done in a way where it is anime.

But it's like it's not in the over the top. annoying way. Like, I feel like it is a lot closer to the naughty dog style than it is to co-de-os. And like, the only thing in terms of how animated is that became like, not even an issue, but I think that I kept noticing and that I couldn't not notice at a certain point was how much they grunt and like how many like noises. Yeah, like so many grunts. To the point where I was like, okay, this is a lot. But it's like one of those things where it's like, you just, you let it slide and you just. You're in the world. We're fighting robot cars.

The robot cars, I was like, fine with it. It was the grunts where I was like, all right, guys. That's where I draw the line. Yeah. Yeah. All right. To go back to the music one, I want to talk about one of the original. Oh, yeah.

Which was the music that plays over the Sector Five Slums, this very soft guitar tune, which is a new song for this game. Really good. And it's perfect. It's like, it nails the tone of that area so much better than the original music did. that I actually like that's one of the things I've been just I don't listen to a ton of music right now because I'm not walking or commuting anywhere but I put that on my Google music it's like I'm just listening to this and repeat for as long as I physically am able to because it just speaking of naughty dog it feels like a last of us track in some way that that music reminded me a lot of some of the more slower somer parts of near automata and astral chain yeah like I feel like a lot of the a lot of the music and first of all let me just say this. God damn, I love a Japanese game with really, really fucking good UI sounds.

I love good UI sounds, man. It's just like hearing that just reminds you of the first time playing like Metal Gear Soled like the first time, you know, I love all that stuff. I mean, speaking to the UI, like, there's a lot of good UI stuff that is shocking to be it's never been in other RPGs like

when they're changing out material, you can change from anybody who's in the party or not. You can see who has something equipped, who used to have something equipped. If you just change something out, and you you had an immaterial slots like within the last couple of hours it'll give like a kind of faded outlook that like oh we used to have it's equipped so if you're just changing things out and you forgot what was in that slot the game will show you it's a it does such a good job of just doing

whatever you want to do without like compromising the organization aspects of it it's so very forward thinking and i feel like there was multiple times where um i was about to confront an issue with the ui and then the moment that i was about to complain it would give me the answer that I was looking for. The moment I was about to be like, why don't you just have, oh, there it is.

An example of that being the weapon upgrade system, where it's like every time you upgrade a weapon, which is often because you get AP, SP stuff constantly in this game. So you're constantly incentivized to open the menu and to just see what you can update. You know what I mean? It's like this part of the fun of it is just being in the menus.

Fran would love it. And you go into the weapon and then it does this like crazy animation. Then you're in like the solar system looking things. thing. And it's kind of like the sphere grid from Tan just a little bit. But you can assign different orbs to like upgrade your stuff. And it's super fun, super engaging. Like you're into it and you really feel like you're making these personal changes. But somewhere through the game, I was like, I'm over these animations. I'm over constantly having to go back. I wish I could just assign it and have it just do it. You hit Triangle. Yeah. And it just does it for you. And it's so nice.

I also like if the weapons aren't necessarily better or worse. Like there are different builds, essentially. Like I've gone back to older weapons because I just like I want to prioritize attack with Barrett and I want to prioritize magic with Ayrath. It doesn't necessarily have to be the best our latest weapon to use. I also want to point out that there are four characters in this game in terms of like the playable characters in terms of your party. And I feel like the the roles they play are all they all complement each other each other so well and they're perfect. Like there was no point where I was like man, I wish I had a character that did this. Like in terms of the dynamic between range and close up,

and there's that, and then also like, Aeth, like being mainly magic, even though you can kind of build them however you want, but her kind of being the person who I would assign to magic, and then that ranging up to cloud being like my melee guy, like all that felt super balanced. And that's a thing that you can't really change because that's a set thing.

Like you have these set four characters to play around with. So I thought that was really good. But then also going back to soundtrack, like I'm going to be shunct. if this isn't soundtrack of the year. Like, if it doesn't sweep for a soundtrack of the year. And this is me coming off with Dume Eternal, which I probably would have said the same thing after beating Dume Eternal.

Like, oh, yeah, this soundtrack is soundtrack of the year. After playing Final Fantasy VII remake, like, this soundtrack is one of my favorite soundtrack I've ever heard. Like, the Sewers area also is one I want to plan out. Like, there's a song. No vibes in there? Yeah, dude. Like, it sounds, it doesn't sound like a, like a hip-hop instrumental that, like, that is

in a video game, like a video game version of of a hip hop instrumental, it sounds like a genuine tight hip hop beat that was like produced by tone deaf or something like that. Like it sounds on point. I love the, uh, when you are in a wall market or what's it called? Wall Market. Walmart.

Um, yeah, there's that, that subtle thing where in the different areas of Walmarket, the theme is played in a different style. I love little touches like that. Um, the, um, uh, to go back to the combat again, um, I, uh, This game brought me back to what I loved so much about Jaggedy's Inquisition and switching between the characters and kind of creating roles, like creating the tank role, creating the DPS.

This person is a little bit weaker. This is your mage character, but they're going to put out high amounts of damage. This guy is going to be your going and poking a few times. I just, I love that stuff. I love that mental game, you know? Yeah. It's game rules, man. It's game absolutely rolls, man.

I can't believe they accomplished it. I can't wait to talk to you guys more about it, especially in a spoiler fashion next week because there's a lot to talk about. And I think there's going to be a lot of conversations about this game for years to come. So until then, this has been the Kind of Funny Games cast. Thank you very much for joining us.

We are about to do the post show for Patreon.com slash kind of funny games supporters. So we'll see you guys there. Until next week. I love you.