The Ringer-Verse - ‘Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’ Reactions | Button Mash

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

Words aren’t the only thing that tell people what you’re thinking … but Ben, Matt James, and Justin Charity use words to give their spoiler-free thoughts on the sensational second installment in Square Enix’s ‘Final Fantasy VII’ remake/sequel trilogy. Tap into the lifestream as the three-person podcast party breaks down the game’s open-world structure, combat, music, mini-games, and more. They close with their hopes for the final act of the trilogy and nominations for future remakes. Host: Ben Lindbergh Guests: Justin Charity and Matt James Producer: Devon Renaldo Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Brian Curtis from The Ringer, and I want to tell you about the Press Box podcast. The Press Box is a podcast for anybody who likes news, whether it's about sports or politics or pop culture, and wants to understand how that news really gets made. We have news shows every Monday and Thursday. We have long interviews with everyone from John Crackhour to Joe Buck. Your social media feeds are bursting with information every day. Let us help you sort it out. Join us on the press box.

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Of course for you. Let's get this show on the road, people. And welcome into the ringerverse, your Nexus podcast. podcast feed for all things fandom. I'm Bell Minberg, a senior editor for The Ringer. And this is ButtonMash, where the Ringerverse ventures into video games. And have we ever got a great topic today? Over the weekends, millions of people immerse themselves in a story so epic that the latest retelling split the original classic into multiple parts. It's about a group of freedom fighters striking back against the capitalistic plunderers ravaging their environment. It's about a once-good guy

who develops a Messiah complex and proclaims himself the chosen one. It's about summoning massive creatures to win big battles and characters who can kind of see the future and a moody protagonist who finds himself in a love triangle. It might sound like I'm describing Dune Part 2. But no. The Midnight Boys at House of Our have you covered there? I am talking about Final Fantasy 7 rebirth,

which also came out last week. And like Rebirth, this podcast features a three-per-year-old. person party. With me today is a man who never met a mini game he couldn't spend several hours on Ringer Deputy Art Lead Matt James. Hello, Matt. Hello, more than several. My God. There's a quick time event happening right now. Press X quickly. Tap triangle repeatedly. Hold circle. Also on the line, fresh off a feature about video game remasters for the ringer.com. What a great website is a friend and colleague who's happy to revisit Final Fantasy 7, but wonders when we're getting

the remake and rebirth of Final Fantasy 8. Ringer's senior staff writer Justin Charity. Hello, Justin. That's our Queen's Blood Champion. Put it on the resume. Guys, our fingers are tingling. Our mouths are dry. Our eyes are burning.

We've had this podcast penciled into the schedule since the rebirth release date drops almost six months ago, and at last the time to talk has a arrived. This year has been defined so far by surprise sensations like Pow World and Helldivers, who knew, but the latest sensation is not a surprise. It was the most anticipated title of 2024 by us and the industry at large. Now it's here. It's largely living up to the hype. The Final Fantasy franchise has been on a role lately between remake and 16 and the continued

flourishing of 14, but as we speak, Rebirth has the highest metacritic rating since 12 and 10. It's part two of a three-part remake slash sequel of Final Fantasy 7. It's a gigantic game. We've had our hands on it for a while, but we're all in different places, and it's also been out in the wild only for a few days. So we're not going to get into massive story spoilers yet. We are, however, going to give you our reactions and reviews. But before we, we're going to give you our reactions and reviews. But before we dive deep like Mr. Dolphin, let's just get in the surface.

Guys, give me your high-level, big-picture impressions of rebirth. Matt, you have had your hints on this thing longer than either of us, and you have seen it all. So do you like it? Do you love it? Do you want some more of it? I have put 128 hours into this game. I did virtually everything that you can do in this game.

I think it is the greatest remake of all time. Wow. And I think it is one of my favorite Final Fantasy games of all time, if not my actual favorite. It's way up there. I think it's fantastic. I think that throughout my playtime, the one thing I kept thinking about the entire time was how much of my enjoyment of this, my experience is tied to nostalgia. Yeah.

how much of it is based on just objective video game analysis. It's hard to separate the two when you're talking about this game. It is. So while I feel this way about this game, someone without ties to the original Final Fantasy 7, I feel like they might feel differently without those nostalgia ties. But I still think that even if you had no ties to this game and just walked right into it, at worst,

I think you would still think that this is a really great game. could get past feeling like you've missed out on something. Yeah. Well, Charity, you can't give us the nostalgia-free perspective either, but what do you make of it so far? Yeah, it's funny that you said, because I think a lot too with this game of how, like, as much as hitting a lot of the beats from the old game, sort of, sure, activate something, I still think about the stuff that I associate with remake exclusively.

Like, I just know the first time Chadley shows up. I was like, yes, yes. I was like actually yelling in my room when Chadley showed up again with that weird voice of his. And then girl, Chadley, I was like, oh, this is great. More Chadley. When Ross showed up, I was like, yes. If you want more Chadley, I've got good news for you. More than ever.

Yeah, it's like, I don't know. There's something, I think the nostalgia point is real. And I also think to your point, right, Matt, I like judging it even just as a a standalone Final Fantasy experience and ranking it somewhere still highly even relative to the original Final Fantasy 7. It's like, no, I think this game has such a

distinct vibe to it and I like that vibe. There are times when I don't know about it like I think in the very beginning, you know, a lot of the flashback stuff, a lot of calm stuff, I found myself chafing in the very beginning against kind of like oh, why does Soproth seem

kind of like before the turn kind of like a K-pop idol Like, that's definitely not how he comes across in the sort of like earlier parts of the flashback in the original game. He still has those striking eyes and he's kind of a weird guy. But the overall, like, man, you're in

June on and suddenly you're playing like Wave Race 64 on a dolphin. Like, that's what the OG Final Fantasy 7 is about. It's about like, sure, this epic story, but it is that fact of you could wander around that world forever and gamble

and race and all this stuff and it's like they really managed to take all of that and blow it up to the scope of a video game of an open world video game in this decade and it's just really impressive

and the vibe of it is just really fun. I was going to touch on that too. I don't know if there's ever been a better illustration of it's not the destination, it's the journey or maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Because this is the second installment in the remake trilogy

and it covers the not-so-climactic middle portion of Final Fantasy 7. I jokingly compared it to Dune earlier, but this is not like Dune Part 2 or The Empire Strikes Back or the Dark Night, even though it contains the game's most memorable moments. This is a game where most of the story consists of following some robed guys around in the hope that they'll lead you to Sephiroth, maybe eventually, somewhere. So this game is meandering and self-oferi. aware and weird and silly and sweet.

The parade. Oh, my goodness. The parade's right. Quick time events. Here's one of my main takeaways. You know how in open world games, there's often an inherent tension between playing the game, saving the world, and just fucking around.

Yeah. There's like the horizon thing of like. Exactly. It's like, where is the urgency? Sometimes it's very urgent. And sometimes it's like, I'm just picking berries. and, you know, it's like, what's true? Yeah, it's like the biosphere is about to be destroyed

and an AI machine swarm is heading for Earth. But maybe Iloy feels like chilling in the arena and shooting arrows at robot dinosaurs or Ragnarok is coming, but maybe me and boy just want to battle our canoe and do some side quests for a while, right? And sometimes, narratively speaking, it sort of breaks down as the game tries to balance

both of those things. and rebirth embraces that disconnect so unabashedly that for me, the tension totally dissipates. This game is a good hang. It gets dark at times, and every now and then Cloud will be like, what are we doing? Shouldn't we get back to business? And then Eris and Tifa will be like, yes, let's talk business. And by business, we mean boys, t-he-he. And then the vibes are good again.

And you might feel like how can they play card games while shouldn't. and Sephora trying to destroy the world. Well, I don't know. How can we play Final Fantasy 7 while the Earth is warming and democracy is in danger? We're all just kind of fiddling while Rome burns. And I can't think of a fiddle that's more fun than Final Fantasy 7 rebirth. I'm loving this. One thing that I've been thinking about as well, now that you mentioned, you know, all the

mini games and how the game can go from dramatic moments to things that are completely unsurious. And this is a very goofy game. It can get really goofy. And as you know, Ben, I've been playing a lot of like a dragon infinite wealth. Yeah. Sort of before and after I played rebirth. And man, there are so many parallels that I can draw between those two.

Which has more mini games, this or that. Oh, it's close. It's close. Yeah. But I think perhaps, you know, obviously that goofiness is there in the original. There's plenty of it. And I think that, you know, when 16 came out, a lot of people were kind of up in arms about how serious it was and how it didn't have any of that

lighthearted goofiness that some Final Fantasy games do have. But this one's got it. And it almost makes me feel like the recent Like a Dragon games, maybe their goofiness has had some sort of influence on Square Enix. And they were like, you know what? People are really loving how the Like a Dragon series is being this goofy. Like, we are the inspiration for these games to begin with. So maybe let's reclaim from them what they originally got inspired by us from. So it's been interesting to play those two games kind of side by side

and see how they both do drama so well. And yet don't take themselves so seriously that when they want to get absolutely stupid, it is completely fine. Yeah. Snowboarding at the end of the world. It was like the subtitle for the original Final Fantasy 7. We love 16, right? That was one of our favorite games of last year.

Absolutely. Yes, if you thought that was sort of self-serious or not Final Fantasy enough for you, a notion that we kind of pushed back against at the time. But this is the antidote to 16, or at least it's a nice palette cleanser or change of pace. If you wanted goofy Final Fantasy back, this is it. So we can actually address one other point, though, that both of you have sort of engaged with, right? Which is like the actual contrast, I think of isn't really 16, it's 15.

Because I think that's an example of like a recent Final Fantasy. And again, I like 15 more than I think a lot of other people do. But I do think 15 has that struggle of like that tension one of you described between are we doing the main plot or are we riding around in, you know, the regalia, right? Yeah. That's a game that really struggles. with sort of having the A plot and the B plot, so to speak, kind of coexist along each other

and not feel like they're kind of stepping on each other's toes, right? And yeah, I just think that's like an important thing that it feels like Square Enix really, like, rebounded with, with this, you know, with rebirth and with this whole series in the first place, is sort of like reconciling that tension. Okay, before we go any further, let's pause for programming notes. The rest of this week on the Ring Reverse feed is still, TBD, but next week we'll be bringing you the award show you've all been waiting for.

No, not the Oscars, the Verses, where the magnificent seven ringerverse hosts come together to recognize the best of fandom from the past year. Join me and Mal and Joe and Van and Charles and Joe, me and Steve, as we try to top that other award show that said that Cross the Spiderverse wasn't worthy of a best picture nomination. Also, over on House of Arr this week, the pods must flow. Mal and Joe have a double dose of Dune for you with a Dune 2 deep dive today and a Dune Mailbag on Friday. And as a reminder, you can email buttonmash at ringaverse gaming at gmail.com. I'd like to start incorporating reader questions and comments into the show.

We'd love to do a mailbag episode if the release schedule would ever slow down. So do drop us a line. Okay. Rebirth more or less picks up where remake leaves off. and it covers the stretch of Final Fantasy 7 between departing from Midgar and getting to the Temple of Ancients and Forgotten Capital. Let's just reminisce for a moment since we were talking about nostalgia about leaving Midgar for the first time in the original Final Fantasy 7. So much world building was packed into the opening of that game. And Midgar felt so fully realized that you almost started to suspect that the whole game would play out there,

even though the game was three discs and that content had to come from somewhere. But it's actually compressed Midgar into the first five or so hours of that game. Then all of a sudden, you set off and that overworld theme kicks in. And the map stretches out all around you with no end in sight. And it was just like, okay, cancel my appointments. Not that we had appointments. We were kids. It was an innocent time.

But it felt limitless, even though in retrospect, it seems possible. pretty primitive. So we played a clip of rebirth's recreation of that moment at the top of this pod. Charity, how well does rebirth's open world capture that spirit of the original for you? Yeah, that opening up feeling, like, because you're right, it was distinct, like, back then JRPGs were still kind of like, but what, it's like if you're young enough and also like the genre itself, you sort of are still discovering the scope of like a JRP. So that really did feel kind of like revolutionary. I mean, it's, it's hard to be taken by surprise twice.

I do feel like, yeah, a sense of, yeah, I don't know, a sense of freedom. Like, you definitely by the end of remake, right, felt kind of a sense of like, okay, I'm kind of cramped, right? I kind of like know all of these parts of the map of Midgar and all this stuff, right? And it, there is something to like, once you get the hang of like the Chocobo stuff, being like, oh, this is the Final Fantasy game where I can actually stretch my legs and do all of the sort of like

put a podcast on open world stuff before I actually advanced the main story, whatever. I think at least that sense of freedom definitely feels like they nailed it. Yeah. Even if it's really hard to recreate that exact feeling of like, oh, wow, there's a game beyond this place, right, that you know is coming at this point.

And when a game goes open world, a long-standing franchise that's never fully embraced that and then finally does. You always have to wonder what's the motivation for that? Is it just to fit a formula to chase a trend? Or is it to fully realize the original vision of the game that the technology didn't permit at the time? So, Matt, is this more of the former or the latter for you? Well, I think that, you know, there are plenty of games who have gone open world because

it was a massive trend in gaming. Yeah. and it's a quick way to fill playtime for a lot of games. But for me, I feel like rebirth going open world not only is essential to retelling this particular segment of the story of the original, but I think it also is critical because so much of the joy of the original, and so much of the joy of this particular segment of the original in the game for me was the sense of exploration, the wonder of discovery, that was so powerful playing the original. And I feel like in the moment in Rebirth, when they kicked that door open and walk into that field,

it was very impactful for me. And not in small part due to the fact that this might have the best video game soundtrack of all time. Yeah. It's way up there. The original, obviously, some of the best music in video games ever. they did such a good job at the music in this game. There are so many tracks. It's unreal.

A lot of them are more beautiful, detailed renditions of the classics, and a lot of them have very fun, quirky takes on some of the themes. But I think they obviously realized that, you know, the music would play a large role in drumming up that nostalgia. And the exploration pairs. with the blasting music that is,

in some people's mind, it's too loud while you are wandering around the world. I don't feel that way. Yeah. Because, man, I love the music in this game. I think it's a fair... It's perhaps a fair criticism, but I don't care. See, it just got better even with Ben's ominous take on...

Keep talking. I'll just keep on it over here. Just raise the levels of it. I mean, you know, simulate the complaint of it. Yeah. Sorry, it just got a little... loss. It's playing on a loop in my head. But it's not exactly open world. It's more like open worlds, right? Which is open regions. What I like about it. Yeah. So remake is Midgar. Rebirth is what,

seven different regions of varying sizes. And they all look and feel very different. And they feel like discrete places, not only because they look and feel different, but because, you know, you have to open things up in each place. You have to travel to each place. You have to travel to each place. using some different form of conveyance, you have to stealth up to a chocobo in each region so that you can hop on the back and ride a chokobo, which is super silly, as we were saying, but also makes you feel like, okay, I'm in another place now. I can't just ride the chokobos that I already broke and saddled up in my previous place. And it's a little like, I think, comparing the original legend of Zelda or Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time to the Hyrule of Breath of the World. wild. You know how those of us who played O'Reilly of Time in 1998, Hyrofields in our mind's eye is this just massive limitless area. And then you go back and watch it and you're like, that's it. That was all it was. But that was always what was in the minds of the creators. That's what their vision was. This is what it was meant to be, but the technology didn't allow it.

And you not only have fans of Final Fantasy 7 working on rebirth, people who grew up playing the game like we did, but the original creators who were back for more and are just getting to show us what was in their heads the whole time. So for me, it works. And I think there's something to the idea that 4K can't compare to the imagination, right? And then, fingers on my imagination, let me tell you. I got no imagination. This is better, trust me. We have graphics at home. Yeah. Or just like the greater fidelity sometimes saps something from the original, how murky Midgar was, how much you sort of had to bring to it yourself or that was implied, right? It left a lot to the imagination, whether you had one or not. And so then you see Midgar in all its high definition glory. And maybe it looks like you pictured it or maybe it doesn't quite or maybe it can just never match up to what. you remember at the time, which may or may not be what it actually looked like. But this game is beautiful.

And it's just so varied that in a lot of places, I think it kind of just looks like what it should have looked like all the time. I don't play it and think, this isn't the whatever I remember, right? This isn't Junon. Like, okay, yeah, I buy this. This is what Junon always was. We just didn't know it yet. Yeah. And in fact, when you get to lower Junon,

if you played the original, you know exactly where the in is. Yeah. Like this game, some of what, I want to touch on some of what you said about, you know, does this feel sort of like

this is the world expanded on or is this like feel off? This feels so spot on to me throughout the entire thing. It feels so much like the world of the original faithfully expanded upon

that several times throughout my playtime, I caught myself hitting triangle button to try and get into my character menu, which is not how you do it in this game. You hit the menu button. But in the original, you just, you hit triangle

to go mess with your characters and menus and stuff. And I just, it felt so faithfully like Final Fantasy 7 to me that that ancient muscle memory kicked in a bunch of times. Yeah. And Charity, you just wrote about remasters and

remakes writ large, which we've talked about on the show before, but I wonder how you would fit Final Fantasy remake and rebirth into the taxonomy of remakes. Is it singular? Is it unique in its goals? What it's trying to do here, be faithful, but also sort of screw with the original formula? Or do you think there are other games that have tried this? Is it kind of on an island? Yeah, I was curious to hear what Matt just said, because I think he was describing, I think of more when I think of, like, if I'm making a spectrum in my head, I think a lot about how like Resident Evil 4 remake, that was a remake where I felt like I was calling on my muscle memory of playing the original Resident Evil 4 a million times, right? That's a game where like you move through that game and the rhythms

of it feel, even though they change stuff and they're kind of like clever at points, I was just like, yeah, there's stretches that game where you can just, if you've played Resident Evil 4 before, like, you know what to do. you know what time it is, right? Yeah. Something like Persona 3 Reload is like, there's some big changes to like Tartarus in that game, right? But otherwise, like, if you know that game, you can even maybe just like remember the social links from memory in that game. And I think Final Fantasy 7 remake and rebirth, I wouldn't put over there that far on whatever side of the spectrum that is.

I just personally don't have the muscle memory thing that Matt's describing, right? but I do definitely see that it's like a remake that's like trying really hard to be something that is just like such a wildly different scope and a wildly different context for gaming in general, right? It's so far removed from the release of the original game. And so it is impressive in moments when you're like, oh, right, like, I know what to do here, right? Like, it's, I don't know, at least with Resident Evil 4, like, that's a game that's, it's remake. is much closer to that game's original release,

whereas with this, you're right, the moments where you do feel like you kind of can finish the game's sentences for it, feel that much more impressive for that reason of how much time is past. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a complete reimagining. Most remakes are just graphics updates or, you know, slight quality of life improvements and getting out on the new system so we can sell it. This is a unique thing.

And something you wrote about charity is that remasters are all, and remakes are forced into the role of preservation just because the originals aren't accessible. And so then that becomes a concern, okay, is this a historical now if you can't play the original? And all you can play is the remake. And the remake is not just a prettier version

of the original with some modernization and quality of life. It's actually kind of a new game. Does that then displace the original? But as you were saying in your piece, with Persona 3 reload, it's less of a concern when the original. is easily accessible. Yeah, when they're keeping it alive, right.

Yeah. And so you can go back and play Final Fantasy on PlayStation on Switch, whatever it is. The original is still very much out there. And so it concerns me a little less about, are we changing the historical record here? Will people not be able to know what it was like to play at the time? And, I mean, earnest sentiment alert, but it really is on inspiring to see the strides that this medium has made in our lifetimes. I kept being struck by that as I was playing this game. I think that's one of the reasons why it's so fascinating to follow and cover video games because 25 years ago, gaming was

such an immature medium compared to books or movies or music. Not that there weren't great games then, not that prettier or bigger equals better, but compare a book or a movie or an album or whatever it is from 1997 with Final Fantasy 7, it's a completely different art form at this point in many ways. And just to see those strides as people who are not that old, at least I'd like to think, and yet we can remember playing this thing in its original form, which just looks so completely different from what we're playing now.

It's the same, but it's also different. And I guess that goes for any remake, but I think more than any for this. And it's exciting. I don't know that we're making as massive strides now, that the leaps between console generations now are as significant as they were then. And one thing you pointed out in your piece, Charity, is that it's maybe most valuable to have remakes of games from this particular era,

90s, 2000s, like when those generational leaps, when we were going from 2D to 3D, when we were just figuring out how to play in that space, those first faltering steps, maybe it's more valuable to revisit those than it will be to revisit this game a few generations hence, which I was thinking of because like

this trilogy might end up spanning three console generations. I was going to say Nottie Dogg would have already made Final Fantasy 7 remake and like this same. You know what I mean? Yeah, well I guess we already got intergrades, right, which is the PS5 version of the PS4 Final Fantasy remake.

But really it took four years to make rebirth, which is actually pretty fast by modern AAA game development standards. They're pumping these things out. And yet, even so, remake is a PS4 game, rebirth is a PS5 game. The next one, you've got to figure. I mean, maybe it'll be available for PS5. But as Sony says, we're in the latter half of the PS5's life cycle now. So maybe that's a PS6 game. So then what do you do? It's like you're bringing the original up to date. But even the modernized version is spread over three different consoles with different hardware. So it's just a moving target, right?

You're just, I mean, you can't keep up with video games. I think we're at a point in the console wars, as they say, where every time you're going to release a new system now, you're going to have to promise to your user base that your existing library continues onto the next console generation. Certainly that's something that, you know, is a big sticking point in rumors about the next Switch. It's like they can't possibly abandon that ecosystem that they've created with the Switch. Right.

And I think Sony will kind of hope to do that, too. Of course, by that time, who knows who's still making consoles? Who knows if whatever PlayStation will get the next game in this series before PC? Interesting to see. One of the critiques that's been leveled against this game amid all the rave reviews and the mostly glowing reception is bloat, right? that it's a bit bloated, that there is maybe a little too much of Final Fantasy 7 in Final Fantasy Rebirth. And it's true that if you go back and play the original 7 now, you can play it at three

times speed, right? You can just zip around fewer random encounters. These games are like playing the original at one seventh speed, you know? I mean, not in terms of like the moment-to-moment pace, but in terms of the translation, like just the total hours that you're putting into these things. That's basically what it is. Now, I think remake felt stretched at times, because again, you're turning five hours of midcar in the original into dozens of hours in remake. Here, you're working with more source material, but you could say, I think one fair critique would be that this is a little bit self-indulgent. It's a little bit masturbatory maybe. Like, this is one of the greatest games ever.

And so every precious second of that sacred text must be preserved and expanded. It's almost like, you know, your favorite old album comes out on an eight-disc, remastered deluxe set with seven versions of every song. You got the acoustic demo and three studio takes and the orchestral remix and an underdubbed version and a live version. And you're like, you know what? I love this album, but I don't need this. much of it. So did you ever have that feeling? Has either of you gotten that feeling with rebirth? Where it's like, I'll pose that like, okay, bloat. I actually don't think from my perspective, at least, that I feel that about the content. I think so much as the game can feel a little bit halting to

me is where it kind of adopts a lot of the conventions of like big AAA games of this nature where every, like for the first 20 hours of it, you're still getting tutorialization. Yeah. Like, that kills me. That's the, that's the kind of thing that actually makes the game feel a bit sluggish

and makes it feel a bit like, it makes everything else about it feel heavier because there's so much of that, you know? But that's not blow because it's not, I don't think that's, that's, at least in my experience so far, it's not about there's too much of the original game. It's almost like,

it's the fact that you have a lot of the original game. And on top of that, you have all of this other kind of like contemporary quality of life stuff. And I'm just going crazy when they do the classic like PS3 move of like everyone has to walk like they're crawling. And because they're having a conversation like stuff like that is where I'm like, oh my God. I'm an adult. Let me play the game. You know, Matt, is there such a thing as too many mini games? Boy, that is a really loaded question for me.

Well, first I want to touch upon something that Justin just said, you know, how deep into the game you're receiving tutorial sort of things. I think that one of the greatest challenges this game has is that there are so many characters that each have their own combat controls and systems. And I think that one of the most fair criticisms of this game is that one of the most fair criticisms of this game is that when you kind of open into the game, into the open world section, and you have all your characters,

there is, it's such a deep combat system. There's so much to learn about it. It takes so long to really understand the flow of combat. You have synergy abilities, which are different from synergy skills. You've got ATB bars going on. There's just a lot to process with the combat. And those tutorials are actually,

like super necessary. Yeah, they are. Yeah, great. It's tough. It's tough. Yeah. It's still frustrating to a degree to have to like ingest so much information while you're like itching to, you know, go on and out and to discover some new things.

And you do have to like have to self-control. Or beat someone's ass. And then it's like, wait, hold on now. Now I need to explain to you. Synergy. It's like, bro, bruh. Shut up, dad. Exactly.

Yeah. No, there's definitely a lot of that. And the thing is, those are necessary things. Like, they have to have all these characters playable for this game to be this game. And they do their best with it. And they, in fact, to my, I don't think they even go far enough. I don't know if you guys have noticed in the combat simulator, Chadley's combat simulator. There are individual kind of combat tutorials for each of the characters that are just sitting in there.

He doesn't even really mention them. You're not really guided towards them at any point. But I found them to be really helpful. As much as I thought I had a full grasp on how each character works, every single one of those very quick, very easy combat tutorials for those characters illuminated something that I didn't realize about how that character controls in combat. Yeah. There's definitely a learning curve there, especially if you haven't played remake recently,

because there's a lot of depth and complexity. Yeah. So I think they did the best that they could. But, man, it was just an uphill. battle from that. But as far as bloat goes, and this sort of ties into pacing as well, that seems to be a common criticism of the people who are criticizing the game's pacing. I think it's really up to you what the pacing is in this game.

There are people who play this game and finish it in 60 hours, and they're insane people like me who are 128 hours. Like, clearly you don't have to put up with much of anything that you don't want to put up with if you can clear this game in around 60 hours. So is it bloat? Maybe it's bloat for you. It's not bloat for me. I'm shooting things in arcade games and I'm playing Red 13 Rocket League and I beat every

chokobo race. The chokobo racing is incredible in this game. Queen's blood is just ridiculously. Bro, if somebody tells me Queensblood is bloat. Like, get out. Just be fun the game. If you think that's bloke, get out of here. Yeah.

How are you enjoying Queensblood? Look, I'm not a Queensblood hater, but I am not a Queensblood partaker, which I know is a hot take. That sounds like a hater to me. Gene Park of the Washington Post was saying the same thing. I know it's the kind of take you get roasted for because this could be a standalone game. You mentioned, Gwen, like, Witcher 3 spin-off, right? This could be that. But I just am not a card game guy mostly in real life and definitely not within video games.

It's like one level too far. It's like too many levels. I can't master a full game inside a game. Yes, you can. Gaming except to it. No. But you can almost skip Queen's Blood entirely. And I know people are groaning and telling me that I'm missing a great draw here.

And I don't doubt it. But I have played one game of Queen's Blood. And it was when I played against Red 13. And I was like, what the hell am I doing? And then I forfeited. That was it. So it never makes you do that anymore. And I'm not as much of a minigame guy as you are, but they are usually optional.

You can quit. You can retry whenever. So it's definitely a mixed bag in terms of how fun and how frustrating they are. But it really is as little or as much of it as you want. It almost reminds me of Super Mario Brothers Wonder in that you have this incredible creative continuity where people are working on this game who worked on this. series decades earlier. And they're just pulling out all the stops. What have we not done before? What could we cram in here? Let's put all the time into developing this strange set piece,

even though you're going to see it in a single sequence and then never again. How do we make 2D Mario feel fresh in 2023? Just mix it up. Be irreverent. Try some stuff. Throw some shit at the wall. And that helps make Final Fantasy feel fresh in 2024. This episode is brought to you by Boris Head. What if we told you the taste of deep fried turkey is now available at your local deli? Boar's Head just did that. Bursting with flavor, perfectly seasoned with that indulgent taste that usually means pointing your whole day around it. Presenting the Friars turkey breast only from Boershead.

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organizations near you. Learn more at clinickids.com slash 100KK. That's Clinic with a K. Clinic Kids is registered 5.101-1-C3 nonprofit. Yeah, and there's actually a pretty interesting storyline that goes alongside the Queensville. Once you start getting into it, there's a whole storyline that kind of reveals itself that is worth seeing, in my opinion. Yeah. But I don't begrudge somebody who doesn't want to play certain mini games in a game, but I will reiterate that this is probably the best card game inside a video game.

It's also like even if you don't, like the card. like the card game, all of the best voice performances in the game are all of these deranged Queensbud players that you're running into. Like, it is, it is the height of acting in video games as a media, right? I swear

of God. Yeah. Was it cry baby Ned or whatever in cards? Right up to jump? Oh my God. The first optional character you can play just won't stop crying. This is the new triple triad I know and I'm missing out.

But, yeah, I mean, I feel like, though, you can skip as much of the side stuff as you want. You can't actually wait and do it later in the game because the world kind of opens up after you unlock certain areas and traversal methods. And that wouldn't actually be a bad way to do it. But it is so silly and campy and fun. And the nice thing about all the side stuff and a lot of the mini games is that you get story, you get character development during that. It's not just total optional side stuff that adds nothing because much of the joy of this game is just being with your party, being with your friends, right? And they're usually with you when you're doing all this wacky, campy stuff. And that's the nice thing is that even though you have three-person parties, the whole party is with you, right?

Like only three characters are playable at any given time, but generally everyone's together except for some sequences where you split up. And so they can develop those characters. and there's a depth and a richness to those relationships that in some cases is lacking in the original game because there's just so much time. You could call it padding or filler here, but it's the draw, I think. Once you adjust your mindset,

and it's like, okay, the big climactic beats here, we know a lot of that has to wait for part three. So just embrace the bloat. If that's what you want to call it, it becomes not bloat, but it's the draw. It's the central aspect of the game Yeah, with hanging out with your friends bloat in your life. Right, exactly.

You've been roast these people. And then again, like, take a place like Gongaga, which is an area later in the game. It's what, like two or three screens in the original Final Fantasy 7? You can miss it, I think. Yeah. There are optional places you don't even have to go. And some places where if you go, they were barely fleshed out at all. now it's a fully fleshed out place in rebirth where I want to live.

That's maybe my favorite place in the game. Great music. Yeah. And I'm glad that those places exist. So even though there are Ubisoft slash Zelda style towers to climb and reveal more. Yeah. When I saw that, I was like, I was like, but it is really entirely optional, you know. And it's it's not onerous.

I don't feel like there's too much on the map for me. or at least when there is, I can just ignore it and move on. I can bring out my inner cloud and just be like, all right, let's get back to business here. Yeah, it's up to you. It's up to you to control your pacing. Take responsibility. I do want to talk about the combat a bit more because I like it. I mean, we're critiquing the complexity, but I think when you do get the hang of it,

it is very satisfying. You do have the chronotrigger-esque synergy skills and abilities, and then there's the strategy of pressuring and staggering your opponent. And then you have the folio, which is like a Final Fantasy 10 type spear grid sort of upgrade system, where you can unlock abilities for each character. And then, yeah, you have affinity to keep track of, you know, what's the status of my relationship with everyone else? And there's complex weapons crafting and skills and materia and all of that.

But when you've got it going on, when you finally figure out how everything works together and feel like maybe you've mastered it, I don't know that I feel like I've mastered it. I'm still not great at anticipating attacks and blocking and dodging, which is maybe just because there's so much going on on the screen. But when I get the hang of it, it feels good.

And I think part of it is just a skill issue, not to be like the get good guy, because I'm usually not very good. But I think at first, I just didn't realize that the game wants me to switch characters. as much as it does. I was kind of locked in. I was like, I'm Cloud.

I'm just going to button mash and swing my Buster Sword. But it tells you that you can't do that because sometimes there are aerial enemies that Cloud can't reach at all. And it's like, what am I supposed to do here? Oh, right. I can go play as someone else. I can be a ranged character here. I can play as Ufi, who's kind of a combo of up close and ranged and is maybe the most

fun character to play, I would say. I like Barrett, too. I mean, if you just switch around and let everyone's gauges and meters fill up and then switch to someone else and kind of take the heat off that person you were just playing on, I think that's the way that you're, quote, unquote, supposed to play, which it took me quite a while to realize. It definitely is. And the synergy abilities, I think for a lot of people is sort of like the last element to be fully understood by a lot of people. The synergy skills are different. Synergy skills, you hold. hold L1 and press one of the face buttons, and you'll instantly do like a joint attack with one of your active party members. But the synergy abilities, they only become available when those two characters that you're

using in the ability have expended a certain number of ATB bars. So that means that if you want to use Barrett and Cloud's synergy ability, Barrett and Cloud have to each have expended like three ATB bars, whether it be abilities or spells or you. using an item. So you have to, that's how it encourages you to switch. You want everyone to be expending ATB bars so that you get these free synergy abilities that will do various things from giving these characters another ATB bar or increasing the stagger on an enemy. So yeah, that is sort of like the key that is not apparent at first is that the more you are switching characters and using ATB bars that you're generating, the better you're going to, you're going to be.

going to be at handling things. I feel like I just unlocked a tutorial here instead of all those menus. We should have just had Matt explaining how you play the game. I think that feels a little awkward. It's just to me, like I spent a lot of time with the remake system because I played it on hard. I did the White's boss fight in remake. And I think the synergy stuff, I definitely still feel myself like getting the hang

of it just because I don't. I think my main thing is that some character. build Barr, like, better than others. Like, Tifa's great, right? Tifa builds Barr, like, so quickly. And you compare that to, like, Ayrth, who I just sometimes hate, I liked her a lot in remake, but in this game, sometimes I'm just like, she's too slow. I hate her little bunny hop.

I'm going to lose my mind. I have to switch off her immediately. She's going to die. She's going to die. You know, so it's like I'm still, even though I spent a ton of time with the remake system, even the tweaks they made this time around, I think in a good way. make me feel like, okay, I'm doing this again from the ground up, right? Like, to an extent.

But yeah, this energy stuff, I still haven't totally wrapped my head around it or gotten the rhythm of it, honestly. Yeah. If you do start to use it, though, combat kind of becomes character development because it increases your affinity between characters that team up in fights. And so you're bonding as you're battling, which I think is kind of consistent with the game's whole ethos of like whatever you're doing. it's just about your friends and the party.

And even if it's some silly mini-game or some side quest that seems like it doesn't matter, you're actually leading to date night with that character potentially down the road, right? So that sort of satisfying to date night. Yeah. So let's talk about the story in broad strokes here. Again, we can avoid specifics. But based on what I've seen so far, and I've kind of looked ahead to see what's in store here.

I guess what we can say is that a lot of this game is faithful. It is maybe expanding on what we saw in the original. It's filling in the blanks. It's adding some depth and some detail. But up until close to the end, it does really follow the same main beats. I guess my criticism, and I would be curious about whether you share this, Matt, having seen even more of it than we do, I'll just say vaguely. I mean, you know how Barrett's like, I've been here since the beginning and I still don't know what the hell's going on.

I have that feeling at times toward the end game of rebirth because I'll just say it gets a little kingdom heartsy. And I like kingdom hearts. That's what you want. That's what I like with these remates. You want the Final Fantasy anime bullshit turned up to 11, right? It's not supposed to make sense, right? But it's just, look, I don't think it's much of a spoiler if you played remake and seen some of the comments that the makers of the game have made that it's getting a little multiversal, right? And there's been such an explosion of multiverse stories just even in the past few years since remake came out that initially my walls went up.

There's like a barrier. It's like we're going here again. We've seen that that's sometimes misguided or sometimes it's lazy, sometimes. it's the easy way out. And I don't know that that's going to be the case here. I think it could come together and I'm reserving judgment till it's all said and done. But that gives me misgivings. What about you, Matt? Okay. I'm going to be very careful about what I say here. So don't worry, everyone, because I'm going to really think it out before I say. I feel, if you played remake, obviously you know about these whispers, right, that are around and they are potentially enabling

fate to run off the rails or trying to prevent fate from running off the rails, right? And those sort of whispers and their connection to Sephiroth play a large role in this game. I don't feel, having finished the game, that the changes to the story based on these whispers, I don't feel that they have detracted from my experience. I don't feel like they've done any large disservice to the plot. I think it adds one more layer of complication

to a story that is a final fantasy story and thus inherently complicated. But I think that for me, if anyone gets hung up on these changes, I think that they are kind of losing the forest for the trees

a bit. I was fine with those changes. And at the end of the game, I was very happy. I know a lot of people don't necessarily feel that way. I haven't encountered a lot of people who feel strongly like everything was ruined.

I think if anything, probably the more common scenario is people might come away being like, well, maybe they could have done this part better. I don't know if I would have done that. But there are plenty of instances in this game where things are a little different that makes sense.

Like for instance in the original, if you didn't happen to go through a forest and say the right things of some rando, you might not have even got Ufi as character, right? You just miss Ufi. Yeah. Completely. Tragic.

So they don't let that happen, obviously, in rebirth. And that is a good change. And there are many instances like that where, okay, we got to change this. Yeah, Ufi Sid, right? Yeah. This is, I think, better versions of those characters in many ways. So I'm the furthest thing from a must be faithful to original, must not tamper with childhood memories.

No, I think if you're going to do something like this and it's not just pure preservation and purifying, then you might as well mix up the formula a little bit. I just, I'm trepidious. I'll say that. I'm wary of where this is going, but I'm willing to let them go there and then see how it turns out when it's all said and done. So one more thing I wanted to mention is that, you know, when you play, a remake, you are looking for those beats, like you're saying, Justin, like an RE4 remake, like there are sections where, right, it's just like muscle memory, like, oh, I know what this is,

what is going to be, right? There's something that is really captivating about the fact that they have changed some things and introduced an element of the unknown into this remake. In some ways, it lets you feel the feelings that you had when you play the original again, because you now have that uncertainty that you had when you played the original. And I think that that has been really compelling for me to not only be able to get to relive this game that I loved, but also to be able to walk into this room and feel the uncertainty of not knowing what's going to happen for sure like I had in the original. That's a really unique remake experience. Yeah.

And I would say for anyone who's listening to this who maybe isn't as conversant with Final Fantasy or Final Fantasy or Final Fantasy 7, I would not be scared of playing this starting here. I mean, maybe start with remake, but you definitely don't have to go back and play the original. I think you can just even start with rebirth because there is, unlike a lot of sequels, this game actually does have a pretty good recap and previously on what happened. You don't even have to go to YouTube. There's one that's packed in with the game. And then there's a flashback sequence at the start of this game.

So it does a pretty good job, I think, of orienting people in this world and in this story, even if they're not coming into it, super familiar. So, yeah, you might miss out on some of the meta-narrative aspects, but it'll just be a good Final Fantasy game for you if this is your first time through. So I would encourage anyone to check it out and not be worried about having missed out. It's not too late for you to board this train. And I guess, speaking of trains, as Barrett says, you got to understand there ain't no getting off of this train. we on until we get to the end of the line. So what do you want to see in part three, which I can only imagine will be called Final Fantasy 7 reunion.

Seems like all signs are pointing to that. Matt, since you've gotten to the end of this game, I mean mechanically, narratively, again, issuing spoilers here, or even just certain sequences from the original that we know are in store. On our Final Fantasy party draft, We talked about nights of the round and what that's going to look like putting that summoned together in part three of the remake trilogy here. But what are you looking forward to or what are you hoping for?

Because obviously there's been growth just going from remake to rebirth. And presumably they will not just be resting on their heels. They will be looking to expand even further for the final act. Yeah, I'm a little sad, honestly thinking about it. Because to me, this is the part of the original that I connected with the most. and this is where we got the transition from that sort of on-rails remake to the open rebirth. And I think it's going to be really hard for them to top this. I think it's going to be very challenging.

On a more micro-level, bring Superdunk back to Gold Saucer. Come on. I got to shoot hoops in Gold Saucer. You've ruined me. I need it. There's tons of little things like that where you fan servicey little things. things. But this is always my favorite section of the original. So all I need is more. I want to play as Vincent. I want to play as Sid. I'm just happy to get more of what they got and ride this out

to the end. But I know that this is going to be sort of my empire strikes back here, you know? Extrapolating from your total playtime in remake and rebirth, how many hours would you estimate you will put into part three? Well, I guess we'll see how long it takes them to make this one. Yeah. Let's see. We're through the first disc at the end of this game. I know, right.

In terms of the source material, there's so much one to go. Yeah, I would expect that the next one is the same size as this. But we'll see. Just so it's not PS7 by the time it comes out. I'm ready to drop 100 plus hours again. Oh, I have no doubt. Charity, anything you're looking forward to? in part three. Yeah, I'm not on the, the Matt James. I'm like a little more than 20 hours into it so

far, so I'm significantly behind. So I can't call the shots of like, this is what they need to do next. But what I can say is like from this perspective. Queens blood. Yes. But it's also like, I don't know. The main thing that I just get so much joy from even when I'm just wandering around is like how good of a job they did. I'm like a huge video game music person and like remake and rebirth, they've just really nailed a lot of the ambiance. A lot of the, again, it's like the nostalgia factor of a lot of the compositions, but also making it feel new. And so whatever, you know, they stuck a toe in these soundtracks.

And I just hope, yeah, I feel like a lot of my favorite pieces from the original Final Fantasy are from kind of that last disc or the back half of the game. Man, and I just can't wait. I don't know. It's like, even in this game, I'm like, when the, When you first hear the Judon military parade theme, I'm just like, oh, they nailed this. Come on. Yes. It's always the music for me with Final Fantasy. I'm looking forward to that, I think. Yeah. And I mean, that's what they say, that memory is so tightly intertwined with music, right? That, you know, when I used to visit my grandmother in a retirement facility, you know, after she had lost a lot of her memory, like the music, the sounds, the songs. would bring that back. That's kind of a common experience that people have had with older relatives,

right? And we're not at that point. We're not that old. But still, it's that immediate, you know, it's like that kind of memory that just, it's a strong sense memory that brings you back to maybe the room you were in when you played that, you know, what it smelled like, what it sounded like, what it looked like. And again, when in my mind's eye, I replay the games that we played, back then, they look like rebirth more than they look like what they actually looked like at the time. But the music, that is the same or that is better. That was always great, you know, at least once we got to disc-based games where you could have more than MIDI chip tunes on there.

So that really just brings you right back. So as we've been saying, this remake, these remakes are sort of singular. You know, they're more ambitious in a number of ways than most remakes. which are more ambitious than most remasters. But to end here, nominate a game that each of you would like to see, given the remake treatment, or at least some sort of remake treatment, if not several times as long, just something from that era, let's say at least 20 years old, that you think past due,

time is ripe for it to get the Final Fantasy remake rebirth treatment. Matt, you have anything in mind? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is Xenogiers, another square RPG. That would be fair to remake, considering that they actually didn't have time to finish it when they originally made it. Yeah, just make it. And the very back end of the game is just cutscenes of the game they didn't have time to make. Zeno gears are a really great square RPG, obviously. But, you know, so that's the first that jumps to mind.

But there's some other stuff like flashback from the Sega Genesis. I remember playing that and thinking, man, this is such a great. cool, like, Blade Runner-esque world that I'd like to see more. And they actually did a remake of that recently, but it was more of a beat-for-beat, Reson Evil 4-style modern update that plays the same. But like a fully, I think what rebirth does so well is it's like a complete reimagining, right, rather than a reworking. So Xeno Gears definitely is the one that pops out to me.

Obviously, Final Fantasy 6, but again, they said it would take 20 years to do that, to which I say, Well, I'll start running and being healthy. Sorry, doing that, please. Yeah. Playing like a dragon and file fantasy back to back, it leads to a sort of sedentary existence that is maybe not conducive to getting out and about. Someone in a square edix, Enoch's shareholder meeting last year popped in to ask about a Xenogier's remaster or remake just randomly. Was that you, Matt?

Someone just crashed the shareholder meeting. No comment. The answer was, we will refrain from sharing information about new titles, but we are considering various ideas within the company and hope that you will look forward to forthcoming announcements. Very revealing. Sorry, they didn't give you more, but thanks for asking the question. Charity, anything you would want to nominate?

Two words. Old millennials will know. Only old millennials will understand this. only for old millennials. Paraside Eve. Come on. Oh, that's a good one. Paraside Eve, bro. Like, one of those games, too, that like we were talking about kind of the era of games where, you know, sure, they're like works of art, but they definitely came from a time when it's like, we're first making like 3D games and it's just stuff feels rough, right? And it's, it's sometimes I don't like when people talk about stuff that way because it's like, yeah,

I like, look, I like playing even the original Final Fantasy 7. I don't care that it's rough. I don't care that cloud looks like Legos. You know what I mean? It's still a great game. But something like Parasite Eve, which is like you can't really play now and a game that did even at the time have kind of like a lot of roughness to it, but it has such a good vibe like Parasite Eve with with the kind of gloss right and the kind of sauce of remake rebirth type character models and stuff in environments.

Bro, don't even get me a start. Like, yeah, somebody asked that at a shareholder, you know, and the investor call. I want to hear the parasite you question on the investor call. And then I'm going to start doing push-ups, you know? There's nothing else to live for, except for remakes of our childhood favorites. That's what's keeping us going.

NBA jam. He's on fire. Let's go. There's more to the character of Sean Camp than we've been allowed to. Yeah, there are so many candidates. And in some cases, I would settle for just having remasters available because sometimes even the remasters are very difficult to play. And once you start getting into emulation,

I mean, look, you can talk about other Final Fantasy games that could get the Final Fantasy 7 treatment for one thing. We don't even have to range far afield from this franchise. But I guess I would go with, and this is never going to happen. I mean, I was thinking of maybe likelier candidates. You know, Super Metroid turns 30 this month. Maybe that's an example of, do we even need a remake? It holds up so well.

And that's often the case with the 2D 16-bit S&ES era is that it holds up better than the first fours into 3D. But my dream game would be Skies of Arcadia. I knew it. I know it's not going to happen. because there just aren't enough of us out there. But that is my favorite RPG of all time. And we were eating well during that period. You know, that was 2000.

I guess Xenogiers was 98, right? I was thinking of Grandia 2 from that Dreamcast era. Final Fantasy 10 was like a year after that. I mean, those were good times for RPGs. Not that they're not good times now. I don't want to wallow in the past, but it was a great past. Skies of Arcadia, that's another one. where there was a spruced up, slightly improved version for GameCube,

but that is more than 20 years old at this point. And it's pretty impossible to play. Like, you can emulate it. I really wanted my wife to play Skies last year, and I eventually resorted to just going and digging my Dreamcast out of storage. One of my childhood consoles that I could not bring myself to part with because I just have such fun feelings about the Dreamcast. And I went and found it in a big box at my mom's house.

that she's been begging me to clear out or auction off forever. And I brought it home and I got an adapter so I could hook up the Dreamcast to my TV and we were playing skies. And it was still good. But man, if we got a full Skies of Arcadia remake, it doesn't have to be three different games, but just give me that full aerial combat in beautiful spruced up graphics or even some of the improvements that were made for the GameCube version. Because it's expensive. I still had my original Dreamcast discs, but it's tough to find now. You can emulate it, but that's always kind of complicated.

So, Skies of Arcadia, there are dozens of us asking and demanding. Great music, too. I'd love to hear new renditions of that soundtrack. Great music, and that's one thing that the GameCube version sort of screwed up. It was, like, compressed, kind of. And so you have to choose between, do I want the GameCube version that has, like, fewer random encounters and other improvements, but the music doesn't sound as good. Give me a best of both worlds.

And some of the people who made Skies also worked on Panzer Dragoon Saga, which of course would be another great one. I went to great lengths to play that game years ago, but it's also pretty much inaccessible. And there are rumors about the source code possibly being lost. So maybe it's impossible to remake anyway. Sega, just dive deep into your archives. Lately, they've gotten on board and been like, we have all this valuable IP. Maybe we should make something of it. Maybe make a new Skies of Arcadia.

Do it. Please. All right, everyone, let's mozy. Chadley is Colin, so we've got to go. We will probably return to this game on a future episode. Maybe we will talk in greater detail about the ending after everyone has gotten to it. But for now, Matt, Charity, thanks for Lending Me, your synergy skills. Woo.

Thanks for having this. Thanks to Devin Ronaldo for producing this episode and to our Juno Ramcapal for his senior management. Butmash will be back later this month. Stay tuned to the Ringerverse feed for the Verses and more in the meantime, and email us at Ringervorcegaming at gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Thanks for supporting. And as long as you're with us, the unknown journey will continue. Friends, lend me your ears.

Our aspiring heroes and indomitable princess's tale draws to a close. Only one act remains. Harting is indeed such sweet sorrow. But as they say, all good things must cover. to an end. Though it is our wish to this tale remain with you long after we are gone.