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Ah, the last FF game to actually move swiftly until FFXII. The menus and battles all flow so smoothly, and the environments all lean heavily on the music for atmosphere. It's funny how everyone talks about this game as the start of a new era, because to me it's always been the end of the old one. Look beyond the surface and it has way more in common with FFVI than FFVIII. FFVII was also my first anime, really. I still think it did a lot of things really inventively, and had a lot of heart for a blockbuster. We're all talking about how the whole game should have been Midgar, and it's true that I went into it expecting that to be the case and thinking the game would be a lot darker, but some of the later towns have a lot to recommend them.
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May 31, 2011 11:52
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Screaming Idiot posted:That reminds me, I read that Cloud's name was supposed to be Claude in the first place, but it was mistranslated. Same deal with the Aeris/Aerith thing. Just another shameless case of FFVII ripping off Star Ocean 2!
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May 31, 2011 12:31
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I think you got feet and meters swapped. I remember playing this part for the first time at a demo unit in Fred Meyer. That falling cutscene at the end made me think I'd done a branching path and was losing the game.
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May 31, 2011 17:52
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Azure_Horizon posted:I would argue FFIX very much relies on an environment-music connection. Moreso than VII, actually. Yeah, I keep blocking FFIX out of my memory because it was so good. It's easy to forget that the only rubbish FF games were really FFVIII and FFX, and I can even forgive a lot about the former. I never played FFXIII so it's not even on my radar. FFIX might have the best soundtrack in the entire series, but nobody will ever admit it. I guess that's fair, because part of its genius is how it uses motifs from the entire history of the series. Just like the game does. Name That Cuss posted:"Zambozay, my brain musta' been eatin' a sandwich! You lucky mango!" I don't know if anyone here has heard the Lambda Expressway, but in my first playthrough I named Barret "BTB".
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Jun 1, 2011 06:30
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Elentor posted:I'm not sure why someone would say "nobody" when the majority of the people in this forums seems to love FFIX's soundtrack above others. Well, the most common comment I hear about it is "I guess it was okay. I don't really remember any of the tracks, so that should tell you something." Anyone who forgets You're Not Alone is a sociopath. FFX makes me nerd-rage. It's the opposite of what I want from a Final Fantasy game, and I've never understood the love. I do love that we've all done the inevitable rundowns of our favorite parts of the series and it hasn't turned into full-blown arguments, though. I think Elentor should get a Nobel Peace Prize or something.
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Jun 1, 2011 10:17
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Elentor posted:Also we don't talk about FFXII here, the game never existed. Move along. But FFXII is exactly what I want out of a modern-day RPG. It's my absolute favorite game of all time. Seriously. I remember when a friend of mine owed me some scratch, and he paid me by giving me his copy of Xenogears. I played the whole thing through and gave it back to him. It's only deep if you're in high school, and only novel if you've never watched any anime. But I'll try my best to be fair: The music was phenomenal, the desert towns peerless, the combat system pretty fun to play around with, and the mood in the early game of uncanniness is extraordinarily well realized. Also I love the blocky sprites for some reason. I actually even kind of liked the way the storytelling changed gears in Disc 2, even if it was a cop-out. The actual story is like a mummy with nothing inside it. Absolutely 100% rubbish, and yes I paid attention and understood all the  symbolism and it's still a waste of time.
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Jun 2, 2011 05:43
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Psion posted:I think the DSM-IV has entries on people like you. I can find moments of technical limitation or overt fuckery on Square's part (like Vaan, obviously), but beyond that I literally can't find anything to even dislike about the game. And I hate MMOs. I had to stay out of the FFXII LP thread because I knew it'd break my heart to see everyone hate on it.
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Jun 2, 2011 05:50
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Schwartzcough posted:Well, and Vaan really isn't the main character. He's the perspective character, but past the first couple hours the game forgets he even exists. In terms of story importance, Ashe is really the only contender for Main Character. Basch is the main character, but it's true that Ashe's story drives the themes and events. Basch has the important perspective, though. And yeah, Vaan is the cameraman.
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Jun 2, 2011 06:15
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resurgam40 posted:I don't hate FFXII... Awesome. I think they pulled off Vaan more gracefully than anyone will admit, but I definitely keep a save right after Balthier shows up for when I replay the game. Also, gently caress Star Wars. It can loving Get Right the gently caress Out of my video games, and the fact that I love FFXII's story so much despite all the Star Wars is a minor miracle I guess. The things that put it permanently and distantly at the top of my list, though, are the subordination of every genre trope in the service of establishing and conveying the exploration of a world, and the ceaseless dedication to not wasting the player's time. Dialogue is subtle and succinct, there are no lengthy transitions between scenes or game modes, and I can honestly say that almost every second of both of my 100-plus-hour save files was spent actually playing the game. This is what we've been missing since FFVII. I hate the random spawns and loot farming, though. I don't understand why Matsuno's so into awesome equipment being frustrating to get. Schwartzcough posted:On repeat plays of the game, Vaan kind of grew on me. For the first couple hours he's all "rah rah rah, hate the Empire, my brother is DEAD, rah!" but shortly afterwards he comes out and says "yeah, I was acting childish. I was having a rough time coming to grips with my parents being dead, then my only sibling going and getting killed and having my country taken over, leaving me a directionless penniless orphan in a land that just had its freedom and identity stolen. But I'm ready to move on." After that, he's just acting like a pretty average teenager eager to see the world and go on adventures. He gets a lot of hate, and he's kind of a dumbass, but he's not nearly as irritating as Tidus or Squall in my opinion. I like how they use him and Penelo in scenes with Lharsa. That's about where his usefulness ends.
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Jun 2, 2011 06:35
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My main problem with Tidus is that he basically takes advantage of Yuna in that lake. Really twisted. It's like after FFVII they forgot how to make a love story interesting. FFVI and FFVII both had really interesting relationships between the characters, but they threw it all out for contrived bullshit and instant character turnarounds. Rinoa dry humps Squall and suddenly he's Rico Suave.
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Jun 2, 2011 08:23
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Cuchulain posted:FFXII is alright, but Basch as the main character makes the game infinitely better, makes Gabranth a much more compelling villain, makes Gabranth being on the cover make sense, and it's goddamn sad they crammed Vaan and Penelo into the main character slots. But that's not the real problem with the game. The real problem? The MarquissssssssssssssssssSSSSS. THE S IS SILENT. STOP SAYS MARQUISSSSS AUGH Only in French. The British pronunciation doesn't have a silent S, and the game uses British English. Deal with it.
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Jun 2, 2011 08:31
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I also like how Tifa is trying desperately to get Cloud to keep helping them, because she knows Barret will gently caress it up on his own.
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Jun 2, 2011 19:24
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Chip Cheezum posted:I don't know about you guys, but I'm totally getting the PC version of this game so I can finally play the game with the voice acting mod. I'm going to go against the flow here and say this isn't nearly as bad as I expected. Maybe because I was expecting "YouTube LP Bad" and only got "fan project bad". I stopped watching at Barret, though.
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Jun 2, 2011 23:03
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Korremar posted:Quite a few pages late, but unfortunately, this is almost a thing. God, this series of books is the worst. At least they mostly sit together on the shelf, but it tends to be right in the middle of legitimate books that I want to read. I thumbed through that one to see if they make a thing out of a character in FF7 being named after my favorite philosopher, but I don't remember what I found (he even talks about strife a lot, so Cloud's name is obviously symbolism, right?).
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Jun 3, 2011 10:05
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Elentor posted:I find Aeris to be one of the most realistic JRPG characters I've seen, all things considered. Of course none of that applies to the EU. I'm glad to hear you say this. As you said before, Tifa and Aerithu get their personalities switched in people's memories purely because of their appearances. Scenes like this are why the game is so much fun to replay, because you pick up on a lot of nuances that show they weren't just making the story up as they went along. It's nothing huge or plot-related, just a bunch of context for understanding character interactions. In some ways FF7 is like Tifa, in that it's remembered as popular for shiny graphics and easy cliches even though it was something earnest and deep all along. It's too bad we'll never see a remake that helps the subtle greatness shine through and tones down the anime, since we're guaranteed to see it go the other direction. Also, even though I'm used to "Aeris" I always thought it was annoying to do a possessive with her name. "Aerith's" rolls off the tongue better, even if "Aerith" doesn't.
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Jun 3, 2011 22:23
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Super Ninja Fish posted:You also have to give Square credit for making Aeris 22 years old instead of 16. She's older than the hero. Aeris is one of the few JRPG characters where the "add 5 years" rule wouldn't work. This isn't really true, especially for Tifa.
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Jun 4, 2011 19:14
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Crowetron posted:I've said it before, but the one Genesis cutscene worth watching is the one where he starts reciting that stupid play for the umpteenth time and even Sephiroth rolls his eyes and is all "Again, dude?" Well, that's because the characters in that game are just Hyper versions of the characters in FFVII. It's like hunting for the unmoved mover in RPG cliches. I can't explain more without going into huge spoilers, but they just repeated every character motivation and trait on a more extreme level.
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Jun 4, 2011 20:29
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I have to jump in to defend the game's dialogue problems for a sec. You just have to remember the context for RPGs when this game came out, particularly FFVI and Chrono Trigger. Both games have a lot of inter-character and character-specific dialogue for scenes, but only as flavor/easter egg kind of stuff. Back then it was something extra, and the whole party really only assembled for major cutscenes. Hell, the whole last half of FFVI has almost no character-specific dialogue just because of the scale of it, and CT only has a couple of scenes I can think of where everyone is assembled. It just wasn't part of the storytelling yet, and if you think about it most of the first disc of FFVII actually has a lot of scenes with the whole party in them. It's one of the few things a remake of this game would actually have the chance to improve (except we all know better).
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Jun 5, 2011 01:22
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Super Ninja Fish posted:Except for the beginning, Chrono Trigger's really less about the main cast and more about the other characters of the world and the plot. The main character doesn't even talk and the game doesn't even suffer for it. Around the middle of the game, you're concerned about Janus, Schala, the Queen, the three Gurus, Dalton, the story behind the Mammoth Machine, the Ocean Palace, Lavos, the Earthbound people vs the Zeal people... I guess if all a game has is an active party and you're really pedantic you can make this argument. Illusion of Gaia was so bizarrely ahead of its time in ways I won't enumerate that I think it counts as an outlier, especially since I'm mostly just thinking of Square here. I dunno about Lunar, but I think my point still stands, especially since FFVII has a lot more whole-party conversations in Disc One alone than you're giving it credit for.
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Jun 5, 2011 04:48
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I don't think it's fair to call the terrorists who are waging war on the energy method that powers Midgar hypocrites for living in Midgar. They have to in order to do their job. As for all the TVs in Tifa's bar, you could argue it's to not stand out, but I don't know if that much thought really went into it.
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Jun 6, 2011 02:54
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Azure_Horizon posted:Sometimes sacrifices are necessary to ensure the prosperity of future generations... at least when it comes to protecting the environment. I wouldn't use this line of reasoning anywhere else. There are things in this world which should not exist, and must be purged. Yeah, what you do at the start of the game is pretty hosed up.
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Jun 6, 2011 06:18
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The first time I played FFVIII I was convinced it was some kind angelic blessing on mankind, because I'd been waiting so long for it and it obviously had to be. Then I played the PC version like a thousand times my freshman year of college and grew to hate it deeply for everything it did wrong (which, let's be honest, is quite a lot - which is probably the game's coolest aspect). It wasn't until my roommate made me play it again years later that I remembered all the good stuff about it. I agree that it's weird to like FFVIII more than FFIX, but neither game is worth a holy war. They're so different that it basically divides into "thrilled by audacious departures from everything the genre holds sacred" and "comforted by a return to classic settings and mood". Tetra Master would have been way better if they told you the rules and it didn't have a random element, though. Maybe I should replay FFIX and actually know how it works.
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Jun 10, 2011 10:27
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Man, how can anyone hate FFVII? It's like you said, the movie is so extremely not as bad as everyone expected that it had to put a smile on your face. It's finding excuse after excuse to go over the top. The only gripes I really have about it are that some of the coolest slow-mo shots from the previews got put back in normal time, and that the music during the church fight is the worst fight music I've ever heard. I bought and enjoyed the FFVII piano album back in the day, but why the hell would you use this for a god-damned fistfight?
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Jun 13, 2011 00:49
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Ragequit posted:I can't speak for everyone, but I thought the part where that guy gets his rear end kicked by that other person, only to have his phone ring with a victory fanfare ringtone from under a pile of pews, was hilarious. It was like a mid-aughts zeitgeist.
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Jun 13, 2011 04:13
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NatashaQuick posted:Because this is fight music from the game, played by a piano. Listen to it. You're not reading my words. I like the song, and I know it's a fight scene, but that particular rendition is poo poo for fight music.
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Jun 13, 2011 08:36
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Farseli posted:Now if the fight took place at Marlene's piano recital...then we can talk. I would buy the BluRay of that.
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Jun 14, 2011 06:38
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PunkBoy posted:Man, I thought the piano version of the battle music was awesome. Elentor put it best on why I enjoyed watching AC. It's dumb, but it's so drat faithful, my inner fanboy can't help but keep watching. Seeing moves from the game done in the movie makes me really want a remake. Yeah, I absolutely adored that they literally put Cloud's limit breaks in the movie, along with a new one for his stupid new sword(s).
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Jun 14, 2011 07:01
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The disc changes are all at the same times as the PC version, in case that joke happens again. Also, I noticed you failed to end the Reno fight before he pulls off his gimmick. Worst LP ever, immersion ruined, voted 1. Can the next thing you do be to change the menus back to solid blue?
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Jun 15, 2011 01:34
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Elentor posted:FINE I'll do a video of me beating him before he pulls off his gimmick. It's just, there's no real creative way to do it. You want to make that tally as impressive as possible by the end of the game, don't you?
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Jun 15, 2011 01:44
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Gharbad the Weak posted:Why are we spoiling summons? Oh well. Link it with Elemental and put it on your armor. GG. As for Nomura, I've always been in the camp that his FFVII designs were perfectly sensible and adequate. They certainly worked for FFVII being the first foray into a more realistic look, but with very little capacity for actual visual detail. What I'm saying is the designs are boring. They're really simple, basic character designs that don't gently caress around in territory the PSX couldn't handle. At the time it was a brave new world, and it's a drat shame they kept Nomura around for any longer than the brief window in which he worked out.
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Jun 17, 2011 10:06
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Bocc Kob posted:I dunno, the game did make a point of showing most of the characters to be incompetent at what they did. Quistis was a bad teacher, Seifer failed the SEED exam multiple times, Laguna didn't know how to do anything as President, Rinoa was a bad terrorist, Irvine and Zell were douchebags nobody liked, Headmaster Cid handed over control of the whole garden as soon as something important happened, etc. They only really got anywhere because they were good at killing people. VIII was awesome in its honesty. Some of them were pretty bad at that even, story-wise (Irvine chokes!). It's a great explanation of why Squall is such a dick, actually: he's just salty that he's the only one who gets anything done.
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Jun 18, 2011 01:32
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Elentor posted:I could not sleep peacefully at night, so here we go: Thread redeemed, although I fairly lost it when I saw that you were using Climhazzard and a suplex to make it happen. Good show! Is that canon, or are you going back to level 12 for the LP?
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Jun 18, 2011 10:20
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AndwhatIseeisme posted:So when I started replaying this game, I decided that I wasn't going to grind levels or limits or AP, since I always end up doing that and I wanted a bit of a challenge this time. Flash forward to me having just finished the optional area near the end of Disc 1, and my characters are all over level 40, I have three characters with all of their limits and the others all have their second lvl 3 limits, and I have quake 3, bio 3, fire 3, ice 3, lightening 3, regen, esuna, mbarrier, and a whole bunch of other spells that I shouldn't have for probably half a disc longer. I don't know what is is about this game, but apparently I can't not powerlevel when I play it. I think it's something about the great music and actually quick pace of the gameplay, but leveling up in FFVII is really soothing. That's probably why everyone went so crazy in power-leveling this game, and goes a long way toward explaining everyone's fondness for it. DocFrance posted:Do you guys think we could take the non-FF7 discussion (and probably some of the FF7 discussion) to the Final Fantasy thread? That would be super-cool I think. Games megathreads are no fun to follow, and everyone's been mostly well behaved for the last couple of pages. We honestly just need more updates if people aren't going to go crazy talking about the series as a whole. I think it's impressive that Final Fantasy games manage to provoke discussion of one another despite not technically being connected.
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Jun 19, 2011 09:44
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Landwhale posted:Isn't that just a tech demo of the N64 using FFVI? It's clearly Locke, Terra, and Shadow. Actually, that video has nothing to do with an N64. It was a demo they made for the Silicon Graphics workstations of the day, and it had crazy interface ideas like "draw a pentagram with the mouse to summon Bahamut". When video of it got out people said "this is what FFVII might have looked like on an N64" and the idea stuck.
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Jun 21, 2011 06:38
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OatmealRaisin posted:One of my favorite mods for the PC is the one that replaces the low-poly models with the battle models. Sure, it sometimes got a little jarring to see a lovingly rendered Cloud standing next to an NPC made of about four polygons, but it was a small price to pay I think. How do they animate?
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Jun 21, 2011 20:39
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Gotta agree that Aeris's mom's flashback is amazing. They do interesting shot transitions and pans that travel through time. It was more direction than had ever been possible before in a simple dialogue scene, and it fit the music beautifully. And every single time I play this game, the first thing I do when I get out of Midgar and have a ton of poo poo to buy is sell all of my ethers. They're an amazing source of cash, and you'll probably never need any of them.
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Jun 22, 2011 07:25
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Left Ventricle posted:Defeating Dias in the tournament is impossible. It's not that he has a mountain of HP or anything like that. He is programmed to be stronger than Claude no matter what and take 0 damage from everything except a Magic Rock. I sharked Claude to have 9999 STR and CON, and still couldn't touch Dias. Meanwhile, he two-shotted Claude, who had over 10k defense. It was bullshit. I thought someone managed to beat him legit using an instant death ability the programmers didn't compensate for. Anyway, I'm blown away by the things I'm learning here. I didn't know about going back to Don Corneo's mansion, nor did I know about the awesome equipment you can steal. I didn't even know it was possible to replace the Buster Sword in Midgar at all!
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Jun 23, 2011 06:14
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Arujei posted:I'm just surprised that Square would name one of their villains after one of the more influential German philosophers. The only surprise is that he isn't the hero, then.  And yeah, it's probably because his reputation is "that Nazi philosopher" instead of anything to do with anything he said. It's worth noting that he didn't really say anything that you can apply to FFVII.
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Jun 25, 2011 10:42
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Arujei posted:Sad. I would have been pleasantly surprised if someone had mentioned how Mako reactors are a part of the Enframing worldview, or some other shoutout to The Question Concerning Technology. You're right, of course. The environmentalist side of FFVII would be very Heideggerian if written a bit differently. The whole thing with the Ancients and so on is just too explicitly spiritual. But that's what Dune is for. I loved the bike minigame! The controls weren't bad once you got used to the timing, and the way the bikes are colored after the light cycles from Tron always made me smile. Plus the sparks look awesome. And while I love Midgar and think the game would have been really interesting if it had taken place entirely in Midgar, I think everyone should stop selling the rest of the game short. It's really nice to get the chance to explore this incredible planet you're supposed to be saving, and they did fill it with fascinating locations. It's just too bad there aren't really any other cities anywhere close to Midgar, because that would have been awesome.
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Jun 25, 2011 21:38
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Yeah, looting Kalm is fun as hell and the flashbacks are all great. I used to replay them over and over again.
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Jun 26, 2011 10:28
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