It’s no secret that Final Fantasy is one of my favourite franchises (lets not talk about FF16 right now though, I currently have no desire to finish it) and I wrote a few years ago now about my experience playing FF7R when it first released on PS4. Fresh information has been streaming through about the highly anticipated FF7 Rebirth coming in February 2024 so I thought not would be an excellent time to refresh my memory on the gameplay of FF7R and finally get around to completing the Intermission Yuffie episode. I’ve still got Crisis Core Reunion to play and with no knowledge of Crisis Core whatsoever I feel I need to give that the attention it deserves to be completely up to date with everything and ready for whatever FF7 Rebirth throws at me.
Spending dedicated one-on-one time with most party members really helps you get to know them as you play FF7R.
I’ve played through the game again and it’s brought back many treasured memories of the countless replays of the original and the amount of times I did actually play through FF7R on the PS4 and then again on the PS5 when I got that version for free. I did quickly become pretty engrossed with FF14 not long after getting the PS5 though so everything kind of got put on the back burner. Now I’m kinda waiting for Dawntrial and have played through several Trails games I thought revisiting FF7R to get caught up again would help reinvigorate my excitement for the release of Rebirth in February. And I am SO excited for that game.
I’ve now completed FF7R again on PS5 and will be taking advantage of the chapter selection mode that becomes available after completing the game for the first time to grab a few more PS5 trophies. I’m halfway through the Yuffie episode too and have Crisis Core Reunion ready to go after that. I feel a lot better knowing what I do know about FF7 Rebirth and that the second installment of the games is going to take us exploring all the way through to The Forgotten City. The announcement trailer showed some of the Weapons which look glorious as I knew they would. Fighting them in FF7 was a pretty spectacular moment, and the sidequest in FF14 showing the Weapons (and getting small PTSD after my first EX trial in FF14) and getting to fight them alongside friends was a cool moment. I can’t wait to see how the Weapons will be utilised in FF7R whether that’s in Rebirth or the installment that follows. If we are keeping the R theme will it be FF7 Revelations or something?
Ah Reno – the character that taught me I have a thing for red haired, snarky, JRPG men… *sigh*
FF7R made me cry, again, probably. I’m sure I cried many times the first time I played it both from the overwhelm of finally getting it in my hands to all those beautifully harrowing moments that caught my attention the first time around. I have come to realize in this playthrough just how much I love each and every character in FF7’s world. People are always pitting Tifa and Aerith against each other for being the ‘better’ female lead but I felt a real strong sense of sisterhood between the two of them. I loved that. I love Tifa’s strength and quiet resolve, I love Aerith for her compassion, kindness and optimism. They are both fantastic characters. Playing as Yuffie for the first time reminded me just how much I love her character in FF7. I ALWAYS did everything I could to get her as a party member early on in the original game to have her for as long as possible. She’s cute, angry, small and clumsy – everything I love in her archetype of character and I can not wait to see how she slots in with the rest of the FF7R characters.
I’m really looking forward to the introduction of other characters and party members through FF7 Rebirth
I haven’t finished the intermission episode yet but Yuffie and Sonon’s relationship at this point has had my laughing. Yuffie is exactly the sort of character I love to play; completely chaotic but with a good heart and doing things with what she believes to be the best intentions. You already get a glimpse of the strained relationship she has with her dad who a lot of people respect. She’s got a bright and sunny disposition and she fights like a complete badass. Strong Estelle Bright energy – an unrelated female protagonist from Trails in the Sky but that lovable hotheaded chaotic energy is exactly the sort of female character I love. Yuffie is going to bring some great energy and interactions in Rebirth. Sonon balances her character pretty well although seems to have taken the ‘big brother’ role and whilst he kind of goes along with what Yuffie is doing and saying he’s also very much muttering ‘why me’ along the way.
Replaying FF7R and reminding myself how weapons upgrade and how to use things like materia and summons alongside remembering that each party member has a unique style to their fighting gets me excited for FF7 Rebirth and the party compositions and synergised attacks to come. I’m really excited to get all the party members together and really see how the grow and develop together in this new version of Final Fantasy 7. Despite my initial reservations about the game being solely based in Midgar that doesn’t mean it’s lacking in depth or emotive story topics. The development and expansion of the starting city really deserves credit because even though some areas of the game do feel a little bit tedious, they are still done well. Playing FF7R again I knew I wasn’t excited about going through the Sewers and then the Train Graveyard again but since playing I have come to realize part of the reason I didn’t enjoy them is because you are at such a rush to get back to base at that point and it sort of feels like you’re blocked.
My replay of FF7R was enjoyable, emotional and has certainly got me hyped up for the next installment in February.
I first starting playing FFXIV in May 2021 so technically it’s been over two years since I began and my character has been through a fair amount of changes during that time. I have been through a fair amount of changes in that time in my personal life as well so it’s been kind of a mixed bag. FFXIV was never a game I was really interested but being one of the lucky few to manage to secure getting a PS5 back then and in the midst of a global pandemic I thought it would be a good idea to try.
I’ve written a few blog posts on my time playing FFXIV because in those two years this game has taken up a huge portion of my life. I’ve tried to do a lot of things from doing the obvious main scenario quests to joining FC’s to housing, crafting and raiding. Some of that has been more successful than others. The biggest difference was someone like me, a usually solo gamer that had a lot of love for other Final Fantasy games, trying to play an MMORPG. The social aspect of the game was daunting enough for me to google ‘how much can I solo whilst playing FFXIV’ and it turns out quite a lot.
Playing FFXIV as a Sprout on Louisoix
I had no idea why I ended up on Louisoix as my server of choice but I am glad that I did because it’s what has allowed me to make the friends I have made whilst playing FFXIV. Originally thinking I wanted to play as a Viera because of Fran from FFXII and finding a very limited amount of hairstyles actually lead me to creating my character as a maximum height AuRa because they looked like small dragons. She had pink hair and my starting job as an arcanist dictated my starting city as Limsa Lominsa which I have since learned has a reputation for being a place for a lot of very interesting conversations.
I knew absolutely nothing about this game at all. I was playing FFXIV on console and found the controls to be confusing. I didn’t know how to access other parts of my UI – the chat box for one – and I didn’t really know what to do. This lead to me basically opening up a lot of quests at once and becoming very overwhelmed. I thought why not try and level my character out in the wilds of La Noscea when I was quested with killing some ladybirds for my job role quest but didn’t understand how job specific abilities worked for a long time and instead would just press ‘square’ and then ‘attack’. Auto-attack damage in this game is not very good, your abilities actually make quite a difference I have since found out.
I remember one morning at about 11am I was trying to enter the first dungeon which, at the time, didn’t have duty support and I had absolutely no luck getting in to it as an arcanist DPS player. So I once again turned to google of which the answer to beating dungeon queue’s was to do so as a tank or a healer. Healing still to this day does not appeal to me and so my option was left to tank. More googling leads to ‘Marauder’ is a tank class in FFXIV which also started in Limsa Lominsa so I went back and I picked up that job and I decided okay well I guess back to levelling again which meant back to killing ladybirds. Although, not auto attacking. I did thankfully do that with my abilities.
Tanking gets you into dungeons faster but maybe learn what that means first…
I will say right now, as a non-sprout and official holder of a burger king mentor crown that I am in August 2023 a fairly competent tank. I say this because potentially some of the below will instill fear and terror as you read what I was like and that I truly understand to my very core what Tankxiety is like when playing FFXIV. I know what it is like to be put off tanking and I feel like I should offer some reassurance that, whilst I make mistakes plenty of times, I am now confident enough to tank most content in this game, that I did get better. We all, however, start somewhere and this is how my decision to beat dungeon queue’s didn’t go as well as I would have liked at first.
My knowledge of being a ‘tank’ class was literally they have more defense than others. It wasn’t ‘I should be leading the charge’ in a dungeon and taking all of the damage and excuse me but what the fuck is emnity and why do I want it? Did I do the ‘hall of novice’ quests before attempting any dungeons? No…absolutely not. I didn’t even have half of my abilities because I didn’t know they were locked behind job quests until I eventually went back to them towards the end of A Realm Reborn were I was well over level 40. I even did the unthinkable shame inducing thing of entering a dungeon without having my jobstone saved on my gearset.
There were, I think, three very specific occasions that taught me to be a better tank on my then chosen main class which started as Marauder and then specialises into Warrior at level 30. The first was the gauntlet for any sprout tank or healer known as Aurum Vale in which some very kind and helpful player literally told me how to use tank stance and what I was supposed to do as a tank in a non condescending way. The second actually was one of the things that lead me to stop playing the job and seriously looking for a DPS class to change to instead and that was being told how stupid I was for using Holmgang at the start of the fight. To which, yes, it is retrospectively a stupid thing to do. Because what I was doing was just pressing ALL my mitigation buttons on cooldown. That was, indeed, not correct.
The third occasion was when I was finally confident enough to learn how to play Warrior properly and try again after finishing the MSQ at level 80 and going on to play my favoured and main job now, Machinist -which has become a running joke to myself really I do play well enough to sometimes steal enmity and thus, tank without any of those defensive buffs, or if a tank dies, I am often high enough on the enmity list to be the next one to unintentionally provoke the boss. Anyway, the third occasion was what I fondly think of as a Warrior masterclass from someone in my free company at the time that did actually know what they were doing and spent a good portion of an afternoon helping me.
Speaking of joining a Free Company…
I have now been in four free companies since I started playing FFXIV. The first one I was in for well over a year, if not around 14 months after a randomly thrown invite way back in my ARR days. I remember accepting the invite and then seeing welcome messages popping up in the chat box which before then had been silent and kind of ignored so I didn’t know how to type in it and didn’t really ever say anything but did start seeing the same names creep up often enough that I began to get a sense of familiarity. Eventually, I think about two weeks later, I accidentally pressed the gamepad button on my controller which did get me into the chat box and I saw I was able to bring up a keyboard and did say hello and explained that I didn’t know how before and which probably made me come across very scatterbrained.
I used many a wrong abbreviation for things when I thought people were talking about things but they actually weren’t. One occasion being asking for help with DR – because I thought that meant ‘duty roulette’ not ‘Delebrum Reginae’ which is something that was relevant at the time and something people did weekly that I didn’t know about or even have unlocked. Three people agreed but it wasn’t until it clicked with someone that I wasn’t asking for actual DR content who explained to me what delebrum reginae actually was. Two of those people did stick with me and do a levelling dungeon because I was trying to get my machinist levelled enough to carry on with the main scenario quests at that point. The other person promptly left which is completely understandable but did leave me feeling pretty embarrassed.
There were several other occasions like this. I was eager to do a lot of content and events that the Free Company I was in put up but I didn’t really know how to be a competent player. I didn’t know how to play my jobs. I had not, in fact, read my tool tips. I think my incompetence but willing to join in kind of nature sort of gave people the impression that I was a bit ditzy and maybe even made people feel a bit sorry for me. The thing is at the time I didn’t know I was doing the wrong things and when someone did tell me I was horribly mortified. Eventually though I learned a lot from the first free company I was in and I did a lot of fun things.
I did current level extreme trials and I was there experiencing all the hype with everyone during Endwalker’s release. I made friends, I attended in game weddings, I was invited to social events and in game parties. I had my own in game wedding too, which was a lot of fun. My friend and I decided to gift everyone with Morbol Seedlings which involved us chasing people around the chapel to give them something no one wanted. I was able to get my first taste of savage raiding with an FC static and I will tell you savage is an entirely different ball game to other content in FFXIV. I even lead my own events as an experienced player to help other people get clears on particular content.
Leaving an FC can be a really hard thing to do…
In the end, however, I did decide to move on from that Free Company. Initially I didn’t have much of a desire to join another as by that point I had joined a different static to do savage raiding with and I was kind of content to have some time away from an FC. However, one day out in the wild I was approached by another FC leader and did decide to give it a go. I am in that free company now and have been for some months but in the interim between joining last October and now I did end up changing servers and being part of my statics FC on Spriggan for a month. I then came back with the desire to start my own FC with some friends but it just wasn’t really the right thing for me to do.
I still have that FC on my Alt so I do get to learn how to do FC workshop stuff and still have everything set up so if we decided to give it another go in the future we could do. However I ended up returning to the Free Company I am part of now and an officer in so I have a level of responsibility and do get to join in and put on my own events.
…But I hope I’ve made some lifelong friends
There are people I speak to on a very regular basis and feel I’ve got to know well. As someone that was incredibly nervous about the social aspect when it came to playing FFXIV I’m glad I have tried to make friends. What may have started as helping out over time became gradually getting to know others better and in some cases has given me a chance to find other games through recommendations. It’s been fun just hanging out in game and showing off glamour to each other, it’s been nice to just have a chat amongst the content.
So what now?
I remember the launch up towards Endwalker really fondly and reading about everyone’s theories and excitement gave me a real buzz as a first time experiencing an expansion release. With FFXIV Dawntrail now being confirmed as releasing in Summer 2024 I do feel like it would be good tidy up a few things and step back a little so I can come back into the expansion feeling a lot less burned out. I wasn’t expecting such an emotional ride both in terms of gameplay and friendships. I wasn’t really expecting any form of personal development either which probably came alongside my Autism and ADHD diagnosis alongside the friends I’ve made who have been there for me.
So for now I’m going to step back from doing savage raiding and focus on the Endwalker extremes, a little bit of older relic farming and finally getting my Master Culinarian achievement.
FFXV is a bloody good game and I have loved playing it for the last couple of weeks. I mean, truly loved it. Final Fantasy has always been a big part of my life as a gamer and FFXV has not let me down. This has surpassed all of my expectations and has given me hope and perhaps a little insight on what to expect with the FFVII remake. I recently played World of Final Fantasy to help pass the time a little as I have been waiting for this for such a long time.
The only think I didn’t particularly enjoy was Chapter 13 and that’s because it was full of jump scares which did get me gasping…for normal people I’m sure this would be nothing but for me…no, that wasn’t my favourite part of the game but I did admire the darker side of it. In the chapter you’re at a pretty vulnerable position for a good part of it which is tough and the second time I played it through (yes, that’s right, I’ve gone through the story twice…) I found it easier as I had actually taken time to level up a bit – rookie mistake. You need to level grind in Final Fantasy games, it makes the end game easier and saves doing it all in the post game content.
The graphics are just stunning and the world map is absolutely huge, there is so much to discover which is good because the story mode is considerably shorter than previous games. This game relies on the post game content and sidequests to fill it out which I really enjoyed. FFXV was a welcome upgrade and combined the very best of 12 and 13 for me but it went right back to the original type of gameplay I enjoyed in the earlier games. I don’t want to give too much away really but FFXV is so much better than those two games.
The story is well thought out and has plenty of emotion. The story is pretty interactive too as you can make different decisions for the characters. You play as Prince Noctis and throughout the whole game you only control him and his actions however you do have three buddies teaming up with you to help with hunts and to progress the story. I really enjoyed the story, the characters were interesting and relatable. The villians were easy to hate too and the enemies provided plenty of challenges.
Combat is very different but I actually really enjoyed it all. Each character has a set of special moves for extra damage, a bit like limit breaks which I was happy to see return and for them to be easy to use was good. The game stops you relying on summons and magic to power through too which I really liked. Summons come when they want to really after you’ve met a certain amount of criteria in a battle like being low on HP or the battle taking too long but usually their attacks are pretty devastating to whoever you’re fighting. It was great to see the classic summons return for a different interpretation. I have to say I really liked Ifrit and I hope he stays like that from now on! Bahamut did not disappoint either. Magic can have a damaging effect on your allies and react differently depending on your environment however I liked being able to craft spells. There wasn’t a huge amount of boss fights throughout the main story but the ones you come across do provide a bit of a challenge. I didn’t find any too hard though and actually I believe the dungeon bosses are harder.
The environment really impressed me and it just made me excited. If this is what they’ve done now then I can’t wait to see what future Final Fantasy games hold. I can kind of see how they will make FFVII work now I’ve played this or at least how I would like it to play out. It was the first Final Fantasy game that I’ve played where I actually felt like I was in the world. It’s hard to explain but I guess it’s because things were more to scale than they have been before and you could see so much more.
I have just been really impressed and I have loved playing FFXV and I will continue to do so as there are more trophies to get and a pretty tough enemy to slay. You can grab Final Fantasy 15 on Amazon.
I love video games and I especially love the Final Fantasy series. During September I loved playing 13 and 13-2 again to get me back into things with the upcoming Final Fantasy 15 being released at the end of the month. However, in the middle of all this I had to get myself the day one edition of World of Final Fantasy.
World of Final Fantasy is a little different from the conventional games but it really reminds me of Kingdom Hearts with it’s style, character animation and original worlds and stories with the mash up of Final Fantasy characters. The key difference being that this follows the active time battle combat system that we’re used to seeing in Final Fantasy games.
The whole thing is really very cute. The characters can turn from Jiants to Lillikins which are chibi style animations. Even the monsters, known as Mirages, are cute. The game starts in Nine Wood Hills were twins Reyn and Lann finding out they are Mirage keepers and that they can head out into the world of Grymoire to collect Mirages to help them battle. The gameplay is pretty straight forward, simple and, in my eyes, classic to the older Final Fantasy games. Throughout the story we come to know characters from the older games and visit places that are familiar to those that are fans of the series.
Photo Credit: Gamespot.com
However, World of Final Fantasy is perfect for those that are a little younger and new to the series. The gameplay is very straightforward, the combat can be sped up or left at a pretty slow pace whilst learning the controls and the story is fairly lighthearted but with a darker plot being layered throughout. Evie and I have both really enjoyed playing the game and collecting lots of different Mirages.
One thing I really liked about this game was the addition of Anime style cut scenes, it was a really nice touch and made them really enjoyable to sit and watch. True to the franchise, there are a lot of cut scenes, some being fairly lengthy so it’s great to see these a little differently. I also really liked the addition of the Post Script – to avoid spoilers, I won’t go into it too much but when you think you’ve finished, you actually haven’t! Start to finish the game can easily rack up around 40 hours however, there are many mini adventures, a Colosseum and extra dungeons to complete where level grinding becomes necessary. This can extend gameplay by a fair few 20+ hours so expect a lot from this game. I found later on in the game a Multiplayer option was added which I’ve not tried yet but I think it’s a nice add on.
Overall World of Final Fantasy is a fun, relatively straight forward adventure for all to enjoy. World of Final Fantasy is available on Playstation 4 and PS Vita
