Yeah definitely a rerelease, not a remake. Still, I'm sure I'll buy it. Loved that game.

Cloud Saves. I see what you did there.

Video's narrator says "Download and play the quintessential Final Fantasy experience today"

Followed by a title screen that reads COMING SOON. Nicely done.

Fletch wrote on Jul 4, 2012, 19:55:
Does every fucking game have to have fucking achievements? How about the achievement of finishing the game? Like every other achievement in every game with achievements, it won't count for shit in your pathetic life, but you probably need SOMETHING to feel good about yourself that you can twitter to the fellow losers who follow you.

Anyhoo... can't wait to play it.

You and I will see the whole "achievement" thing as laughable, being hard core gamers, but apparently this entire concept of "achievements" seems to have worked on the masses.

It gives people something to strive for, which in turn keeps them hooked on the game.

It's a shame that Sega lost the source code to Panzer Dragoon Saga because that was the high water mark for Japanese RPGs. That game blew the 32-bit Final Fantasy games out of the water and is far more deserving of a remake than FFVII.

I'll echo everyone that says 2 and 3 (or 4 and 6, depending on how you look at it) were the best.

It was like a drop off a cliff after that for me. I liked 1. I liked 2 more. I played a good amount of Legends 1 and Legends 2 on Gameboy (both ended up too big for their own good.) I played the crap out of Adventures on Gameboy (so good!) I absolutely loved 3, and I loved Secret of Mana, which was like a bigger, deeper Zelda.

And then I stopped caring. I think I realized that all of these games were just too big for me. They'd become 80-120 hours of pushing forward in a linear way with random fights. Halfway through I'd get tired of time-wasting fighting and just want to push through the plot, but couldn't. If I put it down for more than a couple of weeks I wouldn't be able to pick it up because who could remember where I was and what I was doing. As opposed to Western RPGs, which were more open ended, allowed me more opportunity to avoid stupid fighting, and could be picked up and played easier because it was harder to inadvertently backtrack.

Never played 7. Sometime between 3 and 7 I decided I hated japanese RPGs. I stand by that still.

Materia system = win. Also, I vividly remember the floating casino.

I played all the FFs released in the US up to and including VIII, none after that. I remember VII fondly, but I'll echo others and say while I might have had some interest in a remake, I don't have any interest in a re-release.

Pigeon wrote on Jul 4, 2012, 12:52:
As others have said this is basically a re-release. It just uses modern graphics processors to smooth out the jaggies, and they've slapped in some higher rez cut-scenes. Its seems new features include Saving to THE CLOUD (always on DRM?), achievements and easy-cheat mode.

No, no, your saving to CLOUD, his big sword will hold just about anything.

I was just mentioning that although the FF fans generally consider 7 to be the weakest, it was my favorite. When it comes to JRPG's, you either dig their distinct style or you don't. Graphics are basically irrelevant; with JRPG's it's all about the art direction. FF7 was the first one with 3D models, so of course it looked bad and aged ungracefully. It was the art that I found so appealing, and I'm pleased as punch that a version playable on modern machines is about to be released.

Jerykk wrote on Jul 4, 2012, 19:57:
This is going to look extremely bad if Square hasn't replaced the prerendered backgrounds and FMVs with HD versions. Those things looked terrible even when the game was released over a decade ago.

Yeah. I played it on the PC back then, and it already looked really dated.

If they remade all the graphics... well, no, I probably still wouldn't play it again. It's not a game, it's an interactive movie with an hour of interminable fights between each scene.

YAwwwn.

Ugh Square I used to get giddy with excitement hearing about your products as a child and now-a-days it seems that your new releases leave me with a terrible feeling that you aren't even the same company anymore and I should just erase you from my radar of good developers, and not give a FUCK about any "new" releases. How terribly sad your evolution has been since the 16 bit era.

PHJF wrote on Jul 4, 2012, 18:40:
You're the second person I've seen recently say Chrono Cross was *bad*. I've always considered it better than any Final Fantasy. When did it become cool to hate on CC???

People who wanted it to be as good as Chrono Trigger I guess? I dunno. I too had a lot of fun with CC, even if it was fairly different.

Dades wrote on Jul 4, 2012, 21:48:
With an old game like this it doesn't really matter because the content is set. I do miss games where you would find secrets instead of grinding dumb things for achievements though, I'd much rather find easter eggs and debug rooms than repeat an activity 1000 times so I can get a virtual back pat. I think I've done maybe a handful of truly interesting and fun achievements that are memorable. We're all wasting time gaming anyway but might as well make it interesting instead of repetitive.

I'm not so much interested in easter eggs or debug rooms - in fact I consider them immersion breaking - but I like random bonuses in obscure places.

As for achievements, most of the time I couldn't care less but occasionally I find them interesting. For instance, I was recently playing Civilization V again and started getting achievements I've not seen before - I quickly checked what they were and found myself getting sucked in. Beating the game on each difficulty level gets you an achieve; same with winning as each civ and with each victory type. Suddenly I found myself playing the game in an entirely different way and enjoying it a lot more.

But I couldn't care less about Microsoft achievement points system - why would I care if somebody has played more games and earned more points than me?

Rhino wrote on Jul 4, 2012, 20:57:
I don't understand the anger, here. I don't care for achievements either, though will often fulfill them through the course of my regular play. As I don't want to actively pursue them then I simply do not do so. That said, I'm not about to begrudge those that do given the hypocrisy that would be evident by my suggesting that pursuing them is ridiculous, but spending my free time playing games is not.

There was an interesting article from one of the Xbox Live developers back in 2009 about achievements. The short version is that people respond so well to the reward mechanism in achievements that games with them do better financially than games without them. This led to many developers actually structuring parts of their game around achievements to the point where Microsoft had to introduce stricter guidelines surrounding them. It might not directly affect you in an immediate sense but it definitely indirectly affects you.

With an old game like this it doesn't really matter because the content is set. I do miss games where you would find secrets instead of grinding dumb things for achievements though, I'd much rather find easter eggs and debug rooms than repeat an activity 1000 times so I can get a virtual back pat. I think I've done maybe a handful of truly interesting and fun achievements that are memorable. We're all wasting time gaming anyway but might as well make it interesting instead of repetitive.

nin wrote on Jul 4, 2012, 20:40:

Wow. You just killed all my interest in it. It's like a checklist of things I don't like.

Thanks?

Your welcome?

Fletch wrote on Jul 4, 2012, 19:55:
Does every fucking game have to have fucking achievements? How about the achievement of finishing the game? Like very other achievement in every game with achievements, it won't count for shit in your pathetic life, but you probably need to SOMETHING to feel good about yourself that you can twitter to the fellow losers who follow you.

Anyhoo... can't wait to play it.

I don't understand the anger, here. I don't care for achievements either, though will often fulfill them through the course of my regular play. As I don't want to actively pursue them then I simply do not do so. That said, I'm not about to begrudge those that do given the hypocrisy that would be evident by my suggesting that pursuing them is ridiculous, but spending my free time playing games is not.

PHJF wrote on Jul 4, 2012, 18:40:
You're the second person I've seen recently say Chrono Cross was *bad*. I've always considered it better than any Final Fantasy. When did it become cool to hate on CC???

I don't really get it either. It was no Chrono Trigger but it still did extremely well, gets put in plenty of peoples BEST RPGS OF ALL TIEMS lists and desire for a new title in the series hasn't waned at all.

It's at least more desirable than anything else Squeenix has been releasing in the last decade.

Kitkoan wrote on Jul 4, 2012, 20:22:
I have to admit, I was looking forward to this... until I saw it was

a) Not a remake but a re-release

b) Tied to their own unique store. I don't need yet another account to keep track of, I have enough of them. All this says is people are just trying to follow the EA model of "Well if that company can do their own store and maximize profits, so can we."

c) The comment about cloud saves makes it sound very much like always on DRM just trying to hide as something else, a la Diablo 3

Wow. You just killed all my interest in it. It's like a checklist of things I don't like.

Thanks?