Final Fantasy Remake - INTERmission
Went back to this to play the extra Yuffie chapter you get on the newer versions of the game. It's fun enough, more substantial than I'd expected but that's mostly because it's padded out with minigames (including a fun Tower Defence thing that I spent far too much time on). Yuffie herself is annoying as shit and the guy she's paired with for this is a generic Final Fantasy plank that we'll never see again, but as an extra little bonus it's actually pretty good and you get some extra cutscenes at the end that follow the main party's path a bit further.
I wasn't planning to go straight into Rebirth but I'm actually quite keen to do so now - assuming that is that I can get it running well enough on the Steam Deck. Remake ran great but I'm not expecting the same from the sequel.
Yes the middle setting is by far the best - it gives you enough hints to let you follow the mission story, without leading you from icon to icon by the nose.
All the people who play it without guidance or instinct mode are completely insane.
Final Fantasy VII Remake
I thought this was superb. A really ambitious remake that expands on everything the original offered while still giving fans something new to think about. In particular the characters are much more effectively depicted here (especially Aerith - although Cloud is still a stroppy dullard) and the combat system does a good job of making them feel significantly different.
It does have a few pacing problems, but I guess that's not surprising given that it effectively expands a 5-hour intro sequence from the original into a full 40-hour game. The first half (up to and including Wall Market, I'd say) is mostly pretty great, but the back half suffers a bit with some very long "dungeon" sequences and a final section that just keeps going… and going… and going.
The ending is decidedly weird. Deliberately obtuse, even. It's never really clear where Sephiroth fits into things (I get that he's been retrofitted into this segment of the game from the original) and while he's clearly looking to manipulate timelines and mess about with stuff, I don't know why that suddenly makes him the party's enemy number one. There's a new guy called Zack who shows up with no explanation, right at the end. Jenova appears, gets smacked down and never properly explained. It's not clear where the party is going at the end of the game. But I'm sure this will all get further explained in the next game, or maybe in the new INTERmission segment that I've still got to play.
I gave up on Fire Emblem back in the GBA days when, for the third time, I was unable to progress past a level because I hadn't replayed an earlier level to try and save a character or I hadn't spent hours levelling up characters in an arena. These games do not respect your time. Maybe they got better in the decades since but your post suggests not.
The newer ones have a limited number of rewinds you can use so if you do do something silly you can step back a turn instead of restarting the battle. They also allow you to turn off permadeath if you really hate it (but I wouldn't recommend it as it makes the game very very easy if you do). So yes they respect your time more, at the cost of a little of the series' hardcore identity.
This particular instalment is a twenty-year-old GameCube game so it doesn't have those QoL additions but it is supposed to be one of the easier games in the series and as far as I know it is pretty much linear so grinding and replaying levels isn't a thing. Losing a few characters along the way is part of the adventure and it DOES teach you that you need to play these things defensively.
Path of Radiance seems really, really good. I had been thinking of picking up FE: Engage at some point but I don't think I need to do that for a long while now I have this to play. Really enjoying what I've seen so far.
It's weird having a "retro" service that's constantly releasing full, great games that I want to play. For me the GameCube generation is the tipping point into "this still feels modern" and it's very different to say, dipping into an N64 game for a quick nostalgia blast. Also, everything has big chunky fonts that are nice and easy to read, can we bring that back please?
Garwoofoo