I was 14 when this game came out and for years it was my favourite. It opened my eyes to what games could achieve in story and exploration. Secret bosses (Emerald weapon particularly) and the lengths I had to go to to get Knights of the Round summon. It was an absolute gateway to gaming that had me hooked
Still learning new things about this game to this day! I recently learned about having Odin or Destruct magic linked to added effect on armour stops you from dying when the timer runs out on Death Sentence, allowing you to wear the Curse Ring which increases ALL stats by quite a lot, without suffering the effect of Death Sentence.
I'm about halfway through this video and I just wanted to comment that I deeply appreciate that you actually went into detail about how the gameplay works as opposed to just a straight story retrospective. I also deeply relate to the story about the scratched disc, as a kid I had put disc 1 into the pocket of my cargo shorts to let a friend play it but when I had gotten back one of the neighbor kids had just set up a new trampoline, I promptly forgot about the disc in my pocket and shattered it. I instead ran the clock up on my dad's end game save and accomplished just about all the side content. wonderful video, I hope this isn't the last time you do one of these
That's how I feel about 8. Probably for the same reason. I was 12 years old and it was the first RPG I ever played. Rented it for a friend's house, then BEGGED for a playstation for Christmas so I could play it and more games like it.
I love your previous videos, and I've watched them many times, but the production values on this one are a step above your previous ones. I'm sure that it has taken you a long time to edit, but it is well worth it. I can't wait to see that you have planned next. I listen to a lot of 'retrospective' videos, often due to their length and the fact they keep me going for a long time at work, and this is absolutely one of the best for me.
damn dude. ive always wanted to play this game cuz my buddy loves it and won't ever shuttup about it. this video is awesome. that part where Zack got gunned down was rough. great job again with the video, candle
Do you have any socials? What do you think about SOTE? I hope to see a great new video from you pop up about the DLC 🙂 Beat of luck to you in whatever you're working on, be it Souls or something else
yo candle just a heads up, i googled your patreon (wondered why you were shutting it down) and i guess since you closed it down, now it links to your personal account which includes your full name. thought you’d wanna know in case you’d prefer to keep this channel anonymous
I feel bad since as a younger person who plays video games I struggle to play the original Final Fantasy 7 but I really really appreciate The impact on gaming culture and history
I'm in a similar position to you, as a younger person who played FF7 recently. While it definitely has its merits, especially in regards to storytelling, I can't look past the minigames and how often the combat system ends up being far too tedious, repetitive, and easy. Also, the UI is horrible and not being able to change the Materia of characters that aren't in your party is such a pain.
As someone who GREW UP with FF7, I agree that it can be hard to go back to, if it weren't for the addition of the 3x and no encounter option that you can access with the click of the L3 and R3 sticks, which is a game changer. So don't feel bad guys.
Well I am 26 now and over the last two years or so, I really started to enjoy games, that I wouldn't touch when I was 16, because I felt they were outdated and unappealing. But actually many old games seem to be more ambitious, especially given the age. And then there is dumbing down, within franchises. Features being removed over time, so when you go back to the classics, you see what is missing from the games nowadays.
Edit: my first take was a bit harsh, and I wanted to make it clear that I sympathize with the youth! The biggest thing I’ve noticed, as an older gamer who grew up in this era, is that the younger generations seem to have a crazy amount of what I call “save anxiety”. Growing up in what I’m now calling the “Wild West” of game development, where game design philosophy didn’t really exist, and games were made mostly by feel and vibes, and designers had to be creative with things like progression and replayability… it really just underscores to me how far we have come in games as a whole. When people are used to being able to have auto-save, or at the very least, the ability to save at any time, going back to play a game that relies on save points which are few and far between creates an environment for people not used to such things that is downright hostile 😂😂😂 I understand this feeling, but as someone who grew up never knowing when i was going to be able to save next and just accepting it as a fact of life, hearing someone obsess over where the save points should be, or complain about not having one right there when they need it gets very old very quickly. I don’t mean this to be mean, I just simply want to point out that there’s a significant amount of anxiety that could be avoided if people just accepted that sometimes, you might have to redo a section of a game if you die before finding a save point, and sometimes that’s life. ❤️
Thank you for this video. Ive loved 7 since I played it back in the day! The remake is ok, visually great but not the beauty that was the original ff7. Rebirth is better that it has side quests but that's about it. I cried in a few parts in this video because of the feelings the clips brought back. Thanks again for this great video 😭😭😭💖💖💖
I wish I would have played this game when I was young, it would have been such an amazing trip. I recently finished this one which led me to finish FF9 as well... I'm in my 30s, and I am amazed! I WISH I would have played this when I was young. I remember I was in Toys r' us and it was either GT2 or FF9. I love GT2, but I wish I would have picked FF9 that day :'(
Regarding the jenova synthesis and bizarro sephiroth visual glitch you mentioned, 4-8 actually did another video on why that happens. The short version is that you used Pandora's Box. Pandora's Box reveals hidden models for some reason, and enemies with multiple targets are actually multiple models but only one is usually shown, so when the spell finishes casting you have all these models layered on top of each other.
Nice one love these retrospectives I've tried playing 7 a few times but I smoke a ridiculous amount of herb that affects my memory not usually a problem but ff7 tells you fuckall about where you are where you're going so I'd get 10 hours in and get completely lost
Really enjoy your From stuff but this is right up my street. Also very appreciative of the fact you actually analyse the characters/plot and gameplay properly as opposed to just simply recapping, especially for a video of this length. Would love to see a similar look at FF10 and 12 (but also plz 9). Stupid anecdote: I bought my copy of 7 from a WHSmith's back in 2000 or 1999, must've been before 9 came out. I'd gone in for FF8, only to find out - at the counter! - that they somehow didn't have any discs left for 8, only 7, so I ended up taking home the box + manual for 8 with the discs for 7. No wonder Smiths stopping selling games. Also I didn't know Asda was owned by Walmart until now. Another stupid pseudo-anecdote: I watched some American video where they pronounced Asda as A-S-D-A, which is technically correct, but it really rattled my brain for a moment.
about that scratch on the disc. If somebody has the same issue you can try to swap the disc out for that sequence and reswap afterwards. the game is afaik on all three discs. just the sequences are not.
One of the best comprehensive retrospective I've seen on the game, though it still gets a few tidbits wrong here and there. 1.) Zack was never Aerith's boyfriend. That's a retcon from CC. Although, and arguably, this is slightly obscured due to the poor localization, Aerith states twice that she never dated Zack(once in Midgar and once at Gongaga), with both her and Zack's parents describing him as a playboy who had women all over the place. The mistranslations go even further, when, on the back of the truck, the English makes it sound as though he's talking about Aerith, whereas in the Japanese he's speaking plurally about all the women he knows in Midgar. At best, Zack was Aerith's unrequited love. As for Aerith seeing Zack in Cloud, that's only really during their first meeting. The 1997 Kaitai Shinsho, which contains internal dialogue written for the various characters written by the development team at the time, clearly states that Aerith recognizes, and is in love with, Cloud for who he really is during the date scene at Gold Saucer. 2.) The final battle against Sephiroth is not a mental battle, but a spiritual one against Sephiroth's will in the lifestream. This is apparent because: A.) If Sephiroth still had any influence over Cloud's mind before this, Cloud would not have been able to fight Safer Sephiroth etc to begin with. The accumulation of his arc and removing the shackles of Sephiroth's influence is a prerequisite for him even fighting Sephiroth to begin with. B.) You clearly see Cloud's spiritual body leaving his physical body and traveling through the planet, which is the exact opposite visual storytelling you'd go for if what they were trying to convey was a battle only inside his mind. C.) The sequence of events and why they even went there to begin with. Cloud and co went to Northern Crater to stop Sephiroth from holding back holy. However, Holy is not released after the defeat of Safer Sephiroth. It does not release until Cloud defeats Sephiroth in the lifestream, suggesting Sephiroth's will is still there, holding Holy back. Finally, Sephiroth's control of Cloud's will is predicated on Sephiroth being alive. All throughout the game, Cloud isn't struggling with some phantom Sephiroth persona in his head, he's struggling with Sephiroth messing with his head from the Northern Crater through their shared link via their Jenova cells. If Sephiroth is dead after the defeat of Safer Sephiroth, exactly what is supposed to be exerting influence over Cloud afterwards except Sephiroth's will in the lifestream? Thematically, it's also fairly important for the game's message about, and overall portrayal of, human antagonism in conflict with nature, for Sephiroth to be villainous by default even void the influence of Jenova on a spiritual level. After all, you look at all the other antagonistic elements in the story, they boil down to human flaws such as greed, narcissism and ego, as embodied by characters like Shinra and Hojo. If Sephiroth is seen as only evil insofar he was injected with Alien DNA, this entirely subverts the game's overall questioning of human antagonism by inadvertently going, "but sometimes, planets are just out of luck and get wrecked by aliens," which I don't think anyone would want to argue is the ethos of the game. When Sephiroth is first introduced to us proper in the Nibelheim, despite his facade, he is obviously odious and ominous from the get-go. Visually so, given his design and black cloak. Sound-design-wise when his battle theme is the church bell and percussion from Those Chosen By The Planet. Body-language-wise with his unnerving and villainous laugh. I don't think the original intention for Sephiroth was ever to be a "hero fallen for grace" as SE has since retconned him. After all, we're never shown Shinra do anything militarily that looks remotely heroic, and it's their propaganda newspaper that dubbed him so. On the contrary, I think Sephiroth was intended, like the rest of the game's villains, to be a incarnation of a particular human flaw - in this case narcissism as is obvious by all the symbolic cues that tie him to Luciferian lore, and the fact he was based on the character of Sasaki Kojiro from the novel Musashi, who was also portrayed as a narcissist with a god-complex - which was there all along. Sephiroth didn't suddenly go mad at Nibelheim. He just become more of himself, in response to the ego-threatening revelation that rather than being a naturally gifted special kid, he was actually just a lab experiment. That's why he goes on to spin a delusion of grandeur for himself as the last Cetra, inheritor of the planet, and then later hatches his "become a god" plan when he realizes he isn't a Cetra either. In this, he's Cloud's polar opposite; for where Cloud realizes he isn't a special SOLDIER, but faces the truth and accepts himself, Sephiroth instead runs from the truth over and over again, in servicy of the vanity of his ego. Hence, even when freed from his physical form and the biology of Jenova, he still hangs on in the lifestream like a cockroach trying to prevent Holy from releasing. Food for thought anyways. Other than that, again, I think this is possibly the best long-form account of the game I've seen on the platform, and I've seen many.
I think that they have oil and mako and those are 2 different things. I'm pretty sure that we can see some puddles of oil in the desert (when we are detained). We also know that Barret used to be a minor of some sort so mako isn't the only source of energy. I'd need to replay the whole game and really pay attention but mako never felt like the only source of energy in this world. More like our equivalent of uranium + oil.
It wasn't Holy that blocked Meteor, it was the Lifestream Holy had been freed by defeating sephiroth (who was keeping it trapped) but *it was too late* and the clash with Meteor was causing even more destruction close to the surface of the planet. As Red said, it was *having the opposite effect* because the clash shouldn't happen that clsoe to the planet. Furthermore, Holy doesn'0t really care about collateral damage, and might even choose to wipe out humanity. Holy is the white/blue light. Then you can see the green strings, that is not holy, that is Lifestream, being led *directly* by Aerith. Unlike Holy, this is a force that cares about sentient life. Joining forces with Holy, the Lifestream manages to repel Meteor while also protecting everyone
Never been a fan of either side of the OG vs Remake argument, since both sides have a whole lot of disregarding the positives of the other side. Remake as far as I'm concerned has more engaging gameplay, but the sheer absurdity of customization and combinations you can do with OG I love. Mentioned that it's a shame that iconic weapons like the Buster Sword get outclassed and never used again, but that's something I love about Remake since it makes every weapon viable. Some still better than others especially if you're going for specific builds like all magic on Cloud with the Mythril Saber or all physical with the Hardedge, but Buster Sword works well if you wanna go both ways.
I remember when I was younger I played final fantasy 7, up until the point it expected me to start fighting the same few enemies in order to grind experience. I was never into Experience points or battle credits, all I cared about was the forward adventure. America didn't have a lot of anime, so Final fantasy 7 was as close as I could get for a time. Typing all this because, I feel a lot of people are like me. They appreciated the game for what it was, but not what it was about. Cloud was a bridge to the world of Japan, and you can't ever really have that ever again.
Your transition from Souls games content to other types of content feels very natural , best of luck to the channel . PS : I know this might not be the place to rant, but one of the things i hate about the new ff7 remakes is that the pacing of the original FF7 was really tight, it wasn't Chrono Trigger or Resident Evil 4 levels of pacing, but it was still an extremely well paced game, while the remakes are awful at pacing.
I call her Aeris too, that’s how it is spelled in the official release I played in 1997 and it’s still spelled that way when I play it today. Aerith sounds awful, like someone with a bad speech impediment trying to say her real name.
for all the things the remake get wrong its combat system is 1000% not one of them. peak combat system. only aspect of the games that i cant say anything bad about (besides its music)
The minigames are always the worst parts of FF. I hated chocobo racing and breeding to get Knights of the Round, and fighting in the battle arena to get Omnislash when every 2nd battle gave you status ailments. And then we got more chocobo trolling in FF10. I still haven't redone then since their release eras, maybe I should check if my midlife crisis self is more patience now. These minigames really prevented them from being my favourite games. But I'm also a weirdo who takes 8 over 7 any day
aerith is stupid, its aeris...and i never used her outside of when i was forced to lol. it really doesnt have the same effect when she dies when you forgot she existed lol
There is no ff7 "remake" and square should have been criticized for false advertisement. I'm glad it's liked, but not as much as I look forward to when modders can chop the new stuff up for an actual remake
They really butchered the trophy lists for the remakes. What a catastrophic nightmare to platinum them. Such a grueling, tedious, needlessly difficult chore. Aside from the questionable story changes, going for trophy completion really sucked the fun entirely out of these for me. I wish these developers would design the lists with trophy hunters in mind (since we’re really the only people who care about the trophies anyway!)
With rebirth I went for the trophies because I love the game so much I wanted more.. man is it absurdly hard the battles are nearly just dumb luck that you don't get instantly killed 5 battles in. I still love the game though
Well s*** I've been wondering what you've been up to Pretty sure the ff7 planet is called "Aerith" Ahh ff7, back when games weren't political. Oh to be an ecoterrorist fighting against runaway capitalism again. Okay I'll stop
Honestly, no shit you didn't like the Remake or Rebirth. You are literally disgusted by all great character moments!!! The Remake was all about that. I don't think you can truly appreciate FF7 or be impacted by it if you just like the plot points, but not the overall theme of the story. You just liked it on surface man
That can't be worse than the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 1 that will be a MMORPG, I bet gamers will be pissed because of how much it changes from the base game. Oh wait, my bad, that's from another reality that doesn't exist. In this reality, they took a turn-based RPG and made it an episodic button mashing game and everyone is fine with it lol That thing isn't even selling well, only Square could fail so bad (or ubisoft... or activision... or 343 industry... or Blizzard... damn, what a bunch of losers lol). That game's legendary and already figured out, all they had to do it replicate it with modern tech and they had 1 Billion USD check with their name on it in the first 6 months of release.
Hey do u have a discord server? Ive been a fan since i first watched ur Soulsborne boss ranking videos n would love to join a discord server if u have one. I also love ur channel n definitely think u deserve to be as big of a youtuber as one like Demodcracy but im happy cus it makes it feel more special to find a youtuber like u instead of just finding another admittedly washed out trash big youtube channel. I hope ur channel grows even more as u make even more fantastic content and i appreciate ur content so far cus its nice to see a fella who makes good long videos that i can watch n vibe to. Respect man
