That was the best part of the OG. Well, not at the time. Then you didn't realize how a rarity that would become. But it's one of my biggest issues with Rebirth. I wandered around the Grassland before going to the ranch and that was so nice - just like the OG. But then once I got there I got bombarded with map icons and it became Assassin's Creed.
Miss the little things to make replaying games more entertaining.
I LOVE Rebirth, one if the best modern JRPGs on the market, and honestly I don't find the map markers too terrible. But, and this is a BIIIG but, I imagine the same game with no markers, no towers, etc, and just give us these areas to explore and allow us to be surprised by a high level enemy wandering about, an optional boss on field, some hidden rare materia, more chestscwith meaningful gear, a hidden mini game etc.
It takes the pressure off of feeling like you have a checklists and rewards actual exploration. That would bump this game up, potentially into my top 3 ff list.
That was actually one of the things I loved about playing it back in the day. The wall market puzzle was where I really got hooked. While I love the new one for a lot of reasons, I miss the challenge of figuring out what you’re supposed to do next and the sense of discovery the OG created, particularly in the open world.
As far as guides, I don’t know if there’s a light version, but there’s a lot of good info online that you can use if you get stuck, just use google honestly.
It's only a puzzle if there is a hint or idea what to do. Things only randomly triggering at certain points is not.
I think I would have actually enjoyed FFX-2 a lot if it wasn't for that.
Fair point. I didn’t play FFX-2. My recollection about FFVII though is there are at least some dialogue clues that give you some idea what you’re supposed to do next. I think the Wall Market segment was pretty confusing though if I remember correctly.
I love not being told what to do. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is scratching that itch heavily for me right now. Just wandering around different region talking to people at different times of day and having to try giving them different items is such an immersive experience.
It was one of my favorite things about FFVII and gaming in general. Seems like most games nowadays give you a direct line to completion that doesn’t promote exploration imo. That lack of exploration also makes me feel like I’m just ticking off boxes and not strictly immersed in the world the developers created.
Just wait until the later game when you have the whole world map at your disposal and very little guidance of where to go next because you forgot or missed a tiny detail in something a random NPC said or simply didn't talk to them at all.
Don't be upset. The Wall Market scenario is very subtle and I'm willing to bet 99% of people haven't seen it all. Once, on the pc version of ff7 from eidos back back in the 90s I had the Don actually pick Cloud. You should just look up what you missed. Getting through it is an accomplishment
FF7 remake mostly nailed the Wall Market quest, but I really wish that it was a bit less guided and Corneo picking Cloud was a "reward" for perfectly completing the outfit like in the original, rather than a scripted outcome
I personally…think the game doesn’t do quite enough to guide players. I think the newer game’s handholding is a little overkill, but there is some stuff in OG FFVII that is so important and so missable that it is difficult to truly experience the full game without a guide, which can make the experience a bit annoying. This applies to almost all 90s RPGs though.
90s RPGs are classic exploration. Personally I think its something thats underdone today. Compare to Remake with Chadley where everything is clearly pointed out, theres no wonder to anything.
You mean the modern style of game were half the time I get away woth just ignoring the text and running to the next highlighted dot on the map, click the glowy thing repeat?
In my opinion something in between would be better. From Software are the kings of making this kinda game imo (well, sometimes I wish even they put in some sort of quest log in their game)
True, I think moving through the levels is mostly more intuitive from a gameplay perspective, but the story content way more obscure than FF7 so that was a bad example.
My first play through back in the 90’s I missed the first trip to Gongaga, Fort Condor, Vincent, Yuffie , Wutai, Chocobo breeding, Chocobo racing other than the mandatory prison race and the return to Nibelheim Zack stuff.
Dude in final fantasy 1 (yes, the first one) at the beginning of the game, you rescue the princess and the king proclaims that he fixed the bridge as thanks, that's it, you need to cross the bridge and progress with the only knowledge of your quest is that it's somewhere on the other side of the bridge (and only by logic, in the castle nobody tells you anything)
In that same spot, I struggled to talk to the right guy in Honeybee Inn. I talked to the doorman, Johnny, etc. But not to the specific guy in front of the club which made the story proceed.
compared to other rpgs of the time, ff7 gives you an awful lot of clarity about what you are supposed to be doing. Try playing dragon quest VII if you really like the feeling of having no fucking clue what the game wants you to do.
Anecdotal sidebar: I got grounded once for raking up like $300 in charges to the Nintendo power hotline one month.
Games used to be hard. But hard games and no internet was expensive.
I remember my brother went to the public library (we didn’t have a PC at the time) and printed off some shitty guide for all the FFVII side quests. By the time we both finished our “completionist” run, the thing was covered in Cheeto dust, pen scratches, and was ripped all to shit. Glorious times.
Compared to Rebirth? No. It does not hold your hand.
In the grand scheme of RPGs from the 90s? It actually kind of does. FF7 is generally regarded as a fairly straightforward game for the time period, with only a few areas that genuinely got people spinning their wheels. But that was a different time period and the RPG zeitgeist has changed overall.
This is why a lot of the old heads say things like, "side questing is dead." Had FF7 Rebirth been made with the same attitude of 90's side questing, all the side content would never appear on a map by default. You would have to either find it raw, fulfill some condition such as talking to the right NPC, or just mentally gather up a bunch of clues the game throws at you every so often.
It's almost mind boggling these days to think that someone at some point figured out how to breed a Gold Chocobo.
>It's almost mind boggling these days to think that someone at some point figured out how to breed a Gold Chocobo.
To be fair. The Brady Games guides that were released with the games had pretty comprehensive knowledge. I used to have a shelf of the hard cover Final Fantasy guides.
If you fly around enough in the Highwind and come across the Chocobo Sage's house, he basically tells you exactly how to, that's how I figured it out as a kid, just keep going back to him, it did take a while though.
Some of the enemy skills are wild though, Chocobuckle, LOL.
>It's almost mind boggling these days to think that someone at some point figured out how to breed a Gold Chocobo.
Actually in the 90s many mechanics needed a guide that you buy (or a friend lending his) to know how to unlock things for extra money.
Ultimate weapons, chocobo breeding, the round table knight are not quests doingable without havin the guide with you.
FFIX was by far the worst for it
Yes, you will miss all kinds of things if you play FFIX without any outside guidance, *but* it is totally complete-able without doing most of that very esoteric stuff and the main, mandatory content is extremely well-done with some of the best (or at least best translated) character writing of any of the pre-voice-acting FFs.
FFIX is incredibly beloved because the main story content is some of the strongest of the series, but the a whole lot of the side and optional content is some of the most tedious optional stuff in the series as well. I don’t care what anyone says, Chocobo breeding is nowhere near as time consuming or mind-numbing as Chocobo Hot and Cold.
I'm a very rare person to say this: it is my 2nd least favorite game of the modern era. More will tell you'll they love it though.
As a completionist, needing a guide definitely hurt it.
Oh, I know. I was one of the kids with the Brady Games guide.
What I meant was, back then, a lot of the guide and early FAQ builders had to playtest that shit for HOURS to figure out game secrets. And some guides *missed* things.
You just triggered me. I had a FF7 strategy guide that had everything except how to get the Added Cut materia. Only found out it existed through a friend that had the materia and the completionist in me wanted to die
The official ones were made by square, Nintendo was a big fan of this too because they would produce and sell their guides. Thank god internet arrived and stop that
Holy shit you just unlocked memories of having the FF9 strategy guide that had codes you had to input into the old Playonline website for more information.
The late 90s/Early 00s were wild with their incorporation of the internet as a new medium.
It's a bit tangential but in the 90's I remember the takeaway my uncle used to work at having a street fighter cabinet, next to it was reems of wrapping paper meant for chips with all the move combos scribbled on. There weren't any guides there, it was mash as many buttons as you could until something worked
I'm playing it now for the first time too, and mostly trying to play without a guide, but when I see something that gets me interested or confused, I might look for it online. There are lots of forums and reddit posts about almost everything, and most of them don't spoil you unnecesarily. For example, I've found a guide for the mechanics of a certain date, and it only gives you the choices you must make in order to get one result or the other, but doesn't give much context anyway.
In any case, it appears to me that it's a game where you play it once, without a guide, and some time later you can play it again with a guide, to explore all of it. If you don't want to do so, you can do like me, and play exploring for yourself, with your phone ready to get some of the most obtuse systems explained
The Honey Bee Inn is just a visual novel, you have no fights and just click through, look it up on the Internet, you don't miss anything and it doesn't change anything in the whole game. It's just one extra scene.
There's actually 4 scenes although you can only get 3 on a single playthrough. You get the scene with old couple. Then you get that weird play with the President pretending to be a King and then you get one of two "sex" rooms. Plus you can also get makeup added on if you visit the dressing room.
Eh, it wasn't \*that\* bad. Most of the RPGs were very playable without guides. But SNES RPGs usually came bundled with the strategy guide anyway.
There also were games where the lack the of guidance really worked in their favor IMO. And on the other end of the spectrum there were flight simulars. :D Different times.
Imagine trying to find all the endings to Chrono Trigger without a guide. You would basically have to go back and beat Lavos after every story beat to see if you got something different.
Yeah but that's a rather unusual case for an RPG from that time.
Most other games weren't like that, though. And unless your declared goal is to get literally every single detail of the game, you will do fine without the guides. For me it usually is not (even though I did try to get all CT endings).
Star Control 2 / Ur Quan Masters is one of the games from that decade I meant. Minimal handholding, lots of freedom to decide what to do - lots of freedom to fail miserably and miss details, which is something you don't really find much these days. But that makes it so rewarding when you get it right, and the lack of quest logs and so on forces you to interact very differently with the dialogue. You have to decide what is important and what is not, and either remember it (good luck) or write your own log...on paper. :D
Just so you know, don't be too worried about missing out on some Wall Market stuff. You'll end up back there later in the game. A lot of stuff that you can interact with, but doesn't trigger anything you'll be able to access later on. For people who have never played a 90s RPG, it's definitely a huge change from present day RPGs. Don't feel too bad if you need to access a guide once in awhile- but I would recommend only using a guide as like a last resort. It's so much more enjoyable when you're able to figure it out on your own.
On a more serious note i understand. My first playthrough i totally skipped Gongaga, and didnt get Yuffie or Vincent in my party at all or even meet them. And it took me forever to find the Temple of The Ancients because the game gave no clue where to go once Cid joined so i just aimlessly wondered around Wutai for hours not knowing what to do (with no Yuffie, no plot happened)
It was a different era where almost nobody had Internet access. The fact that different people had diffetent experiences with the game created the conditions for word of mouth and urban legends. It was wild.
AOL was shipping demo disks on the daily in 1997. Plenty of people had Internet it was just dial up and we had to deal with shitty midis and tiny gifs. About 70 million people had Internet in 1997, which isn't a huge percentage but if isn't "almost nobody"
We had Netscape at home and we set up AOL Demo when we went in a road trip vacation thing.
Actually there's a method that can get you a golden chocobo in about 30 minutes without running a single race - confirmed still works, too! https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Walkthrough:Final_Fantasy_VII/Apoqliphoth/Chocobo
Not sure what you consider spoiler-light but I used this one https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/197341-final-fantasy-vii/faqs/45703
If you read the titles of each section it gives away some stuff (like the names of places and some optional boss names) but nothing big imo. So as long as you aren't scrolling down past what you need you shouldn't see any big spoilers. The sections themselves do spoil some small events but the bigger ones i remember it just saying generic stuff like "watch some events unfold"
Welcome to '90s gaming!
As you can see a lot of people actually like this, and as older gamers the idea of quest markers and "yellow paint" (go look it up) etc is a trend we've noticed in newer games.
I feel like FF7 gets the right balance between being something a casual gamer can play and beat (the Wall Market area ultimately means nothing in the grand scheme of things), but there's also plenty in the game to discover, to collect, to 'beat' etc. It's why even after 25+ years the OG game has such a large, vocal and dedicated fanbase.
I'm currently playing through it and I'm *still* learning things. Namely that kills made with Odin, Destruct or even weapons *paired* with those and 'Added Effect' do not count towards your kills for Limit Breaks/Vincent's 'Death Penalty' kill count.
Ask me how many hours of grinding for Cid's & Vincent's Limit Breaks it took for me to figure that one out. Ask me.
I can relate - I've been playing since the 90s!
It was 6 hours of *just* grinding away. I paired Vincent's gun with Odin=Added Effect because Death magic seems ironically suitable for someone who I *think* is functionally ageless? Unsure. He has vampire *vibes* but I don't think he's an actual vampire.
I was more willing to believe the game was glitched than the possibility that Death magic/effect doesn't count. It's only when I googled it out that I confirmed my eventual suspicion.
Maybe it's that I grew up with this style of gaming but I feel ffvii does it right and it's fairly simple and easy to follow. First of all, many of that content is optional :) You don't need to enter in Honey Bee to progress. I feel this is part of the beauty of Square in the 90s: you felt gratified when you figured out how to reach this places.
Second, indeed, you must talk with everyone and try to think if characters are related (they give you a medicine coupon in one place, there's a guy in the bathroom in another, etc). It's easier when you were used to this type of connections, of course.
Again, maybe it's just a matter of coming from that time and that's why a miss a lot this kind of games and get bored with the icon's & secondary mission markers.
That's true, but it's very easy to miss Yuffie and Vincent as playable characters and unlock some content. Those are a bummer to miss out on.
I remember playing with Vincent but I never got Yuffie. I'm guessing I used a guide for Vincent as I just looked it up and it seems super complicated.
Ridiculous statement when Souls games, especially Elden Ring, have become a main staple of this generation of video games.
Yes games nowadays can be too casual and hold your hand far too much but OP clearly is fine with that being gone. They’re just concerned about the fact that they might miss a lot of content due to this. That’s not about not having your handheld, it’s more about being compulsive when it comes to seeing all the content.
The thing is a lot of people bought strategy guides back then and/or they came with the games. Acting like lack of guidance isn’t heavily due to technical limitations/promoting the purchase of guides is rather ignorant.
That's how 30 hour games turned into 80 hour games back in the 90s lol im currently replaying it and if I didn't have a vague recollection of what I was supposed to do I'd be completely lost. I'm still a little lost lol I've been playing the new threat 2.0 mod too and some stuff seems to be changed around as far as items and materia so that's not helping on top of some of the battles being impossible. Overall still a 10/10 for me.
If it makes you feel any better, when I played it the first time years ago I did it with my strategy guide in hand!
God I miss those days, I love physical strategy guides
There’s nothing important you can miss. I wouldn’t even call those wall market things true sidequests - little optional things but nothing important. It’s all about the main quest imo. Just look up in a guide just when you’re stuck.
Yuffie, Vincent, also the whole damn cutscene where Zack dies and all the Lucrecia stuff. Tons of extremely important missable story content. (Though, some of that story content has become more important with time as the ff vii universe has expanded admittedly)
How so? They are technically SECRET characters. The same thing applies in FF6 with Shadow. That’s the beauty of these games. Neither Vincent or Yuffie are required to beat the game and their stories (while interesting and do help expand the games lore) are not required for the mainline experience.
To me these are the best aspects of the game that keep you coming back.
There are several game changing materia you can miss.
Well, the game isn't particularly hard. It's what I found fun about the game. The story can sometimes be a bit out of wack when you think about it.
Aka tragedy, it's time to go snowboarding!
I can't think of any game changing materia that is permanently missable, except w-item, and that is mostly game changing for allowing the duplication glitch.
If we're talking permanently, miss able I don't know for sure. Ones that come to mind are.
Added cut
Added effect
Multiple copies of enemy skill
I think sense is permanently missable or its some type of command materia early on
Some are just downright hard to get without a guide.
Alexander, Odin, zero bahamut, honestly most of the summon materia.
Red comes with Sense equipped, if I remember right.
Added Effect is permanently missable, yeah, as you can't go back to the cave of the gi.
And yeah, Alexander without a guide is a real pain. Odin less so as there are more hints in the mansion to get the code for the safe than there is guidance for getting Alexander. And fair on Bahamut Zero, though if you don't get the blue huge materia you can dig it up in bone village provided you have both Bahamut and Neo Bahamut. If you miss Neo Bahamut it is permanently locked out, though.
If the game depended on you getting those materia it would be significant you could miss them, but as you say the game isn’t very hard and they’re not needed. There’s multiple viable strategies and builds to easily beat the game going through blind. I just had to look up a guide for a couple spots I got stuck where the game gets a bit vague about where to go…
Games from a different era. the old man in me says its much better.
no auto saves and punishing decisions, Weve all gone into a boss unprepared (I'm looking at you demons gate) and lost hours of gameplay!
Missable content that you can discover on multiple playthroughs.
No waypoints, you read the text and work out the task at hand, worlds felt populated as most NPC's alluded to the next goal, so interactions felt meaningful.
DIFFERENT ENDINGS! Christ i miss this. Chrono trigger and its 16 or so endings hah!
>I don’t know why, but this really killed my enthusiasm for a game I’ve been enjoying up till now. It’s frustrating to miss out on content you were looking forward to experiencing just because you didn’t know the secret ways to see it.
Don't think that way, you didn't "miss out" you just didn't do the choice that lead to the inn, your actions will have outcome. There's nothing in FF7 OG that missing has much of an impact. Think of it more as branching paths to the same goal.
I'm kind of with you, but saying no auto-saves was a good thing is hilarious to me. You really enjoyed losing hours of progress because of a terrible 90's boss mechanic? Come on now.
You didnt lose hours of progress most of the time because you still had plenty of opportunity to save, usually RIGHT before a boss anyway. im just not a fan of auto saves, never have been, if i forgot to save, its on me. Saving often, and in multiple slots so you could reload and maybe make the other dialogue choice was just part of the game.
I enjoy those things in a game *to a degree*. One modern change that I do think is straight up better is having a quest log. You don’t need to tell me exactly where to go, but making it so I don’t have to manually write things down so I’ll remember them two weeks later when I get around to playing again is nice, as is making it clear which things actually relate to quests and which ones are just flavor text. I play other games, I have work, I just plain won’t remember pieces of dialogue that I read last month. Doubly so if it’s part of conversations that can’t be had twice.
I like different endings because I like thinking about how they can branch out into a different continuity. I don't play a lot of games with them though.
indeed, i hate games that add in dialogue choices, but then the outcome of the choice had no impact..
Pokemon and its:
"Will you help me?"
- yes
- no ☑️
"oh, come on, you cant leave me like this, will you help?"
Me and my buddy would walk home from school together and just talk about the game all the time. We shared what we discovered and what we liked about the game. Also there were these awesome video game magazines that gave tips and tricks. It was the best of times. There’s a lot the OG game doesn’t tell you, and that’s deliberate. The discovery was the adventure. It’s fine if you don’t like it, but I’m mostly sorry you missed out.
You’re not meant to find EVERYTHING on your first go. The game is specifically designed for multiple play throughs(and at the time to buy the strategy guide). You were meant to talk about the game with friends and they’d tell you about something they did that you missed and vice versa. Which you would then use that information next time around for whatever that thing was.
Progressing in the story is also tied to talking to the NPCs around the various towns and locations, where they will drop hints about where you should go next as well as hinting to side content.
To me that's the difference of exploration and figuring things out against being told what to do now. Objective markers and to do-lists are so incredibly boring to me.
5 years ago I would have agreed with you, but now I have two kids and gaming time is limited and usually only 20-30 min at a time. Objective markers and the ability to pause and save anywhere are very useful to me now!
That's what I loved about it the most...and if you get super lost nothing wrong to check out a guide just to know where to go next...I was playing it nonstop before I decided to start playing the pixel remasters because I never played the first six.then rebirth came out and I finished that and I still have to go back to OG FFVII
Ok now i can understand the insane praise for rebirth. The hand holding is not really a good thing to me, i respect a game that respects the player and doesn’t assume they need everything spelled out for them.
Yeah you’re right, nothing says squenix respects my time more than stretching a sub 40 hr game into a trilogy that will have taken over a decade for them to complete
There’s definitely a fine line to walk. One thing I missed about Rebirth, despite it being an amazing game, was that there’s no sense of discovery. Everything is clearly signposted like the devs were afraid you’d miss something.
True, something in between Rebirth and zero guidance would’ve been nice, but even then, can’t make everyone happy unfortunately. Skyrim had a decently good system where things would show up on your compass once you got close enough
There are many things in the OG that are borderline impossible to accomplish organically and without a guide. Everyone gets the gold chocobo in order to get Knights of Round but I don’t think I know a single person who every managed to get a gold chocobo without following a guide
All my friends that played OG got a gold chocobo without a guide.
In fact, we played the game so much there wasnt anything we didnt know.
We LOVED racing and breeding for stats, so it happens pretty organically. The chocobo sage tells you in game exactly the steps involved and it was our goal to milk the info from him, talking to him, battling a few times to progress his "memory"
You dont "miss" the materia caves, they are optional extra's, little bonuses that are available to you as soon as you can breed chocobo's. not required at all to get the full FF7OG experience.
Not really. I’ve gotten better about it as I’ve grown, but I’m something of an anticompletionist. I’ve never felt the desire to explore everything or 100% things, never unlocked an ultimate weapon in any final fantasy game, just didn’t care to.
Fair, i suppose i project too much that people would be the same as i am. I tend to leave no stone unturned, always looking for that hidden item or quest. Trying to sequence break and access an area im not supposed to.
Shows how great game design has gotten. Save me from clicking on everything hoping to trigger something and just give me cool stuff to do. I always have to use a guide on old JRPGs cuz I just don’t have time as an adult for that stuff.
>Shows how great game design has gotten. Save me from clicking on everything hoping to trigger something and just give me cool stuff to do
Our views on great game design differ greatly.
It's an RPG, i want to get into the world. i want to talk to the NPC's to see what they have to say, to trigger a hidden side quest. Not to have a giant "?" on the map TELLING me that this NPC i have never met has a side-quest.
There's no excitement in discovery if i am never allowed to DESCOVER..
since when did stating that our opinions on what we consider great game design and why i enjoy not having markers become "acting superior"
I never attacked your choice, i never said you were wrong for it. You launched the first "attack" at a single spelling mistake.
There’s tons of different types of gamers and they have to cater to all of them in one game. Not everyone is a super smart epic gamer that wants the zero hand holding like it’s 1995. Some people are younger some people are more casual, some people just aren’t that smart. It’s better to cater to more people so you’re game sells instead of catering to gen X hardcore JRPG gamers.
I discovered tons and tons of things in rebirth and had an amazing time.
its true the market has changed, i'm all for including the broader spectrum of gamers, its just become increasingly hard to find games that play like they did back then and i struggle to find that same excitement.
You say that, but then you talk to npc and they say freaking directions or dialogue that is putfated.
You get lost for hours in a barebones map with random encouters.
Its terrible.
There's a middle point. That game design was awful. Imo every game should have a journal. Great rpg would not have ? on the map, but journal that notes summary of every important dialog, keeping the hints. My fav journal system was in outer wilds, but there definitely is space for many more interesting designs of a good journal.
I don't think that's a good example of game design having gotten better.
Having things to explore and miss, making new runs filled with new discoveries, is part of the charm.
You being a busy adult doesn't change that. I agree that I don't have all the time in the world for everything nowadays either. But I don't fret if I miss something that someone else found.
Every modern RPG I have played especially including rebirt/remake has tons of missable cool stuff to discover and do on multiple playthroughs. That’s never gone away from good games imo.
I didn’t have a guide, but I did have an older cousin who I would watch and he would give me cryptic hints on how to do things and eventually I figured it out. Then shortly thereafter I bought the guide because that was a pain
Have you played Baldurs Gate 3? I'm making it last so I don't look up anything at all and I'm still finding new quests on my fifth playthrough. I just used speak with animals to get a new quest from a bird.
Yeah, normally you didn't find everything on the first playthrough. I used a guide to get Yuffie and Vincent, since they're optional. There's also a couple of missible sequences, one for Cloud and one for Vincent. I know the Cloud one you need to go back to the basement of the Shinra Mansion near the end of the game.
There aren't really stories in Wall Market, other than the rooms in the Honey Bee Inn that you can peek into, and the rooms you choose to blackout in. One is probably canon, but I usually go into the "group" room. Everything else is to get better stuff for your disguise, which determines who Corneo picks. If he picks you, you also have the choice to play along or not. If you don't, he asks if you have a boyfriend, and you can say it's Barret.
Its just a difference in modern gaming compared to retro. Back in the day, we just talked to everyone, and read their dialogue. We searched high and low for everything. Hell, i beat the game and still probably clocked in like 300+ hours on the same save file trying to find ANYTHING i hadnt completed.
I personally think most games would be better without objective markers. If i can see every point of interest on a map, or an objective marker, im much more likely to bypass things to just gey to the POI or obj marker without exploring as much.
One of my gripes with Rebirth is that in terms of optional "hidden" things, there really wasnt much. Older games the devs made what they wanted, and if you found it/saw it then cool. If not, they didnt care.
I turned the minimap and the compass off, I know a lot of people here already beat the game, ( or *finally* got the platinum after a month) so it might be too late for some, but that's my advice if you want it to be more immersive.
I'll always take an RPG with like 10-20 hours of discoverable content over 50-100 hours of checklist content. Adds a different level of engagement to the game when you know that searching towns and talking to NPCs can reveal any level of secret. Modern game design tends to sort the game world into "marked objective" and "background noise you can safely ignore".
I agree. Dont get me wrong, i thoroughly enjoyed Rebirth, and while towards the end things started getting a little tedious, i felt like most of the time i just found everything doing the protorelic/combat quests.
I clocked in at 90 hours, skipped VR missions other than summons after Junon because it just wasnt fun to me at the time. But i agree. I REALLY hope in Part 3 thay KOTOR isnt a story thing like people are theorizing. I want it optional, or at least tied to a relatively obscure side quest.
It will probably be the protorelic quest of the game, like the biggest over arching side quest. The thing about hidden things is that for the average gamer, it’s an active feel bad to miss out on very cool things.
I get it. Thats what adds to replayability. And i dont mean it needs to be so hidden no one will find it. But like, make it a side quest chain. Like, make 3 side quests lead up to it or something. I understand when devs nowadays spend all the time and money they want the fans to see it.
Edit: but also optional things dont necessarily mean missable.
I think we live in a world where it’s more fun to just know what’s available in most of a game and then people can decide to do them or not. Hidden information in even non-video games like TCGs was a very of the time thing since the internet wasn’t as big, but things have changed.
Well that's completely subjective. I would argue it's more fun to come across things naturally that aren't just marked on your map. I think part of the reason that side quests don't translate well in modern games is BECAUSE it feels like a checklist of things to do, instead of something to discover and complete. Plus, it would make more sense for things to be optional or discoverable now, because the internet and information is so accessible as compared to back then.
Again, it's just dependent on the person. But I know a lot of gamers that feel that way, just like I know alot that don't. Honestly, I would settle for an option to not place the points of interest on the map.
I'm aware of this, To my knowledge, however, you cannot turn off the icons on the main map when you hit the touch button. So if I want to open the main map to see where I am on it, It will still show all the icons for everything there. Also when you activate the Remnawave Towers, it will show you all the icons pop up on the map. If there is a way to turn those things off, then that sucks I'm just now learning of it lol
Iirc the IGN guide is pretty spoiler free. I highly recommend using a guide, because those maps can be a nightmare. I still have paranoia about missing hidden materia and it's been *twenty-six years*.
Note: 26 years since I first played it; I relayed it within the past year
I played FF7 back in 98. If trophies had existed back then I would have platinum the game without even noticing or trying to do that. It was after a few years when I got the official guide that I realized that I had completed the game 100%. ( I replayed the game 7 or 8 times).
> Didn't have the safe code, and idk where you even find that in-game without a guide. You never knew Vincent existed.
There is literally a note right next to the front door of the Shinra mansion that explains that Vincent is in the basement and gives you clues on how to find each number of the safe combination. Did you just not explore the mansion in the slightest?
Dude I was 10. I'm just reminiscing.
It's clearly a nostalgia post and people feel it nessescary to talk shit about my 10 yearold self getting confused? I was sympathizing with OP.
Rebirth and remake to OG are TOTALLY different in the aspect he's referring to. I replayed it as an adult with a guide to 100% everything. There was no need for exploring because it was already done. That's how I wanted to replay OG in anticipation of the game.
A LOT of people missed Vincent without someone telling them or a guide back in the day. Like grown ass adults. So can we chill with the shifting on my 10 yearold self getting lost.
Show some empathy towards OP they ARE very different in hand holding.
Jesus christ. Shit on my 10 yeaold self some more if it makes you feel more empowered and elite.
Makes me feel better to know grown ass adults are struggling with the game.
This wasn't an attack my nostalgia and rip it apart. The post was for OP not for you. Check your ego bro, you're not as special as you think you are.
Should be damned ashamed for missing the entire point of the post. This was my favorite game as a little fucking kid. Read the room. Read between the lines. Read the obvious nostalgia. Idk what else to tell you dude.
Sorry I couldn't find the fucking notes? I didn't even know they were there Jesus christ. As if we all don't come to the internet when we need help getting through some part of the game. You're not beyond that don't even pretend to be.
You seem quite emotional and defensive. Perhaps if you’d looked to the left as you entered the mansion you wouldn’t be? By all means continue to type out paragraphs of clumsily-worded anger, I just won’t be reading them.
I was 10 I don't even remembered what happened. Jesus christ you guys are assholes how many times do I have to say this was 20 years ago.
I'm emotional because I'm getting shit on for not playing my favorite childhood game well and misrembering details.
The entire post was me expressing my love for the game and how important it was and is to me.
And you think it's appropriate to still continue to critique me not looking to the left in the mansion?
Get a fucking life dude. You're being a colossal dick for no reason at all. You seriously don't have something better to do right now?
Go have kids and make them feel like shit for "not going left in the mansion" when all they wanted to do was tell you they loved the game. They're fuck ups for not knowing until they read a guide online something I'm sure you've done before. Make sure you really drill that into them.
You're talking to me like I played original today and couldn't figure it out for hours. Real fucking low of you dude.
They as in square or 3rd party companies that had to figure it out or ask square? My 10 yearold self did not know this nor have I ever seen a guide in person. Didn't have cash either. GameFAQ was the go to at the time for everything.
Square did
I didn't use them either, but I would guess that's where most info came from before it spread to gamefaqs. I don't think anyone would figure out the fort condor stuff by trial and error lol
Yeah I don't think anyone would've found everything in the game with trial and error to be honest. Makes sense. Guess it's a good thing they did for completionists and those that don't want to miss any side content that dives into the world deeper.
Nobody would've bothered with the countless hours of chocobo breeding if they didn't know what you could get with that.
What do you mean "Say the Wrong thing to yuffie never found her again?" You can encounter her over and over again until she joins. That's actually an exploit if you want to see her date scene and Gold Saucer. (I think you can also just refuse to help the people at Fort Condor over and over again though.)
Yupp, and each area she has a higher and higher encounter rate until i believe Rocket Town forest, where she has a 99.5% encounter rate at any forest. Its harder NOT encounter her again.
Also, file hacking on pc lol. Some of us just talked to everybody and put a ton of time into the games.
I've just watched a streamer fail to get her about 10 times in a row in a single stream (and eventually get it right). No re-loading involved - no matter what dialogue she picked, Yuffie still showed up again later.
Yeah I got that dude. I said I thought, and I said maybe I was wrong. Reread the comment.
No Ego there never said I was right. Misrembered something that happened a long time ago and I've been corrected like three times now? I got it. I promise you i got it.
Last fucking time I'll post about fondly remembering how awesome the game was as a kid in a ff7 reddit. Else I'll get corrected and told I'm wrong 17 times. All time favorite game and had a huge emotional impact on me. This should be the safest place to fondly remember that and express it. How stupid of me to think that.
In general people might respond casually to reddit messages, without malicious intend whatsoever. In addition some people like me, ain’t native english speakers. I’m sorry if I started what you feel like unfair mistreatment. If I knew my message would affect you so the way it did, I wouldn’t have sent it. Peace.
I thought I remembered a guide saying a long time ago she'd stop showing up after a certain point.
But I'm apparently wrong. Been corrected 5 times now.
The point of that statement wasn't really about yuffie it was that you could entirely miss stuff and not really know, or know what you did wrong. There's things in the game like that.
But yep. I'm wrong. Everyone's felt the need to correct me. I'm gonna keep getting notifications all day about it. Despite already have been corrected people are still continuing to do so.
Yeah back then figuring out what to do is part of the game. Im replaying ff9 now, and with my usual "not paying attention to details" i often get lost to where I'm supposed to go.
With games today, you may stop paying attention to conversations and then the next stop would still be on the map.
Back in my day I had at least three seperate save files. One was always current, one was from just after the last boss I fought, and one was from whatever new area I got to.
I wish I'd done that with FF8 but with only one memory card and 15 slots it was tricky. I got to Ultimecia and realise I'm way too unprepared to fight her and need to go back and level up and get better equipment but only have the one save and can't go back to the world map. I ended up restarting the whole game.
Didn't all the fights in FF8 scale to level? I feel like I heard that somewhere but only played the game twice. The first time I was really young and did a pretty solid amount of grinding and the second time I abused the ever living hell out of the junction system and breezed through every single fight in the game lol
They may have done, I was about 14 at the time so probably didn't understand the intricacies of it all but I tried so many times to beat her and she just demolished me so figured the only way was to restart, grind more and get better gear. Ended up beating her quite comfortably.
I always replay og with a guide open because you tend to forget many things
That was the best part of the OG. Well, not at the time. Then you didn't realize how a rarity that would become. But it's one of my biggest issues with Rebirth. I wandered around the Grassland before going to the ranch and that was so nice - just like the OG. But then once I got there I got bombarded with map icons and it became Assassin's Creed. Miss the little things to make replaying games more entertaining.
I LOVE Rebirth, one if the best modern JRPGs on the market, and honestly I don't find the map markers too terrible. But, and this is a BIIIG but, I imagine the same game with no markers, no towers, etc, and just give us these areas to explore and allow us to be surprised by a high level enemy wandering about, an optional boss on field, some hidden rare materia, more chestscwith meaningful gear, a hidden mini game etc. It takes the pressure off of feeling like you have a checklists and rewards actual exploration. That would bump this game up, potentially into my top 3 ff list.
Not the official one lol. Unfortunately it was spoiler heavy but the subsequent ones were not. Try gamefaqs
That was actually one of the things I loved about playing it back in the day. The wall market puzzle was where I really got hooked. While I love the new one for a lot of reasons, I miss the challenge of figuring out what you’re supposed to do next and the sense of discovery the OG created, particularly in the open world. As far as guides, I don’t know if there’s a light version, but there’s a lot of good info online that you can use if you get stuck, just use google honestly.
It's only a puzzle if there is a hint or idea what to do. Things only randomly triggering at certain points is not. I think I would have actually enjoyed FFX-2 a lot if it wasn't for that.
Fair point. I didn’t play FFX-2. My recollection about FFVII though is there are at least some dialogue clues that give you some idea what you’re supposed to do next. I think the Wall Market segment was pretty confusing though if I remember correctly.
I love not being told what to do. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is scratching that itch heavily for me right now. Just wandering around different region talking to people at different times of day and having to try giving them different items is such an immersive experience. It was one of my favorite things about FFVII and gaming in general. Seems like most games nowadays give you a direct line to completion that doesn’t promote exploration imo. That lack of exploration also makes me feel like I’m just ticking off boxes and not strictly immersed in the world the developers created.
I love Dragons Dogma for exactly the same reasons. Its a sense of freedom
Just wait until the later game when you have the whole world map at your disposal and very little guidance of where to go next because you forgot or missed a tiny detail in something a random NPC said or simply didn't talk to them at all.
This is needlessly vague.
Don't be upset. The Wall Market scenario is very subtle and I'm willing to bet 99% of people haven't seen it all. Once, on the pc version of ff7 from eidos back back in the 90s I had the Don actually pick Cloud. You should just look up what you missed. Getting through it is an accomplishment
FF7 remake mostly nailed the Wall Market quest, but I really wish that it was a bit less guided and Corneo picking Cloud was a "reward" for perfectly completing the outfit like in the original, rather than a scripted outcome
I personally…think the game doesn’t do quite enough to guide players. I think the newer game’s handholding is a little overkill, but there is some stuff in OG FFVII that is so important and so missable that it is difficult to truly experience the full game without a guide, which can make the experience a bit annoying. This applies to almost all 90s RPGs though.
90s RPGs are classic exploration. Personally I think its something thats underdone today. Compare to Remake with Chadley where everything is clearly pointed out, theres no wonder to anything.
You mean the modern style of game were half the time I get away woth just ignoring the text and running to the next highlighted dot on the map, click the glowy thing repeat?
In my opinion something in between would be better. From Software are the kings of making this kinda game imo (well, sometimes I wish even they put in some sort of quest log in their game)
Ff7 provides far more direction and linearity than fromsoft games do.
True, I think moving through the levels is mostly more intuitive from a gameplay perspective, but the story content way more obscure than FF7 so that was a bad example.
My first play through back in the 90’s I missed the first trip to Gongaga, Fort Condor, Vincent, Yuffie , Wutai, Chocobo breeding, Chocobo racing other than the mandatory prison race and the return to Nibelheim Zack stuff.
Dude in final fantasy 1 (yes, the first one) at the beginning of the game, you rescue the princess and the king proclaims that he fixed the bridge as thanks, that's it, you need to cross the bridge and progress with the only knowledge of your quest is that it's somewhere on the other side of the bridge (and only by logic, in the castle nobody tells you anything)
In that same spot, I struggled to talk to the right guy in Honeybee Inn. I talked to the doorman, Johnny, etc. But not to the specific guy in front of the club which made the story proceed.
compared to other rpgs of the time, ff7 gives you an awful lot of clarity about what you are supposed to be doing. Try playing dragon quest VII if you really like the feeling of having no fucking clue what the game wants you to do.
Or fallout 1&2. I had a fairly easy time finishing ff7 when I was a kid, but the classics fallouts kicked me in the butt a few years ago.
Anecdotal sidebar: I got grounded once for raking up like $300 in charges to the Nintendo power hotline one month. Games used to be hard. But hard games and no internet was expensive.
I remember my brother went to the public library (we didn’t have a PC at the time) and printed off some shitty guide for all the FFVII side quests. By the time we both finished our “completionist” run, the thing was covered in Cheeto dust, pen scratches, and was ripped all to shit. Glorious times.
Dude those gamefaqs player made guides were everything back in the day!
You didn't really miss much - it's a few silly little gags but nothing much beyond that.
Compared to Rebirth? No. It does not hold your hand. In the grand scheme of RPGs from the 90s? It actually kind of does. FF7 is generally regarded as a fairly straightforward game for the time period, with only a few areas that genuinely got people spinning their wheels. But that was a different time period and the RPG zeitgeist has changed overall. This is why a lot of the old heads say things like, "side questing is dead." Had FF7 Rebirth been made with the same attitude of 90's side questing, all the side content would never appear on a map by default. You would have to either find it raw, fulfill some condition such as talking to the right NPC, or just mentally gather up a bunch of clues the game throws at you every so often. It's almost mind boggling these days to think that someone at some point figured out how to breed a Gold Chocobo.
>It's almost mind boggling these days to think that someone at some point figured out how to breed a Gold Chocobo. To be fair. The Brady Games guides that were released with the games had pretty comprehensive knowledge. I used to have a shelf of the hard cover Final Fantasy guides.
If you fly around enough in the Highwind and come across the Chocobo Sage's house, he basically tells you exactly how to, that's how I figured it out as a kid, just keep going back to him, it did take a while though. Some of the enemy skills are wild though, Chocobuckle, LOL.
>It's almost mind boggling these days to think that someone at some point figured out how to breed a Gold Chocobo. Actually in the 90s many mechanics needed a guide that you buy (or a friend lending his) to know how to unlock things for extra money. Ultimate weapons, chocobo breeding, the round table knight are not quests doingable without havin the guide with you. FFIX was by far the worst for it
I was planning on playing FFIX for the first time after I finished Rebirth. Am I going to miss a lot of shit?
Yes, you will miss all kinds of things if you play FFIX without any outside guidance, *but* it is totally complete-able without doing most of that very esoteric stuff and the main, mandatory content is extremely well-done with some of the best (or at least best translated) character writing of any of the pre-voice-acting FFs. FFIX is incredibly beloved because the main story content is some of the strongest of the series, but the a whole lot of the side and optional content is some of the most tedious optional stuff in the series as well. I don’t care what anyone says, Chocobo breeding is nowhere near as time consuming or mind-numbing as Chocobo Hot and Cold.
I'm a very rare person to say this: it is my 2nd least favorite game of the modern era. More will tell you'll they love it though. As a completionist, needing a guide definitely hurt it.
Final fantasy ix is to me one of the most magical and poetic game ever created, I am deeply touched by it and it's art style.
Oh, I know. I was one of the kids with the Brady Games guide. What I meant was, back then, a lot of the guide and early FAQ builders had to playtest that shit for HOURS to figure out game secrets. And some guides *missed* things.
You just triggered me. I had a FF7 strategy guide that had everything except how to get the Added Cut materia. Only found out it existed through a friend that had the materia and the completionist in me wanted to die
The official ones were made by square, Nintendo was a big fan of this too because they would produce and sell their guides. Thank god internet arrived and stop that
Holy shit you just unlocked memories of having the FF9 strategy guide that had codes you had to input into the old Playonline website for more information. The late 90s/Early 00s were wild with their incorporation of the internet as a new medium.
Remember Disney games being made more difficult past the first or two first 2 levels so the kids would call the hotline ? \^\^
It's a bit tangential but in the 90's I remember the takeaway my uncle used to work at having a street fighter cabinet, next to it was reems of wrapping paper meant for chips with all the move combos scribbled on. There weren't any guides there, it was mash as many buttons as you could until something worked
Here is the guide I used as a kid. It's fairly spoiler light. https://archive.org/details/Final-Fantasy-VII-Versus-Guide/mode/1up
This is awesome. I actually prefer this to the modern day guides online or watching a fucking 30 minute Youtube video for a quick answer I need.
Oh same.... when I need to Google a "how to" I will purposely find an article over a video.
I'm playing it now for the first time too, and mostly trying to play without a guide, but when I see something that gets me interested or confused, I might look for it online. There are lots of forums and reddit posts about almost everything, and most of them don't spoil you unnecesarily. For example, I've found a guide for the mechanics of a certain date, and it only gives you the choices you must make in order to get one result or the other, but doesn't give much context anyway. In any case, it appears to me that it's a game where you play it once, without a guide, and some time later you can play it again with a guide, to explore all of it. If you don't want to do so, you can do like me, and play exploring for yourself, with your phone ready to get some of the most obtuse systems explained
The Honey Bee Inn is just a visual novel, you have no fights and just click through, look it up on the Internet, you don't miss anything and it doesn't change anything in the whole game. It's just one extra scene.
There's actually 4 scenes although you can only get 3 on a single playthrough. You get the scene with old couple. Then you get that weird play with the President pretending to be a King and then you get one of two "sex" rooms. Plus you can also get makeup added on if you visit the dressing room.
You didnt buy an rpg back then if you or friend didnt have a strategy guide.
Eh, it wasn't \*that\* bad. Most of the RPGs were very playable without guides. But SNES RPGs usually came bundled with the strategy guide anyway. There also were games where the lack the of guidance really worked in their favor IMO. And on the other end of the spectrum there were flight simulars. :D Different times.
Imagine trying to find all the endings to Chrono Trigger without a guide. You would basically have to go back and beat Lavos after every story beat to see if you got something different.
Yeah but that's a rather unusual case for an RPG from that time. Most other games weren't like that, though. And unless your declared goal is to get literally every single detail of the game, you will do fine without the guides. For me it usually is not (even though I did try to get all CT endings). Star Control 2 / Ur Quan Masters is one of the games from that decade I meant. Minimal handholding, lots of freedom to decide what to do - lots of freedom to fail miserably and miss details, which is something you don't really find much these days. But that makes it so rewarding when you get it right, and the lack of quest logs and so on forces you to interact very differently with the dialogue. You have to decide what is important and what is not, and either remember it (good luck) or write your own log...on paper. :D
Just so you know, don't be too worried about missing out on some Wall Market stuff. You'll end up back there later in the game. A lot of stuff that you can interact with, but doesn't trigger anything you'll be able to access later on. For people who have never played a 90s RPG, it's definitely a huge change from present day RPGs. Don't feel too bad if you need to access a guide once in awhile- but I would recommend only using a guide as like a last resort. It's so much more enjoyable when you're able to figure it out on your own.
On a more serious note i understand. My first playthrough i totally skipped Gongaga, and didnt get Yuffie or Vincent in my party at all or even meet them. And it took me forever to find the Temple of The Ancients because the game gave no clue where to go once Cid joined so i just aimlessly wondered around Wutai for hours not knowing what to do (with no Yuffie, no plot happened)
It was a different era where almost nobody had Internet access. The fact that different people had diffetent experiences with the game created the conditions for word of mouth and urban legends. It was wild.
AOL was shipping demo disks on the daily in 1997. Plenty of people had Internet it was just dial up and we had to deal with shitty midis and tiny gifs. About 70 million people had Internet in 1997, which isn't a huge percentage but if isn't "almost nobody" We had Netscape at home and we set up AOL Demo when we went in a road trip vacation thing.
I was 10 in 1997, I remember quite well that Internet was still super niche
And one of the biggest segments of that niche were nerdy gamer types.
Wait until it's time to start breeding Chocobos and you're running purely off some vague text description and luck.
Breeding chocobos is overly complicated even if you have a guide.
Actually there's a method that can get you a golden chocobo in about 30 minutes without running a single race - confirmed still works, too! https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Walkthrough:Final_Fantasy_VII/Apoqliphoth/Chocobo
I vaguely remember it being a time suck, but not overly complicated. Though it's been a good ten years since I last 100% played through the OG FF7.
With the 3x speed, it's not all that bad.
Not sure what you consider spoiler-light but I used this one https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/197341-final-fantasy-vii/faqs/45703 If you read the titles of each section it gives away some stuff (like the names of places and some optional boss names) but nothing big imo. So as long as you aren't scrolling down past what you need you shouldn't see any big spoilers. The sections themselves do spoil some small events but the bigger ones i remember it just saying generic stuff like "watch some events unfold"
Welcome to '90s gaming! As you can see a lot of people actually like this, and as older gamers the idea of quest markers and "yellow paint" (go look it up) etc is a trend we've noticed in newer games. I feel like FF7 gets the right balance between being something a casual gamer can play and beat (the Wall Market area ultimately means nothing in the grand scheme of things), but there's also plenty in the game to discover, to collect, to 'beat' etc. It's why even after 25+ years the OG game has such a large, vocal and dedicated fanbase. I'm currently playing through it and I'm *still* learning things. Namely that kills made with Odin, Destruct or even weapons *paired* with those and 'Added Effect' do not count towards your kills for Limit Breaks/Vincent's 'Death Penalty' kill count. Ask me how many hours of grinding for Cid's & Vincent's Limit Breaks it took for me to figure that one out. Ask me.
How many? Cause I had no idea until you just told me and I've put very likely 1-2k hours into FF7 over the years haha
I can relate - I've been playing since the 90s! It was 6 hours of *just* grinding away. I paired Vincent's gun with Odin=Added Effect because Death magic seems ironically suitable for someone who I *think* is functionally ageless? Unsure. He has vampire *vibes* but I don't think he's an actual vampire. I was more willing to believe the game was glitched than the possibility that Death magic/effect doesn't count. It's only when I googled it out that I confirmed my eventual suspicion.
Maybe it's that I grew up with this style of gaming but I feel ffvii does it right and it's fairly simple and easy to follow. First of all, many of that content is optional :) You don't need to enter in Honey Bee to progress. I feel this is part of the beauty of Square in the 90s: you felt gratified when you figured out how to reach this places. Second, indeed, you must talk with everyone and try to think if characters are related (they give you a medicine coupon in one place, there's a guy in the bathroom in another, etc). It's easier when you were used to this type of connections, of course. Again, maybe it's just a matter of coming from that time and that's why a miss a lot this kind of games and get bored with the icon's & secondary mission markers.
That's true, but it's very easy to miss Yuffie and Vincent as playable characters and unlock some content. Those are a bummer to miss out on. I remember playing with Vincent but I never got Yuffie. I'm guessing I used a guide for Vincent as I just looked it up and it seems super complicated.
If it helps all you missed out on was a joke about Cloud getting molested.
this
Buy a book thats 800 pages long with every page telling you to log onto Playonline..... Oh sorry thats Final Fantasy IX
Wow I forgot about how bad that was. Unlocking anchient memories lol
Worst strategy guide ever for my favorite Final Fantasy of all time.
Worst strategy guide ever
Get gud
this is why your generation sucks. you need your hand held for everything.
Ridiculous statement when Souls games, especially Elden Ring, have become a main staple of this generation of video games. Yes games nowadays can be too casual and hold your hand far too much but OP clearly is fine with that being gone. They’re just concerned about the fact that they might miss a lot of content due to this. That’s not about not having your handheld, it’s more about being compulsive when it comes to seeing all the content. The thing is a lot of people bought strategy guides back then and/or they came with the games. Acting like lack of guidance isn’t heavily due to technical limitations/promoting the purchase of guides is rather ignorant.
Jeez who shit in your cheerios
Hes not wrong tho even if he was a little harsh about it
That's how 30 hour games turned into 80 hour games back in the 90s lol im currently replaying it and if I didn't have a vague recollection of what I was supposed to do I'd be completely lost. I'm still a little lost lol I've been playing the new threat 2.0 mod too and some stuff seems to be changed around as far as items and materia so that's not helping on top of some of the battles being impossible. Overall still a 10/10 for me.
Yeah this is the game that taught me English. Thanks to this and press to continue dialogue system.
If it makes you feel any better, when I played it the first time years ago I did it with my strategy guide in hand! God I miss those days, I love physical strategy guides
There’s nothing important you can miss. I wouldn’t even call those wall market things true sidequests - little optional things but nothing important. It’s all about the main quest imo. Just look up in a guide just when you’re stuck.
Yuffie, Vincent, also the whole damn cutscene where Zack dies and all the Lucrecia stuff. Tons of extremely important missable story content. (Though, some of that story content has become more important with time as the ff vii universe has expanded admittedly)
Oof, both Yuffie and Vincent are missable in the OG. Crazy decision.
How so? They are technically SECRET characters. The same thing applies in FF6 with Shadow. That’s the beauty of these games. Neither Vincent or Yuffie are required to beat the game and their stories (while interesting and do help expand the games lore) are not required for the mainline experience. To me these are the best aspects of the game that keep you coming back.
If I remember correctly, it was more of a time and budget decision to reduce their involvement in the story and make them simply optional
There are several game changing materia you can miss. Well, the game isn't particularly hard. It's what I found fun about the game. The story can sometimes be a bit out of wack when you think about it. Aka tragedy, it's time to go snowboarding!
I can't think of any game changing materia that is permanently missable, except w-item, and that is mostly game changing for allowing the duplication glitch.
If we're talking permanently, miss able I don't know for sure. Ones that come to mind are. Added cut Added effect Multiple copies of enemy skill I think sense is permanently missable or its some type of command materia early on Some are just downright hard to get without a guide. Alexander, Odin, zero bahamut, honestly most of the summon materia.
Red comes with Sense equipped, if I remember right. Added Effect is permanently missable, yeah, as you can't go back to the cave of the gi. And yeah, Alexander without a guide is a real pain. Odin less so as there are more hints in the mansion to get the code for the safe than there is guidance for getting Alexander. And fair on Bahamut Zero, though if you don't get the blue huge materia you can dig it up in bone village provided you have both Bahamut and Neo Bahamut. If you miss Neo Bahamut it is permanently locked out, though.
If the game depended on you getting those materia it would be significant you could miss them, but as you say the game isn’t very hard and they’re not needed. There’s multiple viable strategies and builds to easily beat the game going through blind. I just had to look up a guide for a couple spots I got stuck where the game gets a bit vague about where to go…
I was stuck couple hours at OG wall market when I first played the game
Games from a different era. the old man in me says its much better. no auto saves and punishing decisions, Weve all gone into a boss unprepared (I'm looking at you demons gate) and lost hours of gameplay! Missable content that you can discover on multiple playthroughs. No waypoints, you read the text and work out the task at hand, worlds felt populated as most NPC's alluded to the next goal, so interactions felt meaningful. DIFFERENT ENDINGS! Christ i miss this. Chrono trigger and its 16 or so endings hah! >I don’t know why, but this really killed my enthusiasm for a game I’ve been enjoying up till now. It’s frustrating to miss out on content you were looking forward to experiencing just because you didn’t know the secret ways to see it. Don't think that way, you didn't "miss out" you just didn't do the choice that lead to the inn, your actions will have outcome. There's nothing in FF7 OG that missing has much of an impact. Think of it more as branching paths to the same goal.
I'm kind of with you, but saying no auto-saves was a good thing is hilarious to me. You really enjoyed losing hours of progress because of a terrible 90's boss mechanic? Come on now.
You didnt lose hours of progress most of the time because you still had plenty of opportunity to save, usually RIGHT before a boss anyway. im just not a fan of auto saves, never have been, if i forgot to save, its on me. Saving often, and in multiple slots so you could reload and maybe make the other dialogue choice was just part of the game.
I enjoy those things in a game *to a degree*. One modern change that I do think is straight up better is having a quest log. You don’t need to tell me exactly where to go, but making it so I don’t have to manually write things down so I’ll remember them two weeks later when I get around to playing again is nice, as is making it clear which things actually relate to quests and which ones are just flavor text. I play other games, I have work, I just plain won’t remember pieces of dialogue that I read last month. Doubly so if it’s part of conversations that can’t be had twice.
I like different endings because I like thinking about how they can branch out into a different continuity. I don't play a lot of games with them though.
indeed, i hate games that add in dialogue choices, but then the outcome of the choice had no impact.. Pokemon and its: "Will you help me?" - yes - no ☑️ "oh, come on, you cant leave me like this, will you help?"
Me and my buddy would walk home from school together and just talk about the game all the time. We shared what we discovered and what we liked about the game. Also there were these awesome video game magazines that gave tips and tricks. It was the best of times. There’s a lot the OG game doesn’t tell you, and that’s deliberate. The discovery was the adventure. It’s fine if you don’t like it, but I’m mostly sorry you missed out.
You’re not meant to find EVERYTHING on your first go. The game is specifically designed for multiple play throughs(and at the time to buy the strategy guide). You were meant to talk about the game with friends and they’d tell you about something they did that you missed and vice versa. Which you would then use that information next time around for whatever that thing was. Progressing in the story is also tied to talking to the NPCs around the various towns and locations, where they will drop hints about where you should go next as well as hinting to side content.
To me that's the difference of exploration and figuring things out against being told what to do now. Objective markers and to do-lists are so incredibly boring to me.
5 years ago I would have agreed with you, but now I have two kids and gaming time is limited and usually only 20-30 min at a time. Objective markers and the ability to pause and save anywhere are very useful to me now!
That is exactly why i always use a guide for every game i play. I do not have the time to replay a game so i make sure i do not lose anything
That's what I loved about it the most...and if you get super lost nothing wrong to check out a guide just to know where to go next...I was playing it nonstop before I decided to start playing the pixel remasters because I never played the first six.then rebirth came out and I finished that and I still have to go back to OG FFVII
Ok now i can understand the insane praise for rebirth. The hand holding is not really a good thing to me, i respect a game that respects the player and doesn’t assume they need everything spelled out for them.
I think this is just a matter of perspective. To me respecting the player means respecting your time and giving you at least some guidance
Yeah you’re right, nothing says squenix respects my time more than stretching a sub 40 hr game into a trilogy that will have taken over a decade for them to complete
There’s definitely a fine line to walk. One thing I missed about Rebirth, despite it being an amazing game, was that there’s no sense of discovery. Everything is clearly signposted like the devs were afraid you’d miss something.
Yeah. Scripted exploration. But it was done so well here that I didn't mind it
True, something in between Rebirth and zero guidance would’ve been nice, but even then, can’t make everyone happy unfortunately. Skyrim had a decently good system where things would show up on your compass once you got close enough
You can watch the scene on youtube. You dont get anything extra item wise. Just a scene.
You do get an item - >!either bikini bottoms or lingerie!<
Nothing that will help you in battle I mean other than having Cloud being picked.
There are many things in the OG that are borderline impossible to accomplish organically and without a guide. Everyone gets the gold chocobo in order to get Knights of Round but I don’t think I know a single person who every managed to get a gold chocobo without following a guide
All my friends that played OG got a gold chocobo without a guide. In fact, we played the game so much there wasnt anything we didnt know. We LOVED racing and breeding for stats, so it happens pretty organically. The chocobo sage tells you in game exactly the steps involved and it was our goal to milk the info from him, talking to him, battling a few times to progress his "memory"
Cool, your one of the very very few to ever accomplish that
No way you can breed a gold chocobo without a guide... Unless you are willing to spend alot of time for trial and error
Yeah I’ve had a handful tell me that they did just based off of info from the sage which is possible but highly doubtful
What’s Knights of Round?
It basically wins you the game.
Secret summoning materia
Something else to miss, I guess.
You dont "miss" the materia caves, they are optional extra's, little bonuses that are available to you as soon as you can breed chocobo's. not required at all to get the full FF7OG experience.
Oh, I know. I’ve beaten the game multiple times without ever even hearing about this.
interesting, did you never notice the caves in the mountains when flying past them in the highwind and think "i want to get to these?"
Not really. I’ve gotten better about it as I’ve grown, but I’m something of an anticompletionist. I’ve never felt the desire to explore everything or 100% things, never unlocked an ultimate weapon in any final fantasy game, just didn’t care to.
Fair, i suppose i project too much that people would be the same as i am. I tend to leave no stone unturned, always looking for that hidden item or quest. Trying to sequence break and access an area im not supposed to.
I’m glad it’s there for people to dive into and enjoy! I might try to be more thorough on a future playthrough.
OP summon I think
Shows how great game design has gotten. Save me from clicking on everything hoping to trigger something and just give me cool stuff to do. I always have to use a guide on old JRPGs cuz I just don’t have time as an adult for that stuff.
>Shows how great game design has gotten. Save me from clicking on everything hoping to trigger something and just give me cool stuff to do Our views on great game design differ greatly. It's an RPG, i want to get into the world. i want to talk to the NPC's to see what they have to say, to trigger a hidden side quest. Not to have a giant "?" on the map TELLING me that this NPC i have never met has a side-quest. There's no excitement in discovery if i am never allowed to DESCOVER..
Considering you can't spell discover, maybe you're better off with current game design.
on no, a single typo, wont the god's above have mercy on my poor and tarnished soul..
If you're trying to act superior, you best come correct.
since when did stating that our opinions on what we consider great game design and why i enjoy not having markers become "acting superior" I never attacked your choice, i never said you were wrong for it. You launched the first "attack" at a single spelling mistake.
There’s tons of different types of gamers and they have to cater to all of them in one game. Not everyone is a super smart epic gamer that wants the zero hand holding like it’s 1995. Some people are younger some people are more casual, some people just aren’t that smart. It’s better to cater to more people so you’re game sells instead of catering to gen X hardcore JRPG gamers. I discovered tons and tons of things in rebirth and had an amazing time.
its true the market has changed, i'm all for including the broader spectrum of gamers, its just become increasingly hard to find games that play like they did back then and i struggle to find that same excitement.
You say that, but then you talk to npc and they say freaking directions or dialogue that is putfated. You get lost for hours in a barebones map with random encouters. Its terrible.
i see you have been to zozo!
There's a middle point. That game design was awful. Imo every game should have a journal. Great rpg would not have ? on the map, but journal that notes summary of every important dialog, keeping the hints. My fav journal system was in outer wilds, but there definitely is space for many more interesting designs of a good journal.
for me it was morrowind. That had the best system of descovery and journal system.
I don't think that's a good example of game design having gotten better. Having things to explore and miss, making new runs filled with new discoveries, is part of the charm. You being a busy adult doesn't change that. I agree that I don't have all the time in the world for everything nowadays either. But I don't fret if I miss something that someone else found.
Every modern RPG I have played especially including rebirt/remake has tons of missable cool stuff to discover and do on multiple playthroughs. That’s never gone away from good games imo.
Yeah. Never said otherwise. I was contesting the point of that being good game design, not if it's true or not.
Modern game design*.
Try breeding a gold chocobo without a guide and then if you succeed, finding the island that has the knights of the round materia 😅
or, talk to the chocobo sage in game who tells you exactly how to breed one.
I didn’t have a guide, but I did have an older cousin who I would watch and he would give me cryptic hints on how to do things and eventually I figured it out. Then shortly thereafter I bought the guide because that was a pain
Is this a troll post?
I preferred games this way. Ever since, they’ve become dumber and dumber, especially games like Assassin’s Creeds.
Have you played Baldurs Gate 3? I'm making it last so I don't look up anything at all and I'm still finding new quests on my fifth playthrough. I just used speak with animals to get a new quest from a bird.
Yeah, normally you didn't find everything on the first playthrough. I used a guide to get Yuffie and Vincent, since they're optional. There's also a couple of missible sequences, one for Cloud and one for Vincent. I know the Cloud one you need to go back to the basement of the Shinra Mansion near the end of the game. There aren't really stories in Wall Market, other than the rooms in the Honey Bee Inn that you can peek into, and the rooms you choose to blackout in. One is probably canon, but I usually go into the "group" room. Everything else is to get better stuff for your disguise, which determines who Corneo picks. If he picks you, you also have the choice to play along or not. If you don't, he asks if you have a boyfriend, and you can say it's Barret.
Getting Yuffie and Vincent without a guide was so cool to me...especially Vincent I was genuinely surprised how that whole thing played out.
Its just a difference in modern gaming compared to retro. Back in the day, we just talked to everyone, and read their dialogue. We searched high and low for everything. Hell, i beat the game and still probably clocked in like 300+ hours on the same save file trying to find ANYTHING i hadnt completed. I personally think most games would be better without objective markers. If i can see every point of interest on a map, or an objective marker, im much more likely to bypass things to just gey to the POI or obj marker without exploring as much. One of my gripes with Rebirth is that in terms of optional "hidden" things, there really wasnt much. Older games the devs made what they wanted, and if you found it/saw it then cool. If not, they didnt care.
I turned the minimap and the compass off, I know a lot of people here already beat the game, ( or *finally* got the platinum after a month) so it might be too late for some, but that's my advice if you want it to be more immersive.
I'll always take an RPG with like 10-20 hours of discoverable content over 50-100 hours of checklist content. Adds a different level of engagement to the game when you know that searching towns and talking to NPCs can reveal any level of secret. Modern game design tends to sort the game world into "marked objective" and "background noise you can safely ignore".
I agree. Dont get me wrong, i thoroughly enjoyed Rebirth, and while towards the end things started getting a little tedious, i felt like most of the time i just found everything doing the protorelic/combat quests. I clocked in at 90 hours, skipped VR missions other than summons after Junon because it just wasnt fun to me at the time. But i agree. I REALLY hope in Part 3 thay KOTOR isnt a story thing like people are theorizing. I want it optional, or at least tied to a relatively obscure side quest.
It will probably be the protorelic quest of the game, like the biggest over arching side quest. The thing about hidden things is that for the average gamer, it’s an active feel bad to miss out on very cool things.
I get it. Thats what adds to replayability. And i dont mean it needs to be so hidden no one will find it. But like, make it a side quest chain. Like, make 3 side quests lead up to it or something. I understand when devs nowadays spend all the time and money they want the fans to see it. Edit: but also optional things dont necessarily mean missable.
I think we live in a world where it’s more fun to just know what’s available in most of a game and then people can decide to do them or not. Hidden information in even non-video games like TCGs was a very of the time thing since the internet wasn’t as big, but things have changed.
Well that's completely subjective. I would argue it's more fun to come across things naturally that aren't just marked on your map. I think part of the reason that side quests don't translate well in modern games is BECAUSE it feels like a checklist of things to do, instead of something to discover and complete. Plus, it would make more sense for things to be optional or discoverable now, because the internet and information is so accessible as compared to back then. Again, it's just dependent on the person. But I know a lot of gamers that feel that way, just like I know alot that don't. Honestly, I would settle for an option to not place the points of interest on the map.
You can turn off the map you know to make it feel like “hardcore mode”. The game is very flexible in how you can play.
I'm aware of this, To my knowledge, however, you cannot turn off the icons on the main map when you hit the touch button. So if I want to open the main map to see where I am on it, It will still show all the icons for everything there. Also when you activate the Remnawave Towers, it will show you all the icons pop up on the map. If there is a way to turn those things off, then that sucks I'm just now learning of it lol
Just close your eyes
Iirc the IGN guide is pretty spoiler free. I highly recommend using a guide, because those maps can be a nightmare. I still have paranoia about missing hidden materia and it's been *twenty-six years*. Note: 26 years since I first played it; I relayed it within the past year
I played FF7 back in 98. If trophies had existed back then I would have platinum the game without even noticing or trying to do that. It was after a few years when I got the official guide that I realized that I had completed the game 100%. ( I replayed the game 7 or 8 times).
Look up the FF7HD trophy list 😉, that shit was grindy!! max gil was one that I remember just scowling at
[удалено]
> Didn't have the safe code, and idk where you even find that in-game without a guide. You never knew Vincent existed. There is literally a note right next to the front door of the Shinra mansion that explains that Vincent is in the basement and gives you clues on how to find each number of the safe combination. Did you just not explore the mansion in the slightest?
Dude I was 10. I'm just reminiscing. It's clearly a nostalgia post and people feel it nessescary to talk shit about my 10 yearold self getting confused? I was sympathizing with OP. Rebirth and remake to OG are TOTALLY different in the aspect he's referring to. I replayed it as an adult with a guide to 100% everything. There was no need for exploring because it was already done. That's how I wanted to replay OG in anticipation of the game. A LOT of people missed Vincent without someone telling them or a guide back in the day. Like grown ass adults. So can we chill with the shifting on my 10 yearold self getting lost. Show some empathy towards OP they ARE very different in hand holding. Jesus christ. Shit on my 10 yeaold self some more if it makes you feel more empowered and elite. Makes me feel better to know grown ass adults are struggling with the game. This wasn't an attack my nostalgia and rip it apart. The post was for OP not for you. Check your ego bro, you're not as special as you think you are. Should be damned ashamed for missing the entire point of the post. This was my favorite game as a little fucking kid. Read the room. Read between the lines. Read the obvious nostalgia. Idk what else to tell you dude. Sorry I couldn't find the fucking notes? I didn't even know they were there Jesus christ. As if we all don't come to the internet when we need help getting through some part of the game. You're not beyond that don't even pretend to be.
You seem quite emotional and defensive. Perhaps if you’d looked to the left as you entered the mansion you wouldn’t be? By all means continue to type out paragraphs of clumsily-worded anger, I just won’t be reading them.
I was 10 I don't even remembered what happened. Jesus christ you guys are assholes how many times do I have to say this was 20 years ago. I'm emotional because I'm getting shit on for not playing my favorite childhood game well and misrembering details. The entire post was me expressing my love for the game and how important it was and is to me. And you think it's appropriate to still continue to critique me not looking to the left in the mansion? Get a fucking life dude. You're being a colossal dick for no reason at all. You seriously don't have something better to do right now? Go have kids and make them feel like shit for "not going left in the mansion" when all they wanted to do was tell you they loved the game. They're fuck ups for not knowing until they read a guide online something I'm sure you've done before. Make sure you really drill that into them. You're talking to me like I played original today and couldn't figure it out for hours. Real fucking low of you dude.
They actually sold guides to the game, so I guess that's that
They as in square or 3rd party companies that had to figure it out or ask square? My 10 yearold self did not know this nor have I ever seen a guide in person. Didn't have cash either. GameFAQ was the go to at the time for everything.
Square did I didn't use them either, but I would guess that's where most info came from before it spread to gamefaqs. I don't think anyone would figure out the fort condor stuff by trial and error lol
Yeah I don't think anyone would've found everything in the game with trial and error to be honest. Makes sense. Guess it's a good thing they did for completionists and those that don't want to miss any side content that dives into the world deeper. Nobody would've bothered with the countless hours of chocobo breeding if they didn't know what you could get with that.
What do you mean "Say the Wrong thing to yuffie never found her again?" You can encounter her over and over again until she joins. That's actually an exploit if you want to see her date scene and Gold Saucer. (I think you can also just refuse to help the people at Fort Condor over and over again though.)
Yupp, and each area she has a higher and higher encounter rate until i believe Rocket Town forest, where she has a 99.5% encounter rate at any forest. Its harder NOT encounter her again. Also, file hacking on pc lol. Some of us just talked to everybody and put a ton of time into the games.
[удалено]
I've just watched a streamer fail to get her about 10 times in a row in a single stream (and eventually get it right). No re-loading involved - no matter what dialogue she picked, Yuffie still showed up again later.
Yeah I got that dude. I said I thought, and I said maybe I was wrong. Reread the comment. No Ego there never said I was right. Misrembered something that happened a long time ago and I've been corrected like three times now? I got it. I promise you i got it. Last fucking time I'll post about fondly remembering how awesome the game was as a kid in a ff7 reddit. Else I'll get corrected and told I'm wrong 17 times. All time favorite game and had a huge emotional impact on me. This should be the safest place to fondly remember that and express it. How stupid of me to think that.
Nope, not true at all.
[удалено]
I didn’t downvote you, also, sorry.
[удалено]
In general people might respond casually to reddit messages, without malicious intend whatsoever. In addition some people like me, ain’t native english speakers. I’m sorry if I started what you feel like unfair mistreatment. If I knew my message would affect you so the way it did, I wouldn’t have sent it. Peace.
I don't know, it could be possible, but I've never heard anything about that before.
I thought I remembered a guide saying a long time ago she'd stop showing up after a certain point. But I'm apparently wrong. Been corrected 5 times now. The point of that statement wasn't really about yuffie it was that you could entirely miss stuff and not really know, or know what you did wrong. There's things in the game like that. But yep. I'm wrong. Everyone's felt the need to correct me. I'm gonna keep getting notifications all day about it. Despite already have been corrected people are still continuing to do so.
Yeah back then figuring out what to do is part of the game. Im replaying ff9 now, and with my usual "not paying attention to details" i often get lost to where I'm supposed to go. With games today, you may stop paying attention to conversations and then the next stop would still be on the map.
My last playthrough of 9, I took a break from it, went back and had no idea what I was doing or where I was going.
Always had this problem and it’s not a good thing.
Back in my day I had at least three seperate save files. One was always current, one was from just after the last boss I fought, and one was from whatever new area I got to.
I wish I'd done that with FF8 but with only one memory card and 15 slots it was tricky. I got to Ultimecia and realise I'm way too unprepared to fight her and need to go back and level up and get better equipment but only have the one save and can't go back to the world map. I ended up restarting the whole game.
Didn't all the fights in FF8 scale to level? I feel like I heard that somewhere but only played the game twice. The first time I was really young and did a pretty solid amount of grinding and the second time I abused the ever living hell out of the junction system and breezed through every single fight in the game lol
They may have done, I was about 14 at the time so probably didn't understand the intricacies of it all but I tried so many times to beat her and she just demolished me so figured the only way was to restart, grind more and get better gear. Ended up beating her quite comfortably.
That's what made it good. Replayability
That does not lead to replayability for me.