Samantha Lienhard

Thoughts on the Final Fantasy VII Remake Demo

Mar 042020

It’s been a long time since the public demo was first leaked/rumored, but now at last we can try out the Final Fantasy VII Remake demo ourselves!

I’ve played through it twice, once on Normal and once on Classic.

First off, the nostalgia from the music alone is unreal. I love the new version of the opening bombing mission theme, and it really helped drive home that this remake is really happening.

Moving on to more tangible things, Cloud and Barrett’s personalities feel on point so far, and I like what they’ve done with the Avalanche members.

I enjoyed the dialogue during the demo, and I’m looking forward to (presumably) getting to know Jessie, Wedge, and Biggs better across the course of the game. At one point there’s a little bit of background banter between Jessie and Biggs, and I hope there are more conversations like that in the full game.

Click for original Final Fantasy VII spoilers

Assuming things play out the way they do in the original, I hope the remake creates enough of a bond with them that it’s a real gut punch when they die.

Anyway, the public demo is missing flashbacks that will be present in this sequence in the final release, so I’m looking forward to that as well.

The gameplay feels pretty good. At first the camera felt odd, but it didn’t bother me much once I got into it. The normal combat system is interesting. It’s certainly action, but pausing to pick special moves and switching between characters made it feel slower and more tactical. I was also bad at it, so I’ll need to pay more attention to dodging and blocking if I go with Normal in the full game.

I tried out Classic mode for my second playthrough. Classic is locked into the Easy difficulty setting, so between that and the AI being much better at dodging/blocking than I was, fights were significantly easier (although I still had to heal myself occasionally).

Classic mode doesn’t feel like a true turn-based RPG, and battles against weaker enemies are a bit odd since sometimes the auto-attacks are enough to defeat them, but I still kinda like it. It’s… relaxing, compared to the regular gameplay mode, and it lets you really focus more on the choices you’re making. I’m interested to see how it feels later in the game when enemies get tougher. (I’d also like the ability to select Normal difficulty with Classic mode, but I don’t think they’ll add that.)

Overall I’m pretty happy with the Final Fantasy VII Remake demo. It doesn’t answer my major questions about how the bulk of the game will play out (how much exploration is there? what are side quests like? will the city actually feel alive?), but the start feels good and I’m looking forward to playing the full thing on April 10!

Yakuza Kiwami 2 is Both Epic and Flawed

Reviews, Video games 4 Responses » Tagged with: rpg, yakuza

Mar 022020

So in the middle of the romance month, I also finished another game: Yakuza Kiwami 2!

I started it around Christmas, because Yakuza technically counts as a Christmas game, sort of, and finished it last month. Like Kiwami, which is a remake of the original Yakuza, Kiwami 2 is a remake of Yakuza 2 and follows Kiryu shortly after the events of the first game.

When I played Kiwami, I found the side content to be disappointing, but it’s in top form again in Kiwami 2.

A lot of the substories are pretty funny, there are fun mini-games, and it features the return of cabaret club management, and also a tower-defense-style activity that’s worth it for its theme song if nothing else. The game runs on the new engine like Judgment did, and it’s pretty enjoyable to play.

(The cabaret club story is also basically a sequel to Yakuza 0’s cabaret club story, which is awesome.)

Now, I liked the story a lot. It’s not as good as the story in Yakuza 0 or Judgment, but it’s still pretty good, dealing with the trouble that arises when Ryuji Goda of the Omi Alliance begins trying to start a war with the Tojo Clan, as well as a sinister plot linked to events from many years earlier. There are some great new characters introduced here, although I never liked Sayama quite as much as I wanted to.

The returning characters are also great, of course, and in particular I found Majima to be much more lovable than he was in Kiwami.

There are some things I didn’t enjoy, however. In addition to some aspects of Sayama’s character not coming across well, I also disliked certain parts of the ending. One twist, while I liked it in the context of the scene, raised a lot of questions after for me after-the-fact, and a few of Kiryu’s decisions annoyed me.

Click for major Yakuza Kiwami 2 spoilers

Since Terada defused the bomb before the confrontation, it makes me question just what he was trying to do in that scene… lure out Takashima? It feels odd in retrospect, like it was set up more for the sake of the twist than anything else.

But what really bugged me was Kiryu’s decision to fight Ryuji again instead of escaping the building while they still had time… and then him and Sayama talking about how they let Haruka down but she’d understand.

Ah yes, the little girl is smart, so she’ll understand why her father-figure is going to die because he chose to fight someone instead of escaping while he could. Of course. Even if he suspected he could trust Terada, Sayama still seemed too casual about how Haruka would react.

That whole conversation just bothered me.

Kiwami 2 also has a new short section starring Majima, but the Majima Saga is… kind of disappointing. It doesn’t have substories or leveling, and Majima only has two heat moves, so there’s not much to it in terms of gameplay. The story starts out interesting, but ends up feeling more like an excuse plot to put Majima in position for some Yakuza 0 closure.

That aspect is handled well, though, so I was happy I played it.

Anyway, Yakuza Kiwami 2 is an epic game overall. It had a few disappointments at the end, but not enough to overshadow how much fun the rest of the game is.

Celebrating All Things Romantic: My Girlfriend is the President

Celebrating All Things Romantic, Reviews, Video games 2 Responses » Tagged with: galge, visual novel

Feb 282020

I wanted something more lighthearted after that last one, so we’re ending this month’s celebration with the game that topped my list of weird visual novels, My Girlfriend is the President.

When an alien ambassador accidentally wipes out the Japanese government, she buys herself time to restore them by brainwashing the entire world into believing a nearby girl is the president. And that girl… is your best friend and neighbor!

My Girlfriend is the President is insane.

The protagonist is one of the few characters let in on the truth about what’s going on due to his immunity to the brainwashing. Almost everyone else considers it to be entirely normal that the president (of the United States of Nippon, because the aliens were a little confused about Earth’s governments) and her cabinet are a group of teenagers… and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

From random English lines to surreal military parodies to Pokémon and JoJo references, it’s filled with weird bits of ridiculousness that kept me entertained.

(And while at first you might think the game has some odd typos, it’s actually a case of them avoiding real country names, so you get things like Rusia and Ameriga.)

Earlier this month, I talked about how a lot of “weird” visual novels lack a true soul. This one, thankfully, has a soul. It has heart. It takes a ridiculous premise and runs with it. My Girlfriend is the President isn’t a bunch of wacky ideas thrown together to be quirky, but a full comedy that will take you upwards of 20 hours to complete.

Parts of this visual novel follow a familiar path. You have the ditzy childhood friend, the sudden arrival of a rival (in this case, President Putina of Rusia; your childhood friend is President Ohama), characters cooking for the protagonist, awkward romantic misunderstandings…

…and in the middle of all of these familiar tropes, you’re also trying to pass bills, dealing with politics, and getting swept up in disputes between aliens such as the loli alien gamer scientist Qoo Little-Little.

The romance parts are a little slow, but the rest of the story is absolute nonsense in the best way possible.

Now, it’s an eroge, and as far as I know there is no all-ages version, so you have to be okay with a lot of sexual humor and some explicit sex scenes (but you can skip through those if you don’t care to read them).

I wouldn’t recommend My Girlfriend is the President if you’re looking for a serious plot, and I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re looking for deep, meaningful love stories, but if you want a wacky comedy filled with ridiculous moments and absurd situations, it might be what you need.

I still need to finish up my remaining routes, but My Girlfriend is the President turned out to be the perfect way to wrap up our first ever Celebrating All Things Romantic month!

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