Axersia

Beat the game yesterday and absolutely loved it. It met all my expectations and even exceeded them. I would've been content with a 20-30 hour experience like the KH games and FF15, but I ended up getting this 45-hour epic, as promised. Kinda crazy. With all the time and money they've sunk into creating this incredibly detailed world (it's a 2-disc game, ya'll!), and its troubled development cycle where it was initially farmed out to CyberConnect2 before bringing it in-house, I wanted to keep my expectations low in regards to the amount of actual playable content it had. Not to mention the entire story is set in Midgar, normally a 5-hour prologue. But it earned its playtime and by the end I really felt like I went through an incredible journey.

I never beat the original and only played through half of it, but I'm still quite familiar with the story through osmosis and other products in the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII." I can see why certain die-hard fans would take umbrage with some of the liberties they've taken, but I'm 100% down with what they're doing here, and I likely would've felt the same way even if I had that strong of a connection to FF7. After all, the original still exists (and there's a bunch of fan remasters out there already). That said, I'm a KH fan first and foremost, and only a casual FF fan somewhere down the line. So yeah, this was basically the FF7 remake made for me.

In any case, really looking forward to playing FF7-2 on PS5 where they no longer need to resort to hiding load times behind a myriad of tight corridors. If there's anything in this game I could've done without, it's that. Let's hope Mark Cerny was speaking the truth.

I'm still only on File 4 but I'm not feeling it as much as I thought I would. Then again, I didn't follow any real coverage on the game and mostly bought it based on the original trailer and my love for Bayonetta 2 and Nier Automata.

I always knew this wasn't gonna be a pure action game, but I didn't expect it to be a whole lot of detective adventure, a whole lot of puzzle-platformer, and a tiny bit of action.

The detective sections can really test my patience, and I don't like being in the Astral Plane. It's got terrible music and is hard on the eyes. It's just not a fun space to be in. The best parts for me are going on combat-heavy missions in the actual city, but it doesn't seem like that's what they're going for.

The combat's good, but not as fun to me as other melee-based action games of recent memory. That could change though as I unlock more Legion and get further into the game.

Still, I'm surprised it's been resonating so much with people. I like Marie, but the other characters are, so far, very forgettable. I also wasn't aware I was gonna be controlling a mute. I picked a female character for a reason, only to discover it's actually her male twin who's gonna be voiced. Odd design choice there.

Again, I'm sure all of this was common knowledge for people who followed the game on Treehouse Live and whatnot. I also don't regret buying it, as this was gonna be a pre-order/day-1 purchase for me no matter what. Gonna keep playing, we'll see how I feel about it by the end.

The hell you on about with "FF13/15 battle system?" Those two are nothing alike, and it just looks like KH. Or perhaps more accurately FF Type-0, based on the animations. You can clearly see the Attack command blinking, implying that it's being tapped for each slash. This doesn't look like an auto-battle system.

Anyway, good to see we're finally getting some info again, but yeah, it really hasn't been that long, especially if they can still get out the first episode by the end of the year. On the other hand, when FF15 got its big re-reveal in 2013, we still had another 3.5 years to go, and the game was completely overhauled from what we were promised.

Hopefully that doesn't happen again. Please just let Nomura finish this thing.

So here in Europe it seems the game was unofficially-officially released on the 26th. I managed to get it that morning and beat it the next day.

I'm one of those people this game was made for. Got the first game for my 13th birthday in 2002, and played every damn one of them since with the exception of BBS 0.2.

For me the game absolutely delivered. It felt like a big enough step beyond Dream Drop Distance to be worthy of being called "Kingdom Hearts III." I like the changes they made to the level design, combat, and the overall feel of the controls. That said, I do kinda miss the command-deck system and wouldn't have mind trading in "Flowmotion" to get those back.

Disney worlds were handled well but there were a couple of low points. I thought Arendelle had too little interaction with the movie's characters, and the 100 Acre Wood was so short you wonder why it was even there. The high points for me were Corona and Toy Box. It was neat journeying alongside Rapunzel and Flynn to reach the town and even getting to explore it. Toy Box had the best world opening.

In terms of story it's exactly what you'd expect. If you've been following the series, you're already gonna have a pretty good idea what's about to happen, but it was still a fun and emotional experience seeing it all go down.

Anyway, I haven't played it since I beat it, but I still intend to go back to mess around with the Game & Watch clones and explore some more using the Gummi Ship, as I had to rush it to have it beat over the weekend.

So today is a momentous day. The FMV opening to KH3 has been released. It should be a day of joy, but instead it's a day of disappointment.

Japanese:

English:

As expected, I'm really not feeling it. At least it isn't full-on dubstep, but it's still recognizable as Skrillex to me and I just don't care for his stuff.

Perhaps even worse though, nothing seems to match up to the visuals. It's just pure chaos and very short. I have to wonder if they didn't already finish the visuals with Don't Think Twice in mind and just slapped on Face My Fears (with some editing).

Oh well, at least "Killers with an X" must be pretty stoked he got to work on one of his favorite game franchises.

That's unfortunate.

Not that it's probably too out of place given the original game opened up with Simple and Clean PlanitB Remix, but the big difference here is that I like Simple and Clean PlanitB Remix. I absolutely despise dubstep.

Also, I didn't even know about this "Poo Bear" person's existence until I read the thread title. So thanks for that.

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but I only started playing this in earnest a week or two ago.

I'm over 30 hours in now, and I must say the game's biggest downfall is the grind. Making progress on people's chapter 2 has been a serious drag. I almost didn't make it through Therion's chapter 2 as his Thieving skills were still at lvl 8, whereas my main party was in the late 20s. Luckily I was able to compensate for that by Scrutinizing some townspeople, and getting a Thieving boost up to 80%.

Still, having to go into these boss fights with one guy who can't really contribute anything to the battle, except for Donating BP with the Merchant skill and using items, kinda sucks.

With my main party now at lvl 38, and everyone else far behind, it seems the best course of action is to just grind out the necessary levels for my mains (seems like most people's stories are beat at lvl 45-50, so that ain't too bad), and call it a day. And that's a real shame.

I picked Primrose in the first demo and really liked her story, so I picked her in the full game as well.

Though if I had to do it again, I'd pick Tressa or Therion just to get the money/equips rolling in right away, as that's been a major issue for me.

For my main party I just equipped new jobs as I found them, so this is what I ended up with:

Primrose
Dancer/Thief

Ophilia
Cleric/Warrior

Tressa
Merchant/Hunter

Cyrus
Scholar/Apothecary

Not the best job distribution if you want to maximize weapon access, but I felt like it fits the characters, and it's worked well enough for me. If I had to do it all over again though, I would've made sure to keep at least Olberic/Haanit and Therion in my main party for their path actions.

Now that these classes have been maxed out (except for their secondary Divine skill), I'm focusing more on getting them the right Support skills. Both Dancer and Merchant come with skills that add to survivability and decrease SP use, so I'm giving everyone Merchant skills first, and if there's still time, Dancer skills later.

@gtb08: No, that's the new "core" title you're thinking of. This is the spin-off/remake out this November.

I say "spin-off," as a lot of the changes made to this game will likely not stick. This is specifically developed for the casual crowd. The crowd that played Go, but hasn't ever played the real deal, or at least not in a long while.

There's no EV training, no HMs. Pokemon appear on the map and can only be caught Go-style, not fought. Multiplayer is downgraded all the way back to the 90s except with online. There's no GTS or anything like that.

But yes, the Go interconnectivity is very much optional. I mean, do you really need the means to import Pokemon in a game that only has a little over 150? I'd make it a rule to only trade for the missing Pokemon.