Jim

Hallo ladies and gents, tis me, the all-powerful Jim, ready to give you another absolutely true and 100% unbiased review. You may remember my reviews of Kingdom Hearts III and Final Fantasy XV, and you may recall I liked those games a lot!

Unfortunately, such is not the case for the Final Fantasy VII remake. I've already poured 3000 hours into it, and I can tell you that it is the worst remake ever made, and that it makes the Silent Hill HD collection look like the Citizen Kane of classic 1980's video gaming. 

I'm not sure where to even begin with how mind-bendingly, World-War-3-Startingly, Jar-Jar-Binks-birth-ingly atrocious this pathetic excuse for a game is. Perhaps I should start with the topic that was a bone of contention from most fans: The episodic nature of the remake. As you know, this game was divided into 7 episodes, with each one costing a bank-breaking 50 cents. Square has to realize that iPhone using multiple-dog owners like me can't afford to be dishing out our entire bank accounts to fuel their money-hogging greed. They should have realized they did something wrong once they fired Troy Baker, put microtransactions into the otherwise excellent game that is "Microtransaction Simulator 2018," and started making Kingdom Hearts pachenko machines. Nobody liked them when they did that. Ugh, it makes me so mad.

Next, I didn't think it was possible in today's day in age, think of the graphics, for Yevon's sake! They're so much worse than the original! I know, you're just sitting there thinking, "You obviously haven't looked at them side by side!" But I did, and I'm posting a couple examples for you right now:

Here's the original,

And here's the "remake":

Still don't believe me? Here's another pic of the original:

And another of the remake:

That doesn't even look much like Squall! He's way too muscular! What are they thinking????

One last comparison: the original:

The remake:

If you don't believe me now, you obviously only have five eyes. 

next is the gameplay, and you wouldn't believe how badly they screwed this one up. The original game made use of the ATB ("Angsty Teen Brooding") battle system to control the main characters. It worked so well, because I could literally do everything in the game without pressing any buttons. But now they changed it to a Superman 64/Kid Icarus Uprising/Smash Bros clone with RPG elements, and it completely doesn't work in any way, shape or form. The game literally runs at negative six frames per second, even when there's only one enemy on screen, so even if the battle system *was* good (it isn't), it would be almost unplayable anyway. It's so obvious that the battle system was made at the last second by a group of spider monkeys that looked at an image of Kingdom Hearts CoM gameplay once, that I'm surprised and offended that they didn't fire all of the workers immediately.

And don't even get me started with the story. I don't know how they did it, but they ruined that too and managed to make the game more linear than FFXIII while doing it. They changed all these things around in the story, and all of the changes are awful. Like, they made dumb changes like making Barret's arm a nuke instead of a gun, and making Sephiroth a male with super long silver hair and a stupid katana. SEPHIROTH'S OBVIOUSLY A GIRL, IDIOTS. It's like they couldn't figure it out even after watching that scene in the original where Sephiroth says, "Hello. I am Zidane's female love interest and I want to destroy all boys." How much more obvious could it get? The only thing I liked was when the game bugged out (it's a glitchy mess, btw) during the Don Corneo mission, and Cloud was dressed as a girl for the entire rest of the game as a result. It was the best aspect of the game, and it was all because of a glitch.

The music sounds like a two year old banging on an off-tune piano. The sound effects are garbage. The characters voice acting is so bad that it blew out the speakers in my TV. There's nothing else to say here.

If I had to guess whose fault this trainwreck was, my money would be on the director they chose. You know who I'm talking about. I will never understand why they would ask a talentless hack like Hideo Kojima to direct a remake to the greatest game ever made. It's like they wanted it to be terrible. There are so many better choices. Couldn't they have at least hired Motomu Toriyama to direct and write this game? He's easily the greatest director in the history of all entertainment, and he would have made the game not only bearable, but also amazing. He would have at least had the good sense to replace every character with Lightning and give her 3x the jiggle physics that made LRFFXIII so perfect. She's just such a great character and her games are perfect and this game is a total mistake.

I thought Square had returned to form when they had released masterpieces like FFXIII, FFXIV (vanilla), and FF All the Bravest. But apparently not, and they had to go and disappoint me again. Way to go, Square. You are literally worse than Konami.

Score:

Graphics: 0/10

Gameplay: 0/10

Music: Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric/10

Story: 0/10

Overall: -9999/10. Three thumbs waaaaay down.

Toriyama needs to get freaking fired from Square Enix. He does nothing but run his own ideas into the ground.

I hope his most likely crappy next project becomes vaporware to make room for more projects from directors with actual talent like Tabata, who actually care about making a good game.

He gives us his "raituningu," a character that he's so freaking proud of THAT HE DIDN'T EVEN DESIGN, gives her ok-game-with-some-redeeming-elements a sequel that nobody wanted but with an actual good villain that someone else probably wrote to give his stupid waifu something else to do in the plot, AND THEN COMPLETELY ABANDONS THAT AMAZING VILLAIN AND GIVES HIM ONLY 5 ************ING MINUTES OF SCREEN TIME IN THE FINAL GAME SO HE CAN SPEND THE WHOLE TIME ON LIGHTNING AND HER JIGGLE PHYSICS SO HE CAN PLAY THE GAME NAKED AND RUB LIGHTNING FIGURINES ON HIS SKIN IN THE MOONLIGHT

YOU CAN EVEN SEE IT IN HIS INTERVIEWS, HE DOESN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT HIS ACTUAL GAME MECHANICS AND JUST SITS THERE LIKE A FREAKING GOOBER WHILE SOMEONE ON HIS TEAM WITH ACTUAL TALENT TALKS ABOUT THE GAME THAT THEY'RE AT LEAST PUTTING SOME EFFORT INTO, WHILE HE TALKS ABOUT LIGHNTNINGINGNGGNG.

JUST LOOK AT LIGHTNING RETURN'S SECRET ENDING. PEOPLE ON THE DEV TEAM WHO ACTUALLY GIVE A CRAP ABOUT THE STORY WANTED TO GIVE IT A GOOD RESOLUTION BY HAVING HER MEET WITH SAZH ON A TRAIN LIKE IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING OF XIII -1. BOOKENDS AND PARALLELISM LIKE THAT ARE GOOD STORYTELLING, BUT NOOO TORIYAMA WAS LIKE "nu it shud begin n end wiff mah waifu liiigghhhhttttnniiiiinggguuuuh [sic]" 

HE DID FINE WITH 10 BECAUSE HE HAD OTHER DIRECTORS WITH ACTUAL TALENT ON THE TEAM AND NOJIMA WRITING IT BUT HE WENT TO 10 - 2 AND THEN THAT FREAKING AUDIO DRAMA WHICH UNDOES EVERYTHING IN 10 SO HE CAN MAKE MORE GAMES WITH CHARACTERS HE ALREADY DROVE INTO THE GROUND.

Long story short, Toriyama is easily the WORST director at Square Enix right now, and I don't want to see any more games from him. 

Notice how Square announced their big guns this year and they all look like they're actually gonna be good? Notice something in common with all of them? No? Well then let me tell you one reason why they all look so good: 

I’m gonna try my hand at actual analysis here. Yeah, I had a joke analysis thread a while back, but there are some things in the trailer that I noticed that I haven’t seen anyone else pick up on yet, so I’m gonna put in my input/speculation here.  I’m going to focus on gameplay here, since the whole symbolism of the chess board thing has been done by every youtuber and their mother.

First off, I don’t think we should read very much into Sora having his old outfit in the first half. Everyone’s saying that Nomura just used old footage. I’m ready to believe this, but is there an actual interview where he said that? If someone could link me to it, that would be great. Because I haven’t seen any official statement from him about it besides “Sora will start the game with that outfit.”

Second, I don’t see any reason to analyze the HUD. They’ve said before that it’s a work in progress, so for all we know, it may look completely different the next time we see this game. It literally looks like they just rearranged the KH2 HUD, and slapped on a command menu on the left. What I am hoping, though, is that the characters faces in the final version are mobile again. They were mobile…ish in the D23 trailer, but I’m hoping for more of a “Final Fantasy Versus XIII 2011 Trailer” type HUD where the characters faces actually correspond to what’s going on in battle. A HUD like that would have been out of place in an FF game, but it would fit well for KH.

Also notice how when the first batch of heartless in the trailer show up, it initially seems like the different shots are taking place in the same battle, but you’ll notice (around the 0:32 mark) that Sora has the Olympus-type keyblade in one shot, but the blue starry one in the other. So unless you can switch your keyblades mid-battle (a la Final Fantasy 10), which would be awesome, these probably are from different battles. Why is this significant? I dunno. I just figured I’d point this out.

Also what I’m noticing is a very unusual amount of variety in casting magic. Not just in the effects on the environment, but also in the way Sora casts it. In some shots, he is more or less staying in one place when he casts it, like when he first casts Aero. This one isn't really a shield, but it seems to have use as a sort of defensive "push away" kind of attack.

In others, he seems to be simply… floating around.  On top of this, the attack seems completely offensively based, having the wind spawn away from Sora instead of right around him.

It almost makes me wonder if there’s gonna be an ability in this game to let you be mobile while casting magic, similar to the abilities of Wisdom, Master, and Final Form in KH2. Also, I wonder if the game will have multiple different effects for each spell that you can switch between. Say, blizzard could do what we saw in the trailer, or we can perhaps switch it to a form where it has a different effect on the environment. This seems to be the case for Aero, which, as mentioned, seems to have both offensive and more defense-based forms.

I also want to put in my two cents about the “limit” that people are talking about at around 55 seconds in. I haven’t seen anyone bring this up yet, but I’m not entirely convinced that what we’re seeing here is actually a limit. I’m actually more inclined to believe that it’s a reaction command. I say this because we see the heartless do the tortoise formation, and try to ram the party, and what Sora, Dolan, and Gooby are doing seems to be a direct response to that.

It’s as if they’re setting Gooby up so that his shield would push back that particular set of heartless, and their rush at the end is designed to break up the group formation. Notice how the stance of both parties in the picture are rather similar to each other, with both being in a "v formation" of sorts. I know Nomura said there would be no QTEs, but I don’t think this means the death of reaction commands. We could still have a button that does specific situational stuff, but not make it devolve into setting up a cutscene where we need to hit buttons to continue.

I got nothing about the Rock Titan

What stands out to me with the Keyblade transformations is that they seem to follow the same general pattern of Limit Breaks in 358/2 Days. Think about it: First we see Sora’s blue keyblade transform into guns, and he attacks with those. Then, they transform into a cannon, which could be the “finishing hit” of the limit like how each limit break in Days was a two-part deal. We see something similar with the Olympus one, but in that case, we don’t see what its first transformation is. If you notice how the camera cuts there, it’s obvious that the keyblade isn’t transforming directly into the chariot. Sora seems to turn it into something else first (although I have no clue whatsoever what that something might be), with the way he breaks up the keyblade and moves that sigil thing to his back.

  Unlike Days’ Limit Breaks, though, I don’t think these are limited to just two main sets of attacks. In the D23 trailer, we saw Sora attacking with the guns in a way that looks like the player was casting fire while having the guns equipped. It almost makes me think that the transformations operate sort-of similarly to the summons in KH2. For example, remember how Chicken Little would attack on his own, but you could do a special menu command for “FPS mode?” I’d imagine the guns would be a similar deal. Like, you would be able to do normal attacks and magic with the guns, but also go into “Third Person Shooter Mode”  which would have a targeting reticule appear like in the trailer and put Sora into that position of rapid-firing wherever the player is aiming. And then to finish, he would transform them into the cannon, and you could do a couple final attacks with it.

What would be neat in this case is if the magic spells have specific effects for if you cast them while using a transformation. We saw Sora casting a fire spell with the blasters at D23, and Blizzard(?) with them near the end of this trailer. This would be neat, considering each type of magic used with each transformation could have different effects. Imagine, for example, the Olympus keyblade transformation having an ability where your Thunder spell is much more powerful while that transformation is active.

I also wanna say a couple things about the Flowmotion in the trailer. First off, I’m glad they went to a blue hue for it instead of pink. (also notice that if you watch the part of the video where the following picture takes place, Gooby's glitching around and stuff lol)

Pink worked in the context of DDD, but it looks better as blue in my opinion. Next, his attack from the wall in Twilight Town seems significantly more brief than any of the flowmotion attacks in DDD. This is a very welcome change, in my opinion. Perhaps the Flowmotion attacks are more of combo starters in this game? Like, going from flowmotion into a quick flow attack, then continuing with a combo with that attack being the first hit. Also, I’m pretty sure the “blizzard rain” thing Sora did isn’t part of this particular attack. Notice how that one soldier gets hit by his first blizzard attack (seen in the above picture), then is still frozen when it shows him using flowmotion attacks on the Large Body (seen in the pic below)?

I think what we saw there was a complete chain of flowmotion, with footage of more of his blaster attacks cut into the middle of the flowmotion footage for some reason. I would assume that spinning ice attack is one of the moves at your disposal when you have the gun transformation active, rather than one that activates during flowmotion.

Anyhow, that’s all I have. What do you guys think of this analysis? I’d love to hear your opinions!

They would dress up as Nazis? No, because the swastika has an "X" in it and then Xehanort would be able to find them. Nice try bro. 

• when someone point out 'stupid' elements of the KH series and me wanting to explain why those elements actually work, but not wanting to be that guy 
• ...with the exception of Atlantica in KH2. There is literally nothing redeeming about that atrocious level.
• 
• people shipping characters
• Terra: "You're not afraid of me?" Snow White: "Should I be?" Terra: so it is true. Her heart really is pure light! Dude, like what? That makes zero sense

hi guys im here to analyse the new kh3 trailer that played at 3e last week

so in this first image we see sephiroth and harry potter playing checkers and talking about world war ii i think this is setting up for a crossover but im not sure because the graphics are so bad i cant even see their faces

next we get our first look at the main character, his name is kingdom hearts and hes my favorite video game char i like him even more than metroid who is so cool because he has an arm cannon

here we see kingdom hearts about to bash his head into a wall because he has brain damage and thats why this game is so trippy

this is also the first time we see gameplay running on thomas the tank engine so thats pretty cool and whats noticeable is that hes still in his kh2 outfit and theres an x on his butt which means his anus is not prepared

next we see kingdom hearts's hair catch fire because there is so much hair gel

notice how daffy is there in the bottom right and he's staring at a wall because his ai was coded by a stray cat they found runing around the set of star wars 2

next we get a look at the gunblade hes carrying so if you look closely youll notice that it has a pentagram on the end which means hes gonna sacrifice the flying things to satan

here we see kingdom hearts running up to satan so that satan can accept his sacrifice btw this is how i know this game is gonna be rated m because you can see satan has red eyes and a red mouth and hes very evil and scary

next we see kingdom hearts on a choo choo with daffy and george w bush

its a sparkly train

i like trains

here we see kingdom hearts in his new costume which looks like a cross between his kh2 outfit and a sharpie marker

notice how he has six golden nipples now

here we see kingdom hearts fighting a bunch of racial stereotypes

also notice how the x on his butt is gone which means his anus is now prepared

here we see that kingdom hearts 3 is a third person shooter 

i hope that they have an option to switch to first person because first person shooters are the best games

here we see kingdom hearts riding a boat

this is stupid because hes on land

stupid game, you cant ride boats on land 0/10 immersion broken

ill finish my analysis later but i hope this has been helpful so far to everyone who wants to play kingdom hearts 3 hd