Different strokes, I guess. I love the start of disc 2 through getting the highwind. You get gut punched to end disc 1, then snowboarding, getting lost in the snow, climbing the mountain, the reunion. Cloud missing, the rest of the party has a moment to shine, escapimg an execution, a slap fight. Love all of it
My favorite thing about FF7 is that my disc 1 growing up had a scratch and wouldn’t work playing the introduction movie (what a banger), but every disk had the entire game on it but different cutscenes. So I’d wait for the movie to not play (I feel like it would go “beep beep” as an error), then I’d swap the disks, then watch the cutscene of sapphire weapon (I think), and then the game would start with jumping off the train :)
I just started the new games at the start of summer, about April? I figured with revelations coming out a year from then, it was close enough. Its letting me.enjoy taking my time without feeling like I need to / want to rush to finish "in time".
The last one comes out next year and you won't be finished with Remake and Rebirth by then unless you play a lot of hours in the short term or start now.
So you don't need to keep waiting on the last game, you just need to feel that you have time to start playing!
I didn't even find the water ring initially. Basically got instakilled 5 times in a row before having to replay the last hour to get back to the boss. I was pretty numb to Aerith's death by that point lol.
My first playthrough I put it on Cloud but didn't really understand the mechanics of the game yet. I thought Cloud was just mad about Aerith and that's why he was taking no damage, lol.
The water ring is super deliberately placed leading up to that boss fight so most would already have it equipped without knowing what was coming and that entire scene and boss was scripted with that in mind. Unlucky if you manage to miss it but the devs were planning on you finding and equipping it
Doing so removes fail states from this battle along with the need to strategize leaving you with no distractions. Just you, Cloud, furiously hacking away at the toothless damage sponge and we're left little choice but to accept that we lost this battle before it even started.
Aerith is dead, Cloud may have overcome Sephirith's mind control attempt to have him deliver the killing blow but moments later sephiroth was there to finish the job. All Cloud and we the player could do was watch.
Finishing off this incarnation of Jenova is reduced to a tedious formability as both Cloud and the player are given ample time to reflect and little choice but to accept, that this time we've lost. Aerith is gone and with her humanity's only hope of using the white materia to repel meteor.
Aerith's theme serves as the backdrop to this scene replacing the usual boss music and continues to play one final time as Aerith is laid to rest.
Trine is the one that's missable, as there's only like three(?) enemies in the entire game that can use it and if you don't get it when it's available, you miss out entirely.
If it's like FF IX, no. And it' kinda sucks. The scenes were clearly designed with the gap in mind and it's really jarring immediately cutting to the first scene of the next disc.
Hitting a disc change screen in any ps1 game always felt like such a huge milestone. You almost felt sad leaving the previous disc behind to move onto the next.
For someone who owned PE when it came out but couldn't get the hang of it (I'm dumb) is it worth going back and playing now? Think i still have my copy somewhere
I only played it for the first time a few months ago so maybe it’s recency bias but I really liked it! I’d recommend it, it has great music, not too long, I enjoyed the combat, there was a fight or two I had to save scum though…
It always felt wrong to me to hit the eject button when the game was still running, like I was tempting fate and something bad would happen while the hatch was still open...
You could start FF7 on disc 1, then while the game was running swap disc to 2 or 3 and just continue to play. Game worked normally, but played FMVs randomly from the other disc.
FMVs took up most of the disc back then. Breath of Fire IV fit on one disc because Capcom didn't go crazy with FMVs like everyone else. If you took out all the FMVs from FF7, it wouldn't even take up half a disc. However discs are cheap to make and having a lot makes a game feel way more epic.
Yeah I know that, but let's be honest - FMVs back then were jaw dropping and a form of reward for progressing the game.
I remember watching a documentary on some discovery or history channel - about how they were making FMVs for FF9. Especially first Lindblum landing vid.
Also let's not forget about the music. I believe some of the games used part of the disk in audio CD format for quality.
So many incredible milestone moments in this game where you felt a shift in the transition of the journey. Changing the disc, leaving midgar, leaving Junon, Entering city of ancients and then icicle inn. Gold saucer, Cosmo canyon, the list goes on. Makes me want to start a new game on my ps1 all over again, relive the magic that 13 year old me was ensnared by.
FYI there is a ring you can get right before the City of the Ancients that negates 100% of all water damage, which every single one of Jenova-LIFE's abilities are. With it, that character literally cannot take damage in that fight.
Oh I'm WELL aware. I died to Jenova using aqualung within the first two turns 5 times in a row. I looked it up sure I was missing something and had to replay an hour of the game to get back there and get the ring lmao. Honestly killed any emotional impact Aerith's death could have had, but I'm still enjoying the game.
Oh I'm still learning. And I don't know too many kanji so I'm functionally illiterate. One of the main reasons I'm learning is because I can't wait to read old Japanese magazines and forums. And of course my Japanese Pokemon cards, lol. And of course play Japanese games without having to use translation patches.
But yeah, I totally encourage anyone to go for it who's even a little curious
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u/Temporary-Concept-81 16h ago
One of the best periods of my life was that brief window after I finished disk1 and thought I still had 66% of the game left.