So yeah, Final Fantasy VII is being remade for PS4, so even though I don't own one, I will be purchasing one just to play this game. In my opinion it's still second to FFVI, but I am curious to see what they come up with. I've heard there will be some big changes, I'm expecting voice overs, I hope Steve Burton is back for Cloud, though he's done it for every other game, so I don't see why not. What I really want though is to correct some of the dialogue that got screwed up the first time, specifically two things: #1 "Turks" is always said "Turks" ike it's plural even in cases where it should be the singular "Turk" or other syntax mismatches, please correct that grammar; #2 Barret saying"The Hell..." instead of "What the Hell?" or "Where the Hell?" he's missing a word and I don't want anyoe telling me this is some black person dialect, I know lots of black people and heard them speak all sorts of alternative dialects, none of them talk like Barret, it's not black, it's a lazy translator at Square, probably the same one that did "Turks" own up to it and correct it like you did with "Vicks/Biggs" in FFVI.
As long as I'm on the subject of FFVII, I'm going to talk about Crisis Core. Crisis Core is a prequel concerning Zack Fair and how he connects Cloud, Aerith, Sephiroth, and even the Buster Sword and Yuffie. To understand first you need to know FFVII. The whole game centers around Cloud Strife and Sephiroth. Cloud is the main character, a former SOLDIER First Class who has joined AVALANCHE, a rebel group who are basically eco-terrorists trying to take down the Shinra energy corporation, which is interestingly the only major corporation and seems to be a nation unto itself. To be fair, Shinra has done some bad things, particularly creating Sephiroth from the remains of an ancient monster who himself ends up being the ultimate threat trying to destroy the planet with a meteor. But I'm getting ahead of myself, early on Cloud sees signs of Sephiroth's return which is shocking because he clearly remembers killing him five years earlier. His flashback is critical not only for this game but also Crisis Core because it's really the reason anyone should care about Crisis Core, because it expands on the flashback and tells the whole truth. But before I get to that, let me finish explaining why we need to revisit this critical flashback. Cloud remembers accompanying Sephiroth to his hometown of Nibelheim where Tifa Lockhart is their guide and then Sephiroth discovers a terrible secret at the Shinra Manor and goes berserk burning the whole town and Cloud ends up fighting Sephiroth and kills him. However, once they return to Nibelheim, Cloud's story begins to fall apart and Tifa reveals she remembers Cloud's story, but doesn't remember him being there, she remembers a SOLDIER named Zack Fair, who was Aerith's boyfriend(that last detail is not relevant now, but stay with me). Sephiroth manages to convince Cloud he is actually a clone of Sephiroth and confuses him long enough to get him to hand over the Black Materia which will call the Meteor and end the world. Eventually we sort out the truth, Cloud was there in Nibelheim five years ago, but he was only an infatryman under Zack andf Sephiroth. The reason his memory got screwed up is because Zack had to haul him all the way to Midgar while he was still in a coma after they were locked in a lab after the fight with Sephiroth.
Okay, now let's go to Crisis Core and sort out exactly what happened from Zack's perspective. It all starts during the Wutai War, which means a cameo from Yuffie. Zack is a SOLDIER Second Class, and he has been taken under the wing of Angeal, SOLDIER First Class. The First Class are very exclusive, only three at the beginning of Crisis Core, Angeal, Sephiroth, and Genesis. Each one has a unique sword, Angeal got the Buster Sword from his father as a present for making First Class, and Spehiroth of course has his Masamune, Genesis has a red sword that really doesn't matter, however he is the catalyst that gets things going. These three also all happen to be products of experiments with Jenova cells. Genesis was the first, created by Angeal's parents who didn't realize they were expecting him and accidentally contaminated their own unborn child. This led to two different results, neither perfect, but both providing enough data to get it right on the third try, Sephiroth. Genesis is unstable and kind of loses his mind, so Angeal and the newly promoted Zack have to go looking for him. This is actually a difficult task because Genesis has the power to copy himself, giving his cells to others turnign them into clones so he can use the copies to distract his pursuers. While pursuing the copies, Zack falls into a church, the same one Cloud will fall into five years later and meets Aerith there too. The Turks know about her, but they're takig a less agressive approach at this point, deciding to let Zack be an inside man because it will be too suspicious to simply extract him after he bonded with her. Not a whole lot happens there, just enough to make you really sad about what you know is going to happen later. Anyway, Zack and Angeal pursue Genesis to a remote location and their transport crashes nearby, and Zack has to finish the trek in on foot with one infantryman, namely Cloud Strife. They hit it off quick, but then the confrontation with Genesis happens and Angeal is torn between protecting Genesis and protecting Zack and finally settles on sacrificing himself. Zack finds the Buster Sword and claims it as his own and takes Cloud under his wing the same as Angeal once did for him. Sephiroth is now the leader of SOLDIER and leads an investigation to Nibelheim. This is really the climax of the game, the whole reason you're playing is to watch this part play out and it's just like you remember it from FFVII, only way better graphics and voiceovers. You fight Sephiroth one-on-one with "One-Winged Angel" playing in the background. Then things get wierd. For some reason the ending drags Genesis back for the requisite Death God of Doom Final Battle. I am just perturbed because we already know Spehiroth is goign to be the great destroyer later on and Dirge of Cerebrus gave us Omega Weapon vs Chaos Weapon, which is at least piggybackign on lore from the original game, but Genesis comes out of nowhere, theres not even a real explanation in the game, he just happens like the game wouldn't be complete without this fight. Furthermore, knowing there are already two ways this world is supposed to be destroyed, finding a full third doomsday threat I begin to wonder, maybe we should just let this world die, the odds are stacked against the mortals at this point. Things come back to normal for the finale when Zack finally gets within sight of Midgar and you have to face his true final fight against the full army of Shinra and dies. It's slow, painful and totally fittign for the character's death scene. You already knew it was coming but finding out Zack just realized he and Cloud have been in a coma for four years, and he and Aerith still didn't give up on each other, the whole final scene is just heart-wrenching no matter how much you try to prepare for it.
A while back I heard about challenges to play FFVII with minimal or even no materia. Here's my challenge for the remake, I call it the Story Challenge. You need to work with the story no matter how detrimental it is to your materia and equipment. Since yu can't get rid of the Buster Sword, the Seraph Comb or Barret's gun hand, you must keep these equipped throughout the game. The real challenge is materia, nobody can equip any materia other than what they start with, with four exceptions: Cloud has purple materia in his flashback, so you can equip him with one (or two if one is cover or counter) purple materia on his armor; Aerith may use any green, red or blue materia; Vincent may use fire, ice, or thunder on his gun a la Dirge of Cerebrus and Ifrit because it's similar to his limit break; Yuffie is a materia hunter and may equip any materia especially Leviathan because it's from her story, in fact only she can use Leviathan. This means Tifa, Barret and Cid can't use any materia for the whole game and Cait Sith and Red XIII are restricted to their starter materia. Goodluck when the game comes out!
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