I’d say not. During the last crypto fuelled shortage there was practically nothing available and anything you could get your hands on was ludicrously expensive. Just checked on a few stores and there is currently some offer at varying prices. Just don’t obsess on last gen Nvidia products.
I loved the combat system, so I enjoyed every fight in game (except flying monsters in the first game if you didn’t have barret around). I think it’s my favourite hybrid combat system that allows both tactical and reactionary attacks and shines the most when you’re juggling between characters to get the ATB gauges up on everyone as quickly as possible so you have more toys to play with constantly.
The Yuffie DLC (Intermission) then expands upon the traversal mechanics and team based combat mechanics which were a whole lot of fun. A lot of this carried over to Rebirth as well but expanded upon again. Still ended up with Yuffie being one of the most fun to play though because she was originally designed to play mostly solo from her DLC, but having a character that is more fun to play isn’t a bad thing obviously.
Story wise, without spoiling too much, I love how, much like a lot of the mechanics, tries to expand upon old elements rather than outright replace them. And the story being some kind of pseudo-sequel where meta-textuality enhances the experience it ensures that these games are not replacements of the original. Which makes me laud it up in the highest regards. If they had just tried to replicate everything I think it would’ve felt even weirder it trying to be a wholesale replacement of the original like a lot of standard remakes try to be (think resi and silent hill). I don’t know how others can replicate what square is doing though since a lot of it is rooted in it’s story and doesn’t deviate far from the elements introduced in the original and the compilation games. Resi could not have replicated this intertextuality between versions of the game. You could argue silent hill could due to its story elements but they just focused on making it an enhanced version of the original.
I think I’m starting to ramble too much now so I’ll start to end it. I think the fact I can ramble about these games and gush about them so much shows how much I love them.
Other than astro bot rebirth was one of the most refreshing breaths in gaming for me, despite me more often than not despising both large open worlds and ubi style towers. Yet I felt compelled to almost 100% the game just due to the amount of fun I was having that I could just not get anywhere else.
And now I have two extra games (eventually three) I can regularly replay for my FFVII itch, alongside the original which has been a bi-yearly ritual to replay since before my age was in double digits. I couldn’t be happier. Though Rebirth will always be the highlight when replaying just due to the combat overhauls they made which in retrospect makes the first look like a tech demo.
Thanks for your comment on this. I agree that flying enemies are annoying in the game. I did not realize they had improved the combat mechanics in the second game. That makes me interested in checking that one out.
The synergy skill that allows you to have another party member throw you into the air at an enemy, when controlling a melee fighter, (Tifa, Cloud, Red) is so satisfying and welcome in Rebirth when fighting flying enemies.
Rebirth does something with the open world mechanics I haven’t seen in other games. It interconnects everything.
The life springs give you a shitton of materials for the crafting system, they reveal the locations of crafting recipes, and eventually the area boss.
All of which interconnects with side-quests, not just at the start as a tutorial, but throughout each region.
It hence manages to make you want to do everything, almost on accident. If you do all the sidequests, you progress the collectathon a bunch. If you do the collectathon, you end up progressing quests a bunch just by “coincidence”.
Add to that the fast travel that lets you jump anywhere instantly, and nothing ends up feeling like a chore.
Think you’ve hit it on the nail on the head. It feels less like a chore because of the way they all connect with one another.
Although even before fast travel I still did a lot of manual travelling to get everything done. At least until I realised that fast travel was very likely to get better later in the game, which it of course did.
The problem with judging Steam as a monopolistic platform is whether it uses its market position to maintain its monopoly or not.
Valve doesn’t really engage in vertical integration. There are a few games that Valve makes as a first party exclusive, but nowhere near other competitors like Nintendo or Activision Blizzard. There also isn’t a gaming engine that ties to Steam directly; the closest is Proton but that isn’t required.
Valve doesn’t seem to seem to require onerous requirements on third party game studios to publish on Steam. Outside of banning ad-supported gaming, Valve doesn’t seem to demand preferential treatment.
Valve could easily become a problematic monopoly, but it isn’t there yet.
A few devs who did have commented that Linux users are like <1% of players but most of the crash reports or things like that. That was before the Steam Deck blew up though, so now you might have more Linux players, but those mostly use Proton, so why do you need a native Linux version.
I think it’s still nice to have just so that way if for some reason Proton suddenly disappears alongside Wine (alongside all their forks and other related things) in some catastrophically low odds event you can still play the game or use the program.
This was true, but a big part of that reason (as followed up on by some other devs) is that Linux users are usually tech-savvy, and frequently work on software. They contribute more bug reports because they know how to report a bug. You’ll have more bug reports, but not necessarily because there’s more bugs (though that too), and as a bonus the users reporting them will probably be able to help you fix those bugs a lot better than the average Windows user.
This absolutely happens. Team Fortress 2 Classic dropped Linux support outright a few years ago in favor of Proton support since it’s easier on the devs to do, and even as an avid Linux user I don’t blame them.
It’s not about compiling, it’s about testing and support. Each officially supported version needs to be tested - which means having yet another set of test systems sitting around - and supported by the support team. And not only is Linux a splintered market in its own right, making testing and support a significant operation, but there isn’t the same kind of single-point OS support that you get from Microsoft and Apple.
I don’t understand why we let Civ get away with amputating gameplay from the end-of-lifecycle previous game to repackage as new DLC again? If they hit upon great ideas in an expansion, why is that not folded into the core product like most decent games do with sequels?
They started with a triangle for 6, slowly carved it down to a semi-smooth, functional circle, then turned around for 7 and said “how about a cube this time?” Stop reinventing the wheel and finish refining it.
Honestly, the development mirrors my playthroughs of 4Xs: start with something funky and a lil different, struggle to make it work, and then restart when I’m close to done.
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