That was a fun one! I don’t think fully utilized Aeriths kit until that fight, either.
Intergrade still has some of my favorite fights.
I really wish Rebirth was more difficult right off the bat. When you go into it having played Intergrade, you already know to min-max character usage, and the fights are a little too easy.
A lot of the bosses are spot on tho, and the game absolutely SHINES as you juggle three characters and their full range of abilites. In longer fights you can also go past limit breaks, and use level two and three limit breaks. Lining up three level three limit breaks on a boss is 👌.
And the gameplay does improve massively. The addition of party abilities, powerful mini-limit breaks which you can use if two compatible party members both have the relevant bars filled, are an amazing addition to the combat system.
The combo moves are also a huge qol improvement. In intergrade flying enemies are kind of a pain when playing melee characters like Tifa, but in Rebirth you can have Cloud (if he’s in the party) launch you at flying enemies by jumping off his sword at any time. In Rebirth all the characters get additional combo moves depending on who is in the party.
The ATB bars fill very slowly when you aren’t playing as a party member, meaning that if you need to use certain abilites or spells, you should focus on playing as the character’s that can use them.
Same goes for limit breaks. On harder bosses you may need to build up a stagger, and then pull off a triple limit break during the stun. But you won’t have all three limit breaks ready if you didn’t evenly play as all three.
Also pay attention to ability effects. Some cause stagger instead of damage, some are single target vs AOE. The game doesn’t do a super good job of telling you what to use when, but read the descriptions and remember to check for weaknesses with assess.
Often assess will literally tell you how to beat a boss with specific instructions like “do a stagger ability during its charge up”, so always always always use it.
I think they should make it a daily deal, but not for a week. They should also eat the discount cost, which they apparently aren’t doing, and entirely waive their cut.
What I think they should do instead of extending the deal, is reset the games launch.
There is absolutdly no reason Valve couldn’t re-launch the game, along with all the algoritm benefits an unbugged 1.0 launch should have had.
Also, you seem to have missed that the article says they are contractually obligated to complete their current WIP game. Valve giving them a bunch of money would not give them time to work on further updates for Planet Centauri before then.
It’s going to sell no matter what the price. But knowing that, they set the price low, trusting they’ll still make a profit on volume.
If MS, EA, UBI, or any other publisher were in control, they’d set the price high, no matter how big the actual game was, knowing they’d make even more because of the hype train around the game.