Good god this game is SLOW

[Harmacist]

First playthrough ever. I REALLY wanna love this game, every one will probably shame me outta existence, but ♥♥♥♥ is this game a snooze fest for me. The only real pick me ups i get come in the form of comedy (how wildly stacked tifa is or the cloud wearing a dress thing) and it doesnt last very long before its back to the same old irritatingly frequent combat (which inversely moves at a snails pace). Honestly i think the only thing that's been quick so far was how fast Cloud went from not giving a ♥♥♥♥ to being seemingly all in.

Looking at this i don't even know why Im writing it -_-
Back to trudging I guess.

[NGC4889]

It's a bit of a grind game like XCOM 2 was a nightmare grind. But both are 2 of my favorite games for whatever reason. FF7 has a superior story and depth IMO. If you want a tip to speed up your game then I can give a tactical spoiler, which you might already be using. Uncover below unless you want to figure it out yourself.

Combine All Materia with a powerful magic attack materia (e.g. ranked up Fire/Lightning). Use Enemy Skill materia to learn techniques such as Matra Magic early game and return to the giant snake to learn Beta once you're strong enough. I also liked Trine enemy skill and Aqualung you can get later. There are other very late game ones also, but Beta is way overpowered for mid-game. This way you can often kill groups of enemies in one or two attacks.

[Harmacist]

Tysm. I didn't know about that at all but if i can do that it would definitely help with the drain i feel trying to do anything in game

[HimeAria]

Originally posted by Harmacist:

Tysm. I didn't know about that at all but if i can do that it would definitely help with the drain i feel trying to do anything in game

I also wanna point out that once you get out of Midgar, the story itself starts to actually REALLY pick up. Midgar is still good, IMO, but is honestly one of the weaker parts of the game for me. You don't even really hear about the main driving force behind the whole journey until right before leaving.

[The Grimm Reefer]

This game came from a time people had an attention span further than their cell phone. It's a slow drag for a lot of people, these days.

[NGC4889]

I mean it has plenty of story content that you get juggled between throughout the game, so if you can get into that it might help your experience.

No question it is a long game. I beat it I think twice a long time ago and it took me 70 hours to get everything I wanted to do done this time around, despite knowing the game well. It's a long epic game, which is one of the things that makes it special considering it is from 1997.

I would also consider the game sufficiently linearly scripted and self explanatory while being full open world to allow for a fluid flow through the adventure. I guess if you move fast it's probably beatable within 40 hours for a casual new player.

No doubt there are a lot of people that struggle to come to terms with the random battles. But I enjoyed the tactical edge back in the day. I really do suggest Enemy Skill because it looks cool and it's powerful and quick, but you might need to use a guide to make sure you don't miss it. There are other powerful options later also. Some of the late game power ups are pretty crazy to achieve, so when you're in the very late game, you might seriously want to consider using a guide, or perhaps even earlier (since the game has missables).

Keep your characters as strong as possible and see which magic does the most damage for you. As I said The "ALL" materia will speed things up as it allows you to cast on either your whole team or enemy team at the same time, there are quite a few dotted around the game if you search carefully enough.

Try to make an art of killing things fast and efficient exploration of areas. Definitely some patience needed! Make it your challenge to kill them fast and move on. No major spoiler but I'm thinking about a secret area at the end of the game right now and I was like, dang all those random fights... But that's just part of the game.

You will probably fight around 1000 battles, maybe a bit less, to beat the main story. You could probably finish it in several hundred fights below that, depending on your play style and efficiency.

Definitely, Shinra Building in Midgar is a bit annoying to navigate in the introductory part, as HimeAria suggested. And yeah, you might find the game opens up.

[Harmacist]

Thanks everyone. Im definitely gonna keep playing it as I know the story and love it. Hopefully, like you guys mentioned, once the game opens up I'll enjoy it more. Ill also be using some of those tactics you guys mentioned. Might save me some spam X grief.

[Harmacist]

Originally posted by Grimm Reefer:

This game came from a time people had an attention span further than their cell phone. It's a slow drag for a lot of people, these days.

Yes, lets pretend that this is the ONLY final fantasy to require heavy attention span. I was only talking, primarily, about the battle mechanics and how boring it felt to start off. Further context: I've played almost all of the ff games and this is the one my brain is just having a struggle with getting through the start.

[Electric Cupcake]

FFVII has always indeed been a milestone in gaming in general, but I've always held that it's overrated compared to the golden age of Final Fantasy 1-6.

And PC gaming at that point.

Or maybe it was when the unwashed Sony plebs began invading the space and failing to appreciate it properly like the stupid, smelly, gaijin philistines they are.

[Harmacist]

Honestly i've downloaded 7th heaven and went with "high poly" model textures as well as battle area retextures, 60fps mod, and an arranged soundtrack the game feels a lot less slow, doesnt seem to get hung up waiting for some battle animation as much anymore, and is causing me to get bored a lot less. Now when I'm spending what seems like a good 50- 70% of the game in fights my eyes and brain have something intricate to take in lol.

Perhaps I'll survive to see the game pick up pace after all

[Harmacist]

Oh and a mod to increase the difficulty. I think that the 60fps and difficulty change are really whats doing it for me.

[Awesomer]

i feel like you have a smooth brain and should probably avoid classic games. pre internet games are abit different. just in case your not old enough to understand, these game saves used to be saved on memory cards (kinda like a flash drive today(that you had to take to your friends house to play)) games were meant to take time, you couldn't download 1000 games a week(1 game could take u a week to download)(and this game released on a console without internet). you maybe bought 1 game every 3-6 or more months when the commercials hyped it up. you didn't get updates or dlc. games like this were meant to be slow and played thoroughly(games were a finished product upon release), with a well documented game guide that was 500 pages long and cost half as much as the game did(on release day)

new people live in a world of fast paced screens and information. i can see why a classic is slow.

[NGC4889]

With internet back then it would have taken several hours to download FF7 (1.3 GB) by my calculation. The disk requirements were a lot less than nowadays, so that would likely compensate for the slow internet speeds. Not only do modern games have higher resolution assets, but they probably have less need to compress data and optimize as much due to modern hardware. However, that does not necessarily reflect on the complexity of the game code or script itself, which FF7 demonstrates in terms of its expansiveness.

Compare DOOM 2016 (70 GB) to FF7 1997 (1.3 GB). FF7 has reportedly over 100 enemy types. DOOM had only a handful, I mean like 5 or something. DOOM 2016 was great, but the story was incomparable to that of FF7, which was much vaster. The list goes on how FF7 exceeded DOOM 2016 many decades before in various categories. That's just one simple example.

On console it was 3 PlayStation disks, which was totally a revolutionary thing. After all, Sony was a digital media giant and decided to move into the gaming industry, i.e. interactive media. DVD was invented apparently around 1995, so FF7 probably took advantage of this new technology, an improvement on traditional CDs.

Regarding guides, when I was playing FF7 just recently it made me think that they used to put very well hidden secrets into games that are near impossible to find in any reasonable amount of time, probably knowing that the community or official guides would leak it to interested players.

[Harmacist]

Originally posted by Awesomer:

i feel like you have a smooth brain and should probably avoid classic games. pre internet games are abit different.

Speaking of smooth brains... instead of reading anything other than the initial post you went off on a tangent about my assumed age and kids these days?

FYI: The game was slow to me because it was boringly easy. Enemies didnt have enough life/defense and they didn't do enough damage or I had too much life. Yeah, the battles (every 5-7 seconds of walking) in your favorite game from the 90s requires little to no brain power and that bores me. So sue me -_-

[NGC4889]

It felt surprisingly easy for me too this time around as an adult. But I think the fun is in the story, discovery and kicking *** mainly. Naturally, there is also the nostalgia. I decimated some of the bosses in seconds, but somehow that was still satisfying in a different way. A more challenging turn-based game is definitely XCOM 2 on Legendary Ironman mode, but without the open world or IMO extensive story depth.

My main motivation to replay was to compare it to FF7 Remake, but I still enjoyed playing through it all, soaking in the classic story and dealing with some unfinished business with some end game stuff. I definitely still found the story personally a compelling one. Somehow I felt like I was being taken through the Odyssey or some ancient classic but in video game form.

I think I died like 3 or 4 times legit through the whole 70 hours with all major secrets and challenges finished. Remake was similarly easy.

XCOM 2 on Legendary Ironman I probably died 500 times. But, as they say "That's XCOM, baby!", in reference to the crazy RNG. Any game that has auto-targeting is going to probably get you on RNG. For example, Faster Than Light on Hard mode.

[Harmacist]

Originally posted by NGC4889:

It felt surprisingly easy for me too this time around as an adult. But I think the fun is in the story, discovery and kicking *** mainly. Naturally, there is also the nostalgia. I decimated some of the bosses in seconds, but somehow that was still satisfying in a different way.

Oh no I vehemently agree, I wanted to play for the story, secrets, and sidequests but the constant boring fights seem to have been weighing in on my will to actually play the game. With the increased difficulty I am 100% enjoying the game more. I will definitely have to give xcom a try as I can't ever recall playing it. See for me with this type of game if it's too easy I have no real reason for grinding out or fighting so often, especially if Im only here for the story part of it all so 3-4 deaths (if its an indication of challenge) is just nowhere near enough for 70+ hours imo. From what you're saying xcom will definitely been in my library/schedule really soon.