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CC8: Final Fantasy VII | Retro Game of the Month · Cart Creeps

• Carter Creepington: Hello and welcome back to Cart Creeps. ⁓ this month, July 2026, we're gonna be talking about Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation One. A game came out in nineteen ninety seven. the longest game by far that we've played. And ⁓ you'll see in a second ⁓ how that affected the ⁓ completion rate. For some of us. Yeah, for some for half of us. ⁓ I'm Ryan, and we also have Gabriel the all knowing fool. I am ⁓ J Johnny Fantasy. And I'm Keith. I I didn't think of a nickname before we started. That's why you're the least favorite. No, I'm a I'm that's not what the vote the vote it says. No, exactly. Everyone always agrees. Keep's the best. If you want to get in on the action and discuss this game or ⁓ you know, next month's game, which we'll find out here. In a couple, probably if we're bringing us an hour or two. ⁓ go ahead and join our Discord. Check out our Discord, the link will be below and come talk about ⁓ the next game of the month or any retro games you want to talk about. Gabe, what else ⁓ have we been have you been playing this month besides Final Fantasy? Some co op. I've been playing moving across the fucking country. That's what I've been playing. Whoa. What game's that for? Hey. Guys, check this out. ⁓ Cowboys fan. Disgusting. Hey, hey, come on. Scum of the earth. Those cowboys fans. Whoa, he's here. That's a film joke. So if you listen to the podcast, that doesn't make any sense. If you listen to audio only. For audio listeners, Gabe was in ⁓ Keefe's frame a second ago. Yeah. I've stolen Gabe's dogs, but he has unfortunately come along. Joke was I teleported to Keith's house. How do you do that? No, I'm actually ⁓ staying with Keith forever. ⁓ for like a week or two. Nah I d I don't want him here that long. I want his dogs here that long, but not him. ⁓ Other sweethearts. So ⁓ because I was moving across the country, all I did was play Final Fantasy VII. So sorry. Keith Jay, what do you do? You were moving too, right? I was moving. I moved about fifteen minutes down the road, so not quite as big a move. But I I brought all my furniture with me, so that that took more work. I brought nothing with me but my dogs. So again for our video viewers, I have my my wall of game behind me. It is much more clear. I do I'm a fan of the new background. ⁓ the camera's not looking over me. But you know. Yeah, I'm just distracting from the fact that I did not finish this month's game despite putting forty hours into it. ⁓ idiot. But the I guess outside of the all of that I I I played a little bit of Rocket League. New place has some better internet, so been seeing some smoother frames and that's that's felt nice of me that someone's lost in them balls, huh? I know whenever I see Jay on PSN, I know he's playing either Rocket League or Football. A couple months ago they did like a I guess epic. They did a Spongebob collab with Fortnite and Rocket League and one of For Rocket League, one of the things you could buy was the it's a goal anthem, so when you score a goal, like a song plays and it's it's the band geek song. Sweet victory. Yeah, sweet victory. ⁓ so I'd be hearing that every time I score and like when we went on an ⁓ V P that song plays is pretty good. in a departure from previous months, I actually haven't been playing anything else but Final Fantasy Seven, actually. You have to only play Final Fantasy if you can play complete edit. ⁓ yeah, I didn't really take any time with anything else. I was just kind of just really focused on Final Fantasy VII. Yeah, I've gone I haven't played any fighting games either. This is the longest drought I've gone without playing a fighting game in a while. I'm itching to get back in there. That means the next time you play a fighting game, everyone else that's been playing fighting games in your absence has gotten like forty times better. So you're you're just like You might as well just quit. No, Keith's been studying. He he he watches f fighting games while he plays. I have I have fighting game tournaments playing in the background while I'm playing other games. So it's like a subconscious absorption of knowledge. Keep the crazy attention span thing. We used to play ⁓ tabletop role playing games together like online. We would play over Discord and use ⁓ Albert Albert Rodeo, so it's like a virtual tabletop. And every time we played, sp like Keith would be watching something else while playing. And especially thankfully we we used to play on Thursdays. ⁓ and during football season, Jay and Keith would all both be watching. Thankfully we moved it to Tuesdays and then it started to at least they would just be watching regular TV or something. I want to watch football game. Food. There there's gotta be a sport on somewhere. We gotta find something. It was funny because but I remember I remember talking to you about ⁓ yeah, I watched like fighting game tournaments and sometimes stuff like that. And Ryan was like, ⁓ yeah, let me ⁓ it's like you watching the s a random Super Bowl from like ten years ago. It's like, ⁓ yeah. Yeah. Keefe is like that meme where you have like the zoomer like brain rot like slop where it's It has to be subway surfers playing in the background while someone's also talking to you or they won't keep their attention long enough and he'll swipe away. That's ⁓ that's how Keith's brain works. This happened probably I will say this is a fun key story. Hold on, hold on, hold on. This is good. This is from like this is a Keefe story from like fourteen or fifteen years ago. We were like we were at the beach after ⁓ I guess my graduation, someone's graduation, but we had that big beach trip. You and we were playing two K. It was like late at night. And you know, we're I'm fixated on the TV ⁓ playing against Keith and his character just dribbles the ball out of bounds like clear as day. And I turned around and this dude is asleep with the controllers like mid game. Like mid play. ⁓ Never forget. Well, you know, when I'm comfy I fall asleep no matter what. Equalized. Of the of it was a good couch, yeah. Eagle eyed viewers of the ⁓ YouTube channel during these episodes you can notice my eyes are looking over there sometimes. It's because I have something on the TV. Yeah. Yeah. I turned I I turned it off. I did, I did, yeah. You should probably turn it off if I get distracted. Because when the when the hornets were playing, I was definitely watching during the podcast and was like, ⁓ this guy so unprofessional. He doesn't care about anything. I care about a lot of things. That's that's his problem. He cares too much. Mm-hmm. About experience. He's too much about a billion things. Yeah. I remember playing GTA ⁓ four, the you know, the the older one, the two thousand eight one, one time in its online version, which was a lot more simplified than obviously what GTA five turned into. I was playing with you guys probably remember him, Evan I like I used to play Xbox with him and we were he was driving the car We were both like in a car driving around somewhere and all of a sudden like he stops, like he just smashes into something and he's like, Sorry, I was texting. Life imitates art. Yeah. Shout out to imitates life if you're if you're listening, but you're probably not. Right, what have you been doing? I besides playing Final Fantasy. ⁓ this is well, so I actually did play some other games this month, but only little light puzzle games because I went on vacation for a week, which is part of the reason why I didn't finish the game. Yeah, he was so busy having free time. No, I brought my Key's recommendation. The games I brought with me was the Retroid Pocket Three, which is what I was playing ⁓ Final Fantasy on, and I bought brought the mini mini flip, the little I don't think yeah, I don't have it with me right now, the little pink Mia Mini flip that I have, and I just put really light game puzzle games on it. ⁓ using using menu eye, which is I hadn't used it before. I was normally using onion. So I was using trying out menu I and had like columns, which is a pretty cool little puzzle game. And I had like Tetris DX, because I'm used to playing Tetris ⁓ DS, which is got the holds and everything, you know, and it's like a different kind. Like Tetris DX is just Tetris for Game Boy or NES, just with color, you know, color swapped. And so there's no holds. So I was like, I should try playing this because the I really heavily rely on, you know, holds to like, ⁓ I don't have where to put this, so would hold it. But it it makes makes me worse at the game because there's no holds. So it was interesting to like play it in a you know a handicapped way kind of, but ⁓ I'm still like not very good at that that version. I'm pretty good at the DS version. Also, shout out to ⁓ retro handheld's game of the week, which is columns, but Ryan wasn't playing it this week, he was playing it last week. Yeah, I was actually just playing it randomly because I was like good puzzle games that I haven't played and it was yeah, columns, which is for Genesis Sega Genesis, by the way. ⁓ or Mega Dr. Did I play Candy Crush? no. There there's a there's like my mom plays Candy Crush and she's on like three thousand. She loves my candy. I think she's still like grinding those levels. Killer's mom was really big into it. You should play Super Puzzle Fighter two Turbo. Is that on the website? Yeah, that's just like a PlayStation and isn't that like a Bustamove clone with Street Fighter. No. Or is it a different Puyo Puyo with Street Fighter? Okay. I actually have Bust to Move on there too. Bust Move is pretty fun. I've played before ⁓ for Game of the Month. Classic bubble shooter. But game. Yeah. Kind of hard actually. Pretty hard game, you know, if you're stupid. Yeah. Like me. the rest of the month. It was spent on trying to beat Final Fantasy and that definitely did not happen. And I still played for a decent amount of hours. ⁓ close to twenty. ⁓ I only got to the end of disc one, which there are three, ⁓ today, and I I was like, Well, there's no point in continuing, that's not gonna happen. But we can talk ⁓ about it a little bit in a little bit. ⁓ to read reiterate the concept, ⁓ we have our creep wheel. If you're not familiar, there's bunch of games on it. We spin it at the end of it this episode, every every ⁓ game of the month episode, and it tells us what we're playing for the next month. Last month, Final Fantasy VII was not one of our picks. It was actually our buddy Jacob's pick. ⁓ he's an ultra creep. Ultra creep. That was his choice to put on the creep wheel. So we have ⁓ you know, we got a f that was our first viewer suggested game that we played. And of course by far the longest. game. Yeah. So in addition to that, we ⁓ also have a n a new ⁓ ultra creep, which ⁓ he goes by Lance and he has a game to add. So Jacob's game, ⁓ new game to replace last Final Fantasy Seven is IQ intelligent cube, which is a puzzle game for PS one. Looks actually pretty interesting. And I don't think we have any puzzle games currently No we don't ⁓ definitely not. I actually got that game on that shelf back there. You really? Yeah, intelligence cube. Play that one on the original hardware. Yeah. Finally, back to it. Yeah. Lance, his choice was Silent Hill two for the PS two, which is our first PS two game on the list. So actually pretty excited for if that one wins. ⁓ I don't think this one has tank controls. I think two has over the shoulder controls. I think one has one definitely has tank controls. One has tank controling it before, but We can talk about this month's game, which doesn't have 10 controls, but it has the controls are a little weird, if I'm being honest. ⁓ Keith, you want to tell us more about this? ⁓ yeah. Sure thing. Why not? Since I beat it, of course. Yeah. Today's month this hey, I beat last month's game too. How dare you? This month's game was Final Fantasy VII. It is developed by Square Soft at the time. It's now Square Enix. ⁓ released in nineteen ninety-seven for the PlayStation One. At the time, it was the biggest game, most expensive game with the biggest development team. ⁓ as someone who saw the credits, the credits are really long because it's like the biggest development team of at the time. And it is it's a beast of a game. ⁓ three discs, like Ryan mentioned. Now the discs are as it's funny because like three discs, there's three parts, you know, you end of part one, end of part two, and then you know, the ending. Disc three is pretty much just like the final the last boss and that's pretty much it. This is it's weird how they've kind of split it up. Yeah, so you get to the end of well I was looking it up. You get to the end of disc one people say you're like fifty-five percent of the way through the story and then you get to the end of disc two and you're like ninety-eight percent of the way through the story. Yeah and then from there it's you and you can technically do like all the content all in s disc one technically like before you know any big changes happen to your party or anything like that. So yeah, you can do everything in disc one or like some stuff comes later, like it's introduced later, so you have to do it in disc two. But like you do like the content, the disc isn't like content related. Like you can you can just do everything at at one at once. So it's more just like cutscenes and story stuff that gets broken up in the disc. Because these cutscenes are pretty crazy. And especially when you think about it at the time, it was like, ⁓ yeah, this is like you can see the money in it. It's like you can Just like triple A games with today, like you can see like where they put all the things like okay, you can you can see where hyper realism for nineteen ninety seven. Right, exactly, exactly. So ⁓ triple A games like Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Remake. True. Gabe, what were your thoughts kind of going into the game, I guess, when it was first announced? I think you're the only one that's played it before. Yeah, I I played it and then I have memories of playing it. And then after playing it, I realized I was talking to Keith about this. I was like, I was pretty young and I was playing like my cousin's game, and I'm pretty sure what he did is something I would do with like my daughter, which is just stick me in the overworld and let me run around and do fights. So that's my memory of the game. ⁓ so I remembered like that stuff. There's things I knew about the game, like spoilers and stuff that I just happened to know about before. So I mean, between that, like childhood memory of running around fighting stuff. I I don't know. I had like some expectations just based on knowing like it was a JRPG like Golden Sun 2, which I had just finished. But mostly I don't know. I w I was excited to play it. ⁓ just because it consistently hailed as like the best Final Fantasy. so that's what I expected. I expected to play the best Final Fantasy game. I had played ⁓ say 15 maybe when it came out and I wasn't that impressed with it. ⁓ and I'd played Kingdom Hearts before, so Kingdom Hearts was kind of what I expected. ⁓ except more turn based, which it is. ⁓ definitely more turn based than Kingdom Hearts, which is like a hack and slash. But ⁓ so that was I mean that was kind of my expectation going into it. ⁓ I I r th what I really wasn't sure about is like how good or bad it would look because I knew it was a big game and so I know resources have to go in some places and are which means they're taken out of other places. ⁓ which we'll discuss all that later. But ⁓ I don't know. Where were you where were you thinking going into it, Ryan? ⁓ so I have never finished a Final Fantasy game. The only and the only other one I ever started or played at all was Ten, ⁓ which is a PS two title. It was for a RPG of the quarter for retro handhelds. And I started it and I played through it a little bit. And I was like, okay, I understand like kind of the vibe of this. I didn't like it didn't really register with me ⁓ personally. I think the combat system in that game is different. Like most of the the titles the combat system has changed slightly. and that one seemed actually more linear than this one. Maybe I'm wrong because I never I didn't get super far into it, but it actually seemed more linear than seven. So I mean graphically that one was pretty it looked good. It was especially upscaled. ⁓ you know, on my I think it was the Odin Two Pro at the time. So like I had played other JRPGs. Obviously the big one is Pokemon and ⁓ you know it's not this isn't really you can't really compare it. It's not really the same kind of thing. But I've had played through Star Ocean's second story. So I ⁓ which is also for it was also for Retro Hand Helds. That was like a game of the month too, not even a game of the quarter. So it was a long game in a month. Golden Sun was a game of the month. So this isn't even the first like thirty hour RPG of completing them. Yeah. And so I played that all the way through and I was expecting it to be similar to that game in terms of 'cause like the real mystery for me for this game with the story, the actual systems, like the materia and all the weapons and all that stuff or whatever, that's cool too. And like people talk about that, but like it's the story is what people are referring to. So I will say that like Star Ocean ⁓ was a lot felt a lot more anime than this did. It was a lot more less mature actually. This was more mature than I expected it to be for a game that's rated T actually. and ⁓ but yeah my expectation going in was like I probably won't like it that much because I'm not a JRPG fan. Like I like Dragon Quest. I played a couple Dragon Quest games. They're they feel they're different than this though. They have stories are not as in depth and there's not as much focus on the characters like this game ⁓ but ⁓ yeah, I didn't expect to like it and I liked it but I did my I did end up liking it more than I thought I would. But overall I didn't have high hopes going in just 'cause I'm not a G RPG person, but I was ⁓ hopeful that, you know, what people say is the best Final Fantasy game would be, you know, worth my time. And ⁓ we'll we'll talk about, you know, how I actually felt about it in a minute. But Jay, what about you? How did you ⁓ what were your expectations going in? Yeah. You kinda you touched on Pokemon and that is like my entire JRPG history really. I mean, I played some other like minor ones. ⁓ Digimon World Two and Three for PS1 are both some J RPGs, but really like outside of those two, and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of Pokemon. ⁓ That's not that much. That's not that much. But I mean I played so much fucking Pokemon. So I've never really touched other JRPGs. But I mean I was excited once we we got Final Fantasy to try different J RPG. That and just like the iconicness of it. I've never played a Final Fantasy, but like you guys already said, like seven's the most popular one, ⁓ by a lot. And I guess going in, I was excited just for another another PS one world. I love PS one worlds, the graphics, ⁓ yeah. I just like the aesthetic of it. ⁓ and I was excited to see just how big it was. 'Cause I knew it was b know, it's Three discs. So like when I finally did get to the open world and you saw like the big map, that was a that was a cool moment, like seeing old game be huge. Mm-hmm. Yeah in an effective way. Just that knowing worlds could be that big that early. with enough disc power. Yeah. If you throw enough disc at it, everything's possible. I I'm kinda like Gabe, but like or I played Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts, when I what I would say is like when I Whenever have you ever played Final Fantasy before? I've played Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts is as close as I've ever gotten to playing Final Fantasy. I've played through all the Kingdom Hearts or you know, one, two, three, you know, Birthplace Lane and all the other, you know, that all the craziness there that goes on with that. And you know, and I played Final Fantasy fourteen like I talked about last month. ⁓ and but which has a bunch of Final Fantasy references that are totally awesome. Well that's an ongoing that's an ongoing live series. ⁓ it's like the greatest ⁓ biggest. It never ends world popular ⁓ world Super famous MMORPG ⁓ is pretty cool. ⁓ can keep up with all of ⁓ free trial. Why if it's the Final Fantasy, why are we on like Final Fantasy forty seven? Because when the first one came out, they didn't know if they were gonna make another one, so they had to that's why they called it that. I said that trivia at the end of last episode, and yeah, you're making me repeat it. Yeah. Yeah, in the Final Fantasy episode. What did you want ⁓ to call it? Maybe Final Fantasy? Maybe more fantasy. Who knows? It is confusing to a final at first. Not to mention, this is some fun little trivia. ⁓ so Final Fantasy II is act in America, the one for the SNES is actually f er is it the SNES or the regular Nintendo? But two is actually four, and Final Fantasy Three is actually six. So that's why it goes Final Fantasy II, three and then just jumps to seven on PS1. Mm. okay. Because Japan thought we were they thought we were too stupid to handle the other ones to understand. Makes sense. Same with Super Mario Brothers too. Those Americans don't appreciate our Final Fantasy. That's why whenever they port over like, you like Devil May Cry three, it's like ⁓ the easy mode is Or the normal mode is the easy mode in Japan, but it over over here it's like or like hard mode. It's like it's harder in the Japanese version or whatever, you know, because they think that we're a bunch of Speaking of ways to play games, Keith. ⁓ how did you play this game? Yeah. Well, I ⁓ well I kept it, you know, where it belongs on a Sony system. And I played it on my PS five, 'cause there's you know, updated release version. ⁓ the updated release ha it's you know, it's got the It's got three times speed, ⁓ god mode, basically where your health and magic is always full and your limits always full. And then you can also turn off Fucking limits always full. That's disgusting. I'm just explaining what is in there, okay? That's why this guy beats the game. No, no. Write that down. Write that down. No, write this down. That's why I beat the game. I'm not even ashamed of it. Like I I used it. ⁓ and then it also has ⁓ turn off encounters. ⁓ as well. But I did not use Gabe has watched Gabe Gabe's version, the one that he played, because he played a different updated version than I did. So he had actually different bonuses unlocked that I didn't have on my I had one more which was just autosave. Yeah. But I I don't even know that you don't did you check that you don't have it? Yeah I checked. This is the only those only three options I had. Mm-hmm. It's a keep to check because how you activate each one ⁓ it's usually clicking the left or right stick. And then clicking clicking the left stick, I think left stick turns on three times speed, and I think the right one is God mode. And if you click both of them, it's no encounters. And then ⁓ the auto save you have to turn on in the main menu. So that's why I didn't I I keep that and he's like, but I guess. On my main on my start menu, it's just new game, continue, additional credits, and special movie, which is a teaser for Final Fantasy Seven remake. Because that's when they released the new one. The cause Gabe played on what did you play on Gabe? I played on the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck version, the Steam version is a older version of like the Reload. With more features. It has more features than mine. It's weird. I I I've also bought it on Steam because it it happened to be summer sale when we found out and it was like two or three bucks, I think. Yeah, so so my version had less kind of, you know Technically last because I couldn't autosave, but ⁓ but I played as a rich as close as I could to the original. Was that ever a pain in the ass for you? Just like the scarcity of save points? No. Save points right scarce. No, I mean they're they can be pretty generous. g generous. Generous generousy ⁓ generous ⁓ with them, but there were some times where I'd go into a dungeon and I did die a few times where I forgotten to save and like fuck. And it's like a couple times where I'd like, ⁓ I'd have to worry about that. But most of the time I was pretty like because you can always save in the overworld. So I was just before I go into anywhere, I just save before I went in. I love the tints. I love the can say it's I had I had save mode turned on, but I actually never used the autosave. Because what the autosave does is it just creates a save file at certain points. It's not like it's not like a save state like when emulating. All it does is I think if you exit a battle in the overworld, it'll autosave after you exit. There's a couple other conditions, but it's not like save stating. I love I love the save state. What did you what ⁓ original hardware did you play on, Jim? Yeah, I play it on the original Steam Deck OLED. ⁓ ⁓ yeah, I ⁓ I did it emulate style. ⁓ I did my own fast forward as well and I I used a lot of disc. It it's packed away. But the but the case is right there. Yeah, I was about to say, ⁓ yeah, the case is there. Yeah, yeah. But I didn't play it on that. ⁓ as much as that would have been fun, there's no feasible way to beat that game on native hardware in a month with like a regular job. We're not famous yet, so I can't I can't do this full time. So I did play on Steam Deck for the fast forwarding and the safe stating for the most part, and I I still didn't beat it. But I put forty hours in. ⁓ I did a lot of the side stuff, I think, and I did a lot of grinding. ⁓ so yeah, I'll I'll get I'll discuss more of that later. It's funny. With your three times like with your fast forward, ⁓ it like speds up the audio as well, right? In sense. Yes. So it pretends to be on the emul on our version, yeah, it just speeds up the movement, but all the sound is still normal. Yeah, that's cool. The song sounded just as good fast as they did regularly. I'd like to put a disclaimer that I told everyone to just buy it on the Steam store, but they didn't listen to me. I have no regrets. So yeah, I also ⁓ also emulated it. ⁓ I used my retro pocket. You you don't have original hardware back there? No, no, that's a retroid pocket three plugged into a converter. It's It's down on the f it's right there. I think it's somewhere around there. There's a Retro Pocket 3 down there, Pocket 3 Plus. ⁓ I picked that over the Steam Deck just because it's more portable and I knew I'd have to be taking it with me and playing it as much as possible. And I still didn't finish it. But ⁓ I should my emulator would have been the same as Jay's. It's probably Jay probably used Duckstation. That's what I used. ⁓ and yeah, Duckstation, ⁓ you can configure the fast forward to be as much Yeah. Or as little as you want, actually. You can do five hundred percent, three hundred percent. I think I turned mine down to three hundred. It was the defaulted to five hundred. You could do like ten ten. It just makes the battles way too fast. I had to turn mine down to actually yeah. 'Cause enemies are attacking twice by the time you can react. Yeah, I did change the battle mode. ⁓ we discussed it briefly in the chat. Like you can change it to where they they wait for you to it makes it more turn based. ⁓ Which I did because of the fast forwarding thing. I didn't know that. I forgot about that. It it makes it more t it makes it more turn based, but if you're just sitting there not making any decisions, they can still attack multiple times. Yes, based on Like it doesn't stop their timer. It just it changes it will stop it. I think when you're making decisions like who to who on their side to attack. It's like a few conditions. ⁓ but it's not like just completely making it turn based. Yeah, I believe when I'm if you're Selecting the move like attack or magic or whatever, it's paused, but if you hit cancel out of that into the menu where you're, you know, like just looking at them, they'll still attack you. Okay. Save states. The problem with duct station versus playing like retro arch is duct station does not have an undo save undo load or undo save state. ⁓ I ran into one issue. Where I lost a bunch of progress because I was fast forwarding through a cutscene. It was the cutscene for the ⁓ the battle mode where you like set up troops. I can't remember the name of the location. Fort Condor. Fort Condor. Fort Condor, yeah. So I got there and I had stopped using regular hard saves, like in game saves with the memory card, because I was just using save states. So and then seem ⁓ Duck Station also it has you can have a save slot. So you could have like 10 slots, but you to open the menu and pick that's the one I want. Or you can do the autosave, like the quick save, which just overwrites every single time. So I didn't have anything but the single singular auto save and I had autosaved while it was like loading because I was like or loading that cutscene. I was like, ⁓ what's going on? Maybe I can like fix it by reloading, residing resetting the the game itself, the console, you know, and just loading into that save. But no, it was like froze totally frozen. So I had to go back to Shinra HQ, like I was on like level sixty four or something. I it wasn't that long. It was at least at least I knew what I was doing from that point on, which wasn't that much, but it did set me back a little bit. Yeah. So I learned my lesson from that. And from that point on, I did hard save every chance I got in the game. And I also made separate saves slots for the game. The real quick is that you didn't even have to go there. Yeah. That's true. You have to go there later in the game, but you don't have to go there where he was at. Yeah, you have to do it once at the end of the game. Yeah. Because you basically you escape Shinra, you escape ⁓ Midgar, go through the mithril mines, and then you see Fort Condor. I was following a guide and the guide was like, Go to this battle, it gives you stuff and I was like, Okay, but then I didn't think it's guide. So guides are always like, Here's how you one hundred percent You never listen to a JRPG guide about what to do. Yeah. You like have to like, okay, I I don't need to do that. But Experience otherwise, like the RP three is kind of s it is on the small side. It's basically like a phone with controls slapped on it horizontally. So not in a great control s like the controls aren't they're not very big. ⁓ I use R two for ⁓ fast forwarding and I used L three plus R one for save states. I save state a decent amount, but most of the time I didn't need to save state for battles. But we can talk about battles and combat and stuff later. But it Wasn't a lot of times where I needed them for that. I usually did it if I was going to go in a direction and then like decide, did I need to go that way? Because now I'm gonna run into a random encounter. Cause I did like unlike you guys that played it on played the actual version of the game, I had full random encounters, full like I had to play straight, you know, just using I also played straight, sir. You know, no god mode or anything like that. Something I noticed too, ⁓ with the random encounters is you can't save scum them. ⁓ like if you save a If you save like in the overworld and you take seven steps, it doesn't matter how you take those seven steps, like if an enemy appears, it will appear. Right. And it will always be that set enemy. ⁓ okay. I actually didn't know that. That's interesting. Yeah. If you entered like a a town or something and they came back out, that would be different. But yeah. It was already pre det predetermined. Hmm. I kept running into like, yeah, the pumpkin like on the bridge, the rope bridge, like I pumpkin guy. Over like that. I had to reload because I was like, did I even need to go this way? And it came back through it again and it like, ⁓ yeah, pumpkin guy. Whatever. It's the same one. I'm still here, boss. By this point, we have mentioned who was finished and who who didn't. Jay and I did not did not finish. Gabe and Keith finished it today. Not too long before recording time. ⁓ Yeah. Literally minutes before. Seconds. Yeah. Seconds. We can talk about ⁓ get into the deep dive and talk about all the different parts of the game itself. We can start off with story and structure. ⁓ you guys know more about this because you finished the game than I do. But generally speaking, the game starts out it it kind of starts small and expands outward. So it's there's a long time where you're just in mid gar, which is the first area of the game. And I I guess i the best way to explain it was there's like tiers of like Zooming in and out, right? There's a battle, obviously, when you're fighting each other. And then there's like the over like world kind of like or the rooms kind of thing where you're like running around in an area and there's different like doors lit off of it. And most of the time an area will have random encounters. And then you go outside of like a town, for example. A town is like an area that has doors, you can go into the buildings and stuff, but you leave the town and you're on the overworld map, which also has random encounters you can save and you're walking around in, you know, larger scale. So it's like different scales of what the game is at. And I mean it works fine. A lot of JP JRPGs use this like system. Most of the ones I've played that aren't Pokemon, it's the same way. There's like the big map. Yeah. There's like the little area. Dungeon Town. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But ⁓ as far as the story, ⁓ the overall story is you're a former soldier, which the company or the group is called Soldier, ⁓ working like the Shinrock Corporation, which is a slightly well it's an evil corporation that's like exploiting the not even something they love being evil the planet's natural resources so you start out and you're actually in a ⁓ an eco terrorist group called Avalanche who is fighting against Shinra and it's a bunch of it's like a ragtag group of people and it quickly becomes a lot more complicated. ⁓ you end up ⁓ like having flashbacks for your ⁓ the big bad guy Sephiroth right you You know, see what you did earlier stages of the ⁓ in his in Cloud's past. You can also rename your characters, which I did. Yes and ⁓ I think we most of us did. I kept all mine the same. I kept the original. So there's nine characters. I didn't rename three of them. Well I actually I changed Cloud's name to Max Power. Max Power. I keep that tradition going. Which is hilarious later on when Separoth's like Max Power. Max Power. I only renamed myself and ⁓ Barrett. Then I guess after that I was like, okay, I don't want to think of a bunch of names. So I left everyone else the to be the same. But ⁓ Cloud for me was Spoink. Our hero. Cloud for me was Creepo. Creepo, yeah. And I named Barrett Fartward. ⁓ and then I felt kinda dumb after that one because I kept having to see it over and over and over again. Because it means that every time someone starts speaking it says their name in the top. So it's like Fartword. You'll never forget. The one I'm really proud of is there's a ⁓ there's a cat robot and Keith helped me with this one and ⁓ 'cause I went to name him Chat GPT and then Keith said cat GPT. Yeah. ⁓ yeah, that's it. Jay didn't get to this part, but ⁓ that character ends up ends up being evil, double crosses you. It's a spy. At least in the first theory. Well you didn't get to this part, but he turns a new leaf. Jay has seen him before. But Jay doesn't know which one he is. Yeah. I don't remember specifically which character he g 'cause they explain it. He expla Kate Sith, right? That's his that's the cat guy's name. Yeah. He explains who he is, but I can't remember which character it was. ⁓ but yeah, you guys want to talk about the story more? I mean, I don't know, it doesn't matter if we spoil it because but it's very long. Obviously it's a according to how long to beat, on average it's a forty seven and a half hour long game. Most of I think you guys took less than that, but ⁓ yeah. I took under thirty. I don't remember what my final time was, ⁓ actually. But basically the story is you're chasing Sephiroth for the whole time. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah, Sephiroth wants to basically kill everyone on the planet so he can absorb all their souls and become a god. That's like basically it. I mean, that's a very s very simplified version. To me, one from what I did play, it felt the f would again, which again was only the first disc, so that gets to the end of where spoiler alert, ⁓ Aerith is killed by Syparoth or or Aeris, if you're using the original translation name. ⁓ yeah, I played it that and the the story feels like it it feels very anime, feels like an anime story, which is makes sense. It's a Japanese piece of GRPG. So if you're into that, you'll probably like it. ⁓ to me, well, this is the story part, so we're talking about if we like the story or not. I liked the what I had played and It surprised me in like like I said before, the adultness of it. There's like a decapitated head of Sephiroth's mother, like uses being used to power like these Genova or sorry, the ⁓ yeah, is it Genova? Is that well genova that's okay, so ⁓ Ryan, you have no idea what you're talking about. You simple child. ⁓ you the decapitated head is of an ancient alien creature that landed on the earth thousands of years ago. So the cells were injected into a baby, baby Sephiroth, who was he was born to a normal woman. but he's just he was just injected with like in utero really fucked up. He's just a baby. Well he's got a father too. So like it's a f no he has a father as well. Yeah. His father's Hojo, the crazy scientist that you mean. ⁓ spoiler alert no spoiler alert is kind of a spoiler 'cause you find it out right at the end. You don't find out until the end. but yeah, so his father was Hojo is a crazy scientist. A lot of the wacky things that happen throughout the game, it's like, ⁓ why did that hap why did he do that? It's because Hojo's crazy. Okay. Why why would Hojo do something like that? Hojo's crazy. That's it. so he had a baby with this woman with another researcher who was actually related to Vincent's backstory. Vincent's another character an optional character that could also get. But ⁓ and then he took Genova's cells and in and basically injected it into the baby. And soldiers are all basically they're the super soldiers of the Shinra Corporation. What makes the what separates them is that they are all injected with Jenova cells also. So that's they're experimented on. And then some of them make it, some of them don't. And then that's why ⁓ they also, you know when you're talking with people in cl with ⁓ with cloud or max power in my story. ⁓ a lot of people say, ⁓ I can see it in your eyes, you're from Soldier. It's because your eyes shine a bit differently than everyone else's because they've been infused with You think it's Mako, but it's actually Jenova cells. Is it Mako or is it Mako? In my mind it was Mako, but Mako makes sense. I think it's Mako. I've heard it say Yeah. Well here's another fun spoiler. Mm-hmm. Yeah. ⁓ well, is it? Because wait, Mako is condensed into materia. That's what I'm saying. It turns into material, yeah. Yes. Yeah. ⁓ here here's the other big spoiler story. ⁓ Cloud is not Who he thinks he is. Which is a very Cloud is not a soldier. He thinks he is. Yeah. He tells you that he was injected with Genova sales cells. Whenever he introduces himself, we always say Cloud ex-soldier, first class. Turns out he wasn't soldier. He was a liar real quick. Liar. Yeah, that's cloud. Yeah. Exactly. Well it's it's like a mix of like he is. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ he's got like we learned later yeah who who the actual soldier was. It's a guy named Zach. Zach's pretty cool. He has his own game called Crisis Core. That's a whole thing. ⁓ we learn what happened to him. ⁓ and then yeah, so it's a it's a fun it's a fun little story. Fun little twist actually. I think all of you were dramatic through Cloud's backstory, right? In ⁓ Nibbleheim Yeah, Nibbleheim. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. ⁓ so everything you see there you go through that backstory like three different times. ⁓ and the first time you do is Cloud's telling of it, and then you find out the truth of it all, but it's being presented as Sephiroth is messing with Cloud's memories, and then you finally find out, no, this actually is the truth of it all. ⁓ true, true. Yeah, true, true. The true true. You know, you go through the you go through the first initial flashback and then you show up to the town later in the story and you're like and then Barrett's like you said it was like burned down like five years ago. Well that's another interesting thing is And then I was like is Cloud like now Cloud I was in my head I was like Cloud's an unreliable narrator now he is. Exactly. Well it's it's not just that, Shinro rebuilt the town. Also so to hide the fact that yeah, one of their soldiers went crazy and Mess up the reactor too. Burn down the town. In that first ⁓ flashback when your cloud, if you go and interact in all the houses, you can go in Tifa's house and she'll be like as you're telling the story. Did you go in my house? And you'd be Yeah. And it's like, Yeah, did she go in my room? Yeah. And I just said yes to everything. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ I did it. Yeah. Did you play the piano? Then I then you can like read her diary. She's like, Cloud, you didn't. And he's like, I did. There's another house you can go into with Barrett and then Barrett's like, Man, none of this matters. Get back to the story. It's also funny because everything you do in Tifa's room later on in the story when he's like having that second like where Sephiroth is messing with his head, he'll repeat all of the things you did do and if you don't do them, he won't like say it. Like he'll he'll say like, I went into your room house, I went into your room, I played the piano. But if you like didn't do those things, he won't say it. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. Did you guys ⁓ do the panty raid too? I chic I chickened out. I didn't do it. ⁓ Yeah. You just open the dresser and there's it's orthopedic underwear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I didn't do that. Yeah. Once I saw her giving me like dialogue for interacting with her room, I was like, I gotta touch everything in this room. The Pentira. The Pentiraid. SpongeBob reference. Hell yeah. There's everywhere. Yeah. But I don't know. Yeah. The story has a lot of good twists and turns. ⁓ I don't know. I like the story a lot. I think it's great. ⁓ a lot of it's some yeah. It's a lot of the reason I wanted to finish the game on time was simply because I wanted to see like how this concluded. I wanted to get to the end and like see the whole story. Which is why I did like, you know, I I cheated. I used God mode ⁓ and three times speed to like speed things up some. ⁓ but that's mostly because I wanted to get to the end of the story and I'd be really interested in going back and doing side quest and stuff just to also experience the gameplay. So Yeah. Gabe can vouch for I didn't use God mode on the final boss. So Yeah, yeah. I did. And there's no way I wouldn't beat the final boss in time without it. I didn't cheat in the final boss. Yeah, yeah. Well, Gabe's a liar too, so I finished the game. I I can't trust that. No, I finished the game and then I went over and ⁓ to watch Keith because I was like, I want to see the final boss done without like any sort of like nonsense like that. And it was it was intense. I was like yelling at him to do stuff. It's like you gotta heal, you gotta heal. And yeah, it's like, you know, it's an it's an incredible story. Like you always hear like, It's a great story. I'm like, ⁓ okay. It's like, is it? I'm like, ⁓ yeah, it really is. And it's it's the moments and the moments like really hit me. And like, you know, learning about like the moment of you learn like why Cloud wanted to become a soldier in the first place. And you know, like the reasoning of like all that, his backstory and stuff like that. Him and Tifa's backstory and how it's important, how connected they are, and like, and fuck, he kept his promise. Holy shield, he was there. Like, fuck yeah, and it's like, yeah, fuck. It's like It's so it and like it really hits you and like you really connect and like fuck and it all comes together and you kill the bad guy at the end. Spoiler alert. get out of here. But he's a fighter on Smash, he can't be dead. It's so funny. I sound like a boss in Kingdom Hearts. I told Gabe, this is his this is his final smash. He did that in the resultivement. And this is this is what his stage is doing at the background is Smash. He has this really his like ultimate move is really funny just because it like creates this seal and then you see this beam coming through the solar system and it like will name the planets and be like Pluto and then the beam will go through it and like blow it up and it's like blowing up every planet in the solar system and there's like math equations floating around. But I was like, this is awesome. It's such a long cutscene too. So Yeah, it's really long. And it's a really long boss fight. So like you'll see it multiple times. Thank God you have to f fast forward. So yeah, he'll do it a few times on you. When we talk about the art and the sound and the atmosphere, it does have that classic PS1 game feel. It has the fixed backgrounds and like they're all really good. They're all like they're more gritty than I expected them to be. Because I like I said I didn't know anything about the game going forward or going into it. They're gritty. They're dirty. Like the character models are something we can talk about in a second. But like the visually the the all the art for the towns and the backgrounds and stuff, really good actually. Even especially when you get the fancy you know, temple areas and the caves. Caves can be kind of confusing because there's like things you gotta walk under and stuff like that. I heard this is one of those games that ⁓ the art looks really good on a CRT. Mm-hmm. I could believe that. Yeah. It's so funny also going from like Resident Evil to Which came out next year and the year after this, to this, and it's like it's a similar kind of thing of pixelated or you know, kind of character model here moving around on a big, ⁓ kind of, you know, pre-rendered background. And but you see how detailed the models are in Resident Evil compared to this, how you're moving in the world, because if they took like a Resident Evil model and like put that on the big ass areas that you have. That you're walking through in Final Fantasy VII, like it this game would need like seven discs to make all that work. You know, it's like it's it's so it's really funny how like Resident Evil does it in a more condensed way, but like a similar thing of pre-rendered character or moving on a pre-rendered background, because like the maps are like Ryan mentioned before, is like maps are huge rooms are huge. Like you're going up a mountain and like or going across a long ass bridge on this mountain, it's like It's no they don't cut it off like halfway. Like, no, you are walking your ass all the way across across that wall. Right, exactly. Yeah. Which I really love the fast camera. Like And they even gave you like a Yeah, right. And they even gave you like a button that you could press so 'cause to point out where on the map and where the doors are because like the so it's so big that you can easily lose yourself in the in the art and it's really incredible how they did it. I used that the whole time. Yeah, I had it on the entire time. Yeah. It also helps with like finding like doors and stuff. Yeah. And ladders too. Yeah. Doors and ladders. Yeah. So I always had it on because I was like I already had enough trouble trying to figure out where like like let's say you're going down a path and like it can be there's like a boulder at the start of the path or something and you're trying to find out, okay, where exactly do I need to be to go I know I'm supposed to be somewhere around here. I know the path starts somewhere, but I can't see it exactly and yeah. So like I have to wiggle around and then you find it. So I was like, I'm already struggling with that. I don't need to struggle to figure out where I'm supposed to exit the screen. I thought they were really good about you know, when you enter one area to the other with like multiple entrances, like when you're scaling that mountain. Mm-hmm. It's kind of a maze. ⁓ and you have to go to one screen like then go down another two and then go right, and then you're at the mountain again in the right way. ⁓ Yeah. They I thought that world design was pretty good for, you know the fixed screen limitation to be able to design a puzzle in that way using the world that you're traversing is pretty good for the PS1. I like the the overworld map too. It's a good it looks good. It's not the textures are not that bad. They're kind of ugly right around Midgar where you come out, but everywhere else is like pretty nice looking. And you're just, you know, your 3D representation of your party is your cloud, the like chibi version of the creators, which I personally don't like, but I get with We talked about and Keith just mentioned it, like the hardware limitations of making the models look different for larger areas. Yeah. ⁓ it's probably not wasn't possible. Because like the models in the battle scenes are look really good. If you just don't see them very much. You don't and you there are also pre rendered CGI scenes a number of times throughout the game. Yeah. Those look good. They but you you know, they look like old CGI, but they still look pretty good. But I like the the battle scenes are actually like really good. Battles is it themselves with all the effects of magic, there's like a there's a trillion of them. There's like trillions of different magical effects that are going on in the in in just one battle. There's you know, you're using fire, using ice, using all this stuff. The enemy's got their own sp specific like effects. Yeah. ⁓ or whatever magic they're using on you. Using summon is like a whole summons. Yeah. Which thankfully there's there's fast forward 'cause the summon cutscenes are long. Fast forward it. Especially the the higher level summons are like, yeah, they get crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Mahabit zero. Yeah, Flying in from around the moon to blast great hardly. Yeah. Do you have to fly around the moon every single time, dude? I'm summoning you here. Odin? Don't go the Odin one. And I was like, this one's really long. Like he rises in. Yeah. And then he stops and then he throws a spear and then the spear goes up in the air and then it comes down. I'm like, this is like forty five seconds. I mean, it's probably not, but it feels like it. Yeah. This might be little distracting because all the clouds separate. And yeah, the clouds separate is a big ring. Yeah. It's so funny. I c like I couldn't even like imagine because like I just forgot that ⁓ yeah, you can't just three times speed this. So like you have to just like every time you just you gotta sit and watch this every time the play game takes. At one time speed. Yeah, playing it on original hardware, you'd have to sit through all the summons every single time. Even just the intro battle animation takes so long on like one. Maybe we're just spoiled now. I think we're spoiled. Going back to like 'cause like I turn on three times speed, like kind of in intermittently, like turn it off and then move normally. But like I would turn it off with battles. I'm like, fuck, this is you move. You man, you move kind of slow or am I just going crazy? And the world's so big. That's a lot of walking and with random encounters in between. Yeah. On the world map I had to have three times speed on. I couldn't. Yeah. Yeah. I had it mapped to my right trigger. But like it wasn't toggle, it was hold. So I every time I was holding it, it would fast forward. So I could easily like let it go. So in battles there I'm just like attacking, not doing anything crazy. I would just be holding it and pressing A at the same time. Same thing, same thing with dialogue. In the over in the overworld I couldn't that didn't work because our right trigger changes the reference point of the camera. So yeah, like move I'd be rolling off to the right the wrong direction when I'm trying to walk. So I can in overworld I actually had to go normal speed. Jay, did you know there's a map in the overworld? I did. And if you press select twice it it transparents it over here. It's actually really good. I mean that's a that's more of a gameplay thing. Fun fact I don't know which game came out first, but Digimon World Two did that too. nice. It was a small screen I had the smallest screen of anybody here for sure. Like mine was a phone screen. Mm-hmm. So there were times, especially with the world map, I was like I don't know I and then thankfully you have an arrow like a view cone for yourself. Yeah. Like that ⁓ without that I would be lost totally lost 'cause like I could not I didn't know but it's too small. I know I could see where it was really, really fun for me, like in the overworld, like You know how on the map the cities are just dots. And then you get to the city and it's just like a little house represent like it's a couple houses. It was just always really fun to me getting to a new city, hitting the load screen and just like seeing what it looked like. ⁓ like getting to all the new towns and like you know, getting that magnifying glass into the world from the overworld of all the towns are very unique looking too. Like even the ones there's lots of ones that are kind of just little towns that you don't go to for very long, but they all are unique enough that I can recognize that they're not this one is this one and this one is this one. Especially also there's the golden saucer. Right. Which is kind of ridiculous looking in my opinion. Like I got there and I was like, ⁓ my god, do I have to like how long do I have to stay here? Apparently you have to go back again multiple times. I was like, I don't know about this place because it's like every single room of the Golden Saucer has like every door to every other room in the golden saucer and they're all different looking and I'm like, this is like insane, like to look at. Like I don't want to park here. It's a theme park. Yeah. There's a ghost hotel and there's ghosts in it. And I was like, what? Is that pay to save? ⁓ yeah. That that's some good theme park humor. Yeah. On a note of ⁓ the towns, they also have each of them have a lot of character. Like a lot they're like each town has some kind of hysteric story like some kind of unique yeah theme to it. ⁓ you know, yeah, Cosmo Canyon. I I really appreciated that too. like going to like Barrett's hometown and it's like completely destroyed because of like bullshit Shinra did. It's and it's always good it's also like if you know, if you didn't have a guide going through this, what they expected you is just you go to a town and just talk to people. That's what I did. I didn't I didn't guide. Yeah, more than that, like story just talk to just any random person, any random town, they'll just tell you what's going on, what you need to do, what where do you Yeah, they're they're very helpful with that. Or they'll just like give you like you know, a new weapon for a character. Like I talked to a random dude in a random town and he gave me a cloud weapon and it was like, Whoa. Yeah, right. It's like, yeah, the game does reward you for exploring and they give you more and more options on how to explore. You get a buggy, you get a boat, you get I did think that natural progression to like let you reach more part like they locked off some of the overworld at first and then get to it later. Like they did that in a good way. You guys didn't get to this, but eventually you get an airship and you just fly around the whole map and it's so it's so much fun to just fly in the air. It's yeah. You get random air encounters. ⁓ no, actually, yeah. That'd be funny. You get a submarine. And Vills at you. Yeah, I want to talk about that. The not the monsters, because this is kind of art related. All the random monsters in this game are entirely they're they're ridiculous. Like I have no context of the Final Fantasy universe. And obviously each one is different. But I'm like, we were talking about this earlier. I'm in the train graveyard in Midgar, right? And all of a sudden I'm fighting like a robot motorcycle with a skull on it, and then there's a house that's trying to eat you. It's like, what is this game? But then there's also like just dragons and griffins. Yeah. Rival. It's like such a crazy are a lot of ⁓ monster crossover. Like, you know, like in Dragon Quest, there's a slime in every Dragon Quest. Yeah. There's ⁓ there are monsters that do crossover for each game. I've heard that. Yeah. It's like similar. Some like big monsters, like big boss monsters also cross over to each game. So it is but Yeah, it is funny seeing like the wide range of just different random shit you see. A lot of the summons are crossovers too, right? All the summons are yeah, they're in every game as well. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard that that's ⁓ like a constant. That's one of those. ⁓ that's what makes the game similar. Yeah, is the is the monsters and the summons. There's all the summons are there. There's always chocobos, and there's almost always almost always a Cid. Yeah. Mm-hmm. ⁓ actually something that surprised me was ⁓ just because I know Because of Kingdom Hearts, I know some like Final Fantasy stuff. And I thought the spells would be the same as Kingdom Heart, like you know, like Thundera and stuff like that. ⁓ I thought like a lot of the but it it was just like fire one, fire two, fire three, so did you guys ⁓ mess with any of the spell combinations? Like fusing like you could fuse all to fire. ⁓ hit all. It would do yeah, hit all the We talk about materia in a little bit 'cause that's a pretty big like section of the game. Whole other subsection, whole the system in the move on from ⁓ art and stuff, let's talk about the sound. Well yeah, I mean for sure. Because the sound's amazing. Yeah, specifically music. Music, I mean there's sound effects and stuff. Every sound every like attack I think has its own individual sound ⁓ sound effects, like different ⁓ spells and stuff, but like the music is the main thing of these games. Like ⁓ Final Fantasy is pretty well known for its music and it's inspired like lots of artists even to make music and people to make music because of Final Fantasy. I believe the composer, ⁓ his name is Nobuo. He ⁓ he did the game music from a lot of these ⁓ earlier games and a couple more of the three D ones beyond this one. And yeah, I mean I didn't l hear the music all the time because I was fast forwarding or I had it the game mostly muted, but like what I did hear, I like, Yeah, this is this is good. There's some exception Did you at least hear like Severoth's theme? I think I I'm sure I did. Yeah. It's like the I don't like theme. Womp Womp Womp. Yeah. It really does give like it he's like this eerie presence throughout the game and every time he shows up that music plays and you're just like ⁓ that's good. Yeah. Mm-hmm. The ⁓ the golden saucer. Yeah. That music made me it was annoying. I did not like saucer music. Carnival, man. Yeah. We're having fun. Yeah. Look at all the colors. Imagine if you go to Disney World and they're just blasting the ⁓ Mickey Mouse ⁓ theme song, which is a twenty four. Earth by sleep, one of the worlds is just the Mickey Mouse theme song over and over. That was really annoying. It's a small world. Yeah. Yeah. That I've heard a trillion times. There's like a little ⁓ jingle after you rest too that I liked a lot. All the music really does a great job of just setting the mood for anything you're doing at any given point. Yeah. Like, I mean, I'm I'm not like a huge fan of the Golden Sausa, like music or anything. But I did think it did a good job of yeah. I I thought it did a great job of making you feel like you're at a crazy theme park that's fucking what miles above Yeah. You have to get cable desert all the way up there to get there. Yeah. So dystopian. Yeah right? Yeah. Yeah. Themes. Themes. Ladies and games. Yeah. Yeah. Three thousand or the bus is free. You don't gotta pay for the trolley. The boss music, ⁓ even like it's regular bosses and then The Jenova boss music I always was thought was really, really great. ⁓ and then Sephiroth's final theme is also just iconic, you piece of business. Sephral piece of business there. ⁓ and yeah, even stuff like Earth Earth's theme is also really good. 'Cause like, you know, it which plays after she dies, and it's just like, man, this is Wait, she dies? Yeah. Oopsie. Yeah. So we've talked about ⁓ this a little bit in passing, just here and there. We're talking but we'll get into specifically the core gameplay, like the actual gameplay loop, not the story side. First thing I want to talk about is the movement and I don't know if any of you guys had this problem, but anytime like I'm in a a zone, like a room or a town or whatever, and I'm trying to drive myself into a a place, right? Especially it's especially bad in caves. It's like I'm trying to go this direction. It's just not letting me. I like bump into the wall a bunch or try to turn and it's like not working. I don't know if that happened to you guys, but it happened to me a lot. Sometimes I turn a direction and I think it's like the camera. I don't know if it's like a camera thing or like but like when I'm hitting the D pad to go a certain direction, I'm expecting it to go one way and then just and I actually like turn a completely different way. So I think it was like a camera position type thing. So it did make things kind of frustrating sometimes because I was like Trying to go this way. Go go go this way. But like bumping into a wall, trying to get into a door. Yeah. And then like you're doing that on top of random encounters. Yeah. I I can't tell you how many times I was like ⁓ almost out of a fucking room and like I'd get a random encounter. Or like almost to the high wind. Like Yeah, I'm like, that's another thing. I'm trying to use as few steps as possible to get to where I'm trying to go because I know that's what triggers the next encounter. It's gotta be based on a random number and the amount of steps I'm taking. Because if you load believer room come back, eventually you're gonna get one at some point. And like Jay was saying earlier, like there's always going to be one in a certain spot if you like so it's bas it's gotta be based on your amount of steps, I'm assuming, or the distance you've traveled. So like bumping into stuff is annoying 'cause now I'm like, well now I'm gonna have one sooner. Yeah. A little I mean it's a this is like a nitpick thing, but it did happen to me pretty much constantly throughout the game. I just had one on the way to this dead end. Yeah, exactly. So like the way the map I mean, yeah, the map is ⁓ a drawing, but there's h hidden paths that go throughout, right? Obviously it keeps you on the track. So sometimes and sometimes they're not super obvious, but thankfully you have the pressing select and having little red arrows telling you like where the doors are. But sometimes even still like savor. I'm like running into the wall and I'm like, shouldn't I be able to go under this or am I not supposed to go this way? Or there this is like in caves it's bad where it's like I gotta go underneath something and I'm like, that's not intuitive at all. You know? But like other than that, I mean the controls is just pressing circle to select what you're doing. And it didn't take me l long. At first it was like very initially it was confusing. But in I know in Japan, circle and X are swapped like they are in a in North America. Because X in North America means yes. Like but in Japanese writing its circle is like yes and X is like no. So it felt like just playing a Nintendo game instead. It's like the A button was except. I think the Steam Deck version like fixed that for yeah, 'cause like my my A button was my like. Yeah, I noticed that on you guys' screenshots. Yeah, like your X your you had A and B and Y on your screen, Gabe, whereas mine were re mine were just the original PS one controls, whatever they were. Of course Retroid Pocket Five or three has A B X Y, like Nintendo style. So we all know where those shapes are. Yeah, I know where they are. It doesn't confuse me. No, I was gonna say I did I did run into that, but not like not so much that it like hindered the game play for me or anything. Like you said, it's it's a nitpicky thing, but it is it it's annoying when it happens. ⁓ And it hap I will say it happens more often when you've got like it sped up also. Yeah. Because I would have to turn off the speed sometimes to like be more exact in my mood. I would usually, yeah, not fast forward running unless it was a straight line. But I mean that just goes to like we're spoiled for having the three X speed. You know There would be to your points too, there'd be a couple of times where I'd like get to a ladder like within a room, you know, the green arrow. Yeah. And I just couldn't get on it. No matter like what I did, and I'd have to leave the room, come back, and then I could get on it. And one of the ways that I failed by Mm-hmm. They may have fixed stuff like that in the remaster. There are happened to me a lot. Updates like that. And also things like ⁓ some items are missed labeled. like they have like spell spelled wrong or you know, stuff like that that they did fix. They kept the Aeros thing. I don't know why they did that, but I don't know. Yeah. Combat is a big part of the game. Really the story is the main part of the game, but combat is kind of what the the vessel for relieving you through the story. ⁓ obviously random count random encounters are very prevalent throughout the game. That's just how JRPGs work. ⁓ sometimes they're annoying. Sometimes like they only annoyed me when I was trying in near the end when I was really trying to get through. And sometimes you'll hit a random encounter and like there's an enemy that's just like wallops you. Like, yeah, this shouldn't be this hard. I should just be able to use it. Like all of a sudden, cloud, I'm like fast forwarding it because I'm like, I shouldn't take this on, and then the cloud's dead. And I'm like, that happened to me too. Some hero. Yeah. ⁓ you turn this off, they pay attention. When when I defeated Sephiroth, Cloud was a frog. Nice. Like I got the frog status like right before defeating him. That being said, like the combat system. Is much more complex than a lot of other JRPGs. It's not it's more complicated than turn just a regular turn base. There's a lot of stuff going on. There's more stuff going on that I'm keeping track of. Like I'm not adept enough in it. Like there's the back row, there's the front row, there's like defending, there's you know enemies can also be ⁓ like when a mob hits you. Behind you, yeah. Yeah, they can be behind you, which means they took you by surprise, or they can like have surrounded you. Right. Which I thought was really cool. I that was all yeah, I thought that was all really cool. ⁓ how can like vary like where in combat you're situated. Yeah. ⁓ but yeah, the combat did take me a minute to get used to, but once I got used to it, I I liked it a lot. I like the timer now. I ⁓ when I first got it, when I first started, I was like, this timer fucking sucks. Like they're hitting me like three times before I'm even making a decision. I just want my turn base back. But then once I got used to it, I was like, I actually appreciate this because it kind of creates an urgency. Yeah. Like to the combat. I didn't know it did that at first, so I definitely got hit. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm pretty sure like your speed set will just increase your timer. So you can there's ways to like strategize around the battle system. Right. And there are skills that gave make you go faster or make your timer go faster as well. Gabe could pause on his version. I couldn't pause on my version. Yeah, I could press start mid combat to pause, but I couldn't do it. That's weird that you couldn't because I could. His version is older than mine. But mine's the oldest. That's true. Why would yours not have autosave if it's newer then? I don't I don't know. There's two different versions of ⁓ They were like, ⁓ Autosave was dumb. I don't know. Yeah. No, ⁓ characters are a big part. of the game, obviously story wise, but also party composition and combat wise. And they're like we said before, there's nine of ⁓ And there's no like perfect party. I mean, I think there are yeah. There could be perfect parties for like certain enemies, but they're like you can look at a table of like who's the best at what, and almost everyone is the best at something. And everyone else is like and they're also the worst at something. So you can kind of build the party how you want. And like I usually built like a healer and cloud obviously and then someone that just did straight up a lot of damage. So like I said, I only did disc one. So I had Aeris in my party the whole time. ⁓ or I had access to her the whole time. And I usually had her in the party as a healer. Then I had Cloud and then I usually would use Barrett or Red Thirteen. And then I would but when I got Vincent, I started using him as my second 'cause I could put ⁓ there's a specific weapon a gun he could get. I had a really high critical chance and I paired it with that ⁓ one materia that like makes it the death it's the death blow one. So it does if it ⁓ if it hits it ⁓ it ⁓ does like a ton of damage. So I just use that with him over and over again. Okay. But what about you guys? Like what were your party c compositions like and characters you guys played? Mm. Mine was very similar to yours, so I still had Eris. I had her cloud and I used Red Thirteen. Everything It's both. Yeah. It's a mistranslation. Technically it is Ares. It's like It's like the Vario suit in Metroid. It's supposed to be barrier suit. They mistranslated it. Sorry. But her her limit, like her heel limit was ridiculous. Like I that's how like I did a lot of grinding, ⁓ in my playing and I just like she was really good for that. You could just get them like I don't know, you'd get your party all week from the grinding and then she'd hit her limit and then he'll most of the way back up and you could just grind for a long time doing that. Did you ⁓ Did you get Seal Evil too? I didn't I did. Yeah. Seal Evil's pretty good too. I I just used her for her heal. Like it was Yeah. Even when I had Aerith, I didn't really use her that much. Yeah, I didn't Aerith. She's a good magic user. Like you could Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then she dies, so I was like, Yeah. Yeah. I mean I knew going in like that she was the death, so I was like, I'm gonna use her while I got her. I was the opposite. I was like, I'm not gonna Or anytime into her. So yeah. So which actually Keith ⁓ pointed something out. ⁓ even when your party members are not on your team, they're still gaining experience. Yeah, yeah, they scale with you. I noticed that God's lane could Which is nice, yeah. Yeah. They don't scale as fast, but they do scale. But they'll keep up. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Not too far behind. Yeah, so you can get them up pretty good. So yeah, when you're trying to grind them up, you know, or when you're grinding limits, you know, like Jay mentioned, there are limits in the game, which are super moves that each character can learn. There are four levels. of limits. ⁓ in each le first three levels, ⁓ each character can learn two, except for some, some are special, like Vincent and Kate Sith. Theirs, their numbers are different. But there are four levels for each. And to go from level one to level two, you have to get a certain amount of kills with that character. And it has to be findables with that character specifically. So a really fun thing to do is when you know that one of your party is about to die, but you want to get their limit for a completion trophy is that you have to then ⁓ stop what you're doing and halt everything and just grind out those limits. Which is what I did. So I'm like, well, fuck, I'm I'm getting hers, so might as well get everyone else's. So with the whole process of grinding everyone's levels really beefed up my levels and ⁓ money as well. So I didn't have I d I had zero money troubles going through the rest of the game after that, which was nice. Pretty easy to get money like on the encounters give you some pretty good change. They ⁓ And then the ⁓ so yeah, but for the level four limits, which is like their big, big super moves, then that takes a you have to find a special item and go through a little side thing to find each one for each character. So yeah, so it's ⁓ it's what's worth it to go through to get each. I got cloud. My final team that I was kind of rocked with was Cloud, Tifa, and Vincent. Vincent does the most magic damage, so I just threw a bunch of summons and the strongest spells on Vincent and just put him in the back row. Sephiroth did wipe him a few times because Vincent has like no health button, you know. Yeah, his Vincent had like nineteen hundred health at the end of the game, which is like nothing at that stage. Yeah. Sephiroth does six K in one hit in the goal. Yeah. Wow. My team was actually the same for most of the game, which was Vincent T Ven Cloud. ⁓ early on I used Red Thirteen and Barrett some. And then there's also a section of the game where Tifa and Cloud are both taken out of commission. And so you play as ⁓ Sid. Sid. ⁓ Sid's like the lead party member. And so during that I did ⁓ Sid, Red Thirteen, and Vincent. ⁓ and that was fun. ⁓ I would switch ⁓ out sometimes just to kind of mix things up a little bit. But for the most part, it was I mean, that's pretty much the same thing. I had the same idea as Keefe. ⁓ the only thing is I made Tifa my healer. So she was kind of like a striker and a healer. Tifa ended up being my strongest character at the end of the game. Like I tried to give everyone healing. My Tifa was ⁓ stronger than my cloud. On I yeah, no matter who I had, I always put 'cause with materia you can pair moves so that give them extra effects. So, you know, I put cure and revive all. I paired them both with all. So it's so on Tifa. And then so just hey, if anything happens, just Yeah, do it. It's just one turn and then like you got three characters, so like one out of the three turns to heal, ⁓ to then all attack is not too shabby. Now you guys didn't run into this, but there is a monster called a Malborough. Malborough is a that's ⁓ that's one of those staple creatures that's in every game. This piece of fucking shit has a move called Bad Breath, which our friend Tyler did translate Malborough actually translates to Bad Breath. So it's like what it does. So what it does Is it hits everyone and it gives you every negative status possible? Poison, frog, mini, silence. And I think paralyzed and confused as well. And literally every negative effect, negative status ailment you can have hits you all at once. So I didn't know that. When I first ran into that, I'm like, what the fuck is this? And all of a sudden, my party is super small, and I only have like one maiden's kiss. So I had to use it and then I'm like ⁓ fuck I'm still a frog or then it just did it just does it again so I'm just I'm fucking stuck gay was there. I was getting really yeah it was really funny. So I was like I don't have what the fuck? What is going on? And if in if you like cure like the silence and if you're your silence and also a frog so like you can't when you're a frog you can only it's hit it. You can't do anything else. So like you know if you I'm only doing it for one damage. I'm like okay we're all hitting for one 'Cause we're also mini, it's like this is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. Like, ⁓ my god. Talk to our friend Tyler who's like big in Final Fantasy. I'm like, is this what what is ⁓ yeah, that's just that's just the thing. That's just that's just what it does. ⁓ yeah, that's what there there is a caveat caveat here. ⁓ you can get that bad breath skill. Yes. With ⁓ there is a material called enemy enemy skill. Yes, you can actually get that. So you can but also ⁓ by that point in the game, when you're facing bosses and stuff, none of that that doesn't work anyway. So but so what's the Which would make this game a ten out of ten if you can't do that. Right. So I had to use a smoke bomb to run away from the fight just to get it. I was like, Did you figure it out? And he's like, No, I had to run away. No, I ran. System and and weapons and armor are part of this ⁓ discussion for material, but materia is like what makes the game com ⁓ what is it is the combat system. Like everyone has physical attacks and stuff, but that's not really the bread and butter, it's the materia and there's like crazy a lot of combinations you can do and like make, you know, kind of feels like nearly infinite build builds of you know. a character with different kinds of weapons. And the each character has weapons to do different things and they have different materia you can use. All this kind of stuff. So like it's I don't know, it's clearly it's not infinite, but it it might as well be infinite when it comes to like the stuff you can the kind of party you could like make. Yeah. Even just on one character you could do so many different things. Right. And then different weapons have different ⁓ growths on them. So materia gets more XP on certain weapons. There are also some weapons will have different slots, and some of those slots will be connected, so you can pair them up, but some of them will have more slots, but they're not connected, so they don't get any kind of extra bonuses added onto them. Some weapons are super powerful, but have no slots on them. Yeah. Something Keith didn't tell till the end of the game is if you get your materia to five stars, it'll clone it. And so you get another one of those materias. ⁓ cool. And to work up to five stars and then to clone again. Like so you can just gr that's a just another reason to grind. Like exactly. You can also sell ⁓ for like hella money if you wanted. Like if yeah. If if they get level five, that's what that's what you do. You sell ⁓ 'cause they sell for crazy. And then but there are also weapons with like double, triple growth. And then there are there are materia that gives you bonus experience for the materia. So like you're getting so you just like it all it all stacks up. So you just like go crazy with that. I was really surprised with how much you could do with the materia. Mm-hmm. Like for a PS one game too, but I mean grand scale is what they say. I would say as far as the ⁓ combat goes, it makes the it gives the game a lot of ⁓ replayability. Yeah. Because you can go through and do it completely different. There's so many yeah. Yeah, it's there's just so much builds. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And even 'cause like, you know, you can put 'cause there are material for attack spells, there are material for summons. There are materia that change the effects of other spells. There are materia for enemy or for specific skills like steel or sense, which is tell the opponent's HP and stuff like that. Death blow or enemy skill. And then there's materia that just auto-buffs you or does something automatically like cover, which protects one of your teammates, whoever you put it on, you know, ⁓ and then you know counterattack. ⁓ then you say HP plus. Magic plus, MP plus, you know, it's there's there's yeah, there's a crazy amount of you know options there. There's also one that lets you lure chocobos. Yes. ⁓ yeah. Which is vital. It's vital to the story. One that lets you summon chocobos. Yeah, you can also summon a chocobo. There's also one that lets you turn enemies into frogs as well. Or a major status condition. Yeah ⁓ So the game also has like a ton of mini games built into it. Like this game has everything. Yeah, some of them are literally just mini games like at the Golden Saucer, but there's a lot of instances throughout the game where you're playing through the story and there's some sort of like different mini game. There's like the the first I think the first one you really encounter is the motorcycle ⁓ chase and you're like swinging. Yeah, which is a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. And then you have ⁓ yeah, like The mini games in the Golden Saucer, like I said. I don't know, there's probably more. The tower defense game that broke Ryan's ⁓ Yeah, broke my game, yeah. A lot more than like going on in this game than just being a straight up JRPG. There's there's a submarine battle, then you you're f dub submarine dogfight, yeah. I didn't like that that much, but I I was just having a hard time with it. A lot of the minigames, if you have three times two, there's even a snowboard increase. Yeah. It increases the difficulty a ton. ⁓ just because you're a little out of control. and then once you turn three times speed off, you're like, ⁓ okay. This I was Yeah. That was just fucking with me. The chocobo race is one you can also bet on chocobo races. ⁓ I didn't chocobo race was a little annoying. I had to redo it a couple of times, but yeah. There's like the minigame where you have to march in step and move your gun and stuff. You got the T V reading. Yeah. ⁓ but yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of them. And I will say like the optional ones are mostly like I tried them all, like the ones of the golden saucer out of try ⁓ but I was like, I'm not gonna keep, you know, investing any time into this. But the ones that you're forced to do are were pretty cool. Yeah. To get Cloud's best weapon, you had or best ⁓ his level four limit, you had to do the battle arena because they were selling it there. So first off, I had to bet on Chocobo races ⁓ and I had to look up a guy or look up, you know, on Reddit to say Hey, how do you bet on these? And look up the species for precise, you know, betting which ones the bet on, which one's the not bet on, stuff like that. And then yeah, yeah, and how they well how the betting works also because it does like one, two, but it's like yeah, one will get first and two will get second. It's not like odds thing. It's it really threw me off. Yeah. Right. So the ⁓ so you had to bet on chocobo races to get enough points to then go into the battle arena. And the battle arena is they give you eight fights. And then each fight you get a they spin a wheel after you win one fight. And then whatever randomized wheel ⁓ gets on the wheel, that it's a negative effect that happens to you. To be honest, it's sh fucked. Like it's yeah, it's a shit ton of different effects. So it's like the it's like they break your armor or they break your accessory, half your health, half your MP, lower your lower your level by ten levels, lower your flight. Turn you into a frog. Turn you into a frog. put curse on you so that you have a sixty second timer to win or you know fucking poison you it's like reduce or or break all your material so now your material works. It is so fucked. So I will say for that, for grinding limits, I did turn on God mode for that 'cause I'm like, fuck all that the part that you're when you're forced to do it in ⁓ in the game, that's the only time I spent doing it to get the Keystone. And You just it doesn't matter how many rounds you win, you just as long as you do it, you get it. But I did to like I only got to round three and I got paired up against a frog and then the frog beat me. I mean turned me into frog and a p jet some negative buffs too. I think it was like half get frogged or something and something else some other negative buff, but I was like All right. Okay, frog. We can talk about ⁓ the difficulty of the game, which is also mainly that's that lies in the boss encounters. ⁓ personal I mean, like I said, I only finished the first disc, which means I only encountered two really difficult bosses, two or three. ⁓ the only there's only two well sorry, I guess there were there were three that I did have to like replay. So I die I got wiped. ⁓ the first instance was the Scorpion ⁓ in the reactor. The Mount Coral reactor. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. I I got wiped by him like twice. That I I fit that wasn't it wasn't that hard. And then the next one is in the Temple of the Ancients, ⁓ the Zigarat thing. There's that demon that comes out when you're trying to leave. That one took me a while. That was the hardest one I had. I died like multiple times. I got wiped. To be fair, like you fight Bahamut like right before that. I think yeah, 'cause that's I got you. Yeah, I got his summon. I used his summon on him. That summon does like two K damage in that fight. But that's only like a fifth of his like overall health. And then once that's burned up, everyone else's summons don't do that nearly as much. Right. So I was like bouncing back and forth with like he'll this, you know, he'll actually ⁓ to be fair, I was following the guide. Yeah. The guide was like, take all materia and all weapons and all armor that you care about off of Aerith because she's gonna die in a minute. So it was like so I did that fight with her having nothing on. Like nothing. She could do attack and that was it. No, no material on her. Also, Cloud was my healer. And I had Cloud and had Vincent. So I was just bouncing back and forth between those two. And I had to like I there I used multiple Phoenix downs. I used multiple like revive spells. Like it was just like someone would I I would get someone up, then they get hit in the head with a rock and they die again. And finally I got through it. It was tough. Yeah. And then the next boss I encountered was the the Genova form. ⁓ for Sephiroth at the where the the whatever that place is the City of the Ancients. City of the Ancients. Yeah. And ⁓ that one wasn't as hard as that previous boss I talked about. It it they had a lot of health, but ⁓ it maybe took two attempts. So nothing. So I don't know if you put it on but you find like a water ring or you can find a water ring. Yeah. Yeah. But that helps a lot with that fight. Yeah. My guide's I guess the guy the R the the gatekeeper boss that comes out of the wall that one that you're talking about. It's like the hardest boss in the game. Is it really? Yeah, the guy says like this is one of the hardest bosses in the series. This stuff for like the amount of level how I le was leveled at the time. I had mid 20s, maybe. I never grinded the whole game. I didn't spend any time grinding, so I wasn't super powerful in general. So like if someone that someone could basically take two hits from the even just that rock dropping spell, which is not the most powerful spell, and that was it. Yeah, I ⁓ had Vincent. Yeah. And Vincent, so I would never I would always be wary of using his alt, hers limit, you know, because once he does that, you can't do anything else to it. He can't he just keep doing it and you can't Yeah, yeah, right. You can heal him, but I would like hold off on that and just keep doing Death Blow over and over again. And I did I think use it eventually. I finally did like use the limit break 'cause it's like, okay, whatever, we're probably getting close. And then he would attack. And I I think I actually ⁓ mistakenly loaded a save and had to do the fight again. From like I s I I actually mid mid boss fight save stated, which is a bad I didn't do that much in this game. It's a bad practice for duck station, just not having multiple save state slots. So I'd have to go back to the min earliest hard save, which I don't remember how far away that was. So I was like, I have to beat this in this instance, or I'm gonna have to I'm gonna lose a lot of progress. But ⁓ I got through that one. And then yeah, like I said, I got through the ⁓ Genova one at the end of the the first disc and I actually started The second disc and I did like one thing and I was like, I'm not gonna get any further than this. But what about you guys? What do you think about the difficulty? This it could be a hard game. It's a pretty hard game. It can be. It can be. Even if you're not cheating like Gabe was, ⁓ that I was I was supposed to say I I didn't cheat like consistently. I cheated to like I I turned on Godwart to speed things up, like like I I would turn it on in the overworld. I wouldn't turn it on in the dungeons, I would turn it on to grind. ⁓ I turned it I actually turned it on for that. wall demon thing because I was like, I just fought Bahamut. I don't want to deal with this right now. But ⁓ I was like, so I'm j I'm just going through this. But ⁓ the bosses that I did fight I mean some of them were difficult, yeah, but the first the hardest boss fight for me was the first one, which was in the reactor against the robot that like comes down on you. Cause I was like trying to figure out how to do combat 'cause up until that point you're just basically attacking and that's it. Yeah. ⁓ like I was like I he's attack he's like shooting lasers at me. I don't know what to do. And it gave a note of like prop like only attack when his tail's up or something like that, which you don't get from any other boss. ⁓ yeah. Through the whole game, they're never like, Hey, do this again. ⁓ which I thought was interesting that they were like, Here's a strategy for this boss, but then they like for the rest of the time they're like, Figure it out. Yeah. But ⁓ it's up to you, buddy. Sometimes this boss just starts counting down and then you don't know what's gonna happen when it hits zero. Yeah. Yeah. But there's like some like ⁓ I choosed a couple bosses with God mode. Like there's the there's a point in the game where the Earth releases something called weapons, ⁓ and they're based on gems. It's like diamond, emerald, ruby, sapphire, and there's and then all like the Sukma. They're the super bosses of the game. Yeah. Yeah. They're the like super bosses of the game that you can like you you just do them if you want. You have to fight. You fight two of them through the story. But ⁓ But yeah, Ultima, you fight two. Yeah, you fight two of them. But then but they're like story battles and you don't actually beat them, beat them. They just leave. ⁓ and then two of them are actually killed through the story and then you get and go kill the other those killing the others if you want. Yeah, so I didn't cheese the ultima weapon because I didn't realize it was ultimately. also a weapon. But I did the diamond weapon because I was like, I don't want to spend it. It's like near the I'm like near the end of the story and I'm like, I don't want to spend a lot of time like trying to fight this boss. But ⁓ I did I don't know. Yeah. I I didn't cheese as much as like you may think I did, but I did I mean I did cheese at some. Yeah I I enjoyed the bosses. Trying to get through the game. And yeah, they were they were challenging. A lot of them are Except for like Jenova specifically. Pretty much every boss you run across, and I guess the weapons too, a lot of them are susceptible to poison. So if you get if you put a hit with poison, like that really just solves a lot of your problems. Just like real life. Yeah, right. So a lot of them are immune to fire or get healed by it. That's another noticed. Yep, that too. Yeah. Hitting a boss with like a crazy magic. spell and then it like heals it. I'm like Are you serious? Really? Well if it's shooting fire at you, then why would you shoot fire at it? It's ⁓ J I don't remember if Jay talks about this while we were recording, but he mentioned doing sense and then like reloading the save state so that he knew the s like weakness. I never thought about doing that, but then good strategy. Yeah. Like okay now I know the weakness I'm gonna go in prepare. It's good. Yeah. Or if or just throw all your summons on one character and just have them just Keith go crazy the first time. Like he beat Sephiroth like first try, which I thought was nuts. PB. I used God mode on Sephiroth because I was like Sephiroth was one where like I'm literally at the end of the game. I'm just gonna use God mode here and Yeah. Like see because I was like, what I'll I'm what I'm gonna do is watch Keith actually do it. So I'm not gonna put myself through stress. Does it, fellas? It was it was stressful. I was like, fuck. Yeah. Like I said, we were both like yelling. I was like yelling at him to do stuff. ⁓ one problem that I kinda did have with combat ⁓ is that sometimes when you're trying when you want to do a skill, when you do a skill or attack or anything, you can target anyone. You can even target yourself. You can target. Yeah, yeah. Friendly fire is a thing. You can do friendly fire. You can also heal the enemies. You can also see if you wanted to. ⁓ so sometimes when I'd try to heal someone during the server. You know, or res them, I would accidentally cause the camera angles, it's hard to tell where the pointer is pointing. So a lot of times I'd be healing I trying to heal someone else, but I would heal myself or Aerith instead, or when I have Header in the party or Tifa. You it's like Fuck. So that's why you gotta put the group heal on just to avoid that problem. Gabe saw it, I fucking use revive on Sephiroth accidentally. So it didn't work, but you know, I still wasted that turn 'cause I try to fucking bring someone else up and actually use it on him. Even though there is actually a boss in the game where you do where you use healing spells and ⁓ to actually do damage to it, which is a fun little place. I I killed I killed it with the I beat it with the Phoenix down, which is which is fun. But yeah. But yeah, that was kind of an annoying thing of just like the targeting who you want to hit because the camera angles would kind of make it not clear on which which character you're on with the pointer. So 'cause the camera moves a lot during combat. It does. Yeah. It does. A lot of dynamic camera angles and shots. And when you're doing a summon, you can't target anyone. Yeah. Yeah, because there's a big cinematic going on. Yeah. Well, ⁓ Do we wanna move on to ⁓ rap get close to wrapping this up and then talk about our rapid fire favorite section, least favorite section and one thing you change. ⁓ how about you, Jave? Yeah. I've touched on it right at the Let's go in order of who finished it the most. Or least, sorry. We're g yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do that. Let's do that. Yeah. ⁓ from what I did play, I just really enjoyed the world itself, like like I said earlier, just traveling the overworld, ⁓ Talking to all the people in every town, just seeing the towns from the overworld, then going into the, you know, ⁓ the zoomed in version, getting all the details, all the like the just talking to the shopkeeps, he's in the hotels, being a normal citizen. Yeah. With a big sword. Yeah. Anytime it's a PS one game, I feel like I'm gonna say just like exploring the world is my favorite part of it. ⁓ and this has a big one of that. So that was fun for me. And I will probably It's a long game. Depending on what we get on this wheel, I'd love to finish it. ⁓ but yeah, we'll we'll see what happens. It's it's a big commitment. Yeah. You can learn a story, see if Aerith really worth that. If we were just making jokes about it. I think so too. Yeah, I'd love to just put this on my resume. Yeah. Final fantasy seven. I'm a real gamer now. My first Final Fantasy. Yeah. far as me ⁓ favorite section ⁓ as far as actual gameplay story section like story sections I actually did like the part where you're sneaking on you're pretending to be a soldier and you're like doing the step like that was that part stuck with me as being one of the funnier parts of the game. and like I would say I like my one of my favorite things about the game is the mat like the depth of the materia system. Not that I ever really fully grasped It because I didn't spend a lot of time. I I mean I looked at some guides about what to pair and what to but I also I think I missed some early game that I should have grabbed somehow, like just didn't go off screen somewhere to pick it up. So that was kind of annoying that I'd have to I didn't have them, I'd have to go super far back to get them if it's even possible to get some of them anymore. A lot of times if you miss something early, you could just buy it later. Yeah, that's true. My ⁓ least favorite section of gameplay was well, first of all, we have the ⁓ That boss I was telling you about, the really hard one. Mm-hmm. And then ⁓ but other than that, the train graveyard part of Midgar, which is pretty early on in the game and you like to have to move a train and slide this one in this way. It was really confusing to me. I was like, What am I supposed to and in that select button showing you where the doors are and ladders didn't help that much. I was like, What? I was just walking around and like, do I go in this one? It took a long time. It was kind of I stumbled into that one. I I was like, I didn't know what to do. Yeah, you have to move two different trains, I think. But ⁓ yeah. So that was probably my least favorite like section of what I played. ⁓ one thing I would change, ⁓ the only really annoying part is party management and it when it comes to materia and weapons. So you we didn't touch on this, but you can you only ever have three people in your party, and you can only change your party members on the world map. You can't it's called something called the PHS. It's what it's like a phone. It lets you change your yeah, it lets you change your party members. And so whoever you're rolling with your three, you can't change if you're in a town or if you need to like a lot of times when you're trying to do something specific in a upcoming battle, you can't swap. So if you actually lock your run back to a save point. Yeah. Yeah. If you accidentally lock your materia on someone else, and like when you get to a section, there's lots of times in the game where you have to play with a specific character in your party. So there's a section where you gotta play with red thirteen, there's a section where you gotta play with Barrett, section where you gotta play with ⁓ Aerith Aerith. ⁓ and so I like if I wasn't using those characters normally, I'd have to go swap off all the materia from the other character, then swap back the party again, and just have to put them all in. Like of course I'm not using the same consistent like placement of materia each time either. I'm forgetting where they were. I'm like, ⁓ I guess I'll give this person this this one. I wish that was a little bit simpler. I wish there was an easier way to just take it all off. And there's like a couple of times where you can do that. in like the very beginning in the Shinra ⁓ building, it's like press square to take everyone's material away. And I was like, Yeah. All right, sure. Be cool if that was an option throughout the game to just move it all off. Cause like you're always shuffling it around based on what you're doing at the time. So that's the one thing I would change. I bet I'm sure it's not like that in the modern version, the remake ⁓ of the game, you know, like the the updated graphics and everything. Yeah maybe it is. I don't know. All right, ⁓ what about I think Gabe you finished first, so but you guys both finished, so who goes next? I think I'll go first because Keith actually finished I finished it more than finished it better in a better manner. I I really liked I it's gonna sound fucked up. I liked the whole secret sequence where Erith dies. Like I I even though I knew it was coming Wait, what even though I knew it was coming, it was still like I mean, you could feel the emotional weight of the whole scene and everything. ⁓ I just really liked that section of game. I thought they did it really well. ⁓ I don't know, it had a lot of emotional weight, even though I knew it was gonna happen. So ⁓ I thought they executed that really well. ⁓ the music's great, everything's great about that. ⁓ The end of Disc One. My least favorite part. There's a part where you're climbing the mountain. It's not that big of a deal, but I just remember getting pissed off because I was like I wasn't looking at the a lot of the time I wasn't Keith was like right ahead of me, so I wasn't looking at the guide. I was just asking him, Hey, what do I do here? And so there's this part where you have to climb the mountain and you have to stop on the ledge and warm yourself up and then climb up. the mountain, which gives you enough time to climb to the next ledge and then warm yourself up. And I hit a ⁓ I hit like a crossroad and I was like, hey Keith, what do I do next? And he like took too long to answer me and so I froze to death and I had to start all the way over. It's like close to the top. And I was like That was just a little thing that like I I got pissed off. But I mean that's not really a problem with the game. So but I mean that's just like the most thing that I was like, Keefe didn't answer me fast enough. Sorry, I can't. I was too focused on my own thing. ⁓ if I had anything to change, it it wouldn't really be much about the game. I just wish I had more time personally to actually enjoy the game. ⁓ I really wanted to complete it because I really wanted to see the whole story ⁓ and be able to talk about all that. But I mean this is a game where I I'm I think I'll probably play it again at some point because I'd want to play it like it should be played. Like without the God mode. Maybe three times speed because there are some really slow parts. But ⁓ yeah, I don't know. I just I wish we had this game a different month month where like things were more relaxed or something. ⁓ because I would have really liked to like looking back, experienced it properly. ⁓ so that's I'd say that'd be yeah. I'd say that makes me answer. I got to pl I got to play this. Thanks, Jacob. Yeah. Keith, what about you? So I think my favorite part of the game would be honest, I think so. There's a point where you're Cloud and Tifa and you both fall into the life stream. And that's a point where you go through Cloud's subconscious and you try and figure out everything that's going on and figure out exact everything that happened. And honestly, that whole section where you're like going through and going through Cloud's, you know, his history and like seeing what made like I mentioned before, like what made him want to become a soldier in the first place and everything there and his relationship with Tifa and everything. It was like, wow, this is it's really and like we learn what really happened, it really makes Cloud an amazing character. I'm like, ⁓ wow, this is ⁓ this is great. Like why he did what he did. And it's like, ⁓ why he is why he is the way that he is because you know he was you want to become a soldier because he wanted he wanted the girl to notice him. Something as simple as that, because he wanted to protect this girl that he knew. It's like, ⁓ because he couldn't do it when he was a kid. Then he came back and he kept his promise. He kept he helped her out when she needed him. And he fucking stabbed Sephiroth. It's like, fuck, ⁓ man. It's like he killed Sephiroth, or killed, but you know. And then he kills him again later. So I was ⁓ fuck, this is great. And learning all that, that was an amazing story moment. It's like, ⁓ fuck, man. This is this is this is this is beautiful stuff. I love this game. I was like, fuck, this is great. I had a really great time with this game. That's funny because that's The other thing I was debating for my favorite section. It was like between that. And I was like, I don't know, Eris death is devastating. It is. It is also. Yeah. And then I'd say my least favorite is the Marlboro. I fucking hated that thing. That was a real fucking kick of the dick ⁓ that I was not expecting. ⁓ that's ⁓ yeah, I was not I didn't know that was in that. I didn't know this was even possible. Like The guide, by the time I got there on the guide, it already happened to Like, ⁓ well, thanks a lot. Guide. Fuck that. I'm like, fuck, man. This is really annoying. ⁓ status ailments are a real pain in the ass in this game. So they are. There's a extreme. Yeah. You notice mine and Keith's least favorite part was someone else not telling us about something fast. ⁓ something fast enough. There is an accessory called a ribbon which protects you from all status elements, but like I have that. Yeah, so it's like it's really fucking good. So it's like, but yeah, 'cause like you really need 'cause like yeah, the status almost can really kick your ass. Also, confusion is really funny because your character is spinning. Yeah, he's spinning in a circle. There's a point during the Sephiroth fight where Keeps Vincent was spinning in a circle. It's like, What are you doing, man? Come on, focus. Yeah, there's a ambition together, Vincent. ⁓ I think one thing I'd change as much as I like the camera angles and dynamic kind of stuff, I think having an it'd probably be easier if you could when you're trying to target something, if a little mini menu popped up and you could just pick what you want to hit, that'd be just make things a lot easier for like healing or attacking or anything like that, 'cause that would just make things a lot easier so you wouldn't waste turns ⁓ trying to revive a boss as it's killing you. So That's actually a good note because ⁓ During the first phase of Sephiroth's fight, he's got like five different parts you can target. Yes, ⁓ yeah. So like which part do I hit? Which one? Yeah. Aim for the head. Yeah. Yeah. Which has like two. Yeah. And you want to aim for the cord. A couple of you already mentioned at least Keith and ⁓ Gabe. Well maybe not Keith. Keith, would you play it again since you've played it once? What do you think you use yourself playing it in the future? ⁓ I'm going to continue to play it because I want to get all the trophies ⁓ in the game. Nice. ⁓ I'm not normally a trophy guy. Sometimes I am. Sometimes when the mood strikes me, I'll get a platinum. ⁓ our friend Tyler is all about trophies. ⁓ but I'm when the mood strikes me, I'll I'll go for it. ⁓ but I do want to ⁓ go through and actually platinum this game because I want to see everything that it has to give because even with the time crunch that we were kind of on, because like you know, we were kind of getting ⁓ down to the wire here. Gabe's dogs are jumping on my couch. I still really enjoyed the game. I know I didn't really I was still able to really get a lot out of this game. I really enjoyed it. So I now I want to experience all of it. ⁓ I'm not gonna play the remake. I still don't really have any interest in playing that, but I can now kind of go into it now appreciating more the remake and also understanding more what people complain about with the changes that the remakes make. Yeah. And being like, ⁓ and wow, how are they going to cover all this in the remake? Like, what are they going to do with the snowboarding game? That'll be interesting to see how they make that work. So, or the submarine bit. There's like so much stuff that happens because remake is broken up into three games. You know, rebirth, which is the second one, that ends with Erith's death. Now for me and Gabe, like there's I mean for people who don't know, Aerith dying is a very early in the game, relatively speaking. So like there is a shit ton of game left after that happens. You split it up into three game and three games and you're saving the second half of the original game for the third game. Yeah. I don't know if they're doing three or not, actually, but I'd It's been three. Yeah, it's a trilogy. So like, I mean, I don't know what they're gonna do. I mean, it'll be fun to see, but you know, but now I have a ki like I said, I have a greater understanding of stuff and being like, ⁓ wow, that looks I remember that scene now. I remember this scene from the original game, how they're look making it look in this game now. ⁓ okay, that's cool. I don't I don't not gonna but after I platinum the game, I'm not gonna I don't think I'm gonna replay it, but I will get as much fun as I can out of it. Yeah. ⁓ Gabe, you already said you would You'd probably play it again, if not ⁓ yeah. Like at some point just maybe keep playing it now. Yeah, maybe keep playing. I don't know so much about keep playing it now, but this is a game I'd like to revisit. Maybe this is a game I'd like to play with my kids some or something when they're older and old enough to appreciate it. Yeah, yeah. But ⁓ yeah, I don't know. This i it's a good game. ⁓ I I I w I wanna say I will. I maybe, but I I like the idea of playing it again at the very least. I'm not gonna like say I'm definitely gonna play it again, but you know, it I'd like to. The concept of it. Yeah. Concept of playing Final Fantasy again excites me. What about you, Jay? Would you finish it? I I I at least wanna finish it the one time. ⁓ I had the past two months has been a time crunch with my moving and all that. ⁓ so I unfortunately didn't get as much time with this as I wanted. And well I mean I I did put forty hours in the game. So I I did put a lot of time. Yeah. Yeah. But I I still was only on disc one ⁓ at the end of the month. So I was just doing what Keith wanted to do first. ⁓ so I I plan to continue to play the game and get this story finished. I'd like to put this in In my in my resume, like I said earlier. It's a good one to have completed. So I at least want to complete it. Hell yeah. That is the goal. ⁓ as far as me, because I'm the only one that hasn't answered so far. ⁓ it did really so I wasn't before we had this recor started this recording, I probably would have said, No, I'm not gonna finish it and I definitely won't play it again. But you guys are trying to you, Keith and Gabe are selling the story pretty good. So I might, but it really depends on what the game of the next game of the month gets rolled as it takes up a lot of time. I probably don't won't come back to it. And even if and I'm being honest with myself, I probably just won't come back to it at all. I probably won't finish it. I could look up the story ending and be somewhat satisfied with how it ends and knowing what happens. Of course playing it would be better. ⁓ I don't see myself ever like a hundred percenting or doing all the side quests or stuff like that. I'm not opposed to like checking out the remake because it's just visually So much, you know, it's like I can see I've seen clips of it and stuff and like I can s I know where that happens in the original. So it'd be interesting to see it in the rem remake version. ⁓ I don't know if I'll ever spend the time, you know, with that as well though, just because I'm not much of a JRPG fan. You know, final thought, ⁓ I might finish it. And if I do finish it, I probably won't play it ever again because like I have A lot of things I said though so far, I've like, Yeah, this is good. I like this part, I like this, I like that. But like to me as as an overall experience, it's like it's just been okay. I didn't hate it, I didn't like dislike it. I liked it more than I thought. Mm, but it's just not my style of game. I don't have an interest in grinding levels to get, you know, more stuff. It doesn't appeal to me and the story seems interesting enough to maybe continue, but I don't know that I will just depending on what we we roll here in just a minute. Apparently the remakes also ⁓ they kind of do a similar thing as like the re releases of the original. They do like ⁓ they've like updated it now to have like bonus stuff like no encounter or not no encounters, like, you know, bonus XP or you know, you know, boost and stuff like that. So I don't know if that would make a difference. Yeah. That's actually something, yeah, maybe not even having to worry about random encounters. Then you're just playing story, which is fine. I mean a a game that's a story is fine. That's Yeah, the remakes are good. It's like a totally different like kind of style in terms of like how you fight or just how what you run into, just like yeah, this will be ⁓ Jay and I will be finishing this next month or not. We can move on to Don't worry, my games are short, so except for Tomb Raider, I guess. But once I win again, we'll ⁓ short somewhat short. All right. I've added the two newest games on here, which are IQ intelligent cube and silent hill two for the PS2. That was from that one's from Lance and IQ is Jacob's ⁓ good old Jacob three re edition of his game. So I'll scramble this a little bit and cover what we have on here. Super Star Wars, Turn of the Jedi, Act Razor, WWF, SmackDown 2, Know Your Role, Diablo, Demon's Crest, Shadow Tower, Medieval, Final Fight, Shantae, Castlevania, Symphony of the Night, Middle Wars, Silent Hill 2, Intelligent. IQ intelligent cube and finally Tomb Raider. I hope it's not Tomb Raider, but we'll see. Alright, you guys ready? Get ready for Cube Twin again. It's still as though it was before. It's really great. No way. Okay, not it's gonna stay, it's gonna stay stopping. Yep. ⁓ game. Metal Warriors. I will not be buying this one physically because this is like three hundred dollars. Really? Damn. It's it's ridiculous. This is awesome. Metal Warriors for the Super Nintendo. This is a game Ryan sent me on Instagram. And I looked at and I was he sent it and he's like, You should pick this and I looked at it and I watched the gameplay and I was like, Yeah, I'm gonna pick this. This this looks awesome. It's like a mech suit side scroller. It's like a Ryan and Gabe game. It's like if you wanna It's like if the Iron Man game Keith chose was good. I played the first game that we played. Okay. I played the first couple of levels of this a year or two ago, just when I was like starting to get into, you know, like cart collecting and all that. ⁓ And this was one of like the underrated gyms that was on a bunch of YouTube videos. So of course I looked it up and it is way too expensive. ⁓ so I'm just looking on EB right now. The the cheapest authentic I can find right off the bat is four hundred. Well Jay's rich, so he'll get that. No, no, no. Complete in box. He said he said yes. He said yes. Complete in boxes two thousand right now. I don't know if that's sealed or not. It doesn't look sealed. Yeah. That's a drop in the that's a drop in the bucket for old that is not Probably not, but I was gonna say you think you could go to like your loc local retro game store and find somebody who doesn't know the value of it, but nah. I don't think anymore. Some of the secrets out. The jigs up. I was gonna say Yeah. Probably not. I was gonna say pawn shop, but I feel like pawn shops don't sell anything like that. Maybe maybe McKay's will sometimes have like super expensive stuff for cheap, but Yeah. ⁓ this one apparently is four hours to beat so there's time to play final the rest of Final Fantasy I can do that. Yeah plenty of time. What a good change of pace. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A quick fun little side scroller where you get to control a mech and control a little guy. Little guy, yeah. You you like you like control the mech and like the pilot can hop out and you'll there'll be I guess there'll be sections where you control him as too from what I saw. But it looks fun. This looks like the Sasabi from Shar's counterattack so we're gonna I'm gonna talk about this mobile suit. Gun too. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Mecca. Yeah. ⁓ also wanted to mention if you haven't watched our latest episode, our creep talk episode, the first one we put out. ⁓ check that out. And also Yeah. I'm gonna say I'm actually not sure if the ⁓ scoring, like we're so the high score challenge thing, right? I'm not sure if that'll be closed by the time this comes out. I think it will be because we'll have recorded started recording the next Creep Talk episode. But for the future at least, check out that ⁓ that feature we started we're starting up. It'll be live ⁓ by the time you're hearing this. There'll be a channel in the Discord where you can post your high scores. And so this first one was ⁓ Pokemon, ⁓ pinball, Ruby and Sapphire version. So play that. ⁓ I mean if it's past time, then don't worry about it. Play the next one. But check out the high score challenge. That's something that we're gonna start implementing and talk about on the ⁓ secondary, you know, the other videos that only me and Keith will be in next time. Yes. Yep. But Ryan will still have to edit. I was just saying you guys can edit it too. That's also why part of the another big reason I didn't finish Final Fantasy seven is because I we I recorded well we recorded this last episode, our last episode about ⁓ Resident Evil, right? And that's when we learned we're playing Final Fantasy. So In that time span between then and now, I edited this video. With Keith and I recorded another video and I edited that video too all before this game. ⁓ you know, we this today we're like recording for this, 'cause actually that episode is coming out today in real time. Now you've got a nice simple four hour game to play. Yeah. Yeah. Spent a lot of time. Yeah. So Gabe will have ⁓ also Coming up with his three choices for his next game of the for you all to vote on. Yep. Anybody in the Discord can vote. Doesn't you don't have to be a member of the Patreon. If you are a member of the Patreon, you get early access to these videos. So you'll see them two days before will drop they always drop on Tuesdays. Normally they'll drop on Thursdays for everyone else. You can also if you're an Ultra Creep, like we've said before, you can put your own game on the wheel. ⁓ do you guys have any final thoughts on Final Fantasy Seven? We didn't say if it holds up or not. say I think it does. It does. I would say it does. Yeah. I think it does. Definitely. I think JRPGs often hold up just because of the way the games play. That's true. It's like a timeless style. Yeah. It feels it does feel old, but it's still it just it's a JRPG, so it just kinda the formula is there. Like it works regardless of the age. Old but polished. Yeah. You just have little nitpicks about movement and vision like the visuals are obviously of the time and they're fine. For the time, but the little things like the like I talked about the materia thing and just party organization, that stuff would be fixed in a newer game, right? Probably. Yeah for its time. Yeah, I think. And even now you could it still holds up. And like I might finish it, but I probably won't. I have a real shot this month with this four hour game, so I'm excited. Well, ⁓ Jay's gonna spend all his money you know buying it first and then he's gonna play it. So we'll have to work over time to make up for it. He's gonna let himself ragged and we can have to write supers. All right. Well, ⁓ you guys probably know where to find us, but if you don't, you can find us on YouTube at Cart Creeps, Spotify at Cart Creeps, also on Apple Podcasts. You can find us on Instagram and TikTok as well. We post some shorts and s reels and stuff like that every once in a while. Thanks for listening. ⁓ and join us next time for Metal Warriors on the Super Nintendo. Stay creeping everybody. Play the attro. Play it. Play it. Play it. Nope. ⁓ no. After my after my great bit. That's my great line. ⁓ that's a killer.