Julius

And, after nearly 52 hours and reaching Level 48, that is a wrap on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Quick and rambled thoughts with no time to sit on how it all wrapped up incoming! Finale and story spoilers For as flawed as I think Rebirth might be - some of the issues with combat from Remake that I had have stuck around, the story elements not from the original can be a bit hit and miss, and the open world I found almost entirely redundant - I've got to say: I had an absolute blast. As for GOTY discussions, well and truly, for me: The music, the characters, the vibe, Cait Sith going from like a D-tier character at best up to a clear and obvious A-tier, the mini-games, the music, the boss fights, the Synergy stuff, the incredibly expensive but also fantastic looking set dressing of an open world, the playability involved when travelling through and from certain areas, just the vast look and feel of this game world and the abundance of people in it and in certain cutscenes, not to mention how well the "camera" is used for some really unique shots and perspectives, and last but not least, let's not forget to mention the music for the third time!! The real winner for me with this game, though, is just how much it has made me want to revisit the original – and so I've got it pencilled in already for a potential replay next year off the back of this. I played this game through once close to a decade ago now and I feel so incredibly strongly about it that I think it's worth a revisit, especially before the final part, because I keenly remember that being the weakest part of it all for me, and where it fell apart in a way some of my other favourite JRPGs haven't. I'm really curious now too to see if they can change my mind about the last act with the final game in the trilogy. Which is all to say: I can't wait for the seemingly inevitable DLC and the third and final entry in this trilogy. It's been a hell of a time, and so for now, until next time, Unknown Journey

Got to acknowledge just how great No Promises to Keep from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth turned out now that I've heard it all in its fully glory: Goes toe-to-toe for me with any of the other vocal FF performances I've heard. The instrumental version you hear bits and pieces of throughout the game is wonderful, too. I'm sure I'll be back with more Rebirth to drop in here when I give everything a listen through track by track, but seriously: when all is said and done, and the trilogy draws to a close, the Final Fantasy VII Remake project as a whole will probably be the greatest collection of songs of any game project. I'm seriously struggling at this point to see how you could make a case for anything else, and I'm also struggling to see how you could one-up what will likely end as a trilogy and two spin-offs (?) packed with music just from a practical production and industry perspective. Just imagine being asked to bring that original Uematsu VII score into a modern game, and not only succeeding, but not putting a single foot wrong and turning some tracks which were already 10s into 11s, injecting new life into the soundscape of VII beyond merely bringing it up-to-date. Freaking insane what they've pulled off so far – "they" of course being Masashi Hamauzu and Mitsuko Suzuki. Deserve their names up in lights

And the monthly Essentials games for October are up:

@drahkon it has arrived: Yeah I have absolutely no idea when I'm getting back to BG3 for a solo run

Bahahahahahahaha Chapter 13 spoils

Yeah, yeah, Call of Duty, we know

So, what's tickling everyone's fancy to pick up for their PlayStation this October? For me, I think this might be the first month in a little while where I don't pick anything up at release. Metaphor ReFantazio I'm saving for Christmas as my big time sink during my time off, whereas for Silent Hill 2 I'm waiting to see how the reviews turn out – and even then I'm weighing up whether I want to play the remake or the original. Maybe Neva? But then there are other indies I want to catch up on which are on sale, too Yeah, between my planned Halloween games and potential going back to indies or making use of PS+, probably a quiet month for me on the pick-ups front!

Completely missed this, but out of TGS the news came that this game would be Uematsu's final OST he works on start to finish (might've been known before? No idea) To me it just makes the decision to include FF music even more bizarre, like a farewell to Uematsu working full-time on an OST by including some of his other great work, but kind of giving a vote of no confidence in his final full OST for a game? Just makes a strange decision even stranger

Started and finished off Chapter 11 on Friday night, which had maybe my favourite boss fight (got them to no HP showing and they dropped a nuke on me first time, so beat them second time), but was a series of highs and lows. Ending up needing to solo an area as certain characters, especially support characters, just kind of sucks – genuinely think the most frustrating battle in the game so far was against a pair of standard enemies as said support character. I will say, it's probably because of not doing side stuff, but I wiped only once in the entire game before the finale of Remake (against Type-0 Behemoth) whereas, probably not doing much of the side content and not getting the better gear, I've wiped a few more times than I did in that game – which I LOVE. This game really feels like it builds on Remake's combat and boss encounters in such unique and interesting ways where I don't mind taking some of them on a few times because of how fun they are to face off against. At the same time, though, the problem Remake had of you sometimes not having a certain spell or ability of a certain element to take advantage of a weakness means that on a second attempt you can re-spec with slotting in a new materia (I think it gets really messy when the party gets split up because you might have a few compositions which cover all bases and then - SURPRISE! - you have a super weird party comp which doesn't and so you need to rejig things a bit), and any extra attempts beyond the first are infinitely once you know what you're doing – one problem I then had resulting from that with a certain boss fight in the following chapter was that I got to the second phase too quickly and without having had my gauges fill up to a point where I could consistently do damage the way the game asks you to. In the latter stages of the game - probably because of the increased speed of attacks - I've definitely had the animation cancel problem (be it through an attack or a mid-battle cutscene) return from Remake against some bosses, where ATB gauges and the like are going to waste because just so happened to use them at just the wrong time? Chapter 12 yesterday...I knew that was coming after we got the game presented at the TGAs last year, but damn, yeah I was fully choked up, as I thought I would be weird difficulty spike starting here with the boss fights where even using Assess they're suddenly so much more about having Limit Breaks and ATB abilities and spells ready to go in the very small window a boss is prepping a certain move/has a certain vulnerability, but once you know what's coming damn is it still great. The 1v1 took a bit of time for me to adjust to (I kept attacking too early on the Reload) but damn was Triple Slash helpful as all heck in this battle. I thought I would be spending loads of time doing mini-games and tracking down Queen's Blood players once the map opened up more here, but nope, I want to see the ending out of excitement and also it seems like some of the stuff back at Gold Saucer is on a higher difficulty which, meh, isn't really what I'm looking for out of those games. Started Chapter 13 and had the exact same issue I mentioned about needing to attack an early boss a certain way when powered up, except the damn thing wouldn't stay still or even allow me to ground it consistently, so that took surprisingly long – Shiva throwing icicles at its face worked a treat. Game is well and truly starting to build up to its climax so I'm very excited to see where it goes, but holy damn @Hero-of-Time you weren't kidding about how long Chapter 13 was, it does kind of grind things to a halt (as much fun as I find it to spam Heatwave as Aerith on horses of Shinra fodder), and at a guess I probably half-ish of the way through before putting it down last night. It's a shame because in the context of the complete VII story having a fully fledged dungeon here makes sense - much more so than the length of Hojo's place in Remake - but in the context of Rebirth in a vacuum, yeah, it's long, and you feel it because you want to see what happens next and how it wraps up. I'm now really curious to see how and where this wraps up, exactly. Will be aiming to wrap this up today in order to start picking away at my spooky or monster-filled picks for Halloween this month imagine I'll be making very liberal use of the spoiler tags!

The Battlefront Collection that Aspyr released earlier this year

Monolith Soft are celebrating their 25th anniversary today, and have released a video in commemoration of this: Think I've played more games that they've supported on than I have games they led development on, but still – from my time with the games they've had some involvement in, it's clear that they're one of the greats Happy 25th Monolith Soft!

Yeah, to clarify what I meant about the whole mannequins thing because it was late when I typed it up and I don't think I really explained it that well reading it back: I think sometimes having Type A/B/C/etc. can be just a bit too nondescript, and I think that extends far beyond just the gender options in some games. I think it seems to be clear enough here what the differences are between the options, but some games have options named like that and swapping between them, zooming in, heck even walking up to my TV, I swear I have no idea what the actual difference is. But yeah, the actual move away from Male/Female to Type A/B I obviously have no problem with, I think it's a simple but effective way to be inclusive, which is a good thing, as is being able to assign a masculine or feminine voice regardless of gender. Really can't wait to see the full range of customisation options, I want my party looking like they're straight out of a 90s anime I mean just to point out the differences with the female warrior here, they literally just gave the her some briefs and an undershirt: I kind of wish they changed more? The first design looks...bizarre, I'm less sure about it being sexualised and more just thinking it looks incredibly uncomfortable and impractical, and so for me the redesign just seems a bit on the lazy side, all things considered. There's so much more you could do to make a more badass-looking female warrior from that base design!

Horii with a pretty direct callout of needing to adhere to pressures from America when making certain production decisions – such as when it comes to the female protag's outfit, or male/female options becoming Types A/B: Also "it's like an absolute god...an evil disguised as good" sounds anime as hell and I love it I can kind of see where Horii is coming from, in the sense that I took have never in my life heard someone complain about the way options are named, has anyone else? It seems extreme to me that we end up treating character designs like they're different types of mannequins? Anyways, all of this conjures up memories for me of IGN's review of Dragon Quest XI by Jared Petty, who talks about some of the skimpier outfit options in the game like just having the outfit in your inventory is going to make you spontaneously combust. Kind of hard to disagree with Horii when the first review you'll find when you search for a Dragon Quest XI review is this one. I do think there are times when anime and games can go completely overboard and oversexualise female characters to a very uncomfortable degree - outfits, angles chosen, how they're treated by and in the story, etc. - but Dragon Quest XI isn't at all one of them. There are dudes built like freaking freight trains walking around shirtless for goodness sake. And don't even get me started on "icky bits". Urgh, yes this review still irks me to this day, how could you tell?

Lore book incoming, and it looks a little familiar Urgh fine I'll take twenty

So, uh, this ad and its use of Astro and friends is incredible And sharing because I found it charming and funny:

Hell yeah, great idea, thanks H-o-T For sure, I've been on the verge of making a post on here somewhere which was just blank with a spoiler tags and saving the link the last few days -- I only pushed back doing that because I didn't know where I could put it Wonder if that means you can add titles to spoiler tags again then? [SPOILER=test] *content* [/SPOILER] [SPOILER="test"] *content* [/SPOILER] UPDATE

Looks like it works to me @Hero-of-Time It's been a minute – was it ? EDIT: okay, that does the trick then. Awesome!

Full recording of today's TGS panel: Some stuff out of today's TGS panel: Photo Mode looks ~ I N S A N E ~

Just got back from watching Revenge of the Sith in cinemas for the first time. Loved it. Teared up several times. Mouthed many, many strings of dialogue along with the characters at several points. Didn't realise until part of the way through that I was actually watching the original theatrical cut, counted probably 30 or so very quick shots I've not seen in RotS before from the point I noticed onwards, some were at really odd points and totally changing the pace or tone of a scene. But the real downside of the theatrical cut is that those bastards cut down the best credits medley in existence. For shame! Not the best Star Wars film by any stretch of the imagination (still think that honour belongs to A New Hope or Empire), but it's my personal favourite and it meant so much to me to finally get the chance to see it in theatres!

Per the game's English TGS stream, it will be aiming to run at 60 fps on a base PS5 console, though it seems to be using frame generation to do so. Going to look amazing on the Pro, and really happy that it's going to be able to kind of cheat to 60 fps on the base PS5 – the option is always nice to have!

Uzumaki continues to look like absolute perfection: Can't wait

Did I fall asleep watching the Suikoden panel which aired in the stupid hours over here, despite it lacking a translator and me not knowing a lick of Japanese? You're damn right I did. Really jolly vibes in this panel, highlight for me was probably getting to see some of the concepts for the original games when it comes to how battles were presented. They also showed off some of the merch which was announced a couple of weeks ago, which uh, yeah, made my wallet twitch. I'm totally in for the OST. They also showed some footage from the Symphonic Poem Blu-ray set, which depicts the 2022 concert held in Tokyo, and comes bundled with a ton of things like a fabric map which I want but have no reason to want but really, really want. Oh, and a little peek at some of the animated music video. Just 5 ½ months to go

It really is, I've popped on some of the tracks people have pulled from trailers between various rewatches of them (because I love a good trailer) and as someone who looooooooooves me some epic orchestras and vocals, this game's OST has it in spadefuls. Look, I know we knew Shoji Meguro was talented as hell from his other OSTs - I pop the Persona 5 soundtrack on in the background in my apartment at least twice a month - but it's crazy that he's gone from THAT to THIS. Like, seriously, it's such an extreme switch up in genres it's insane. It's like being one of the best snooker players in the world and then deciding to take up ice skating. Damn it I'm trying to be sensible and wait for this to be my Christmas game while I'm off work for a few weeks with how endless it seems to be but also I DON'T WANT TO WAIT AT ALL Don't get me started – I remember this got announced the year I joined the forums, which was, uh, over 8 years ago now. Where the hell has the time gone? Project Re Fantasy was a silly project title then, but somehow Metaphor ReFantazio...is kind of incredibly epic as a title? If still a little silly there was that IGN First video with the cool concept art (still a bit letdown she didn't become our protag but whatever). There was also that time they released that really weird, high concept trailer with concept art, random people standing around in fantasy costumes and that guy in a set of armour. Is this game's entire existence a metaphor..?

I think you meant to say sssssssslander

I'm pretty sure his proper title is Serpentine Steve Sesame, Snek, of Sssville. That's right, I still use my copy of the Yellow Pages. AND NO, I WON'T STAND FOR THIS MISLABELLING. STICK TO THE MIGHTY BUT SILLY SHOPKEEPING CHAMELEON AND LEAVE THE SNEK LABELLING FOR THE EXPERTS.