I have been sort of half-playing games lately, here are some of them.
Final Fantasy XII
I hadn’t played this since 2019 or so on my old laptop so it was finally time to play it on the PC in 2024. I had played it at least twice on the PS2 back in the day, and once on PC when they released the Zodiac Age on Steam.
I really liked it on the PS2, and I liked the changes they made to it for the Zodiac Age, what with the Job system and all. I got all 100% completion a few years ago on the PC and that particular run I got Espers I had never unlocked before and pretty much saw stuff I never encountered on the PS2 version. But this time, I bombed through it at 4x speed and didn’t really take much in.
I had set goals like get every Esper, complete every Hunt and so on but after a while I knew all I would do is one goal: complete the main game. Which I did. I didn’t even bother doing the auto-level thing all that much, I did it for an hour or two and then got bored and kept playing. So I died a lot more than usual, but the game stayed somewhat challenging. However by the end my equipment and setup was so strong I was able to crush the main plot easily. I did most of the hunts, maybe 40/45 of them, but didn’t really bother with Trial mode and only got maybe 7/13 Espers.
Final Fantasy VII
I always wanted to play 7 again but was held back by the lack of speed boosters for the PC version. Then one day a weeks ago after my kind of bleh replay of 12 on x4 speed I said fuck it, time to re-install.
I played FF7 maybe 2-3 times on the PSX. I would always play it using the PSX controller with no sticks even when on PS2 because it didn’t support their use anyway. I played it just once on the PC and as usual got it 100% completed. Much like my experience with FF12, my journey to 100% completion saw me explore things I had never seen before when I had it on Playstation: Chocobo racing/breeding to get the Gold Chocobo, acquiring/maxing every single materia in the game, every Limit Break and so on.
This time was a little bit different - I did get a lot of the materia but didn’t bother making sure to get all of it. I definitely didn’t bother levelling all the Limit Breaks, I just tried to stick to a party made of Cloud-Tifa-Nanaki as much as possible. Tank, Thief/DPS, Mage.
It still probably has the best story arc of all and the best use of the full cast. No one is really forgotten, except maybe Vincent this time I didn’t really do any of his sidequests. And he’s a bonus character anyway. I did the Wutai sidequest even though I didn’t have to.
Much like 12 I found myself getting wiped out a lot. I didn’t spend much time grinding and often didn’t use the right moves or equipment. Guess it’s just been that long. I used to find FF7 just right, not too hard but this time it was very difficult. Part of that was the ATB gauge - I had it on Active and thus enemies would get free moves while I’d be trying to figure out mine.
What’s next?
I kind of want to play Resident Evil 4 again. The original one. It’s been 5 years, does it still hold up?
