No there won't be, same reason why survival challenges in fighting games heck even just the simple 10 fight "tower" or single player character fights you see in mortal kombat even, bloody palace in dmc games, etc. don't have them.

They're meant to test your skill and confidence. A checkpoint system would just trivialize the whole point of them being difficult. If it were implemented at any round then one could just beat one round, save, do another round beat it, save over and over again.

That would be doing 10 single fights in a more tedious way tbh.

Emotionally very, physically not so much. Ofc that’s when you take in her entire arc. Idk if we ever truly seen her broken other than her seeing her memories she shunned away. If that were the case then she can pretty much handle pain and danger somewhat better than most people as she was surrounded by it for quite a while in her upbringing

If you think something like this is considered "unfair" then you have no idea what to expect further down the line. A TPK can be annoying if you can't figure out how to avoid it or prevent it.

If you're not going for the platinum, what's left to do is anything you haven't really completed yet. You can clean up any content you missed but don't necessarily have to go for all rewards which some ask you to do on hard mode.

The only thing that is new that unlocks post game are gigachadleys last two sets of VR challenges. To even access them you gotta finish the protorelic storyline first. There are in total 15 of them all set to hard difficulty that acts to test the players skill and in some cases your sanity.

I love how when someone beats Bonds of Friendship and/or Rulers of the Outer worlds for the first time, they flip off the screen because the suffering is universal 😂

I spent 90% of the time healing because a single move depleted my health bar or killed Aerith or Cait who just don’t even stay alive longer than 15 seconds in those final battles without constant healing.

Not to mention countering/parrying just becomes a shitshow and most of the moves can’t be blocked anyway.

Use precision defense materia. Even without it any move that's not unblockable/bindable can be blocked with perfect timing as well as using any synergy skill that provides cover for individuals. If you didn't already realize, there were a lot of times when the party change up was locked and different throughout the game and chapter 13 you had to constantly switch over back and forth as well. It was the games way of telling you:

"Alright, you need to know how to play all 7 characters competently because if you don't, chances are you will suffer in the end".

The game WANTS you to be good with everyone so they ask you: "Can you be victorious in the boss rush no matter who is in the party"?

I beat it so it’s not a skill issue, but this wasn’t fun at all.

Just because you beat it does not mean it wasn't or is no longer a skill issue. If you let's say arbitrarily die to a certain boss dozens of times and then suddenly beat it, it more so has to do with luck or the game had to get easier for that to happen.

You said you had to switch to normal mode which actually does make the game easier because if you do a lot of side content in dynamic, chances are you are over the level that normal detects which raises the levels and ultimately the enemy stats to meet it. Playing on normal negates this.

Maybe it’s this active combat crap. I think turn-based would have made it more fun.

Just because you are not good at action games or don't understand the game doesn't mean the game sucks.

157 hours, but about 7-8 hours of it I lost because I kept resetting quest data on hard mode every chapter I was in because I kept thinking it only applied to that one chapter and so I had to keep doing the same quests over and over again (i'm a fucking idiot ik).

The only trophies you really need to prepare yourself for are 3 in particular.

• Completing the game in hard mode
  
• Completing all of gigachadley's VR sims
  
• Getting all rewards for Johnny's hotel

Your mileage WILL vary depending on how many goodies you got for Johnny up til now and your overall skill as the final set of chadley's VR has a really good chance of terrorizing you for a lack of a better word. The hard mode playthrough is indeed the longest one to do of the 3 but is honestly perhaps the least difficult. Your total playtime may be between 150 to well over 300 hours.

What you want maxed out is entirely up to your playstyle. The build itself doesn't matter too much even on hard mode except for certain specific encounters. Skill matters more in this game because even if you believe you have the best setup possible (which in some cases you probably do) in won't mean anything if you don't know how to use your setups properly.

If you made it a point to assess every new enemy you see (which is highly encouraged for the first playthrough btw) then you can look up the enemy intel for bosses before you actually fight them and adjust accordingly.

The 3 bullet points I made above just cover the essentials that will make everyones lives easier, anything else on top of that is optional. The list of potential materia that may be viable is so extensive because of the number of strategies one could take so I won't list all that I think are crucial. The optional stuff I'm referring to are some complete and magic materia. Things like VIT UP, SPR UP, and reraise materia are nice but not really required as the buffs gained from the former 2 aren't the greatest and with reraise I found trivial in this case as it costs quite a bit of MP for a situation you probably are trying to avoid anyway.

Since hard mode doesn't allow you to use items it's important you mitigate damage taken and deal as much damage as you can. In this case, maxing out elemental, HP and MP absorption materia is a must as well since they can be your source of healing and MP regeneration. If you know the chapter ends with a boss fight (chapter 2 for example), then you know you can go all out on MP if necessary because each chapter restores all your HP and MP back to normal. Chocobo stops still replenish your MP so you don't have to worry about MP mitigation whenever you're in the open world, only in dungeons or dungeon like areas where there are only benches which ofc only restore HP like the last game.

List of potential materia that could be useful in hard mode which are not limited to these (this list includes materia that only have one level so keep that in mind and also materia that is locked behind some extensive side content, keep that in mind as well):

• ATB Boost
  
• Limit Siphon
  
• Enemy Skill
  
• First Strike
  
• Darkside
  
• Magic Focus
  
• Magic Efficiency
  
• Binding (mostly if you want to get some breathing room on bosses that are susceptible to this)
  
• Swiftcast
  
• Fire/Ice and Lightning/Wind
  
• Magnify

Any materia that requires a lot of AP to level up particularly any support materia, use AP up linked to that.

Manuscripts are the only thing you need to be concerned about getting on hard mode. Most are locked behind sidequests (you will have to do them all) and enemy intel bosses in each region as well as the final VR challenges post game. The minigames, and odd jobs are not necessary if you already done them. Coliseum and underground fights can be done on any difficulty if available so those are not required as well.

There are a handful of theories out there.

The one I like to stick with is:

Imagine if Aerith and Sephiroth were playing NG+ 4D chess with each other to get their desired ending but in a new scenario, HOWEVER they themselves don't fully know what the other is capable of.

Obviously there are problems with this like "well how did they know the OG events in the first place".

My guess would be that the lifestream this time around has the knowledge of ALL the works in the compilation. As to how much of the compilation either of them know? I honestly don't know. The whispers may have "intentionally" came into contact with them both to set up this new scenario. You could liken it to what Bahamut did with the Nox Fleuret and Izunia family lines in FFXV but we're in the FFXIII scenario of resisting the gods.

Yes this theory is pretty shit in the end but I still like it nevertheless.

Idk what "lacking info" means. If it means the game not really telling you how to do certain things it only tells you the basic necessities of how to play not necessarily the secrets behind the scenes. If you mean people incorporating a straight forward guide, it's not that easy as there is a ton of stuff to digest.

If you found the previous game tedious to platinum, you should be warned that this one is much more tedious as it is much more difficult and takes a lot longer to do.

In terms of what materia to max out. A lot of materia should be considered leveling up because you never know when a certain one comes in handy. Almost all of chadleys materia is worth leveling up. If it doesn't have a use in hard mode, do not put effort into it (such as Item Economizer). Ones you should consider investing time into are:

• Multiple copies of the same magic materia particularly healing and elemental

• Any and all copies of support materia as the number for them is finite (except warding)

• 7 of HP UP, MP UP, Steadfast block, Precision Defense

Did you even play remake?

Idk what you consider 100% for this game but trust me, unless you're genuinely enjoying it the more side content you do in a small time frame the more infuriating it might get. It's a lot to unpack so you can take your time with it. The platinum for this game already is in the 150+ hour (likely more) ballpark.

OK so how can I keep my distance but also land a Braver?

This strategy only works when you know after an attack he will follow up with a reload. Something like guns akimbo he will almost always do this when he's done. If you're within close proximity to him when he launches guns akimbo, run in that arc I said but even more so closer to him at the same time. You must time it quickly RIGHT AFTER he finishes NOT when he begins reloading so best to go into tactical mode to do this.

https://youtu.be/zAgSeZ1wO4k?si=Eb1mFknvTiFcp_Vy&t=53

Here's an example of someone doing it.

What if I built 2 ATB bars, use triple Slash to teleport to him, them immediately use braver?

Doing triple slash is good because it will pressure him upon hit however the braver strategy only works if it was the first attack that landed. Any further attacks after triple slash just does damage normally.

It's been tough to stay away from him. 1 he teleports to me any time I get some distance, and 2, even sometimes my first beam attack will instead make me fly toward him. So the beam attack is unreliable. It usually works but sometimes it does a physical attack instead, and then you're done.

His teleports or "dashes" are kinda unpredictable so my advice would be to dodge in a triangle because he rarely ever dodges toward you consecutively (unless ofc you're close enough to him). Idk what this "beam" attack it is you're referring to but if it is the dodge into attack ranged attack then I'll say this.

What you may have noticed is that once you do that command Cloud will do a series of beam arcs and if you keep continuing he will then dash toward the enemy. The trick is to cancel out of it before that happens. Essentially: Circle, then mash square a bit and keep an eye on Cloud. The point where he actually starts dashing for this command is always the same, it's when he pretty much does a 180 turn and he moves backward a bit.

When you see that on screen, press circle/evade again and go into mashing square. Now this kind of strat is passively good because it can slowly build stagger once you land an attack that pressures him because there will be a point where he starts guarding and if you physically attack him he may counter and so ranged attacks are good because he just keeps guarding until you basically do no damage or he follows up with his next attack.

7,777,777

not enough bros tbh

When he does a simple shotgun blast and he moves backward with it, just be out of range when that usually happens. So basically never get too close when he's still on the offensive.

If he does guns akimbo he'll shoot about a dozen bullets. Literally run in a circle. I'm not even joking (not in a circle motion but like the arc of a circle so that you still cover some distance between you and him)

Any other ranged attack he does just ensure that again you're not too close, keeping a certain distance away will give you ample time to dodge away.

Staying close enough to him is the high risk high reward as landing braver on him instantly staggers his ass (like remake) THAT'S the secret to this fight but the timing window of this is shorter than it was previously.

At this point Rufus is now mostly viewed as a skill test for the player. There have been a good deal of people who say they struggled on Rufus and eventually and unfairly hated the game after that and then we discover what they were doing (or I guess were not doing during the fight), it clearly speaks for itself why they couldn't really beat it.

I don’t feel like I’m learning the mechanics.

I'm surprised you even lasted this long if you aren't/can't seem to learn anything useful. Even on dynamic Rufus isn't that big a deal. Is there a noticeable spike in difficulty? Kinda, but it's still very manageable if you just learn how to play properly.

Who in their right minds made it so that the build has to be respeced after every defeat?

The respecing after Elena/Rude and before Rufus every time you lose is not necessary/mandatory. If you can't seem to beat him with any build in the game where the bulid matters less than skill, it's just a skill issue at that point. Everything you need to beat him is already within Cloud's innate nature of playstyle.

You don’t need to grind. If you played on dynamic even there’s no point as the enemies will scale to you anyway if necessary.

Why wouldn’t it auto save like the rest of the game? I literally never manually saved for 70 hours

The game autosaves whenever you enter a new location, after certain story beats and whenever you complete a chapter. It doesn't autosave at the end likely because you're not actually going into another state of the game (if that makes any sense), you just enter the menu.

You should always make the case to manual save no matter how safe you think you are. In fact, if you do some post game content you'll make it a point to manual save A LOT.

HOLY SHIT IS THAT SELPHIE, WHERE'S SQUALL?!

WAIT IS THAT TIDUS AND WAKKA?!?!?!?

FFX-3 THEN?!?!??! OMG

Depends on the game and how it runs as well as its price:

Like I bought crisis core reunion for ps5 when it has a ps4 version but the ps4 version is locked to 30fps at 4K and the ps5 version plays at 60fps. Since this was a psp remaster the frame rates were going to be locked either way and since this was a preorder as well I chose ps5

I recently bought elden ring ps4 version as that version when on sale goes for even less than its ps5 counterpart. Also as far as I’m aware ps5 native Elden ring is not smooth on either mode but playing the ps4 pro version through BC gets a smooth locked frame rate

I got tales of arise for ps4 and not ps5. While it is ps4 pro enhanced it’s still locked to 30fps but at the time when I bought it, it was dirt cheap

All of these examples were on disc btw.

FFVII rebirth, VERY likely because of recency bias, was my most anticipated game of 2024, my 20th platinum, and the platinum itself is very challenging to get even for seasoned players

I’m personally ok with what they’re doing for the most part. The reason why is because I know the devs history and they’ve been very forthcoming with developer info and interviews since before remake came out. For a handful of people in the fandom they also follow suit in staying up to date with what they’re doing and may feel the same way. Others don’t and others don’t and also don’t really understand how it works.

As for complete outsiders, you’re not really going to be able to convince them to play a certain game if it just doesn’t meet their criteria. I know a handful of people that wouldn’t dare play the OG simply because of its graphics and the year it came out, in fact I don’t think they would play any original title if a remake title exists. In my experience when they play that original title they can’t even comprehend how to play that game properly anyway.

People can be very shallow when it comes to things like this but there’s nothing you can do about it. The best thing we can do is to attempt to play it safe when they do enjoy playing the remake of a game even tho technically we as the fandom know its shortcomings.

Bloodletting Beast in one of the dungeons (can't remember exact name) and it just jumping all around in a very tiny enclosure.

If I had to guess:

Cloud: Motorcycles, and professional Queen's Blood Player

Barret: Environmentalist activist and daycare giver

Tifa: Sewing/knitting, pet store owner, martial artist instructor

Aerith: Florist, teacher, aspiring choral singer

Red XIII: Hunting, howling at the moon

Yuffie: Arms/materia dealer, full time ninja, "pickpockteter"

Cait Sith: Uhhh.......ask Reeve

Vincent: Sleeping

Cid: Mechanic, Scientist, recreational aviation