Before I started Final Fantasy VII on the Steam Deck, I made sure that it was at least of a "Playable" status, although I would have given it a try just to make sure; because the 2014 release of Lords of the Fallen is categorized as "Unsupported" and I haven't had any issues with it. It is important to note that the version that I am playing on Steam is a slightly different version than the one that was originally released on Windows in 1998, which is different in several ways from the PlayStation release over a year earlier. It seems to be a mix of the 2009 International version, which has improved graphics and soundtrack but still contains many of the keyboard-centric commands of the 1998 Windows release.
Like a lot of early Steam games, when I start Final Fantasy VII on the Steam Deck, a separate config window is brought up. There is the option to change the graphical style from the HD-ified 2009 character models to the 1998 Windows models (which are still an improvement over the 1997 PlayStation graphics). But, you have to use a mouse to navigate this menu and you might think that the right trackpad on the Steam Deck was built for moments like this, and normally you would be right, but not this time. Here, you have to hold down the "Steam" button to activate the mouse cursor with the right trackpad to navigate if you like. It did take me a few minutes to figure this out. I also tried going into the controller config screen to have the right trackpad automatically function as a mouse, but that didn't seem to work, so the "Steam" button method would have to be it.
I did see some people talking on the discussion page about needing a Square Enix login, and it does appear that my Square Enix account was already attached to my Steam account since, except when I logged into my account, it only mentions Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV. So I'm not 100% sure what was going on with that, but since it seems to be an issue for other players that I did not have to deal with, I still wanted to bring it up here just in case.
But then I ran into another problem.
Once you get past the Eidos Interactive and Squaresoft animated screens and the New Game or Continue screen, the game brings up a screen to show you how the keys on the keyboard are mapped. Normally this would just be a reminder since the Windows copy of the game came packaged with a plastic keyboard overlay that would fit between and around the spaces of a keyboard 10-Key. And to get past this screen, you had to press the "Okay" button which was mapped to the "A" button by default. However, the game would not recognize the A-button as a valid input. It took me a search on the Steam Discussion boards to figure out that I needed to press the "X" key on the keyboard since "X" is by default the "Okay" button. So I had to go back to the button config screen within Steam and mapped the "X" key to the R4 button on the back of the Steam Deck. I figured that I wasn't going to be using this button too often and I already mapped the Screenshot function to the R5 button (which I do for every game that doesn't use the R5 back button).
And I thought that that would be the end of my Steam Deck button config-related issues. And it was for a time.
Then I realized that the R/L shoulder buttons didn't do what they were supposed to do. So like the R4 button above, I went into the controller config screen and mapped PgUp and PgDn to their respective shoulder buttons. I did briefly consider doing a never-running away run, but then I remembered that there was additional functionality for navigating the menu screens so I went in and remapped them anyway. And all was well and good. Until I had to do squats. This particular minigame requires the player to press three buttons in succession to perform a successful squat. The button prompts here were [Switch], [Cancel], [Ok]. Before the practice squats started, I was confident I knew what the game wanted for [Cancel] and [Ok], but I had no idea what it meant by [Switch]. Longer story short, the [Switch] button is mapped to the Insert key on the keyboard, so Insert is now mapped to the L4 back button.
But aside from that, the game runs great. Which it actually does, no sarcasm there. I think my past experience with the Steam Controller and seeing that as more of a keyboard emulator than a traditional controller has made me more comfortable with customizing the button remapping beyond simple swaps and even if all of the above seems cumbersome, none of it has deterred me in playing this game.
On the side, but not actually while I'm playing, I am watching an older Kotaku series by Tim Rogers on the differences between the original Japanese in-game text and the English translation, which adds a nice little bit of historical context to this 27-year-old game. I am also watching Dan Floyd's playthrough which he started two weeks ago. . . maybe that's part of what kicked off this desire to play/finish Final Fantasy VII as I do love his commentary while he plays through areas that I just recently went through; that and also re-catching the Final Fantasy bug after finishing Final Fantasy XIII a few weeks back, because I do really love JRPGs of the '90s. And while I still assert that Final Fantasy VII is not the pinnacle of the franchise, I do love the world created by so many of the other entries.
Now I guess we'll just have to see if there are any more button mappings I need to do and if it actually only takes me 36.5 hours, or 81.5 hours even without doing anything with the Knights of the Golden Round Chocobo quests.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
No comments:
Post a Comment