Return to Midgar: Restarting Final Fantasy VII Again.

Well, I'm back.

Again.

I think this must be the one, two, three. . . fifth time I've started Final Fantasy VII?  Sixth?  And I've never finished it either.

I'm sure that I've talked about starting this game before, maybe not here, but on our first site.  I think the one correction I want to make to that article is that I don't think I made it very far when I played on my laptop, and I think I might have started a new game when Dr. Potts and I lived together for a year.  Or maybe that memory is wrong because I'm now 23 years away from that time and 2013 Me was only 12 years.  Funny how memory works like that.

And speaking of memory, I don't specifically recall how far I made it in that last playthrough 11 years ago.  Judging by the Steam achievements though, it looks like I must have stopped sometime after acquiring Red XIII and before entering Wutai to pick up Yuffie.  Not really all that far considering that the game can be beaten in an average of 36.5 hours and I was 20.7 hours in when I stopped in November 2013; kinda wonder what was happening back then?  I think The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind happened?

That was another thing that surprised me before deciding to jump back in, was that I had in my mind that this was a 50-70 hour game, and that's really without going for anything to do with the Golden Chocobo/Knights of the Round quests.  But if it's supposed to take only 36.5 hours, and knowing me with JRPGs, it will probably still take me upwards of 60-75 hours, partly because I don't mind grinding.

I think that's it.  Just publically declaring that I'm going to jump (back) into Final Fantasy VII and actually plan to beat it this time.  After going through Final Fantasy XIII, it kind of rekindled my Final Fantasy bug and not really ready to fork over $59.99 for an incomplete Final Fantasy VII remake, although I will probably pick up that series in a couple of years after the price drops and I'm playing on either the Steam Deck 2 or Super Steam Deck Advantage DX.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Free From the Shackles of Time

P.S.  Restarting this series was also somewhat inspired by Dan Floyd over at PlayFrame starting a commentary-laden playthrough of FF VII.  Plus again, coming off of the heels of Final Fantasy XIII and finding out that you can beat the game in under 40 hours, makes this all the more appealing.  Supposedly anyway.

P.P.S.  I may even finally give Final Fantasy VIII a shot this time around too, which I've never played, but I know I'll reread Dr. Potts' articles from 4-ish years ago.

P.P.P.S.  I am almost half tempted to replay through Crisis Core since it is a prequel to FF VII, and while the remake is tempting, I might just replay the PSP versions since I still have that.  Or not, because I'm not attempting to do an entire Final Fantasy VII chronology retrospective, I just wanted to play a JRPG that I hadn't finished yet.