I played FFVII when it came out and hadn’t played a JRPG before. I thought I was getting near the end of the game until I left Midgar and saw the world map for the first time.
To be fair, having multiple discs spoiled it. Yeah I had the "whoa, Midgar is just one small part of the map?" moment, but the fact I hadn't even switched to disc 2 was a hint.
So I didn’t know there were multiple discs. My brother had started playing and stopped because he has terrible taste in games apparently. I just started playing with the disc already in there. So I got out of Midgar, thought “oh my god, there’s so much more to this game”, and then hours of play later, I looked at the box and saw there were two more discs. Yet again, I was blown away with how much was left.
My Star Ocean 2 second disc worked fine until you actually beat the game and it froze (since most of the space on psx discs was for FMVs). I bought one of those disc doctors but I don't think I ever saw it before youtube.
I remember playing Parasite Eve for the first time at a friend's house, got to the part where it said "insert disc 2" and he was ADAMANT that I turn off the system to switch to switch discs. Learned the hard way that they expected you to open the disc tray and swap with the console on and had to replay the annoying last boss of disc 1 again (unlike FF, PE did not let you save right before the disc prompt).
On the other hand, the discs are so front-loaded it's almost a red herring really. If you finish disc 1 so you think you must be 1/3rd of the way in, you're going to be disappointed -- it's more like 65 / 25 / 10 (of course, exact values may vary depending on when you do certain optional content)
Very true, I remember the last disc was always just end game content and what took up the bulk of the space was the FMVs for the ending. Funny how almost all of FF7's towns and map fit onto disc 3 so you could still revisit with new dialogue even though there wasn't any story reason.
There's also the fact that some games, like Resident Evil 2, had different discs for different game modes, so it wasn't a dead giveaway, just a strong hint.
No, its 12 hours of the game. The entire game is only 58 hours long, 12 hours is much more than just the end of the game. its got 5 dungeons and 18 boss fights.
I had the exact same experience. It was my first JRPG as well, and I was... Bad at it. The fact that I was dying and had to work hard at it really added to the experience. Of course now I know what I'm doing, so I don't know how you can replicate that experience without just being infuriating.
As sort a result of playing JRPGs I had bit of a learning curve with Baldur's Gate 3. I had to adjust to the fact that things like poison and slow are actually worth investing in. Was used to not investing in things I assumed wouldn't work on tough enemies.
Anyone here play GBA version of 1 & 2? With the extra add-ons they added at the end I only beat the first game. I also had three and four. Out of all four games I only beat the first. And on top of that I'm pretty sure it took me a week of prepping and training for the final dlc tower.
Pretty sure in the end I went to game FAQs to get help with the last parts of the game.
Yeah, I am playing through FF X Remastered and having so much fun! "chapter-wise" I'm like 75% done, but actual story and gameplay-wise, I'm barely half way, if that!
Yeah, those were my last FF games before I basically quit the series. Played through FFXII, but it was not memorable enough for me to even remember doing it. I own FF13, but have yet to play it. . . FF11 becoming online only kind of messed up the entire franchise for me.
I remember renting FF7 with my brother back in college. We played for like 18 hours straight and never got out of the city and off of disc 1 before we had to return it lol.
Great shout. Young me was like "huh, couple of shinra reactors nearly destroyed, a few more to go, this will be done and dusted in a couple of hours".
Next thing you know you're knees deep grinding to get KOTR or a gold chocobo or something, trying to beat emerald or Ruby weapon or whatever, and that total time counter on your save has gone through the roof lol.
Not just that though. It's literally too long of a story to put into one game logistically. The textures you'd need to put into the game file to make it one playthrough would legit be over 300gb lol. It really is 3 games worth of game in terms of amount of computer memory needed to support it.
Same problem as original FF7 for PS1 that had to be split across 3 discs since there was just too much content to store on one disc.
Not really. They added so much filler content in the remakes. If it wasn't there it would be perfectly viable as a single game, as demonstrated by the fact that it, well, was. And the filler content was only there because... they decided to split it into multiple games, and it would feel too short otherwise.
I'm sure some people love the fact that they got more stuff, and I'm happy for them. But let's not pretend the whole "the story was so huge it couldn't possibly be done in a single game" isn't just their PR justification to turn one beloved IP into 3 separate full price games they can sell you.
Also, quite literally the only thing making FF7 require multiple discs was the FMVs. Which, again, were nice to have and everything, very impressive at the time, I'm sure they helped move units. But would the game be materially different if you just replaced most of them with in-engine cutscenes? Obviously not. And they could tell the exact same story in a single disc, no problem whatsoever. I mean, the SNES had games of similar length that fit in hundredths of that space, so "obviously" there is nothing inherently impossible about it, it's just a matter of how many bells and whistles you decide to ship with.
The FMVs were huge, datawise. Half of each disc is basically dedicated to video files. The rest is redundant game data. If CDs could hold a little over twice the normal data, then all of ff7 could fit on 1 disc.
Like if SSDs were half as expensive and 25th percentile internet speed was twice as high then it wouldn't be a problem to put the new FF7 games into one game, but that's not current reality. Probably in 20 years the technology will get to that norm and then you could do it, just like how we can look back at FF7 with hindsight and say things like "if they had the technology back then that we have today then they could've put it on one disc!"
That's because they added an incredible amount of content compared to the original. Had they just faithfully remade the game with modern graphics it would be a very standard length jrpg.
Wait! Play Suikoden! S2 is the better game but there's enough returning characters and such that you'll get a better experience playing S1 first. Unlike most JRPGs, the whole series takes place in the same world so things connect.
I played it as a kid (multiple times) and I was surprised how quickly it went when I played as an adult (gold chocobo and weapons killed in about 30 hours). Granted, I know the game inside and out at this point.
I cannot wrap my head around how many damn hours I must have spent in those games. And in an era where yt and guides were rare, heck, teen me didn’t have internet access even without my parents approval. (School only)
It would take adult-with-kids me probably years to finish ff7 now. Even the remake I only did one part and the second one is still in the foil
85
u/AlwaysFinnishInsider 4h ago
Just played the og FF7 for the first time and I had no idea it was such a big game