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playing on PS5, but should be available on XBox and Switch as well.

Depending on your play style, it's easy to lose the impact of the story. There are some great character moments as regular play, and several you have to look for (which can actually be good so it doesn't feel like they're overdoing it). That said, it still may not appeal to everyone, but nothing ever does. Hope the gameplay is fun for you, at least. I'm addicted to plot, so focused a lot on that as I played.

I played around with a few different characters/classes afterwards, and my favorite is still Morley for direct control. I never did find a solid use-case for Julei, but if I ever do a hard-mode run (NG+ or otherwise) I imagine his healing would be even more necessary for some of the tougher fights. I'm looking forward to seeing what my kids make of the story.

I didn't - I'm notoriously oblivious to things like music when I'm in the thick of a fight, which is all those things are. Even when I was editing, I was too focused on the action. I'll have to go back and look/listen for that now. Thanks!

Did you "Continue" and load from a save file with the crown on it? I haven't heard of it bugging out on anyone.

@bronxx117 yes. I continued, but the mana seed and items didn't unlock. It did when I new gamed.

@@guyrheuark3445 huh, maybe it's something they patched in the meantime. I wasn't exactly blazing through this game, so you probably got to that point before me, and maybe they just fixed it. anyway, glad you were able to play it one way or another, at least.

Never played it, but I've always heard there was no actual link between the Mana games beyond thematic and common elements, but no same-world at all. The idea of a woman of the Mana Tribe becoming the Mana Tree seems pretty common in the series, from what I've read and played (admittedly, just Secret and now Visions), and the men becoming the Mana Knight to protect her, etc. I would love for another Mana game that actually connected to one or more, but with the development studio being shut down, I'm not optimistic we'll ever get that. Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed the playthrough, thanks for watching! Some post-game content on the way next week, and always more games after that. 🙂

There's definitely more an appreciation of that by the end of the game, both as the player and among the characters themselves. It's surprising in a way, how you don't really notice certain ideas growing in you or them as the game progresses, until suddenly the moment hits.

He was pretty tough, with whatever aoe push-back he was using on me as the fight progressed. I'm glad I had the ClassStrike ready at the end or I might've lost it. I enjoy a good fight!

thanks! glad you're enjoying the content. 🙂

😀

Yeah, don't spoilt it for yourself if you want to play. Vids will still be here when you're done if you want to come back and compare notes, or just stay ahead of me in playthrough and watch as you go. Good luck as you play - I'm quite a ways in now and 100% loving the game.

Thanks - sometimes it's hard to find a decent option in these games that aren't as cinematic as, say, FFVII Rebirth is. 😀

I've seen some people really go to town (no pun intended) upgrading their houses. I usually end up making some upgrades as I go when it's convenient, just to improve the economy and earn more money in the end, but somehow I never seem to stay focused enough to improve maybe more than half a neighborhood. 😀😆

Kinda wish I had at this point. Volumes seemed okay after the first re-balance, but the next episode I'm editing now all of a sudden gets noticeably louder in the BGM, and at this point I can't do anything about it. And by the time I'm editing now, I'm pretty much in the end game farming completion gear and approaching the final boss. I'll at least be able to adjust volumes for the finale, I suppose.

It's all good brother! Nice work!

Kind of sneaky how they make it appear also so you wouldn’t notice

I'm pretty sure none of the Jenovaroth clones ever exhibit the one-wing appearance, it's only ever the true Sephiroth that does (and also with the black feathers....?), so I think that's a clear indicator that you're seeing the real Sephiroth (in this case "Ultimate Sephiroth" or "Omni Sephiroth" as I've seen others call him). I don't think the timing of the appearance is significant, just that he gets to dramatically reveal it, cuz Sephy's a little bit of a drama queen.

@@bronxx117 haha drama queen for sure. Ide have to go back and look but through the entire game I think you get one wing seph or no wing at times, even during the ending aerith scenes it switches back and forth

So in keeping with OG7, none of the Sephiroth appearances that are a black-robed "clone" ever appear with the one-winged look, and Sephy himself has never exhibited the wing any time prior to his "death" in Nibelheim and subsequent five-year mako bath holding his mother's head. In OG, he never appeared with it until Safer Sephiroth form at the end (and then it was one-wing replacing an arm), and the one-winged humanoid appearance first appeared in a KH game, iirc. They liked the look and response so much they retconned it back, gave it to him in multiple media appearances, made it part of Genesis/Angeal in CrisisCore, etc. So it makes sense that the clones (assuming Hojo legit used Sephiroth's dna as part of creating S-type soldiers) would mimic Sephiroth's last physical appearance, not what he evolved into. You sometimes see the feathers (which are harder to track back through games to spot, so I'm not 100% sure), but the only time he appears with the one wing in Remake is after Whisper Harbinger. Even before that on the road, he floats down w/o the wing, and I'd contend that's almost certainly an incarnation of the Ultimate Sephy there, and he just seems to have it when he wants it and ditch it when he doesn't. If I'm right, it's presence 100% indicates you're looking at post-OG7 Sephiroth (aka "Ultimate Sephiroth"), but the lack of the wing doesn't mean anything in itself. In Rebirth, he briefly appears with it at the end of Ch13 before slicing off the tendril Cloud and Aerith are clinging to (also a downpour of feathers), but I'm pretty sure that's the first appearance of the wing here. Then of course he brings it back for the Reunion moment you pointed out, and again for the final fight. CORRECTION: He first appears with it immediately before the Demon Wall fight, but again, that's 100% Ultimate Sephy talking about his plans beyond this one world. Come to think of it, even though I'd say the Sephy who stabs Aerith and delivers the "you're just a puppet" line is still a Jenovaroth clone, you *DO* see the feathers falling down just before it pans up to see him plummeting. No wing, but yes feathers. So it's harder to say anything definitive about them, I think, unless they specifically indicate an intervention by (if not the actual presence of) Ultimate Sephiroth, much like the white rainbows potentially indicate some sort of influence by Ultimate Aerith. No word yet on the lone white feather at the beginning of Rebirth. ;-)

Glad you're enjoying it. There's so many details they included in these games, some are so subtle I didn't catch them until seeing for the 3rd, or 4th (or more) time through, and I have no illusions I caught them all. It's the reason I decided to go chapter-by-chapter, and I really encourage people to watch through and tell me anything I might've missed, too! :-)

Thanks, glad you're enjoying them. I wish I hadn't had to take such a long break on FF5 - I definitely underestimated how absorbed into Rebirth I'd be and for how long. :-)

Camera problems, and since I'm not looking at my computer screen, I didn't realize how bad it was until a lot of recording was done. Eventually I figure out that turning off the camera light helps reduce the glitch, and once the video series wrapped, I got myself a new camera (and so far, it's working much better).

I'm 100% team Tifa since I first played this game 20-something years ago. They can drag me all they want, but if done the way I'm thinking, it takes nothing away from her role or importance (or relationship). If this was closer to a 100% faithful remake of OG7, I would question anyone else joining the LS sequence. But I think in this version, the original Tifa/Cloud sequence just doesn't cut it, and it would be too close to the Tifa LS sequence we got in Gongaga.

@@bronxx117 I agree with you but when I said something about this theory I really saw people did not like it. I honestly think Tifa would love seeing Aerith again but Tifa fans think it takes away from her moment and some find it to be an intimate moment between Cloud and Tifa. When I said I didn’t think it’s supposed to be an intimate moment and it’s supposed to be about Cloud discovering his memories and wouldn’t it be beautiful if the three people closest to him helped him discover that, I was told by Tifa fans they didn’t see a reason for Zach and Aerith to be floating around during the sequence 🤷🏻‍♀️ I don’t think Zach is coming back to life though so I don’t see what other point he would have in the story besides helping Cloud in the ls sequence and I believe the theory that we will get Aeriths burial scene in the ls sequence and Aerith might be there in spirit form. But some Tifa fans want it all separate. Oh hey I like your theory that the dream pocket world Cloud created when he saved Aerith blipped out of existence almost instantly after her death. I haven’t seen anyone else say that one yet it makes sense.

@@Uhoh_itsAshley That's a toxic level of fandom, imo, and I'm sorry their concept of Tifa thinks that she's so weak this would take away from her in any way. Send 'em this way and I'll happily, respectfully, disagree and discuss all they want. If we were JUST trying to do what OG7 did and reveal Cloud really was a real person and really was her childhood friend, then yeah, Aerith and Zack would serve no purpose and could even be thought to take away from her moment. But imho, Tifa loses nothing by being at Cloud's side as he restores all the pieces he needs to be whole, and a "reveal" of something that 90% of the players already know would be ridiculous. She's always been his reason for try to be better and to seek the truth about himself, and nothing about that changes.

@@bronxx117 yeah I thought pretty much the same thing. TBH I’ve never seen the ls sequence I’ve only seen clips of it bc I’ve only played Remake and Rebirth. But I can’t help but think Zach and Aerith are going to be apart of it just bc of how it’s being set up. That just feels like where it’s going to me ig. Have you heard the theory that they will find Sephiroths moms locket in the ls from when Glenn kicked it in the ls from The First Soldier?

@@Uhoh_itsAshley First I've even heard of the locket. I haven't played any of the prequels, unfortunately, and I've deliberately tried to avoid a lot of summaries, etc, so I'll be able to play them fresh in the future. That said, I don't see offhand what that would add to anything. In OG7 you have a chance to communicate with the woman who actually birthed him, Lucrecia (which I expect we'll still get, but it will be significantly expanded), but I have to wonder exactly what picture is in that locked if Sephy believes his mother's name is Jenova. Any picture of Lucrecia might accidentally be seen by Sephy if they used her image. ... Now saying that, if they're trying for a Sephy redemption arc, I could see Aerith arranging for it to be returned to him to give him an anchor in humanity. As for the OG lifestream sequence, if you've played Rebirth, you've basically seen the original one. The primary difference is in the OG you re-watch them all again with Tifa correcting the record and Cloud realizing he really was there, just not like he thought, and his trauma had rewritten his memories to make him the SOLDIER in Nibelheim flashback.

but if it's destroyed, why would we see it afterwards? the whole point of parallel worlds is that they AREN'T destroyed by choice, but rather created by it. it's just in FF7's case, the choices that lead them further away from the canon story hasten their destruction (in my theory, anyway). I still hold that Zack's choice that differentiated the worlds wasn't made in the tunnel (hence the ribbon), but........ you could still be right if it was a DIFFERENT Biggs world, one where Zack chose the ribbon and then still chose to go left. everywhere else, the white/rainbow seems about transfer (literal crossing between worlds, or even just the glow behind Aerith's head when she swaps out the materia Cloud brings her) or at least a meeting of worlds (the glow around Cloud and Aerith before/after the final fight). That one instance of the tunnel flaring into light is, I think, unique in the story for something that.... violent? an alternative.... since the white especially seems so closely tied to Aerith, I wonder if that's her basically diverting another world for her use, like she did with the dream/date world......... Zack's got to end up somewhere at the end, if he's not in the Beagle world, and the other worlds we see him in are presumably gone now.

@@bronxx117 excellent points. So many ideas have crossed my mind about this ending and where it can go lol.

Thanks. :-) There are a few live-streamers I follow who've considered a live spoilers run where we could have this type of discussion, but as of yet none have started it up. I'm really looking forward to some of the discussions with their communities.

I think the first time I watched AC it was in Japanese (with English subtitles, or I'd have been lost), but that was waaaaay back and on a... um.... borrowed.... copy of lesser quality. Are the English subtitles for Japanese the same dialogue as in the English dubbed version? Or are they translations of different dialogue?

No it's completely a different dialogues and you know it's the original subtitles for the game ​@@bronxx117

Thanks - hope you enjoy it when you get a chance to finish.

There seems to be a subtle distinction from that, in that it's the act of joining the Lifestream, not the Lifestream itself, which is a vast collective mostly devoid of individual consciousnesses. There's no longer a singular person's awareness, so it's not really life-after-death like most would think of it, rather it's like pouring a glass of water into an ocean. All the water from the glass is still there, but it's no longer the same glass of water and you'd never reassemble JUST the water that was in that glass. The act of release and acceptance and the peace that comes with it is the Promised Land. At least that's my current understanding from what I've been able to find and read.

Yeah, I thought I remembered it being semi-confirmed at some point, but I really only half-remembered it anyway. At some point, I'd love to see something about how it's supposed to have happened.

Thanks. The final chapter and wrap-up will *hopefully* be out next week.

You're right, he does shout "This way" as they run out. I missed that, thanks! I think I was focused too much on him just putting up his arm outside the reactor when he doesn't speak. I appreciate that they included the "puppy" comment as a callback to CC. Something that would make sense to first-timers, but immediately get noticed by those of us who played the other game(s).

I saw someone suggest Shinra would encapsulate the biological Weapons we saw in Rebirth in armor and create the bio-mechanical ones we got in OG7, that's the only other real prediction about them I've seen (and I don't buy that for a minute). I think these will upgrade when they're actually needed to take offensive action, since these are basically big fish and seem mako-bound, while they'll need to be able to go on land & air if they take on anything approaching their role in OG7.

Glad to have you, enjoy the content. 🙂

This will forever be among my favorite games of all time.

Thanks - years as an English major put to use in the weirdest way. ;-)

yeah, probably a side-effect of the swearing and general irritation at that minigame. definitely low on my "minigames I enjoyed" list for Rebirth.

Appreciate it - glad you're enjoying. 🙂

I get wrapped up in atmosphere quite easily sometimes, and I avoid horror films whenever possible. I've seen a few - enough to know my imagination does NOT need the help. Midgardsormr was awesome (my first thought was "You are beautiful" in the same way Matt Smith's "Doctor" was often in awe of things). I do feel boss fights are missing a little something they had in Remake, and I honestly think it's down to the insane size of Rebirth, with so many epic fights, if they made them the same scale of epicness as Remake's boss fights, it would just be too much. If that makes sense.

I still need to play XV - it's at the top of my to-do list once I get through with hard mode and recap for Rebirth.