In case anyone wasn't aware for why Devil May Cry 2 turned out so bad, essentially the original director (who remains unknown) left the project very late in the development process, forcing Hideaki Itsuno to take over a game. However, the development of Devil May Cry 2 had gone so unbelievably bad that at that point, the scenario had not been written, they had not filmed any cutscenes, they had no finished environments, had not programmed Dante's Devil Trigger, and had not programmed any of Dante's moves other than his Stinger. Oh and worst of all, the game was set to be released in 6 MONTHS! In short, the game never had a chance to be any good and the fact that it even managed to morph from basically one attack animation to a shitty, half-finished game in a ridiculously short amount of time by game development standards is basically a miracle.
Recommendation- check out Jacob Geller's video on CoD MW called "Does Call of Duty Believe in Anything?" It's the kind of philosophical deep-dive you'd really enjoy.
I love Doom Eternal, but yeah the story is told really poorly. It does end up explaining itself better towards the end of the game outside of those text logs, but it wastes a lot of time before it does that, and then piles it all up towards the back third or so of the game. Once it does explain everything, I actually quite liked the payoff and the extended world they constructed for the franchise, but they went about it in a bad way. And yeah, DMC2 really is that bad. It's not just a meme. When I played it, I did try to focus on melee as much as possible, even though it's obvious the guns are the more effective thing. Swords aren't really any more fun. There's no variety in attacks, they feel really limp and awkward, and what variety it does have is done through this weird directional input system that the game doesn't explain, doesn't function properly, and barely makes any difference to combat anyway. Glad to see you liked God of War too. Personally I felt like the loot/RPG mechanics got in the way of the combat mechanics a bit, but still overall I liked it a lot.
it should be called "final fantasy vii-2". it "does a star trek 2009" to ff vii. it's like you ordered pizza but in the pizza box there was a cake. and people defend it saying "why don't you like cake? cake is good". that's not the point.
Furthermore, Star Trek 2009 was perfectly approachable even if you had no idea what Star Trek was. FF7R basically says "I hope you dumb-dumbs did your homework, or else this is gonna make NO sense".
FF7 spoilers talk . . . . . I dont know why FF7 remake felt the need to justify its existence with a meta narrative. Its so confident in every other aspect of its presentation, i don't know why it needs to explain itself in this regard. I think its the weakest part and most controversial for that reason myself, but idk. shrug emoji
I'm in the early stages of my quest to complete all 460 games on my Steam account, currently working on Assassin's Creed Odyssey (way more immersive than I was expecting), Poly Bridge (my new addiction) and struggling through Apotheon (oh boy this one is rough). No doubt we can expect a full analysis of The Last of Us Part II sometime by the end of the year. I'm wondering if Psychonauts is somewhere on the roster?
I admit I may be grasping or trying to be too clever, but I think people seem to get hung up on the Remake "trying to also be a meta commentary on itself" without thinking that that entire "commentary" might be an intended plot point to try and tell a bigger story without ruining the original game's own story. I highly suspect that as this plays out, the meta stuff will play into the overall plot and by the end be telling a new story while also re-telling an old one, blend them together, and make both old-school fans and newcomers fall in love with the original game in an entirely new way.
With DMC2, The one thing that caught my attention was the devil trigger customization element. It was interesting as a concept and I wish I'd have had the stomach to go through the whole game to dig deeper into it.
SPOILERS I got similar issues with FF7's alterations. I was really banking on it being a strong new entry point for newcomers who can't get into the clunky-looking original. But it drops a climax on you with a villain you'd only have investment in if you're already familiar with him, and as you said, semingly drops the whole topic of environmentalism and direct-action against corporate greed in favor of meta commentary. I also am concerned of how this problem could become even worse depending on how the sequels go, especially if the future has been changed. From the perspective of a newcomer, what exactly will have happened? They warned of a bad future without really explaining the details or what would lead to it ("What does all this have to do with a meteor??") and then I guess we're just gonna carry on in the timeline where that future is no longer a concern? Warning of a terrible but vague fate, and then just presenting the story as "Okay, that's done. Moving on!" will just read as horribly, HORRIBLY hollow, if you don't understand the context. Also... ... fucking Zack. Newcomers must've been so confused about why they were supposed to care when he popped up. This game basically drops the revelation on you in the last few hours that, actually, you were supposed to read up on a whole other game first, dumb dumbs!
@@pelgervampireduck I probably wouldn't be as hard on it if I wasn't really banking on it being a comfortable fresh jumping-on point (which I do realize is kind of a me problem) and if it weren't for the fact that it lets you think it's a remake for the first 30-40 hours. I do know it'd probably have ruined the surprise that it was going for f it was more up-front about its more sequel-ish nature, but even considering the interesting uniqueness of the way it addresses remakes and fan expectations to want to keep everything the same, I do think it would've just had more to gain if it just stuck with the same themes of environmentalism, which I thought it was doing shockingly well.
I’m a newcomer, and I actually enjoyed the remake far more than the original, which I played directly after I played the remake, so I don’t really agree with any of this. The changes that Remake makes made the game far more exciting and interesting for me, and I’m far more hyped for part 2 than I would be if it were a 1-1 recreation. So many things rubbed me the wrong way in the original, especially the characters and translation, and the remake made those things (and hopefully will continue to do so) astronomically better. No way in hell I’d like Aerith if I didn’t play the remake first, and absolutely the same goes for Red XIII. I hope it continues this trend, because VII has some awful character related flaws with basically everyone who isn’t Cloud/Tifa/Barret/Aerith that became the main reason I only mildly enjoyed it. I only hope it continues to make the characters feel far more cohesive and actually friendly with each other, and perhaps make characters like Cait Sith not the worst in any JRPG (despite how damn hyped I was to play as him due to his amazing design and what Reeve was in Remake) or make Yuffie/Vincent have any character outside of their 1hr side quests.
it would be perfect if it was called something else. the problem is they pretended this whole time it was going to be "the same story with better graphics". some little changes in details, some new stuff, but basically the same story. nobody wanted a sequel with alternate timelines, nobody was excited thinking "I wish they go off rails and do whatever they want with this universe and characters!!". everybody was happ "we are getting final fantasy vii with better graphics!!!". it's like they were making exactly that for 90% of the project but then somebody full of ego said "I'll make this my own thing! I won't be held back by the original and the fans!, I'm a genious!!". imagine you order a pizza, it comes in a box that says "pizza", but when you open it, there's a cake inside. people defending ff7r sound like "cake is good, don't you like cake? I like cake". that's not the point.
On top of everything else, the whole fate angle just muddies the waters so much of its own themes. Shinra was the result of human greed...but it was also fated to happen that way??? Despite mixed opinions, FF13 already did a "fighting fate" storyline and in my opinion the theme worked much better there because the world was specifically created to support that being the core theme of the game. Here the fate angle is meant to be more of a meta commentary but it also ignores how shoving that into a world and story not initially designed to support that raises new questions and potentially undermines the idea that the humans behind Shinra CHOSE to exploit the planet for profit. That said, I generally liked 7 Remake and a lot of the new additions before the last two hours, especially the character interactions. But having seen Kingdom Hearts go off the rails and fail to really provide a satisfying conclusion to its own plot threads, I'm a bit worried about where the new content might end up.
:c I feel like a small minority who adored FFVIIR’s ending. Is it really just those of us who love exploring new paths in fanworks who love it? It feels like it.
It's just kind of disorienting that the game did such a good job of approaching its themes of environmentalism and corporate accountability, only to turn into something about "walking into the unknown" in the last few hours. This is especially bonkers for those who haven't played the original, and were lead on by the first 95% of the game into thinking this was a safe jumping on point.
I completely agree with you here, I love engaging with fanworks and I feel like this kind of perspective makes it easier to give such story changes a chance as we're already accustomed to it. I myself am very excited for what the ending means for the future of the story, though I'm very aware that it could either go very badly or or very well. So far the producers have shown a very strong understanding of the themes, world and characters, so I'm more optimistic than pessimistic about it. Only time will tell.
I've never played FF7, and i don't know if i want to start these long ass series of games the remake seems to be, does the original still hold up today? Or should i just play the remake even though i don't like such long games?
The original is dated, but absolutely holds up. Especially if you get one of the re-releases with quality of life cheat options to get around some of the more dated design features (grinding, random encounters, etc.). It's a masterpiece that deserves its reputation.
If you're playing it on a modern console, next to modern triple A games, it's going to look even more dated. However, it's been ported (pretty well, I'm told) to Android and iOS, which seems to me like the perfect place for classic games like this. If you need a game for your tablet, it's gonna be alot more fun and engaging than the generic template angry man shouting games.
Btw, I've been catching up to some games I've been wanting to play as well and now I'm halfway through Silent Hill 2. I wonder if it will someday receive an analysis on this channel? It seems like a perfect case study. Being pretty short and tight should make it easier to unpack than a 50+ hours JRPG, but boy there is a lot to unpack here...
thematman92 Outer Wilds is its own game. They often get confused. It’s a First Person Indie game about traveling a solar system. It’s on Xbox One and PC. Definitely worth a look if you have game pass.
@@mattd3224 I only have a ps4, so I probably won't. Also I feel like one of the game companies should have changed the name because that is too confusing. Seriously 2 letters difference is not enough.
I think the ending is meant to justify making minor changes to the plot going forward. My prediction is that it will still get from point A to point B, but it may change some of the in-between, in particular in regards to the stuff that has less of a bearing on the overall plot.
That'll go over the heads of new players, then. If it turns out it was just a meta explanation for some changes, but those changes are never referenced in the story, new players are gonna wonder what that whole fate-changing debacle was even about. "How was Red XIII running in a canyon some bad future we wanted to change? Are they gonna explain that?"
Because storytelling is interesting in all its forms, and I have a particular love for the way video games use their interactive elements to tell stories. Arbitrarily limiting the narrative arts to only one medium is pointless, and stagnates the arts in general.
In case anyone wasn't aware for why Devil May Cry 2 turned out so bad, essentially the original director (who remains unknown) left the project very late in the development process, forcing Hideaki Itsuno to take over a game. However, the development of Devil May Cry 2 had gone so unbelievably bad that at that point, the scenario had not been written, they had not filmed any cutscenes, they had no finished environments, had not programmed Dante's Devil Trigger, and had not programmed any of Dante's moves other than his Stinger. Oh and worst of all, the game was set to be released in 6 MONTHS!
In short, the game never had a chance to be any good and the fact that it even managed to morph from basically one attack animation to a shitty, half-finished game in a ridiculously short amount of time by game development standards is basically a miracle.
Recommendation- check out Jacob Geller's video on CoD MW called "Does Call of Duty Believe in Anything?" It's the kind of philosophical deep-dive you'd really enjoy.
I'd love to see a full vid about FF7 Remake!
I love Doom Eternal, but yeah the story is told really poorly. It does end up explaining itself better towards the end of the game outside of those text logs, but it wastes a lot of time before it does that, and then piles it all up towards the back third or so of the game. Once it does explain everything, I actually quite liked the payoff and the extended world they constructed for the franchise, but they went about it in a bad way.
And yeah, DMC2 really is that bad. It's not just a meme. When I played it, I did try to focus on melee as much as possible, even though it's obvious the guns are the more effective thing. Swords aren't really any more fun. There's no variety in attacks, they feel really limp and awkward, and what variety it does have is done through this weird directional input system that the game doesn't explain, doesn't function properly, and barely makes any difference to combat anyway.
Glad to see you liked God of War too. Personally I felt like the loot/RPG mechanics got in the way of the combat mechanics a bit, but still overall I liked it a lot.
Would love to hear the stuff about FFVII.
it should be called "final fantasy vii-2". it "does a star trek 2009" to ff vii.
it's like you ordered pizza but in the pizza box there was a cake. and people defend it saying "why don't you like cake? cake is good". that's not the point.
Furthermore, Star Trek 2009 was perfectly approachable even if you had no idea what Star Trek was.
FF7R basically says "I hope you dumb-dumbs did your homework, or else this is gonna make NO sense".
[insert "blay dmc2" joke]
i want a half hour round up about just FFVIIR! Absolutely!
I hope you get to DMC5, it's absolutely fantastic and I love how it balances 3 different protagonists with 3 different complex combat sets
FF7 spoilers talk
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I dont know why FF7 remake felt the need to justify its existence with a meta narrative. Its so confident in every other aspect of its presentation, i don't know why it needs to explain itself in this regard. I think its the weakest part and most controversial for that reason myself, but idk.
shrug emoji
I'm in the early stages of my quest to complete all 460 games on my Steam account, currently working on Assassin's Creed Odyssey (way more immersive than I was expecting), Poly Bridge (my new addiction) and struggling through Apotheon (oh boy this one is rough). No doubt we can expect a full analysis of The Last of Us Part II sometime by the end of the year. I'm wondering if Psychonauts is somewhere on the roster?
The meta plot of FF7R is easily the worst part of that game. I have many other complaints but holy shit what a load of pretentious nonsense.
I admit I may be grasping or trying to be too clever, but I think people seem to get hung up on the Remake "trying to also be a meta commentary on itself" without thinking that that entire "commentary" might be an intended plot point to try and tell a bigger story without ruining the original game's own story. I highly suspect that as this plays out, the meta stuff will play into the overall plot and by the end be telling a new story while also re-telling an old one, blend them together, and make both old-school fans and newcomers fall in love with the original game in an entirely new way.
@Astovidatu I'm well aware it's a part of the broader plot these games are building.That's precisely the problem.
Ah, I do love the closed-captions function ... even by its own standards, the "Do Maternal" at 6:22 was an especially amusing error!
you're still alive?? thanks for the video.
With DMC2, The one thing that caught my attention was the devil trigger customization element. It was interesting as a concept and I wish I'd have had the stomach to go through the whole game to dig deeper into it.
I could've sworn you did a Review Roundup on DMC 3. I must be going coo coo.
SPOILERS
I got similar issues with FF7's alterations. I was really banking on it being a strong new entry point for newcomers who can't get into the clunky-looking original.
But it drops a climax on you with a villain you'd only have investment in if you're already familiar with him, and as you said, semingly drops the whole topic of environmentalism and direct-action against corporate greed in favor of meta commentary.
I also am concerned of how this problem could become even worse depending on how the sequels go, especially if the future has been changed.
From the perspective of a newcomer, what exactly will have happened?
They warned of a bad future without really explaining the details or what would lead to it ("What does all this have to do with a meteor??") and then I guess we're just gonna carry on in the timeline where that future is no longer a concern?
Warning of a terrible but vague fate, and then just presenting the story as "Okay, that's done. Moving on!" will just read as horribly, HORRIBLY hollow, if you don't understand the context.
Also... ... fucking Zack. Newcomers must've been so confused about why they were supposed to care when he popped up. This game basically drops the revelation on you in the last few hours that, actually, you were supposed to read up on a whole other game first, dumb dumbs!
it's not a remake. it's a sequel.
it's like "back to the future 2".
@@pelgervampireduck
I probably wouldn't be as hard on it if I wasn't really banking on it being a comfortable fresh jumping-on point (which I do realize is kind of a me problem) and if it weren't for the fact that it lets you think it's a remake for the first 30-40 hours.
I do know it'd probably have ruined the surprise that it was going for f it was more up-front about its more sequel-ish nature, but even considering the interesting uniqueness of the way it addresses remakes and fan expectations to want to keep everything the same, I do think it would've just had more to gain if it just stuck with the same themes of environmentalism, which I thought it was doing shockingly well.
I’m a newcomer, and I actually enjoyed the remake far more than the original, which I played directly after I played the remake, so I don’t really agree with any of this. The changes that Remake makes made the game far more exciting and interesting for me, and I’m far more hyped for part 2 than I would be if it were a 1-1 recreation. So many things rubbed me the wrong way in the original, especially the characters and translation, and the remake made those things (and hopefully will continue to do so) astronomically better. No way in hell I’d like Aerith if I didn’t play the remake first, and absolutely the same goes for Red XIII. I hope it continues this trend, because VII has some awful character related flaws with basically everyone who isn’t Cloud/Tifa/Barret/Aerith that became the main reason I only mildly enjoyed it. I only hope it continues to make the characters feel far more cohesive and actually friendly with each other, and perhaps make characters like Cait Sith not the worst in any JRPG (despite how damn hyped I was to play as him due to his amazing design and what Reeve was in Remake) or make Yuffie/Vincent have any character outside of their 1hr side quests.
it would be perfect if it was called something else.
the problem is they pretended this whole time it was going to be "the same story with better graphics". some little changes in details, some new stuff, but basically the same story.
nobody wanted a sequel with alternate timelines, nobody was excited thinking "I wish they go off rails and do whatever they want with this universe and characters!!". everybody was happ "we are getting final fantasy vii with better graphics!!!".
it's like they were making exactly that for 90% of the project but then somebody full of ego said "I'll make this my own thing! I won't be held back by the original and the fans!, I'm a genious!!".
imagine you order a pizza, it comes in a box that says "pizza", but when you open it, there's a cake inside.
people defending ff7r sound like "cake is good, don't you like cake? I like cake".
that's not the point.
On top of everything else, the whole fate angle just muddies the waters so much of its own themes. Shinra was the result of human greed...but it was also fated to happen that way???
Despite mixed opinions, FF13 already did a "fighting fate" storyline and in my opinion the theme worked much better there because the world was specifically created to support that being the core theme of the game. Here the fate angle is meant to be more of a meta commentary but it also ignores how shoving that into a world and story not initially designed to support that raises new questions and potentially undermines the idea that the humans behind Shinra CHOSE to exploit the planet for profit.
That said, I generally liked 7 Remake and a lot of the new additions before the last two hours, especially the character interactions. But having seen Kingdom Hearts go off the rails and fail to really provide a satisfying conclusion to its own plot threads, I'm a bit worried about where the new content might end up.
Good show, old sport!
:c I feel like a small minority who adored FFVIIR’s ending. Is it really just those of us who love exploring new paths in fanworks who love it? It feels like it.
It's just kind of disorienting that the game did such a good job of approaching its themes of environmentalism and corporate accountability, only to turn into something about "walking into the unknown" in the last few hours.
This is especially bonkers for those who haven't played the original, and were lead on by the first 95% of the game into thinking this was a safe jumping on point.
I completely agree with you here, I love engaging with fanworks and I feel like this kind of perspective makes it easier to give such story changes a chance as we're already accustomed to it. I myself am very excited for what the ending means for the future of the story, though I'm very aware that it could either go very badly or or very well. So far the producers have shown a very strong understanding of the themes, world and characters, so I'm more optimistic than pessimistic about it. Only time will tell.
@@Mayeur000Donz I played the original too. Stop acting like those who liked the changes are all newbies who never owned the original on PS1.
I've never played FF7, and i don't know if i want to start these long ass series of games the remake seems to be, does the original still hold up today? Or should i just play the remake even though i don't like such long games?
The original is dated, but absolutely holds up. Especially if you get one of the re-releases with quality of life cheat options to get around some of the more dated design features (grinding, random encounters, etc.). It's a masterpiece that deserves its reputation.
If you're playing it on a modern console, next to modern triple A games, it's going to look even more dated. However, it's been ported (pretty well, I'm told) to Android and iOS, which seems to me like the perfect place for classic games like this.
If you need a game for your tablet, it's gonna be alot more fun and engaging than the generic template angry man shouting games.
@@GameProf Thank you! i'll get a re-release, probably the Steam one.
DMC3 should treat you much better. Just be aware that the NTSC PS2 version sets you to hard mode if you pick normal, and normal mode if you pick easy.
Btw, I've been catching up to some games I've been wanting to play as well and now I'm halfway through Silent Hill 2.
I wonder if it will someday receive an analysis on this channel? It seems like a perfect case study. Being pretty short and tight should make it easier to unpack than a 50+ hours JRPG, but boy there is a lot to unpack here...
I don't necessarily agree with alot of your scores, but your detailed opinion and perspective is so easy to respect. Great Reviews!!
"lacksadaisical" ?
Good reviews, though :)
You said Dad of War wrong. You had it right the first time.
You should check out Outer Wilds. Love to see you review it!
Do you mean the outer worlds? I have never heard of the outer wilds.
thematman92 Outer Wilds is its own game. They often get confused. It’s a First Person Indie game about traveling a solar system. It’s on Xbox One and PC. Definitely worth a look if you have game pass.
@@mattd3224 I only have a ps4, so I probably won't. Also I feel like one of the game companies should have changed the name because that is too confusing. Seriously 2 letters difference is not enough.
thematman92 Outer Wilds came out first
Do Panic for the Sega CD on the next one.
16 minutes ago
You thought Barrett was stereotypical because he was a black person that didn't sound white..?
The tricky thing about FF7R is while it is a re-telling it is also a sequel.
I think the ending is meant to justify making minor changes to the plot going forward. My prediction is that it will still get from point A to point B, but it may change some of the in-between, in particular in regards to the stuff that has less of a bearing on the overall plot.
That'll go over the heads of new players, then.
If it turns out it was just a meta explanation for some changes, but those changes are never referenced in the story, new players are gonna wonder what that whole fate-changing debacle was even about.
"How was Red XIII running in a canyon some bad future we wanted to change? Are they gonna explain that?"
If you care mostly about story I'm surprised you choose to analyze video games instead of literature
Because storytelling is interesting in all its forms, and I have a particular love for the way video games use their interactive elements to tell stories. Arbitrarily limiting the narrative arts to only one medium is pointless, and stagnates the arts in general.