A post about all the FFVII-related stuff I’ve been pickling my brain in for the past several months. There will be spoilers for Rebirth as a game, but not in terms of story.

The Dress Up Game that is Ever Crisis

We’re a few months past the 1-year anniversary of Ever Crisis and it’s been a fun ride so far. It’s the first gatcha game I’ve played and only the second mobile game I’ve played. At first, I didn’t know a lot of things and many tutorial videos weren’t helpful because they used gatcha-specific jargon I didn’t understand. Having the option of not gearing up yourself then fighting in battles the computer fights for you felt really silly. “How is this a game if I’M barely the one controlling it?” was my initial reaction. But I gave it the good ol’ college try, literally Googling “gatcha game vocabulary,” which made tutorials from EC YouTubers a lot more helpful.

Eventually, the game became fun. Not fun enough to spend money on beyond an exploratory $14.99. I loved getting the outfits for Seph, and since I was skipping all the scantily-clad bait—and not at all understanding that you need multiple copies of a weapon to make it stronger—I got by with the free blue crystals.

There did come a point, however, where I couldn’t beat harder content. I was getting quite frustrated during the Final Fantasy IX crossover event, and eventually learned that harder content pretty much always requires you to equip your team manually and play on manual. The former I could do well enough, but the latter was a bit of a challenge.

Since I wasn’t doing so well on manual, and I fell into the false assumption that gatcha games are “pay to win,” I started spending real money to be able to pull on banners for more weapons and stat-boosting outfits. Nothing that was beyond my means, but definitely more than I thought I would spend on a game that could last five years or one and then be gone completely.

Gatcha games are essentially a form a gambling, so I must say that if you’re struggling with problem gambling, spending money on this that should’ve gone to pay for things like food, rent, or other essentials, please seek help! The National Council on Problem Gambling has help via web, phone call, and text message for folks within the United States.

Ultimately, I don’t think Ever Crisis is pay-to-win, because the harder fights require strategy. You could spend tons of money to get all your characters and weapons leveled up, but go in with the wrong strategy and you’re still toast. Conversely, I’ve seen people post videos of boss fights they cleared with weaker gear and characters than I can put together, but they’re clearing content that I struggle with. Since these harder fights require manual control, it’s harder for me to keep up with everything going on in the battle and do the right things at the right time. But I’ve come to terms with not clearing everything that comes out. If nothing else, I enjoy the outfits. (LOL)

On Realizing Games are Outgrowing Me

Rebirth came out in late February and by early March I was already seeing people who said they beat the game. I don’t understand how anyone who isn’t completely unemployed and with zero obligations to self or others manages this. I didn’t beat Rebirth until this past July, and I pushed myself to finish because I was going to the Orchestra World Tour concert in Chicago and figured there would be spoilers.

Maybe I just suck at modern games, as my struggle with even some of the battles in Ever Crisis shows. When it comes to real-time fights, I’m bad at keeping up with enemy moves to make sure I dodge or parry at the precise moment. I rely mostly on being overpowered so I can just whack my way through everything. As long as you grind, you can make progress this way. But other aspects of the game that require precise controls don’t let you get away with this. For one, I play with both axes inverted, so aiming in some non-optional mini games like shooting at Palmer from the mine cart, the pirate game at Costa del Sol, and the Cait Sith box throwing were absolute nightmares as the mini games ignore your settings. (At least, they did when I played these parts, and the box throwing thing I did this July.) The chocobo flying quest was another nightmare, though that one at least was optional.

I had actually dusted off my PS2 during the initial covid lockdown and started a replay of OG FFVII, and while the turn-based combat has gotten a little stale even for me, the amount of precise inputting you need to do in Rebirth—and even just inputting in parts that actively detract from the drama of the moment by making you do that, e.g. all the slow-crawling—made many parts of the game annoying and downright not fun for me. I really didn’t even want to play after a certain point. Once I beat it—don’t get me started on that absolutely atrocious final boss sequence—I said to myself I wanted to do another Normal-mode playthrough in Japanese, but I still haven’t been able to bring myself to play it. I’m beginning to see the appeal of just watching cut scenes on YouTube.

Of course, the only reason I tortured myself with this was because it’s FFVII. Years ago, I bought the first three Devil May Cry games because they looked so cool and were super popular. I didn’t have the skill to go very far in even the first one. I don’t remember what point I gave up at, but I most definitely did. I ended up giving all three games to a nephew, never having even touched the second and third installments.

With Remake, though the end initially upset me by a lot, after discussing with friends and watching other fans’ theory videos (the super long Easy Allies video with Maximillian Dood in particular), I actually became excited for the continuation of “the unknown journey.” With Rebirth, after that absolutely atrocious 40-minute or something final sequence of boss after boss after boss after boss after boss with no way to change equipment in between, I just felt done. I had bookmarked the Easy Allies video for Rebirth and hoped it would lighten my spirits towards the game, but nope, not really. Though I still plan on playing the third installment and hope I enjoy it, I’m finding that right now, I really just don’t care. I’ll never go to the extreme of saying Rebirth or the Compilation shouldn’t exist, but it just didn’t do it for me.

Did I mention the absolutely terrible awful redesign of the Shinra Manor? That was a level I was looking forward to. And they butchered it. Turned it into long sterile stainless steel stairways and hallways and yet another combat simulator and the inexplicable Cait Sith box throwing mini game. Whoever came up with that needs to sit in a corner and reflect on their choices. The manor should’ve been creepy and gothic and beautiful. It was everything but. You can’t even explore the second floor and the iconic spiral staircase was replaced by an elevator. I’m still hoping that in the third installment we’ll go back to Nibelheim and the manor will be done right.

Rebirth Orchestra World Tour

When this concert tour was announced, I knew that I would go to the Detroit stop. I bought my ticket shortly after they went on sale. But a friend asked if I wanted to see it in Chicago as well. I figured it would be a good chance to see her, add a stop on my permanent Hard Rock Café side quest, and actually see some of the city—I’d been there previously on day-trips to run passport-related errands only. This trip also ended up being my first time on Amtrak. I loved rail travel in Japan so I was excited to see what it would be like here.

The trip went well. My trains weren’t delayed, though on my way back home, I couldn’t explore Central Station because passengers were restricted to the grand waiting room due to security measures put in place ahead of the Democratic National Convention. Ah, those days full of hope… *Ahem*

I was glad that the tracks I most wanted to hear, namely Gongaga and Rufus’ parade theme, were included in the concert. They replaced the bagpipes in the Gongaga theme with something else, which wasn’t as nice, but still pretty good. I was also glad to hear that they did something different with the end. That’s all I’ll say about that!

Inktober 2024

I’d been on a pretty good Inktober streak, but I broke it this year, getting through only 13 prompts within seven drawings. It certainly didn’t help that for some reason, the spirit moved me to do the first three of them in full color.

This would be a good place to mention that I no longer use Twitter, given that I had posted these there and written my Twitter handle on the drawings. I made a Bluesky account with the same name though, so it’s not a completely useless signature.

Shameless Guild Plug

I started a guild called Midwest Crew back when guilds were introduced to Ever Crisis this past summer. I didn’t really know what to expect from it, but hey, the game was giving me blue crystals for joining one, so I didn’t think about it too deeply. After five guild battles and a high rate of turnover though, I want to recruit more dedicated players. I don’t really have a platform for doing that, and recruiting on Reddit and Discord hasn’t helped (to my knowledge). Those sites seem to be visited by more hardcore players, and they’re by and large already in powerful guilds. They’re not going to go from a Top 100 guild to a Top 1000 guild like mine.

But, if there’s someone out there reading this who would like to be in a guild run by two dedicated, long-time FFVII fans, with a few other steady members who contribute greatly to Guild Battles, then consider joining me in Midwest Crew! Whether you’re in or from the Midwest or not.