FFVII: Ever Crisis Announced

X-SOLDIER

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Zack, being the master of deadpan hyperbole where you can't know if he's exaggerating or if he somehow thinks he actually could do that.



X :neo:
 
X-SOLDIER

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Welp, I still need to go play this latest chapter.


The reason why I haven't done yet is something that I need to vent about in regards to the game itself on Steam:

I hate the way that the Steam version of this game still gets its updates only while you're directly connected to the game itself. Like, if Steam says that it's up-to-date, it'll still have to connect and will encounter a screen that will prompt you download the latest update – where you have to choose between the necessary minimum or complete download. This means that things like checking the integrity of the game files from Steam just... doesn't work in any meaningful way. Just from a playability perspective, it's also a colossal fucking waste of time to how any other type of game manages its updates via the service that installs the game, such that it's easier to keep the game up-to-date, and also fix anything that goes wrong with the installation itself.

Connected to that, a not insignificant number of times when I haven't played for a bit and there's a ridiculously large update that needs to download, it'll just freeze at a random point whilst downloading/installing the update. That on its own is bad enough, but basically whenever that happens, it causes some sort of sync failure to the drive that it's writing to that's SO EGREGIOUS that it completely removes my computer's ability to detect that ENTIRE SSD Hard Drive AT ALL. This persists through restarts, and will last until I literally power down, and then physically detach and re-attach the cables to the SSD before powering my computer back on. Afterwards if I want to attempt to play Ever Crisis still – because Steam can't be used to verify the integrity of those downloaded files and there's no repair or integrity verification in the game itself – I'll have to completely purge the entire folder and its contents manually, and then re-install it from scratch in Steam... which then means when I start up the game, because it doesn't actually give Steam the true updates – there's an even BIGGER required update file that I have to download while connected to the game, which just increases the probability of this failure becoming a cyclical problem.

(Attempting to just restart from where it gets cut off is why, at times I've had the game installed to where I can play it, but it's been totally impossible for me to even get into certain areas of the game – like the main Battle Tower as well as the Dungeon that uses Hojo's Lab as a map asset, because there's no way to for the game to detect that something about those parts of the installation didn't download correctly, and the only fix that is possible is to nuke it and totally reinstall it).

Literally all of my Steam games are stored on that SSD along with a boatload of other things, and none of them have EVER had issues. It's ONLY Ever Crisis that has ever at any point managed to run into game file integrity problems of ANY kind, let alone to totally screw up everything to the point that the entire hard drive it was located on stopped being detected at all. The fact that it has done so on multiple occasions is just so damn frustrating. If they would just make it so that they'd update their game like anything else on Steam does, it would make it so that those huge fucking download files could just be done asynchronously without me having to have the game actively pulled up and just waiting for it to potentially freeze and screw up the entire rest of my games library, and then even if it DID have issues with anything that got downloaded – I could just use the client to replace any broken files... Instead I've ended up just using my phone to play the parts of it that don't work, so that I don't have to run through a mess that doesn't work and physically rip my computer apart to get the installation to be minimally operational.

It's just hard to justify that level of troubleshooting & headache just to get the damn thing running long enough to check out the new story content and then forget about it again only to have a coin toss that it'll happen again next time.



X :neo:
 
SS2Link

SS2Link

Pro Adventurer
Tetsujin said:
Here's me hoping he's recording a new album or something. :mon:
He did start up YFC again recently iirc...
Click to expand...
I’m not sure why he would go to a recording studio he hasn’t been in for a decade, specifically “to record my voice” if he’s just making music lol

He’d just go to his standard studio and post that he’s recording music
 
Tetsujin

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
Well seeing how he hasn't recorded a new album in a decade and how he is a singer primarily...like, this could be anything. I just don't see the evidence pointing towards VA or anything FF specifically.
 
Theozilla

Theozilla

Kaiju Member
Tetsujin said:
Well seeing how he hasn't recorded a new album in a decade and how he is a singer primarily...like, this could be anything. I just don't see the evidence pointing towards VA or anything FF specifically.
Click to expand...
But he said he's currently recording his voice, I don't think a musician would specify that in particular if they were simply doing music. Also voice recording studio doesn't look the same as music recording studio.
 
Kuraudo.

Kuraudo.

Pro Adventurer
Extended Gallery - Updated
Video 1 - New Playable Character Sephiroth (Original)
Video 2 - Event FINAL FANTASY VII ADVENT CHILDREN EC Edition
FF7EC 2nd Anniversary Highlights
Starting from 9/7 (Sun), the event "FINAL FANTASY VII ADVENT CHILDREN EC Edition" has been confirmed to take place! Sephiroth (Original) can be unlocked as a playable character by clearing the Remembrance of Joy and Pain story quest in the event FINAL FANTASY VII ADVENT CHILDREN EC Edition.
  • AC Event Story (Sep)
  • Playable Adult Sephiroth (Sep) (unlockable only thru temporary AC event)
  • Bahamut SIN as boss
  • Cloud AC skin and AC Fusion sword
  • Cloud and Adult Sephiroth Ultimate Weapons
  • Tifa AC skin, Yuffie AC skin, Kadaj AC skin for Young Seph
  • New feature "Memoria" (add stat to your party)
  • New feature "Enemy moves" (added as new tab close to limit break)
  • LVL 100 uncap
  • Glenn & co joining anti-Shinra mov. story (Oct)
  • FSII last story chapter (Oct)
  • FF13 collab. Lightning boss fight (Nov)
  • Nier collab (Dec)
  • Roadmap, gift, etc.
  • Log in after maintenance (right after maintenance, or an hour after maintenace) to get at least 1k crystals
  • AC story will be added once the AC event is over
  • DC story confirmed to release early 2026 (attempt)
  • BC acknowledged. However, nothing has been confirmed
Ver. 3.0.0 Update notice
We would like to introduce the content of the Ver. 3.0.0 update releasing on Sep. 6 PDT.

Update Details​

Regarding the Previously Announced Ver. 3.0.0 Update Details
We would like to take this opportunity to once again go over the update details announced in “2nd Anniversary Update Details”
  • New Playable Character Sephiroth (Original)
  • New Feature: Memoria
  • New Content: Trial of the Summons (Fury)
  • Character Maximum Level Increased
  • New Battle Tower Colosseum of the Chosen Floors
  • Double Summon Noble Memory added
  • Limit Break unlock conditions eased
  • Batch Ticket Draw feature added
  • Improvement of Highwind
  • Improvement of Training Quests
  • Improvement of Season Pass
  • Improvement of Crisis Medal Exchange Lineup
  • Improvement of Co-op Exchange Lineup

Below are update details that were not included in the notice “2nd Anniversary Update Details”
  • New Feature: Gear List,
A feature that allows you to view all Gear you own will be added.
  • New Feature: Type,
Enemies will be categorized by Type based on their characteristics. Additionally, abilities that grant extra effects against specific enemy types will also be introduced.
  • R. Ability Icons Adjusted,
R. Ability icon designs will be adjusted.
  • Character Stream Training Packs Removed,
The Character Stream Training Packs that become available by progressing through a character's Stream are being removed from the game. *Packs from before this update can still be purchased until the end of the purchase period.
  • Stream Improvements,
A button will be added to the Stream screen that allows you to jump between pages.
  • Issues Resolved,
Resolution of minor issues Other
  • New app icon,
  • New title screen
 
Last edited:
Suzaku

Suzaku

Pro Adventurer
So, some additional details from the Livestream.

Sephiroth (Original)
  • Sephiroth (Original) is deliberately designed to be overpowered, and to occupy a unique role within the game. Because he can't be paired with young Sephiroth in parties outside of multiplayer, the two will specialize in different areas, and thus synergize with different party loadouts that don't overlap.

  • Sephiroth will be the only character to have Reprieve as a default R. Ability, meaning he doesn't need to source it from Gear.

  • Sephiroth has an exclusive role, different from the standard Attacker, Tank, Healer, and Support roles: Unknown. As such, he will have his own exclusive Tuning materials.

  • Sephiroth's also got a unique Overspeed to go with it, which grants him total immunity from damage and reduces the ATB cost for all his abilities to 1 for the duration, lasting 40 seconds when fully charged. It has a 200 second charge time, but can be activated starting at 50% charge, lasting for a proportional duration (20 seconds at 50% charge). While active, damage received reduces its duration, but only if that damage is equal to or greater than 30% of his HP. The amount reduced is proportional to the damage received.

    This will allow him to survive otherwise fatal attacks, to rapidly break sigils, or to deal large amounts of damage in a short duration. They note it's also good for filling his Limit / Summon gauge, as the amount the gauge is filled remains proportional to the original ATB cost of the abilities used.

  • It seems that part of the way they're balancing Sephiroth's innate overpowered nature is by making him a sort of "special occasion" character who will get banners less frequently than the rest of the cast. However, because his weapons and gear will be stronger than usual, they'll also remain relevant in the meta for a longer period of time.

  • They're currently planning for him to specialize in Fire and Water damage, while young Sephiroth will specialize more in Ice and Wind.

  • His Masamune is essentially a single target version of Bahamut Greatsword that also greatly reduces the target's PDEF/MDEF. His Kotetsu is a neutral physical AOE attack that greatly reduces PATK/MATK. These two weapons are basic, but are meant to make him an effective and easy to use sub-attacker for any party composition. These two weapons will be gifted to all players, and there will be easy ways to Overboost them up to OB6.

  • His first banner Gear is just a recolor of his default look because they wanted to preserve his iconic appearance for the time being, but they noted they will get more creative with his Gear in the future. It provides ATK Up (All), +15% HP, and +30% Ability Damage up for all six elements.

  • His Kikuichimonji is a neutral magical AOE attack that grants him Haste on its first use and grants the party a new Damage Bonus buff that makes all physical and magical attacks deal additional bonus damage proportional to the initial damage dealt, +30% damage at OB10. His Shiranui is a single target fire magic attack that grants the party a Fire Damage Bonus buff that works the same way, +30% fire damage at OB10. The two are additive, so if you have both buffs up and use a fire attack, it would add +60% damage. This applies to Limit Breaks and Summons too.

  • His banner Ultimate Weapon, Ame no Murakumo (Heaven's Cloud), has 3 uses, grants Haste, and grants an Exploit Weakness buff that causes him to deal up to 40% additional damage to enemies when exploiting their elemental weakness. It also passively grants the party 30% ability damage up when Stream Phases are Interrupted.
AC Cloud

  • Cloud gets his AC Form gear, which has the same passives as Sephiroth's while also granting him Reprieve.

  • Cloud's Fusion Sword does a big single target neutral attack, gives him a Physical and Magical Weapon Attack Boost, a new type of buff that multiplicatively increases damage from equipped weapon C. Abilities only. It also grants 40% Exploit Weakness.

  • His banner Ultimate Weapon, Ragnarok, has 2 uses, deals a big single target neutral attack, grants himself a Physical and Magical Ability Amp, and grants the entire party +3 ATB. It also automatically grants the part tier 3 PATK/MATK buffs at the start of the battle.

Other Stuff

  • Yuffie and Tifa get their AC Style Gear, Raging 4-Point Shuriken and Combat Leather Gloves, details to be revealed later. Young Sephiroth gets the Remnant Suit and Souba katana, which will be Ice oriented.

  • Memoria is a new type of "materia" that is equipped to the party rather than a character. Their main goal with this seems to be making it easier for players to increase their party's HP, PDEF, and MDEF, as they had lots of complaints and confusion from players who would gear up and go into fights only to get one shot because their defensive stats were too low.

  • Enemy Skills appear to be a new kind of Limit/Summon attack that you can learn from defeating certain bosses, including limited bosses. More details will be revealed later. You'll be able to learn an ability from Lightning by beating her during the FFXIII crossover event.

  • They recognize that a lot of people are calling for Before Crisis to be added, but have noted that due to the large number of characters it's really difficult, almost like creating a whole new game, so they're not sure how they want to implement it yet. In the meantime, they are doing Advent Children now, and are already working on Dirge of Cerberus.
 
Eerie

Eerie

Fire and Blood
Re: the second anni, way to make me hate ACC even more lol. I expected it would be bad and it's worse than what I thought it would be. They butchered it just for Sephiroth. CT magically disappeared. Oh they're going to hear me. Cloud's month? Lol his weapon and UW are a joke compared to Sephiroth's. And his UW is extra difficult to get. I'm fuming.

I hate this damn event. It should have been a story instead of butchered clips of AC.
 
SS2Link

SS2Link

Pro Adventurer
That was disappointing. I get the game’s already moving at a snail’s pace, but they couldn’t give us aaaanything in-game for Advent Children? Just clips from the movie and then Bahamut Sin? That’s so lame.

I love Dirge so here’s hoping they don’t throw in the towel there too. But it’ll still release over the course of a billion months, so, whatever.

Has Crisis Core even finished? The release schedule is so frustrating.
 
Last edited:
X-SOLDIER

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Suzaku said:
  • They recognize that a lot of people are calling for Before Crisis to be added, but have noted that due to the large number of characters it's really difficult, almost like creating a whole new game, so they're not sure how they want to implement it yet. In the meantime, they are doing Advent Children now, and are already working on Dirge of Cerberus.
Click to expand...

So I do want to dive in about this bit of the stream when Nomura talked about that challenge. WAY back on February 25, 2021 we got this teaser trailer which planned for a 2022 release date and stated that Ever Crisis, "Features the entire Compilation of Final Fantasy VII AND MORE" which is something that's still VERY much far from where things are at now:


When looking back at that older trailer, it's very easy to notice that this is still back at a point when it seemed like it was an actual GAME, rather than a haphazardly assembled series of menus cobbled together for supporting gacha banners. Back at this stage, it likely wouldn't've been difficult to implement all of the different characters and various other things into a single place, because that's what it was all about.

Even when the announcement about Closed Beta Test coming in 2023, there are still a lot of differences with the menu then being "Main, Allies, Equip, Party, Draws" where the "Main" was just "Story" and represents the core of where that content was designed to live as the front-page of the app. That's where it was still all about being a home for the Compilation Content first & foremost (I'm still curious how the "Allies" would have been utilized), but that's not where it stays.


By the time that actually happened, more of the mobile-centric model took prominence and you have the design shifting over to "Home, Growth, Enhance, Party, Draws" like it is now, where "Home" gives a place for backgrounds to live, and the "Story" section just became a sub-menu along with "Battle, Events, Expeditions, Guild" and all of this additional bloated content that's less permanent and ultimately just attached to all of the temporary banners and other live service content that's being used to keep the game going as a means to generate income more than presenting a home for the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII.


I bring all of this up, because it's VERY clear that they had a direct roadmap to bring in Before Crisis and everything else from the Compilation at one point early on when those things were being presented, but very quickly, a lot of changes happened that started to subject that roadmap to the changes that the app itself was being put through.

This is why we're now presented with Advent Children being entered into the game as "Event" content, rather than being implemented into a section in the "Story" where it OUGHT to be placed if that original framework were still the core model. Then we'd actually have the characters going through things from moment to moment, or chapters broken up into the story, where we get scenes that play out, and have battles against the three Remnants or even Shadow Creepers or something like that... but the dev team that does that sort of work just isn't scaled up to deliver that, based on how we've seen content made in the past while.

This is also connected to how in the story content we get, Maps don't get made for the game as player explorable unless they can be implemented as Dungeons, and most of the story stuff doesn't have much insofar as any real gameplay mechanics or even fields that you can explore to make use of characters in different costumes or replaying scenes with different parties – which is what the initial idea was. Even with banners & gear still being a core of the gacha, having characters in different outfits and replaying the story elements aren't really a part of the core experience, because the power creep of the gameplay basically just evaporates ANY of that balance into an impossibility. Thus, those story things are largely just on-rails scenes to click through dialogue because they can't ever really make a balance that works for variable replayability. So... TBH it's not surprising what the AC Event gives in a repetitive Bahamut SIN fight with random condensed cutscenes, since even The First SOLDIER Chapter 2 was running into not really having the ability to have encounters with more than a single new boss enemy when it was doing its really interesting Wutai backstory.

Instead, the only team who really gets a lot of bandwidth is the character combat, so we get Original Sephiroth added as a playable character – but he's not even a character who's got a playable scenario within Advent Children at all. So, they just have to sort of toss him in together, and then run everything as an Event. Most everything else has some significantly dialed back interactions, and the story content is so disconnected that basically no matter who's actually IN the event scenarios, you can fight with whoever right from the start. The only limitations are in the Battle Towers where it's clear that they've at least put some effort into balancing and compartmentalizing who they have... but that's also why Original Sephiroth has his weird 5500 Day Event Progression so that you can fill out his character level stuff.

Ideally, the Advent Children costumes for everyone should just be connected to the story stuff the same way that Zack's SOLDIER outfits are part of the Crisis Core story. Young Sephiroth getting Kadaj gear is neat, but it's rough that we don't even get boss fights out of those 3, and it doesn't live in the "Story" section, so it's not really like it's "IN" the game like a lot of people have been hoping for, and that's really just a snapshot at where the financial lifeblood of Ever Crisis is trapped by how its development shifted over time.

The main content is just repetitive recycled "fight X boss at all the different difficulties" repeated the way that everything has been done for ages, and so instead of boss fights against the Remnants & Sephiroth, it's trying to make the gameplay loop of gear & weapons more appealing by adding in a very different type of character – despite the fact that this is the core of what ultimately has undermined their ability to keep Ever Crisis as a game that's capable of implementing the other Compilation stories to – because of the difficulty of adding in a unique character like Original Sephiroth pales in comparison to the task of adding in LOTS of new player characters, which just breaks the core of how the game is set up.

However, it's not all bad.

My primary hope is that because Dirge of Cerberus relies almost exclusively on Vincent, and it's more than just a 2 hour film, it's broken down in ways that allow it to be "Story" content just like Crisis Core is. The Tsviets are all boss characters who easily lend themselves to being rotating Event challenges that work to present various challenges (the same way that it's used boss characters like Masamune for TFS Ch2), since Weiss has ALREADY been used that way in the Virtual Training Room for Remake it's got some stuff to work from. As such, DoC actually has elements that all lend themselves to being very serviceable content for the state that Ever Crisis is currently in.

Whether or not that has enough of what it takes to be able to get things back to a point where Before Crisis actually works, or possibly even allows an Advent Children "Story" to show up at some point... who knows. I expect that there's a decent possibility that aside from following Team Green Matcha Tea (which they also announced during the stream), that we may also end up getting The First SOLDIER Chapter 3 with Genesis as a playable character with Gackt being in the studio again, as that would mesh with reasons to have Original Sephiroth added as a playable character, and give some additional content to help get the game a little bit more wiggle room to figure out how to navigate the position it's currently in.

Given that Zack's finale in Crisis Core also intersects the acquisition of Genesis by Weiss & Nero, I'd expect that we may get some additional information about that in the same way that Crisis Core has given us new story already in a way that helps to transition the trajectory of story into things with Deepground & Dirge of Cerberus that neatly circumvent diving in too deeply into the events at the end of Final Fantasy VII. This is also the conundrum that I expect Advent Children experienced, and why the "Event" version we got for the 2nd Anniversary isn't the "Story" because it's very much tied up in Cloud's guilt about everything that isn't really explored in the content of Ever Crisis OR the Remake Project at this point, so it's awkward about how deep it can delve into those subjects and what that means for the updates to those parts of the story.

Vincent's backstory with the Turks does present some potential hooks that the team may gradually be able to invest effort into, as a way to tackle Before Crisis, since it's VERY clearly something that the fans are desperate for (as was apparent from the Live Chat during the stream). Before Crisis also has the advantage of being story that doesn't really have the difficulty of being covered because it's BEFORE any of that happens, so there's plenty of incentive for the team to still be trying to find a way to sustainably tackle that. They're currently focused on roadmap things to close out TFS Ch2, as well as setting up for DoC that'll bring them into 2026 – and despite this not being an ideal world where we got the version of Ever Crisis that they initially envisioned... I actually DO think that we're still in a fairly good position at the moment for where it's got the potential to take things over the next year, all things considered.




X :neo:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom