ゲームを楽しもう!

One weird thing about FF7R for me is that when i was going into it, while i was 10000% excited for the game itself, the big draw for me was actually to the DLC. To this, episode intermission. the idea of a whole episode of unique new stuff for the series with the return of some favourite dirge of Cerberus characters was enough for me to get unbearably excited. i spent so much of the base game hype for this, not to the point of rushing it or enjoying it less but i just wanted to play this part so badly. i wasn't disappointed and it's probably the best part of the game and it even managed to exceed my expectations. this is very much how DLC should be and it sets a high-bar for the remake trilogy going forward.

the story here is more or less all original which i love. those new additions were the best part of the remake for me and this doubles down on all of that, plus it expands even further on introducing compilation elements into the original games timeframe which was another favourite thing of mine. the whole DLC feels mostly like a way of doing that and of making yuffie feel better integrated into the actual story. in the original she was very incidental, either you found her or you didn't and she didn't have much of a connection to the rest of the cast beyond being their connection to wutai, which wasn't even all that important in the original. crisis core and dirge did a good job of giving her more to do though and they expand on that even more here, which fits well considering the remake trying it's best to make wutai into a bigger deal with the mentions of the war. she's so interesting here too. she is still that goofy tomboy she was in the original but now she has this streak of radicalism to her, constantly trashing midgar and shinra and i think it's neat. she's like a more chuuni barret and i think that's a really interesting direction to take her in. she's also so funny! her intro and all of her interactions with the people of shinra and avalanche are gold and i love her energy. her doing materia tricks or the cool ninja poses she does is just endlessly cool. this also brings in more from those games, it's most noticeable with all of the stuff from dirge with the deepground soldiers, Weiss and Nero. i was so happy to see them and they were probably the biggest highlight of the DLC for me getting to finally see their designs in high fidelity. while nero gets a perfect amount of screentime it does feel like Weiss is sidelined a little, which is a shame. i get why and i like the extra stuff with chadley his inclusion results in but it would have been nice to see more than just a digital version of him and a few shots.

beyond all of the references the new story itself is really good. you get some great scenes with scarlet, my favourite as she makes you run through weapon trials in the shinra building. her commentary during these is great and i love the scene with yuffie, sonon and her in the elevator. avalanche's main branch gets to get involved in the story and they're a fun bunch, i love the chase sequence one of the members gets into a lot and the others have some cool moments too. it's something that was touched on in before crisis so it's debatable weather it's all new but it feels pretty fresh to me and there are new characters in there. it adds a lot to the world i think, seeing how ineffectual they are really lends credence to barret's gang's decision to split off and go in a more extreme direction. as it goes on even yuffie begins to get why they split off and honestly it's easy to empathise. yuffie gets a party member in the form of sonon, a big brotherly character who's a lot of fun to be around. i liked him a lot and I'm sad he only has this DLC for his screentime. i love those kind of grumpy and cool but fun onii-san style characters. i actually *spoilers* teared up when he dies near the end of the campaign, the stuff with melphie got me super emotional too the ending of the DLC is pretty great too, seeing a new angle of the plate drop was brutal and it was heartbreaking to see yuffie react to it. i think that's really well handled and he shines brightly for his short screentime. there's also a new post credit scene that ties into rebirth which shows how the gang got to kalm and gives a little extra zack progress, it's neat and worth watching after you finish.

Yuffie also has a whole new playstyle to her that differentiates her from the rest of the cast. she gets a very speedy basic combo with her shuriken that actually has some air time which is really neat. what sets her apart though is the throw command, she can toss her shuriken at the enemy which works like trish's sword from DMC4SE which stays in place on the enemy and damages them. she can then shoot out spells instead of her basic attack that you can give elemental modifiers using her ATB attacks, she can even rush to retrieve the shiruken which does big damage upon retrieval. it's a really fun system and she just might be the games most fun character to play, the most powerful too. the particle effects flying, the speed and the big damage all just give her the best feel out of anyone in the cast. she also gets some other abilities like a throw that damages multiple enemies (locked behind a preorder bonus), a strong combo ATB attack, a wind attack that can draw things in and a cool dodge that can refill your ATB.

this is all before you get to her other big differentiator: sonon. this is an NPC party member that you can't directly control, but you can give him orders and do cool team-up attacks with using synergy mode. it basically gives her whole extra combo strings she can do at will as the both of them attack at once, these are really powerful. though i will say the combo for her shuriken in this mode is a little silly, it reminded me of sonics homing attack or the silly dash bounce thing zeta had in granblue relink. that's in addition to him giving her more powerful ATB attacks if you use one of each persons ATB and his own set of attacks like a spin, a powerful strike, a focused mode and a provoke that draws enemies away from yuffie. it can almost feel like playing a TWEWY spinoff at times with how you need to control both at once to do well, especially on hard mode. it's really fun and i think i liked it more than the combat in the base game. it helps that it also has some of the games best boss fights. the 3 stage nero fight is the highlight with cool patterns and a really cool looking arena but the fight with scarlet in the mech suit and a huge drill centipede boss fight are also highlights. you even get a new boss for the main campaign with Weiss being fightable in the battle simulator by the main crew. it's probably the games hardest fight but also up there with reno, nero and rufus for the games best battle.

The episode isn't just a straight shot to the end though, you have a stop in the sector 7 slums before the biggest part of the mission starts and you even have a few new minigames and side quests here to try out! almost like a teaser of what's to come in the future. you get a battle with ramuh, the expansions sole summon and a fairly fun fight. the box destroying mode returns with a version available for yuffie. it's fun but it's a lot more difficult than the main game and might even be one of the biggest challenges in the game. there's a sidequest with the owner of the happy turtle, a chain of bars from wutai. you have to collect some posters around the slums with help of some clues and this is actually one of the highlights of the episode for me. each one is fun to track down and it even leads you to what Is basically an extra side dungeon for yuffie to fight in. each even has its own rendition of the happy turtle theme to clue you in when you're nearby, some of them can be pretty catchy too.

the real thing here though is the new minigame, fort condor! this is similar to the minigame from the original but instead of being a huge fight on a mountain, it's a small RTS minigame you can play with various NPC's around the slums. roche, the avalanche crew, kirie, johnny, chadley and even *shinra middle manager* all show up as fightable opponents with their own boards and strategies. it's like a real time tower defence game, you send out units to fight on their own and they both protect your bases and you have to attack the enemy bases. as you advance the line you can place units further up and it uses an ATB system similar to how the original game's battle system. it's a lot of fun and I had a great time with it, honestly my only issue is that i wish there was more of it. it could have really used an FF8 style system where you could battle random NPC's for rewards and new units in addition to the units you can buy from the happy turtle vendor. as it is you run out of opponents before you unlock most of your units and some you won't even get until long after you leave the area. it would have been nice to just have more to do with it, an online versus mode would have been a ton of fun, or a cool arcade mode. you also get some new shinra battle sim fights. a few with yuffie and shion like with a fairly easy ramuh fight, a new version of peace and love which is far easier than the original thanks to yuffies lightning attacks and even a new fight for the main cast with Weiss being a new fight available for cloud and the gang. this last one is the highlight, it's the hardest fight in the game by a large margin but i think it's one of the most fun ones. he basically takes zero damage until he's staggered and can one-shot you so it's a desperate rush to get him down so you can just wail on him. he even has different modes where he switches from his cool gunblades to Azul's canon and Rosso's blades. it's the best kind of fanservice for dirge fans and it made me really happy to see.

you have a few new areas here too. a small tutorial segment in the wastelands outside the slums which was fun to explore. a huge factory zone with some really fun switch puzzles, platforming and a really cool chase sequence and the star of the show which is the final chapter set inside of the shinra weapons development zone. a zone that is very intentionally reminiscent of deepground from dirge of Cerberus with all of its blue lighting. it's the highlight of the DLC for sure and the main reason i was excited to play. they are a lot better than the main campaigns new levels at least and the deep ground portion is probably my overall favourite zone in the game. the game does take advantage of being on new hardware too, the later area's look far and beyond anything the original game had going on which i think is neat. it's a good show of progression. the designs here are also very good. i think sonon's pretty handsome and i like his design a lot. the newcomers at avalanche look good too, i especially love nayo's design with the cool vest suspenders shirt she wears and the skirt looks cool too. yuffie is redesigned well here too, it's very in line with the original but they gave her a cool moogle poncho she wears for a lot of the game and it looks so cute. i wish it was a toggleable costume for her and i hope it comes back in the sequel. Weiss and Nero look great too! Nero's darkness looks so good in HD and they captured his design well with all the arms and the blue on the deepground outfits. Weiss just looks hot, no notes needed. he's almost shirtless here and that's enough fanservice for me to be satisfied.

the game isn't super long so you won't spend a ton of time in each zone so things never really get all that stale. a fast run could last you maybe 5-6 hours but most people i imagine will take their time and complete those minigames and sidequests and if you do that it could bring it up to around 8-10 hours which i think is a perfect length for what it is. it's not too difficult either, yuffies combat is even more easily exploitable than anything in the main campaign and with shion there nothing is really a big challenge outside of those optional fights.

the OST is pretty large for a DLC and full of an impressive amount of variety that may honestly outshine even the base game in quality and variety. it's largely by the same group of people according to the credits so i won't talk about that here, if you want to see who was involved here then check out my coverage of the original remake. standout tracks for me would be "descendant of shinobi" and it's battle versions. it's probably the best rendition of the song there is. "avalanche's HQ theme" is another OST standout, it sounds very crisis core to me. "ninjas are insane" is solid. i like "fort condor" and its variants (the best of which is "sudden death"). "ramuh, lord of levan" is a standout boss theme. i love "sonon's theme". "a hero lost" is a standout on the OST. "happy turtle fight song" got the biggest laugh in the game for me, it's amazing. there's a whole multi part jazz suite at one point with the series of tracks called "the rundown" and they're all seriously good, a highlight of the DLC. particular highlights are "the run: part 2", "part 4" and "Part 5". "good morning levikron" is basically an honorary rundown theme and it might even be the best one. "hey you, evildoers!" and "the gigantipede" are both excellent fight themes, the latter is one of the boss theme highlights. "the W's have it" is really chill, as is "advanced weaponry", "No escape" and "materia production". the latter of which is one of my favourite songs on the OST. i adore "seeing melphie again", "sky's the limit" and "facing disaster". "scarlets welcome" is a pretty great boss theme, same for "the crimson mare", "Nero, the sable", "Weiss the immaculate" and "diabolic creation". "good-bye, city of mako" is a pretty perfect song to end the game with too. there's a lot of music in the sidequests too, especially the numerous versions of "happy turtle" which all have English and Japanese versions. i prefer the Japanese versions personally but the English ones are pretty good too. "happy turtle jingle", "why can't i be a turtle", "turtle doo-wop", "you, me" and "technologic terrapin" . those were all a delight to discover.

You can get the game for fairly cheap as part of the games PS5 intergrade port. copies of the game came with it for free but for anyone who got it used or via the PS4 upgrade will need to pay for it manually, but it's only around £15 or so for it and i think what you get here is more than worth it. the games switch port also seems to come with it by default, though this port is a game key card so be warned. there isn't really a way to get this on disc, even the PS5 combo pack has this as a code. it leads right into rebirth with a new post credits scene and that's where the series went from there, there's even a sequel to that on the horizon. the DLC sadly wasn't given its own credits sequence apart from the game so i can't really say who did what on it, though it does seem to be the same team as the original, so anything i said in that article about who made this most likely applies here too. it's an easy recommendation overall, though not as a standalone thing. you will need to have knowledge of at the very least the story of either the original or remake, ideally both and dirge if you want to get everything out of the DLC. it's not good for a beginner, even though you could start with it from the menu. i think if you enjoy remake or dirge then it's well worth the playthrough. it's everything good about the remake in a smaller, more concise package. what's not to love.