FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE Demo Out Now!

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
Has anyone seen the demo video where if Cloud keeps (deliberately or not I guess)walking into the lasers in Mako Reactor No 1, Jessie rips the piss out of him, asking if he really was in SOLDIER or if he’s a masochist or fetishist (I can’t remember which one)?
She says both, yeah. Go to the 29:00-minute mark in my playthrough video to see all of her laser lines:


---

Speaking of lines from the demo, around 19:00, Cloud subconsciously excuses his lack of knowledge about the reactor's layout with "Different reactor, different layout. Depends when it was built. Never seen one like this, but I'll manage."

I wonder if that's going to come up again in the No. 5 reactor as a point of oddity in Cloud's accounting of things, considering that reactor's layout is markedly close to No. 1's. Or at least was in the original game.
 
Has anybody found additional categories to fill out the battle log with? With Scorpion Sentinel I've only found these four:
- Staggered​
- Part Crippled​
- Weakness Exploited​
- Struck by Limit Break​
But there is room for two more in the battle log. Wouldn't surprise me if the remaining categories are unavailable in the demo.


I was surprised to find that setting Screen Shake (System -> Options -> Camera & Controls -> Screen Shake) to Off actually worked even in that final stretch when you are leaving the reactor. I would have thought that the game considered the "shaky cam" too adamant to be shut off in this dramatic moment, but fortunately the setting did what it promised.


When Jessie says "Not that way. Down the ladder, dummy." and the player is forced to retreat, I found that you can cancel the retreat by pressing square and using your Buster Sword. While not a true "out of bounds" example, I enjoyed finding the ability to say "NO U" and explore this dead-end despite the limitation the game tried to set on me.
- Photo 01
- Photo 02


It only took me about twenty playthroughs but I finally understand the nuance of timing your stagger-centric attack so that the "Pressured" gauge rises most quickly. :lol: I was confused as to why Focused Thrust and Focused Shot did so little to raise the Pressured gauge much of the time. Was it randomness? The angle from which I attacked? It took me this long to realize that the "phase" of the enemy/boss is what determines the effectiveness of stagger-centric attacks. I think a main reason for my confusion was that the "Pressured" gauge is visible even when the enemy is not susceptible to having that gauge filled quickly. :wacky: Definitely makes the Sweeper and Scorpion Sentinel battle(s) way easier now that I know what I'm doing!

Accordingly, I've managed to get closer to my dream of a zero-restoratives run through the demo. My record so far is having used only 2 Potions and 1 Phoenix Down. I make sure to also never use Ethers and not restore MP from the boxes.


Should have taken the time to record some of my runs. That way I would have captured that one time when I managed to enter Tactical Mode just as Scorpion Sentinel was defeated, which led to the Spoils/Reward list taking a long-ass time to complete.
- Photo 01
- Photo 02
- Photo 03

I'm almost dead-sure that in one instance the game never showed that defeating Scorpion Sentinel granted 100 EXP and 100 gil. I wonder if the EXP and gil were actually added or if I encountered a glitch where the game skipped those spoils?
 
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X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Has anybody found additional categories to fill out the battle log with? With Scorpion Sentinel I've only found these four:
- Staggered​
- Part Crippled​
- Weakness Exploited​
- Struck by Limit Break​
But there is room for two more in the battle log. Wouldn't surprise me if the remaining categories are unavailable in the demo.

There's one for using the Assess materia on them which you can see in the old Assess screenshot:
49122328033_fcb07f60f5_b.jpg


I'd expect that there's one for stealing items from them as well, since that's listed in the assessment, though given that we got the confirmation of Enemy Skills today, that's always a possibility as well – as neither of those would be achievable in the demo.



X :neo:
 

Ite

Save your valediction (she/her)
AKA
Ite
A glitch occurred during battle! I wasn't sure what happened, because battle happens so fast I thought I missed something, but the recording was no lie. Here it is:


The things that happen in order:
-Barret selects to give Cloud a potion
-Exit Tac Mode
-Switch to Cloud
-While transitioning, Barret's dialogue implies that Scorp's "Call Debris" attack has been initialized
-After arriving at Cloud, the camera snaps instantly back to Barret and begins the animation again.
-Scorp visibly begins his "Call Debris" attack
-Cloud is struck by the attack, taking 19 damage, then the potion hits him two frames later.
-Two frames after that, Cloud and the damage number are teleported to the space directly above Barret, while the green healing number stays where it is. Camera remains with Cloud.

Wonder why that happened!
 

Erotic Materia

[CONFUSED SCREAMING]
A glitch occurred during battle! I wasn't sure what happened, because battle happens so fast I thought I missed something, but the recording was no lie. Here it is:


The things that happen in order:
-Barret selects to give Cloud a potion
-Exit Tac Mode
-Switch to Cloud
-While transitioning, Barret's dialogue implies that Scorp's "Call Debris" attack has been initialized
-After arriving at Cloud, the camera snaps instantly back to Barret and begins the animation again.
-Scorp visibly begins his "Call Debris" attack
-Cloud is struck by the attack, taking 19 damage, then the potion hits him two frames later.
-Two frames after that, Cloud and the damage number are teleported to the space directly above Barret, while the green healing number stays where it is. Camera remains with Cloud.

Wonder why that happened!
Maybe you should send that to SE? They might be interested to see it.
 
As it turns out you can't flee from the first battle against the Sentry Rays. There are lasers in the way.
- Photo 01
- Photo 02


I achieved a zero-restoratives run but unfortunately Cloud got KO'd at the end. I would have liked to get a zero-KO's run but after many grueling attempts I am giving that up for today. First time that I am now legit pissed off at the remake. Even learned afterwards how to better deal with the phases of the Scorpion Sentinel, but there is just too much randomness involved in the missile sprees. All it takes is one mistake and some bad luck and Cloud will get KO'd in the scorpion fight.

I'll swallow my pride and share my embarrassing zero-restoratives result.


"Achievements"
- Single segment (no retries)
- 0 restoratives used
- 0 boxes destroyed
- 1 KO
- 0 battles fled
- All battles cleared
- One grenade-toss ForceStealer-style

Settings
- Normal mode
- Voices: Off
- BGM: Off
- Screen Shake: Off

Editing
- FFVII OG music added
- Two loading times reduced in editing

The missing second at 24:16 is because of an error in the original recording, not because of my editing. If this was a speedrun I would have been very annoyed at the loss of that second.
 

PTGLuckySixes

Lv. 1 Adventurer
Hi guys, new to the forums and the ff media game! Loving a lot of comments, tips and tricks here and looking forward to being a part of the community.

We have also uploaded our first video (with many more to come in coming months) so if you up for a bit of a laugh check it out here:

Please feel free to let us know any comments or just let us know what you think! Cheers guys!
 
One of my favorite pieces of banter from the demo because of what a wonderful reference it is to the original game.



So I just confirmed that Potions max out at 99 and I acquired as many as 29 Moogle Medals. The shinra boxes at the train station and right before the elevator to the furnace can be infinitely re-spawned by crossing this specific border (marked in red) before the T-bridge. While I reached the three-hour mark in my recordings, I was testing and dilly-dallying plenty in my playthrough so you could pretty easily max out your Potions in below 2 1/2 hours.


Since I destroyed the boxes before the elevator so frequently I ended up testing what each box drops.
- My conclusions
That one box always drops an MP mako shard. The remaining four boxes seems to use the same drop list, though I admit I didn't confirm the Moogle Medal for one of the boxes.

Counting the guaranteed mako shard, it is very rare to acquire three items at once. Among my several hundred attempts I only ONCE acquired four items at once: Three Potions and one MP mako shard.

On two occasions I actually got two Moogle Medals in one go.


- Loving that Cloud's eyes glow a subtle mako green even in the dark
 
- To my surprise, not only does "Retry from Last Battle" respawn ALL the shinra boxes, but it KEEPS all the rewards you may have gotten from destroying the re-spawned boxes! So you can infinitely respawn any shinra box this way and quite likely grind even faster for Potions and Moogle Medals than in the method I demonstrated earlier in video format. Treasure chests can never have their contents refilled.

Another detail is that items gained DURING a fight will not be kept when selecting "Retry from Last Battle", not even if you get rewards from shinra boxes mid-fight.

- After a shitton of attempts I was able to record Barret singing the victory theme. In the battle (final monodrives in the escape from the reactor) when the voice clip was triggered I used only Barret and managed to defeat all of the monodrives using only Barret's default square-button attack. Seems fairly consistent with when I've seen others play the demo: If they use mostly (or only) Barret in particular battles, he is likely to sing the victory theme when the battle is over.

- Watching the Monodrives casually push around the shinra boxes amuses me for some reason.

- I still don't know what status these downwards red arrows signify.

- For anyone who might not know, while the game is loading (like when you skip a cutscene) you can toogle between the multiple tutorial messages in the loading screen by pressing left and right. I learned this weeks ago but just figured I'd share.

- When you are fighting the four security officers (and the game teaches you about Operator mode), if you land a grenade in the corner right next to the door you can actually manage to explode one of the shinra boxes in the next room. The explosion actually reaches that far! :lol:

- Evading and keeping your guard up slows the build-up of the ATB bar considerably. Simply controlling a character (even if you're doing nothing at all) makes their ATB bar grow faster than if you let the AI control that character (EDIT: I need to control if this is because the AI tends to use guard or if the ATB build is slower even when the AI is doing nothing). Replaying the demo definitely teaches you that the game rewards you for switching constantly between playable characters but it's only just now that I bothered to observe these two exact nuances of the ATB system.

- For some reason I am unable to replicate the trick where I went further down the wrong path than you're supposed to (the "down the ladder, dummy" moment). Clearly this trick was way more precise than I thought.

- If you select "Retry from Last Battle" during the reactor bomb countdown, you will start back at the time that was remaining before you entered the battle. So that's nice of the game to do. :monster:


I am milking this demo for all its worth. The act of playing a demo brings back nostalgia from when I was playing demos for PS1 games, which is definitely the period when I played game demos the most. You keep replaying the demo over and over, dreaming of how awesome it would be to get the whole game. Interestingly enough I never had a demo for FFVII back in the 90s. My only exposure to FFVII before my friend showed me the PC version in 1998 was a CG shot of Sephiroth in the commercial that one of my PS1 demo discs played upon boot-up.
 
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Lex

Administrator

Ite

Save your valediction (she/her)
AKA
Ite
- To my surprise, not only does "Retry from Last Battle" respawn ALL the shinra boxes, but it KEEPS all the rewards you may have gotten from destroying the re-spawned boxes! So you can infinitely respawn any shinra box this way and quite likely grind even faster for Potions and Moogle Medals than in the method I demonstrated earlier in video format. Treasure chests can never have their contents refilled.

Another detail is that items gained DURING a fight will not be kept when selecting "Retry from Last Battle", not even if you get rewards from shinra boxes mid-fight.

This is a huge discovery, Shademp! Especially since potions are more valuable than Cure. If this makes it into the final game, you’ve found an exploit that is truly staggering. 99 potions before you even get to Reactor 1...
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
And even if it did...why would you want to ruin your playthrough like that, lol. To say nothing retrying a gazillion times just for some potions.
 

Vyzzuvazzadth

Yazzavedth Zayann
It's just a mini-icon signifying the character has a negative status effect. See the Abzu fight for reference:

Mini-Status Icon.pngMini-Status Icon Revealed.png

Same thing for positive status effects:

Mini-Status Icon Positive.png

Loved your breakdown of all the interesting bits you found. Especially Shinra boxes respawning when selecting "Retry from last battle". That's really good for stocking up on potions and MP when facing a hard foe. Thank you for that info!
 
Video demonstration of the Retry-from-Last-Battle (RfLB) box respawning method. I was able to go from 0 Potions to 99 in 70 minutes, compared to the roughly 2 hours it took me with the old method to go from 20 Potions to 99. A big helper is that in each cycle you are now destroying eight boxes with potential good rewards (one of the boxes always rewards an MP mako shard), compared to the four boxes in the previous method.


The faster area to grind for Potions and Moogle Medals with the RfLB method would probably be when you're escaping from the reactor, right before facing the first Shock Trooper. But if you're aiming for an early grind, this area before the cut fence (see video) is likely the fastest.


- As a bonus I made this second grind for Potions so that I could also grind limit break usage, now that I can safely become a sponge for damage. The menu denotes Cloud's- and Barret's respective limit breaks as being Level 1.
Cross-Slash: Level 1
Fire in the Hole: Level 1

After repeated usage of Cloud's Cross-Slash I did not accomplish any level-up however.

Stats of my limit break playthrough
Cross-Slash used: 18 times
Enemies defeated with Cross-Slash: Security Officers x6, Guard Dogs x2, Shock Troopers x2
Number of times used on Scorpion Sentinel: 9 times

Of course, there are three possible conclusions here without further data.
A) The mechanics for levelling up limit breaks are deactivated for the demo
B) More of the same is required for levelling up, be it LB usage or number of enemies defeated
C) Later game content is required to level up limit breaks

I'm almost definitely missing/forgetting some news that have been shared online about limit breaks in FFVIIR. But if somebody here decides to spam Cross-Slash throughout the demo, please try to accomplish at least 20 Cross-Slashes so we can learn what happens (if anything at all). :monster: Keep in mind you'll have to do some extra grinding for Potions along the way even if you got 99 at the very beginning, since you'll be taking A LOT of damage to build up the limit bar.

Not that it matters but I only just now bothered observing that landing a limit break does NOT add to your ATB.


- At least in the Scorpion Sentinel's final phase it is easy to get the boss into a loop by standing behind it and causing it to use Tail Swipe repeatedly. This attack is easy to dodge and by locking the boss into this loop they will never use missiles or even EM Field. May or may not be useful, since to actually advance the battle further you still need to switch characters and accomplish things from the front.

- New personal record for number of Moogle Medals: 37. Not trying to max out Moogle Medals, this is just the number I've gotten while grinding Potions.
 
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Okay so now I finally caught on to what the downwards pointing red arrows were about: They represent ANY negative status effect and even though Berserk is technically not a "red" status effect (at least if you go by the color scheme) it still gets represented by red arrows.

Berserk status when Cloud is Active character and his HUD is highlighted:
qHiaPcJ.png


Berserk status when you switch character and Cloud's HUD is no longer highlighted:
eolX1Iv.png


I just assumed that the single downwards arrow were a specific, as-of-yet-unspecified status effect which is why I was still confused even after Vyz's examples.


Cloud enters Berserk status when he lands the final blow in his OperatorPunisher Mode combo. The duration of the status is then shown with the Berserk icon slowly getting greyed out. When fully greyed out, the status is no longer in effect.

LYb4KV8.jpg
XZkN8Xp.jpg
zJw4xSs.jpg
4jTvdoh.jpg
dLO8c7T.jpg


You can restart the Berserk status by landing the finishing blow of an OperatorPunisher Mode combo yet again.
 
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Vyzzuvazzadth

Yazzavedth Zayann
I assume the orange/brown status effects are both positive and negative, which we know Berserk, Fury and Sedate (Sadness) are.
For the general status effect representation on the smaller character UI areas, they opted to keep them easily distinguishable, thus representing orange/brown status effects in red as well. Since they also do have negative side effects, red takes priority.
 
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