Over the weekend, taking much longer than I expected, I played through both chapters of the Final Fantasy 7: Remake Intermission. I’m pretty sure I’m missing part of the name, but even after looking it up, it seems confusingly similar to what they’re calling the remake of Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core, so I’m just gonna call it “FF7: Remake Intermission” or just “Intermission” for short. Despite my confusion and unwillingness to engage with it deeply enough to deal with the overly complex naming scheme used for parts the remake of Final Fantasy 7 that aren’t a part of the “core” game, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The Fort Condor minigame was a lot of fun, if a bit frustrating at times (I beat the grandmaster, but only be restart spamming so I could get an advantageous start and then getting a bit lucky as the match continued), and seeing the other side of Avalanche was an interesting addition to the world. I got a bit tired of how many references were crammed into the game, partly because it made it very clear that Rebirth was going to have less going on in the periphery than the original game did. Which, you know, makes sense given how much they’ve expanded the part of the original game that they turned into Remake. Games aren’t infinite, even if this one comes on two discs unlike literally any other massive PS5 game I’ve played (though not needing the internet to play this game is a pretty big plus that none of those other games can claim), so it makes sense to trim down some parts of the old game to make room for additions like riding Segways.

Overall, it was a lot of fun getting to catch a glimpse of Yuffie before we’re going to (probably? I’m assuming?) meet her in Rebirth. We also got a bit more history about the war between Shinra and Wutai, some information about why the cast of Remake launched a splinter cell of Avalanche, an introduction to some characters that had only appeared in sequels (not all of which were games) to the original Final Fantasy 7 game, and a new character that the game tried very hard to make us love before it killed him off. Also, we got a lot of conflicting information about Yuffie, though most of it seemed to only be in conflict when it came to her accounting of herself and everyone else’s views of her. It was a lot of stuff crammed into a few hours of gameplay (which only took as long it did because I was playing this the weekend after deep-cleaning my apartment, which left me exhausted, sore, and did not help how mentally scattered I felt prior to the start of that weekend).

I think my favorite part was the changes the game made to Remake’s combat system. Rather than control your extra party member (another ninja named Sonon who had arrived from Wutai a few days earlier than Yuffie), he acted independently the whole time, but could be give commands for his magic/skill meter and could even be instructed to attack in concert with Yuffie, linking his actions to hers in a way that made for some incredibly beatdowns. It was also a tricky thing to balance, since you started at a relatively high level but didn’t have any high-level gear or Materia (the orbs that give you access to extra skills, stat bonuses, passive boosts, and magic). You could have Sonon act independently, often drawing fire just by being there–an ability that was easily enhanced by the Materia you started with–while not doing much damage on his own, or you could have him team up with you to focus fire on a particular enemy to increase the damage dealt and hopefully beat them down before the other enemies showed up to dogpile you. Managing that on top of the usual ability charges, HP, MP, and enemy stagger gauges was a fun level of added complication that rarely felt like more complication. Most of the time, it felt like an extra, secret ability I could whip out when I needed it (especially because you had Synergy Abilities that were only available when you were teamed up like that). I’ve dipped a bit into Rebirth at this point, enough to know that synergy abilities are still a thing, so I’m hoping there will be an opportunity for this kind of teamed-up fighting to make an appearance somewhere in the game.

As much as I enjoyed fighting alongside Sonon, I wasn’t super fond of him. He seemed interesting enough, but the rather short duration of the game wasn’t enough to really get me to like him or be terribly attached to him. Since the game spent all of its character development time on him, trying to make me like him enough to be moved by his eventual sacrifice (which was moving, of course, since I’m an incredibly light touch for this stuff in general and even more so when it comes to these types of “self-sacrificing and supportive elder sibling relationship” ty[e characters), it didn’t leave a lot of space for developing Yuffie. Sure, they did enough to build up how much she wants to be taken seriously and treated like an adult, but that sort of thing doesn’t take much build-up, especially when part of the story’s commentary on her character is that she is still a child, for the most part. The game doesn’t define her age and there’s plenty of history of the racist infantilization of Asian women, so maybe she is a legal adult, but the game never really says and it really feels like it is trying to make the point that she still has some growing up to do, some of which happens during the end of second chapter of Intermission, though I suppose we’ll have to see if that’s actually built on in Rebirth given that Intermission is incredibly easy to skip or miss out on.

Even if it did prevent me from getting into Rebirth until all the time I’d have to play is an hour or two each night, between work and bed, I’m still glad I played Intermission. It really feels like a good look at where the developers are planning to go in Rebirth and playing them all this closely together will give me a pretty clear picture of it if they accomplished their goals. Assuming I’m correctly understanding their goals from the way they’ve designed the games, anyway. That’s a pretty big assumption. Sure, I’ve backed it up by reading interviews and other articles, enough that I feel pretty confident about my choices, but I could still be wrong. I’m far from infallible, after all.