Now, in my third week of playing, I’ve finally make it into chapter seven of Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth. Chapters five and six were exactly the sort of weirdly enjoyable stuff I’ve been looking forward to since I first saw the Segway–excuse me, “Wheelie”–bits in the game’s trailer. Each one has its own little moments of interesting characterization, some whacky fun (that, in Chapter 5, bordered on being a little over the top for my tastes, but was still incredibly hilarious in the moment) unique to each chapter, and then each included a moment that swept the rug out from underneath me–even during what I was hoping would be a classic beach episode filled with emotional development and inter-character discussion in Chapter 6. This is, in my opinion, the modern versions of Final Fantasy 7 at their best. As long as we can include the bit from chapter four that I wrote about last Tuesday. It would feel wrong to describe the modern FF7s as being at their best without including that moment of intensely emotional characterization for Cloud that is incredibly rare in these games. After all, we get to see a bit of Cloud’s softer side in Final Fantasy 7: Remake, but only in drips and drabs as he plays the part of the invulnerable hero and we never really get it at all in the original game, aside from a few moments during the end of the game where Cloud admits he has no idea what he’s doing but he’s going to keep doing it anyway (which isn’t really that much vulnerability since everyone already knew that by then).

I’ve really been enjoying Queen’s Blood, which is rare for me since I’m typically not a fan of the “game within a game” thing that seems to be running wild through most modern fantasy games. I had no patience of Pazaak in the Knights of the Old Republic games and I played only the required amount of Gwent in Witcher 3 (before I eventually lost my focus on the game and went off to play other stuff). Queen’s Blood, though, I don’t mind playing. I mean, it’s not my favorite thing to do, but the way its couched in the world doesn’t really break my immersion (which is more than can be said of Gwent since those cards are valuable and too many broke-looking randos have decks in that game) so I don’t mind ticking those quest boxes off as I play. Plus, it’s a strategy game that only minutely relies on random chance and you can build around the random chance anyway, so it’s pretty easy to get the win you want once you learn that the best way to win the game is to just out-place your opponent, controlling the board and forcing them to use only a few cards by destroying their cards, advancing your claimed spaces at the right times, and using the right kinds of vertical, horizontal, and angled space claims to counter your opponent. It’s kind of a brutal way to play the game that absolutely exploits the mechanics rather than uses interesting effects to win the game, but that feels pretty authentic to how I’d imagine Cloud would play the game. That boy has no subtlety. He’s a hammer and I play the game like a hammer would. But only because I’m impatient and don’t want to think too hard about a game within a game.

Anyway, seeing the passive exploration quests of “become the best card player in the area!” turn into “let’s do a whole tournament arc that lets you take on at least one of your friends!” was a delight. It was a fun way to spend some time with NPCs that either don’t have much going on in the new game or whose relationships with Cloud (and the player) were mostly transactional. Plus, the crowd of NPCs added just for the tournament are pretty fun, like the robot whose purpose is to become the best Queen’s Blood player in the world but can’t seem to win even a single match or the haughty reigning champion that I managed to absolutely wreck in my first match against her due to lucky card draws on my part and her having absolutely no response for my brute force strategy. It’s a great little arc that made me completely forget that I was supposed to be wary of some monsters sneaking their way onto the ship that I’d have to battle in the engine room. Getting woken up in the middle of the night to fight a rolling battle around the ship, my party changing from one set of encounters to the next, was a fun way to end the arc of this particular chapter, even if it caught me off guard.

Then, when the dust had cleared and my party emerged into the merciful sun, I found the beach town I’d last seen as a collection of rough polygons expanded into the wonderous utopia I’d been looking for from the very start of my journey. There, before me, was a “Wheelie.” I only found this out later, as I was cruising around to find the last of the jobs I had to do in order to unlock all the beachwear options for my main crew, but the game makes these Wheelies extra enticing by offering a prize for riding them for four kilometers within the town. I had already passed that by the time I thought to speak to the desk attendant and was instantly presented with a slew of rewards I clicked past quickly so I could return to scooting about town, careening off people and planters, to find my last job–a piano recital that I did great at during practice and then flubbed a part near the end of the actual performance. While I didn’t get booed off the stage, thankfully, the only commentary I got was insincere platitudes that cut deeper than even derision could. Pity? At my beach party? No thank you.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun playing the tourist around town. Doing weird little minigames, ignoring the looming responsibilities weighing on both mine and Cloud’s mind. Sephiroth wasn’t going to hunt himself and taking responsibility for an ever-dwindling-but-always-at-least-five number of black-robed figures as they wandered around the world in a daze and were preyed upon by human and monster alike is a pretty stressful undertaking all on its own. Definitely spent as little time as I could thinking about that particular aspect of the game until, during what I’d hoped would be a fun, emotional-development-filled beach episode, the plot reasserted itself and I got to beat the shit out of a bunch of monsters and a massive robot with a beach umbrella. The most unfortunate fact of all is that I was not able to keep the beach umbrella as a weapon and my dreams of wandering the world in swim trunks while beating monsters to death with a beach umbrella have been shattered. I think I saw a tutorial that said I could wear whatever outfits I wanted once I cleared the game, so that’s my next goal. Clear the game so Swim Trunks Cloud, Sailor Uniform Barret, and Tied-Off Button-Up Tifa can wander around the world, doing the business of Avalanche or whatever else happens in this game after this chapter.

I wasn’t really a fan of how lasciviously the beach cinematic treated Tifa and Aerith in their beachwear. I’d have less of a problem with it if the game had ogled Cloud just as much. Or, like, spent some time on Barret as a massive muscly man in that sailor outfit. They had a lot of stuff they could work with and just focused on the women. Sure, you can find just as many background characters in the world who quietly express their desire for Cloud as for Tifa and Aerith (the rolling text on the screen, as you walk past NPCs in towns with their proximity-triggered chatter [there’s a specific word for this, but I can’t remember it or figure out what it is because my search results are filled with LLM trash, offers for LLMs to produce NPC dialogue, and reddit posts complaining about both of the above AND how boring the NPC chatter is in video games] makes it easy to count the responses), but the game itself only really lingers on Tifa and Aerith, which feels pretty telling about the actual attitudes of the people making the game. Plus, there’s revealing swimsuit options for both of them and absolutely no speedo option for Cloud. Absolutely rude. Let the man show off his quads. Dude is the king of squats but you’d never be able to tell because he’s always wearing baggy pants or these loose swim trunks. Let the man show off his stuff! Or, you know, don’t objectify any of your characters. Which feels like a something that’d make most people incredibly mad since the first reaction I ever saw about this series of remakes is people online complaining that Tifa’s boobs weren’t big enough. All those people probably loved this bit…

Anyway, the chapter was a lot of fun and even though I’ve been too burned out to play any more since I finished this chapter, I’m excited to eventually dig into chapter 7 and whatever comes next, plot-wise. Once I get through this bought of depression, anyway. I’m running out of other stuff to do, though, so I doubt it will take much longer until I’m back around to Final Fantasy 7 and working my way through the game. It’s just more difficult now that the excitement of riding “Wheelies” up and down the boardwalk is behind me.