While this might not be the last of these posts, today does mark the final official step in my journey to play some of each mainline Final Fantasy game this year. There could still be some interesting treats between now and the end of the year for the series that I would cover here, but that's looking less and less likely. In fact, I'm sure somewhere there are people who actually expect to be playing the FFVII Remake before the end of the year, but I'm not one of them. It does so happen that I saved Final Fantasy VII on PS4 for last, and though it's not the remake, it is still pretty nice. If you've enjoyed this series of posts and want more, please chime in with what you liked or what you'd want more of. If not, it's been a blast and thanks for reading.

If you want to catch up on my prior pieces, here's a link to Issue 36 from last week.

Final Fantasy VII (PS4)

I've spent a fair share of time with Final Fantasy VII, and while it's not a top tier Final Fantasy for me, I appreciate a lot of what it does. Since I've played the PS1 version on the original system and the PS1 Classic on PSP, I opted to try the new PS4 version with all of the lovely built-in cheats. It is the same exact game after all, so why not see if blasting through it with cheats on makes for a fun time?

The available cheats include turning off random encounters, boosting the game to three times the normal speed, having health constantly being restored, and the limit break meter always returning to max. All of these make it much quicker to get through the early parts of the game, as you can either bypass most combat or make it super easy. Doing this made the Midgar section a breeze, though having the game running at three-times the speed did make maneuvering through doors a little tricky. Thankfully, it's just a quick button press to toggle these on and off.

Other than making things easier, I've found that having the characters constantly able to use their limit breaks made them feel a bit different to the mostly cookie cutter builds they usually are. The biggest problem I've always had with FFVII is that character build creativity fell solely to materia and magic selection, since limit breaks were more of a rarity, so they felt lacking. While overpowered and not balanced for a challenge, having these up all the time at least made the characters more special, which I liked.

As I sit still listening to Final Fantasy VII's music (a fantastic soundtrack), I want to leave you all with some final words since this could be the final entry in the journey. I do once again want to thank everyone that followed this throughout the year. I plan to keep up my goal of playing some Final Fantasy each week, but my writing efforts are going to be channeled into different things unless the mood strikes me to return here. I still plan on checking out FFXV's Episode Ignis, so don't think that's going to get ignored, but for now this specific journey is most likely done. Thanks again and may we all have many more years of Final Fantasy to come.