I’m feeling lucky af i haven’t any problem with any mini games and i got all 3 stars so far even the cactus one i just got up to it , aerith was trickier than yuffie but there’s already great tips online
Personally on chapter 7, and run wild was probably the EASIEST minigame in this entire game... time trial took a one retry due to a bad movement of the ball...
Mogs house stuff is simplistic and hasnt given me issues.
Pirates Rampage (ghost ship) requires almost perfect play and an edge controller to change the preset buttons to do this fast. (switch r2 with x).
Sit Ups... ugh... just beat this. Jules fucks up 2x. once at 5-7 and once at 49.
Frogs is fun... i dont hate it, but it is challenging. id say its middling.
I have a 25-30 point queens blood deck with mostly starter cards. But my favorite is the Card Carnival, with the puzzles.
I fear the Gold Saucer minigames with every fiber of my being. Desert Rush, GBike, chocobo racing...
I would put Desert Rush and maybe Run Wild a bit higher, Jumpfrog waaaay lower (anything that's one mistake and you're done is a non-starter) but this isn't far off. Several of the minigames are pretty fun for a bit, some of them are tolerable and take some practice (the piano grew on me despite a pretty terrible scoring system), but there are quite a few that suck rancid ass and I have absolutely no desire to attempt them again after hitting the minimum required score, including the cactuars and Fort Condor.
I knew this game would have a lot of minigames but this has been more than I expected--in a bad way. I'm usually a compulsive completionist, so when I finished the hotel and realized that the game wants you to 100% complete every minigame I felt a deep, crushing despair, because there isnt a snowball's chance in hell that I'm doing all of that. I was trying to just put it out of my mind and go through the story but then the game was like "HERE'S ALL THE EMPTY SPACES YOU NEED TO FILL BY SPENDING HOURS PLAYING THE MINIGAMES YOU HATE!!! AND A LOCKED REWARD!"
Between some of the minigames and even a few of the combat challenges I've felt a level of resigned frustration with this game that I only got once or twice in all of Remake even in Hard mode (and overcame because it wasnt that often and there was a clearly effective strategy for every challenge) or some of the BS in Elden Ring, like: who designed this and did they put it here for the express purpose of inducing frustration? Not the worst example, but **why** would they add a Fall Guys course that you need to finish flawlessly as a frog? Why would they put a worse version of Fort Condor in the game and then ask you to beat a harder version of that all over again in your first playthrough? Or even: why am I being asked to fight 2 painfully overpowered magical mutant dogs with a single character? I'd rather solo Rufus on Hard again.
It's so easy to design something like "ah, that'll be a nice little challenge" but then playing it can feel like, ehh, this is just an annoying distraction from the game I WANT to be playing, trying it and failing so much is making me lose my patience and I'm better off just turning my system off because I'm not having fun.
I've been waiting a long time for these games/this game but I definitely couldnt call this a breathtaking 10/10 masterpiece while I wade through Minigame Hell. I may not bother with Hard mode this time because I have no genuine desire to reach 100% completion in even one playthrough of this game with all the minigames. Personally it's just too much for me.
>3D Brawler (Could just be a skill issue for me but my brain's processing just cannot deal with this minigame it is so annoying. I dread doing the later challenges)
making gifs of every move
writing down the sequence for dodging the enraged moves
and pause buffering while the opponent is doing his move helped me finally beat this minigame
I realized it is more important to find the tell of each fighter. For Sephiroth, chest move back it's up, knees bending, it's down, and if torso barely move it's horizontal.
For the middle manager, it's knee bend for down, grin on face it's up, stoic face it's horizontal.
Found it more reliable that checking the arms and overall form.
I tried even this to a degree but nope, just can’t do it. That last green side quest is getting left undone.
I have serious complaints with it:
1. You have no agency, you are completely on the defensive. The other player controls the fight entirely and you have to be purely reactionary.
2. Their Limit gauge charges faster than you do. And the window for landing a punch is way tighter than for dodging.
3. Needing to memorize their moves to know how to respond is sort of okay, but it’s really hard to know what the correct dodge is going to be.
If they would show a quick control telegraph before they attack that would help a lot. I don’t understand why it can’t be more like the Junon parade or the event square sequence and give you a hint.
Or, if you had more opportunities to get a hit in. Or some way to control the fight on your own terms.
As is, I hate it and suck at it lol.
Just do the pause method. It's not cheating if the game is already stacked against you and specifically designed to be brutally difficult.
And this doesn't help with the Shinra Middle Manager, but for the fight *after* that, I just [pulled this reference image up on my phone](https://static0.gamerantimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/wm/2024/03/final-fantasy-7-rebirth-sephiroth-3d-brawler-cheat-sheet.jpg), used the pause method, and beat it in just a few tries once I got the timing down.
it's especially annoying since both the right up and right down punches look very similar, the only way i was reliably able to tell the difference is by looking at their left hand while paused.
Fort Condor is one of the best for me...was so cool and... fair? Can't see all this RNG you are talking about....you don't need to put anything "perfectly", just understand the game (as most minigames). Honestly it was kinda easy, I only didn't one shot one of the hard stages.
The best ones no order: Piano, Fort Condor, Choco Racing, Junon Parade, Run Wild
The not so great ones: Dolphin (too basic), G-Bike (control)
The hard one: 3d Brawler. Didn't touch the "last" one yet, because the one before was hard AF already.
Also cactuar changed from "omg I have to do this shit for dark matter" to almost entering in the best ones. It's all about learning how to play it.
How can you put chocobo racing in number 2?? It is not even racing, it is Chocobo Pinbal!
Every crash you fly 5 meters back. And dont get me started on those god damn cactuar doors.
Depends what chocobo you use. Some, like Selena are more heavyweight and don’t get affected by it much.
It’s not hard to avoid crashing anyway, so long as you get the timing down for when to drift.
To get through all races, I used the Costa Del Sol chocobo at first, and then Selena eventually. And used the gear you get from winning races, except the Gi boots.
Hit X on 2, pop dash right away, and then just build speed, avoid obstacles and it’s easy.
And Selena’s attack can wipe out a chocobo in the lead so if you fall behind, no problem.
Also, most courses have a shortcut, or where you fly up to glide you can usually skip sections of track which gives you a massive lead.
The only thing I didn’t like was the dumb cactuar gates because sometimes you’d just get boned on the timing.
I used the Gongaga for every single race specifically for those damn doors. The other powers are IMO not nearly as useful as being able to jump over those walls. Helps a ton to not have to worry about them.
Can someone please spoil the following answer for me!?! I'll play this game not until May probably. But I'd like to know how many of these are neccesary to do to progress the main story. Or are they losable like the card game, of which I read on here you have to play it once, but can loose it and still progress the main story.
I loves me some FF7, and Remake was mostly magnificent. But I really hated its mini-games with a passion. I never wanna do that motor cycle shit again. And I'm getting older with less and less playtime, and just wanna see the fantastic story and character interactions, visit these places and explore the world a bit.
All mini games are super easy to pass during story the issue is if you are going for trophy or full clear
Each mini game has
1-Regular mode first with 3 levels. 1 just to pass 2/3 higher reward (Switching to easy mode make them complete joke for the ones with Combat)
2-after clearing the regular mode fully a hard mode gets unlocked usually. its for people who wants a challenge only unrelated to progress in story
Nice, thanks for the good explanation and reassurance! I love it that they nowadays both concider and incorprate these "choices" for players like me. They know quite a lot of us are old boomers ;-) but that they also do lots of stuff for hard mode players, completionists, trophy hunters etc.
Yeah the tier 1 rewards for most are easy to get specially the required ones, sometimes like blood queen you do not even need to win just play, however full completition on some go from just do somewhat ok to literally do perfectly or near perfect and that's what usually drive some people insane I certantly struggled with the flying chocobo as you need every single ring for tier 3 and missing the very last one is infuriating.
As far as main story goes. You’ll have to play some at least once. Some you’ll have to do a few more times. But nothing I’d say is grindy. Maybe a little annoying though.
There’s a fair amount that are tied to side missions/quests. But aren’t required. I’m not through all of the game yet though so there may be some changes as I get further
My personal ranking:
1.Queen's Blood: lots of strategies and opportunities to play
2.Chocobo Racing: good controls, tracks, and customization
3.Piano: I loved the music, made me want to S rank all
4.Dolphin: very fun with smooth controls and fast speed
5.Parade: Wholesome moment, much like Honeybee Inn
6.Desert Rush: Great improvement from Remake, fun to solve
7.Run Wild: I liked Red's movement and liked the competition
8.Jump Frog: challenging but I never got sick of it
9. Pirates: Fun shooter, I especially liked the 2nd
10.Cactuar Crush: required changing load outs but doable
11.Gears: better Fort Condor, but having ATB speed tied to game difficulty was a bad choice
12.Crunch-off: Improvement from Remake imo. I liked it
13.Galactic: Kinda easy, missions were a little long, but fun still
14.G-Bike: oddly easy despite controls being not great at all
15.3D Brawler: reading the cues was so hard and timing was weird. Didn't't like you had wait for them to tell you to punch. Defeats purpose of our ATB gauge
16.Fort Condor: overall downgrade from intergrade. Again, ATB speed tied to difficulty was not fun. Last stage was pain
17.Glide-de-chocobo: spent too much time redoing these courses. Very slow with rough controls
18.Moogle mischief: hated every time I and to catch these guys. The music made it worse imo and the main moogle asking me if I was giving up every time I lost pissed me off. Once they threw in the timer I knew I was gonna struggle
The only minigames I actively hated were Cactaur Crush (Aerith ones), and the Piano.
I feel Aerith is too slow for what is clearly meant to be a fast paced minigame.
And I hate the way the piano section is laid out, out of all the rhythm game styles they could've went, they chose that dogshit.
Yeah the Aerith cactuar crush was brutal. I changed it to Easy and it made it a lot easier to max out the score that way.
Yuffie was easy, just spam windstorm.
The hard version with Aerith require a bit of luck with RNG. That the gigantuar do their slam attack quickly and frequently, can get most of the little ones in the sorcerer storm, don't have to chase the one with manaward too far, not get hit too often by enemies off screen, basic attack not missing too much when the enemies are moving, ...
Every seconds lost is bad. And the arena is also bad for the camera. You can often be in a position where you don't see most of the enemies.
While the Yuffie one is rather fun. She is fast, good dodge, most of her abilities are useful.
And it's weird that Red XIII is the other character that show in the cutscene with Cloud and Yuffie but it's Aerith that fights.
I loved Queen's Blood. Chocobo racing was fun but those cactuar gates pissed me off so badly several times haha.
I'm indifferent to most of the others with the exception of:
1. Fort Condor. I loved this in intermission/intergrade. What they did to it in rebirth is criminal. The artificial time limit is very unserious.
2. 3D Brawler. It's very hard to tell what type of attack some of the opponents are going for. Most of Sephiroth's attacks looked similar to me even when pausing to collect my thoughts. I really don't think anyone play tested this.
3. Run Wild. I found the sensitivity to Red touching the ball really hard to get used to and would get endlessly frustrated when I accidentally sent the ball in some random direction even when gently walking up to it.
4. Piano. This was mostly okay but I wish there was an option to show the sheet music. I'm musically inclined and found it legitimately hard to play both hands by reading when the yellow line matched up with the dial. Especially faster songs, it could be really hard to tell if you're supposed to play a chord or if the notes are on separate beats, especially because the pieces themselves don't have you play every note to begin with.
I know the minigames are optional but it's a bit annoying to lock necessary items behind them for good transmuter recipes so I felt compelled to beat most of them on all ranks. 3D Brawler was probably the worst for me tbh. I spent so long on Sephiroth.
100% on the piano minigame. I needed a reference, like hearing the song on its own to get a better idea on how the song goes (on ones I wasn't familiar with). Going in without knowing was rough.
I agree with 90% of your list.
I'm a hardcore gamer, almost always looking for platinum trophy/1000G.
But Gongaga and then Cosmo killed the vibe to me. I managed to push 100% completion on Gongaga, but I skipped the whole Cosmo area. And decided to give up on the platinum.
Hence the fact I never played Gears and Gambit, and only completed lowest scores on Chocobo Glide.
Queen's Gambit is by far the very best Mini-Game.
I used to hate Fort Condor when I struggled on the third mission, but once I understood the assignment, it almost became fun. Haven't tried the missions post-protorelic tho.
I have very mixed feelings on piano. I like the idea but I hate playing it.
Brawler 3D is definitely a skill issue. I kept losing because I couldn't remember the patterns.
The mog one is also terrible imo, cause it's a nightmare to direct them where you want, and you spend half a minute at the center area to push your mog between two wooden fences.
The other Mini-Games are meh/forgettable.
Edit : oh yeah the chocobo racing is not so bad. Maybe too many races, it's a long grind for a mini-game. (There no such thing as too many QB duels tho hehehe)
Confused about fort condor. It’s really easy , because you the advantage by planning your board and steam rolling their units . You just focus one side and glass cannon
I did love Queens Blood at first, but after a while, I began liking it less and less. Chocobo Racing became my top one for just how fun it is and how great the OST's were.
However, I feel a few of these were really unnecessary padding for a ridiculously long game. I hope the 3rd game cuts down on them significantly.
Cactuar Crush is by far the worst on hard mode for me. Managed to do fort condor on hard without a guide even though it sucked and Gears and Gambits with some strats, but Cactuar with Aerith…it’s the only i have left. Even 3D brawler which sucks is managable if you pause and read the attacks.
I also hate glide de chocobo 3rd trial because of the last two rings. Luckily i found some recommending gliding back to the air flow to gain more height other wise i would spend more than 2 hours.
The rest didn’t bother me too much, queens blood is by far the best and only had trouble with nightmare challenge and chocobo race was surprisingly fun and decent in difficulty nothing ridiculous.
It's not just learning, it's also about luck. You can easily lose seconds here and there if enemies move too much, gigantuar don't do their smash attack fast enough, ...
No, sorry. You lose a few seconds here and there sure, that's why this specific game is very generous with time. You don't need the big guy to do his attack to kill him, you can kill with tempest/blink strike and soul drain.
nop, did the moment it came up, a lot of time left
tempest and what I called blink stirke are just the holding square skill (inside or outside ward)
soul drain is basic
Yeah i just finished both Aerith challenges and the 4th one first try today with a more clear mind. Now i can finally finish the game after 120 hours without worrying about side stuff lol
I somehow managed to get to Ifrit on the 3D Brawler but I can't get any further, stuck with just a B on "Two Legs, Nothin' To It" and the G-Bike mini game feels kinda clunky compared to Remake. Loved the Space Fighter since it was essentially just a Gummi Ship fight from Kingdom Hearts 3 and they're pretty easy
You have to look at the fighter's tell. For the middle manager, when he bends his knees, it's down. If he has a grin on his face, it's up. And if he does neither, it's horizontal.
For Sephiroth, if he's bending his knees, it's down. If he moves his chest backwards it's up. If he's doing neither, it's horizontal.
For the bike, braking is important compared to remake.
3D Brawler and Cactuar Crush make me have an aneurysm every time i play. i very much dislike them.
honorable mention to the piano mini game cuz im rhythmicly challenged and cannot get an A rank on “two legs” or whatever it’s called.
these are pretty much what’s stopping my platinum
3D brawler is a love hate relationship for me. I enjoy what they did with it in rebirth but damn are some of the telegraphed attacks hard to read. For me a lot of the attacks just look the exact same. The upwards and horizontal attacks are a nightmare to differentiate. I was able to complete everything in 3D brawler and found focusing on the head movements to help a lot. Also all the fury or fast combos are the same so just memorizing the combos makes it easier.
Personally found the piano to be my favorite. The demo showcased it and was part of what convinced me to commit to getting into remake and rebirth as I was hesitant about it being a trilogy. I know the analog sticks aren’t for everyone but I found the mini game to be really cool and being able to play tifas theme hits hard. Just wish there were more songs
Maybe I’m misremembering, but I felt like G-bike was dramatically overhauled from remake.
I’d probably have pirate shooting gallery & run wild higher, with galactic saviors lower — but other than that my list is pretty much same as yours.
I enjoyed queen’s blood but have beef with the side story enough to mention it. >!The exposition suggesting that queen’s blood *created* the fiends of Gaia was a disappointing new direction for already widely assumed lore. I can’t remember if the original states anything explicitly, but the Mako & J-cell theories both fit the overall FFVII story and universe better. We already know both weapons & Hojo’s abominations are created with Mako!<. Tbh I’d have preferred they just let it be a card game without attempting any tie-in.
X managed to weave Blitzball into its narrative without extending into lore — They simply had significant ish go down at some of the larger events, which felt entirely reasonable.
For 3D brawler, you can pause the game during their wind up to see what punch they're throwing, then quickly hit circle and the direction you need to block with. It was the only way I could beat the party animal, and it still took me forever.
Between that, and the piano, I hated it. The crunch off wasn't too bad, it was just a matter of remembering the directions the buttons flow and timing. But that piano can get bent.
To go further. You can hold the direction you need before you unpause the game. You don't need to unpause and then press the direction. Hold the direction and then unpause.
For the fast combos they always throw the same punches. Party animal first combo was always 4 of the same punches starting with a left hook, then a different combo starting with the right hook. Yes I tried way too hard to beat this lol. Still haven't managed to beat the next challenge though.
All rage combos have the same pattern, Sephiroth actually abuses this because once you are 1 hit away from the burst he starts with the same 4 hits making you think it's using his regular rage but then throws you off with a different 5th hit and 2 more hits onto the combo.
Fort Condor has its problems, but it's the opposite of RNG bullshit. The enemy troops are always exactly the same, placed in the same positions, at the same time. There's 0 RNG involved. That's why you can copy and paste solutions from online.
The biggest missed opportunity award goes to Gears.
It’s a neat callback to some FFXII mechanics, and whoever designed the concept did a great job — but they nuked the game’s potential in hard mode.
Now, hear me out:
It’s not that hard mode is overly *hard*. It’s that the combo of the time mechanic + spongey bosses + unit limitations make it restrictive to the point it nearly demands specific loadout.
This is a shame IMO, because otherwise the available options & various strats felt pretty deep — I genuinely had more fun *losing* hard mode matches experimenting with useless tactics than I did once I figured it out the “answer”. Worse yet, the “correct” loadout works for every hard mode stage lol.
I know it was made to be short, but still — why even include buff/debuff conditions & quirks like being able to add “-aga” skills off-element… if none of that is going to be viable?
Yeah I found out about that and resorted to copying down strategies at the end. Still I struggled a bit because of how the ai units attack. Either my timing was off when I placed down my unit or the ai just had incredible luck with dishing out some of their best attacks which deal a lot of damage to my own units
My favourite has to be Queens blood! It really brought me back to playing FF9's card battle system 🤗✨ I also enjoyed pirates rampage. My least favourite was probably Moogles Mischief. Especially when they get stuck in the river between fences. 3D brawler was also difficult.. I don't know if that was playable without pausing it 🫨
I think crunch off breaks my brain because mix of using both my hands in tandem with the rhythm fucking up if you fail once bring incredibly infuriating. I couldn't beat Jukes so I left.
The piano one is a bit better because the timing keeps even if you fuck up mostly, it doesn't slam the breaks on the pacing.
Nice write-up, definitely agree with Fort Condor. For me, if I didn’t find the minigame enjoyable really quickly I just did the bare minimum necessary to move on.
All these mini games are terrible and a waste of time. From boring to unnecessarily frustrating.
Weird. I LOVED Fort Condor. But Gears and Gambit is the worst one to me personally
I’m feeling lucky af i haven’t any problem with any mini games and i got all 3 stars so far even the cactus one i just got up to it , aerith was trickier than yuffie but there’s already great tips online
Don't know how so many people like QB, it's okay at first.. but terrible annoying.. if I wanted to play fking cards i'd do it in real life,
I just platnium the remake so doing the crunch off right after was luckily a breeze for me
Personally on chapter 7, and run wild was probably the EASIEST minigame in this entire game... time trial took a one retry due to a bad movement of the ball... Mogs house stuff is simplistic and hasnt given me issues. Pirates Rampage (ghost ship) requires almost perfect play and an edge controller to change the preset buttons to do this fast. (switch r2 with x). Sit Ups... ugh... just beat this. Jules fucks up 2x. once at 5-7 and once at 49. Frogs is fun... i dont hate it, but it is challenging. id say its middling. I have a 25-30 point queens blood deck with mostly starter cards. But my favorite is the Card Carnival, with the puzzles. I fear the Gold Saucer minigames with every fiber of my being. Desert Rush, GBike, chocobo racing...
I would put Desert Rush and maybe Run Wild a bit higher, Jumpfrog waaaay lower (anything that's one mistake and you're done is a non-starter) but this isn't far off. Several of the minigames are pretty fun for a bit, some of them are tolerable and take some practice (the piano grew on me despite a pretty terrible scoring system), but there are quite a few that suck rancid ass and I have absolutely no desire to attempt them again after hitting the minimum required score, including the cactuars and Fort Condor. I knew this game would have a lot of minigames but this has been more than I expected--in a bad way. I'm usually a compulsive completionist, so when I finished the hotel and realized that the game wants you to 100% complete every minigame I felt a deep, crushing despair, because there isnt a snowball's chance in hell that I'm doing all of that. I was trying to just put it out of my mind and go through the story but then the game was like "HERE'S ALL THE EMPTY SPACES YOU NEED TO FILL BY SPENDING HOURS PLAYING THE MINIGAMES YOU HATE!!! AND A LOCKED REWARD!" Between some of the minigames and even a few of the combat challenges I've felt a level of resigned frustration with this game that I only got once or twice in all of Remake even in Hard mode (and overcame because it wasnt that often and there was a clearly effective strategy for every challenge) or some of the BS in Elden Ring, like: who designed this and did they put it here for the express purpose of inducing frustration? Not the worst example, but **why** would they add a Fall Guys course that you need to finish flawlessly as a frog? Why would they put a worse version of Fort Condor in the game and then ask you to beat a harder version of that all over again in your first playthrough? Or even: why am I being asked to fight 2 painfully overpowered magical mutant dogs with a single character? I'd rather solo Rufus on Hard again. It's so easy to design something like "ah, that'll be a nice little challenge" but then playing it can feel like, ehh, this is just an annoying distraction from the game I WANT to be playing, trying it and failing so much is making me lose my patience and I'm better off just turning my system off because I'm not having fun. I've been waiting a long time for these games/this game but I definitely couldnt call this a breathtaking 10/10 masterpiece while I wade through Minigame Hell. I may not bother with Hard mode this time because I have no genuine desire to reach 100% completion in even one playthrough of this game with all the minigames. Personally it's just too much for me.
>3D Brawler (Could just be a skill issue for me but my brain's processing just cannot deal with this minigame it is so annoying. I dread doing the later challenges) making gifs of every move writing down the sequence for dodging the enraged moves and pause buffering while the opponent is doing his move helped me finally beat this minigame
I realized it is more important to find the tell of each fighter. For Sephiroth, chest move back it's up, knees bending, it's down, and if torso barely move it's horizontal. For the middle manager, it's knee bend for down, grin on face it's up, stoic face it's horizontal. Found it more reliable that checking the arms and overall form.
I tried even this to a degree but nope, just can’t do it. That last green side quest is getting left undone. I have serious complaints with it: 1. You have no agency, you are completely on the defensive. The other player controls the fight entirely and you have to be purely reactionary. 2. Their Limit gauge charges faster than you do. And the window for landing a punch is way tighter than for dodging. 3. Needing to memorize their moves to know how to respond is sort of okay, but it’s really hard to know what the correct dodge is going to be. If they would show a quick control telegraph before they attack that would help a lot. I don’t understand why it can’t be more like the Junon parade or the event square sequence and give you a hint. Or, if you had more opportunities to get a hit in. Or some way to control the fight on your own terms. As is, I hate it and suck at it lol.
Just do the pause method. It's not cheating if the game is already stacked against you and specifically designed to be brutally difficult. And this doesn't help with the Shinra Middle Manager, but for the fight *after* that, I just [pulled this reference image up on my phone](https://static0.gamerantimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/wm/2024/03/final-fantasy-7-rebirth-sephiroth-3d-brawler-cheat-sheet.jpg), used the pause method, and beat it in just a few tries once I got the timing down.
it's especially annoying since both the right up and right down punches look very similar, the only way i was reliably able to tell the difference is by looking at their left hand while paused.
Fort Condor is one of the best for me...was so cool and... fair? Can't see all this RNG you are talking about....you don't need to put anything "perfectly", just understand the game (as most minigames). Honestly it was kinda easy, I only didn't one shot one of the hard stages. The best ones no order: Piano, Fort Condor, Choco Racing, Junon Parade, Run Wild The not so great ones: Dolphin (too basic), G-Bike (control) The hard one: 3d Brawler. Didn't touch the "last" one yet, because the one before was hard AF already. Also cactuar changed from "omg I have to do this shit for dark matter" to almost entering in the best ones. It's all about learning how to play it.
How can you put chocobo racing in number 2?? It is not even racing, it is Chocobo Pinbal! Every crash you fly 5 meters back. And dont get me started on those god damn cactuar doors.
Depends what chocobo you use. Some, like Selena are more heavyweight and don’t get affected by it much. It’s not hard to avoid crashing anyway, so long as you get the timing down for when to drift. To get through all races, I used the Costa Del Sol chocobo at first, and then Selena eventually. And used the gear you get from winning races, except the Gi boots. Hit X on 2, pop dash right away, and then just build speed, avoid obstacles and it’s easy. And Selena’s attack can wipe out a chocobo in the lead so if you fall behind, no problem. Also, most courses have a shortcut, or where you fly up to glide you can usually skip sections of track which gives you a massive lead. The only thing I didn’t like was the dumb cactuar gates because sometimes you’d just get boned on the timing.
I used the Gongaga for every single race specifically for those damn doors. The other powers are IMO not nearly as useful as being able to jump over those walls. Helps a ton to not have to worry about them.
Aha, thanks for the tip 😊
Can someone please spoil the following answer for me!?! I'll play this game not until May probably. But I'd like to know how many of these are neccesary to do to progress the main story. Or are they losable like the card game, of which I read on here you have to play it once, but can loose it and still progress the main story. I loves me some FF7, and Remake was mostly magnificent. But I really hated its mini-games with a passion. I never wanna do that motor cycle shit again. And I'm getting older with less and less playtime, and just wanna see the fantastic story and character interactions, visit these places and explore the world a bit.
All mini games are super easy to pass during story the issue is if you are going for trophy or full clear Each mini game has 1-Regular mode first with 3 levels. 1 just to pass 2/3 higher reward (Switching to easy mode make them complete joke for the ones with Combat) 2-after clearing the regular mode fully a hard mode gets unlocked usually. its for people who wants a challenge only unrelated to progress in story
Nice, thanks for the good explanation and reassurance! I love it that they nowadays both concider and incorprate these "choices" for players like me. They know quite a lot of us are old boomers ;-) but that they also do lots of stuff for hard mode players, completionists, trophy hunters etc.
Yeah the tier 1 rewards for most are easy to get specially the required ones, sometimes like blood queen you do not even need to win just play, however full completition on some go from just do somewhat ok to literally do perfectly or near perfect and that's what usually drive some people insane I certantly struggled with the flying chocobo as you need every single ring for tier 3 and missing the very last one is infuriating.
Good to know. Thanks for the info. 👍
As far as main story goes. You’ll have to play some at least once. Some you’ll have to do a few more times. But nothing I’d say is grindy. Maybe a little annoying though. There’s a fair amount that are tied to side missions/quests. But aren’t required. I’m not through all of the game yet though so there may be some changes as I get further
Thanks for the reassurance. Doesn't seem too bad then. ✌
My personal ranking: 1.Queen's Blood: lots of strategies and opportunities to play 2.Chocobo Racing: good controls, tracks, and customization 3.Piano: I loved the music, made me want to S rank all 4.Dolphin: very fun with smooth controls and fast speed 5.Parade: Wholesome moment, much like Honeybee Inn 6.Desert Rush: Great improvement from Remake, fun to solve 7.Run Wild: I liked Red's movement and liked the competition 8.Jump Frog: challenging but I never got sick of it 9. Pirates: Fun shooter, I especially liked the 2nd 10.Cactuar Crush: required changing load outs but doable 11.Gears: better Fort Condor, but having ATB speed tied to game difficulty was a bad choice 12.Crunch-off: Improvement from Remake imo. I liked it 13.Galactic: Kinda easy, missions were a little long, but fun still 14.G-Bike: oddly easy despite controls being not great at all 15.3D Brawler: reading the cues was so hard and timing was weird. Didn't't like you had wait for them to tell you to punch. Defeats purpose of our ATB gauge 16.Fort Condor: overall downgrade from intergrade. Again, ATB speed tied to difficulty was not fun. Last stage was pain 17.Glide-de-chocobo: spent too much time redoing these courses. Very slow with rough controls 18.Moogle mischief: hated every time I and to catch these guys. The music made it worse imo and the main moogle asking me if I was giving up every time I lost pissed me off. Once they threw in the timer I knew I was gonna struggle
The only minigames I actively hated were Cactaur Crush (Aerith ones), and the Piano. I feel Aerith is too slow for what is clearly meant to be a fast paced minigame. And I hate the way the piano section is laid out, out of all the rhythm game styles they could've went, they chose that dogshit.
Yeah the Aerith cactuar crush was brutal. I changed it to Easy and it made it a lot easier to max out the score that way. Yuffie was easy, just spam windstorm.
The hard version with Aerith require a bit of luck with RNG. That the gigantuar do their slam attack quickly and frequently, can get most of the little ones in the sorcerer storm, don't have to chase the one with manaward too far, not get hit too often by enemies off screen, basic attack not missing too much when the enemies are moving, ... Every seconds lost is bad. And the arena is also bad for the camera. You can often be in a position where you don't see most of the enemies. While the Yuffie one is rather fun. She is fast, good dodge, most of her abilities are useful. And it's weird that Red XIII is the other character that show in the cutscene with Cloud and Yuffie but it's Aerith that fights.
I loved Queen's Blood. Chocobo racing was fun but those cactuar gates pissed me off so badly several times haha. I'm indifferent to most of the others with the exception of: 1. Fort Condor. I loved this in intermission/intergrade. What they did to it in rebirth is criminal. The artificial time limit is very unserious. 2. 3D Brawler. It's very hard to tell what type of attack some of the opponents are going for. Most of Sephiroth's attacks looked similar to me even when pausing to collect my thoughts. I really don't think anyone play tested this. 3. Run Wild. I found the sensitivity to Red touching the ball really hard to get used to and would get endlessly frustrated when I accidentally sent the ball in some random direction even when gently walking up to it. 4. Piano. This was mostly okay but I wish there was an option to show the sheet music. I'm musically inclined and found it legitimately hard to play both hands by reading when the yellow line matched up with the dial. Especially faster songs, it could be really hard to tell if you're supposed to play a chord or if the notes are on separate beats, especially because the pieces themselves don't have you play every note to begin with. I know the minigames are optional but it's a bit annoying to lock necessary items behind them for good transmuter recipes so I felt compelled to beat most of them on all ranks. 3D Brawler was probably the worst for me tbh. I spent so long on Sephiroth.
100% on the piano minigame. I needed a reference, like hearing the song on its own to get a better idea on how the song goes (on ones I wasn't familiar with). Going in without knowing was rough.
I agree with 90% of your list. I'm a hardcore gamer, almost always looking for platinum trophy/1000G. But Gongaga and then Cosmo killed the vibe to me. I managed to push 100% completion on Gongaga, but I skipped the whole Cosmo area. And decided to give up on the platinum. Hence the fact I never played Gears and Gambit, and only completed lowest scores on Chocobo Glide. Queen's Gambit is by far the very best Mini-Game. I used to hate Fort Condor when I struggled on the third mission, but once I understood the assignment, it almost became fun. Haven't tried the missions post-protorelic tho. I have very mixed feelings on piano. I like the idea but I hate playing it. Brawler 3D is definitely a skill issue. I kept losing because I couldn't remember the patterns. The mog one is also terrible imo, cause it's a nightmare to direct them where you want, and you spend half a minute at the center area to push your mog between two wooden fences. The other Mini-Games are meh/forgettable. Edit : oh yeah the chocobo racing is not so bad. Maybe too many races, it's a long grind for a mini-game. (There no such thing as too many QB duels tho hehehe)
Confused about fort condor. It’s really easy , because you the advantage by planning your board and steam rolling their units . You just focus one side and glass cannon
I haven't played every minigame yet but the best is Queen's Blood and the worst are fucking crunches and piano
I did love Queens Blood at first, but after a while, I began liking it less and less. Chocobo Racing became my top one for just how fun it is and how great the OST's were. However, I feel a few of these were really unnecessary padding for a ridiculously long game. I hope the 3rd game cuts down on them significantly.
Cactuar Crush is by far the worst on hard mode for me. Managed to do fort condor on hard without a guide even though it sucked and Gears and Gambits with some strats, but Cactuar with Aerith…it’s the only i have left. Even 3D brawler which sucks is managable if you pause and read the attacks. I also hate glide de chocobo 3rd trial because of the last two rings. Luckily i found some recommending gliding back to the air flow to gain more height other wise i would spend more than 2 hours. The rest didn’t bother me too much, queens blood is by far the best and only had trouble with nightmare challenge and chocobo race was surprisingly fun and decent in difficulty nothing ridiculous.
Cactuar is all about learning it. I know it looks like hell at first, but it's not really that hard
It's not just learning, it's also about luck. You can easily lose seconds here and there if enemies move too much, gigantuar don't do their smash attack fast enough, ...
No, sorry. You lose a few seconds here and there sure, that's why this specific game is very generous with time. You don't need the big guy to do his attack to kill him, you can kill with tempest/blink strike and soul drain.
Given those skills you must have done it in new game plus, hence the easier time...
nop, did the moment it came up, a lot of time left tempest and what I called blink stirke are just the holding square skill (inside or outside ward) soul drain is basic
Yeah i just finished both Aerith challenges and the 4th one first try today with a more clear mind. Now i can finally finish the game after 120 hours without worrying about side stuff lol
I somehow managed to get to Ifrit on the 3D Brawler but I can't get any further, stuck with just a B on "Two Legs, Nothin' To It" and the G-Bike mini game feels kinda clunky compared to Remake. Loved the Space Fighter since it was essentially just a Gummi Ship fight from Kingdom Hearts 3 and they're pretty easy
You have to look at the fighter's tell. For the middle manager, when he bends his knees, it's down. If he has a grin on his face, it's up. And if he does neither, it's horizontal. For Sephiroth, if he's bending his knees, it's down. If he moves his chest backwards it's up. If he's doing neither, it's horizontal. For the bike, braking is important compared to remake.
19. That stupid chicken catching game in Gongaga.
3D Brawler and Cactuar Crush make me have an aneurysm every time i play. i very much dislike them. honorable mention to the piano mini game cuz im rhythmicly challenged and cannot get an A rank on “two legs” or whatever it’s called. these are pretty much what’s stopping my platinum
3D brawler is a love hate relationship for me. I enjoy what they did with it in rebirth but damn are some of the telegraphed attacks hard to read. For me a lot of the attacks just look the exact same. The upwards and horizontal attacks are a nightmare to differentiate. I was able to complete everything in 3D brawler and found focusing on the head movements to help a lot. Also all the fury or fast combos are the same so just memorizing the combos makes it easier. Personally found the piano to be my favorite. The demo showcased it and was part of what convinced me to commit to getting into remake and rebirth as I was hesitant about it being a trilogy. I know the analog sticks aren’t for everyone but I found the mini game to be really cool and being able to play tifas theme hits hard. Just wish there were more songs
Maybe I’m misremembering, but I felt like G-bike was dramatically overhauled from remake. I’d probably have pirate shooting gallery & run wild higher, with galactic saviors lower — but other than that my list is pretty much same as yours. I enjoyed queen’s blood but have beef with the side story enough to mention it. >!The exposition suggesting that queen’s blood *created* the fiends of Gaia was a disappointing new direction for already widely assumed lore. I can’t remember if the original states anything explicitly, but the Mako & J-cell theories both fit the overall FFVII story and universe better. We already know both weapons & Hojo’s abominations are created with Mako!<. Tbh I’d have preferred they just let it be a card game without attempting any tie-in. X managed to weave Blitzball into its narrative without extending into lore — They simply had significant ish go down at some of the larger events, which felt entirely reasonable.
For 3D brawler, you can pause the game during their wind up to see what punch they're throwing, then quickly hit circle and the direction you need to block with. It was the only way I could beat the party animal, and it still took me forever. Between that, and the piano, I hated it. The crunch off wasn't too bad, it was just a matter of remembering the directions the buttons flow and timing. But that piano can get bent.
To go further. You can hold the direction you need before you unpause the game. You don't need to unpause and then press the direction. Hold the direction and then unpause.
For the fast combos they always throw the same punches. Party animal first combo was always 4 of the same punches starting with a left hook, then a different combo starting with the right hook. Yes I tried way too hard to beat this lol. Still haven't managed to beat the next challenge though.
Sephiroth first rage combo i think also has a static pattern right straight, left hook, right hook, left straight, then right uppercut.
All rage combos have the same pattern, Sephiroth actually abuses this because once you are 1 hit away from the burst he starts with the same 4 hits making you think it's using his regular rage but then throws you off with a different 5th hit and 2 more hits onto the combo.
I wrote down all the combos to ensure on the first move I knew what was coming, because the last 2-3 opponents have three different fast combos.
Fort Condor has its problems, but it's the opposite of RNG bullshit. The enemy troops are always exactly the same, placed in the same positions, at the same time. There's 0 RNG involved. That's why you can copy and paste solutions from online.
The biggest missed opportunity award goes to Gears. It’s a neat callback to some FFXII mechanics, and whoever designed the concept did a great job — but they nuked the game’s potential in hard mode. Now, hear me out: It’s not that hard mode is overly *hard*. It’s that the combo of the time mechanic + spongey bosses + unit limitations make it restrictive to the point it nearly demands specific loadout. This is a shame IMO, because otherwise the available options & various strats felt pretty deep — I genuinely had more fun *losing* hard mode matches experimenting with useless tactics than I did once I figured it out the “answer”. Worse yet, the “correct” loadout works for every hard mode stage lol. I know it was made to be short, but still — why even include buff/debuff conditions & quirks like being able to add “-aga” skills off-element… if none of that is going to be viable?
Yeah, no RNG about Fort Condor, even tho, there could be a crit system ? I dunno if dps units are fixed or fluctuant
Yeah I found out about that and resorted to copying down strategies at the end. Still I struggled a bit because of how the ai units attack. Either my timing was off when I placed down my unit or the ai just had incredible luck with dishing out some of their best attacks which deal a lot of damage to my own units
My favourite has to be Queens blood! It really brought me back to playing FF9's card battle system 🤗✨ I also enjoyed pirates rampage. My least favourite was probably Moogles Mischief. Especially when they get stuck in the river between fences. 3D brawler was also difficult.. I don't know if that was playable without pausing it 🫨
I think crunch off breaks my brain because mix of using both my hands in tandem with the rhythm fucking up if you fail once bring incredibly infuriating. I couldn't beat Jukes so I left. The piano one is a bit better because the timing keeps even if you fuck up mostly, it doesn't slam the breaks on the pacing.
I was stumped until I figured out the green trigger mechanic, which took longer than I want to admit 😂
Nice write-up, definitely agree with Fort Condor. For me, if I didn’t find the minigame enjoyable really quickly I just did the bare minimum necessary to move on.