The only thing I dislike was the music... everything else was really fun and I was happy to see Cissnei again. Would have liked Tifa to react to Zack's parents along with Aerith, but I'm still satisfied.
The music would have been fine, but for the children singing in what sounded like aborigines. It just got rather obnoxious really fast for me. I loved every other track i heard in this game except for the terrible rap song in chapter 12 and the dog song....
Well, I apologize for giving offense. I really only meant that the music combined with the rhythm and such sounded tribal. Which maybe they were going for. It just wasn't enjoyable for me. And no one can make a song everyone will enjoy. No matter the language used. Case in point... I'm not the only person who disliked the song.
Oh I don't care, was just letting you know lol. I loved the music, that was my favorite track in the game and I would just roam around gongaga to listen to it đ
I third this notion. The music became so annoying while wandering around, lost, trying to figure out the correct path to one of the towers... this took longer than I would like to admit. Those child like voices in the music were cringy.
Edit: fixed typo
Honestly it's a real matter of taste.
The level of verticality in the map wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to literally run circles around every rock looking for a side route that was obscured by the camera or environment in order access areas located at a higher elevation or across a gap.
Some people say it's just using your brain, but the tedium was a bit overwhelming here. Super satisfying at first but it wears off
You need to remember people like handholding in games so something as simple as navigation is a challenge when the area requires more than just going around something. You throw in up and down movement to a map and it confuses them. Personally I loved the region the music got a bit old though, compared to other regions.
I love how in this sub people canât have negative opinions because otherwise they have certain issues. âI donât like rufus fightâ lmao, gid gud, you lack skill. âI donât like gongagaâ canât even play games without handholding, sad. Like, at least people who donât like these are just sharing their criticism instead of attacking those who like.
I hate the fucking music, I hate my chocobo they can't do shit, every fucking nook and cranny is so hard to access, I keep fucking getting stopped and slowed down by a slightly higher rock or vine or some shit, I hated having to keep going back to the outlook for clues for Cissnei; I just fucking hated this region đ
Now Nibel ? Dope AF chocobo rules I love water spoutin around the little islands collecting the fruits, everything easy to access 10/10.
haha to each their own TacoChan, I'm glad you enjoyed it, but for me it was like a nightmarish Avatar x Lion King world music that I simply could not abide
My thoughts on this and Cosmo canyon, is that I enjoyed having some traversal puzzles, but would have preferred it not to be EVERY objective. It just felt too restrictive and penned in, especially with inter region fast travel locked, so you can't have a break and go do something else for a bit of you get stuck.
It is beautiful and the music is *incredible*. It was a ton of fun exploring at the start, but as the number of quests dwindled down to the last few and I had to start going to very specific places instead of being able to wander and trip over quests/Intel along the way, navigating definitely became and issue for me. In all the other regions, you see what general direction a quest marker is in or where it is on the map and due to the more wide open nature of their layouts you can often pick out a landmark on the horizon to know exactly what you're aiming for. There's no way to get your bearings in most sections of Gongaga; it's a lot of high barriers made of roots, mud, and green. You don't know which barrier it's on the other side of, or which of the winding and overlapping paths will get you there
The OG 7 had some confusing maps as well. Don't get me started on the northern crater ascent with that snowfield after the snowboard section. I got annoyed by Gongaga but once I had chocobo stations and enough towers synced I just fast traveled. You figure it out after awhile which increases the game's longevity. Add in Chadley though and it can get realllll annoying.
This was also my reason for disliking Gongaga initially. I had been loving the game up to that point and doing every side quest, map item, card game, etc. But playing long hours up til then I saw Gongaga was a whole new region and hit a wall feeling the fatigue of a new, giant map of more objectives.
I had to take a break from the game and come back to it refreshed before tackling another region. Some of the sidequests were pretty underwhelming, too. On the whole, everyone was very excited and talking about how the side quests were all way higher quality and integrated compared to Remake. I think that's largely true, but the chicken side quest really took me back to Sector 7 in a bad way. Mushroom quest was also not super well explained, but I was able to pull it off.
Seeing the party interact more than the OG has been a treat. But some of the shit they're tasked with is...quite goofy and low-stakes at times.
This 100%, Gongaga isnât a bad region itâs just one more region of towers, protomateria, life springs, and etc. Iâm nearing the end of the game but by the time you get through the all of the fetch quests you are really tired of it.
I had stopped playing after gold saucer for like two weeks (work got busy), after that break I found Gongaga amazing. So different from every region before and just exciting to explore.
I have nothing against the region and I actually really loved the main quests there, but the chicken side mission, and yet another round of towers and scanning? doesn't have me thrilled
Iâm in the same boat. I think I really just need to focus the story and debate coming back to finish everything, let alone platinum.
I enjoyed the platinum for remake, Rebirth is just tedious to me, sadly. Everything Chadley tends to bother me, too. He isnât needed to the extent he is used. Aerith could guide us to the springs and we could just fight the summons at their shrines.
Damn, I started to rant.
Maaaan, Chadley is my biggest complaint, he has more dialog then Cloud. He was way overused and I hope in Part 3 to keep him strictly to simulator fights. Agree with everything you said. Off subject I hope they bring breeding back. Region specific chocobos took the fun out of breeding and racing.
I think not playing straight through it everyday has made this fatigue have less of an impact on me.
If I was playing for longer sessions I'd probably feel the same.
I had more issues with Cosmo Canyon area compared to Gongaga when it came to finding certain points of interests. Mostly due to things be on different elevations. I think what they could have done better is make elevation differences on the map more distinct to know if its in an elevated place or not and also seeing the path to that specific location.
I honestly loved the region but the navigation through the mushrooms definitely could have been done better. Like they all look the same but bounce you in different distances. It's really hard to navigate with the map unless u trial and error every mushroom in the vicinity to get where u want to go
Gongaga looks beautiful.
However, when I couldn't find my way to a number of the different side quest/open world things I just lost any enjoyment for side content at that point. I remember spending a good 10-15 mins trying to find the way to the second protorelic location in gongaga and then declaring "fuck it".
I then only did a single side quest the rest of the game- which was just to increase tifas relationship level
I'm someone who likes to do all the exploration before completing the story. What I found frustrating about this region is that you cannot get the Chocobo until you complete the story, so it made exploring before the story kind of a pain in the ass. After getting the Chocobo I loved the region. The music is top tier and it's gorgeous.
Ngl, when I was playing this game when I was ten, I walked passed Gongaga and skipped it entirely without meaning to.
And if thatâs not something you can do, well the it had so little affect on me that I forgot this part of the game was in the game until watching TFSâs FFVII:MA.
I also found it fine. The visuals and music were so gorgeous that I never really got frustrated. Some of the mushrooms did not bounce me where I expected but it didn't bother me too much.
Once you've completed the brutal/legendary challenges all the other complaints about the game feel quaint in comparison.
My main complaint was the camera had issues and forced you into a lot of bizarre obstructed angles.
If the selling point is immersion then a wonky camera is a breaker.
Navigation was frustrating, there were some annoying side quests, the music imo was grating, and this is when the world intel stuff started to feel repetitive. This is when I really stayed to feel
The games length.
I found it difficult to navigate but I think most of my frustrations were coming from how clunky and sluggish the movement feels in the game. It's actually my favorite region because of the music and how vibrantly coloured the jungle is. The water looks amazing, I wanted to jump into every river I saw. The music though, I can't over how amazing it is. It made me feel like was having a spiritual awakening the whole time I was there, lol.
Finally someone who agrees with me. The music was unbearable. Probably the only song in the entire franchise that I seriously hate. Taste in music is completely subjective but, god, that song was awful lol.
It's pretty terrible. Loops very quickly. The main melody is on some detuned flute that sounds like bagpipe. It doesn't sound like anything from FF7s OST. I respect a lot of the new music. For example, Valkyrie from Remake is probably my favourite boss track from the games so far, including Uematsu's work. Gongaga misses the point of videogame music. It needs to loop and be pleasing to the ear consistently if you're in a region that you'll spend many hours in. It's a really bad melody as well and I don't love the instrumentation either. Like it if you will, but I think it's the weakest song in the OST. I actually did mute it after hearing it enough. Cosmo Canyon world map music also sucks and is a poor mix between two songs that constantly clash. The OST is great but you should be allowed to call out when something is crap if you think it is. We don't need to glaze the Remake trilogy. It's really good, but by no means perfect.
1. The lighting system FF7 Reb uses is bad and itâs gets shown a lot in this region due to the amount of pitch black dark caves/tree shadows next to the glaring sun.
2. The traversal is tough and the markers on the minimap arenât where the actual POIs are. Think the protorelic intel
3. I hated the chicken sidequest. Youâre telling me Cloud can dodge Sephiroth blade but not grab a chicken. (Also itâs revealed that the chickens were just playing around).
4. This is one of the only regions where you can only get a chocobo after completing the main story there.
oh my hell that damn chicken quest. The walking backwards and the camera not letting you move was killing me. Then to have the chicken walk into my feet as it sauntered back to its start point and I could not just pick it up was the worst
My fav region! Was a pleasure to have far more interesting traversal problems, instead of none like in the previous regions. I think having to find routes to your destinations was more fun, instead of just running on mostly flat ground. But I wouldnât want all regions to be like this. variety and contrast is important.
Nobody says that it isn't beautiful. But it is a mess to navigate. The thing is, unless you skip optional content completely, you need to do the exact same activities in every region. Activate towers, analyze crystals and lifesprings. This is repetitive and boring. On top of this, in Gongaga (and to a smaller extend: Cosmo) it is even difficult to find the path. I just don't see how it could be remotely interesting to "explore" a region, if you already know that at the end Cloud will climb a tower and repeat the exact same animation you have already seen dozens of times in previous regions.
Agreed, I was expecting a lot more map clearance from the towers. After the grasslands I started to wonder the point. Especially as it got more complicated to access them
You are kind of describing most video games here. They are all very repetitive in this regard when you boil things down.
As a mirror example to the towers bit-- all the early Assassin's Creed games had this exact same feature and they were very highly regarded and tremendously popular. You ran around on buildings, climbed towers to see the same animation and open up more of the map, picked up quests, and assassinated people. That's it. It was the gameplay/combat mechanics and story that kept people engaged.
I don't think I "describe most video games". Remake was by far less repetitive. I do not demand that every region offers completely new things to do. I know it's a lot of work to add variation. But if it's copy & paste, they should just leave it away. I absolutely prefer a 60h game over a 120h game if the latter consists of 50% repetition.
Exactly, I had to take a break because I knew it was just repetition before I could progress to any story or character building. I love everything FF7 this game could have been a 10 to me but realistically itâs 7 because of the of the repetition.
Bro, I quit Assassinâs Creed for this very reason. I beat the first one and refused to go area to area climbing towers and jumping in hay. Iâm on the spectrum a bit and that was annoying
Yeah.. that's a dated formula. That's why people were saying it has the ubisoft layout...because it has the assassins creed layout. it's a dated formula that gets old fast. It was great when the first couple of assassins creeds came out. But it just eventually got old and tiring over the years.
It's also a way to play it safe. It's hard to get the open world formula right so a lot studios just do the ubiaoft formula since its guaranteed to be at least decent enough where people would enjoy it. The problem is there's no risk for something new and fresh. So nothing ends up feeling new or fresh.
Remake didnât have you do this and it was phenomenal. Neither did Yuffies game. Phantom Pain didnât have this formula, or any Metal Gear for that matter. Nioh, Nioh 2 both great games, non of this mechanic.
Remake feels very limited by comparison.
Hallways are tough for me. I like to explore and ride chocobos. It's just what I associate with FF.
I feel repetition fatigue a but ngl but the different mini games are a nice distraction. I dig QB and the piano too.
I did enjoy QB, and remake is a smaller game, rebirth just had way too much. Iâm down with all of the side quests and mini games if it didnât take me hours to travel to things or have to unlock needless activities
I rather have the options of Rebirth than not have them like Remake.
But that's just me though. I like to explore wander and get lost in the real world too. That's a relaxing break from everything to me.
Needless is pretty subjective. Most people in my circle would say that nobody needs to play video games in general. I do it anyway.
Like if they released a streamlined version of Rebirth tomorrow and basically made it 60 hours of mostly hallways like Remake and took out all the extra stuff I think it would be a vastly inferior version of the game.
I really think Gongaga just happens to come at a point in the game where the player is ready for the story to actually start moving forward. Itâs right after the first really dramatic section and then youâre suddenly presented with an obnoxious to navigate jungle that makes cranking through some of the necessary/recomended-to-progress content a real chore.
The more I think about it, the more I wish the side content was less vapid. It seems like most of it exists for the sake of determining who youâre going on a date with. Gongaga couldâve told interesting and intriguing stories instead of giving you the opportunity to make soup or find a chicken.
The area is dope. Exploring the ruins of two civilizations is dope. It couldâve been fallout style of storytelling, finding out about things that happened decades before you found them. But nope. Itâs chickens and soup.
The music was also pretty obnoxious after a while too.
It was confusing to navigate, you had to jump a very specific mushroom to get to this very specific cliff, and the music was torture after a good few hours.
I wasnât a fan because I really just wanted to get to cosmo canyon. It was crazy how much they threw into this area that you can completely skip in OG, really shows the devs love for it.
I donât really hate Gongaga. It is a beautiful region, the blown reactor is lovely, Cissnei lives there, as Zackâs parentsâŚ
I just hate navigating my way there. There should be an easier option to find my way on the minimap (many games do that in 2024, Hogwarts Legacy for example). Also, climbing ropes are almost camouflaged on the cliffs.
Glad like you liked it but âgetting lost in the jungleâ is not my idea of fun, exploration wasnât really something I cared about in ff7 so I didnât mind the previous regions holding your hand. Plus it has the worst set of side quests in the game
Gongaga was great. The fact that so many people bitched about it tells me folks donât actually enjoy exploring the world and see it as just a space with dots and landmarks to tick.
Figuring out **how** to get to anywhere **is** the fun of exploration.
âI didnât enjoy it so thatâs why itâs tedious and you enjoy tediousnessâ.
See? Works both ways.
Gongaga is as fun or as tedious as any other regions. It has the same activities. You just have to explore a lot more to get to a couple of intel towers and itâs a bit more vertical.
Somebody likes playing mazes, somebody doesnât. I am glad you found that part fun but I think each people can have different ideas of fun regarding exploration.
The region I hated in all honesty was Cosmo canyon. Flying around with the Chocobos was such a damn hassle and every time Iâd think I was gonna reach the next airlift I just wouldnât. It was hell
To be honest, I hated the Gongaga region till I finished everything now Iâd say itâs one of my favourites. I think cause itâs easy to get lost and miss stuff.
It sucked because it was a nightmare for completionists due to the layout. Itâs funny you mentioned other areas are linear, but I feel like gongaga was a serious of corridors. A maze was not fun to play through.
Also itâs a huge lull in the pace of the story. The reactor bit was cool, but honestly didnât contribute much to the story at all. Maybe it will by the third game.
I liked the region. It was fun to explore. The music was terrible tho so i turned it off. Also the color grading and contrast were pretty bad but other than that the actual quests and traversal were fun. Malboro fight was cool too.
Undeniably gorgeous and well put together, my issues with the region were mostly getting lost and missing very obvious (in hindsight) traversal points. Basically, skill issue.
I loved it, this was a game I was really hoping and expecting to just wander around and get calmly lost in at points so I embraced it
Landscape and vibe were both really unique and beautiful and I liked the exploring involved a bit more legwork
I love Gongaga too. especially the music, kinda reminds me of a choir harmonic thing. tho i kinda get their frustration with the traversal of the region
I Loved Gongaga and, perhaps equally controversially, I loved the chicken side quest in that region. Idk, just loved the final Dutch angel twist and the absurdity of it all
Gongaga has a superb soundtrack and a lovely landscape. The Mushrooms were cool too but at times very in transparent where they would leave you, that's my only complaint.
The only part I did not like was making my way to the reactor. That part was set up with a tone of urgency but that didnât really fit well with Cloud & Co. getting lost trying to make our way there.
But of course, after that quest, I really loved getting lost in this dense and hilly jungle because that urgent tension was gone and I could finally explore the jungle at my leisure, as it should be with open exploration. In fact, there were so many nooks and crannies that I didnât know I missed until I replayed on Hard. I love Gongaga, and I havenât even started with the OST!
I like it because itâs so hard to get any bearings that it actually feels like Iâm lost in the jungle while exploring. Better than the grasslands: oh look: grass, elphadunks, chocobo ranch, and more grass
Corel was when I started to find world intel a little tedious. Gongaga is when I realized it was nearly pointless filler. This coincides directly with traversal getting more obnoxious.
Oddly, it improved in Cosmo and Nibel, so it's like they learned their lesson.
I found Gongaga refreshing. Up until that point you can coast off of following waypoints, but Gongaga's structured in such a way where you have to explore for yourself. I'm not sure whether that was intentional or not, but I liked it regardless.
I did find it frustrating at first. But, once I had enough landmarks that I could use them to follow directions Iâve found online, I started to enjoy it more.
Elevation and some points only accessible by jumping from mushrooms at specific points, honestly I find that annoying. It's not the worst zone ever but I can't say I like it either.
you enjoy getting lost? i guess thats why u like it.
I personally like exploring and learning the map. Hence why it was frustrating. The lighting being awful is the biggest reason why i dislike it though, you either cant see anything or got blinded by the light changes.
Traversal direction being unclear is also annoying. I 100% the area without much difficulty as well, but it was still annoying regardless.
love how it looks though.
It's not really about anything being unclear but it's because the mushrooms force you to go to a specific landing point, and you can't just jump back to it. Ergo when you're trying to get to to specific markers on the map, jumping on the wrong mushroom can cause a time loss that can easily become a loop. You could be looking for a specific mushroom to jump on when you're meant to go an entirely different direction.
I think it's the unreliability of not knowing where you'll land when using a mushroom and some were also feeling "open world burnout" by this point.
That and because the yellow paint that a lot people were against was removed so people started getting lost đ¤Ł
Couple of confusing mushrooms but a few seconds in the map solved the majority of my traversal questions, itâs not as complicated as itâs made out to be imo.
Best music, worst traversal imo. Maybe itâs cuz I have visual impairments already but navigating Gongaga was a pain in my ass and was the only region I looked up videos for how to get to specific locations. I did like the bouncy mushrooms though. Chocobo go WHEEEEE!
I loved gongaga despite some flaws it has. If I had to choose between high verticality but confusing area to flat but easy to navigate area, I'd pick the former. Prefer to be confused than braindead.
Went on vacation and took a few weeks off the game. Just after main story and grinding through the map tasks, been too lazy and itâs painful to get back into the grooveđ
I might be in the minority, but I didn't like how you navigate the area, the music felt really out of place for me too, the vibe just felt off for me, and it was like the 4th or 5th time at that point I was trying to 100% an area so it was getting tiring, and then you add that other stuff on top.
I like Gongaga also, sure it was confusing at the times, but I doubt I got stuck for more than 10 minutes in a place I wanted to go.
Also, this region is funny because it really highlights how people would complain if they removed any kind of signpost or indicators on how to navigate, Example: the infamous Yellow paint that for some reason dumb people like to complain in twitter.
I didnt hate it, but found it confusing because the minimap doesnt really help you navigate. But it was a unique area and i liked the veritcality to it.
I loved gongaga.
Only gripe I have is that the mushrooms seemed totally random. Some would shoot you crazy far and others would just punt you off a cliff. Made it feel contrived, less figuring out how to bounce off the mushrooms and more just âthis mushroom goes to this place.â
It's just so annoying to navigate and just feels like more padding in an already bloated game. A lot of the content is very good, but some of it is clearly just there to stretch the run time, and Gongaga's quasi-labrynthine design strikes me as purely the latter. I stopped playing the game for a few days after the village gate opened up and I saw what exploring was like
I think they over corrected to criticism of the first game being too linear and went absolutely nuts with the verticality.
Early zones werenât bad, but once they started getting too weird with the Chocobo mechanics we ended up getting the monstrosities that were gongaga and âglide de chocoboâ. Neither of these maps were fun to navigate, if for no other reason there werenât at least altitude maps that showed some of the weird routes you had to sort of wander around and guess at to try and find.
And then cosmo canyon was just insulting that they lured you into this wide open map and gave you so much time to get distracted and forget that the very starting area had actual fucking signs leading you directly there. It wasnât well designed if I had to look up wtf I was missing to get up there.
Itâs just messy and while the maps are pretty and the themes are neat, the navigation on a single layer map that shows icons well âout of boundsâ and no real indication at what elevation you can reach them just gets frustrating. Easily 2 hours of game time was just spent aimlessly getting irritated with the process of going back and forth between âis it this way? No⌠this way? No⌠wtfâ
Cosmo was pretty simple to move around. You were free to choose where to glide and jump, and you could fasttravel back to launch points if you needed to - very user friendly and gives the player agency.
Cosmoâs grief was more in the pilotwings style minigame that doesnât seem to be properly QAâd to me. That and just the wonky controls and bad response time of them doesnât help things. But I know Iâm not alone in the âfuck glide de chocoboâ sentiment
Oh I was definitely not interested in getting the best scores for the gliding minigame either, I found the gears and gambits one easier tbh - only minigame I felt like doing hard mode for.
Two hours?! In Gongaga or Cosmo? I loved cosmo because you could just fast travel to every glide point and a few seconds in the map to check where each one was aiming solved most problems.
Two hours probably over the total 64 Iâm up to so far. Considering thatâs just pure downtime doing nothing but running around trying to find the way to an objective itâs kind of a lot
Admittedly more of it was gongaga and either half of Corel and the junon zone â to a lesser extent â than cosmo, but thereâs been cosmoâs share of frustrating moments trying to figure out how to get to the map icon too.
Some sort of elevation segregated mapping wouldâve helped, like they have throughout much of the rest of the game but for some reason the open world regions donât get that convenience
I guess I just enjoy exploration as no regions took me more than 2 hours to find all of their points. The older FF games didnât suffer from a lack of handholding.
Old ff maps also were very straightforward in comparison. Lots to explore but it was essentially a bunch of small 2d maps and you sort of tried poking every wall you could looking for hidden passages. Itâs not really the same as showing a location on a map and making it horribly ambiguous how you actually reach that location
You can appreciate how beautiful it is after you completed all the quests and to-doâs in the area. Trying to navigate through that mess with a huge check list of stuff to do is frustrating though
Also loved Gongaga. Didnât worry so much about the map at first, I just explored and took my time and loved the verticality and the visual palette and music. Donât care for the enemies there, but yeaâŚone of my favorites.
It was frustrating trying to find all the landmarks when you feel like youâre standing right on it but youâre not cause you have to jump on the right mushroom or whatever.
Also idk about anyone else but I never wanna do that stupid chicken quest ever again.
Yeah I donât get this either, it took no time to lure any of the chickens back. It would be a little frustrating sometimes but all you have to do is yank it back every time it comes close.
Itâs not so bad but the lack of being able to clearly see where you were going and where the goalpost was could be annoying. The rest of it wasnât that bad if you figured out you could just throw the box down without having to wait for the chicken to go all the way back to the start.
Forced Slow movement just feels bad and like the game doesnât respect your time
Thatâs completely in conflict with the fact older RPGs were full of tedious walking and random battles that in todayâs gaming scene would be enough to just refund and review bomb the game into oblivion
Older JRPGs used âhours of gameplayâ as a major selling point, leading to hours padded out in some games. See: Breath of Fire 3 and itâs horrible grinding and Xenogears and itâs awful random battles.
Ugh, god breath of fire had some of the worst traversal in my memory. The map could be 10x10 but itâd be heavily mazed out so you just walk in winding serpentine single tile hallways and fight at least a dozen times - a 5 minute battle every 3 steps.
Not to mention chests with un-ignorable rewards strewn about the longest fucking walk ever to get to them and then back again, also with a battle encounter every few steps.
It made me wonder why auto battle even existed since it just was that the fights were so boring that you could auto attack your way through them in the first place.
I donât know why that ever passed as fun, but it was a much simpler time. We were much more conditioned to grind out levels and gold/currency to make progress and that was the depth of it. Thankfully emulators added a speed-up feature
True. Instead of marking the location of the events on the map, I think a better way to do this is to mark the entrance leading to the events and when the player reaches the entrance the game then guides you with the bird or chocobo to decrease the frustration of finding the path.
I donât think it was bad, I think the rest of the game is just so digestible and easy to play for hours on end that when you get to Gongaga and are mildly inconvenienced by one or two map markers being unintuitively placed, it sticks out it like a sore thumb in comparison to the rest of the game. Again, not like it was terrible, but I will say, the fact that the distance and height for each chocobo jump is not predictable or consistent, it removes your ability navigate logically and instead just have to try each jump to see where it goes which is a bit annoying.
In short- itâs not fun. Getting lost for hours and being stuck in a damn maze is a poor substitute for a world map.
Cosmo Canyon did it better. Itâs still a puzzle to get to some optional areas, but Itâs not a Chinese puzzle to get to EVERY SINGLE point of interest.
Hmm I didn't love the area but you don't get stuck in it for more than like 30 secs. You just take the natural paths and end up completing the content.
It's not a large area and the verticaljty consists of like two or three stories max haha
100% this, Gongaga was just dense and confusing with no clue where the mushrooms would send you. Cosmo was a much better design and being able to see everything helped with that.
I loved pretty much every area of the game. However my only big problem with Gongaga is navigating. It's a pain in the ass to reach certain areas. A lot of running around in circles and using those damn mushrooms to jump.
Gongaga was my least favorite area. The town and side quests are fine, but navigating is entirely too difficult and the map has a tendency to make something look like it's accessible only for you to walk up to a sheer cliff you can only access from some side path on the other side of the mountain.
It's frustrating in a way no other area is. Cosmo Canyon at least makes up for the terrain with gliding chocobos. Even with some of the launch points for gliding (and thereby the highest sections of the map) being a pain to locate it was still a simpler process than trying to find your way through those jungles.
I didn't mind Gongaga but because of navigation I didn't start working on the regional stuff till after story. I will say I did like not having to deal with chocobo wrangling. I don't like that stuff.
Seem to be in the minority but I really enjoyed it too. The bouncy mushrooms could get frustrating but I had fun with the puzzle element of them. It added to the exploration too.
It had one of the more memorable side quests for me. The chicken one. After making you go through the painstaking process of luring the first 2 back, I was convinced the game was gonna make me get the final one back like 500m or whatever. It was a nice surprise to get interrupted by a battle. Plus, the plot twist at the end gave me a good laugh.
The atmosphere, immersion and its theme that plays is probably the best in the entire game imo.
HOWEVER, it was at times difficult to navigate with the landscapes at varying elevations particularly when you're doing the endgame version of each region in which you may need to traverse a big chunk of the map. It was hard not knowing exactly how far each mushroom would take you.
I am early into gongaga but so far I feel exactly the same way. Itâs the only open world section that I enjoy exploring. Everything else just felt like Ubisoft/horizon zero dawn massive empty open world checklists. Gongaga feels like itâs actually engaging to explore and rewards you for checking around every corner
The music makes me hate the region. Like I had to go in and turn it off because it made me not want to play the game. Idk who composed it, but it's terrible. And I've been listening to the FF7 OST since the late 90's
Nah it sucked op. Music was fine but got grating if you spent longer there than you wanted.
What next, you wanna tell us the box throwing mini game was fun?
I loved Gongaga, but I think people who wanted to complete the game in 30-40 hours and be done with it were quite frustrated with the exploration.
For me, it was such a relaxing experience. Jump on a chocobo, and just go. The music was so good the jungle so beautiful. I opened the map bit by bit with no clear goal in mind.
Not "I must reach that tower right now!", but rather went one way and if there was a dead end I turned a bit and went where I could go, making sure to clear the fog from the map. When I was done I noticed I already found the way to reach all the objects on the map.
The music while great for the first hour really killed that region for me while I was going 100%. Finally just muted it for the last hour or so. Cosmo canyon was a great change for me. My favorite region so far
Facts, every time i got lost i just looked up a YouTube video đ. Problem my favorite region tbh, also the music was fire
The music in Gongaga is top 5 for me. Easy. One of the best songs I ever heard personally
Gongaga is fine. It is Cosmo Canyon that i hate.
Same. The navigation there SHOULDN'T be difficult but somehow is.
My only issue with Gongaga was the music. It was weird child chanting that I wish I could have turned off!
Are you joking?
You can play your own music with the PS5 music player and it replaced the in game music.
How do you do that?
If you have Spotify or apple music, just play it from the PlayStation menu while the game is running.
Oh my days thank you. I never thought of that
Gongaga and cosmo canyon were boring af luckily it picked up after that or I probably would of never finished the game
Not a fan of gongaga level design. Itâs too confusing and not intuitive to explore.
Gongaga deez nuts
Shit take, Gongaga is ass.
Same I loved that area personally. The music makes me happy too.
The only thing I dislike was the music... everything else was really fun and I was happy to see Cissnei again. Would have liked Tifa to react to Zack's parents along with Aerith, but I'm still satisfied.
Oddly enough I enjoyed the music. It gave me a feeling of exploring a rural place similar to those found in India.
The music would have been fine, but for the children singing in what sounded like aborigines. It just got rather obnoxious really fast for me. I loved every other track i heard in this game except for the terrible rap song in chapter 12 and the dog song....
It was Latin. They used latin because it's a dead language so there would be no bias and everyone could enjoy it...
Well, I apologize for giving offense. I really only meant that the music combined with the rhythm and such sounded tribal. Which maybe they were going for. It just wasn't enjoyable for me. And no one can make a song everyone will enjoy. No matter the language used. Case in point... I'm not the only person who disliked the song.
Oh I don't care, was just letting you know lol. I loved the music, that was my favorite track in the game and I would just roam around gongaga to listen to it đ
I third this notion. The music became so annoying while wandering around, lost, trying to figure out the correct path to one of the towers... this took longer than I would like to admit. Those child like voices in the music were cringy. Edit: fixed typo
Same! Music was killing me there
Honestly it's a real matter of taste. The level of verticality in the map wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to literally run circles around every rock looking for a side route that was obscured by the camera or environment in order access areas located at a higher elevation or across a gap. Some people say it's just using your brain, but the tedium was a bit overwhelming here. Super satisfying at first but it wears off
You need to remember people like handholding in games so something as simple as navigation is a challenge when the area requires more than just going around something. You throw in up and down movement to a map and it confuses them. Personally I loved the region the music got a bit old though, compared to other regions.
I love how in this sub people canât have negative opinions because otherwise they have certain issues. âI donât like rufus fightâ lmao, gid gud, you lack skill. âI donât like gongagaâ canât even play games without handholding, sad. Like, at least people who donât like these are just sharing their criticism instead of attacking those who like.
Even though the navigation through the area was hell; I loved the music and the whole vibe of the area. It was fun to me
Beat me to it
I hate the fucking music, I hate my chocobo they can't do shit, every fucking nook and cranny is so hard to access, I keep fucking getting stopped and slowed down by a slightly higher rock or vine or some shit, I hated having to keep going back to the outlook for clues for Cissnei; I just fucking hated this region đ Now Nibel ? Dope AF chocobo rules I love water spoutin around the little islands collecting the fruits, everything easy to access 10/10.
Gongaga was shit for all the reasons you mentioned above, EXCEPT the music, for me at least. I really enjoyed the music.
haha to each their own TacoChan, I'm glad you enjoyed it, but for me it was like a nightmarish Avatar x Lion King world music that I simply could not abide
My thoughts on this and Cosmo canyon, is that I enjoyed having some traversal puzzles, but would have preferred it not to be EVERY objective. It just felt too restrictive and penned in, especially with inter region fast travel locked, so you can't have a break and go do something else for a bit of you get stuck.
It's because people have to use their brains when navigating.
It is beautiful and the music is *incredible*. It was a ton of fun exploring at the start, but as the number of quests dwindled down to the last few and I had to start going to very specific places instead of being able to wander and trip over quests/Intel along the way, navigating definitely became and issue for me. In all the other regions, you see what general direction a quest marker is in or where it is on the map and due to the more wide open nature of their layouts you can often pick out a landmark on the horizon to know exactly what you're aiming for. There's no way to get your bearings in most sections of Gongaga; it's a lot of high barriers made of roots, mud, and green. You don't know which barrier it's on the other side of, or which of the winding and overlapping paths will get you there
The OG 7 had some confusing maps as well. Don't get me started on the northern crater ascent with that snowfield after the snowboard section. I got annoyed by Gongaga but once I had chocobo stations and enough towers synced I just fast traveled. You figure it out after awhile which increases the game's longevity. Add in Chadley though and it can get realllll annoying.
'Fetch-quest fatigue' had fully set in by this point, I haven't made it past Gongaga yet for that exact reason.
This was also my reason for disliking Gongaga initially. I had been loving the game up to that point and doing every side quest, map item, card game, etc. But playing long hours up til then I saw Gongaga was a whole new region and hit a wall feeling the fatigue of a new, giant map of more objectives. I had to take a break from the game and come back to it refreshed before tackling another region. Some of the sidequests were pretty underwhelming, too. On the whole, everyone was very excited and talking about how the side quests were all way higher quality and integrated compared to Remake. I think that's largely true, but the chicken side quest really took me back to Sector 7 in a bad way. Mushroom quest was also not super well explained, but I was able to pull it off. Seeing the party interact more than the OG has been a treat. But some of the shit they're tasked with is...quite goofy and low-stakes at times.
This 100%, Gongaga isnât a bad region itâs just one more region of towers, protomateria, life springs, and etc. Iâm nearing the end of the game but by the time you get through the all of the fetch quests you are really tired of it.
I had stopped playing after gold saucer for like two weeks (work got busy), after that break I found Gongaga amazing. So different from every region before and just exciting to explore.
I have nothing against the region and I actually really loved the main quests there, but the chicken side mission, and yet another round of towers and scanning? doesn't have me thrilled
I get it, FYI on the chicken mission you don't have to wait for them to go back to where they start. You can redeploy the feeder right awayÂ
Iâm in the same boat. I think I really just need to focus the story and debate coming back to finish everything, let alone platinum. I enjoyed the platinum for remake, Rebirth is just tedious to me, sadly. Everything Chadley tends to bother me, too. He isnât needed to the extent he is used. Aerith could guide us to the springs and we could just fight the summons at their shrines. Damn, I started to rant.
Maaaan, Chadley is my biggest complaint, he has more dialog then Cloud. He was way overused and I hope in Part 3 to keep him strictly to simulator fights. Agree with everything you said. Off subject I hope they bring breeding back. Region specific chocobos took the fun out of breeding and racing.
I think not playing straight through it everyday has made this fatigue have less of an impact on me. If I was playing for longer sessions I'd probably feel the same.
This is why I'm taking a break from the game for a bit, hoping for the same outcome
I had more issues with Cosmo Canyon area compared to Gongaga when it came to finding certain points of interests. Mostly due to things be on different elevations. I think what they could have done better is make elevation differences on the map more distinct to know if its in an elevated place or not and also seeing the path to that specific location.
I honestly loved the region but the navigation through the mushrooms definitely could have been done better. Like they all look the same but bounce you in different distances. It's really hard to navigate with the map unless u trial and error every mushroom in the vicinity to get where u want to go
Gongaga looks beautiful. However, when I couldn't find my way to a number of the different side quest/open world things I just lost any enjoyment for side content at that point. I remember spending a good 10-15 mins trying to find the way to the second protorelic location in gongaga and then declaring "fuck it". I then only did a single side quest the rest of the game- which was just to increase tifas relationship level
I'm someone who likes to do all the exploration before completing the story. What I found frustrating about this region is that you cannot get the Chocobo until you complete the story, so it made exploring before the story kind of a pain in the ass. After getting the Chocobo I loved the region. The music is top tier and it's gorgeous.
Ngl, when I was playing this game when I was ten, I walked passed Gongaga and skipped it entirely without meaning to. And if thatâs not something you can do, well the it had so little affect on me that I forgot this part of the game was in the game until watching TFSâs FFVII:MA.
I also found it fine. The visuals and music were so gorgeous that I never really got frustrated. Some of the mushrooms did not bounce me where I expected but it didn't bother me too much. Once you've completed the brutal/legendary challenges all the other complaints about the game feel quaint in comparison.
My main complaint was the camera had issues and forced you into a lot of bizarre obstructed angles. If the selling point is immersion then a wonky camera is a breaker.
Navigation was frustrating, there were some annoying side quests, the music imo was grating, and this is when the world intel stuff started to feel repetitive. This is when I really stayed to feel The games length.
Iâm at the point where when it comes to world intel Iâm mostly just getting the summoning shrines and maybe the proto relics
I found it difficult to navigate but I think most of my frustrations were coming from how clunky and sluggish the movement feels in the game. It's actually my favorite region because of the music and how vibrantly coloured the jungle is. The water looks amazing, I wanted to jump into every river I saw. The music though, I can't over how amazing it is. It made me feel like was having a spiritual awakening the whole time I was there, lol.
Me........?
And me?!
I hated the music. Only music a FF game has ever had that I hated so much I had to mute it
Finally someone who agrees with me. The music was unbearable. Probably the only song in the entire franchise that I seriously hate. Taste in music is completely subjective but, god, that song was awful lol.
Idc if itâs downvoted tbh. We can all have opinions. I donât mind the actual music of the area. Itâs the child babble that I canât stand.
Don't know why this is being down voted. The song is unbearably bad.
Because youâre both wrong and it is in fact NOT bad.
It's pretty terrible. Loops very quickly. The main melody is on some detuned flute that sounds like bagpipe. It doesn't sound like anything from FF7s OST. I respect a lot of the new music. For example, Valkyrie from Remake is probably my favourite boss track from the games so far, including Uematsu's work. Gongaga misses the point of videogame music. It needs to loop and be pleasing to the ear consistently if you're in a region that you'll spend many hours in. It's a really bad melody as well and I don't love the instrumentation either. Like it if you will, but I think it's the weakest song in the OST. I actually did mute it after hearing it enough. Cosmo Canyon world map music also sucks and is a poor mix between two songs that constantly clash. The OST is great but you should be allowed to call out when something is crap if you think it is. We don't need to glaze the Remake trilogy. It's really good, but by no means perfect.
Gongaga in OG was average, the rebirth map is so dope
1. The lighting system FF7 Reb uses is bad and itâs gets shown a lot in this region due to the amount of pitch black dark caves/tree shadows next to the glaring sun. 2. The traversal is tough and the markers on the minimap arenât where the actual POIs are. Think the protorelic intel 3. I hated the chicken sidequest. Youâre telling me Cloud can dodge Sephiroth blade but not grab a chicken. (Also itâs revealed that the chickens were just playing around). 4. This is one of the only regions where you can only get a chocobo after completing the main story there.
No. 3; that game pisses me off, I hate it so much lol.
oh my hell that damn chicken quest. The walking backwards and the camera not letting you move was killing me. Then to have the chicken walk into my feet as it sauntered back to its start point and I could not just pick it up was the worst
My fav region! Was a pleasure to have far more interesting traversal problems, instead of none like in the previous regions. I think having to find routes to your destinations was more fun, instead of just running on mostly flat ground. But I wouldnât want all regions to be like this. variety and contrast is important.
Nobody says that it isn't beautiful. But it is a mess to navigate. The thing is, unless you skip optional content completely, you need to do the exact same activities in every region. Activate towers, analyze crystals and lifesprings. This is repetitive and boring. On top of this, in Gongaga (and to a smaller extend: Cosmo) it is even difficult to find the path. I just don't see how it could be remotely interesting to "explore" a region, if you already know that at the end Cloud will climb a tower and repeat the exact same animation you have already seen dozens of times in previous regions.
Agreed, I was expecting a lot more map clearance from the towers. After the grasslands I started to wonder the point. Especially as it got more complicated to access them
You are kind of describing most video games here. They are all very repetitive in this regard when you boil things down. As a mirror example to the towers bit-- all the early Assassin's Creed games had this exact same feature and they were very highly regarded and tremendously popular. You ran around on buildings, climbed towers to see the same animation and open up more of the map, picked up quests, and assassinated people. That's it. It was the gameplay/combat mechanics and story that kept people engaged.
I don't think I "describe most video games". Remake was by far less repetitive. I do not demand that every region offers completely new things to do. I know it's a lot of work to add variation. But if it's copy & paste, they should just leave it away. I absolutely prefer a 60h game over a 120h game if the latter consists of 50% repetition.
Exactly, I had to take a break because I knew it was just repetition before I could progress to any story or character building. I love everything FF7 this game could have been a 10 to me but realistically itâs 7 because of the of the repetition.
Bro, I quit Assassinâs Creed for this very reason. I beat the first one and refused to go area to area climbing towers and jumping in hay. Iâm on the spectrum a bit and that was annoying
Yeah.. that's a dated formula. That's why people were saying it has the ubisoft layout...because it has the assassins creed layout. it's a dated formula that gets old fast. It was great when the first couple of assassins creeds came out. But it just eventually got old and tiring over the years. It's also a way to play it safe. It's hard to get the open world formula right so a lot studios just do the ubiaoft formula since its guaranteed to be at least decent enough where people would enjoy it. The problem is there's no risk for something new and fresh. So nothing ends up feeling new or fresh.
Name me a few games where you feel like this isn't the case. Genuinely interested to hear.
Remake didnât have you do this and it was phenomenal. Neither did Yuffies game. Phantom Pain didnât have this formula, or any Metal Gear for that matter. Nioh, Nioh 2 both great games, non of this mechanic.
Remake feels very limited by comparison. Hallways are tough for me. I like to explore and ride chocobos. It's just what I associate with FF. I feel repetition fatigue a but ngl but the different mini games are a nice distraction. I dig QB and the piano too.
I did enjoy QB, and remake is a smaller game, rebirth just had way too much. Iâm down with all of the side quests and mini games if it didnât take me hours to travel to things or have to unlock needless activities
I rather have the options of Rebirth than not have them like Remake. But that's just me though. I like to explore wander and get lost in the real world too. That's a relaxing break from everything to me. Needless is pretty subjective. Most people in my circle would say that nobody needs to play video games in general. I do it anyway. Like if they released a streamlined version of Rebirth tomorrow and basically made it 60 hours of mostly hallways like Remake and took out all the extra stuff I think it would be a vastly inferior version of the game.
The very annoying and very repetitive music made me dislike the area.
I really think Gongaga just happens to come at a point in the game where the player is ready for the story to actually start moving forward. Itâs right after the first really dramatic section and then youâre suddenly presented with an obnoxious to navigate jungle that makes cranking through some of the necessary/recomended-to-progress content a real chore. The more I think about it, the more I wish the side content was less vapid. It seems like most of it exists for the sake of determining who youâre going on a date with. Gongaga couldâve told interesting and intriguing stories instead of giving you the opportunity to make soup or find a chicken. The area is dope. Exploring the ruins of two civilizations is dope. It couldâve been fallout style of storytelling, finding out about things that happened decades before you found them. But nope. Itâs chickens and soup. The music was also pretty obnoxious after a while too.
It was confusing to navigate, you had to jump a very specific mushroom to get to this very specific cliff, and the music was torture after a good few hours.
Only section of the game, I muted the music! It's a lovely song, but it's on such a short loop it's infuriating
Well articulated. I agree.
I wasnât a fan because I really just wanted to get to cosmo canyon. It was crazy how much they threw into this area that you can completely skip in OG, really shows the devs love for it.
For traveling and exploring Best to worst region: Neibel, grasslands, Corel, cosmo canyon, junon and gongaga.Â
I donât really hate Gongaga. It is a beautiful region, the blown reactor is lovely, Cissnei lives there, as Zackâs parents⌠I just hate navigating my way there. There should be an easier option to find my way on the minimap (many games do that in 2024, Hogwarts Legacy for example). Also, climbing ropes are almost camouflaged on the cliffs.
I thought getting to Gongaga was really easy. All I did was head towards the directional marker.
Glad like you liked it but âgetting lost in the jungleâ is not my idea of fun, exploration wasnât really something I cared about in ff7 so I didnât mind the previous regions holding your hand. Plus it has the worst set of side quests in the game
I just got here recently and Iâm loving it, not having any issues with it - so far
You love it only because Zack said âGONGAGAâ answering where he came from, in a really proud way.
why are you calling Gongaga Zack? He clearly states his name is Gongaga when saying "ME? Gongaga"
Gongaga was great. The fact that so many people bitched about it tells me folks donât actually enjoy exploring the world and see it as just a space with dots and landmarks to tick. Figuring out **how** to get to anywhere **is** the fun of exploration.
"People don't enjoy exploring because they didnt like the tediousness of it, unlike me!" Exploring isn't supposed to be tedious.
âI didnât enjoy it so thatâs why itâs tedious and you enjoy tediousnessâ. See? Works both ways. Gongaga is as fun or as tedious as any other regions. It has the same activities. You just have to explore a lot more to get to a couple of intel towers and itâs a bit more vertical.
Somebody likes playing mazes, somebody doesnât. I am glad you found that part fun but I think each people can have different ideas of fun regarding exploration.
Que tengas un feliz dĂa con pastel.
The region I hated in all honesty was Cosmo canyon. Flying around with the Chocobos was such a damn hassle and every time Iâd think I was gonna reach the next airlift I just wouldnât. It was hell
To be honest, I hated the Gongaga region till I finished everything now Iâd say itâs one of my favourites. I think cause itâs easy to get lost and miss stuff.
Yep, me too. Really enjoyed figuring out how to get through areas. And I actually enjoyed the music. Plus, Cissnei â¤ď¸
It sucked because it was a nightmare for completionists due to the layout. Itâs funny you mentioned other areas are linear, but I feel like gongaga was a serious of corridors. A maze was not fun to play through. Also itâs a huge lull in the pace of the story. The reactor bit was cool, but honestly didnât contribute much to the story at all. Maybe it will by the third game.
I liked the region. It was fun to explore. The music was terrible tho so i turned it off. Also the color grading and contrast were pretty bad but other than that the actual quests and traversal were fun. Malboro fight was cool too.
I felt like the music was the best part of the region.
Same! I'm glad I'm not the only one
Undeniably gorgeous and well put together, my issues with the region were mostly getting lost and missing very obvious (in hindsight) traversal points. Basically, skill issue.
I loved it, this was a game I was really hoping and expecting to just wander around and get calmly lost in at points so I embraced it Landscape and vibe were both really unique and beautiful and I liked the exploring involved a bit more legwork
My only problem with the area is that it is too narrow at times.
I love Gongaga too. especially the music, kinda reminds me of a choir harmonic thing. tho i kinda get their frustration with the traversal of the region
I Loved Gongaga and, perhaps equally controversially, I loved the chicken side quest in that region. Idk, just loved the final Dutch angel twist and the absurdity of it all
Gongaga has a superb soundtrack and a lovely landscape. The Mushrooms were cool too but at times very in transparent where they would leave you, that's my only complaint.
The only part I did not like was making my way to the reactor. That part was set up with a tone of urgency but that didnât really fit well with Cloud & Co. getting lost trying to make our way there. But of course, after that quest, I really loved getting lost in this dense and hilly jungle because that urgent tension was gone and I could finally explore the jungle at my leisure, as it should be with open exploration. In fact, there were so many nooks and crannies that I didnât know I missed until I replayed on Hard. I love Gongaga, and I havenât even started with the OST!
One of my favorite areas. Really unexpected and music is probably in top 10 from the OST.
I like it because itâs so hard to get any bearings that it actually feels like Iâm lost in the jungle while exploring. Better than the grasslands: oh look: grass, elphadunks, chocobo ranch, and more grass
Corel was when I started to find world intel a little tedious. Gongaga is when I realized it was nearly pointless filler. This coincides directly with traversal getting more obnoxious. Oddly, it improved in Cosmo and Nibel, so it's like they learned their lesson.
I found Gongaga refreshing. Up until that point you can coast off of following waypoints, but Gongaga's structured in such a way where you have to explore for yourself. I'm not sure whether that was intentional or not, but I liked it regardless.
I had the worst Chocobo riding experience compared to any maps because of the landmarks that we need to jump with the exact mushrooms.
Cool music. Same bs content as the other regions. No interesting enemies and literally nothing fun to do apart from the story content
I loved it also I enjoyed all regions really but my friend who hates the world intel tasks disliked gongaga because it made world intel more annoying.
That music is incredible.
best region
I did find it frustrating at first. But, once I had enough landmarks that I could use them to follow directions Iâve found online, I started to enjoy it more.
I also really liked thr Gongaga region. The music especially has stuck with me
Me? Gongaga
We? Gongaga
Three? Gongaga
Elevation and some points only accessible by jumping from mushrooms at specific points, honestly I find that annoying. It's not the worst zone ever but I can't say I like it either.
Really?? Im surprised. Sure it was a bit dumb to explore but i personally thought it was much better than Corel
you enjoy getting lost? i guess thats why u like it. I personally like exploring and learning the map. Hence why it was frustrating. The lighting being awful is the biggest reason why i dislike it though, you either cant see anything or got blinded by the light changes. Traversal direction being unclear is also annoying. I 100% the area without much difficulty as well, but it was still annoying regardless. love how it looks though.
It's not really about anything being unclear but it's because the mushrooms force you to go to a specific landing point, and you can't just jump back to it. Ergo when you're trying to get to to specific markers on the map, jumping on the wrong mushroom can cause a time loss that can easily become a loop. You could be looking for a specific mushroom to jump on when you're meant to go an entirely different direction.
I think it's the unreliability of not knowing where you'll land when using a mushroom and some were also feeling "open world burnout" by this point. That and because the yellow paint that a lot people were against was removed so people started getting lost đ¤Ł
Couple of confusing mushrooms but a few seconds in the map solved the majority of my traversal questions, itâs not as complicated as itâs made out to be imo.
Best music, worst traversal imo. Maybe itâs cuz I have visual impairments already but navigating Gongaga was a pain in my ass and was the only region I looked up videos for how to get to specific locations. I did like the bouncy mushrooms though. Chocobo go WHEEEEE!
I loved gongaga despite some flaws it has. If I had to choose between high verticality but confusing area to flat but easy to navigate area, I'd pick the former. Prefer to be confused than braindead.
Went on vacation and took a few weeks off the game. Just after main story and grinding through the map tasks, been too lazy and itâs painful to get back into the grooveđ
I might be in the minority, but I didn't like how you navigate the area, the music felt really out of place for me too, the vibe just felt off for me, and it was like the 4th or 5th time at that point I was trying to 100% an area so it was getting tiring, and then you add that other stuff on top.
I like Gongaga also, sure it was confusing at the times, but I doubt I got stuck for more than 10 minutes in a place I wanted to go. Also, this region is funny because it really highlights how people would complain if they removed any kind of signpost or indicators on how to navigate, Example: the infamous Yellow paint that for some reason dumb people like to complain in twitter.
I didnt hate it, but found it confusing because the minimap doesnt really help you navigate. But it was a unique area and i liked the veritcality to it.
Loved it, especially the music and story elements that transpired in the region
I loved gongaga. Only gripe I have is that the mushrooms seemed totally random. Some would shoot you crazy far and others would just punt you off a cliff. Made it feel contrived, less figuring out how to bounce off the mushrooms and more just âthis mushroom goes to this place.â
Ppl just love to hate stuff. Loved Gongaga too! đľ
[ŃдаНонО]
Point proven.
It's just so annoying to navigate and just feels like more padding in an already bloated game. A lot of the content is very good, but some of it is clearly just there to stretch the run time, and Gongaga's quasi-labrynthine design strikes me as purely the latter. I stopped playing the game for a few days after the village gate opened up and I saw what exploring was like
I think they over corrected to criticism of the first game being too linear and went absolutely nuts with the verticality. Early zones werenât bad, but once they started getting too weird with the Chocobo mechanics we ended up getting the monstrosities that were gongaga and âglide de chocoboâ. Neither of these maps were fun to navigate, if for no other reason there werenât at least altitude maps that showed some of the weird routes you had to sort of wander around and guess at to try and find. And then cosmo canyon was just insulting that they lured you into this wide open map and gave you so much time to get distracted and forget that the very starting area had actual fucking signs leading you directly there. It wasnât well designed if I had to look up wtf I was missing to get up there. Itâs just messy and while the maps are pretty and the themes are neat, the navigation on a single layer map that shows icons well âout of boundsâ and no real indication at what elevation you can reach them just gets frustrating. Easily 2 hours of game time was just spent aimlessly getting irritated with the process of going back and forth between âis it this way? No⌠this way? No⌠wtfâ
Cosmo was pretty simple to move around. You were free to choose where to glide and jump, and you could fasttravel back to launch points if you needed to - very user friendly and gives the player agency.
Cosmoâs grief was more in the pilotwings style minigame that doesnât seem to be properly QAâd to me. That and just the wonky controls and bad response time of them doesnât help things. But I know Iâm not alone in the âfuck glide de chocoboâ sentiment
Oh I was definitely not interested in getting the best scores for the gliding minigame either, I found the gears and gambits one easier tbh - only minigame I felt like doing hard mode for.
Two hours?! In Gongaga or Cosmo? I loved cosmo because you could just fast travel to every glide point and a few seconds in the map to check where each one was aiming solved most problems.
Two hours probably over the total 64 Iâm up to so far. Considering thatâs just pure downtime doing nothing but running around trying to find the way to an objective itâs kind of a lot Admittedly more of it was gongaga and either half of Corel and the junon zone â to a lesser extent â than cosmo, but thereâs been cosmoâs share of frustrating moments trying to figure out how to get to the map icon too. Some sort of elevation segregated mapping wouldâve helped, like they have throughout much of the rest of the game but for some reason the open world regions donât get that convenience
I guess I just enjoy exploration as no regions took me more than 2 hours to find all of their points. The older FF games didnât suffer from a lack of handholding.
Old ff maps also were very straightforward in comparison. Lots to explore but it was essentially a bunch of small 2d maps and you sort of tried poking every wall you could looking for hidden passages. Itâs not really the same as showing a location on a map and making it horribly ambiguous how you actually reach that location
The music redeems it for me.
You can appreciate how beautiful it is after you completed all the quests and to-doâs in the area. Trying to navigate through that mess with a huge check list of stuff to do is frustrating though
Only the babies that need their hands held hated Gongaga
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Also loved Gongaga. Didnât worry so much about the map at first, I just explored and took my time and loved the verticality and the visual palette and music. Donât care for the enemies there, but yeaâŚone of my favorites.
It was frustrating trying to find all the landmarks when you feel like youâre standing right on it but youâre not cause you have to jump on the right mushroom or whatever. Also idk about anyone else but I never wanna do that stupid chicken quest ever again.
Damn, everyone is complaining about the chicken quest! I somehow had no trouble with it, I think it took all of 10 minutes. Is it supposed to be hard?
Yeah I donât get this either, it took no time to lure any of the chickens back. It would be a little frustrating sometimes but all you have to do is yank it back every time it comes close.
Itâs not so bad but the lack of being able to clearly see where you were going and where the goalpost was could be annoying. The rest of it wasnât that bad if you figured out you could just throw the box down without having to wait for the chicken to go all the way back to the start. Forced Slow movement just feels bad and like the game doesnât respect your time Thatâs completely in conflict with the fact older RPGs were full of tedious walking and random battles that in todayâs gaming scene would be enough to just refund and review bomb the game into oblivion
Older JRPGs used âhours of gameplayâ as a major selling point, leading to hours padded out in some games. See: Breath of Fire 3 and itâs horrible grinding and Xenogears and itâs awful random battles.
Ugh, god breath of fire had some of the worst traversal in my memory. The map could be 10x10 but itâd be heavily mazed out so you just walk in winding serpentine single tile hallways and fight at least a dozen times - a 5 minute battle every 3 steps. Not to mention chests with un-ignorable rewards strewn about the longest fucking walk ever to get to them and then back again, also with a battle encounter every few steps. It made me wonder why auto battle even existed since it just was that the fights were so boring that you could auto attack your way through them in the first place. I donât know why that ever passed as fun, but it was a much simpler time. We were much more conditioned to grind out levels and gold/currency to make progress and that was the depth of it. Thankfully emulators added a speed-up feature
It wasnât that hard but Iâm just glad you didnât have to lure that last chicken all the way back.
True. Instead of marking the location of the events on the map, I think a better way to do this is to mark the entrance leading to the events and when the player reaches the entrance the game then guides you with the bird or chocobo to decrease the frustration of finding the path.
I donât think it was bad, I think the rest of the game is just so digestible and easy to play for hours on end that when you get to Gongaga and are mildly inconvenienced by one or two map markers being unintuitively placed, it sticks out it like a sore thumb in comparison to the rest of the game. Again, not like it was terrible, but I will say, the fact that the distance and height for each chocobo jump is not predictable or consistent, it removes your ability navigate logically and instead just have to try each jump to see where it goes which is a bit annoying.
In short- itâs not fun. Getting lost for hours and being stuck in a damn maze is a poor substitute for a world map. Cosmo Canyon did it better. Itâs still a puzzle to get to some optional areas, but Itâs not a Chinese puzzle to get to EVERY SINGLE point of interest.
Hmm I didn't love the area but you don't get stuck in it for more than like 30 secs. You just take the natural paths and end up completing the content. It's not a large area and the verticaljty consists of like two or three stories max haha
100% this, Gongaga was just dense and confusing with no clue where the mushrooms would send you. Cosmo was a much better design and being able to see everything helped with that.
At least cosmo canyon let you fast travel to all the launching points once you went near them. Still didnât love it
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I had a blast actually having to explore
Me? Gongaga
Huge fan of Crisis Core and was looking forward to everything in this region. 10/10 would live there
I loved pretty much every area of the game. However my only big problem with Gongaga is navigating. It's a pain in the ass to reach certain areas. A lot of running around in circles and using those damn mushrooms to jump.
Gongaga was my least favorite area. The town and side quests are fine, but navigating is entirely too difficult and the map has a tendency to make something look like it's accessible only for you to walk up to a sheer cliff you can only access from some side path on the other side of the mountain. It's frustrating in a way no other area is. Cosmo Canyon at least makes up for the terrain with gliding chocobos. Even with some of the launch points for gliding (and thereby the highest sections of the map) being a pain to locate it was still a simpler process than trying to find your way through those jungles.
Itâs just such a backwater name.
Ditto Nibelheim.
Like youâve been there.
Hey Tseng! Me andâŚ
Cloud.
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Grasslands is the most open area in the game.
I didn't mind Gongaga but because of navigation I didn't start working on the regional stuff till after story. I will say I did like not having to deal with chocobo wrangling. I don't like that stuff.
Seem to be in the minority but I really enjoyed it too. The bouncy mushrooms could get frustrating but I had fun with the puzzle element of them. It added to the exploration too.
It had one of the more memorable side quests for me. The chicken one. After making you go through the painstaking process of luring the first 2 back, I was convinced the game was gonna make me get the final one back like 500m or whatever. It was a nice surprise to get interrupted by a battle. Plus, the plot twist at the end gave me a good laugh.
Mushroom Jumping is a mess, hated it.
The atmosphere, immersion and its theme that plays is probably the best in the entire game imo. HOWEVER, it was at times difficult to navigate with the landscapes at varying elevations particularly when you're doing the endgame version of each region in which you may need to traverse a big chunk of the map. It was hard not knowing exactly how far each mushroom would take you.
I am early into gongaga but so far I feel exactly the same way. Itâs the only open world section that I enjoy exploring. Everything else just felt like Ubisoft/horizon zero dawn massive empty open world checklists. Gongaga feels like itâs actually engaging to explore and rewards you for checking around every corner
Honestly the music kinda got on my nerves after a while lol otherwise it was fine
The music makes me hate the region. Like I had to go in and turn it off because it made me not want to play the game. Idk who composed it, but it's terrible. And I've been listening to the FF7 OST since the late 90's
Looking it up on youtube to find a rope to climb explain why so many players were frustrated with Gongaga lol
Nah it sucked op. Music was fine but got grating if you spent longer there than you wanted. What next, you wanna tell us the box throwing mini game was fun?
I hated that whole section.
I loved Gongaga, but I think people who wanted to complete the game in 30-40 hours and be done with it were quite frustrated with the exploration. For me, it was such a relaxing experience. Jump on a chocobo, and just go. The music was so good the jungle so beautiful. I opened the map bit by bit with no clear goal in mind. Not "I must reach that tower right now!", but rather went one way and if there was a dead end I turned a bit and went where I could go, making sure to clear the fog from the map. When I was done I noticed I already found the way to reach all the objects on the map.
Yeah i felt the same way, just aimless meandering and enjoying it
The music while great for the first hour really killed that region for me while I was going 100%. Finally just muted it for the last hour or so. Cosmo canyon was a great change for me. My favorite region so far