The calm before the storm
Serving as a small appetizer for fans and a little incentive as picking up the modern generation version of the Final Fantasy VII remake, Episode Intermission serves as a nice bit sized adventure fleshing out one of the original cast with her own prologue before her main debut with activities and story.
What the episode here does more than anything is bring Yuffie into context of the story before her initial debut, plenty of fun side activities that keep you busy for an hour or two and a story that doesn't slow down and bring some exciting elements that weren't there in the original. Yuffie's characterization is more charming and actually gives her more personal stakes in the eventual main journey along with Sonon making a great foil and sidekick for Yuffie's antics. The other characters are cool but considering the pace of the story, they don't get much time to shine other than serve as context for other important characters.
Yuffie is incredibly fun to control and that's a great thing considering she's the only character you'll truly control for this five hour romp. Sonon will join you as an extension more than someone you can truly control and it's mostly fun since you can select ATB commands for him but in terms of pure real time control, that's a negative. The main meat of combat is here with the additional element of synergizing with Sonon which lets you focus on a target for extra damage and access to more powerful techniques with the price of reducing how much Sonon builds up his ATB gauge which prevents you from constantly being synergized. While combat is just as fun, Fort Condor is a surprisingly fun mini game within the episode being a remix of the original except it being a two sided tower defense hybrid game. Despite being only able to control one character, the game does not overstay its welcome too much this time around so the novelty ran its course perfectly.
I kinda like the idea of a DLC like this if priced correctly and released at the right time, providing a little of something for the fans to tide yourself over until the next main release. Games are taking longer and longer to make so anything to make the wait a little easier is always nice especially since we'll only be able to play only so many games in our lifetime. Final Fantasy and Madden will (probably) exist after most of us go so it's nice to get more of it if done right. This comes with Intergrade by default on PC and new copies on PS5 which provides a code, I can't comment if used copies of Intergrade will have this since mine came with a code so you might have to pay $20 for this one and it's a little iffy on value unless you really want more of the remake's style of game.
Serving as a small appetizer for fans and a little incentive as picking up the modern generation version of the Final Fantasy VII remake, Episode Intermission serves as a nice bit sized adventure fleshing out one of the original cast with her own prologue before her main debut with activities and story.
What the episode here does more than anything is bring Yuffie into context of the story before her initial debut, plenty of fun side activities that keep you busy for an hour or two and a story that doesn't slow down and bring some exciting elements that weren't there in the original. Yuffie's characterization is more charming and actually gives her more personal stakes in the eventual main journey along with Sonon making a great foil and sidekick for Yuffie's antics. The other characters are cool but considering the pace of the story, they don't get much time to shine other than serve as context for other important characters.
Yuffie is incredibly fun to control and that's a great thing considering she's the only character you'll truly control for this five hour romp. Sonon will join you as an extension more than someone you can truly control and it's mostly fun since you can select ATB commands for him but in terms of pure real time control, that's a negative. The main meat of combat is here with the additional element of synergizing with Sonon which lets you focus on a target for extra damage and access to more powerful techniques with the price of reducing how much Sonon builds up his ATB gauge which prevents you from constantly being synergized. While combat is just as fun, Fort Condor is a surprisingly fun mini game within the episode being a remix of the original except it being a two sided tower defense hybrid game. Despite being only able to control one character, the game does not overstay its welcome too much this time around so the novelty ran its course perfectly.
I kinda like the idea of a DLC like this if priced correctly and released at the right time, providing a little of something for the fans to tide yourself over until the next main release. Games are taking longer and longer to make so anything to make the wait a little easier is always nice especially since we'll only be able to play only so many games in our lifetime. Final Fantasy and Madden will (probably) exist after most of us go so it's nice to get more of it if done right. This comes with Intergrade by default on PC and new copies on PS5 which provides a code, I can't comment if used copies of Intergrade will have this since mine came with a code so you might have to pay $20 for this one and it's a little iffy on value unless you really want more of the remake's style of game.