Awesome / Final Fantasy VII Remake

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A Three-Point Landing. Because an Unflinching Walk wasn't awesome enough.

• Final Fantasy VII
• Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
• Crisis Core
• Dirge of Cerberus
• Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

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Pre-Release

• Let's begin where this entire journey did. The reveal trailer, shown at E3 2015. After all the buildup throughout the stellar trailer, the incredible Wham Shot of both Barret's gatling gun and Cloud's BFS sent the audience ROARING. It's STILL an incredible trailer, even with the game out and available for all.
  Narrator: At last... The promise has been made.
• For E3 (2019) attendees, the highlight of the extended reveal trailer was the moment Tifa finally appeared. Made evident by the crowd's enthusiastic cheers the moment they saw her updated character design.
  • Also judging from the crowd's reactions, the other highlights were: seeing her and Cloud supporting each other back-to-back and the moment Cloud is confronted by Sephiroth!
• The E3 exposition also has an amazing partial remake of the famous opening of the original, moving from the abstract camera pan through glowing particles of magic Aerith kneeling before a luminous piece of Materia to Cloud Strife riding the highjacked train and effortlessly and awesomely executing the classic flip that brought him into the franchise to begin with.
• The 2019 Tokyo Gameshow trailer, whose highlights include:
  • Reno and Rude, who now appear to have SOLDIER enhancements! In the original game, Advent Children, and all their other subsequent appearances, the Turks didn't have powers. So now they'll pose an actual threat to Cloud.
  • The trailer also features our first look at summons in the remake: Ifrit and Shiva, now in HD. Both look every bit as awe-inspiring as we'd imagine, thanks to the new graphics engine, sound, and animation quality.
  • Also, the squatting mini-game makes it triumphant return, along with Don Corneo's brothel segment. Fans of the original know what that means for poor Cloud... whereas the trailer shows that Tifa and Aerith can't wait!
• With the trailer to the game showcasing the new ending theme song, came a Behind-the-Scenes look at said song's composition as Nobuo Uematsu himself works with Survive Said the Prophet. Despite the composer's age and failing health in recent history, there's something genuinely earnest in seeing the man bobbing into the groove of the music and getting hyped at the finalized recordings of Yosh's vocals. Also crosses into Heartwarming Moments.
• A brief glimpse of Leviathan as an apparent mandatory boss fight, appropriately large and very much in charge. And indicative that, far from being a sadly easy-to-miss optional sidequest as it once was, this time around Wutai is very much heavily involved in the plot!
• As pointed out by Jim Sterling in a video he did about the games controversial ending^note  He liked it, by the way he does find it almost miraculous that in the absolutely leak-happy video game industry, one of the single most anticipated games of the year managed to spend its whole development period with no one finding out about the ending.

Post-Release

In General

• Barret's Pre-Asskicking One-Liner before combat starts.
  "You really wanna throw down with ME?!"
• A lot of Elite Mooks like the Hell House, the Eligor, and various other monsters each became boss battles with really fun mechanics to them.
• Everything about Cloud in this game can count as one large series of awesome moments, especially compared to his original self from the Playstation 1 game. In the original, while Cloud was definitely a pretty experienced fighter, he was SLOWLY, but surely gaining the strength to pull off the incredible feats he does throughout the whole remake. Here, Cloud is at full top Advent Children tier from the very beginning of the game. He's able to pull off superhuman jumps, feats of swordplay no mere mortal can perform, and is constantly doing awe-inspiring stunts throughout the entirety of the game, such as any of the motorcycle segments within which require him to do death-defying swordplay while still riding like a pro. By the time you get to the end, fully decked out with your best materia, weapons, and techniques, Cloud is such a badass the final fight of what's ONE-THIRD of the story turns into one worthy of Advent Children or even its little brother, Kingdom Hearts. The same could easily be said about how ridiculously powerful the whole team is, compared to the original (to say nothing about how their enemies measure up).

Chapter 4: Mad Dash

• Roche is nothing but a bundle of joy to hear every time he shows up. He does nothing but laugh, wallride, and do wheelies and flips on his bike during the chase scene. First, he twirls said bike, and does a reverse wheelie on top of a regular wheelie right before he drifts while using his Shock and Awe Sword Beams to fight Cloud. Then, he disarms Jessie, wheelies again while swinging his sword, drifts, smacks Cloud with the bike, before doing a u-turn wheelie to joust Cloud again before locking blades in a scene reminiscent of Advent Children.
• Jessie's plan for escaping the Sector 8 plate and getting back to the slums? Jumping off the plate and parachuting down into the slums. It works.

Chapter 7: A Trap Is Sprung

• The boss battle with the Air Buster in Remake is vastly different from the one found in the original Final Fantasy 7, and is a much more satisfying boss to fight against. We hear that the Air Buster was designed specifically for the purpose of killing giant monsters, and the party notes how better off they would be by running away from it instead of facing it. The lead up to the boss shows how much armaments and data are being used to power it up, with the party actively sabotaging it in hopes of standing a much better chance in the fight against it. Cloud even notes how he isn't sure if they can defeat it. When they finally face off against it, Shinra places a camera to show off the battle to the population. Instead of being a pushover much like it was in the original game, the Air Buster has multiple phases and a powerful laser to boot, it even takes to the air to bombard the party with missile attacks forcing the party to use magic and Barret's machine gun to even fight back. All the while Heidegger's projection is in the background cheering on the Air Buster and taunting you while this plays. The best part is that it starts off the fight by separating Cloud from the party much like it did in the original fight.

Chapter 8: Budding Bodyguard

• Data Files reveal that Shiva, the early game summon, was the summon responsible for defeating Jenova itself over 2,000 years ago by sealing it away in ice. Pretty impressive for what was originally an early game summon.

Chapter 9: The Town That Never Sleeps

• While Cloud is taken away to be Don Corneo's girl for the evening, Aerith and Tifa are taken for his men to "enjoy".
  Scotch: So, ladies. Ready to... get to it?
  Aerith: Yeah... I guess I'm good to go whenever. How 'bout you, Tifa?
  • As Scotch gets closer, he starts to recognize Aerith. Aerith locks eyes with him, a small smile on her face, and purposefully waits until he figures out he knows her as the new co-champion of the Corneo Colosseum. Now that it's dawned on him what's about to happen, Aerith nails him with a Groin Attack and the fight begins.
  • The fight is a complete Curb-Stomp Battle, Tifa perfectly follows up Aerith's Groin Attack with a roundhouse kick (heel first) to Scotch's jaw while Aerith ducks under it to give Tifa room perfectly taking him out, Aerith then yanks the rug out from another one of Corneo's men and then smashes him in the face with a chair as Tifa punches out the other two. It all takes roughly 10 seconds to finish.
• The revised Wall Market sequence, including the part where Cloud — for someone who claims to not partake — manages to bust out some very impressive moves on the dance floor.
• It's not commented on, but Andrea gets one as the first competitor in the pull-up challenges by putting up a rather good showing against Tifa (a woman with enough body strength to kick a monster through several shipping containers and give Sephiroth himself pause), despite being already gassed from doing it for hours before she turned up.

Chapter 11: Haunted

• Tifa, having had enough of ghosts in the Train Graveyard finishes off the Eligor monster by giving it a massive somersault kick into oblivion.

Chapter 12: Fight for Survival

• Aerith's more proactive attitude in the Remake has her and Wedge rapidly assembling an evacuation of the Sector 7 slums - later on, Don Corneo bemoans that he is hiding from Shinra because the plan to claim countless innocent lives was dashed due to the evacuation. As horrifying as the collapse of the plate still is, Aerith was able to help prevent a far worse tragedy (and indeed, most of the NPCs Cloud meets in the Sector 7 slums were able to escape and are still around following Shinra dropping the plate).
  • Wedge has his own moment during the evacuation. After avoiding his death from the original game by surviving his fall from the pillar. He is downright depressed that he can't fight and the Shinra guards won't let people evacuate through the gates into Wall Market. After a pep talk from Aerith, he literally screams at the guards until the younger guard opens the gate.
    • "No, sir! I will not obey that order!" You are a random grunt, a mook for the megacorporation that controls most of the world. You are working under Heidegger, Scarlet and other executives who have no qualms killing anybody defying them. You are standing in front of a crowd of people trying to escape impending doom (the plate about to fall and crush everything beneath it) and your superior officer tells you to keep the gate shut. And you tell him, with utmost respect, that he is wrong and that you will do what is right because one overweight dude in front of you (who might actually be an AVALANCHE operative) is begging you to be more than a cog. In a world full of badasses, SOLDIERs, monsters and magic, you shined above most in awesomeness.
  • On her way to find Marlene, Aerith stops to help a little girl named Betty who had fallen in the rush to escape. Aerith picks her up, encourages her to be brave and carries her to Marle where Betty reunites with her dad. Fighting and defeating powerful city-ruling corporations and legendary monsters is definitely awesome, but the humble act simply carrying a small child to safety from a terrible disaster is a truly heroic act.
• At one point during the Plate battle, Reno uses a helicopter minigun to shoot down a stack of pipes, which nearly collapse on Aerith. Tifa yells at her to get down, then takes a flying leap over her and kicks the pipes away.

Chapter 16: The Belly of the Beast

• Shinra's visual presentation. It's propaganda at its finest, but from a visual perspective graphically and in-universe, it's hard not to find the swooping in and around Midgar shots impressive.

Chapter 17: Deliverance from Chaos

• Motorcycle-based combat makes a return during the escape from the Shinra building and is just as awesomely ridiculous, if not more so. Highlights include Cloud mowing down a room-full of Mooks with his motorcycle and sweeping a wheel a couple of inches from Heidegger's face, and flying off a ramp to take down a helicopter with his sword by slicing its main rotor off like he's in Black Lagoon. Much slow motion is involved.
• While all of the Remade boss fights are highly impressive, special mention has to go the revised Rufus Shinra boss fight. Once an underwhelming enemy that went down pretty quickly and easily, he is now far more threatening and impressive with the newly christened President carrying around an ornate shotgun that can split into a pair of Hand Cannons, pulling off various Combination Attacks with his attack dog Darkstar, tossing around coins and shooting them out of the air for a variety of deadly effects, using his shotgun to propel himself around the helicopter pad as a sort of improvised Flash Step, and parrying the Ex-SOLDIER's sword swings with ease despite being nothing more than the son of his company's CEO holding a gun.

Chapter 18: Destiny's Crossroads

• The mere fact that everyone here has their own time in the limelight, moving forward the plot in their own way. A great example is that when the final battle gets into the Advent Children levels everyone pulls their weight and contributes to the fight.
  • With One Winged Angel: Rebirth blasting during the final battle, you deplete Sephiroth's health and watch an amazing final cutscene. Aerith blasts away Sephiroth's wave of Whispers, Tifa and Red XIII strike them down and Cloud rushes the man himself while Barret lays down covering fire. It will get the blood pumping.
• Six words: "Wait... was that all of 'em?" Just to prove that Nothing Is the Same Anymore, Zack shows up after the timeline has been altered, and wipes out all of the Shinra grunts sent to kill him and Cloud.
  • The buildup to it counts as well. A horde of Whispers are surrounding the party as Sephiroth tells them to "listen" and how "destiny comes", causing Cloud to have another flashback - where we now see a horde of Whispers surrounding Midgar at daytime, with a figure carrying the Buster Sword overlooking it for a cliff...and then we see said figure's black hair, and it turns out to be Zack. He then remarks "we dragged our asses all this way, and this is the welcome we get" - with the camera then cutting to Shinra's army surrounding him, confirming that this is happening just before Zack's death, and that the Whispers aren't just intervening in Cloud's time anymore.
  • Before facing down the soldiers, Zack repeats his famous monologue:
  "Boy oh boy, the price of freedom is steep. Embrace your dreams, and whatever happens, protect your honor...as a SOLDIER! Come and get it!"
• Rufus's out-of-battle Establishing Character Moment at the end of the game, when he completely ignores Heidegger calling him "Mister Vice President," but responds to Tseng's "Mister President" before taking a seat in his father's chair.
  Heidegger: Mister Vice President.
  Rufus: ...
  Tseng: Mister President.
  Rufus: That's right.
• The entire "Crazy Motorcycle" sequence contains a few such moments.
  • The prelude do it is a whole shipping tanker full of awesome. Cloud busts through the window to a triumphant version of the game's main theme, then proceeds to take out almost all the guards by drifting into their legs (a trick he observed Roche doing several days before). Cloud then charges at Heidigger and the last remaining guards, slams his sword into the ground, and pivots into the air to smash each one in the face with the rear tires... except Heidigger's. As everyone flees up the stairs, they come across a single, nervous guard standing in front of a window, their only escape. Cloud spins into a doughnut and HURLS the sword straight at the window, impaling itself right next to the guard. The guard practically shits himself as he collapses to the ground and flees. To finish it up, Cloud drives into the window and catches his spinning sword in mid-air before landing on the highway and escaping.
  • When the sequence starts, as if to show exactly how much of his time they're wasting, Cloud effortlessly takes out a few Shinra soldiers on their motorcycles by smashing his sword into them, sending them reeling down the highway.
  • After the first segment, Shinra has set up a roadblock. Cloud, thinking quickly, revs up his bike and moves forward, slashing the front tire of the armored truck that had been harassing him. This causes the truck to lose control and flip over onto its roof, sending the truck skidding at high speed into the blockade. The Shinra troops are forced to dive out of the way while Cloud and the Shinra Hauler with the rest of the party breeze right through the blockade, unimpeded.
  • After the second segment, a helicopter has been raining Death from Above on the party. After Barret pelts the thing with gunfire, it finally starts shooting its primary machine gun directly at the highway in an attempt to take the party down with it. Doesn't work; Cloud hits a ramp, jumps up to just beneath the helicopter's blades, and cuts off the entire rotor. Cue the helicopter slamming into the highway.
  • Shinra tries one last time to stop the party with the Motorball. Cloud and Red XIII deal the Finishing Move with Red jumping up to sever the thing's processor-cables, with Cloud bisecting the Motorball's transmission from below with his sword. As Cloud's bike and the Shinra Hauler jump over an empty section of highway, the Motorball crashes below, complete with a massive explosion behind the group as they ride towards the Final Boss.
• The battle against the Whisper Harbinger, the One-Winged Angel form for the Arbiters of Fate i.e, what is essentially the Anthropomorphic Personification of Railroading and They Changed It, Now It Sucks!. The combined efforts of Cloud, Baret, Tifa, Aerith, and Red XIII lead to an altered timeline where Nothing Is the Same Anymore.
  • Sephiroth manipulating the party into slaying the Whisper Harbinger. With its death, he manages to undo his own defeat!
• Heck, just the fact that after the Arbiters of Fate are defeated and the status quo is changed up, the first thing you do in the new timeline is fight the Final Boss of the original game! With the very girl he was supposed to kill at your disposal!
  Cloud: [Sephiroth’s] tough.
  Aerith: Yeah, so what? Screw him.
  • Be it Aerith, Tifa, or Barret, the way that they managed to repel Sephiroth from attacking Cloud and another party member is simply commendable, Aerith by casting a fire spell, Tifa by somersaulting the guy, and Barret by shooting him away.
  • Sephiroth gets to shows exactly why he is the greatest SOLDIER ever by easily showing off the incredible strength and swordsmanship he was famous for in the form of swift and damaging combo attacks and being the only boss who could block attacks and would do so with ease if the player tries to charge at him recklessly, as well as incredible magical prowess by casually casting high-level elemental spells, which he could and would do while the player is recklessly charging at him in a clear strategic maneuver, before then revealing a previously unseen level of Elemental Infusion and starting to show off the dark magic spells he could use along with making use of his wing's feathers as dark projectiles.
    • His overall attitude during the fight makes it clear he wasn't going all-out, and he keeps his smug smirk the entire time as he easily beats Cloud and handles him and another party member. He only briefly loses his composure when he is beaten hard enough to cancel his Meteor and even then he quickly recovers and manages to separate Cloud from his friends for a final on-on-one duel by using the Whispers.
  • After Cloud is separated from his friends and offered a chance to join Sephiroth, despite having experienced just how strong Sephiroth is and the clear difference in strength, Cloud refuses quickly and confronts Sephiroth, despite being terrified of him, and actually manages to go up against him even if the entire fight ends up being a Curb-Stomp Battle. This seems to intrigue Sephiroth enough that he spares Cloud after winning the ensuing duel, if only to see what he does next.
• Not to belabor a point, but the unremitting boldness that the writers and developers had to take one of the most beloved stories in all of gaming and change it so that we no longer know what will happen in it going forward. While the changes to the ending of the Midgar section were one of the more polarizing aspects of FFVII:R, one can't help but commend Square Enix for sticking to their creative guns and making a new mark on this franchise and its story.

Episode INTERmission

In General

• Fort Condor, formerly a wave defense minigame where you have to defend the Condor at the peak from waves of enemies has been radically altered into an Augmented Reality Board Game. Each players goal is to destroy the opponent's HQ before theirs is destroyed, with the game going into Sudden Death if it is tied. What makes this an awesome minigame? The sheer number of options you have available as you progress through the ranks. By the time you reach the grandmaster you have unlocked 5 or 6 boards, each with different numbers of available units, ATB and materia to use. As for the units, they range from the 2 ATB footsoldiers, to the 5 ATB barracks, all the way up to the 6 ATB heavy mechs and even a 7 ATB chopper! And for added style points, there is a combat triangle to exploit and tons of strategy to use in order to win. And that's not even getting into Hard Mode, where the game ramps up the difficulty by changing your win condition to only destroying the opponent's HQ. And if you don't do it in 3 mins, you only have one minute of Sudden Death overtime to finish it off.
• Yuffie manages to outshine the entire Avalanche crew with her combat prowess. In addition to her long range shuriken attacks, she can also use close quarters melee strikes, using it as a blunt instrument; and using the throw mechanic, she can free her hands for some basic magic attacks using her ninjutsu. Furthermore, using her signature moveset she can alter her ninjutsu from non-elemental to wind, ice, lightning or fire to hit enemy weaknesses. Oh, and all these are basic attacks. Her ATB skills are even more busted, with one of them providing her with a free Flash Step to dodge enemy attacks, and another getting stronger the more ATB you consume in between uses. She mixes Cloud's power blows with Aerith's magic attacks and Tifa's agility. You never need offensive magic materia because of her elemental ninjutsu, and that lets you free up valuable materia slots for HP Up and Magic Up.

Chapter 2: Covert Ops

• The sheer fact that Remake is introducing the Tsviets straight away, and Nero is even the Final Boss of the episode!
  • Yuffie and Sonon get a credit for being able to fight against Nero, especially as in Dirge Of Cerberus, Yuffie was instantly defeated and absorbed by him. Not only that, they managed to force him to remove his limiters and damage him enough that he even goes as far as to admit they were Worthy Opponents.
  • That said, Nero's entire attitude during the fight was Laughing Mad and while he clearly felt it when Yuffie and Sonon attacked him, it was evident that the pain was minimum enough that he could go as far as to enjoy it, suggesting he may have been holding back to enjoy the fight. He even feigns defeat in the end in order to get the drop on them, showing how strategic he could be. Doubles as Nightmare Fuel and a Tear Jerker considering Sonon ends up dying.