Not really, it’s just a different story you get to know him through. The first time he appears in Remake, Cloud is having a massive PTSD flashback to a burning town, and then you see that Cloud has a raging hateboner against this ghost that he’s obsessed with and sees everywhere, mistaking his sick neighbour for him and trying to murder him on sight. Until he shows up for real and he’s involved with those weird shadows that few people can see and he acts ultra criptic and he makes no sense. It doesn’t expect the player to know him, you just see Cloud’s PTSD through his eyes, it’s a madness and an obsession that’s just hurting his head, it doesn’t matter if you know him or not. Beyond that, it’s part 1 of a trilogy, you’re expected to wait for the next 2 parts to learn more about him and why Cloud hates him. Even at the beginning of Rebirth, he’s the mysterious ghost whispering lies in Cloud’s ears, making him doubt reality and go full “lalala you’re not real” PTSD paranoia. People who know the OG, and people who don’t, see his presence very differently.

It’s not that you meet Sephiroth early and you’re supposed to know who he is, it’s that Cloud is crazy and you’re supposed to doubt him. That gets stronger and stronger in Rebirth - you’ll definitely start part 3 with Barret, Tifa, Yuffie convinced that Cloud is completely gone and lost, Barret’s getting ready to take Old Yeller down, he’s just waiting for Tifa to give up. I think that’s a much stronger story today.

Most of the story beats are still there. Most of the emotions from the OG are still there - except one thing. I’ll try to avoid spoilers but if you’ve played OG and remake, you should know.

The major change in the story itself is the continuation of something you saw at the very tail end of the first Remake, that probably made you go WTF, the meta-narrative you’re suspicious about. It might be a concept you don’t really like because it sounds like it’ll break the story, but it actually doesn’t concretely change anything until the end. The places, the events, the world, the mission are still the same. The most critical change that caused a lot of noise is a big cliffhanger that will only be resolved in the final game, when it was expected to be a big emotional hit now. It’s very clear that this is a trilogy, and expecting this game to end the same way as the OG caused a lot of distress. People who loved the OG for one specific reason or another might feel robbed by the way this game is pretending to change things, but actually doesn’t, but actually maybe yes - and you’ll only get the resolution in the last game. If that means something to you, maybe you should wait for the trilogy to be completed and treat it as a single game, because this part 2 is only half of the game you liked back then, and it might not have what made you love it - yet.

One big change in storytelling is what it focuses on: it gets much more into the psychology of Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, Barret, about mental health, trauma, and their relationships (in the same way they massively developped the Avalanche trio in Remake). Basically, they’re making everyone real human beings with a history and interactions. Now you understand from the inside of their head why they do or don’t do this or that. It also adds focus on some aspects and perspectives that only developed in the Crisis Core prequel and were not a thing in the OG. It’s a massive improvement on storytelling and world building (the world now has a history of geopolitics scattered everywhere in every side quests), but it looks like a lot of fans of the OG who expected things to go a certain way get hung up and slowed down by all the new details, and it feels like fluff or a change they don’t like. You clearly feel the stretch from one 50 hour long turn-based RPG into 3 action RPG that last 50 (remake) + 120 (rebirth) + 1?? (part 3) hours, and it’s a lot, and you might not like it.

It absolutely has tons of gaming content to enjoy, both in the characters and the absolute shitload of things and side quests and mini-games to do absolutely everywhere for a 120 hours playthrough and you don’t even see the time pass, but it might not be exactly what you felt in the OG. It’s a new perspective. I’ve seen among various streamers that the people who were the most confused by the ending are often the harder fans of the OG, and new fans see the details and hidden explanations that OG fans miss because they think they know what’s going on - and get blue-balled on what they came here for.

And then Sephiroth changes. We still don’t know if they’re whitewashing him by giving him a sad backstory and a big personal mission (the gacha game Ever Crisis that’s still ongoing is developing his time as a young SOLDIER) or if they’re making him an even worse guy, and so far it has the potential to ruin the character. We have to wait until it’s all resolved.

You only fight Sephiroth at the end. But he does lurk around more often, harassing and taunting you.

No one has MvC2 on any playable system today, because it was removed at some point from all digital stores. Not counting the obvious piracy choice, the MvC2 community that’s still going strong has been crying for a rerelease for literally two decades. So that collection has a decent chance of doing notable numbers.

But yes, they pulled that bait test a couple times before and never went anywhere with it and that was super shitty. I don’t have any hope that this will revive MvC because it’s not up to the players, it’s up to Marvel to let Capcom make a good game. This collection is still very much appreciated either way.

The article really wants to remind everyone that the hero’s canonical name is Tir, and at first I thought that meant the site was actually using the name. But instead it makes a point to not use that name and call him Hero, so now the article’s insistence just seems sad.

Also for anyone like me looking for the date and confused by it not being in the first line of the article, it’s March 6 2025.

You could argue it’s more like Sekiro but Zelda. Or like Candy Crush but Zelda.

Has no one seen the Assassin’s Fist series or what?

Completing the trilogy “after 28 days” and “after 28 weeks”

I’ve been playing the series since LttP. Twilight Princess is my top, for presentation and storytelling.

I feel like Skyward Sword tried to repeat that, but the dungeons and style / atmosphere of the world of TP still come out on top (even though I’m not very much into gothic style and furries). I think SS is way too cartoonish and happy-go-lucky for a world where the surface has been abandoned to the demons and yet everyone who lives there is cool (gorons, kiwis, moles, proto-Zora), that’s a massive tonal dissonance between the narration and the actual environment and it just takes me out.

The next ones on my top list are Minish Cap and Link Between Worlds.

I know what you mean, but Nintendo is a pretty bad example to illustrate that sentiment. I mean, they totally do corporate crap to benefit them and not the players obviously, but the Zelda series is literally built around the gimmicks of the console. They start thinking about a gimmick, either on the console and / or how to turn that into a gameplay gimmick, and then they make a Zelda game around that. OoT had the rumble pack and then tried to do Ura Zelda that was supposed to be the system seller for the DD64 - but that blew up and was salvaged between Master Mode and Majora’s Mask. The GameCube had Four Swords with the connection to the GBA and the multiplayer. The Wii had Skyward Sword with the motion thing, the Wii U had the separate tablet. The DS then the 3DS weren’t too relevant for Zelda but they tried, and other games did rely on it.

I’m not saying it’s a fact for the whole series, but Nintendo is particularly famous for developing a gimmick console and then building games around that, so yes, the physical console is actually relevant to the game you want to play it on, you’d be hard pressed to port that elsewhere and emulators are always weird and have a lot of work to adapt into something that makes sense on a single screen with a basic gamepad.

Buried, Ryan Reynolds is the only one on screen (not playing multiple characters, just one), though there are voiced characters from other actors on the phone.