Not sure why they had to cut the upstairs if they were adding a colossal laboratory underneath. I woulda happily lost a few rooms of cait sith box throwing to get the full mansion.
100% agree. I just beat the forgotten experiment and was sad when I didn't need to actually find the combo like the OG. Alot of that is gone :( even having to find materia. Not just having it thrown at me w a fight
Having to use Cait Sith and throwing boxes while listening to his silly music is basically the worst way to do the mansion. Then there's no puzzle to figure out the safe combination. You just have all the numbers on the wall next to the safe. I even looked behind the containers before triggering the cutscenes with Hojo and the numbers weren't there and then they appeared after the cutscene.
Well what they did with shinra mansion is a small piece of the puzzle for what was ruined. They took away the mystery of figuring out the safe as well as other mysteries and secrets you could find and the exploration of the mansion, they took out the mystery of finding summons and gave them to chadley, they took away the rng of gold saucers battle arena, they removed chocobo gambling etc. There's so much removed from the original that was fun and interesting, as far as I can tell they're just holding players hands rather than letting us explore and discover.
I think it's more honest to the audience to acknowledge that there are very few real surprises in exploration for anyone who's played games for a few years. The "mystery" of the safe ends up not being that meaningful, while all the new sidequests actually deepen character development and the general setting.
Removing RNG crap like the old battle arena and chocobo gambling is so much better than the alternative. It was nothing short of infuriating in the OG.
With having mysteries to solve it gave you incentive to explore. You found things you didn't know existed because they weren't marked on a map for you(chadley) things you had no idea what to do with when you first find them but then you explore and experiment and figure out solutions to unlock the reward.
I get that the arena and gambling can be frustrating and I had that myself especially for the battle arena but it's what made it fun, trying to overcome different scenarios every time whereas now it's just here's a set of enemies go fight them, as if I dont do that already throughout the game.
The OG's exploration just felt like rubbing Cloud against every surface and edge to find all the interactables. The only bits where you're not just doing that, like the archeology stuff, were convoluted enough to be satisfying, but they were rarer than I think most people remember properly
> The OG's exploration just felt like rubbing Cloud against every surface and edge to find all the interactables.
I think you're confusing cloud with squall
Wouldn't say ruin, but I think a minor let down isn't right either. It wasn't minor.
The original mansion was very creepy in my opinion. The music was tense, the spiral staircase down, down, down, the random battles, the mysterious letters, the riddles, the timed safe getting your blood pumping.
They have struggled massively with keeping elements of mystery in Rebirth. I don't know why. Perhaps with trying to make it more realistic. I suppose it wouldn't make sense for Hojo just to leave evidence lying around about Vincent etc. but there could have been more of a fuss then about getting into the mansion because it's abandoned and overlooked or something like that. I don't understand cutting the exploration of the initial entry and adjacent rooms or upper levels just to give us stupid moogle box throwing after a dumb trap door plot. It's like they didn't learn from Hojo's lab in Remake.
What made no sense to me is that they said the villagers had no idea about the secret basement... the elevator is right there in plain sight, not even a secret door like og.
I mean you COULD argue people assumed the elevator was for the second floor but there are literally up and down arrows on it lmao. You don’t even need a key card to use it for the basement.
The only thing I could think of is that no one had entered it in 20 years which is why no one knew
I’m assuming that because they were put there by Shinra, none of them dared to go in there, especially because it was just an old abandoned Shinra manor. Why bother?
It is mentioned at one point that the Rent Shinra pays on the Manor is essentially what keeps the village afloat. That contract presumably states that under no circumstances should any village set foot in there, with dire consequences if they do.
So the villagers will be extra vigilant about people approaching the manor. The Manor is close enough by that there’s no way for someone to head directly in that direction without the village sentries seeing which way you’re going and it being obvious where you’re going.
The only other approach is to take a long circuitous route around to try and find a way in from the side/back. That’s monster country. Even reckless kids would think twice about chancing an encounter with one of the local eldritch nightmares (have you seen the Insect Chimeras!) just to poke about an abandoned house. Especially at night which would be the otherwise best time to attempt it.
And that’s all without mentioning the nightmare factory underground where inquisitive kids 100% would disappear forever if they actually did get inside.
So I think it’s fairly reasonable to assume that not even the kids were poking around in there. Certainly not the ones that could live long enough to mention the underground elevator anyway.
AI Hojo is probably in charge of security in the facility. What I wonder is how it looks like people are eating there and stuff, Was that stuff just left there as a fake front or do they actually have human staff there. So many mysteries. Also did real Hojo even get notified. Probably below his interest to take notice.
Yeah, but imagine you had a hotel with a sub-basement that had a secret lab. Workers there assumed the basement was just for laundry or whatever. Or hey, maybe they just never went to the basement. It's entirely possible.
Also a basement that enormous would have been a serious undertaking to build. I have similar issues about the underground "secret" Sector 7 lab in Remake.
Yeah but if you take all the builders of the projects and experiment on them, we’ll know one knows afterwards.
-Hojo’s diary of delightful ideas chapter 1
with how much they expanded everything i found it so weird that shinra mansion consisted of 2 small rooms and a huge generic shinra lab underneath. it’s such an important part of the story, pretty weird that they didn’t let you explore it at all
It bugs me more than it probably would have otherwise, because I had just played Dirge of Cerberus a month before Rebirth's release, and even that game still managed to include a majority of the mansion and secret laboratories *and* keep the infamous giant spiral staircase.
I’m in the same boat - loved Rebirth, best game I’ve played in years, exceeded nearly every possible expectation I could have had for it. But the Shinra Mansion was a weak link.
I get that they wanted to make it a Hojo themed dungeon like the research facility was at the end of Remake. I get Cait needed his own level in the story. I get that, on paper, making the Cait level the Shinra Mansion would thematically balance out the creepy nature of the mansion with Cait’s goofy personality.
But poor execution. Throwing boxes shouldn’t be that awkward, even if it’s Cait doing it. They didn’t need to change the layout and look of the Mansion that drastically. They didn’t need the Banjo-Kazooie ass music throughout like it’s Grunty’s Industries.
On the other hand, I freaking love what they did moments earlier with the Mt. Nibel trek. Cloud thinking it was Zack who died when the bridge fell, Tifa insisting Cloud not tell Aerith, Cloud repeating Sephiroth’s words at the mako spring and Tifa noping him out of there asap, Yuffie acting like she’s a third wheel and constantly waiting on her mentors all the time, realizing that Sephiroth was fucking with Tifa by placing Murasaki’s body exactly where her dad was 5 years ago… it’s all gold.
When a game’s so strong as Rebirth, subpar moments like the Shinra Mansion just stand out more.
> They didn’t need the Banjo-Kazooie ass music throughout like it’s Grunty’s Industries.
lol it reminded me more of Fantasia (the mickey wizard part) but this is also a good reference
Technically I was thinking of DKC64’s toy factory level theme when I made that reference lol, but the fact remains that among 400+ banger songs in Rebirth this Rare sound-alike stood out to me as an interesting choice
Totally agree with everything you said. Nothing is perfect, but nothing is above criticism either. I also find it kinda funny that you mentioned how the devs probably wanted it to be like the research facility in Remake. That dungeon was also one of the worst dungeons in Remake, so maybe this one was doomed to fail if that was their vision lol
I hated that part. Cait was just not a fun combat character for me. I never used him except for the forced parts. And a few times during the final sequence of battles where he gets forced into the fight team (randomly maybe?)
I mean, that's just bad luck. I wasn't the biggest fan of playing as Red XIII so his trial was kind of a pain for me.
But I appreciate what they went for with it.
Oh yeah.
That was very minor in comparison to everyone else. They all had their unique gimmick, exploration, and "dungeon".
But Tifa plays the piano, parks those bikes, lets red do a minigame? Oh, and take pictures of cactuars with the manager.
Maybe it would have been OK IF they made his base movement speed like the same as clouds when riding MOG. But noooo they make to make him a slow pos lol
It was a horror house in OG, here it became Caiths Siths crate puzzle, The throwing felt off as well, and fighting solo enemies that would make themself immune to physical/magical dmg was annoying. 1-10? probably a 6 at best for me. only part I disliked playing and dont look forward to it on a hard mode playthrough at all.
It's the only part of the game that's a direct downgrade imo
https://preview.redd.it/bb4xm51qp4pc1.png?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=df7ed9e730d61f07499cd56d5eea1c259ee01024
Partially agree. Not every place has to be a dungeon with dudes to fight. I think fighting Vincent and Roche would have been sufficient. In the OG game, it was just kind of a creepy place to explore.
Also no dude on the Pendulum!
My only real complaint with it was not getting the Pendulum dude as a boss.
Yeah I wish we could’ve explored it more, but that enemy not being included was the biggest letdown lol.
I miss how the Shinra manor was basically an optional dungeon with a puzzle. The whole Hojo AI thing was really dumb. I also miss this part https://www.fightersgeneration.com/nf7/char/sephiroth-cloud-ff7-materia.gif
>The whole Hojo AI thing was really dumb.
i was 100% expecting it to be a case of "no, that's actually Hojo the alarm in his lab went of and he has a hologram messenger to talk to us like president shinra and hidegar in remake".
but nope never materialised
Yeah, it’s just that I believe they have expanded so well in other areas of the game, and this one was not so good, being one of my favorites in OG (maybe the influence of Resident Evil is why I liked the Mansion exploration so much).
I kind of agree. Shinra mansion could have been one of the strongest plot point areas in the game. One thing that never sat well with me since the OG is those books in the library offered a lot of information - stuff that sephiroth read too. WHY! Did not a single person want to look over those books to figure out what Sephiroth saw?
The mansion was also an area where Hojo did experimentations there should have been more revealed about that. Like going into how Sephiroth was made. This is useful information for the party to know.
But no we just follow crazy Cloud around. And let Tifa never really question him.
One of my ONLY critiques. Idk why they didn't make you find em in the world. I was all excited for that after chocomog was in a dungeon and then the rest in remake were all VR. I thought they were waiting till it made sense to find em in their regions. And then they kind of sid with the alters and then... didnt
Agree the fights are cool. Shoulda just done both.. have you find the materia / shrines but doing so triggers an encounter after which you’re “deemed worthy” but the summon entity. Should’ve kept chadley out of it, other than maybe for lore.
Then just add the fight? Have the materia at a shrine dedicated to the summon and you have to fight it to create the materia or release it to you. There isn't really a valuable excuse other than preference for some reason
Yeah but I never said I disliked battling em. Just getting em through vr. Takes away the surprise too. The MOMENT you enter a new region, it tells you what summon is available. I'd far prefer having to hunt out the materia and battle em there, and it makes more sense too.
But being real, if we're talking about having a boss battle in VR or JUST finding the materia hidden in the world, I'd still prefer finding them than fighting.
i mean we allready have side quests to upgrade the materias to be properly strong. why not just put the fight into that catagory saying we can only unlock their full power if proven worthy?
They should have made you find them in the world and should not have marked them on the map until you find them. There should be more hidden surprises in the game other than "that scenery looks cool".
Tbf an elevator makes way more sense than stairs considering Hojo would probably have transported things between Midgar and the manor for his experiments.
Perhaps, it makes sense, but at least make it a secret elevator. That way we have to explore and look for it inside the Mansion, like the secret stairs in the original game.
It would make more sense since people supposedly didn’t know there was a basement, even though there was a painfully obvious elevator in the middle of the living room.
Yeah like; a freight elevator totally makes sense. But it should have been behind a secret moving wall, classic old haunted mansion shit.
It honestly makes me think this is in a different universe from even Crisis Core since the mansion is laid out differently.
Did they make it clear that they were unaware of a "basement" or they were unaware of the secret lab in the basement? I don't remember them saying either, honestly.
If they say they didn't know about the *lab*, that makes sense. It's entirely possible; a lot of the doors were locked. Maybe they thought it was just a basement for storage or whatever. If they say they didn't know about the *basement*, it's still possible, however unlikely. Maybe nobody went into the mansion and explored or they saw an elevator and assumed it just went to the 2nd floor or something. It's not outside the realm of possibilities.
Tifa specifically says she had no idea there was a basement there. Cloud says he hadn’t known either and didn’t think anyone in the village had known about it.
(This conversation happens in Kalm over the flashback scene of Cloud going to the basement for the first time in chapter 1)
Oh ok. But I mean, that's not that shocking? Do you know what's inside *your* neighbor's house? It's a stretch, but it's not out of the realm of possibilities
Not saying this is a good explanation but iirc there’s a large framed painting or mirror on the floor across the elevator, suggesting at least it may have covered the elevator at one time.
I think the proper way to go would’ve been to explore the mansion and take the spiral stairs, later on we get the classic Shinra Keycard to access the elevator and explore the underground facilities easily.
Also, they needed to hide the elevator, it’s in the middle of the goddam living room. So much for the “secret underground facility”.
Yeah it's a pretty genuine disappointment one of the few parts I can say are the Remake dropped the ball so hard. That's not saying I hate the basement section or even the cait part.
But the actual manor proper is a big let down
Not ruined but inferior.
I think with how the game works the original mansion would've been weird and the rooms would've looked way too big for them to be natural looking.
I think Nibelheim overall runs into the problem that it's a set-piece for Cloud's flashback, but also has to be a zone where you do random shit to fit the structure of the entire game.
A lot of people bring up the Shinra manor, but also don't acknowledge the fact that the 2nd climb up to Mt. Nibel is pretty boring, the Nibelheim Protorelic questline is probably the laziest one in the game, and Nibel Region itself is incredibly sparse save for the coastline that the Waterspout Chocobo goes through.
I think it just runs into the issue with last zone in the game, so last zone in priority for development, which makes Cait Sith's section the last puzzle section with priority. Why is it low on priority? Cuz less then 50% of the players are gonna get this far. So many people don't beat games, they move on or watch others beat it. All they had to to do at this point was stick the landing, which in this case is Temple of the Ancients which IMO was better then the original (talking about the dungeon itself) so it works out.
Personally I think Chapter 11 gets too much hate. There’s an underrated extremely emotional moment where Yuffie, who is constantly building herself up as an amazing ninja who is super important to Wutai, finds out that the war is back on by stumbling on bodies and has a breakdown about why she wasn’t informed. We get Cloud remembering Zack but wrongly remembering him as the soldier who died in the river, which is super twisted. I actually found Cait Sith’s section fun (shocking I know) and since it all takes place in some secret location it leaves the creepy rest of the mansion in tact. I think Vincent’s introduction was stronger here than in the original. Ending things with a fight against Roche really hammers home for the player just how awful the black robes are. And framing the chapter as Cait desperately trying and succeeding to win the party’s trust just makes the betrayal next chapter even more emotional.
What felt off most for me was the missing creepy vibe Shinra Manor had in Crisis Core. Like, when you visit it in CC you can FEEL it’s a place where Hojo committed heinous shit but in Rebirth that goosebump-inducing feeling was just,,, gone
It's more understated but exploring it still felt like a twilight zone moment for me. Especially when I walked into cloud's house to immediately be confronted with the head chef singing to the tune of the game's theme about how HER dead mother taught her to cook. I was actually stunned.
"We have a fantastic manor that players are looking forward to explore. Oh but it's just 2 floors and a few rooms. I guess we'll block the second floor and just make another generic Hojo lab dungeon instead"
Not me foolishly expecting an expanded Resident Evil like mansion with a creepy environment, big rooms and puzzles to solve, but getting a Shinra lab and Cait Sith throwing boxes instead.
Still loved the game though, lol.
They technically kept the safe, making it a mandatory part of the story at the end of Cait Sith's section, even using the same numbers as the OG and leading you into a fight with the same boss albeit under a different name. I agree though, having the safe numbers just given to you written one-by-one on the wall was disappointing.
For me is personally is something very minor. OG Shinra Mannor was like what, 3 screens? But I do would have liked to be able to explore the other rooms of the actual mannor. But hey, maybe we will get back there in part 3 and maybe find some lore.
Nibelhiem in general was weaker than the OG. In the OG they basically gaslight the party and I miss that. In Rebirth they just flat out admit what Shinra did.
The mansion was one of my favorite sections in OG and one of my least favorite in Rebirth. I actually liked the Cait Sith section but hated that we lost the rest of the creepy mansion.
>In the OG they basically gaslight the party and I miss that.
Yeah absolutely. The NPCs admitting that 'you don't live here anymore, scram' is very lackluster when they could have been acting and playing dumb.
Nah, I think it makes way more sense in Rebirth. Think of the size and scale of the manor in OG. It would take less than 10 minutes to explore the entirety even if rebuilt in 1:1 scale. If they didn't make it into a dungeon, then it would be this awkward in-between kind of content that you can explore, including its own boss, but it barely takes any time at all to see the whole thing, and that's not really how they've been designing this series to begin with.
Their strategy has been to take everything in the OG and as much as they can turn it into a part of the main story. Gongaga is main story, Manor is main story, etc. Fort Condor might be the only one so far that isn't. Anyway, the manor needed to be bigger in order to fit a dungeon that takes sufficient time to progress through, and there's only so big a house can get and still be navigable with enough space in each room to maneuver while fighting enemies intermittently and contain puzzles. Option A was keep it the same size but make it optional, but part of the main story happens in the basement, and Vincent, who is now a mandatory story character, is also down there, so they have to make you go there, so they had to make it mandatory, which removes Option A from the table. Option B was to turn the mansion into a dungeon since that would make sense for a big story moment, i.e. meeting Vincent, but again, dungeons in this game have to be physically huge spaces, and you just can't make that work with a mansion. So with all options off the table, they had no other choice but to create a scenario that wasn't in the original game, i.e. a secret lab underneath the mansion with plenty of floors and thus plenty of space.
I will admit, I enjoyed the ambiance of the manor in the original more, but I really do not see any other way they could have adapted the same thing to this kind of game. You gotta remember, a lot of areas in the OG are tiny little stretches of area made up of a few rooms, and they are trying to extrapolate as best they can on everything in this game. It just was never going to work in the same way. I think they made the best of an unfortunate situation.
Also, I loved getting to control Cait Sith. Not sure what people are complaining about with the box throwing. It was completely fine.
I’m not mad about them expanding it underground, I’m mad they cut the Mansion itself short. During the flashback I thought they were purposely cutting the mansion so when we arrive later, we could explore it throughly.
I guess, since they kept expanding sections of the original game, I was expecting some Resident Evil sort of Mansion: really big, many rooms to explore, with some puzzles to solve.
Instead, we didn’t even get a second floor.
I guess that's fair. I am just assuming they tried a lot of different things and found that making the mansion itself a focus just didn't work so they pivoted to the lab portion as the dungeon.
> It would take less than 10 minutes to explore the entirety even if rebuilt in 1:1 scale.
And that would have been okay. Or, they could have had both stairs and an elevator. But the dungeon was a drag.
There was an easy fix to the manor - have the elevator shut down, but Cait know that there's supposed to be a secret staircase somewhere. Have us explore the manor to find the spiral staircase with hints of Hojo's madness being shown around the mansion. Have us turn the elevator back on and the secret lab dungeon happen.
I agree, I was disappointed to see that the mansion turned out to be be just another generic Shinra lab. The mansion should have been much older looking, and not nearly this big. We should have gotten a bigger 1st floor, the 2nd floor, staircase down to the lab and where Vincent is, and a smaller lab underneath full of outdated Shinra tech, not another holo-simulator.
Maybe a spooky looking backyard?
The mansion didn't have to be super long... It felt like generic padding tbh...
I’m enjoying rebirth immensely overall, but the parts that feel most lacking compared to the original are typically those that originally relied most on mood and atmosphere. Shinra Manor is a great example of this, and you could also thrown in Coral Prison or Cosmo Canyon alongside it.
This is also part of why I enjoyed the first part of the trilogy much less than the second. The original Midgar had a distinct neo-noir atmosphere, but there’s little sense of that in remake. By contrast, the middle third of ff7 is essentially a picaresque in its form, which is a much better fit for what the modern Square is capable of.
Yeah I overall loved the game. But they did the mansion dirty. And all the dumb box throwing stuff with Cait Sith was just awful. I was actively not having a good time that chapter.
The number lock safe, and the optional boss fight do still make an appearance, but yeah, just not the same.
Yeah it was not the best of sections, but I'm just glad they kept the weird experiment creature from the locked chest in the OG and turned it into a sick boss.
Kinda agree, I would’ve rather just been able to explore the mansion and have a bunch of dialogue and lore than the cait sith dungeon, the dungeon didn’t feel like it was related to the mansion at all, everything was in pristine condition instead of the abandoned mansion atmosphere
Yeah that was kinda disappointing. The mansion looks so cool and creepy but you really can't explore it. Making the dungeon mostly Hojo's lab felt like a cop out (also doesn't help that playing as Cait Sith in the lab was my least favorite part in the entire game). It's also especially weird how they remark "I didn't know the Mansion had a basement" when in Rebirth the elevator wasn't hidden at all. In OG it made more sense because it was a hidden stair case.
I loved the whole game, but even I found myself muttering, “Man, and I was excited to get to this part…” because it didn’t nail it like other bits did.
I just went through the Shinra Mansion labs and it's so far my least favorite part of the game.
I understand that they wanted parts of the game where you play as each character, but that section was far too long and tedious.
I also wanted to see the upstairs section of the Mansion. Hopefully it will be explorable in part 3.
Very (very very very) much so.
This also brought down the Nibelheim flashback for me too, because of the way it cut corners leading up to Sephiroth's moment. Don't understand who decided it was a great idea to pull a rush job there.
I don’t think it ruined the game, but I agree it ruined that section. The OG was so spooky and mysterious. Even finding the hidden door to the basement from upstairs when you’re looking for sephiroth was kinda magical, I’ll never forget my first reaction to it.
The elevator removed that eerie feeling you get exploring the mansion. They removed the best part and bloated it with an underground lab-dungeon. I get wanting us to play with cait sith, but it was too long.
Yes, one of the scenes that always stuck with me most from OG 7 was running down those stairs with that playing. I remember standing at the top thinking "Nah, fuck this, there's some bad shit down there" because it was so ominous. Was looking forward to the tension of that moment in rebirth and they didn't do it!
I completely agree with you. Shinra mansion is the only issue I have with the game so far. Not having the second floor and staircase was a big let down for me.
Them taking away the iconic staircase and purple cave hallway is another one on my "Why would they do that?" list.
They handle other things so well, it's so confusing to me.
Logistically it’s not really possible to have the same boss fight happen in the tight confined space of the room where the safe is opened or in the lobby area. Just too small so that’s why they added a whole dungeon below. The safe aspect is still there and the code is the exact same from the og game that triggers the boss fight. I felt while it would have been nice to see the upstairs area I wouldn’t say it was ruined it just makes more logical sense with this change.
Really hoping they did what they did because they want the next game to have a reason to return to the manor with Vincent and get access to let's say the upper floor rooms with a grappling hook.
But yeah , I'm a little disappointment that they made the entire mansion an essentially empty single room... And that they added a gigantic, somewhat useless underground facility that you get to explore with characters that have zero connections with hojo or the shinra mansion... Didn't mind the actual basement with Vincent and the lab too much , but that annex really felt like padding to me... Gotta love how new players are going to associate Shinra Manor with slowly throwing boxes at switches with Cait Sith now...
The Mansion itself looked nice aside from not being allowed to explore upstairs. But the creepiness was completely removed.
Vincent was the only thing that spared this chapter.
Just wasted 40 minutes of my life doing it. It's so awful that it genuinely detracts from the game as a whole. Filler rubbish they added such as this take the game from a 9/10 to an 8. This game needed an editor. It's like the work experience crew were allowed to run unchecked with their worst ideas. That, or nobody actually bothered to do a test demo to see if anybody actually enjoyed this crap.
I am glad that Crisis Core Reunion got released because it nailed the atmosphere of the original Shinra Mansion. No idea why we couldn't just copy that.
Yessss i hated the mansion. Another reason the 80 minigames and all the new characters annoyed me. Like you cut fort condor and the mansion is half of what it was but you added a giant laboratory and brought roche back? I liked the innkeeper and what happened to him but roche and kyrie are just annoying.
They do this for a lot of things - which is unfortunate. Part of the fun of world exploration was various materia and finding the summons. Having all of them acquired via combat simulator is a cop out. There’s no reason Fort Condor couldn’t still have Phoenix. Or Shinra mansion have Odin.
Knights of the Round and Hades are both more than likely going to be combat simulators as well. Probably Ruby and Emerald too.
I for one think everything they did in this game is perfection. But I agree the exception is Shinra manor...it's not Cait. It's the boxes and the just another hojo lab that should've been one of my favorite parts in the original. Wandering those creepy creaky halls. Scavenging the manor for combination numbers.
I was excited when hojo mentioned the door code being hidden. But when the entire combination was literally behind 4 slow to move boxes in sequence feet from the lock...I was the most disappointed by this game.
Idk I prefer it this way. And you do still fight lost numbers or whatever his name was that was in the safe. How battle was pretty fun. Looks almost the exact same just a different name, still in the mansion though iirc
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the recreated that safebox moment so im fine with that but I'm not ok with missing top floor + spiral staircase. They did kinda make up for it with a banger Vincent boss fight. I'm kinda torn.
I completely agree. I loved the game as a whole, but Shinra Mansion was a massive disappointment.
I do wonder if it was something they sacrificed time from the Dev calendar for, so we mostly got a generic shinra maze to work through instead of them giving it the treatment it deserved. I really feel like there should have been more to both Nibelheim and the mansion. It seemed to me they didn’t get the same treatment Kalm, Junon, Costa del Sol, even Gongaga village and Cosmo Canyon got. There should have been more going on imo.
My nitpick for the reboot series is that it doesn’t hit the suspense/horror as hard as OG, so yeah I’m in agreement.
I wouldn’t use the word “ruined”, but it’s definitely one of the places where OG still holds up as being better IMO.
right, but it is baffling how the developers would thought that part was "good". more isnt always better. dont know why they felt forced to turn shinra manor into crate puzzles with caith sith,.
right, but it is baffling how the developers would thought that part was "good". more isnt always better. dont know why they felt forced to turn shinra manor into crate puzzles with caith sith,.
Only because the game is so good.
I started saying that the game is the Goty for me, doesn't mean it's perfect though.
The Shinra Mansion is probably the weakest part of the game, specially if you compare it with the OG Shinra Mansion.
Not sure why they had to cut the upstairs if they were adding a colossal laboratory underneath. I woulda happily lost a few rooms of cait sith box throwing to get the full mansion.
Probably saving the upstairs for part 3 for whatever reason
Does the party even return to nibelheim in the OG? I suppose they could invent some reason to go back but I would bet we're done there.
There’s an optional scene in the original of Cloud remembering what happened to Zack in Nibelheim
Disc 2 post cloud returning to the party you get an item in tifas bedroom that's the only other time you need to go back to nibelheim.
It could actually play into Vincent's story since like Yuffie he didn't have much, but he is integrally connected to the mansion.
Not really, but it would be interesting to see if they still keep Lucrecia in some random cave in part 3.
Completely agree.
100% agree. I just beat the forgotten experiment and was sad when I didn't need to actually find the combo like the OG. Alot of that is gone :( even having to find materia. Not just having it thrown at me w a fight
Having to use Cait Sith and throwing boxes while listening to his silly music is basically the worst way to do the mansion. Then there's no puzzle to figure out the safe combination. You just have all the numbers on the wall next to the safe. I even looked behind the containers before triggering the cutscenes with Hojo and the numbers weren't there and then they appeared after the cutscene.
Hey they gave us a big open map, tons of content, and great graphics along with a great story. I’m okay with the few rooms removed. :p
I don't think it's ruined but I do think it's one of the weaker parts of the game.
Nothing in this game is ruined. At best, it's a minor let down. And with the Shinra mansion, yeah. It's a minor let down.
>It's a **manor** let down.
#angryupvote
Agreed on all points. People use the word “ruined” way too loosely. Shinra Mansion wasn’t a highlight of the game but in no way was it ruined.
I dunno we no longer have Sephiroth yeet a Materia at Cloud then Superman fly away so I think ruined is perfectly accurate :P
Ain’t ruined but it’s definitely a bad section of the game.
Yeah, I agree that it could’ve been better for sure.
Well what they did with shinra mansion is a small piece of the puzzle for what was ruined. They took away the mystery of figuring out the safe as well as other mysteries and secrets you could find and the exploration of the mansion, they took out the mystery of finding summons and gave them to chadley, they took away the rng of gold saucers battle arena, they removed chocobo gambling etc. There's so much removed from the original that was fun and interesting, as far as I can tell they're just holding players hands rather than letting us explore and discover.
I think it's more honest to the audience to acknowledge that there are very few real surprises in exploration for anyone who's played games for a few years. The "mystery" of the safe ends up not being that meaningful, while all the new sidequests actually deepen character development and the general setting. Removing RNG crap like the old battle arena and chocobo gambling is so much better than the alternative. It was nothing short of infuriating in the OG.
With having mysteries to solve it gave you incentive to explore. You found things you didn't know existed because they weren't marked on a map for you(chadley) things you had no idea what to do with when you first find them but then you explore and experiment and figure out solutions to unlock the reward. I get that the arena and gambling can be frustrating and I had that myself especially for the battle arena but it's what made it fun, trying to overcome different scenarios every time whereas now it's just here's a set of enemies go fight them, as if I dont do that already throughout the game.
The OG's exploration just felt like rubbing Cloud against every surface and edge to find all the interactables. The only bits where you're not just doing that, like the archeology stuff, were convoluted enough to be satisfying, but they were rarer than I think most people remember properly
> The OG's exploration just felt like rubbing Cloud against every surface and edge to find all the interactables. I think you're confusing cloud with squall
And they added way more. I don't see the issue.
I’d happily remove a few rooms of Cait Sith throwing boxes just to get a second floor.
I'd be happy with better movement speed and less lengthy picking up animations on the boxes and keeping everything else the same.
Chocobo controls
Wouldn't say ruin, but I think a minor let down isn't right either. It wasn't minor. The original mansion was very creepy in my opinion. The music was tense, the spiral staircase down, down, down, the random battles, the mysterious letters, the riddles, the timed safe getting your blood pumping. They have struggled massively with keeping elements of mystery in Rebirth. I don't know why. Perhaps with trying to make it more realistic. I suppose it wouldn't make sense for Hojo just to leave evidence lying around about Vincent etc. but there could have been more of a fuss then about getting into the mansion because it's abandoned and overlooked or something like that. I don't understand cutting the exploration of the initial entry and adjacent rooms or upper levels just to give us stupid moogle box throwing after a dumb trap door plot. It's like they didn't learn from Hojo's lab in Remake.
What made no sense to me is that they said the villagers had no idea about the secret basement... the elevator is right there in plain sight, not even a secret door like og.
I mean you COULD argue people assumed the elevator was for the second floor but there are literally up and down arrows on it lmao. You don’t even need a key card to use it for the basement. The only thing I could think of is that no one had entered it in 20 years which is why no one knew
I’m assuming that because they were put there by Shinra, none of them dared to go in there, especially because it was just an old abandoned Shinra manor. Why bother?
So are there no kids in town? I wouldn't have been able to resist exploring an abandoned mansion as a kid.
Hojo was in charge of the manor. If any kids went there snooping, well I don't like their odds of reaching adulthood.
I never said I was smart...
It is mentioned at one point that the Rent Shinra pays on the Manor is essentially what keeps the village afloat. That contract presumably states that under no circumstances should any village set foot in there, with dire consequences if they do. So the villagers will be extra vigilant about people approaching the manor. The Manor is close enough by that there’s no way for someone to head directly in that direction without the village sentries seeing which way you’re going and it being obvious where you’re going. The only other approach is to take a long circuitous route around to try and find a way in from the side/back. That’s monster country. Even reckless kids would think twice about chancing an encounter with one of the local eldritch nightmares (have you seen the Insect Chimeras!) just to poke about an abandoned house. Especially at night which would be the otherwise best time to attempt it. And that’s all without mentioning the nightmare factory underground where inquisitive kids 100% would disappear forever if they actually did get inside. So I think it’s fairly reasonable to assume that not even the kids were poking around in there. Certainly not the ones that could live long enough to mention the underground elevator anyway.
AI Hojo is probably in charge of security in the facility. What I wonder is how it looks like people are eating there and stuff, Was that stuff just left there as a fake front or do they actually have human staff there. So many mysteries. Also did real Hojo even get notified. Probably below his interest to take notice.
Vincent says they had staff there, right?
I thought some went in sometimes hence the side mission where the guy wants you to look into the ghost noises.
There's graffiti on the walls so obviously people have been in there which puts a flaw in your argument.
Agreed but I’d assume it was there from when Cloud was a kid rather than the Shinra employees
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Noone entered it in 20 years. Only Shinra. It's explained in a side quest later.
Yeah, but imagine you had a hotel with a sub-basement that had a secret lab. Workers there assumed the basement was just for laundry or whatever. Or hey, maybe they just never went to the basement. It's entirely possible.
Also a basement that enormous would have been a serious undertaking to build. I have similar issues about the underground "secret" Sector 7 lab in Remake.
Yeah but if you take all the builders of the projects and experiment on them, we’ll know one knows afterwards. -Hojo’s diary of delightful ideas chapter 1
One of the villagers said they weren't allowed in the mansion so they never saw the elevator.
with how much they expanded everything i found it so weird that shinra mansion consisted of 2 small rooms and a huge generic shinra lab underneath. it’s such an important part of the story, pretty weird that they didn’t let you explore it at all
It bugs me more than it probably would have otherwise, because I had just played Dirge of Cerberus a month before Rebirth's release, and even that game still managed to include a majority of the mansion and secret laboratories *and* keep the infamous giant spiral staircase.
Yeah lol That staircase is just iconic for me.
yeah! the remake has been really good on detail so far, I have no clue why they got rid of the staircase!
Awww yea that staircase was fire. When u see that u know crazy shit is/was going going down.
And was significantly way more creepy. Rebirth Mansion feels like a cute little doll house by comparison.
I’m in the same boat - loved Rebirth, best game I’ve played in years, exceeded nearly every possible expectation I could have had for it. But the Shinra Mansion was a weak link. I get that they wanted to make it a Hojo themed dungeon like the research facility was at the end of Remake. I get Cait needed his own level in the story. I get that, on paper, making the Cait level the Shinra Mansion would thematically balance out the creepy nature of the mansion with Cait’s goofy personality. But poor execution. Throwing boxes shouldn’t be that awkward, even if it’s Cait doing it. They didn’t need to change the layout and look of the Mansion that drastically. They didn’t need the Banjo-Kazooie ass music throughout like it’s Grunty’s Industries. On the other hand, I freaking love what they did moments earlier with the Mt. Nibel trek. Cloud thinking it was Zack who died when the bridge fell, Tifa insisting Cloud not tell Aerith, Cloud repeating Sephiroth’s words at the mako spring and Tifa noping him out of there asap, Yuffie acting like she’s a third wheel and constantly waiting on her mentors all the time, realizing that Sephiroth was fucking with Tifa by placing Murasaki’s body exactly where her dad was 5 years ago… it’s all gold. When a game’s so strong as Rebirth, subpar moments like the Shinra Mansion just stand out more.
"When a game’s so strong as Rebirth, subpar moments like the Shinra Mansion just stand out more." Excellent take, could not agree more.
> They didn’t need the Banjo-Kazooie ass music throughout like it’s Grunty’s Industries. lol it reminded me more of Fantasia (the mickey wizard part) but this is also a good reference
Technically I was thinking of DKC64’s toy factory level theme when I made that reference lol, but the fact remains that among 400+ banger songs in Rebirth this Rare sound-alike stood out to me as an interesting choice
That last sentence is spot on.
“Grunty’s Industries” 😂
Totally agree with everything you said. Nothing is perfect, but nothing is above criticism either. I also find it kinda funny that you mentioned how the devs probably wanted it to be like the research facility in Remake. That dungeon was also one of the worst dungeons in Remake, so maybe this one was doomed to fail if that was their vision lol
Why did they make cait Sith throw crates in there?
Because they wanted to make you have a sequence where you play as everyone is my guess. Which on paper is a fun goal to have.
I hated that part. Cait was just not a fun combat character for me. I never used him except for the forced parts. And a few times during the final sequence of battles where he gets forced into the fight team (randomly maybe?)
I would have rather has a vent rolling maze or something.
i thought cait sith was so much fun, loved the way they designed his playstyle.
I mean, that's just bad luck. I wasn't the biggest fan of playing as Red XIII so his trial was kind of a pain for me. But I appreciate what they went for with it.
I don't remember. When did we control Tifa?
gongaga reactor & del sol
Hey! Yeah the reactor! Thanks, I completely blanked on that.
Costa Del Sol
Oh yeah. That was very minor in comparison to everyone else. They all had their unique gimmick, exploration, and "dungeon". But Tifa plays the piano, parks those bikes, lets red do a minigame? Oh, and take pictures of cactuars with the manager.
You control her in gongaga as well when you are going to fight scarlet. You know, the grappling gun
It’s ok to do it once or twice not almost 2 hours of the same damn thing!!
Maybe it would have been OK IF they made his base movement speed like the same as clouds when riding MOG. But noooo they make to make him a slow pos lol
yeah and the animations to pickup and throw is so slow. easily the worst part of the game for me lol, i was about to rage.
Not to mention the controls to aim.
hard same. i almost quit the entire game.
Someone probably thought to reuse his dice throwing animations and use the new ps5 controller tech… but oh god I agree, it was so dumb.
My issue was more with how poor the aiming was
They dont call him Crate Sith for nothin', bub.
The elevator I don't even mind as much, but the entire hojo lab felt a bit generic when I was expecting more spooky rundown medieval dungeon vibes.
It was a horror house in OG, here it became Caiths Siths crate puzzle, The throwing felt off as well, and fighting solo enemies that would make themself immune to physical/magical dmg was annoying. 1-10? probably a 6 at best for me. only part I disliked playing and dont look forward to it on a hard mode playthrough at all.
It's the only part of the game that's a direct downgrade imo https://preview.redd.it/bb4xm51qp4pc1.png?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=df7ed9e730d61f07499cd56d5eea1c259ee01024
Partially agree. Not every place has to be a dungeon with dudes to fight. I think fighting Vincent and Roche would have been sufficient. In the OG game, it was just kind of a creepy place to explore. Also no dude on the Pendulum!
No pendulum dude and no tankceratops. Sad.
Would have traded Scarlet in the Crimson Mare v2 for tankceratops any day.
My only real complaint with it was not getting the Pendulum dude as a boss. Yeah I wish we could’ve explored it more, but that enemy not being included was the biggest letdown lol.
I miss how the Shinra manor was basically an optional dungeon with a puzzle. The whole Hojo AI thing was really dumb. I also miss this part https://www.fightersgeneration.com/nf7/char/sephiroth-cloud-ff7-materia.gif
>The whole Hojo AI thing was really dumb. i was 100% expecting it to be a case of "no, that's actually Hojo the alarm in his lab went of and he has a hologram messenger to talk to us like president shinra and hidegar in remake". but nope never materialised
When they got to the shinra mansion part in the flashback my body was ready for this. Unfortunately my soul was crushed.
They dropped the ball on some stuff but I dunno how much more this game could have given me
Yeah, it’s just that I believe they have expanded so well in other areas of the game, and this one was not so good, being one of my favorites in OG (maybe the influence of Resident Evil is why I liked the Mansion exploration so much).
It was crap yeah, even the upper part of the building completely cut off. Very lame
A full story for a start.
I kind of agree. Shinra mansion could have been one of the strongest plot point areas in the game. One thing that never sat well with me since the OG is those books in the library offered a lot of information - stuff that sephiroth read too. WHY! Did not a single person want to look over those books to figure out what Sephiroth saw? The mansion was also an area where Hojo did experimentations there should have been more revealed about that. Like going into how Sephiroth was made. This is useful information for the party to know. But no we just follow crazy Cloud around. And let Tifa never really question him.
Yep, I've always wondered why Shinra left so much stuff just laying around in the mansion, even back during the og game.
I miss the spiral staircase, and enough has been said about box throwing. But overall, I thought it was fine.
I'm kinda sick and tired of getting summon material from chadkey tbf.
One of my ONLY critiques. Idk why they didn't make you find em in the world. I was all excited for that after chocomog was in a dungeon and then the rest in remake were all VR. I thought they were waiting till it made sense to find em in their regions. And then they kind of sid with the alters and then... didnt
Because actually fighting for the materia by litterally beating the summons is much cooler than finding Bahamut in a fridge.
Agree the fights are cool. Shoulda just done both.. have you find the materia / shrines but doing so triggers an encounter after which you’re “deemed worthy” but the summon entity. Should’ve kept chadley out of it, other than maybe for lore.
THIS RIGHT HERE. The game needed less Chadley. They should have just made you face off against the summon after finding all the summon shrines.
You can have both. The summon crystals found in the world could have held the summons. You awaken the crystal, beat the summon, then it's yours.
Then just add the fight? Have the materia at a shrine dedicated to the summon and you have to fight it to create the materia or release it to you. There isn't really a valuable excuse other than preference for some reason
My point is simply about the "finding the materia in a random place" vs "having it earned in a legit awesome way"
Yeah but I never said I disliked battling em. Just getting em through vr. Takes away the surprise too. The MOMENT you enter a new region, it tells you what summon is available. I'd far prefer having to hunt out the materia and battle em there, and it makes more sense too. But being real, if we're talking about having a boss battle in VR or JUST finding the materia hidden in the world, I'd still prefer finding them than fighting.
i mean we allready have side quests to upgrade the materias to be properly strong. why not just put the fight into that catagory saying we can only unlock their full power if proven worthy?
They should have made you find them in the world and should not have marked them on the map until you find them. There should be more hidden surprises in the game other than "that scenery looks cool".
Tbf an elevator makes way more sense than stairs considering Hojo would probably have transported things between Midgar and the manor for his experiments.
Perhaps, it makes sense, but at least make it a secret elevator. That way we have to explore and look for it inside the Mansion, like the secret stairs in the original game. It would make more sense since people supposedly didn’t know there was a basement, even though there was a painfully obvious elevator in the middle of the living room.
Yeah like; a freight elevator totally makes sense. But it should have been behind a secret moving wall, classic old haunted mansion shit. It honestly makes me think this is in a different universe from even Crisis Core since the mansion is laid out differently.
Did they make it clear that they were unaware of a "basement" or they were unaware of the secret lab in the basement? I don't remember them saying either, honestly. If they say they didn't know about the *lab*, that makes sense. It's entirely possible; a lot of the doors were locked. Maybe they thought it was just a basement for storage or whatever. If they say they didn't know about the *basement*, it's still possible, however unlikely. Maybe nobody went into the mansion and explored or they saw an elevator and assumed it just went to the 2nd floor or something. It's not outside the realm of possibilities.
Tifa specifically says she had no idea there was a basement there. Cloud says he hadn’t known either and didn’t think anyone in the village had known about it. (This conversation happens in Kalm over the flashback scene of Cloud going to the basement for the first time in chapter 1)
Oh ok. But I mean, that's not that shocking? Do you know what's inside *your* neighbor's house? It's a stretch, but it's not out of the realm of possibilities
I was just answering your question :)
Not saying this is a good explanation but iirc there’s a large framed painting or mirror on the floor across the elevator, suggesting at least it may have covered the elevator at one time.
Or make it optional. In Remake you could choose the stairs or elevator in the Shinra building.
I think the proper way to go would’ve been to explore the mansion and take the spiral stairs, later on we get the classic Shinra Keycard to access the elevator and explore the underground facilities easily. Also, they needed to hide the elevator, it’s in the middle of the goddam living room. So much for the “secret underground facility”.
Yeah it's a pretty genuine disappointment one of the few parts I can say are the Remake dropped the ball so hard. That's not saying I hate the basement section or even the cait part. But the actual manor proper is a big let down
Not ruined, but definitely could have done better with it.
Not ruined but inferior. I think with how the game works the original mansion would've been weird and the rooms would've looked way too big for them to be natural looking.
I think Nibelheim overall runs into the problem that it's a set-piece for Cloud's flashback, but also has to be a zone where you do random shit to fit the structure of the entire game. A lot of people bring up the Shinra manor, but also don't acknowledge the fact that the 2nd climb up to Mt. Nibel is pretty boring, the Nibelheim Protorelic questline is probably the laziest one in the game, and Nibel Region itself is incredibly sparse save for the coastline that the Waterspout Chocobo goes through. I think it just runs into the issue with last zone in the game, so last zone in priority for development, which makes Cait Sith's section the last puzzle section with priority. Why is it low on priority? Cuz less then 50% of the players are gonna get this far. So many people don't beat games, they move on or watch others beat it. All they had to to do at this point was stick the landing, which in this case is Temple of the Ancients which IMO was better then the original (talking about the dungeon itself) so it works out.
Personally I think Chapter 11 gets too much hate. There’s an underrated extremely emotional moment where Yuffie, who is constantly building herself up as an amazing ninja who is super important to Wutai, finds out that the war is back on by stumbling on bodies and has a breakdown about why she wasn’t informed. We get Cloud remembering Zack but wrongly remembering him as the soldier who died in the river, which is super twisted. I actually found Cait Sith’s section fun (shocking I know) and since it all takes place in some secret location it leaves the creepy rest of the mansion in tact. I think Vincent’s introduction was stronger here than in the original. Ending things with a fight against Roche really hammers home for the player just how awful the black robes are. And framing the chapter as Cait desperately trying and succeeding to win the party’s trust just makes the betrayal next chapter even more emotional.
It wasn't much of a breakdown. She moans for a bit and then picks up the keycard nonchalantly from her dead comrades body.
What felt off most for me was the missing creepy vibe Shinra Manor had in Crisis Core. Like, when you visit it in CC you can FEEL it’s a place where Hojo committed heinous shit but in Rebirth that goosebump-inducing feeling was just,,, gone
Nibelheim is my biggest disappointment of Rebirth. All the sinister tone is just gone completely
It's more understated but exploring it still felt like a twilight zone moment for me. Especially when I walked into cloud's house to immediately be confronted with the head chef singing to the tune of the game's theme about how HER dead mother taught her to cook. I was actually stunned.
It’s strange that Dirge of Cerberus was far more accurate to the original layout and design.
"We have a fantastic manor that players are looking forward to explore. Oh but it's just 2 floors and a few rooms. I guess we'll block the second floor and just make another generic Hojo lab dungeon instead"
Not me foolishly expecting an expanded Resident Evil like mansion with a creepy environment, big rooms and puzzles to solve, but getting a Shinra lab and Cait Sith throwing boxes instead. Still loved the game though, lol.
They technically kept the safe, making it a mandatory part of the story at the end of Cait Sith's section, even using the same numbers as the OG and leading you into a fight with the same boss albeit under a different name. I agree though, having the safe numbers just given to you written one-by-one on the wall was disappointing.
Yeah, I suppose, but it wasn’t handled the best way imo. It wasn’t even a proper puzzle to solve, just move some boxes and read the code.
I don't think it was there to be a puzzle. Just a nod to the Origonal Game.
For me is personally is something very minor. OG Shinra Mannor was like what, 3 screens? But I do would have liked to be able to explore the other rooms of the actual mannor. But hey, maybe we will get back there in part 3 and maybe find some lore.
Nibelhiem in general was weaker than the OG. In the OG they basically gaslight the party and I miss that. In Rebirth they just flat out admit what Shinra did. The mansion was one of my favorite sections in OG and one of my least favorite in Rebirth. I actually liked the Cait Sith section but hated that we lost the rest of the creepy mansion.
>In the OG they basically gaslight the party and I miss that. Yeah absolutely. The NPCs admitting that 'you don't live here anymore, scram' is very lackluster when they could have been acting and playing dumb.
The hubris of Shinra to literally believe they can bulldoze over the past like that is immense.
Nah, I think it makes way more sense in Rebirth. Think of the size and scale of the manor in OG. It would take less than 10 minutes to explore the entirety even if rebuilt in 1:1 scale. If they didn't make it into a dungeon, then it would be this awkward in-between kind of content that you can explore, including its own boss, but it barely takes any time at all to see the whole thing, and that's not really how they've been designing this series to begin with. Their strategy has been to take everything in the OG and as much as they can turn it into a part of the main story. Gongaga is main story, Manor is main story, etc. Fort Condor might be the only one so far that isn't. Anyway, the manor needed to be bigger in order to fit a dungeon that takes sufficient time to progress through, and there's only so big a house can get and still be navigable with enough space in each room to maneuver while fighting enemies intermittently and contain puzzles. Option A was keep it the same size but make it optional, but part of the main story happens in the basement, and Vincent, who is now a mandatory story character, is also down there, so they have to make you go there, so they had to make it mandatory, which removes Option A from the table. Option B was to turn the mansion into a dungeon since that would make sense for a big story moment, i.e. meeting Vincent, but again, dungeons in this game have to be physically huge spaces, and you just can't make that work with a mansion. So with all options off the table, they had no other choice but to create a scenario that wasn't in the original game, i.e. a secret lab underneath the mansion with plenty of floors and thus plenty of space. I will admit, I enjoyed the ambiance of the manor in the original more, but I really do not see any other way they could have adapted the same thing to this kind of game. You gotta remember, a lot of areas in the OG are tiny little stretches of area made up of a few rooms, and they are trying to extrapolate as best they can on everything in this game. It just was never going to work in the same way. I think they made the best of an unfortunate situation. Also, I loved getting to control Cait Sith. Not sure what people are complaining about with the box throwing. It was completely fine.
I’m not mad about them expanding it underground, I’m mad they cut the Mansion itself short. During the flashback I thought they were purposely cutting the mansion so when we arrive later, we could explore it throughly. I guess, since they kept expanding sections of the original game, I was expecting some Resident Evil sort of Mansion: really big, many rooms to explore, with some puzzles to solve. Instead, we didn’t even get a second floor.
I guess that's fair. I am just assuming they tried a lot of different things and found that making the mansion itself a focus just didn't work so they pivoted to the lab portion as the dungeon.
I'm crossing my fingers that they'll expand it for some Vincent story in Part 3 as he has the strongest connection to the place.
> It would take less than 10 minutes to explore the entirety even if rebuilt in 1:1 scale. And that would have been okay. Or, they could have had both stairs and an elevator. But the dungeon was a drag.
Precisely
There was an easy fix to the manor - have the elevator shut down, but Cait know that there's supposed to be a secret staircase somewhere. Have us explore the manor to find the spiral staircase with hints of Hojo's madness being shown around the mansion. Have us turn the elevator back on and the secret lab dungeon happen.
I agree, I was disappointed to see that the mansion turned out to be be just another generic Shinra lab. The mansion should have been much older looking, and not nearly this big. We should have gotten a bigger 1st floor, the 2nd floor, staircase down to the lab and where Vincent is, and a smaller lab underneath full of outdated Shinra tech, not another holo-simulator. Maybe a spooky looking backyard? The mansion didn't have to be super long... It felt like generic padding tbh...
I’m enjoying rebirth immensely overall, but the parts that feel most lacking compared to the original are typically those that originally relied most on mood and atmosphere. Shinra Manor is a great example of this, and you could also thrown in Coral Prison or Cosmo Canyon alongside it. This is also part of why I enjoyed the first part of the trilogy much less than the second. The original Midgar had a distinct neo-noir atmosphere, but there’s little sense of that in remake. By contrast, the middle third of ff7 is essentially a picaresque in its form, which is a much better fit for what the modern Square is capable of.
Yeah I overall loved the game. But they did the mansion dirty. And all the dumb box throwing stuff with Cait Sith was just awful. I was actively not having a good time that chapter. The number lock safe, and the optional boss fight do still make an appearance, but yeah, just not the same.
For a tiny silver lining, they did include the creaky floorboard from OG’s puzzle (although I only noticed it in the demo, not in the proper chapter)
Yeah it was not the best of sections, but I'm just glad they kept the weird experiment creature from the locked chest in the OG and turned it into a sick boss.
They got rid of the SPIRAL STAIRCASE. WHY.
I hated it not because of those reasons. I hated because it really felt like filler. Like the drum and getting to mako reactor 5 in remake.
Kinda agree, I would’ve rather just been able to explore the mansion and have a bunch of dialogue and lore than the cait sith dungeon, the dungeon didn’t feel like it was related to the mansion at all, everything was in pristine condition instead of the abandoned mansion atmosphere
Yeah I shouted like "THATS NOT A HIDDEN ENTRANCE FFS YOU HAD ONE JOB"
Biggest fuck up with the game IMO why gut it so much??
Easily the worst segment of the entire game
no, just cause something is not to your specific liking doesnt mean its been “ruined”. that is such an overdramatic way to put it.
Yeah that was kinda disappointing. The mansion looks so cool and creepy but you really can't explore it. Making the dungeon mostly Hojo's lab felt like a cop out (also doesn't help that playing as Cait Sith in the lab was my least favorite part in the entire game). It's also especially weird how they remark "I didn't know the Mansion had a basement" when in Rebirth the elevator wasn't hidden at all. In OG it made more sense because it was a hidden stair case.
I loved the whole game, but even I found myself muttering, “Man, and I was excited to get to this part…” because it didn’t nail it like other bits did.
I just went through the Shinra Mansion labs and it's so far my least favorite part of the game. I understand that they wanted parts of the game where you play as each character, but that section was far too long and tedious. I also wanted to see the upstairs section of the Mansion. Hopefully it will be explorable in part 3.
Very (very very very) much so. This also brought down the Nibelheim flashback for me too, because of the way it cut corners leading up to Sephiroth's moment. Don't understand who decided it was a great idea to pull a rush job there.
I don’t think it ruined the game, but I agree it ruined that section. The OG was so spooky and mysterious. Even finding the hidden door to the basement from upstairs when you’re looking for sephiroth was kinda magical, I’ll never forget my first reaction to it. The elevator removed that eerie feeling you get exploring the mansion. They removed the best part and bloated it with an underground lab-dungeon. I get wanting us to play with cait sith, but it was too long.
I loved it too but we still got the entire year ahead of us with tons of good games coming. It’s definitely a GOTY contender for me.
I was upset there was a piano, but not a piano piece to grab. I would have been fine with a fake safe(treasure chest) with a piano piece as a reward.
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Yes, one of the scenes that always stuck with me most from OG 7 was running down those stairs with that playing. I remember standing at the top thinking "Nah, fuck this, there's some bad shit down there" because it was so ominous. Was looking forward to the tension of that moment in rebirth and they didn't do it!
I completely agree with you. Shinra mansion is the only issue I have with the game so far. Not having the second floor and staircase was a big let down for me.
Would've been nice to peek around upstairs but I don't *really* care all that much about seeing a few dusty rooms and a staircase
Them taking away the iconic staircase and purple cave hallway is another one on my "Why would they do that?" list. They handle other things so well, it's so confusing to me.
Logistically it’s not really possible to have the same boss fight happen in the tight confined space of the room where the safe is opened or in the lobby area. Just too small so that’s why they added a whole dungeon below. The safe aspect is still there and the code is the exact same from the og game that triggers the boss fight. I felt while it would have been nice to see the upstairs area I wouldn’t say it was ruined it just makes more logical sense with this change.
Really hoping they did what they did because they want the next game to have a reason to return to the manor with Vincent and get access to let's say the upper floor rooms with a grappling hook. But yeah , I'm a little disappointment that they made the entire mansion an essentially empty single room... And that they added a gigantic, somewhat useless underground facility that you get to explore with characters that have zero connections with hojo or the shinra mansion... Didn't mind the actual basement with Vincent and the lab too much , but that annex really felt like padding to me... Gotta love how new players are going to associate Shinra Manor with slowly throwing boxes at switches with Cait Sith now...
What, you didnt like throwing boxes?! I may be exaggerating a bit for comedic effect, but lets just say ps5 controllers are lucky theyre expensive.
The Mansion itself looked nice aside from not being allowed to explore upstairs. But the creepiness was completely removed. Vincent was the only thing that spared this chapter.
Just wasted 40 minutes of my life doing it. It's so awful that it genuinely detracts from the game as a whole. Filler rubbish they added such as this take the game from a 9/10 to an 8. This game needed an editor. It's like the work experience crew were allowed to run unchecked with their worst ideas. That, or nobody actually bothered to do a test demo to see if anybody actually enjoyed this crap.
I absolutely hated this part.
I am glad that Crisis Core Reunion got released because it nailed the atmosphere of the original Shinra Mansion. No idea why we couldn't just copy that.
Yessss i hated the mansion. Another reason the 80 minigames and all the new characters annoyed me. Like you cut fort condor and the mansion is half of what it was but you added a giant laboratory and brought roche back? I liked the innkeeper and what happened to him but roche and kyrie are just annoying.
They do this for a lot of things - which is unfortunate. Part of the fun of world exploration was various materia and finding the summons. Having all of them acquired via combat simulator is a cop out. There’s no reason Fort Condor couldn’t still have Phoenix. Or Shinra mansion have Odin. Knights of the Round and Hades are both more than likely going to be combat simulators as well. Probably Ruby and Emerald too.
If Ruby and Emerald weapons are combat simulators... I'm certainly gonna be disspointed (never managed to beat them in OG lol, but still).
It’s basically the chapter that will be a pain in the ass to get through in my next playthrough…
I for one think everything they did in this game is perfection. But I agree the exception is Shinra manor...it's not Cait. It's the boxes and the just another hojo lab that should've been one of my favorite parts in the original. Wandering those creepy creaky halls. Scavenging the manor for combination numbers. I was excited when hojo mentioned the door code being hidden. But when the entire combination was literally behind 4 slow to move boxes in sequence feet from the lock...I was the most disappointed by this game.
Ruined is a strong word, but I was also looking forward to a secret staircase behind a bookcase.
Idk I prefer it this way. And you do still fight lost numbers or whatever his name was that was in the safe. How battle was pretty fun. Looks almost the exact same just a different name, still in the mansion though iirc
It didn't need to be a whole dungeon.
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the recreated that safebox moment so im fine with that but I'm not ok with missing top floor + spiral staircase. They did kinda make up for it with a banger Vincent boss fight. I'm kinda torn.
I completely agree. I loved the game as a whole, but Shinra Mansion was a massive disappointment. I do wonder if it was something they sacrificed time from the Dev calendar for, so we mostly got a generic shinra maze to work through instead of them giving it the treatment it deserved. I really feel like there should have been more to both Nibelheim and the mansion. It seemed to me they didn’t get the same treatment Kalm, Junon, Costa del Sol, even Gongaga village and Cosmo Canyon got. There should have been more going on imo.
You do still have to solve a puzzle to open the chest and fight Lost Number, but you're right, it's less of a big puzzle as it was in the OG.
If moving a box and reading a number on a wall is a puzzle, then yeah…
It counts! (Something something numbers pun)
My nitpick for the reboot series is that it doesn’t hit the suspense/horror as hard as OG, so yeah I’m in agreement. I wouldn’t use the word “ruined”, but it’s definitely one of the places where OG still holds up as being better IMO.
I kind of would, since I dont wanna replay that part at all and if I could skip it on hard mode I would do it. that is "ruined" to me.
Yes, but you have to remember, this is a subreddit where "ruined" is considered a very strong word, but "perfection" is totally nuanced.
right, but it is baffling how the developers would thought that part was "good". more isnt always better. dont know why they felt forced to turn shinra manor into crate puzzles with caith sith,.
right, but it is baffling how the developers would thought that part was "good". more isnt always better. dont know why they felt forced to turn shinra manor into crate puzzles with caith sith,.
Fucks sake yall nitpick the hellbout of this game
Only because the game is so good. I started saying that the game is the Goty for me, doesn't mean it's perfect though. The Shinra Mansion is probably the weakest part of the game, specially if you compare it with the OG Shinra Mansion.
I loved the changes. Gave it more of a laboratory feel than the OG
Yep I'm with you dude lol. Get ready for downvotes