Hey all, I apologize in advance if this question has been beaten to death.

After beating Crisis Core for the first time, I'm in the market to purchase a PS5 copy of FF7 Remake. I've actually never played FF7 before as I have always been an FF8 fan, so I am very excited to jump into FF7 Remake. That being said, new copies WITH DLC are expensive as hell, so my options lead me to pre-owned/used copies. Those used copies typically have used the DLC codes already which is fine. My question is primarily for those who have personal experience with purchasing a USED PS5 copy of FF7 Remake.

If I purchase a used PS5 copy of the game, am I able to purchase the DLC from the PSN store separately? It might sound like a stupid question, but the amount of uncertainty I have uncovered trying to get a solid answer on this is actually insane. Any information from personal experience would be amazing and I thank you in advance!

(Also, just for the sake of clarity, I have no interest in purchasing the UK version of the game and making a UK PSN account).

It seems like 75% of the time I use an elemental ability (or maybe they're called "skills" - the ones like Wildfire, Snow Flurry or Wind Current) it gets interrupted. I'm not very good at the combat yet, so I'm probably just doing something dumb but I'd appreciate if someone could tell me how to prevent this, as exploiting an enemy's weakness seems to he a big part of this game. TIA (BTW, the confusion over nomenclature made this hard to look up, hence my asking for help directly - searching for "abilities" results in Synergy Abilities and searching for "skills" results in synergy skills like Counterfire, Bodyguard etc. Just thought that was funny, nevermind lol)

Heya, folks! SPOILERS ahead for Remake, a mission in Rebirth, and one of the major arcs of the original if the tag and title didn't catch you.

If you saw my last post about reading the Trio as adaptation of metaphysical ideas from Xiyouji, you might remember that I said I was going to do a shorter one next talking about how FF7 and scenes from Remake likely inspired an episode of a show. This is that one, and it is shorter.

If you think even rudimentary literary analysis is academic hokum reading too far into things, this post is, as kindly as I can say, not meant for you. To the people who enjoy reading and leave kind words even on the posts I've deleted, thank you kindly again.

I wanted to actually write something much shorter and point out that there is a "continuation" of Xiyouji which bears the influence of Final Fantasy VII Remake to the point that there is a whole episode dedicated to retelling the events of Final Fantasy VII with visual nods to Remake. Most of what I write here will be looking in the other direction for influence on FF7 Remake and Rebirth, so this was an easy detour.

So... SPOILERS for Lego Monkie Kid, specifically for Season 2 Episode 2, Dumpling Destruction.

#A Spiky-Haired Lego and a Buster Sword

If you don't know what Lego Monkie Kid is, it is a "continuation" of the story of Xiyouji in which a kid, Monkie Kid, in a futuristic city discovers he is the successor to Sun Wukong and teams up with characters connected to the original pilgrims named Pigsy (Pigsy), Tang (Tang Sangzang), Mei (Bai Long Ma), and Sandy (Sandy) in order to protect the world from demons. It is a children's show about Lego people, but it is decently popular. It also has stunningly good animation and a lot of respect for the source material and media it references, much of which is Xiyouji adaptations or pieces of media which regularly or prominently reference Xiyouji.

While the show already bears a lot of visual and symbolic similarity to FF7, such as placing the characters in a futuristic city instead of a more recognizably "fantasy" setting, Dumpling Destruction is just a retelling of FF7 with some scenes in the beginning directly referencing scenes in Remake.

You might think this is a stretch, but the Buster Sword makes an appearance near the climax of the episode to make it kinda obvious.

The beginning of the episode has the Monkie Kid have his first "headache" leading into seeing Sun Wukong, which isn't a power Monkey had in the novel. He is able to take his iron rod with him when he is in another location, such as when he suddenly gets snatched into hell, but he doesn't really have that kind of vision. The "astral projection" of the show begins with this episode, and it seems to be pulled straight from FF7 in its style.

Immediately after this, a giant, flaming dumpling falling from heaven in a scene mirroring the visuals of the meteor reveal from Remake is itself revealed. The scene with the robed man/Sephiroth is a mirror for a few shots, but without his presence.

From here, the viewer sees Sun Wukong hunting for Lady Bone Demon (Lady White Bone/White Bone Spirit) that looks, on the scroll he provides, much closer to Jenova than the Lego Lady Bone Demon or most historical examples of Lady White Bone that are usually played by young women.

After this, Tang (the Monk) and Monkie Kid travel to the birthplace of Sun Wukong to seek a way to use Guanyin's (a bodhisattva of mercy and compassion known for working with children) waters to stop the dumpling. They have a brief fight involving them using a Buster Sword before they return with the waters. The dumpling looms in the sky the whole time, and Guanyin does not appear outside of illustrations.

In the end, they let the waters loose in the hope that Guanyin's aid can stop the dumpling from destroying Megapolis. The waters spiral up into the sky and suck up the meteor before the meteor overpowers the waters and leaves the city partially covered in soup.

I can't say with certainty that the creators of this episode see Final Fantasy VII as an adaptation of Xiyouji, but I can say with some confidence that somebody among the writers or animators thinks its events, asthetics, and characters fit as neatly within Xiyouji stories as Dragon Ball does. There is no giant, heavenly dumpling or meteor that the pilgrims must stop in the original text. This episode is just the events of FF7 from the reveal of Meteor to the partial destruction of Midgar in an abridged, referential form. The dumpling meteor itself bears more similarity to the meteor of Remake than that of the 1997 release or Dirge, and the Buster Sword makes an appearance.

#Fun Fact Tied Into My Reading

As a fun fact on this one like the last one, Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth reference quite a few adaptations of other works, from Shakespeare's works as adaptations of older plays to Disney adaptations of his works. This fun fact ties back to the mention of Oh brother where art thou? as adaptation of Homer's Odyssey from my last post.

The title of the chicken-wrangling mission of Rebirth in English, O chicken where art thou?, can be read as referring to the movie and its chicken-chasing scene through the title, but the overall arc of the mission reflects the Buddhist influence the game has regardless of it coming from being an adaptation of Xiyouji or not. Suddenly realizing that chickens are sentient beings is something I did not expect from FF7, but it certainly aligns with this reading. It also mirrors the arc of Red Boy, who goes from a youth pretending to be a man and who desires to eat flesh and exceed his father's legacy to a youth submitted to Buddhism and a vegetarian diet by the gold, restraining bands around his arms, legs, and neck provided by Guanyin. If that assortment of gold sounds familiar, I'll be speaking on it when I get to Red XIII as Red Boy.

The next thing I write about will be on Rufus and Darkstar as Erlang Shen and his celestial hound with a special focus on his final moments in the 1997 release, what that might look like in the next part of the Remake trilogy if this reading holds true, and the transformation battle between Monkey and Erlang Shen read into the Remake trilogy. Cloud Jr., the whispers, and Hell House will all come up, if you can believe it.

Not to be negative but it's to the point that I seriously wonder if there's a different writer for the ending vs the rest of the game. Before I get into it I really want to emphasize how much I enjoyed the game up to the ending. Fantastic combat (my favorite for a modern/non turn based RPG), great story & fun additions to the FF VII lore, but the endings are so bad/weird to me.

It feels like they took all the weirdness of Kingdom Hearts lore and injected it randomly into the each games finale. Especially the multiversal piece (though tbf I'm overall tired of multiverses). I have no idea why they spent so much time with Zack just to chuck him back into his own universe. Or why they undercut Aerith's death, one of the OGs games most impactful moments in multiple different ways. Not having the whole party witness the death & fight through the despair on top of the weird is she dead or not really ruined it for me.

Also the multi phase fight with Genova through fighting Sephiroth (again..) to getting a sneak peak at his end game form was an underwhelming encounter for a game that nailed combat so well.

Apologies for the rant, truly enjoyed the game. It's my favorite so far this year but the endings are just so over the top weird.

As soon as I saw rebirth I said to my fiancée the last one will be called reunion... Is everyone else on the same page or you thinking something else?

I think we can all agree the soundtrack for Remake and Rebirth is incredible. However is there any remastered song you think doesn’t sound as good as the original? Mostly with the orchestra etc it’s an improvement on most, however I was disappointed with the new version of temple of the ancients, it just didn’t sound as epoch as the original to me.

What other ones do people think werent as good as the original?

I lay in bed, 4:36am, unable to sleep. My brain is filled with thoughts of Rebirth. I'm currently replaying the OF and just got to the point of Rebirth's ending.

Naturally, I'm now thinking of part 3 of remake.

These posts may be a bit common, but they're fun and it's nice to think about.

That said... I look at the calendar and see we are in October of 2024. We are literally only 8 months removed from FF7 Rebirth.

It already feels like ages since release and I am pining for the final part.

Already there's been predictions of 2027 and 2028. 2027, clearly would be monumental as it's the 30th anniversary, but is 3 years enough time to cook this bad boy?

I'm hopeful, but let's hear what yall think. 2027 has some logic behind it. The core gameplay only needs refined, the map is roughly 70% complete, and the team as far as we know is still the same. This all would lead to an unprecedented level of speed we hope. But 2028 also has some logic behind it. Another 4 year development cycle between games would match that of Remake (I know it's longer than 4 years as they kicked off rebirth prior to 2020).

Bonus fun question: when are we going to get our first trailer? When are we going to get our first bit of information?

Just started the dlc and am enjoying it a lot but I really dislike yuffie autoattacking and I can't find a way to turn it off. Is there any way to stop it? Is this an intended feature or do ghosts live in my PC?

I pre-ordered Rebirth, played it as soon as it came out, dynamic difficulty, loved everything about it and beat it after some 100+ hours. It became my favorite game ever and I was pretty confident about my abilities.

I didn't want to replay it immediately so I tried other games, among them some games known for being hard like Bloodborne, Elden Ring and God of War (especially liked this one). I had a hard time with some bosses on these games, but I learnt the combat mechanics and beat even the hardest bosses. So I thought that if I played Rebirth, it'd be a breeze. Man was I wrong. This game is so generous with healing that any person could beat it, but I've noticed that I take amounts of damage in fights that would get me killed in any other game; even in FFXVI, which is a relatively easy game, I'm much better at dodging and blocking, then again enemies are much, much more aggressive in Rebirth, something I'd also forgotten.

Anyway, I'm taking this as my chance to 'git gud', I'm going to focus on learning the combat a lot better and stop relying so much on healing.

Edit: just to be clear, I don't think Rebirth is harder than any of the games I mentioned, I just feel like what makes it an easier game is how often you can heal, so you don't really have to be good at dodging or parrying like those other games.

I hate the gold cup but want to complete the quest. Don’t care about getting 1st in all three races. I got second overall and wasn’t able to complete the quest which is frustrating. What combinations of finishes will still get me the victory? Thanks for the help!

Has anyone gone this year? I just finished platinuming Rebirth, and previously did Remake. I've loved the game and everything about it since the original came out. The reason I'm asking about the orchestra performance is because my wife and I are going this weekend, and I'm wanting to watch some "story of FFVII" videos to bring her up to speed. I'm not sure if the performance will cover the entire story of the game(s), Remake and Rebirth, or just Rebirth. Thanks in advance.

Hi all,

Square Enix announced that both FF16 and FF7 Rebirth failed to meet sales expectations. I understood as if both of the games resulted in a loss, not even evening out the budget. Though there is no clear reason of financial failure, most people think it is related to games being time-exclusive to PS5.

Also, latest graphs from Square Enix shows AAA games only amounts to 1-5% of gaming revenue and almost all of the 95% comes from FF14.

My question to you is do you think there is a risk that Square Enix backs down from AAA games (or just FF series or the sole FF7) and cancels FF7 Part 3? Or is it more likely that they will take this as a loss and still complete the story because of the value of FF7 in gaming with some changes in their approach (such as no more PS exclusivity)?

Looking forward to read your comments

I went into it on hard mode with 6 MP for Cait Sith. As a result, this has been the most challenging fight with him so far. I got really good at evading him with cloud. Cait Sith was useless unless needed for bait while Aerith and cloud were in a tough spot. Now I can happily no longer have to use Cait Sith lol

Heya, folks! SPOILERS ahead for Remake and the 1997 release along with minor ones for Rebirth if the tag and title didn't catch you.

If you saw my last post about reading Barret Wallace as adaptation of Sha Wujing from Wu Cheng’en's Xiyouji, this is another one of those posts analyzing characters, locations, fiends, and events from the FF7 Remake trilogy as adaptation. This one, though, is about the Trio of Madam M, Sam, and Andrea and what they can tell us if read as representative of metaphysical aspects of adapting Xiyouji.

If you think even rudimentary literary analysis is academic hokum reading too far into things, this post is, as kindly as I can say, not meant for you. To the people who enjoy reading and leave kind words even on the posts I've deleted, thank you kindly again.

I was wrong about this one being shorter, though. As it turns out, this reading finds them as deeply telling as most pieces of the text, and I regret not doing other characters and events before this one so ideas don't come out of left field. Oh well. Guess I've gotta cover a few events and some esoteric Daoist/Shinto philosophy present in the novel.

#Adaptation as Accumulation

Not every adaptation isolates itself to just the plain text of the original work it is adapting. For example, the Coen brothers' Oh brother where art thou? as an adaptation of Homer's Odyssey pulls heavily from other works to build its own unique identity as an American story. The title itself comes from the film Sullivan's Travels in which the main character wants to produce a film about the Great Depression titled Oh brother where art thou?. Without the influence of popular works like Sullivan's Travels, the Coen brothers' Odyssey would have been a much different movie, if it came to be at all. I picked this one because the English FF7 Remake references the early chicken-chasing scene of this film with its mission Oh chicken where art thou?

In a similar way, no reading of a modern text as adaptation of Xiyouji can go without acknowledging the influence of works after and beyond the 1592 text attributed to Wu Cheng’en. Many Japanese adaptations of Xiyouji owe a lot of their most memorable scenes and creatures to the style and techniques of tokusatsu, for example. It would be just as hard to imagine Monkey from NTV's Monkey without his early swatting by White Dragon Horse's tokusatsu-inspired body or his miniscule form next to Buddha as it would be to imagine Gaia without its Weapons protecting it from a destructive corporation and the Calamity from the Skies in a world without tokusatsu's own Godzilla protecting the planet from destructive companies or the King of the Void.

The work I want to bring up to assist in this reading, though, is Saiyuki as published by Enix's publishing arm before they merged with Square. Saiyuki is actually just the title of the Japanese translation of Xiyouji, and the manga and anime that bear this title are loose adaptations of it. Within it, the Monk (Genjo Sanzo, the Japanese equivalent of Tang Sangzang) begins his journey to the west after the Three (the Sanbutsushin, a unique invention of the manga) direct him at the behest of Kannon Bosatsu (the Bodhisattva Guanyin) to gather Son Goku (Sun Wukong), Sha Gojyo (Sha Gojō, or Sha Wujing), and Cho Hakkai (also Sha Wujing, but with a pet dragon/jeep named Hakuryuu inspired by White Dragon Horse) in order to travel to India and stop the resurrection of Gyumaoh (a unique invention of the manga). Gyumaoh's revival is causing yokai across Shangri-la (This Saiyuki's combined equivalent of the heavens and China of Xiyouji) to behave erratically and violently towards humans, and his return would mean an end to the world as the characters know it.

#Adapting Daoist Thought From Xiyouji

The Sanbutsushin of Saiyuki are an individually unnamed trio of a disembodied feminine, masculine, and androgynous head that appear on the face of a waterfall to direct and influence events from the beginning. While many fan-readings identify them as only aspects of Buddha, this ignores the Daoist (Taoist) and Confucian elements of Xiyouji as a syncretic text influenced by the thought of Zhang Boduan as identified by scholars like Ping Shao. In fact, he identifies the first two of these Three Schools of Chinese religion as fundamental in reading the text as allegory of obtaining golden elixir and Buddha-nature in the path to enlightenment. In his dissertation Monkey and the Scriptural Tradition in China, Ping Shao explains on page 9,

The conflation of elixir and buddha-nature in Zhang Boduan's thought underscores a unified religious vision that I believe explains the seeming irrelevancy with regard to the numerous evocations of Buddhism and Taoism in Xiyou ji. Buddhism may be crucial to this study, but it is considered as an essential part of Zhang Boduan’s Taoist theology that incorporated Chan thought.

Anthony C Yu, on page 93 of the introduction to his 2012 Revised Edition of Journey to the West, echoes part of this 1997 dissertation when he states,

The wonder is that the Chinese novel has stitched so seamlessly a fabric of three religions that remained in tension (and occasionally in serious conflict) with one another down through history. The company of five pilgrims, on the other hand, does not merely become a harmonious community at the end; throughout the narrative, it also evolves steadily into different aspects of a single person in his development toward some form of psychic and physiological integration.

Just as easily, a reader can see this syncretism expand into Shinto readings of Xiyouji, Shinto itself is already a type of syncresis of Daoism and the native practices, beliefs, and systems of Japan. Many terms within Shinto, for example, originate in Daoist texts. The Dao (the Way, 道), for example, appears in Shinto as the -to (神道), and the shin- of Shinto carries some aspects of the Chinese, Confucio-Daoist shen (神). Other aspects of Daoism, from Feng Shui to its rituals can be seen in modern Shinto practice. Of the biggest interest for this reading are the Confucian and Daoist ideas of yin, yang, taiji, and, to a lesser extent, qi.

#What do These Have to do With the Monkey King?

In brief, and this is extremely brief for metaphysical ideas with as much depth as essence or form, yin and yang are the origin of all things and actions through their interaction. This interaction is represented by taiji. Bringing about all things are the destructive and constructive interactions of the five agents of fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. Qi, basically energy, is the “thing” that is transformed in interacting through these agents. These layers can be expressed in a taijitu, parts of which you have seen before. The symbol you probably associate with yin-yang can be a piece of some forms of taijitu, but you might have also seen that as part of a related but distinct bagua diagram.

For the doubtful of the appearance of these things in Japanese media, qi has even made it into the explicit text of one of the most popular adaptations of Xiyouji in the modern day as ki in Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball. That Dragon Ball power level meme is actually from Son Goku's ki, or qi, being detected. Adaptations of Sun Wukong and the other pilgrims commonly have a detectable qi and an ability to direct blasts, waves, or beams of qi to fight fiends and demons on their journey. Common colors for this are blue, yellow, and red, though ones unique to Monkey are quite commonly blue, such as with Goku's Spirit Bomb, or, I suggest, Cloud's Blade Beam and his sometimes blue glow in things like Smash or Advent Children.

As an uncomfortable aside, properly citing sources is hard here, so please use Google Scholar instead of Google if you look these things up. Looking into these things casually can land you on pseudoscientific sites at best and sites affiliated with straight-up cults at worst. I won't name names, but please be critical.

Translations of Xiyouji would also be incomplete without the explicit inclusion of some of these concepts from the red-buttocked baboon's "knowledge of yin and yang" (Wu & Yu, 2012, 3; 115) to chapter titles referring to the characters as one of the five agents. These inclusions, however, might appear esoteric to a non-Daoist, non-Confucian, or non-Shinto reader seeing them delivered through speech in an adaptation. It goes doubly so for somebody unfamiliar with them at all. A handy way of solving this, however, would be to embody these ideas in characters and their actions that mimic the original novel's more allegorical uses of them.

For this reading, then, we might look more deeply at the Sanbutsushin as embodying yin, yang, and taiji while recalling that Xiyouji scholars associate three or more of the pilgrims with the five agents. Of the Sanbutsushin, the feminine would be the yin, the masculine would be the yang, and the androgynous the taiji in which they interact and spring from. By placing them at the start of the journey, Saiyuki turns the waterfall, a symbol of desire present in Chinese Buddhism according to Ping Shao (98), into a symbol of wuji and taiji, begetting the yin and yang of taiji that, in turn, begets the journey itself and its interactions through the pilgrims as embodiment of five agents. Briefly, many readings of Xiyouji see the pilgrims as representative of the processes in the body balancing yin and yang through processes directing yin qi and yang qi through the five phases. If you have ever heard of things like “aligning cinnabar fields,” this is that.

If you know anything about Xiyouji adaptations, you will know that much of the story of those from Japan is the pilgrims overcoming that waterfall of desire through these interactions. The characters landing in a tough situation because of a desire to eat good food, enjoy a fun fight, or spend time with an attractive woman are pretty commonly pulled from Xiyoui. A notable example of this happening in is when Monkey transforms into a woman in order to “rescue” a daughter of the Gao patriarch from a pig monster who later joins the journey.

How convenient would it be, then, for an adaptation to explore this dynamic of interactions by placing it before the journey begins and making visible the yin and yang of the taiji and how their presence influences representatives of the five agents in order to display how the pilgrims change over the journey?

#The Trio as Genitors of the Journey

Through this reading of the Sanbutsushin, we can read the same of the Trio as adaptation of these concepts as expressed by Xiyouji. If we read Remake and Rebirth while searching for the apophrades of re-adapting Xiyouji, we can read Madam M as representation of the yin, Sam, the yang, and Andrea as the taiji generating them before they generate the journey through the five agents of Cloud (the Monkey), Tifa (the Monk), Barret (Sha Wujing), Cait Sith and his Moogle (White Dragon Horse), and Don Corneo (standing in as a mirror of both Laozi and Cid [Pigsy] without limit on his desire). Additionally, this reading of Don Corneo as Laozi, often depicted with his blue bull in Xiyouji adaptations itself mirroring Abzu, ties the Trio again to the Dao through the works attributed to Laozi, such as Daodejing.

And, should we do so, the events of Wall Market read closely to a combination of the end of Qitian Dasheng’s (Monkey’s) rebellion against heaven in the first seven chapters and an early part of his journey involving his transformation into a woman to rescue the youngest daughter of Mr. Gao from a marriage that had been agreed to in Chapter 18. This second piece may seem like a stretch, but Mr. Gao’s daughter is actually one of the handful of times in the novel where the person Monkey is rescuing isn't the Monk, so swapping out a female character with a female Tripitika isn't unusual in the slightest.

To explore this more deeply, we will first turn to the attempted public execution of Cloud, Barret, and Tifa and the combination of Cloud's recollection of the Nibelheim Incident with our post-Compilation understanding while comparing those to the attempted execution of Monkey ordered by the Jade Emperor. During that execution, the celestial beings involved attempted to kill Monkey with blades, fire, and thunder but failed to kill him. After this, the Gods of Light and the Gods of Dark hand Monkey over to Laozi in order to have him fired in his Eight Trigrams Brazier.

What is crucial to this reading is that this attempted execution revealed the near-indestructibility of the diamond body of Monkey before his fall from heaven and crushing by Buddha under Five Elements Mountain. In a similar way, Cloud's near-indestructibility is revealed by his three trials of the Nibelheim Incident in the fire, impaling, and pseudoscientific experiments of Hojo five years before his fall from the heavens when the execution by Shinra goes awry.

It is after this attempted execution and being recruited as a bodyguard by Aerith that Cloud discovers that Tifa has been recommended to Don Corneo by the Trio and himself ventures to use them to confront Don Corneo. This, then, combines Monkey's punishment by heaven in Xiyouji with the generative interactions through taiji producing yin and yang of the Sanbutsushin in Saiyuki, allowing us to read the events of Midgar as our Monkey figure’s firing in the Eight Trigrams Brazier before his punishment by Buddha under Five Elements Mountain. Don Corneo and Abzu, outside of Corneo's adopting the role of the pig monster before he joins the journey, act as Laozi atop his blue bull failing to destroy Monkey's diamond body. Here, then, this reading encounters a problem: if Monkey is to be crushed under Buddha's fist as Five Elements Mountain to still Monkey's Mind Monkey to allow him to reveal his Buddha-nature after cultivating his body, where is the mountain crushing Cloud once he survives every heavenly trial?

#Midgar as Diagram of the Way

This is when I get to reveal the coolest thing I've discovered about this reading of the game; that you can read Midgar as one of those bagua diagrams I mentioned earlier. Bagua diagrams usually contain some symbol of the interaction of yin and yang in the center like the symbol you might be familiar with for Daoism. Around this symbol are depicted the eight trigrams or bagua, symbols also representing the interactions of yin and yang producing all things. Midgar, with its two levels and eight reactors with accompanying plates, can act as a bagua diagram informing the player of the course of events in the game. Each trigram and accompanying image we can read as lining up with a reactor and its corresponding sector: Qian (乾, ☰, image is heaven) for one, Dui (兌, ☱, image is lake) for two, Li (離, ☲, image is fire) for three, Zhen (震, ☳, image is thunder) for four, Xun (巽, ☴, image is wind) for five, Kan (坎, ☵, image is water) for six, Gen (艮, ☶, image is mountain) for seven, and Kun (坤, ☷, image is earth) for eight.

This, then, allows us to read Midgar itself as the Eight Trigrams Brazier that Monkey is fired in, as Laozi's brazier also contains eight compartments correlated with each trigram. In particular, Monkey was placed into compartment correlated with Xun, which this reading associates with the Sector Five Cloud falls into after the failed execution. During his time in the brazier, Monkey was bombarded by the wind associated with the Xun trigram, giving him unique eyes that actually appear in few adaptations of Xiyouji. While the Fiery Eyes and Diamond Pupils that can appear like thunder appear in few adaptations of Xiyouji, they certainly do mirror the unique Mako Eyes of members of SOLDIERs exposed to Mako. While I won't elaborate on it here, though I will when I write about Roche and Zack, I will note that Monkey is not the only character to technically bear these eyes during the story, and that they can be read to represent a weakness in Monkey and those others who bear them.

Additionally, with the connection of Sector Sven to mountain, this reading allows us to see the Sector Seven Plate as the Five Elements Mountain with which the Buddha assists the Jade Emperor in stopping Monkey's rampage. When none of the execution methods work, the Jade Emperor requests the Buddha's aid, and, after a wager with Monkey, the Buddha traps Monkey under Five Elements Mountain. This allows one to read the events of Fight For Survival, when the plate we associate with the trigram bearing the mountain image collapses on the headquarters of our Avalanche cell, as the selfsame crushing by the Buddha's fist in an adaptation where our Monkey figure is not immortal to a Western understanding of the term. Additionally, one can see the compression of time in Monkey's punishment enfolded into this event to support the semi-realism of the game if read as adaptation. Where Monkey was trapped under Five Elements Mountain for 500 years, Cloud Strife is left dazed and with a settled mind for only 5 years after the Nibelheim Incident before the events in Midgar propel him on his own journey.

#Conclusion and…

The reason it took me so long to write this compared to my last one is because the esoteric philosophy of Xiyouji as retold in modern, Japanese adaptations is not a thoroughly settled field. Daoism's influence on Shinto is also not settled. Even more, fandom discussions of even explicit adaptations tend to shy away from it more than one would expect. While non-Catholics are happy to discuss Catholicism as it appears in Bayonetta or Devil May Cry from Japan to the USA, Dragon Ball isn't even widely known as having its start as an adaptation of Xiyouji.

However, you might be able to see why with that information: by reading one set of three characters from an explicit adaptation and a work that can be read as adaptation as allegory for Daodejing, you hit a waterfall of information from scholars, modern practitioners, and fans that don't always agree. Even worse, you can end up on a site for a random funeral home in Florida or the welcome page for a cult if you try to look this stuff up in English.

With a concentrated reading and a little effort, though, we can end up reading the beginning of Final Fantasy VII and the whole of Final Fantasy VII Remake as reordered and condensed adaptations of Xiyouji's first seven chapters. Taiji produces the yin and yang that generate the final ascent in the rebellion against Shinra and also reveal the symbolic nature of Midgar itself. We can more clearly read certain characters as adaptations of others, such as being able to read Don Corneo and Abzu as Laozi and his blue bull. We can also get a more clear feeling for the inherent influence a faith other than Christianity or Judaism has on FF7. While most people have spotted the “seraphim” of Sephiroth or the Jehovah of Jenova, this reading makes it a little surprising that more discussion of the Buddhist, Daoist, and Shinto influence on a popular game with an explicit martial class and a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth hasn't happened in most languages.

Most of these will not be as general as this one, but I did need to use the Trio to introduce ideas for posts I will be making in the future that will need to touch on these subjects. I also wanted to show with example that adaptations of Xiyouji don't necessarily follow the 1592 text one-for-one. While Bloomian criticism can tell us that, it makes it more clear to be able to say, “Saiyuki is an adaptation of Xiyouji, but the creators changed it to meet their own creative urges.”

#…Another Fun Fact

With all of that said, the fun fact for this one is that the only Buddhist sutra to appear in full in Xiyouji is the Heart Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom. It is a sutra that describes how understanding that everything is hollow, empty, and void is a powerful means to reveal one's Buddha-nature. Its inclusion in Xiyouji is meaningful for more reasons than it being about a Monkey, Sun Wukong, whose name can translate to “Monkey Awakened to Emptiness/Hollowness/Void.” An even more fun fact from that one is that the King of the Void who fell from space and crashed into a mountain to bring destruction and disaster, Ghidorah, has a theme in the 2019 Monsterverse film Godzilla King of the Monsters that contains excerpts from the Heart Sutra in Japanese.

Interestingly enough, “hollowness” has become the explicit theme of the beginning of the journey in FF7 Remake with Hollow playing at the end and containing the lyrics,

With your every, smile hiding something more / Dark mysteries lurking beneath / But I was, consumed with this emptiness / This selfishness, this void to fill

Even more interesting is that, while most fan readings of this song see it as about Aerith and Cloud, much of the interpersonal conflict of Xiyouji is between the Monk, who is based on a real man whose name (Xuanzang, 玄奘) can be read as “Great Mystery” if broken apart, and Sun Wukong, the Monkey Awakened to Hollowness/Void/Emptiness. The monk of the party in JRPG terms or the terms of this reading is not Aerith, but Tifa.

Thank you for reading this far if you have. The next one will be much shorter and focuses on an episode of a piece of Xiyouji media, Lego Monkie Kid, that retold the meteor arc of FF7 and seems to have used scenes from Remake’s meteor reveal as inspiration for this retelling. While I can't say the creators of this episode see FF7 as a Xiyouji adaptation, I can say with certainty that they think FF7 fits neatly within Xiyouji stories. I already have that one written, but I'm working on either Tifa as the Monk or Rufus and Darkstar as Erlang Shen and his celestial hound after that. I truly appreciate the kind words I've received from people that are as interested as I am in literary criticism and learning new things about the world we live in.

I'm like alomst about to beat the game but I'm just doing sidequest and compelting intels recently just completed corel region and now I have to do the last one which is the ocean one and side quest I got to complete. Is there any more things to do but those things? And I'm also curious if queens blood is also worth doing before proceeding and how long would that take?

What if in FF7R Part 3, most of the events faithfully lead to a showdown with Sephiroth in the Northern Crater, but the Lifestream sequence is where it all goes batshit and off the rails?

Not only will the memories of Cloud’s childhood & the Nibelheim Incident return, but Advent Children & Dirge of Cerberus memories from the future will appear in some form and will also possibly be playable, effectively erasing them from that future, bringing the compilation together, and opening a path to a new ending and a finality to the story.

Thoughts?

It’s gotta be Prime mode for me. I didn’t really get it when I first started using it but after finally testing it out it quickly became my favorite ability. It’s so fun to use and makes cloud so op. Its genuinely all I use most of the time 😂

https://www.ffvii-savepoint.com/

Hey guys! Quick update on my earlier post. I've finally finished creating an online build management system for FFVII (og), Remake, and Rebirth. Since you can't save your builds in-game, I made Savepoint as an online alternative. The app is completely free-to-use. Editing builds doesn't really work out on mobile, so I would recommend using the desktop version. I'm relatively new to web development, so I would really appreciate feedback on any issues or features you would want to see in later versions.

The main edit menu

So I completed rebirth about a week ago and got a few questions about it.

1. Do all the post game content (such as stars for the best dialogue) appear when I start a new game or does it have to be from chapter select from the same playthrough

2. Do content from the later chapters go back to the lower chapters? Like if I go back to chapter 3 do the quests you can only get from for example chapter 12 appear completed or able to be accessed?

3. I'm also tryna fill up the relationship bar and right now I'm trying to access the quest "sand and circuses". I understand I need to first complete the quest "trouble in paradise". I have defeated the malboro that should access that quest, but it's not appearing in Costa del sol.

I've seen a ton of praise for the combat system in Remake, but I'd love some clarity re the level of strategy involved.

I'm generally not a fan of action/button mashing combat (the one exception being Jedi Survivor, but that's probably just because I've always wanted to be a jedi). To me, the combat in Remake looks to be more action-focused (like Elden Ring) and less strategy-focused (like BG3/FF Tactics, two of my favorite games).

I'm I misjudging? I'd love to just buy the game and find out, but I can't justify spending $40 on a game I might not finish.

Thanks!!

(For what it's worth, I loved the original FFVII as a kid, but upon replaying it as an adult, I did find the combat a little simple/repetitive. I still loved replaying, but that was more for nostalgia than actual gameplay I think. And the music. I will never not love the FFVII music.)

I’m about done playing through Remake and about to start Rebirth. My question is how much of the original game does remake and rebirth cover? Is this going to be a trilogy? Or is it going to be like 4 or 5 games?

I feel like Reunion would be perfect if it hadn't already been used