FFVII Intergrade Intermission

A fun add-on that sheds a bit more light on Yuffie and Midgar, but it felt a little underwhelming.

Demetrius Atkins

June.14.2021

FFVII Remake was one of the games I had been looking forward to since it was alluded to over a decade ago, and once it was released it has been one of my favorite games in my library. Square Enix knows how much people enjoyed it and how much more they want so the Intermission DLC came at a great time while everybody is waiting for Part 2.

Intermission is a story (more like what you might experience in a side quest) about Yuffie coming to Midgar. Right from the get-go it's very clear that Yuffie has all of the flair, pizzazz, and clumsiness she has always had. I sometimes worry about how certain aspects of characters will translate over to a more realistic depiction of them but Yuffie is spot on.

One of the great things about FFVII Remake was the world building that took place in creating Midgar and that holds true in Intermission. You see the same areas and know your way around; the downside being you're going to be playing through a lot of the same areas and similar environments to what you've seen before. You'll see a lot of familiar faces (some that feel almost gratuitous) as you travel along on your journey, but seeing the happenings of Midgar from a different viewpoint is interesting. Although while it's interesting I would have hoped to see a little bit more since it's reusing a lot from Remake, if only because Yuffie is such a unique character seeing more of her interactions would have been a treat.

You'll also learn a bit about Wutai which I always felt was missing from the orignal FFVII and I hope that knowledge will continue to grow as Remake progresses. Wutai plays a large part in the geopolitical atmosphere but felt a bit like a second thought in the original. Introducing some perspective into the turmoil between Midgar and Wutai earlier on gives the player a better look into what is actually happening between the two places even if we haven't formally been introduced to Wutai yet. It also lends to the understanding of some of Yuffie's personality traits which will undoubtedly be revealed farther in the game as more parts are released.

You'll start out with Yuffie at level 25 so there won't be any ramp-up into gameplay mechanics or walking you through how to play the game; they're going to be expecting that you know what you're doing. I'm personally a fan of this because odds are you're not going to be playing Intermission without playing through Part 1 of FFVII Remake so I appreciate the faith that was put in me to know what I'm doing. This made getting right back up to speed simple and just in time to have some new mechanics introduced.

You'll have a new partner throughout Intermission in Sonon Kusakabe who is semi-autonomous in combat. While you can't control him directly you will be able to issue him commands such as Abilities, Spells, Limit Breaks, and a new ability called Synergy. When you Synergize with Sonon he'll stick close to you and attack whoever you're attacking in the same manner (i.e. physical attacks or ninjutsu). It will slow down Sonon's ATB gauge and cause it to fill up more slowly but you'll be able to simultaneously perform attacks together. Not only does this look awesome but it does a lot more damage and can even be extended to performing a Limit Break together.

I played through on Normal and the difficulty felt finely tuned. None of the battles felt like they were dragging on which could happen with some of the boss battles when playing with Cloud and company. And while a couple of the fights were difficult I never felt like I was underleveled or anything was unfair. It usually required thinking through the fight and what was available at my disposal to come up with a way to get through the fights.

Making a triumphant return as a side quest of sorts is Fort Condor. It's not the same as in the original where you actually travel to Fort Condor and help save the area; it's been transformed into a board game that you can play against a number of opponents. You lose out on the story behind it but you gain access to a mini game that could have the ability to be carried over throughout the rest of the game, akin to something like Triple Triad from FFVIII. The mini game plays very similarly to how it did in the original but there are updates that help with the gameplay and depth. This includes shorter game lengths, the ability to customize your board to how you like to play, and customizing your loadout and which characters you want to use. One of the things that I enjoyed as well is going around to different characters and challenging them to a game while they progressively got more difficult to beat. This lends to building out a better loadout and board as you climb the ranks.

The DLC is fun to play through; it takes place during some of the events of Cloud's escapades through Midgar so you'll get to see some events play out from a different perspectives. Most of what you'll see you've seen before which makes this feel like a side quest which may or may not seem like it warrants the full $20 you'll need to pay. For me I enjoyed the extra bit of story that we get, the introduction to Yuffie, and seeing some familiar faces. I did all of the side quests in the DLC and even a couple that took me quite a few retries and still clocked in at about seven hours. While the time spent was short overall it was fun.