The Colonel fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Mar 8, 2020

• They did a pretty good job of replicating the areas of the reactor you run through, while also adding in new areas that link each area together (not sure why a reactor has a ticket booth, though). I do miss the more grungy look of the original though.
  
• In connection, the demo overall feels like it runs a lot longer than the opening of the original does. Encounters in the original are over pretty fast, since most of the enemies take one or two hits. Here, the enemies take a lot hits.
  
• Combat feels pretty good, but I don't know if I just didn't grasp it that well, or if there's an issue with how it flows (I was playing on Normal difficulty). As Cloud, I ended up taking a lot of damage, and burned through a lot of the potions I collected. As Barrett, one small issue I had is that when you first gain control of him, hitting those turrets up above was a little awkward because the camera doesn't rotate all the way up to show them in full view (you can only see the bottom half).
  
• The boss fight against the Guard Scorpion is where I had the most trouble. The fight itself wasn't hard, but I felt like I was supposed to have done it faster. The game says to hit it with lightning magic and hit the thing on the back to destroy the shield, but the lightning magic didn't seem to work sometimes, and getting behind it to hit the shielding device felt awkward. The fight was where I burned through most of my potions (mostly for Cloud). My strategy was to try to get into close range and beat the boss in Punisher Mode, but I get the feeling you're supposed to spend more time blocking and dodging. I think my issue is that I was trying to rush it because of the timer, but obviously the timer doesn't start until after you beat the boss.
  
• I probably missed this during the tutorial message, but I realized when fighting the slashing guys during the escape, blocking at the last moment will counter attack.
  
• I wish that you could switch from Operator to Punisher during a combo, because the ideal method of attack seems to be to close the distance with Operator, than immediately switch to Punisher to deal damage fast. One annoyance I have is that ATB won't let you use potions unless you have a bar, but I suppose the original game is like that. I guess maybe in the remake demo, it came across like you just need ATB to do the special moves.
  
• Story/Writing-wise, they translate the little spats between Cloud and Barrett pretty well (highlight was the bit with Barrett making the joke with rank and age). I'm still disappointed that they didn't bring Steve Burton back to play Cloud, but the new voice actors fine. Dunno if Biggs, Wedge, and Jesse are fleshed out better here or in the original. One thing I took note of while playing the opening of the original last night is how the characters physically emote a lot. which adds a lot.
  
• I don't know if this is just me being dense or what, but in the cutscene where Heidegger and President Shinra have the bots start shooting up the plant after the bomb goes off, I wasn't sure if that was implied that the bomb failed and they were making it look like it had worked, or if they were causing additional damage to try and kill AVALANCHE by bringing the plant down faster.