Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade: Episode INTERmission Review

A little more than a year after its original release, it’s now Yuffie’s time to shine with the DLC for the Final Fantasy VII Remake. Is Episode INTERmission worth installing the 100+ GB JRPG once more, or should you just leave it be?

Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade: Episode INTERmission Review

Episode INTERmission begins with Yuffie arriving in the Midgar slums to meet up some members of Avalanche. When she shows up, she makes a big ol’ scene and introduces herself, only to find her contact hasn’t arrived yet. From there, you have to travel through the slums and find them. Yuffie’s main goal here is to steal materia from Shinra, but she needs help to do it. You arrive right after Cloud falls in the Shinra reactor, so things are a little bit hectic. Eventually, you find your contacts, but it isn’t Tifa or Barret – it’s another group within Avalanche.

Here you are introduced to a bo staff user named Sonan, who serves as your partner and ally. Sonon is much like Red, in that you can’t control him in combat directly. You can give him commands, but you can’t use him yourself. He and Yuffie are Wutai, and both of them have beef with Shinra. You then get a little bit of time to explore the slums, get new materia, do side quests, and play mini-games before going into Shinra HQ. If you do everything, you are looking at about five hours worth of content in all.

Yuffie is an interesting character to play as. She can do both ranged and melee combat, really excelling at both. Much like a ninja, she moves fast, dashes around, and does a lot of jumping attacks. Her primary weapon is a shuriken that can be thrown or used in melee attacks. If you throw it, you can use elemental attacks from a range, keeping Yuffie out of any real danger. I did run into a couple of fighters where I kept bouncing up and down with her over and over. I was doing damage, but it was really weird looking. Overall I am happy with how Yuffie plays and hope they don’t change much in the next game.

A new feature in this little DLC is its synergy attacks. You can pair up with Sonon and combine attack gauges to use combo attacks that dish out massive damage and inflict large amounts of stagger. I’m not sure why, but you need to press a button to make this activate in combat; you should start off in synergy mode and press a button to turn it off. A couple of fights have really minor downtimes that reset your synergy, which seems pointless because you’ll just pop it again. Honestly, this seems like the type of thing they will cut in the next game, which sucks because it is very beneficial. Alternatively, maybe people will only be able to synergize with Yuffie; it’s too soon to tell.

There is also a new mini-game called Fort Condor. The game itself seems like practice for the big battle at the fort next game, but it’s actually enjoyable and addicting. The concept is simple: two players fight each other, with whoever taking the enemy base the victor. You get to select six different kinds of units to spawn, and you pick where they go. If you can push through your opponent, you will win and get some new cards. A welcome addition, Fort Condor is something they really need to expand upon in the next part of the remake.

That is where my most significant problem with this DLC lies. I have no idea what will be kept, if these events will be mentioned next game, or if the new villains will have any relevance. You can wall run in this because of Yuffie. Will I be able to do that next game? I liked this DLC, but it raises more questions than anything else, and I could easily see Square Enix cutting some of its best features.

Episode INTERmission is a fun few hours most Final Fantasy fans will enjoy. That being said, its short length and uncertain future make this DLC a hard sell at its current price point.

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