Warning! While the entire world is now completely open, this chapter includes a “point of no return” when you try to advance in the storyline. So if there was anything you’ve missed (if you skipped the Chapter 12 quest explosion), or anything else you were planning on doing, do it now! I, admittedly and unfortunately, forgot to complete my item transmuting pages/levels.
I started this chapter off by finishing the Gilgamesh quest line, and it’s a doozy. You have numerous battles where you’re fighting multiple summons at once. My only recommendation here is to make sure you kill the Phoenix first. If you don’t, it will do that thing that Phoenix does.
Next up, I headed North to the Temple of the Ancients. The game will prompt you when you’re hitting that point of no return, so no worries there.
The Temple of the Ancients appearing is a new one, but makes more sense knowing that no one has found is thus far, as opposed to it just being this giant pyramid looking building that somehow no one knows about. The interior is incredible. The original was this awful maze, where it was difficult to figure out which way you should be going, and they’ve corrected that in the remake by adding rooms with gravitational shifts. You still need to try them all out, to ensure you’re finding all of the exploration rewards (chests), but it’s an upgrade compared to the original.
Aerith using the lifestream to rebuild areas on the inside was a neat touch, and provided some pretty cool moments. We also got more Turks fights, which I always appreciated throughout the game. The cutscenes in the middle of any Turks fight are always A+ material.
Once you’ve gotten to the end, you’ll go through everyone’s “trials.” I don’t want to spoil anything here, but this part of the game has the most devastating scene in a video game that I’ve ever seen. It took a scene from the original, elaborated on it, and made it as brutally awful and real as it possible could. It broke me, and if you’ve made it this far in the game, it’ll probably break you, too.
Moving on from that, the walk through the temple, and entering the room with Meteor on the wall, was perfect. The dreaded “wall boss” is awesome. This is another one of those legendary bosses from the original, so I’m glad they kept it and really brought it to life. The escape from the collapsing temple afterwards was really amazing.
I questioned a part at the end, where Sephiroth has the Black Materia, then gives it to Cloud to make him give it back. I would have preferred this stuck to the original, where Cloud already has it, but it’s not a dealbreaker. The ending scenes in this chapter are wild, and it really sets up Aerith disappearing for the final chapter.
The original Final Fantasy VII was my favorite game of all time, and the remakes are living up to it for me.
The full playthrough of Chapter 13: Where Angels Fear to Tread can be viewed here:
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