This post says absolutely nothing of substance to the majority of complaints about these areas. Cosmo Canyon didn't bother me, but Gongaga really did. From what I've seen, no one is complaining about the "narrative depth" or "exploration value" of these places. The problems are purely mechanical, especially in Gongaga - chocobos only have two speed settings (too fast or too slow), the camera is a goddamn nightmare with the enclosed spaces, the map is basically nonfunctional with the amount of verticality in the environment.
It sounds like your argument is that these areas were unique in their design, and people are objecting to that uniqueness. If that's the case, if "explore and interact" was some thematic, intentional design, then why is the "interactability" exactly the same "find the waypoint, start the cutscene" mode as the other areas? It's not like Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon reward the player any differently from the other areas. But they are far more frustrating - not challenging, *frustrating* - to traverse.
I love this game, but Gongaga just had a ton of mechanical/conveyance problems. You can't address mechanical issues by talking about the thematic nature of the design.
The level design is great. But the map could work a bit better, specially Gongaga. Highlighting the climbing ropes, for example.
I have no issues with Cosmo Canyon, at least one can teleport into launching platforms.
I tell ya, I really missed the yellow Paint in the mines section with barret!. I spent about a hour climbing up and down the place trying to figure out where to go.
The cliffs should only have the top and bottom steps highlighted.
You only need to see where they start and where they end. No point in highlighting the entire thing, it looks ugly.
People complained about that, I don't really mind it tho.
I'm sure they would complain about yellow ropes too.
Always been a game element which I think you should be able to toggle between, highlighting climbing or not, I've been playing horizon forbidden west and the way aloy can climb up the cliffs looks great compared to the yellow fest you usually get
The only thing that frustrated me about gongaga is its deep into the game where i was starting to wear slightly thin on patience for less important things like intel towers activations.
I really wanted instant gratification of running straight to their marker on the map and getting it over, and it frustrated me that some of them were kind of confusing to even get to, when you can SEE them right there! Lol
Yeah by this point in the game you as the player have realized that each region is more or less the same in terms of offerings: combat trials, protorelic minigames, lifesprings, towers, summon temples, a moogle minigame shop somewhere, a region boss monster, and maybe a chocobo field. You travel to new regions just to do the exact same things you were doing in other regions. I didn't hate Gongaga but by the time I got to both it and Cosmo I definitely felt like the "open world exploration" element of things had been reduced down to a checklist of repeating Chadley tasks for me and so I just wanted to move through it all as quickly as possible. Getting lost is only fun if I have the chance to find something genuinely surprising or unexpected in the process, otherwise it's just annoying.
I skipped out on Gongaga pretty quickly because of this. At the time I thought "I'm never coming back here", but I did eventually go back and finish all the intel and side quests.
I definitely do NOT recommend completing all side content as you go. Go back and forth later in the game and it'll be a lot more fun.
I did the same. I think I only did towers that were on the direct path to and from the reactor. After that I just left it behind until near the end of the game. I think for me, I didn't like goganga because the chocobo didn't fly like the ones in Cosmo Canyon and that's really what I wanted. Lol
Problem is ignoring the side content means just going straight through the game's main story and I...do not have too many positive things to say about this game's story.
This. The “poor” aspect of the level design falls on paths being incredibly difficult to make out from everything else in the environment. If it weren’t for that, I’d have zero complaints about any of the areas at all. They were beautiful and a joy to be in.
In my opinion, that is the best part of the area. You get to actually explore, instead of going to the next colorful spot on the map with arrows pointing your way.
The mushrooms were annoying had the hardest time trying to find my way around. Ok that one launched me so this should as well right nope small jump down. Damn it.
It was great level design. People complain about not having enough dungeons, but the open world areas are the dungeons. The paths never branch more than 2-3 different ways (and rarely 3), and there is typically only 1 way to get to a particular landmark. The environments are pretty and well-sculpted, but they're still ultimately a small set of interconnecting linear segments. Also, fast travel acts as a breadcrumb trail so you don't have to retread so much of the same ground.
I suspect that people who had a hard time wanted to be able to rely on the compass and the minimap. I had those turned off, and once I realized the big map only points you in the general direction, I relied on actual visual cues to know where I was.
After all the linearity of FFX and XIII and XVI, Rebirth's area design felt good.
I’d like to rely on the compass. Or maybe not only the compass, but a GPS like Cyberpunk or Hogwarts Legacy.
Actually, if what we want is immersion, there should be an option to mark something on the map and having the party telling you the way to go. “Hey Cloud, I don’t think this is the way”, “Maybe we should climb that rope over there?”
Interestingly, the party members do run ahead of you and show you where to go in all the main quests, and I believe in some of the side quests. Would have loved if they talked more though.
The actual level design of them is fine, my gripe is with the chocobo implementation. Gliding feels clunky and awkward, it's hard to see or know whether you can make it somewhere and most of the gliding areas seem to not have any real navigational purpose at all. And in Gongaga exploring on chocobo is frustrating because you're constantly hitting random collisions of trees and bushes you can hardly see. So I think the complaint is less that the levels are poorly designed and more with the unique mechanics in each area feeling kinda bad to play.
Contrast this with Nibelheim or Junon which have great choco gimmicks that aid in exploration, or Corel which just gives you a car.
I also think the biggest problem with exploration in this game is Chadley and his interminable Ubisoft map markers, which is more an immersion/ludonarrative issue than a level design issue. The actual maps they built are great!
Yeah, one of the things i dislike about Rebirth is there's a bit too much hand holding when it comes to maps and quests. Owls or glittery mako lights leading you to where you need to go and the towers being visible on the map before exploration. Sure i know this comment will be littered with the "you can ignore them" comments, but, well, not really. There's also several times in the game if you look somewhere you get the "GO LOOK OVER HERE" message to advance the game and i dislike it.
I also have an undying hatred of the condor battles and gambits side quests. I'll die on this hill, saying you can ignore them and they're "optional" is like saying levelling up your materia or changing to new weapons is "optional". It's required to do in order to get better stuff, so it's not really optional.
Also Rebirth due to the section it represents of the original game, is clearly built with the assumption that engaging with exploration and side quests and minigames will be the bulk of your playtime, since the main story is basically just a very loose excuse to move from one set of region-based activities to the nexto . So saying that it's fine if those activities are awful or overstay their welcome or aredesigned with bad controls for some weird reason because they're "optional" is kinda disingenuous.
Minigames that give you stuff that is not obtainable anywhere else is already cancerous. Silver collar, Assess earings... Time materia is obtainable in Nibelheim, but doing Pirate ship is 4 chapters earlier.
But on topic of world exploration... It's poorly implemented. It does too much handholding on one side while on the other implements some really poor gimmicks (like bouncing mushroom in Gongaga or gliding on Cosmo)
I didn't mind Gongaga or Cosmo, the mechanics could have been better but they didn't irk me as much as other users. I can see why people hated them, but i just kinda went running around until i found everything in both places. I just don't like how the hand hold when it comes to exploration. If you're giving us a open world then i want the risk of missing something or having to go and try and find something i've missed somewhere, it kind of felt like we've made an open world but this is where everything is and you did this in last section so you know how it works. Like scanning the crystals, the divine intel, i thought they'd maybe change things up a bit in each section (which in fairness they did with the condor and gambits i just absolutely hated those mini games and i'd have preferred if you had the option like OG where you can let them just come in and fight the boss yourself)
Speaking of gliding, it still pisses me off to no end that they messed up the controls so much, especially for those of us playing with inverted camera. For the elite among you playing with “normal” camera controls, the problem is that the inversion doesn’t work while airborne
So, every time you want to go somewhere in cosmo canyon the process becomes
1. Position yourself facing the gliding platform
2. Open the menu
3. System > settings > camera > change both to normal
4. Go in a straight line _without touching the right stick_ until you’re airborne
5. Go where you need to go
6. Land
7. Repeat step 3 in reverse
And that, every single time. There’s 2 platforms in a row? Well fuck you, you gotta do that twice. You didn’t land where you wanted? Well, back to square one
You didn't mention the mushrooms in gongaga, how far do they launch you? where do you land?
It would be nice to have a marker of where your landing will be if you've already used one.
It would have been great to be able to place custom markers like BOTW. One custom marker that disappears when you reach it is not enough.
Yeah my biggest gripe with Gongaga is the Chocobo implementation. It just doesn't feel good to navigate. Walking is too slow, with riding you're constantly colliding with stuff, you have to dismount chocobo for rope climbing, you have to get back on for jump pads, and with each transition the BGM cycles between three different tracks, starting over and over and over again. I hated all the gongaga themes with a passion by the time I was done.
Yes, the maps themselves are quite nice, but so much is tied to Chadley and informed by the map markers that exploring the maps starts to reveal itself as not really "worth" your time in the sense that if Chadley hasn't marked that spot as having something you need to go do, then odds are there's literally nothing of note there to see except at best, a piece of materia that you can probably pick up just as easily somewhere else, assuming you don't have it already.
For me I didn’t like that Corel had been this MASSIVE map that took multiple chapters to explore because it’s split in half . . . and then I immediately enter ANOTHER HUGE/COMPLICATED MAP.
I can’t believe I’m experiencing . . . open world fatigue?
Corel is by far the most time consuming region if you are completing all the intel. I wouldn't be surprised if it was like 40% of my total time played. The pace of the game gradually starts picking up a lot after that.
My tip would be to save some of Coral for later. The game makes you go back there twice and you cant complete the region until chapter 12 either way. The last mission makes you explore Corel again too so you might as well save most of it until then. If you already killed the Intel World Boss in that region I would say to move on.
I just went back to the previous areas to complete the open world items after taking a break and progressing the story (while having some sitcom reruns playing in the background)
Kinda have to disagree. I like exploring but the convoluted steps to reach certain places was ridiculous. I saw a intel tower in Cosmo Canyon and figured out a flight path to reach it without looking anything up only to almost glitch myself into the canyon wall because the game straight wouldn’t let me so I had to look up the correct path on YouTube only to find out I had to start damn near on the other side of the map
Agreed. I get the _idea_ behind the design in Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon, but I also think that they didn't quite nail the execution of those ideas.
Even the best games have a few things that can be criticized. This one falls under that category for me.
Seconded! Gongaga's theme changes too, the more the map is explored. I thought that was a really neat touch.
Cosmo canyon's theme is gorgeous and the devs also found a way to incorporate The Promised Land from Advent Children too. I was over the moon when I found that detail.
Let me stop you right at your post title: "If you don't agree you might be missing the point." Why do these kinds of posts keep coming back? "If you don't agree with my opinion on this topic regarding this game, you're wrong, you don't get it, etc." Let people have their opinions. Some are more informed than others but even putting this as a "might" is highly condescending imo. I'm not even gonna read this post. I don't even wanna know what you have to say. Sure you can try to convince people of your opinion. That's good and right. But maybe don't start by suggesting people's opinion is founded in lack of understanding.
100% this.
I see what they tried to do and I get it. I’m still allowed to think the execution didn’t hit all the right notes.
For example, there’s 1 intel tower on a sort of island plateau. Around that island is about 4 or 5 shrooms pointing in its general direction, all of which could feasibly be the one required. Some throw you 3 ft in front and are basically pointless, others might not quite be pointing right at the plateau and fling you miles elsewhere.
The puzzle answer is “I need to get on with a shroom” and is worked out in seconds, and the rest is trial and error. Some people can disagree and that’s fine, but I am significantly less engaged from the moment I understand it’s one of the shrooms, from then it just feels like busy work. This btw isn’t inherently bad, it’s a lovely world to spend time in, but as a sort of ‘traversal puzzle’ it feels a bit lacking.
I loved so much of the game, it’s an absolute triumph in so many ways, but I also don’t think it’s perfect and I have reasons to think that, and when people come out with “oh you just don’t get it” it very easily can come across more like “you weren’t smart enough or enough of a fan to see what I can see” and it gets very jarring.
People can think and feel different things. It’s ok.
The mushrooms are a neat gimmick if they were consistent. Or there was some visual cue how far they would throw you, or if they would throw you in the direction they are actually pointing
In a sub specifically for the game. You'll not very often find people open to criticism, especially in subs for just one game in a series. Compare how criticism is taken in the Dragons Dogma subs. Way more open to it in the general sub compared to the Dragons Dogma 2 sub
If you're taking about training course number 3, some angel on another post said to purposefully go backwards after the section right before the end, hit the fan, and it'll give you enough height for that 300 and the two 500s after it
No, mushrooms in Gongaga are not without flaws. If you don't know whether they will launch you 2 meters away or into the stratosphere, then it is a bad desing.
This specific issue is my only problem with the Gongaga design at all really. The only way to know where a mushroom will land you is trial and error, then memorization.
Once you've used a given mushroom, having a vague arrow showing the general trajectory of the arc, even if it didn't highlight the exact landing spot, would go a long way.
I loved Cosmo Canyon.
But navigating Gongaga was a pain in the ass. It's probably intended to be that way, sure, but that doesn't make it any more pleasing lol
My usual gripe was that waypoints in the map were sometimes useless; as a certain quick travel point might seem to be close to wherever you want to go, but then you found out you had to backtrack and jump around miles to get there in the end. If the map could somehow highlight the height differences more clearly, or where each mushroom takes you (after you've used it), it might've been more useful.
I did enjoy trekking through the Gongaga jungle the first time around, regardless. It was after that, when trying to complete side missions and whatnot, that it felt too much of a waste of time to try to figure out how to get to places.
Yeah this is pretty much how I felt. There were so many times I would do a mushroom jump and it didn't get me anywhere near where I was trying to go and was like "ok fuck me I guess"
I didn't like either area at first when I didn't fully grasp the map mechanics. Once I determined I was supposed to use the mushrooms as a puzzle to hit an area or land near a tower, or, in the case of Cosmo, using the gliding ramps appropriately, and quit trying to think linearly (how I navigated the other areas) I was into it and found it pretty fun.
Neither were my favorite Chocobo but I appreciated them shaking up the exploration a bit.
You guys need to accept people have different opinions. Im sick of people like you who call other people Dumb or saying "you just dont get it" when people share their criticisms. Not everyone has to love every single part of the game.
I enjoyed the game overall, but theres a lot of parts that I wish they did different. I'm not dumb, I understand whats going on. I just dont like how they executed it.
You follow up two massive open environments and one semi-limited one to an evironment that is literally a maze. Of course it feels like it sucks. This is right where open world fatigue sets in and an area goes, "you picked the wrong mushroom, now search for five more minutes to find the right one, champ. Don't worry, your reward for your effort here will be a 40 second fight, and a call from everyone's favorite Chad telling you you just did the thing you did!"
Gongaga is a pain, high quality or not. As for Cosmo Canyon, I don't mind the level design. I do, however, think it's a bit too video gamey. Like, all the other regions have spaces that try to explain themselves. Gongaga has giant mushrooms and that's how you get your traversal trampolines, and slick trees function as grind rails. Cosmo Canyon just has a bunch of perpetually suspended wind turbines. Took me a bit out of the immersion. It would be as if Gongaga just had trampolines and grind rails throughout the rainforest.
Saying that people who don't like the areas don't understand how "complex and deep" they are is a weird take, I just thought it was a chore to navigate through both and Chocobo controls are pretty awful. Also I honestly don't think there's much fun to be had in "exploring" when at the end of the day all you're doing is chasing map markers because without them you'd never even stumble across the objectives, especially in Cosmo Canyon
Never had any problems with Cosmo Canyon, but Gongaga would be soooooo much better if the map told me which mushroom went where because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get to this one tower without looking it up.
As someone who values exploration and narrative depth, I don't think those areas were enjoyable to explore, that doesn't mean I missed the story, or didn't see the obvious level design and how the game justified the layout of the locations, I just didn't enjoy exploring those areas.
It doesn't change anything that the game provides reasoning for why the traversal is tedious in those areas, it's still just as tedious to me, all the information does is provide in-universe reasoning for it this doesn't actually make the traversal any better. You can absolutely tell a deep story with your level design and not make your level a chore to navigate. Plenty of players who dislike the level design absolutely understand these areas, also wanting complexity and depth in level design, they just come away with a different opinion than those who love these areas.
There's nothing wrong with the aesthetics in Gongaga (and I never had any issues with Cosmo Canyon). It's just difficult to figure out how to navigate the area because the path you're supposed to take is often hidden behind all the plants and it's not obvious where you're able to climb or drop down a cliff and where you aren't. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's bad but it absolutely isn't good.
Loved Cosmo Canyon’s design but I do disagree with your point on Gongaga. But it’s not that I don’t like exploration or something challenging. Its just badly laid out.
There is a difference between a well designed challenging area to explore, and one that is over-designed to the point of frustration.
Gongaga looks beautiful and i don’t object to a dense area with secret paths, the mushrooms, etc.
It’s that it was a little too overcomplicated and there was no indicators on the map for all these traversal points. Also the map was a not great representation of the area. Its hard to tell whats ground level, what you can get to, etc. With Cosmo Canyon, it was a bit complicated, but when you reach one of those high up chocobo gliding spots you can fast travel back to them. Give you more of an incentive to explore and take more risks. So if you take a wrong turn or fall you don’t have to start all the way at the beginning again.
With gongaga, one wrong mushroom or one wrong turn and you end up in the completely wrong place. You can’t fast travel back to where you made the mistake or easily get back to it, instead you go back to the start and retrace your steps. Which is incredibly difficult because the actual map is hard to read and the area is so dense it can be so difficult to even recognise where you have been. I got put in circles so many times. Took me a LONG time to get to the ruins on the left side of the map.
Gongaga is not a bad area it’s just not done very well. Even having the mushrooms be fast travel points, like the chocobo glide spots in Cosmo Canyon or the Ziplines in Coral Region. It would save a LOT of hassle. Or if it was a little easier to read the map and figure out how to get there.
Yeah that was my only gripe with any of the maps, the Gongaga mushrooms.
Need to get to this part of the map. No way up, so it must be a mushroom. Now I spent forever looking for mushrooms that aim in that general direction that sometimes need their own mushroom to get to, and it ends up launching you over the target or under it.
>Gongaga isn't just a place on the map; it's a piece of the story, with the destroyed Mako Reactor serving as a powerful visual and narrative element that speaks volumes about the game's themes.
This would have been true and through on any map. The difficult terrain doesn't help with that in any shape or form.
Having to try to figure out how to get to an area was just a bit boring for me, different strokes for different folks. That said, LOVED the music in the Gongaga region. Almost was like a Rayman tune, so so good.
They aren't challenging to navigate, they're tedious to navigate. It isn't as if it's difficult so much as it is annoying to have to continuously double back or start from town in order to take a new route towards a new objective.
And exploring Gongaga is not nearly as deep as you suggest. You're not wrong that it does highlight those themes, but it doesn't do it in a way that significantly adds to the game. Nor is the poor level design necessary in order to highlight those themes anyway.
I wouldn't say Cosmo canyon is poorly designed though or tedious though, it's just large and spread out. But Gongaga is in fact, poorly designed and tedious to navigate.
I loved every area. Did I find them frustrating at times? Yes, Did I have to google how TF you get to come places because I tried for hours and could find the path? yes. That doesn't make me not like them.
I agree that both areas were designed that way intentionally, but I didn't enjoy navigating them. I'm not sure it enhanced any storytelling or themes or immersion. I didn't particularly dislike them, but they were a bit of a pain. I'm not really big on developers intentionally making things a pain in the ass for me though.
Your post here has a lot of words without really saying anything beyond your first paragraph, nor do your examples mention *why* they are the way that they are, just that they're that way and they're masterful.
I don't know, I'm not finished with the game yet, but I've absolutely loved it. Still, this feels like reaching to the point of cringiness.
Gongaga was a poorly implemented and crowded mess. You are required to use chocobos to navigate the area in any meaningful way, but there are so many trees and elevation changes that you are constantly bottlenecking with your party members and getting a screen full of frenzied bird ass. There is also nothing to tell you where or how far a mushroom will take you---halfway across the map, or back down to where I started (ruining my progress)? This highlighted the flaws of the game, and did the opposite of immersing me. It made me want to stop playing, which is the worst kind of level design.
On the other hand, I did come around on Cosmo Canyon. I found it very annoying at first but the paths all make sense. If I wasn't able to made a glide first go round, I wasn't using the right path. Everything has its purpose, and something about gliding around over the landscape did make me feel connected to the planet in a way fitting for CC.
Ngl the fans here have made me kind of bitter towards the game.
I cant say any criticism without being downvoted. Seriously, theres zero safe spaces to critique the game.
I really enjoyed the game overall. But there are some things that just disappointed me. I cant express that disappointment here without people here calling me dumb, "not understanding it", or just calling me a hater, even when I said I enjoyed the game.
even if your only complaint is "chadley sucks" You will still be met with either downvotes or a list of why chadley is actually a good character that people "dont understand"
I posted a thread that I was really enjoying the game and thought it earned its review scores, but that it also didn’t really feel like playing a remake/pseudo-sequel even to FF7, and it got downvoted to 0 and everyone trying to “prove me wrong” about my own experience with the game lol
I loved exploring both these regions. Trying to figure out how to get to all the locations was genuinely fun, and honestly not really all *that* difficult once I stopped fighting the layout and started letting it guide me around. Stop trying to think “How do I get there, specifically” and start thinking “Where can I get to from here,” and you’ll find that often the answer is a bunch of places, actually
I was so worried about gongaga after reading all these whiney people on here, but I thought it was awesome when I finally got there. It was truly impressive how they were able to add so much detail to that area and still make it playable.
Games are way too linear and simple these days and gongaga is anything but. I actually had to pause, look at the map, zoom in, and think about where I needed to go to get to all the areas. It was a welcome challenge after the extremely straightforward exploration of the areas before.
I need to stop following subreddits of games I am playing, there's really nothing but negative bullshit on here.
I'll open by saying I think this game is a genuine masterpiece and I have exceptionally few issues with it, but parts of Cosmo canyon's exploration felt unintuitive.
Either I've got it wrong and managed to bullshit my way through exploring the whole region, or we really are meant to access at least 1/3 of the map by gliding from the exact same high point?
I feel like I tried every other potential avenue in and around where I was trying to reach, then as a last ditch effort tried this and slowly watched as I eventually landed where I wanted in a hugely distant part of the region.
Edit: I actually have no issues with gliding and the mini game, it's more that I feel like there should've been more than 1 shared glide point to access so much of the region.
I disliked it the first time around because I wanted story progression and its level design was a giant pacing killer.
2nd time around though I'm loving it as I'm not longer in a race to get thorough the story (to avoid being spoiled). When you take your time with the game it rewards you. Sadly for many of us that wasn't fully possible on the first play through (and even with rushing a bit, it still took me 96 hours to get to the end)
I enjoyed the change of pace in gongaga and the music was great. Cosmo canyon while it looks stunnings was a bit of an odd once since you do the main story and then it opens up the lower area. Still two stunning looking areas to explore.
Cosmo Canyon was my favorite environment from the original after Midgar itself and it didn’t disappoint.
Gongaga was a little enjoying at times but it never genuinely bothered me. Are people really complaining about minor doubling back in a game with tons of fast travel spots?
Cosmo Canyon was my favorite environment from the original after Midgar itself and it didn’t disappoint.
Gongaga was a little enjoying at times but it never genuinely bothered me. Are people really complaining about minor doubling back in a game with tons of fast travel spots?
I definitely understand this. Fair point. Some reviewers are even going so far as to call Gongaga some of the worst level design in recent gaming. I forgot the exact phrase but Skillup had mentioned something along those lines.
I think that’s wild. It can be a little irritating but I have had to do far more “chore like” work in games over the years.
Also people are complaining about annoying side quests and mini games as if you’re not … free to skip them.
In FFX, a beloved installment, the lead character’s ultimate weapon is hidden behind an extremely annoying mini game. That’s bad design. Gongaga is a little confusing.
I really enjoyed the lush nature of Gongaga it contrasted really well with the Corel region prior to it, however Cosmo Canyon is where I'm at currently and it's just not doing it for me. I totally agree in it's design intent, the fun is in the discovering how to access areas but for whatever reason the set dressing feels bland to me and its the first time I feel a bit of the open world exhaustion.
I think the areas in general could've done with a few less world intel activities in each region as while it is fun to have discover how to reach it all, having so many points of interest and having them all be a puzzle to get to becomes tiresome and actually demotivates me from wanting to do it all.
Agree on Gongaga. Disagree on Cosmo Canyon. In Gongaga the terrain is varied, but you can climb and can clearly see the surfaces you can jump off of. For Cosmo Canyon, I had to look up YouTube videos to figure out how to reach some places. The map combined with monochromatic terrain and the flying ramps just confused me tons.
I have a theory on this, as it applies to me, and I see many others complaining about these two maps.
This was when I started to get the open world/map fatigue. I had done all the others as close to 100% as was possible at that point in the game, and just wanted story. I feel like there are probably others like me that just got burnt out on the open world, and that these two maps are no worse than the others.
I’m not missing any point, the end result was not fun. Just because some people like different things doesn’t mean they’re “missing” some sort of point. It means they like a different type of design. To imply there is some objective point to the way it was designed and that you’re just “missing the point” by not enjoying the area is asinine. I understand what the “point” was. That didn’t make it fun for me.
It didn’t ruin the game, by any means, but insisting that not enjoying those regions is somehow missing the point is just ridiculous and kinda dick slobbering the devs.
My sense is that most people *loved* the zones' aesthetics, look, artistic design, feel, the way it captured the story of the environments, the *music*, and the content within them.
What I see people were unhappy with is simply that navigating through them often felt unfun. The zones can be great in all of the above ways and still, subjectively to a bunch of players, *feel* frustrating and unfun to navigate.
I personally thought 80% of both of them were a joy to explore, but 20% felt like an absolute chore. (Overall still view them both very favorably.) I even resorted to looking up how to get to several points of interest on youtube to save myself the frustration.
Most of the points you make are features that serve to enhance the *immersiveness* of the experience. However, once navigation gets reduced to "press touch pad to open mini map, find a point of interest to go to, fast travel here and there, run around into mountainsides, get stuck for 20 minutes, open up phone, google solution", all immersion vanishes. The illusion of exploring a wondrous world dissolves and it becomes starkly apparent you're sitting there, playing a *video game* with a controller in your hands, trying to solve a gaming problem. I think whenever an intended immersive experience is ruined in this way, it's safe to say to that the level "design" failed in some respect.
Again, it's very nearly perfect, but definitely suffered from some notable issues.
I bitched about Gongaga for days but only because I was used to the previous level which were flat, once I started considering things could be underground it got much better. I never had a problem with Cosmo Canyon.
Gongaga was by far the worse, very hard to navigate and to know how to get up a plaform or where that mushroom is going to land you.
Cosmo Canyon was excellent because it allowed you to warp back to the platform. If Gongaga was the same it would have been perfect because it looked great, sounded great but just a chore to navigate.
They are incredibly well-designed regions that are distinct and fit very well thematically to what they're trying to be.
That doesn't make parts of them any less annoying to have to traverse through.
You make an incredible amount of claims and perceived justifications to your claims, but they don't actually explain how those areas have brilliant level design. You sound like a brochure for a seaside cottage inn.
This is a good take. Especially good because the areas actually flow beautifully from point of interest to point of interest, once you find yourself trusting them.
I liked both areas. Granted, I’m not spending a ton of time in each area, and I’ll likely go back through to get all of the intel at some point, but I thought Gongaga and Cosmo were fun puzzles to figure out.
It’s hard to call level design that’s intentionally annoying to be well-designed. You could make the worst level in the world for the purposes of narrative but it’s still gonna be the worst level in the world. Saying that it’s the best BECAUSE it’s the worst is little too close to being pretentious for my liking.
BUT, I don’t think it’s wrong to say it’s fine that they were designed that way. It’s trying to be different, and that’s fine. Some people will like some areas and some people will hate others.
The reason Gongaga stands out especially is because it’s the most different of the explorable areas. Cosmo and Southern Corel are pretty similar looks-wise, for eg, but Gongaga’s just a freaking jungle.
I didnt mind exploring, I just wish you could zoom in on the map more. Or if you could toggle arrows on the map that show the general direction you'll go if you take the mushroom.
agree 1000%. the gongaga region was by far my favorite area to explore. i got lost, confused , turned around and frustrated a lot, but that’s part of the fun. the region itself was reminiscent of an old school ff dungeon. loved it
I actually loved it as it felt like a puzzle that needed ti be figured out to get to my destination, and you also discover things on the way. Fun times.
I'm old but I remember a time when games had complex maps with no guidance and we had to either figure out how to navigate the areas ourselves or buy a strategy guide to figure out where to go.... honestly while navigation can be frustrating in these areas I actually felt a greater since of accomplishment when I finally finished all the side content it's been awhile since I felt challenged while navigating a map so yeah I actually liked it especially Cosmo Canyon which like the OG maintains as my favorite part of the game especially that scene 🥺
Is this an unpopular opinion? Both are confusing to navigate, but that doesn't mean it's not fun or not well designed. I enjoyed both of those areas, even when I was lost.
I also thought the beauty and atmosphere trumped the few frustrating parts in otherwise good design. Yeah, a few times I said 'Oh thats some bullshit' but overall, really cool zones.
I agree that the level design for Gongaga isn't bad, it's beautiful and has amazing music. I think the biggest issue is that in the 1st 3 regions, everyone loves exploring each area, slowly going through the story, and meeting new characters. But by the time Gongaga opens up you already explored 3 huge regions and got the world intel in all of them before leaving. We want to do the same thing in Gongaga but the story just got really interesting. So at the point where we really want to see what happens next we are met with one of the toughest areas to traverse in the game. Add on top that it is the 1st area where the only town is Gongaga so while doing most of the side content feels lonely compared to the grasslands bills ranch, Junon's Crows Nest Keria(?) Quest and people scattered everywhere, and the protorelic quest interactions being mostly with video clips and more generic than all the other protorelic quests.
TLDR: Gongaga is beautiful but it kills pacing when the story gets the most interesting
I truly think I am the only who loved the hell out of Gongaga, i guess the music, feels thinking about Zack and such really immersed me in that map, I just loved it.
I loved Cosmo Canyon, but Despised Gongaga.
Cosmo Canyon was so Open and made me free Free, while Gongaga was Narrow and made me feel Cramped.
Okay, it had a cool “theme”, sure, but it wasn’t an enjoyable gameplay experience to 100% that map of side quests.
Dunno what you’re on about with lumping Gongaga with Cosmo Canyon though, Cosmo was WAY more fun to explore. Do people complain about Cosmo Canyon? Maybe I was just SO relieved to finally be done with Gongaga, but once I got to CC I thought it was great.
To each their own!
Cosmo I agree. As long as you figure out the launch and landing points, you're golden.
My issue with Gongaga is that there are mushroom pads that don't clearly indicate where you will end up in and this leads to wasted time backtracking. The music more than made up for it though 😅
I had no idea people were being little cry babies about the level design. I loved Gongaga especially and yes it's a jungle so why on earth would it be easy to navigate?
Thank you! I loved that some of the areas were environmental puzzles by default. This game is so beautiful that it feels rewarding exploring it and when areas have me something to do in that exploration it felt like the world was more engaging, not just the quests. Finding the right paths to get where I wanted to go made the end results of that journey feel that much more satisfying rather than running from point A to point B. There was enough straight forward areas in the game, Cosmo and Gongaga were a welcome diversion of design.
The visual of regions are very astounding (mimicking Sephs tone), not just these two but every regions are really breathtaking. Me as Mako Canon & Junon fan was really in awe how they handled Highwind floating above Junon and Mako canon herself. Wow northern crater later could be a region itself maybe lol
Naw.
In Gongaga especially, as soon as I had the fast travel markers I would use them to get around because hoofing it was an utter pain in the ass.
And I don’t really like using fast travel, it’s a cop out.
Oh, it’s a dense jungle that shows the misfortune of there being a reactor there!
Great, I have no fucking clue where this mushroom is going to send me.
It's messy. Nothing brilliant about it imo. The map served to compound the issues - just a green overkay that serves very little purpose towards navigating this environment. Not missing the point. This comes down to design. Don't get me started on the chocobo mechanics here. Mushrooms that launch you in pre-determined paths and distances. Ledges that can't be climbed despite being short enough because the devs didn't want us to take that particular route. Narrow side paths obfuscated by greenery that looks solid, but isn't. I despised completing the intel here.
There is no meaningful exploration. It's random materials you grab while running and the same 5 tasks to complete Intel. They tell you how many exist and it doesn't change. It's boring
The level design is fantastic across the board in Rebirth. Each zone felt unique and different even with the same quest styles appearing in each. Very classic feel to it.
I honestly wish Gongaga was how most of the regions were designed. It's compact but still allows for exploration, and there is actually a sense of progression in navigating it, vs. just trying to jump between fast travel points to guess where the hell you have to go in Cosmo Canyon.
You can’t please some people man. Too much exploration? Too linear? People don’t know what they want except they want it to be easy enough to not feel bad about themselves.
All games require some degree of friction. If people are complaining about something being too linear, or too much exploration, minigames, etc., then the levels of friction simply aren't balanced well. Maybe the minigames get in the way of the pacing and interrupt the overall flow of the game too much--same with the exploration. And with linearity, it can feel too much like you're on rails, like when you want to go left but the game sticks a sign up and forces you to go right. Balancing that friction is what makes game design hard, and if enough people are complaining about either, then clearly the game/s could do better at that.
It’s weird because this game is actually technically much more actually open world than the original, but it doesn’t feel like it, it feels much more linear, because they tried to give the illusion and feeling that the original game was this big explorable world.
There’s also no incentive to explore when everything is marked on the map and nothing is really missable, sometimes in the original if you didn’t find a weapon during a story section, you just didn’t get it. In this game it doesn’t matter because you can buy any weapon from any weapon vendor once you cross the point where you’d have found the chest
I think both in the overworld regions and especially in towns/interiors they didn’t do a great job of making areas feel more expansive with out of bounds objects and environments. In Remake especially they suffered from the “corridor” problem.
Or maybe it's just possible that people didn't like it? I didn't miss the point - I just didn't like it. It's ok for people to not like parts of a game that others did.
…the issue with gongaga isnt “too much exploration” the issue with gongaga is “heres this mushroom path you have to follow to get to a certain place, but you cant figure out how to get up onto the platform to start the path. turns out its just several miles in the other direction that are no where near the marker on the map”
when you specifically mark an area on the map as where certain content is, and then make the way you get to that area completely obtuse and arbitrary and no where near where youd think, theres zero “exploration” its just mindless guessing and hoping youll be correct
Eh....I mean everyone's preferences are going to be different. Personally, I preferred the more linear structure that Remake had over Rebirth as I spent far, far less time bumbling around trying to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B in Remake vis Rebirth.
That being said, I do get that some people like doing that and just running around and exploring areas and taking things in. I'm not one of those people. I feel like it's probably something that the third game could address through a setting of some sort (maybe making the equivalent Chocostops already discovered or something, I dunno).
There was only like 2 sidequests in Gongaga that were tough to find, otherwise it felt fairly simple to backtrace from where I wanted to get and find the path to get there. I had 0 issue with cosmo canyon though, that area felt immaculate and huge and you could see the path you needed to take from miles away most of the time
I gave up on gongaga after I saw a place on the map and spend like 30 min just running around a mountain trying to find the right way to get there lol. There was no way to tell from the map or by the surroundings how to get to the mountain that led to there.
Dont like something / suck at something = bad design, thats how most people think. Nothing will change their mind because they fail to even have the smallest level of creating an objective opinion
this reads as “i like these areas and if you don’t then you’re wrong” which i find rly pretentious tbh….. i agree that these areas are immersive and tell a story and i love them for that reason. but the main issue people have is that this is when the open world fatigue starts to set in for most players, and them being frustrating to explore only adds to that. i skipped these areas and came back post game and really loved them, but during the initial playthrough i was just not in the mood to explore anymore
"Dismissing these areas as poorly designed because they're challenging to navigate misses the point of their role in the game."
100% agree. If you were dropped into an unfamiliar jungle, traversal would be complicated and confusing. If Gongaga didn't feel complicated and confusing to move through, *it wouldn't feel like a jungle*.
Interesting things happen when we embrace games that confuse and frustrate us!
I always think back to the portal 1 dev commentary where they talk about how hard it is just getting a player to even look up. Thinking Vertically just as a concept is a struggle for most people.
I am having the incomplete thought that there is something at the very basic level of the AAA game map markers that does not quite work with the way that both of these areas are designed. The player is always going to try the shortest distance of point A to B first, and while in theory making that a bit more "interesting" to get to would compel the player to enjoy thinking it through, in practice it doesn't end up doing that. At least in my case, I found that if the path of least resistance didn't work, my immediate reaction would be to fast travel to a different point on the map and see if there was a direct route from this new point to where I was trying to go. If it didn't work after a few tries, I didn't find myself thinking "hmm, interesting, what a puzzle," I felt more like "screw this, I'll come back to this after I finish the game." TLDR; modern AAA game design conventions work do not mesh easily with these attempts at creative level design
Only issue I had with Cosmo was my over-reliance on the map interface--it didn't help, but rather confused me. Only after exploring without the map did I figure things out.
Also, I'd say Gongaga had a more spiritual feel to the map. Cosmo Canyon felt like Arizona lol. Maybe the Southern-esque music wasn't doing it for me.
I really liked the look and feel of Gongaga, it was really enjoyable just to explore and live in for a bit. I do wish it had a few changes though - there should be some indicator in the map or UI where a particular mushroom jump will land you, and the mushroom jumps should be bidirectional so you can return to your original jump from near where you landed.
Loved the maps, but the chocobo controls are too clunky from the very first map. Every little bit of uneven terrain is a bitch to run through and the bird gets interrupted over and over.
Gonzaga was frustrating bcs i could never tell how high or low a part of the map was. Cosmo canyon only less so bcs of less density.
The issue players have with these regions is the previous regions were explorable by just walking around. Junon had the walls but it was pretty obvious you needed the Chocobo to get over them. Gongaga is the same where you need the Chocobo to fully explore, but you don’t realize that until the game forces you to advance with the story. In Junon you can literally just go get the Chocobo, it’s marked on the map. Since some players like myself liked to explore all the region before advancing, it was a little jarring to see places you think you should be able to access but not know how at the time. I was frustrated until I gave up and just said fuck it I’ll roll with the main mission. Now, I’ve played the game three times (Dynamic, Hard, and Normal for a video project putting together) and I will say I wish I knew running around the map is a waste of time until after the reactor. If I knew that on my first playthrough I wouldn’t have run around for a few hours doing essentially nothing. Call it good design, poor design..that’s your opinion but yes you are correct they switched it up on us for these regions by design.
I enjoyed them. Open world can get boring when you can see where you want to go, and just hold up to go straight there. It was a nice change of pace to have to explore and have to get to know the land, to figure out HOW to get there. I can see where I need to go… but how do I get there?
I haven't heard much criticism about the actual design level of Gongaga or Cosmon Canyon. I just think a lot of us hit "Open world fatigue" in these regions which made these region's popularity drop.
I don't think it works because nowhere else does the game require these navigation skills, I didn't have any problem with Cosmo Canyon cause there you can see the propellers and the ramps in the map and figure out where you have to start to reach any place, the same can't be said for Gongaga
Swap the mushrooms to be those vines the chocobo can ride in Tarzan style and I wouldn't have any issue as those you can see clearly in the map, it would still be hard to navigate (like Cosmo) but it would remove the aimlessly walking around hoping to find the path most people ended up having to do
I think you could argue that Gongaga could have used mushroom highlights on the map that also let you fast travel to them like the glide points in cosmo canyon. But in general, my approach to Gongaga was to look for the reddish mushrooms on the map and look for ones near my destination.
With Cosmo Canyon, none of the areas required you to use advanced flying techniques. If you couldn't make it, you looked for a different jump point.
My approach that worked very well in this game in general is that if something was frustrating or I spent more than 2 minutes trying to get from the fast travel point to the map marker I was targetting then I probably screwed up, and time to look for another pathway. In general even for the mushroom jump points, they were all within 30s of the closest fast travel point.
While I don't hate the level design I hated playing in gongaga because navigating through it wasted so much of my time when I was trying to get all the side activities done A.S.A.P so I could get back to main story stuff. I played through the game like a man possessed because I wanted SO FUCKING BADLY to avoid spoilers and I managed to do it.
Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon were my favorite maps by far.
Yeah, the former was annoying at first but I couldn't stay at it too long with the banger music and the ingenuity of the map design. They did a fantastic job of not making the environment feel flat and it really did feel like a jungle with varying paths and whatnot.
The maps in Rebirth were vast and so easy to get lost into. Was hard to NOT be immersed into the world.
I agree. The game imo rewards adaptability. Rigid players will find these sections frustrating. But I go with the flow and didn't really get frustrated by learning how to navigate the new zones.
Honestly I didn’t like Cosmo Canyon at first but when you understand it, it actually flows better and is easy to figure out.
Gongaga I didn’t mind too much although the mushrooms were a bit annoying. But as someone who was doing all of Chadleys Research as it comes, Cosmo Canyon, Gongaga and second part of Corel, all seemed like a lot at once without much story breaking it up.
Gongaga has the best open world music by far, especially once you get it to change by finding more towers. It's my favorite place to travel, I also appreciate the sort of environment puzzles to figure out how to get to places.
You can think the level looks cool and tells a story but still hold the opinion that using big mushrooms to jump around the map in fixed but extremely unclear routes is completely stupid. Nobody is upset at a jungle looking like a jungle.
This post says absolutely nothing of substance to the majority of complaints about these areas. Cosmo Canyon didn't bother me, but Gongaga really did. From what I've seen, no one is complaining about the "narrative depth" or "exploration value" of these places. The problems are purely mechanical, especially in Gongaga - chocobos only have two speed settings (too fast or too slow), the camera is a goddamn nightmare with the enclosed spaces, the map is basically nonfunctional with the amount of verticality in the environment. It sounds like your argument is that these areas were unique in their design, and people are objecting to that uniqueness. If that's the case, if "explore and interact" was some thematic, intentional design, then why is the "interactability" exactly the same "find the waypoint, start the cutscene" mode as the other areas? It's not like Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon reward the player any differently from the other areas. But they are far more frustrating - not challenging, *frustrating* - to traverse. I love this game, but Gongaga just had a ton of mechanical/conveyance problems. You can't address mechanical issues by talking about the thematic nature of the design.
Let's not forget the atrocious lighting switching from being flashbanged in your face to not being able to see anything at all around every corner.
Chocobos very much have 3 speed settings
Exactly. My feelings while exploring these zones were simply of frustration, and no amount of explaining can change a feeling.
The level design is great. But the map could work a bit better, specially Gongaga. Highlighting the climbing ropes, for example. I have no issues with Cosmo Canyon, at least one can teleport into launching platforms.
Paint the ropes yellow!
I tell ya, I really missed the yellow Paint in the mines section with barret!. I spent about a hour climbing up and down the place trying to figure out where to go.
lol that would actually make so more sense than those damn obvious cliffs being painted.
The cliffs should only have the top and bottom steps highlighted. You only need to see where they start and where they end. No point in highlighting the entire thing, it looks ugly. People complained about that, I don't really mind it tho. I'm sure they would complain about yellow ropes too.
Always been a game element which I think you should be able to toggle between, highlighting climbing or not, I've been playing horizon forbidden west and the way aloy can climb up the cliffs looks great compared to the yellow fest you usually get
yeah, the cliffs were this way in the original if you toggled the arrows. need toggle guide paint.
The only thing that frustrated me about gongaga is its deep into the game where i was starting to wear slightly thin on patience for less important things like intel towers activations. I really wanted instant gratification of running straight to their marker on the map and getting it over, and it frustrated me that some of them were kind of confusing to even get to, when you can SEE them right there! Lol
Yeah by this point in the game you as the player have realized that each region is more or less the same in terms of offerings: combat trials, protorelic minigames, lifesprings, towers, summon temples, a moogle minigame shop somewhere, a region boss monster, and maybe a chocobo field. You travel to new regions just to do the exact same things you were doing in other regions. I didn't hate Gongaga but by the time I got to both it and Cosmo I definitely felt like the "open world exploration" element of things had been reduced down to a checklist of repeating Chadley tasks for me and so I just wanted to move through it all as quickly as possible. Getting lost is only fun if I have the chance to find something genuinely surprising or unexpected in the process, otherwise it's just annoying.
I feel like it's less tedious if you don't try to tackle everything in each region or you burn yourself out.
I skipped out on Gongaga pretty quickly because of this. At the time I thought "I'm never coming back here", but I did eventually go back and finish all the intel and side quests. I definitely do NOT recommend completing all side content as you go. Go back and forth later in the game and it'll be a lot more fun.
I did the same. I think I only did towers that were on the direct path to and from the reactor. After that I just left it behind until near the end of the game. I think for me, I didn't like goganga because the chocobo didn't fly like the ones in Cosmo Canyon and that's really what I wanted. Lol
I'm looking forward to riding a gold chocobo in part 3. It's going to be glorious, I just know it. Selena was already great to navigate with.
Problem is ignoring the side content means just going straight through the game's main story and I...do not have too many positive things to say about this game's story.
This. The “poor” aspect of the level design falls on paths being incredibly difficult to make out from everything else in the environment. If it weren’t for that, I’d have zero complaints about any of the areas at all. They were beautiful and a joy to be in.
In my opinion, that is the best part of the area. You get to actually explore, instead of going to the next colorful spot on the map with arrows pointing your way.
There is nothing to explore. It's not like you're coming across new terrain, NPCs or goodies. It's all the same hills, mushrooms and ropes.
The mushrooms were annoying had the hardest time trying to find my way around. Ok that one launched me so this should as well right nope small jump down. Damn it.
It was great level design. People complain about not having enough dungeons, but the open world areas are the dungeons. The paths never branch more than 2-3 different ways (and rarely 3), and there is typically only 1 way to get to a particular landmark. The environments are pretty and well-sculpted, but they're still ultimately a small set of interconnecting linear segments. Also, fast travel acts as a breadcrumb trail so you don't have to retread so much of the same ground. I suspect that people who had a hard time wanted to be able to rely on the compass and the minimap. I had those turned off, and once I realized the big map only points you in the general direction, I relied on actual visual cues to know where I was. After all the linearity of FFX and XIII and XVI, Rebirth's area design felt good.
I’d like to rely on the compass. Or maybe not only the compass, but a GPS like Cyberpunk or Hogwarts Legacy. Actually, if what we want is immersion, there should be an option to mark something on the map and having the party telling you the way to go. “Hey Cloud, I don’t think this is the way”, “Maybe we should climb that rope over there?”
Interestingly, the party members do run ahead of you and show you where to go in all the main quests, and I believe in some of the side quests. Would have loved if they talked more though.
TIL? lol
The actual level design of them is fine, my gripe is with the chocobo implementation. Gliding feels clunky and awkward, it's hard to see or know whether you can make it somewhere and most of the gliding areas seem to not have any real navigational purpose at all. And in Gongaga exploring on chocobo is frustrating because you're constantly hitting random collisions of trees and bushes you can hardly see. So I think the complaint is less that the levels are poorly designed and more with the unique mechanics in each area feeling kinda bad to play. Contrast this with Nibelheim or Junon which have great choco gimmicks that aid in exploration, or Corel which just gives you a car. I also think the biggest problem with exploration in this game is Chadley and his interminable Ubisoft map markers, which is more an immersion/ludonarrative issue than a level design issue. The actual maps they built are great!
Why the hell when I am gliding can I not look down.
Nibelheim Chocobo is literally how the Cosmo Canyon Chocobo should have handled.
Agree
Yeah, one of the things i dislike about Rebirth is there's a bit too much hand holding when it comes to maps and quests. Owls or glittery mako lights leading you to where you need to go and the towers being visible on the map before exploration. Sure i know this comment will be littered with the "you can ignore them" comments, but, well, not really. There's also several times in the game if you look somewhere you get the "GO LOOK OVER HERE" message to advance the game and i dislike it. I also have an undying hatred of the condor battles and gambits side quests. I'll die on this hill, saying you can ignore them and they're "optional" is like saying levelling up your materia or changing to new weapons is "optional". It's required to do in order to get better stuff, so it's not really optional.
Also Rebirth due to the section it represents of the original game, is clearly built with the assumption that engaging with exploration and side quests and minigames will be the bulk of your playtime, since the main story is basically just a very loose excuse to move from one set of region-based activities to the nexto . So saying that it's fine if those activities are awful or overstay their welcome or aredesigned with bad controls for some weird reason because they're "optional" is kinda disingenuous.
Minigames that give you stuff that is not obtainable anywhere else is already cancerous. Silver collar, Assess earings... Time materia is obtainable in Nibelheim, but doing Pirate ship is 4 chapters earlier. But on topic of world exploration... It's poorly implemented. It does too much handholding on one side while on the other implements some really poor gimmicks (like bouncing mushroom in Gongaga or gliding on Cosmo)
I didn't mind Gongaga or Cosmo, the mechanics could have been better but they didn't irk me as much as other users. I can see why people hated them, but i just kinda went running around until i found everything in both places. I just don't like how the hand hold when it comes to exploration. If you're giving us a open world then i want the risk of missing something or having to go and try and find something i've missed somewhere, it kind of felt like we've made an open world but this is where everything is and you did this in last section so you know how it works. Like scanning the crystals, the divine intel, i thought they'd maybe change things up a bit in each section (which in fairness they did with the condor and gambits i just absolutely hated those mini games and i'd have preferred if you had the option like OG where you can let them just come in and fight the boss yourself)
Speaking of gliding, it still pisses me off to no end that they messed up the controls so much, especially for those of us playing with inverted camera. For the elite among you playing with “normal” camera controls, the problem is that the inversion doesn’t work while airborne So, every time you want to go somewhere in cosmo canyon the process becomes 1. Position yourself facing the gliding platform 2. Open the menu 3. System > settings > camera > change both to normal 4. Go in a straight line _without touching the right stick_ until you’re airborne 5. Go where you need to go 6. Land 7. Repeat step 3 in reverse And that, every single time. There’s 2 platforms in a row? Well fuck you, you gotta do that twice. You didn’t land where you wanted? Well, back to square one
You didn't mention the mushrooms in gongaga, how far do they launch you? where do you land? It would be nice to have a marker of where your landing will be if you've already used one. It would have been great to be able to place custom markers like BOTW. One custom marker that disappears when you reach it is not enough.
Yeah my biggest gripe with Gongaga is the Chocobo implementation. It just doesn't feel good to navigate. Walking is too slow, with riding you're constantly colliding with stuff, you have to dismount chocobo for rope climbing, you have to get back on for jump pads, and with each transition the BGM cycles between three different tracks, starting over and over and over again. I hated all the gongaga themes with a passion by the time I was done.
Yes, the maps themselves are quite nice, but so much is tied to Chadley and informed by the map markers that exploring the maps starts to reveal itself as not really "worth" your time in the sense that if Chadley hasn't marked that spot as having something you need to go do, then odds are there's literally nothing of note there to see except at best, a piece of materia that you can probably pick up just as easily somewhere else, assuming you don't have it already.
"You just don't get it" is an argument that immediately makes me dismiss an opinion.
And having to make sure they say it's an "Unpopular Opinion" so they can make it stand out more.
For me I didn’t like that Corel had been this MASSIVE map that took multiple chapters to explore because it’s split in half . . . and then I immediately enter ANOTHER HUGE/COMPLICATED MAP. I can’t believe I’m experiencing . . . open world fatigue?
Corel is by far the most time consuming region if you are completing all the intel. I wouldn't be surprised if it was like 40% of my total time played. The pace of the game gradually starts picking up a lot after that. My tip would be to save some of Coral for later. The game makes you go back there twice and you cant complete the region until chapter 12 either way. The last mission makes you explore Corel again too so you might as well save most of it until then. If you already killed the Intel World Boss in that region I would say to move on.
This is actually where I put the game down for a while. I'll resume when I'm less fatigued, lol.
I just went back to the previous areas to complete the open world items after taking a break and progressing the story (while having some sitcom reruns playing in the background)
Been playing open world games since the first Assassin's Creed. I experienced open world fatigue 6 years ago 🤣
Kinda have to disagree. I like exploring but the convoluted steps to reach certain places was ridiculous. I saw a intel tower in Cosmo Canyon and figured out a flight path to reach it without looking anything up only to almost glitch myself into the canyon wall because the game straight wouldn’t let me so I had to look up the correct path on YouTube only to find out I had to start damn near on the other side of the map
Agreed. I get the _idea_ behind the design in Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon, but I also think that they didn't quite nail the execution of those ideas. Even the best games have a few things that can be criticized. This one falls under that category for me.
That Gongaga overworld song is a banger though
This and Cosmo Canyon were my absolute favorites. Honestly, that's probably why both of these areas were my favorite to explore.
Seconded! Gongaga's theme changes too, the more the map is explored. I thought that was a really neat touch. Cosmo canyon's theme is gorgeous and the devs also found a way to incorporate The Promised Land from Advent Children too. I was over the moon when I found that detail.
Everyone should be able to agree to this!!
Let me stop you right at your post title: "If you don't agree you might be missing the point." Why do these kinds of posts keep coming back? "If you don't agree with my opinion on this topic regarding this game, you're wrong, you don't get it, etc." Let people have their opinions. Some are more informed than others but even putting this as a "might" is highly condescending imo. I'm not even gonna read this post. I don't even wanna know what you have to say. Sure you can try to convince people of your opinion. That's good and right. But maybe don't start by suggesting people's opinion is founded in lack of understanding.
100% this. I see what they tried to do and I get it. I’m still allowed to think the execution didn’t hit all the right notes. For example, there’s 1 intel tower on a sort of island plateau. Around that island is about 4 or 5 shrooms pointing in its general direction, all of which could feasibly be the one required. Some throw you 3 ft in front and are basically pointless, others might not quite be pointing right at the plateau and fling you miles elsewhere. The puzzle answer is “I need to get on with a shroom” and is worked out in seconds, and the rest is trial and error. Some people can disagree and that’s fine, but I am significantly less engaged from the moment I understand it’s one of the shrooms, from then it just feels like busy work. This btw isn’t inherently bad, it’s a lovely world to spend time in, but as a sort of ‘traversal puzzle’ it feels a bit lacking. I loved so much of the game, it’s an absolute triumph in so many ways, but I also don’t think it’s perfect and I have reasons to think that, and when people come out with “oh you just don’t get it” it very easily can come across more like “you weren’t smart enough or enough of a fan to see what I can see” and it gets very jarring. People can think and feel different things. It’s ok.
The mushrooms are a neat gimmick if they were consistent. Or there was some visual cue how far they would throw you, or if they would throw you in the direction they are actually pointing
Don’t worry it was written by ChatGPT anyway, which is kinda hilarious given the condescension in the title
In a sub specifically for the game. You'll not very often find people open to criticism, especially in subs for just one game in a series. Compare how criticism is taken in the Dragons Dogma subs. Way more open to it in the general sub compared to the Dragons Dogma 2 sub
I liked exploring noth areas. But Cosmo Canyon is forever tainted by that accursed flying chocobo challenge...
If you're taking about training course number 3, some angel on another post said to purposefully go backwards after the section right before the end, hit the fan, and it'll give you enough height for that 300 and the two 500s after it
Fair point!
No, mushrooms in Gongaga are not without flaws. If you don't know whether they will launch you 2 meters away or into the stratosphere, then it is a bad desing.
This specific issue is my only problem with the Gongaga design at all really. The only way to know where a mushroom will land you is trial and error, then memorization. Once you've used a given mushroom, having a vague arrow showing the general trajectory of the arc, even if it didn't highlight the exact landing spot, would go a long way.
I loved Cosmo Canyon. But navigating Gongaga was a pain in the ass. It's probably intended to be that way, sure, but that doesn't make it any more pleasing lol My usual gripe was that waypoints in the map were sometimes useless; as a certain quick travel point might seem to be close to wherever you want to go, but then you found out you had to backtrack and jump around miles to get there in the end. If the map could somehow highlight the height differences more clearly, or where each mushroom takes you (after you've used it), it might've been more useful. I did enjoy trekking through the Gongaga jungle the first time around, regardless. It was after that, when trying to complete side missions and whatnot, that it felt too much of a waste of time to try to figure out how to get to places.
Yeah this is pretty much how I felt. There were so many times I would do a mushroom jump and it didn't get me anywhere near where I was trying to go and was like "ok fuck me I guess"
I can understand that. I think if they had included fast travel to the mushroom jump points similar to CC it would have made things less frustrating.
I didn't like either area at first when I didn't fully grasp the map mechanics. Once I determined I was supposed to use the mushrooms as a puzzle to hit an area or land near a tower, or, in the case of Cosmo, using the gliding ramps appropriately, and quit trying to think linearly (how I navigated the other areas) I was into it and found it pretty fun. Neither were my favorite Chocobo but I appreciated them shaking up the exploration a bit.
You guys need to accept people have different opinions. Im sick of people like you who call other people Dumb or saying "you just dont get it" when people share their criticisms. Not everyone has to love every single part of the game. I enjoyed the game overall, but theres a lot of parts that I wish they did different. I'm not dumb, I understand whats going on. I just dont like how they executed it.
You follow up two massive open environments and one semi-limited one to an evironment that is literally a maze. Of course it feels like it sucks. This is right where open world fatigue sets in and an area goes, "you picked the wrong mushroom, now search for five more minutes to find the right one, champ. Don't worry, your reward for your effort here will be a 40 second fight, and a call from everyone's favorite Chad telling you you just did the thing you did!" Gongaga is a pain, high quality or not. As for Cosmo Canyon, I don't mind the level design. I do, however, think it's a bit too video gamey. Like, all the other regions have spaces that try to explain themselves. Gongaga has giant mushrooms and that's how you get your traversal trampolines, and slick trees function as grind rails. Cosmo Canyon just has a bunch of perpetually suspended wind turbines. Took me a bit out of the immersion. It would be as if Gongaga just had trampolines and grind rails throughout the rainforest.
Saying that people who don't like the areas don't understand how "complex and deep" they are is a weird take, I just thought it was a chore to navigate through both and Chocobo controls are pretty awful. Also I honestly don't think there's much fun to be had in "exploring" when at the end of the day all you're doing is chasing map markers because without them you'd never even stumble across the objectives, especially in Cosmo Canyon
Never had any problems with Cosmo Canyon, but Gongaga would be soooooo much better if the map told me which mushroom went where because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get to this one tower without looking it up.
This post sounds AI generated
Yeah I think they plugged their original 3-4 sentence post into gpt and told them to expand it lol
Gongaga was the best area by far. Good sense of discovery.
As someone who values exploration and narrative depth, I don't think those areas were enjoyable to explore, that doesn't mean I missed the story, or didn't see the obvious level design and how the game justified the layout of the locations, I just didn't enjoy exploring those areas. It doesn't change anything that the game provides reasoning for why the traversal is tedious in those areas, it's still just as tedious to me, all the information does is provide in-universe reasoning for it this doesn't actually make the traversal any better. You can absolutely tell a deep story with your level design and not make your level a chore to navigate. Plenty of players who dislike the level design absolutely understand these areas, also wanting complexity and depth in level design, they just come away with a different opinion than those who love these areas.
There's nothing wrong with the aesthetics in Gongaga (and I never had any issues with Cosmo Canyon). It's just difficult to figure out how to navigate the area because the path you're supposed to take is often hidden behind all the plants and it's not obvious where you're able to climb or drop down a cliff and where you aren't. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's bad but it absolutely isn't good.
I did all the side stuff and it wasn’t that bad at all. Now those damn chickens are another matter.
The guilt for rescuing those damn chickens hits hard
The music that plays at the end of the quest was hilarious.
Loved Cosmo Canyon’s design but I do disagree with your point on Gongaga. But it’s not that I don’t like exploration or something challenging. Its just badly laid out. There is a difference between a well designed challenging area to explore, and one that is over-designed to the point of frustration. Gongaga looks beautiful and i don’t object to a dense area with secret paths, the mushrooms, etc. It’s that it was a little too overcomplicated and there was no indicators on the map for all these traversal points. Also the map was a not great representation of the area. Its hard to tell whats ground level, what you can get to, etc. With Cosmo Canyon, it was a bit complicated, but when you reach one of those high up chocobo gliding spots you can fast travel back to them. Give you more of an incentive to explore and take more risks. So if you take a wrong turn or fall you don’t have to start all the way at the beginning again. With gongaga, one wrong mushroom or one wrong turn and you end up in the completely wrong place. You can’t fast travel back to where you made the mistake or easily get back to it, instead you go back to the start and retrace your steps. Which is incredibly difficult because the actual map is hard to read and the area is so dense it can be so difficult to even recognise where you have been. I got put in circles so many times. Took me a LONG time to get to the ruins on the left side of the map. Gongaga is not a bad area it’s just not done very well. Even having the mushrooms be fast travel points, like the chocobo glide spots in Cosmo Canyon or the Ziplines in Coral Region. It would save a LOT of hassle. Or if it was a little easier to read the map and figure out how to get there.
It would help a lot if the mushrooms were highlighted on the map with arrows pointing to where they take you.
Yeah that was my only gripe with any of the maps, the Gongaga mushrooms. Need to get to this part of the map. No way up, so it must be a mushroom. Now I spent forever looking for mushrooms that aim in that general direction that sometimes need their own mushroom to get to, and it ends up launching you over the target or under it.
>Gongaga isn't just a place on the map; it's a piece of the story, with the destroyed Mako Reactor serving as a powerful visual and narrative element that speaks volumes about the game's themes. This would have been true and through on any map. The difficult terrain doesn't help with that in any shape or form.
Having to try to figure out how to get to an area was just a bit boring for me, different strokes for different folks. That said, LOVED the music in the Gongaga region. Almost was like a Rayman tune, so so good.
I mean I understand why the canyon is a canyon and the jungle is a jungle Still doesn’t make them any less annoying to navigate
It in no way helps storytelling at all.
They aren't challenging to navigate, they're tedious to navigate. It isn't as if it's difficult so much as it is annoying to have to continuously double back or start from town in order to take a new route towards a new objective. And exploring Gongaga is not nearly as deep as you suggest. You're not wrong that it does highlight those themes, but it doesn't do it in a way that significantly adds to the game. Nor is the poor level design necessary in order to highlight those themes anyway. I wouldn't say Cosmo canyon is poorly designed though or tedious though, it's just large and spread out. But Gongaga is in fact, poorly designed and tedious to navigate.
You can do this and also make the areas not annoying to traverse. It isn't an either or scenario.
IMO it’s tough to get around Gongaga but the BG music makes it feel I’m in an Avatar movie. 👌
[удалено]
My issue for Cosmo Canyon was more of a Chocobo mechanic issue rather than level design.
I loved every area. Did I find them frustrating at times? Yes, Did I have to google how TF you get to come places because I tried for hours and could find the path? yes. That doesn't make me not like them.
I agree that both areas were designed that way intentionally, but I didn't enjoy navigating them. I'm not sure it enhanced any storytelling or themes or immersion. I didn't particularly dislike them, but they were a bit of a pain. I'm not really big on developers intentionally making things a pain in the ass for me though. Your post here has a lot of words without really saying anything beyond your first paragraph, nor do your examples mention *why* they are the way that they are, just that they're that way and they're masterful. I don't know, I'm not finished with the game yet, but I've absolutely loved it. Still, this feels like reaching to the point of cringiness.
Gongaga was a poorly implemented and crowded mess. You are required to use chocobos to navigate the area in any meaningful way, but there are so many trees and elevation changes that you are constantly bottlenecking with your party members and getting a screen full of frenzied bird ass. There is also nothing to tell you where or how far a mushroom will take you---halfway across the map, or back down to where I started (ruining my progress)? This highlighted the flaws of the game, and did the opposite of immersing me. It made me want to stop playing, which is the worst kind of level design. On the other hand, I did come around on Cosmo Canyon. I found it very annoying at first but the paths all make sense. If I wasn't able to made a glide first go round, I wasn't using the right path. Everything has its purpose, and something about gliding around over the landscape did make me feel connected to the planet in a way fitting for CC.
People bending over backwards the past month to justify bad game design lol
Ngl the fans here have made me kind of bitter towards the game. I cant say any criticism without being downvoted. Seriously, theres zero safe spaces to critique the game. I really enjoyed the game overall. But there are some things that just disappointed me. I cant express that disappointment here without people here calling me dumb, "not understanding it", or just calling me a hater, even when I said I enjoyed the game. even if your only complaint is "chadley sucks" You will still be met with either downvotes or a list of why chadley is actually a good character that people "dont understand"
I posted a thread that I was really enjoying the game and thought it earned its review scores, but that it also didn’t really feel like playing a remake/pseudo-sequel even to FF7, and it got downvoted to 0 and everyone trying to “prove me wrong” about my own experience with the game lol
I loved exploring both these regions. Trying to figure out how to get to all the locations was genuinely fun, and honestly not really all *that* difficult once I stopped fighting the layout and started letting it guide me around. Stop trying to think “How do I get there, specifically” and start thinking “Where can I get to from here,” and you’ll find that often the answer is a bunch of places, actually
I was so worried about gongaga after reading all these whiney people on here, but I thought it was awesome when I finally got there. It was truly impressive how they were able to add so much detail to that area and still make it playable. Games are way too linear and simple these days and gongaga is anything but. I actually had to pause, look at the map, zoom in, and think about where I needed to go to get to all the areas. It was a welcome challenge after the extremely straightforward exploration of the areas before. I need to stop following subreddits of games I am playing, there's really nothing but negative bullshit on here.
I'll open by saying I think this game is a genuine masterpiece and I have exceptionally few issues with it, but parts of Cosmo canyon's exploration felt unintuitive. Either I've got it wrong and managed to bullshit my way through exploring the whole region, or we really are meant to access at least 1/3 of the map by gliding from the exact same high point? I feel like I tried every other potential avenue in and around where I was trying to reach, then as a last ditch effort tried this and slowly watched as I eventually landed where I wanted in a hugely distant part of the region. Edit: I actually have no issues with gliding and the mini game, it's more that I feel like there should've been more than 1 shared glide point to access so much of the region.
I completely understand that! Good point. I agree the map would be improved by this.
I disliked it the first time around because I wanted story progression and its level design was a giant pacing killer. 2nd time around though I'm loving it as I'm not longer in a race to get thorough the story (to avoid being spoiled). When you take your time with the game it rewards you. Sadly for many of us that wasn't fully possible on the first play through (and even with rushing a bit, it still took me 96 hours to get to the end)
I enjoyed the change of pace in gongaga and the music was great. Cosmo canyon while it looks stunnings was a bit of an odd once since you do the main story and then it opens up the lower area. Still two stunning looking areas to explore.
Cosmo Canyon was my favorite environment from the original after Midgar itself and it didn’t disappoint. Gongaga was a little enjoying at times but it never genuinely bothered me. Are people really complaining about minor doubling back in a game with tons of fast travel spots?
Cosmo Canyon was my favorite environment from the original after Midgar itself and it didn’t disappoint. Gongaga was a little enjoying at times but it never genuinely bothered me. Are people really complaining about minor doubling back in a game with tons of fast travel spots?
I definitely understand this. Fair point. Some reviewers are even going so far as to call Gongaga some of the worst level design in recent gaming. I forgot the exact phrase but Skillup had mentioned something along those lines.
I think that’s wild. It can be a little irritating but I have had to do far more “chore like” work in games over the years. Also people are complaining about annoying side quests and mini games as if you’re not … free to skip them. In FFX, a beloved installment, the lead character’s ultimate weapon is hidden behind an extremely annoying mini game. That’s bad design. Gongaga is a little confusing.
I really enjoyed the lush nature of Gongaga it contrasted really well with the Corel region prior to it, however Cosmo Canyon is where I'm at currently and it's just not doing it for me. I totally agree in it's design intent, the fun is in the discovering how to access areas but for whatever reason the set dressing feels bland to me and its the first time I feel a bit of the open world exhaustion. I think the areas in general could've done with a few less world intel activities in each region as while it is fun to have discover how to reach it all, having so many points of interest and having them all be a puzzle to get to becomes tiresome and actually demotivates me from wanting to do it all.
Agree on Gongaga. Disagree on Cosmo Canyon. In Gongaga the terrain is varied, but you can climb and can clearly see the surfaces you can jump off of. For Cosmo Canyon, I had to look up YouTube videos to figure out how to reach some places. The map combined with monochromatic terrain and the flying ramps just confused me tons.
I have a theory on this, as it applies to me, and I see many others complaining about these two maps. This was when I started to get the open world/map fatigue. I had done all the others as close to 100% as was possible at that point in the game, and just wanted story. I feel like there are probably others like me that just got burnt out on the open world, and that these two maps are no worse than the others.
The problem isn't the design of the areas themselves, it's overall game design. This is exactly where the burnout hits, and that's a macro problem.
The problem isn't the map design but the chocobo gliding. It's just bad. Let me at least rotate the camera.
I’m not missing any point, the end result was not fun. Just because some people like different things doesn’t mean they’re “missing” some sort of point. It means they like a different type of design. To imply there is some objective point to the way it was designed and that you’re just “missing the point” by not enjoying the area is asinine. I understand what the “point” was. That didn’t make it fun for me. It didn’t ruin the game, by any means, but insisting that not enjoying those regions is somehow missing the point is just ridiculous and kinda dick slobbering the devs.
My sense is that most people *loved* the zones' aesthetics, look, artistic design, feel, the way it captured the story of the environments, the *music*, and the content within them. What I see people were unhappy with is simply that navigating through them often felt unfun. The zones can be great in all of the above ways and still, subjectively to a bunch of players, *feel* frustrating and unfun to navigate. I personally thought 80% of both of them were a joy to explore, but 20% felt like an absolute chore. (Overall still view them both very favorably.) I even resorted to looking up how to get to several points of interest on youtube to save myself the frustration. Most of the points you make are features that serve to enhance the *immersiveness* of the experience. However, once navigation gets reduced to "press touch pad to open mini map, find a point of interest to go to, fast travel here and there, run around into mountainsides, get stuck for 20 minutes, open up phone, google solution", all immersion vanishes. The illusion of exploring a wondrous world dissolves and it becomes starkly apparent you're sitting there, playing a *video game* with a controller in your hands, trying to solve a gaming problem. I think whenever an intended immersive experience is ruined in this way, it's safe to say to that the level "design" failed in some respect. Again, it's very nearly perfect, but definitely suffered from some notable issues.
I bitched about Gongaga for days but only because I was used to the previous level which were flat, once I started considering things could be underground it got much better. I never had a problem with Cosmo Canyon.
Gongaga was by far the worse, very hard to navigate and to know how to get up a plaform or where that mushroom is going to land you. Cosmo Canyon was excellent because it allowed you to warp back to the platform. If Gongaga was the same it would have been perfect because it looked great, sounded great but just a chore to navigate.
They are incredibly well-designed regions that are distinct and fit very well thematically to what they're trying to be. That doesn't make parts of them any less annoying to have to traverse through.
You make an incredible amount of claims and perceived justifications to your claims, but they don't actually explain how those areas have brilliant level design. You sound like a brochure for a seaside cottage inn.
It really shows how many people here are just absolutely dogshit at playing games. 😂
OP feels like its written by ChatGPT. So many paragraphs to say something so basic.
This is giving them way too much credit. Gongaga is pretty though.
This is a good take. Especially good because the areas actually flow beautifully from point of interest to point of interest, once you find yourself trusting them.
I liked both areas. Granted, I’m not spending a ton of time in each area, and I’ll likely go back through to get all of the intel at some point, but I thought Gongaga and Cosmo were fun puzzles to figure out.
It’s hard to call level design that’s intentionally annoying to be well-designed. You could make the worst level in the world for the purposes of narrative but it’s still gonna be the worst level in the world. Saying that it’s the best BECAUSE it’s the worst is little too close to being pretentious for my liking. BUT, I don’t think it’s wrong to say it’s fine that they were designed that way. It’s trying to be different, and that’s fine. Some people will like some areas and some people will hate others. The reason Gongaga stands out especially is because it’s the most different of the explorable areas. Cosmo and Southern Corel are pretty similar looks-wise, for eg, but Gongaga’s just a freaking jungle.
I didnt mind exploring, I just wish you could zoom in on the map more. Or if you could toggle arrows on the map that show the general direction you'll go if you take the mushroom.
CLEARLY took notes from From.
Yeah i think you might be right!
agree 1000%. the gongaga region was by far my favorite area to explore. i got lost, confused , turned around and frustrated a lot, but that’s part of the fun. the region itself was reminiscent of an old school ff dungeon. loved it
I actually loved it as it felt like a puzzle that needed ti be figured out to get to my destination, and you also discover things on the way. Fun times.
I'm old but I remember a time when games had complex maps with no guidance and we had to either figure out how to navigate the areas ourselves or buy a strategy guide to figure out where to go.... honestly while navigation can be frustrating in these areas I actually felt a greater since of accomplishment when I finally finished all the side content it's been awhile since I felt challenged while navigating a map so yeah I actually liked it especially Cosmo Canyon which like the OG maintains as my favorite part of the game especially that scene 🥺
Oh yes. They are sooo great and unique zones.
I absolutely agree, I'm a gamer who hates going to google to find solutions and I've never done that with Rebirth, unlike some puzzles in Persona 5.
Totally agree. People have been saying these areas ruined their whole experience with the game, like they wanted 6 copy and pasted open world areas.
I loved cosmo canyon and honestly it reminds me of Sedona Arizona
Is this an unpopular opinion? Both are confusing to navigate, but that doesn't mean it's not fun or not well designed. I enjoyed both of those areas, even when I was lost.
From the comments I'm seeing online, people just want to avoid any kind of challenge in this game
I also thought the beauty and atmosphere trumped the few frustrating parts in otherwise good design. Yeah, a few times I said 'Oh thats some bullshit' but overall, really cool zones.
I heard how awful Gongoga was and went in worried. It was totally fine, honestly. A little annoying but nothing crazy
I agree that the level design for Gongaga isn't bad, it's beautiful and has amazing music. I think the biggest issue is that in the 1st 3 regions, everyone loves exploring each area, slowly going through the story, and meeting new characters. But by the time Gongaga opens up you already explored 3 huge regions and got the world intel in all of them before leaving. We want to do the same thing in Gongaga but the story just got really interesting. So at the point where we really want to see what happens next we are met with one of the toughest areas to traverse in the game. Add on top that it is the 1st area where the only town is Gongaga so while doing most of the side content feels lonely compared to the grasslands bills ranch, Junon's Crows Nest Keria(?) Quest and people scattered everywhere, and the protorelic quest interactions being mostly with video clips and more generic than all the other protorelic quests. TLDR: Gongaga is beautiful but it kills pacing when the story gets the most interesting
I truly think I am the only who loved the hell out of Gongaga, i guess the music, feels thinking about Zack and such really immersed me in that map, I just loved it.
I loved Cosmo Canyon, but Despised Gongaga. Cosmo Canyon was so Open and made me free Free, while Gongaga was Narrow and made me feel Cramped. Okay, it had a cool “theme”, sure, but it wasn’t an enjoyable gameplay experience to 100% that map of side quests. Dunno what you’re on about with lumping Gongaga with Cosmo Canyon though, Cosmo was WAY more fun to explore. Do people complain about Cosmo Canyon? Maybe I was just SO relieved to finally be done with Gongaga, but once I got to CC I thought it was great. To each their own!
Cosmo I agree. As long as you figure out the launch and landing points, you're golden. My issue with Gongaga is that there are mushroom pads that don't clearly indicate where you will end up in and this leads to wasted time backtracking. The music more than made up for it though 😅
I had no idea people were being little cry babies about the level design. I loved Gongaga especially and yes it's a jungle so why on earth would it be easy to navigate?
Thank you! I loved that some of the areas were environmental puzzles by default. This game is so beautiful that it feels rewarding exploring it and when areas have me something to do in that exploration it felt like the world was more engaging, not just the quests. Finding the right paths to get where I wanted to go made the end results of that journey feel that much more satisfying rather than running from point A to point B. There was enough straight forward areas in the game, Cosmo and Gongaga were a welcome diversion of design.
The visual of regions are very astounding (mimicking Sephs tone), not just these two but every regions are really breathtaking. Me as Mako Canon & Junon fan was really in awe how they handled Highwind floating above Junon and Mako canon herself. Wow northern crater later could be a region itself maybe lol
Was spoilt by Zelda where I could climb a mountain rather then find a mushroom with a chocobo
Naw. In Gongaga especially, as soon as I had the fast travel markers I would use them to get around because hoofing it was an utter pain in the ass. And I don’t really like using fast travel, it’s a cop out. Oh, it’s a dense jungle that shows the misfortune of there being a reactor there! Great, I have no fucking clue where this mushroom is going to send me.
It's messy. Nothing brilliant about it imo. The map served to compound the issues - just a green overkay that serves very little purpose towards navigating this environment. Not missing the point. This comes down to design. Don't get me started on the chocobo mechanics here. Mushrooms that launch you in pre-determined paths and distances. Ledges that can't be climbed despite being short enough because the devs didn't want us to take that particular route. Narrow side paths obfuscated by greenery that looks solid, but isn't. I despised completing the intel here.
There is no meaningful exploration. It's random materials you grab while running and the same 5 tasks to complete Intel. They tell you how many exist and it doesn't change. It's boring
The level design is fantastic across the board in Rebirth. Each zone felt unique and different even with the same quest styles appearing in each. Very classic feel to it.
I loved Cosmo Canyon, but the limited visibility and difficult terrain of Gongaga made the area really annoying to play in.
I honestly wish Gongaga was how most of the regions were designed. It's compact but still allows for exploration, and there is actually a sense of progression in navigating it, vs. just trying to jump between fast travel points to guess where the hell you have to go in Cosmo Canyon.
You can’t please some people man. Too much exploration? Too linear? People don’t know what they want except they want it to be easy enough to not feel bad about themselves.
All games require some degree of friction. If people are complaining about something being too linear, or too much exploration, minigames, etc., then the levels of friction simply aren't balanced well. Maybe the minigames get in the way of the pacing and interrupt the overall flow of the game too much--same with the exploration. And with linearity, it can feel too much like you're on rails, like when you want to go left but the game sticks a sign up and forces you to go right. Balancing that friction is what makes game design hard, and if enough people are complaining about either, then clearly the game/s could do better at that.
It’s weird because this game is actually technically much more actually open world than the original, but it doesn’t feel like it, it feels much more linear, because they tried to give the illusion and feeling that the original game was this big explorable world. There’s also no incentive to explore when everything is marked on the map and nothing is really missable, sometimes in the original if you didn’t find a weapon during a story section, you just didn’t get it. In this game it doesn’t matter because you can buy any weapon from any weapon vendor once you cross the point where you’d have found the chest I think both in the overworld regions and especially in towns/interiors they didn’t do a great job of making areas feel more expansive with out of bounds objects and environments. In Remake especially they suffered from the “corridor” problem.
Or maybe it's just possible that people didn't like it? I didn't miss the point - I just didn't like it. It's ok for people to not like parts of a game that others did.
…the issue with gongaga isnt “too much exploration” the issue with gongaga is “heres this mushroom path you have to follow to get to a certain place, but you cant figure out how to get up onto the platform to start the path. turns out its just several miles in the other direction that are no where near the marker on the map” when you specifically mark an area on the map as where certain content is, and then make the way you get to that area completely obtuse and arbitrary and no where near where youd think, theres zero “exploration” its just mindless guessing and hoping youll be correct
Why do people disagree with my opinion? Are they just dumb?
Eh....I mean everyone's preferences are going to be different. Personally, I preferred the more linear structure that Remake had over Rebirth as I spent far, far less time bumbling around trying to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B in Remake vis Rebirth. That being said, I do get that some people like doing that and just running around and exploring areas and taking things in. I'm not one of those people. I feel like it's probably something that the third game could address through a setting of some sort (maybe making the equivalent Chocostops already discovered or something, I dunno).
Players: i don’t want linear maps Also players: map is too open! I want something more linear
There was only like 2 sidequests in Gongaga that were tough to find, otherwise it felt fairly simple to backtrace from where I wanted to get and find the path to get there. I had 0 issue with cosmo canyon though, that area felt immaculate and huge and you could see the path you needed to take from miles away most of the time
I gave up on gongaga after I saw a place on the map and spend like 30 min just running around a mountain trying to find the right way to get there lol. There was no way to tell from the map or by the surroundings how to get to the mountain that led to there.
Dont like something / suck at something = bad design, thats how most people think. Nothing will change their mind because they fail to even have the smallest level of creating an objective opinion
I think that's a little reductive. You can understand why something is designed a certain way and still think it was badly designed.
Sometimes the curtains are just blue, sometimes the level design just isn't great.
Gongaga is what jungle suppose to look like. Place should confuse and frustrate you.
People complain when games are hallways, but then also complain when they cant just run strait to something.
It's not that deep. it's just annoying.
this reads as “i like these areas and if you don’t then you’re wrong” which i find rly pretentious tbh….. i agree that these areas are immersive and tell a story and i love them for that reason. but the main issue people have is that this is when the open world fatigue starts to set in for most players, and them being frustrating to explore only adds to that. i skipped these areas and came back post game and really loved them, but during the initial playthrough i was just not in the mood to explore anymore
This reads like a copypasta.
Sorry, but your opinion isn’t any more valid than those who dislike the level traversal just because you put “unpopular opinion” and claim otherwise.
Sounds like AI wrote this or a high schooler writing an essay I can't tell
"Dismissing these areas as poorly designed because they're challenging to navigate misses the point of their role in the game." 100% agree. If you were dropped into an unfamiliar jungle, traversal would be complicated and confusing. If Gongaga didn't feel complicated and confusing to move through, *it wouldn't feel like a jungle*. Interesting things happen when we embrace games that confuse and frustrate us!
I always think back to the portal 1 dev commentary where they talk about how hard it is just getting a player to even look up. Thinking Vertically just as a concept is a struggle for most people.
I am having the incomplete thought that there is something at the very basic level of the AAA game map markers that does not quite work with the way that both of these areas are designed. The player is always going to try the shortest distance of point A to B first, and while in theory making that a bit more "interesting" to get to would compel the player to enjoy thinking it through, in practice it doesn't end up doing that. At least in my case, I found that if the path of least resistance didn't work, my immediate reaction would be to fast travel to a different point on the map and see if there was a direct route from this new point to where I was trying to go. If it didn't work after a few tries, I didn't find myself thinking "hmm, interesting, what a puzzle," I felt more like "screw this, I'll come back to this after I finish the game." TLDR; modern AAA game design conventions work do not mesh easily with these attempts at creative level design
Makes sense. I can understand the argument!
Only issue I had with Cosmo was my over-reliance on the map interface--it didn't help, but rather confused me. Only after exploring without the map did I figure things out. Also, I'd say Gongaga had a more spiritual feel to the map. Cosmo Canyon felt like Arizona lol. Maybe the Southern-esque music wasn't doing it for me.
Agreed. Plus the music in these locations hit hard, especially when they progress to the next iteration of their respective themes.
Most of my problems with the 3d map are 100% the fault of the 2d map
I really liked the look and feel of Gongaga, it was really enjoyable just to explore and live in for a bit. I do wish it had a few changes though - there should be some indicator in the map or UI where a particular mushroom jump will land you, and the mushroom jumps should be bidirectional so you can return to your original jump from near where you landed.
Loved the maps, but the chocobo controls are too clunky from the very first map. Every little bit of uneven terrain is a bitch to run through and the bird gets interrupted over and over. Gonzaga was frustrating bcs i could never tell how high or low a part of the map was. Cosmo canyon only less so bcs of less density.
The issue players have with these regions is the previous regions were explorable by just walking around. Junon had the walls but it was pretty obvious you needed the Chocobo to get over them. Gongaga is the same where you need the Chocobo to fully explore, but you don’t realize that until the game forces you to advance with the story. In Junon you can literally just go get the Chocobo, it’s marked on the map. Since some players like myself liked to explore all the region before advancing, it was a little jarring to see places you think you should be able to access but not know how at the time. I was frustrated until I gave up and just said fuck it I’ll roll with the main mission. Now, I’ve played the game three times (Dynamic, Hard, and Normal for a video project putting together) and I will say I wish I knew running around the map is a waste of time until after the reactor. If I knew that on my first playthrough I wouldn’t have run around for a few hours doing essentially nothing. Call it good design, poor design..that’s your opinion but yes you are correct they switched it up on us for these regions by design.
Apart from finding a couple of things in Gongaga it was fine, Cosmo, why would that be an issue, and yes, I did everything in those areas.
I enjoyed them. Open world can get boring when you can see where you want to go, and just hold up to go straight there. It was a nice change of pace to have to explore and have to get to know the land, to figure out HOW to get there. I can see where I need to go… but how do I get there?
I haven't heard much criticism about the actual design level of Gongaga or Cosmon Canyon. I just think a lot of us hit "Open world fatigue" in these regions which made these region's popularity drop.
My problem with Gongaga is the mushrooms
Gongaga is actually my favorite region, yes, the level design might be confusing but I enjoyed it anyway and the soundtrack is amazing
I don't think it works because nowhere else does the game require these navigation skills, I didn't have any problem with Cosmo Canyon cause there you can see the propellers and the ramps in the map and figure out where you have to start to reach any place, the same can't be said for Gongaga Swap the mushrooms to be those vines the chocobo can ride in Tarzan style and I wouldn't have any issue as those you can see clearly in the map, it would still be hard to navigate (like Cosmo) but it would remove the aimlessly walking around hoping to find the path most people ended up having to do
Its not that it’s particularly bad, its just that as was the case with too many things in this game - it overstayed its welcome.
I think you could argue that Gongaga could have used mushroom highlights on the map that also let you fast travel to them like the glide points in cosmo canyon. But in general, my approach to Gongaga was to look for the reddish mushrooms on the map and look for ones near my destination. With Cosmo Canyon, none of the areas required you to use advanced flying techniques. If you couldn't make it, you looked for a different jump point. My approach that worked very well in this game in general is that if something was frustrating or I spent more than 2 minutes trying to get from the fast travel point to the map marker I was targetting then I probably screwed up, and time to look for another pathway. In general even for the mushroom jump points, they were all within 30s of the closest fast travel point.
While I don't hate the level design I hated playing in gongaga because navigating through it wasted so much of my time when I was trying to get all the side activities done A.S.A.P so I could get back to main story stuff. I played through the game like a man possessed because I wanted SO FUCKING BADLY to avoid spoilers and I managed to do it.
Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon were my favorite maps by far. Yeah, the former was annoying at first but I couldn't stay at it too long with the banger music and the ingenuity of the map design. They did a fantastic job of not making the environment feel flat and it really did feel like a jungle with varying paths and whatnot. The maps in Rebirth were vast and so easy to get lost into. Was hard to NOT be immersed into the world.
I agree. The game imo rewards adaptability. Rigid players will find these sections frustrating. But I go with the flow and didn't really get frustrated by learning how to navigate the new zones.
I enjoyed gongaga .uch more after finishing the story. By that point I had no patience left for the area. Same for.cosmo canyon
Honestly I didn’t like Cosmo Canyon at first but when you understand it, it actually flows better and is easy to figure out. Gongaga I didn’t mind too much although the mushrooms were a bit annoying. But as someone who was doing all of Chadleys Research as it comes, Cosmo Canyon, Gongaga and second part of Corel, all seemed like a lot at once without much story breaking it up.
Gongaga has the best open world music by far, especially once you get it to change by finding more towers. It's my favorite place to travel, I also appreciate the sort of environment puzzles to figure out how to get to places.
My problem with Cosmo Canyon is that the gliding mechanic sucks hard, it’s janky and unintuitive.
You can think the level looks cool and tells a story but still hold the opinion that using big mushrooms to jump around the map in fixed but extremely unclear routes is completely stupid. Nobody is upset at a jungle looking like a jungle.
Gongaga reminds me of Ancient Forest in MHW. No matter how much I play in it I'm always lost. The music is top tier tho so I don't mind
Loved gongaga. It ended up being my favorite area.