Square Enix has a certain type of supplementary books to their games, filled with secrets, development insights, and general information about specific games for superfans. These are called Ultimanias. I covered the Final Fantasy VII Remake Ultimania a while back, but there’s, even more, to uncover here with Final Fantasy VII Remake Material Ultimania Plus, a sort of addendum to the previous volume that covers what Integrade added. There is a bit more on the base game, but this book mostly goes into Yuffie’s story.
The book starts a bit unorthodox, with some sheet music for the Honeybee Inn song, “Stand Up”, including the reprise. It’s a bit odd, but far from unwelcome, even if using this book to play the song would be a bit difficult given the hardcover. After that are some high-quality renders of Yuffie and Sonon, including real-life clothing references as well as staff commentary on the designs. There are some renders of other characters introduced in InterMISSION, alongside some commentary too.
After this is a short but interesting section on cutscenes, showing a comparison between pre-visualization and the final versions. The difference is dramatic, and of course, there’s some developer commentary here too. After this, the book goes into various items and graphics seen in both Remake and InterMISSION. There are a ton of these, from items to in-game posters, and they’re all cool to see. Going back to cutscenes oddly, the section caps off with some storyboards.
Most of the book after this point are scripts for memorable moments as well as some random NPCs around the world, complete with maps of where these dialogues play. It’s certainly a cool addition, even if it’s not what I expected from this book. Speaking of unexpected, the last section is a full walkthrough of InterMISSION, finishing off with sheet music for the “Happy Turtle Jingle”. It contains small bios for each enemy encountered in every chapter, displaying their names, portraits, levels, HP, and elemental weaknesses. It doesn’t exactly tell you what to do moment to moment, but having the information on enemies and treasure locations is nice.
David is the kind of person to wear his heart on his sleeve. He can find positives in anything, like this is a person who loved Star Fox Zero to death. You’ll see him playing all kinds of games: AAAs, Indies, game jam games, games of all genres, and writing about them! Here. On this website. When not writing or playing games, you can find David making music, games, or enjoying a good book.
David’s favorite games include NieR: Automata, Mother 3, and Gravity Rush.
While the Final Fantasy VII Remake Material Ultimania Plus is definitely more of a companion piece or expansion to the main Ultimania for FF7R, it’s still neat in its own right. The consistent developer commentary gives some cool insight into both the base game and the Yuffie focused expansion.
PROS
- A ton of developer commentary
- A variety of content
- Scans and maps look great
CONS
- Far from comprehensive
- Some odd layout choices
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