I decided to finally give Final Fantasy 7 a full playthrough since I never beat it on PS1. I started playing on PC with the 7th Heaven Mod Manager, and decided to try and move to the Deck. I saw lots of old methods for how to install it, but they were all incredibly difficult to get going. Then, I stumbled upon “7th Deck”, and had mods working within minutes. It even makes a Steam Shortcut and I added artwork to it and everything.
The only tips I can give are turn off the Deck Mod that comes pre installed (it makes my game run worse) and just set each setting it lists individually in Options, so you can turn some off if they cause lag. The only option not listed is Auto Run, which can be found in Qhimm’s Gameplay Mod. Make sure to make a separate folder to install 7th Heaven to, as the game wouldn’t load with mods if I installed to the FF7 folder. Also, I could only get the game working when both the game and 7th Heaven is installed on internal storage, tho I’m sure someone would be able to figure out how to launch the game from SD if you wanted to.
Now, will I play the game now that I spent all night configuring it? That remains to be seen. Sometimes I think I have more fun doing configuration of games and setting them up with mods than actually playing 😆 anyone else?
I set up seventh heaven manually a few months ago for a run with voice acting (EchoS did a great job, every single line, even the very situational and rare lines of dialogue) - it was 100% worth it.
It was a bit of a hassle, so I’m glad someone had made it easier. I really recommend it for anyone wanting to catch up on FF7 before Rebirth. Even A New Threat works, with new game content and balancing (albeit at the cost of no voice acting)
Yea, I’m doing Echo-S for the first playthrough. I figured A New Threat can wait for a 2nd play if I ever get around to that lol but omg yea I was amazed at how professional most of the lines sounded for Echo-S. It’s very well done, and adds so much character to some lines.
Good approach! I’ve heard it’s hard to go back to vanilla after A New Threat, because of how rough the vanilla gameplay balancing is.
Yeah the voice acting made me actually think about who I wanted in my party for certain plot points. It just makes the party feel so much more expressive and alive when you can hear them talk. It makes me not want to miss any dialogue.
There are a few fun Easter eggs too, like if you get the rocket password correct first time without experimenting, >!then Cid will insult you for being a filthy cheater who looked up the solution.!< I love that they had a bit of fun with it.
Isn’t there a combat changes only version of New Threat that should be compatible?
This is fantastic - thanks so much for posting this!
That said, is anyone else having an issue in which the mod installation progress bar on some just freezes halfway and hangs there?
Yep I also had that on some of mods, like you figured out tho, it’s just installing and takes some time
I feel like id set this up, get all excited to play, go through the start and by the time i saved and quit deep down I know im already done. Nice for people into FF7 but that ship sailed for me when I missed it in the 90s.
Give it a shot.
The mods really bring it forward as a modern game. 60FPS, HD textures, modern character models… There’s even a voice acting mod.
Does it still have the issue where the music stops after waking up from sleep? I installed 7th heaven on my deck a month or two ago, but ran into that issue.
I did a test putting it to sleep and resuming a few times and no problems yet!
Cool. I’ll have to give it another shot.
I’ll test this today and report back! I’m using the Echo S mod so idk if that matters.
Just played through ff7 for the first time on original hardware but I feel the urge to do this soon
Does it allow Steam achievements?
Yep, you need to change the setting to allow steam input or whatever it is, but then it does. I’ve been getting the notifications when I get them.
I installed 7th heaven on my lcd deck but it stopped working because 7th heaven needed an update and it would never download the update. I’m waiting on my oled to arrive and hopefully I can use this now and the experience will be better.
Can you disable some of it and not use all of it? I really dislike most of the mods included in 7th Heaven, like voice acting and the new character models, I just want things like the improved audio and the upscaled backgrounds.
Yup, 7th Heaven let’s you choose which mods you want a d which you don’t, and most mods have a configuration window that lets you change smaller details. I edited the post with the mods I’m using.
Does this require any pre setup? When I try to run the install.sh via Konsole, it asks me to choose where to install 7th Heaven and says it must exist already. I can’t seem to choose any file, it just keeps opening. Maybe I’m missing some Linux specific action?
That’s very odd. All I had to do was open FF7 once. Then I was able to choose which install folder for 7th Heaven, which I made a folder in the My Documents folder or whatever. I think they might have a discord server? Or hopefully someone else can help. It just worked for me.
That just means you have to have a presumably new and empty folder ready to select for the installation path/destination
Is there anything like this for 8 and 9?
FFIX has the moguri mod which is pretty extensive.
Not sure about VIII but there’s always the remaster which adds a coat of polish.