This is the most controversial action figure that I got. This is the Play Arts Kai action figure of Tifa Lockhart from the game, Final Fantasy VII Remake. Why is it controversial? Well it got delayed several times due to reasons like quality control and the pandemic. What I got is the February 2021 release of Tifa, not the re-scheduled April 2021 release, so I'll say it now, this figure is good but got some issues.
"I know we have to think big if we're going to make a difference. But not like this.
I just... I feel trapped."
~ Tifa Lockhart ~
~ Tifa Lockhart ~
PACKAGING
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| Box front |
The front cover shows a large product image of the Tifa figure. The design of the box is Mako themed. It's simple but it looks good.
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| Box back |
The back shows more product shots of Tifa in different poses.
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| Front cover open |
Open the front cover to show the figure and its accessories through the viewing window. The backside of the front cover shows another product shot of Tifa, you can also read her background story, her combat style and the game's plot summary.
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| Time to beat some enemies. |
Packaging includes:
- Tifa Lockhart figure- 2x interchangeable hair parts
- 1x interchangeable face
- Pair of open hands
- Pair of fists
- Pair of fighting pose hands
- Display stand
- Instruction slip
THE FIGURE
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| Viewing Tifa at four sides. |
Tifa looks really good. In my opinion, her remake design looks much better than the original and she looks sexy.
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| Tifa's face looks oily. |
Here's one of the most common issues of the February 2021 release of Tifa PAK, the face. The default face with a nice smile looks good but not great. It looks flat and the skin is glossy. Her right eye is slightly bigger than the left eye and it looks like she got a big forehead. The eyes and lips are really glossy. The face looks really good in some angles and it might grow on you in time.
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| Silver teardrop-like earring. |
Tifa wears a pair of earrings, but this figure only have a silver earring on the left ear . I don't know why there's no earing on the right ear while it's still possible to sculpt one and will still be visible (although partially) while covered by her hair.
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| Tifa's very long hair. |
Tifa's hair is really long in the original game and the remake. Its sculpt looks really good, it's kinda glossy and have some shadings. The hair is tied at the bottom with a red (or maroon) hair tie.
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| Tifa's battle dress. |
In the remake, the developers and designers gave Tifa a modern look but still retains the original silhouette. She still wears a short tank top but she's now wearing a black undershirt. Unlike the face, the skin of her abs are not that glossy.
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| Tank top closer look |
The collar of the black undershirt is not painted properly. The paint job looks jaggy and sloppy. The suspenders looks good and have a rough texture and the paddings are glued on the shoulders while the two straps are loose so that the chest and waist articulation are not hindered.
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| Tifa's back |
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| Right arm |
Both arms looks nice. The skin tone have nice shadings, but I don't like their glossiness. The right arm looks simpler than the right arm. It got a long black arm sleeve and a have a red Materia looking gem at the wrist. The gold rims of the Materia is not painted entirely and the sculpt doesn't look good.
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| Tifa's arm guard. |
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| The straps and buckles of Tifa's left arm guard. |
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| Tifa's skirt |
Tifa's black skirt looks nice and got some cool details and textures like the gun metal painted studs and a couple of flaming crossbone emblems. The belt have some engraved details. Tifa is wearing a black skin-fit shorts underneath the skirt.
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| Side pocket |
Both sides of the skirt have this large pockets that's being hanged on the belt. Looks like Tifa is wearing these while serving at her bar. Anyway, They look nice and have smooth and rough/textured surfaces. The two straps of each pockets looks good. The buckles (or the metal-like parts) are not properly painted, it looks like they're just dry-brushed with metallic silver paint.
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| Tifa's long legs. |
The legs is the most simple looking in Tifa's overall character design. She's just wearing a long black socks/stockings. The exposed skin is a bit glossy, unlike the face and the shoulders/biceps, which is good.
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| Tifa's boots |
Tifa's red boots design looks cool. The upper parts are separate floating pieces that covers the ball-hinges of the boots. There are some dark shadings and dark paint washes on the boots.
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| Bottom of the boots. |
The bottom of the boots is black and have that common shoe sole design.
ACCESSORIES
Tifa have decent amount of accessories but all of them are interchangeable parts. She got two interchangeable hairs, one interchangeable face and a total of six extra hands.
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| Tifa's package. |
If want more accessories for Tifa, like a couple of gripping hands (for that nice pull-ups minigame) and some fighting effects like swooshes and particle effects that can be attached on Tifa's hands and feet.
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| Interchangeable serious face. |
The interchangeable face have a serious expression. This face looks much better than the default face. The face still glossy though. Also, like the default face, the serious face also have one earring.
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| Interchangeable hair #1: Windswept to the back. |
Tifa have two interchangeable hairs. This one have the lower area of the hair got windswept backwards. This is good for poses that require Tifa to look up straight, like rising uppercuts. It's also good for rushing attack poses.
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| Interchangeable hair #2: windswept a little to the left. |
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| Extra hands |
Tifa is a martial artist, so she focuses on hand-to-hand combat. That's why she got a pair of open hands, pair of fists and a pair of fighting stance hands. The metal parts of the gloves on each hand have some minor paint issues, like some of them are not properly painted. It's nice that SQEX also made a storage piece for the hands just like in their Bring Arts line. This make it easy to store the extra hands.
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| New Play Arts Kai display stand. |
Finally, a Play Arts Kai stand that I can use! You don't even have to do some complicated assembling to use this stand. This new PAK stand is similar to the Bring Arts stands but larger. It's adjustable and can be tightened by tightening the screws. It also got two sizes of clamps: small and big clamps. Since Tifa can stand well on her own, I'll probably use this stand on my other PAK figures that have trouble standing like Catwoman (Variant) and Fran (FFXII).
ARTICULATIONS
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| Adjusting her glove. |
This new Tifa PAK figure features some new joints. Let's see how effective and how good they look.
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| Normal pose. |
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| Victory pose. |
The shoulder's have a long ball-peg. It got very good range of motion but they leave gaps while you pose the arms. Anyway, both arms can fully rotate without any problems. The long ball-peg can make the arms shift/tilt on any directions. The arms can raise to the side really well.
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| Classic fighting stance. |
Tifa have hidden bicep swivel and looks good when you use them. The elbows now have double-hinges. They're not ratcheted, that means great range of motion because there's no click restriction. They can bend more than 90 degrees. The new double-hinged elbows can also make the biceps and forearms swivel and they don't look bad when you bend these joints. The wrists are have small ball-hinges that have nice range of movement.
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| She's pumped up to fight. |
Chest articulation is pretty limited even though Tifa have soft chest. It can do a small ab crunch and have little movement to the back. Turning/tilting side to side is pretty good. The waist have better movement range. It can turn/tilt side to side well and can go forward and back better than the chest articulation.
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| She's gonna kick. |
The legs can raise forward really well, they can go a little backwards. Tifa can do high kicks because the legs can raise really high sideways because the skirt have cuts on the sides and they're soft, reducing the movement restrictions of both legs. The legs can also twist/swivel on the joints. No hidden thigh swivel even though it's possible to do it.
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| Uppercut! |
The knees are double-hinged but the clicky ratchets are gone. The knees can now move freely without the restrictions of the ratchets. They also look good when you bend them.
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| Low kick |
SCALING
Play Arts Kai height comparison time!
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| Two Tifas! |
Let's compare the two Tifa's first. The Tifa remake is much taller and have better body proportions compared to the other Tifa (FFVII:AC).
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| The AVALANCHE team... and Cid. |
Tifa is slightly shorter than Cloud (FFVII:AC). Barret (FFVII:AC) and Cid (FFVII:AC) are also taller than Tifa.
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| Tifa with the one-winged angel and shape-shifting "vampire". |
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| Tifa with the deceased characters of FFVII. |
Tifa is slightly taller than Zack (CC). Aerith (CC) is really short compared to Tifa. This is an awkward height comparison.
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| Tifa with the inhabitants of Ivalice. |
Balthier (FFXII) and Fran (FFXII) are slightly taller than Tifa. Gabranth (FFXII) is the tallest in this picture.
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| Tifa with the citizens of Coccoon. |
The FFXIII characters like Lightning (LR:FFXIII), Serah (FFXIII) and Hope (FFXIII) are all shorter than the amazon, Tifa.
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| Tifa with the people of EOS. |
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| Tifa with the short colorful crew. |
Tifa is the tallest compared to Sora (KH3D), Riku (KH2), Terra (Dissidia), Squall (Dissidia) and Lightning (Dissidia).
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| Tifa with the Bat and Cat Variants. |
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| Tifa with two twin tailed Variant characters. |
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| Tifa with a mix of characters. |
Harley Quinn (B:AK) and Deunan Knute (Appleseed) are both shorter than Tifa. Lara Croft (RotTR) is slightly shorter and Raiden (MGR) is the tallest.
QUALITY ISSUES
I picked a better-looking Tifa figure but this figure that I still got have issues, they're mostly minor but annoying considering the price of this figure.
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| Extra "skin" under her pits. |
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| The gap makes me think her left arm is robotic. |
The left arm have a small, but noticeable, gap on the bicep swivel. There's also a small extra molded plastic on Tifa's left side.
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| Getting lazy on the paint job, I see... |
If you move the toe hinges of the boots, there are parts that are still not painted. Other issues are minor paint issues I mentioned in this review.
Other Tifa figures have really serious issues on the face. I saw one with a chipped sculpt on the left eye, it looks like a deep scar but on the eye. I also found one with slightly crossed-eyes and bad paint job on the face.
My advice is inspect the figure thoroughly first before getting the figure. Most stores won't let you open the box and inspect the figures so look very carefully through the box's viewing window. I'm glad that my Tifa figure mostly have minor common issues. But still this sucks.
CONCLUSION
The Final Fantasy VII Remake Play Arts Kai action figure of Tifa Lockhart (Feb 2021 release) is a letdown. The figure have a very good proportional body, but the face, while still good, is not great. There are good points like the articulations, it's really fun to play and pose this figure. Another plus is the accessory variety. This PAK figure's price is slightly lower compared to past PAK figures probably because of the new simple joints that might lowered the production cost. Still, this is an expensive figure. It's sad because I paid for this toy that have quality control issues. So do I recommend this figure? Yes, but wait for the April 2021 release of the Tifa PAK figure. Do not buy the currently released February 2021 Tifa PAK figures. I hope the store where I pre-ordered this figure give free replacement face(s) for Tifa.
[Update 03.26.2022] I added a edited action photo of Tifa
She's dishing out quick, flashy and powerful kicks.
Cheers and Happy Collecting!
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