#not to mention my team is half-dead from the last battle... and i'm stuck with FIVE debuffs...

[florinoir]

i hate this game.

[lioma-gaming]

FFVII : Remake

It's been about 2 years since I bought it cheap, and I've finally finished it.

I remember well when the game released: Me and my neighbour never had much in common, but one day, they approached me "You look like someone who plays Final Fantasy VII. How'd you like the Remake?"

And I went "I don’t like that they changed the story." which was met with some incomprehension.

So why did I buy it if I didn't like it from the start? Because it's the best FFVII has ever looked. From the look to the gameplay, FFVII was successfully upgraded to today's gaming standards.

And, after actually playing it (and finishing it), I have to say that my biggest beef isn't with the changes to the story - or, well, it is, but not so much with the multiverse / time-travel thing Square added on top.

But let's not get ahead of myself.

Graphics

This is the criteria in which FFVII Remake shines the most. Whether you're playing on PS4 or PS5, the graphics are simply stunning. The world, monsters and characters are all the most detailled and realistic-looking they have ever been (and that's taking the movie into consideration).

I can very well imagine that there are players out there who wanted to play the original FFVII but were put off by its heavily outdated graphics. In all honesty, even its immediate successor, FFVIII, which also released on PS1, looks much better by comparison.

One potential caveat I've noticed is that passages in FFVII:R are often very long and narrow. I'm assuming this is a way to better manage the PS4's resources, as being able to see less of the level at once allows the console to preload more objects in the background. Yet while walking along those passages can get a little boring, they fit the setting of the crowded metropolis.

Gameplay

It took me a while to appreciate the revamped gameplay, and despite of being a long-time gamer and friend of turn-based RPGs, it's not the action part I had a problem with. In fact, FFVII:R needed to have action gameplay in order to appeal to the gamers of today. And it did a really good job in that aspect. I especially like that every character can be controlled in battle and they all feel unique.

What irritated me at first was how the old ATB system was integrated. Take the Air Buster boss fight for example. It requires you to precisely time your dodges, blocks and hits to minimize damage to yourself - but at the same time, you have to issue commands to your team mates. And every time you bring up the menu, time slows to a crawl. It has to, because there's so much stuff to consider and choose from. Yet at the same time it breaks the flow of the "action part" of the fight. When you're done navigating the menu - were you about to dodge or block or attack?

Something else that often came up as a problem was having the wrong type of materia equipped to properly deal with an enemy, or running out of MP to use it. The Hell House boss fight is a perfect example for this problem as you need to have Ice, Thunder and Fire equipped to handle it effeciently (and Assess, ideally, to help you figure this out). More often than not, it's not possible to rely only on the action part of gameplay during fights.

However, as I progressed through the game, both issues became less and less prominent - largely due to characters gaining more materia slots and growing in strength.

I did enjoy especially the Rufus boss fight as dealing with him was all about the right timing.

Last, but not least - I wished there would've been an option to change the character that is controlled in battle by default. I often stuck with Cloud as sometimes enemies were already half-dead by the time I had switched to another party member. Perhaps Rebirth added this Quality of Life feature?

Music

I do like most of the arranged tracks, except for the battle and boss theme, but I don't like the jukebox music. It's simply too different in style and tone from the original tracks it's based off.

Story

Defying Fate

As mentioned before, and as you'll likely already know, FFVII:R wants to be Canon Divergence rather than a faithful recreation of canon. And it draws attention to that by introducing a subplot about ghost-like beings that try to maintain the original plot, Aerith being aware of the original timeline, and Sephiroth wanting to escape from that timeline.

In the end, our party fights fate - though the reason why never became clear to me. After all, in the original timeline, meteor was stopped, Sephiroth defeated, and the only real loss was Aerith. During the final fight before the final fight in FFVII:R, all of our party members glimpse this future, but Square used only segments from Advent Children to show. What about all the good stuff that happened before that? The arbiters of fate even save Barret (and, arguably, the whole party) in the last chapter - if anything, sticking to fate up until just before Aerith's death should seem desirable.

I mean, this isn't FFXV, in which the entire world went straight to hell.

Sephiroth

Sephiroth doesn't make much sense, either. But it's not like I had expected that from him, anyway. Sephiroth doesn't need a clear motive. But what he needs is a good build-up. To me, Sephiroth being known far and wide as a video game villain doesn't excuse him lacking a proper introduction in Remake. In the original FFVII, Sephiroth wasn't heard or seen throughout the Midgar episode at all. But he was there - the ominous, dark presence that caused a power outage, dragged Jenova's body around the building and had already killed the Shinra President before the party got there.

Sephiroth was like a powerful, invisible threat (like Jaws, or so a developer once said). The story telling had you on edge, awaiting his reveal and the subsequent battle. And while today, we already know it's Sephiroth, I still think revealing him right at the start in one of Cloud's hallucinations was a huge missed opportunity to build up the player's anticipation.

The pacing

The pacing in this game is what raisins in nut mix are to some - the one thing that spoils the experience. There are so many scenes that require you to follow an NPC *veeeery slowly* (and do not allowed you to turn back to explore) - the plot takes numerous detours to explore characters that had very little relevance in the original (such as Jesse, Biggs and Wedge) or were created exclusively for Remake (Johnny, Leslie, Tifa's Landlord Marle).

Sadly, none of them or their stories contribute to the overall plot of FFVII or the backstories or development of the main party. Due to this, they end up serving only as filler to pad the Midgar segment of the original game from 5 to around 40 hours.

I would like to argue that focusing on the main characters; for example, by giving the player Tifa and/or Barret and/or Aerith-centric side quests, the time could have been spent in more meaningful ways.

A few of those "detours" were meaningful, however. For example, Cloud and Tifa interacting with one of Sephiroth's clones. In the original, they were bizarre NPCs with extremely limited dialogue (if any) whose relevance became clear only much, much later. And, of course, Barret confronting President Shinra - a meeting that could not happen in the original as the President was already dead at that time.

In conclusion

FFVII:R is a very mixed bag. Some will like it - for example, those die hard fans of FFVII, and also a decent amount of people who never played the original or knew what it was about. Which is ironic, as Remake relies on that knowledge to some degree. However, the primary plot of the Midgar segment is the "Avalanche vs Shinra" subplot, so not knowing what the game is about in general should cause only minor to medium confusion. And, let's face it; Japanese RPGs are often difficult to fully understand, anyway, since their plots can be very complex.

If you're like me, and were looking for a faithful recreation of the original that utilizes all the processing power of modern consoles; It is that, but almost exclusively in terms of gameplay. It tried to add to the original story, but failed to expand the universe in meaningful ways, thus damaging the plot and pacing instead of improving on it.

I haven't played Rebirth yet, but if it contains considerably less padding (which I'm expecting, as Rebirth is not tied to Midgar as its location), you might be better off skipping Remake and picking up Rebirth right away.