I was waiting for a PC port of FF7R so I could mod out all the things about it that would inevitably annoy me. But, well, it dropped on PS+ and you can't beat free, so here I am, finally playing this for real. I tried the demo when it came out and while the nostalgia factor was strong, I didn't like the gameplay much. This hasn't been improving with the full game, in fact, I think it's getting worse...
Let's see. I am currently at the Wall Market (chapter 9 I think). Explored it a bit, but saved for the night before reaching Don Corneo's mansion.
- Combat.
Full disclosure: I do not like Real-Time-with-Pause combat. Never have. So, I am obviously biased against the game here. But I suppose I can explain what I really dislike about it: it's essentially the worst of both worlds. It's mediocre action combat constantly interrupted by commands input which I find really tedious, with lots of chaotic elements going on that are beyond your control. And yes I'm playing it "right" and not button mashing. I'm using skills to stagger enemies and then spam my strongest damaging skills while they're down, I optimize my materia/weapon skills/etc. as best I can, I even peeked at this thread and I'm not seeing anything I'm doing that go against the general tips there. I am experienced with RPGs and I am not struggling with the combat. I just dislike it, the whole flow of it, it's tedious and annoying for the most part, and just not fun to play. I don't see this changing. Bring back full ATB or even pure turn-based, or go FULL action like Ys games do. Not this in-between shit. And worse, this is setting trends, as I'm hearing future Kiseki games may be inspired by this system, FML. "Fuck off nowadays JRPGs" - someone, probably me
- Pacing and side-quests.
Okay WTF. What is this 2008 quest design horseshit? Killing rats or drones in an area I've already explored? Then making me return there yet again for part 2 or 3 of the quest? Are you fucking kidding me? The game has done this repeatedly to me now. Absolute filler, bottom-tier side-quests that make the lamest Ubisoft sidequest seem downright clever in comparison. "Just skip them", you might say, but I always fear missing out on materia and such, and who knows if there is actually one side-quest out there that's worth doing and I miss it, I don't know in advance if it'll be a decent one or not and I do have a bit of a completist side sadly, so I do have to check them out. But optional is no defense for outright terrible content, anyway. (At least they do offer to teleport you back at the quest giver right after it completes, I'll give them that)
- Pacing, again - more padding shit
This game is sometimes pure torture to play. Remember all the forced slow-walk sections we complain about in Naughty Dog games? It has so many of those it'd make ND blush. Hell sometimes you can't dash around for no apparent reason. There's no dialogue you have to hear or vistas you are forced to look at, but still, you are moving like a turtle in this section because... reasons. Oh and the game loves to wrestle control away from you to force you into these "cinematic" little segment like that because, of course.
Oh remember those "can't go there, go back into the story/combat zone!" warnings from the PS360 days that annoyed us all? Boy does this game like to hold your hand that way too.
Look, a dead end, except your character could totally climb over that minor obstacle or even squeezed through narrower passages before? No matter, do a detour where you operate a bunch of crane mini-games in an incredibly tedious manner, adding several minutes to what should have taken 5 seconds to traverse. People made fun of the ladder/raft sections in TLoU, but FF7R takes this nonsense to parody levels and somehow make them even more boring. There's no challenge there, no puzzle to figure out, no simple excuse for more additional combat encounters or whatnot... it's pure padding, a total slog.
- The women.
Oh boy. Aerith and Tifa are both terrible, honestly. My expectations were low, since, well, I'm familiar with JRPG tropes, but they ended up being worse than I expected. I'm not really gonna go into Tifa's design because that's a tired conversation (I will mention that the camera is verrrry male-gazey around her though), but I want to talk about their body language/animation and mannerisms. They do not behave like people; they are waifu/anime school-girl caricatures. You know what I mean, right? The constant leaning forward with arms behind the back (no one does that IRL, ever), the raising of both fists at shoulder level in cutesy excitement, and so on -- stuff that actual adult women never do; hell, even kids don't behave that way, not past the age of 10. They are infantilized, saccharine, insipid, cutesy waifu bait. It's even worse with the high fidelity graphics, honestly, because it gives a horrible uncanny valley to everything and makes it stand out even more.
What irritated me the most is probably their running animation. It's parody level. They are not running or sprinting, they are prancing, with their arms flailing about daintily in some complete caricature of what it would look like if you asked someone to "run like a girl". Like, was this mo-capped? If so, who directed the mocap actresses so I can wish for them to step on legos every day forevermore?
Since we're on the women, I want to talk about Jessie a little bit. Jessie was not as bad as I feared, but was a bit of a missed opportunity. Her boob armour is obviously stupid and distracting, but whatever (yes I know it's the original design, it was bad then too), that's not what I want to talk about. Basically, she's turned into yet more waifu material for Cloud, and that's annoying. However, I will say that I actually find her far more likeable than Aerith and Tifa. She flirts aggressively, and is obviously horny for Cloud, but... the way she's written makes her at least more relatable/human than the other two, somehow? Like she behaves more or less the way I'd expect a normal, flirty woman to behave. The thirst gags ran for a bit too long, but it was at least kind of amusing, I guess. That said, they could have done a lot more with her character than reduce her to "bomb engineer who's thirsty for Cloud", and that kind of sucks.
Basically, a lot of the characters in FF7R are flanderized version of their original selves, I could talk about how they've done Sephiroth dirty too, but the women fare worse here.
- Stupid new shit
Speaking of flanderization... yes the OG had some cartoonish, goofy stuff of course, but nothing as cringy as Roche the douche. Who added this and why? That shit isn't funny or cool or entertaining. It's just flat-out dumb, like what a boomer thinks the kids think is cool these days or something (inbefo someone says "but you're the boomer"/Principal Skinner meme.jpg). It wouldn't feel out of place in Trails of Cold Steel, and that's honestly not a compliment. Even McBurn isn't that cringy, and his name is McBurn FFS, do you know how low of a bar that is? xD
- The music
I continue to be baffled at the constant praise for the soundtrack. It was incredibly disappointing in the demo, but I was promised the full game would change my mind. It sure has shit hasn't, 9 chapters in. Not a single track in the remake so far has been an improvement over the OGs except maybe Underneath the Rotting Pizza which is about similar I guess. New tracks that I don't recognize don't impress me either. Often gone are the punchy synths, replaced with generic and overdone orchestrations. Even when the guitar version of Still More Fighting finally shows up (during the Airbuster boss fight), they still felt the need to throw in a bunch of random choirs in there, just to make everything more bombastic and overwrought, and it's silly and out of place. Even Aerith's theme is weaker. The original had an elegant simplicity to it that worked perfectly, the remake slows it down and makes it a more soaring/swelling orchestrated type and it's frankly boring.
So... why am I still playing, you might ask?
Fair question. I guess I don't have a whole lot to play at the moment, it's free, and, being real honest, the setting and the nostalgia is doing all of the heavy lifting here. I do enjoy some parts of the game. Cloud's characterization seems strong and accurate to the original and I enjoy his "whatever, asshole" attitude as much now as I did then. Barret is very cool too and massively improved over the original. Traversing through Midgar in a fully realized 3D world is pretty dope (when they actually let me explore). Having played the OG about 2 decades ago, I still remember the major plot points but not all of the finer details, and revisiting the story has been enough motivation to keep going... for now, at least.
But this remains a pretty bad video game. Perhaps my opinion will change as I play more (doubt.jpg). I heard good things about this Wall Market section (though so far I don't see the fuss, it looks kinda cool I guess). Speaking of, I'm gonna hop on the TV and play that now. We'll see how well my opening post ages, I suppose. :D
Let's see. I am currently at the Wall Market (chapter 9 I think). Explored it a bit, but saved for the night before reaching Don Corneo's mansion.
- Combat.
Full disclosure: I do not like Real-Time-with-Pause combat. Never have. So, I am obviously biased against the game here. But I suppose I can explain what I really dislike about it: it's essentially the worst of both worlds. It's mediocre action combat constantly interrupted by commands input which I find really tedious, with lots of chaotic elements going on that are beyond your control. And yes I'm playing it "right" and not button mashing. I'm using skills to stagger enemies and then spam my strongest damaging skills while they're down, I optimize my materia/weapon skills/etc. as best I can, I even peeked at this thread and I'm not seeing anything I'm doing that go against the general tips there. I am experienced with RPGs and I am not struggling with the combat. I just dislike it, the whole flow of it, it's tedious and annoying for the most part, and just not fun to play. I don't see this changing. Bring back full ATB or even pure turn-based, or go FULL action like Ys games do. Not this in-between shit. And worse, this is setting trends, as I'm hearing future Kiseki games may be inspired by this system, FML. "Fuck off nowadays JRPGs" - someone, probably me
- Pacing and side-quests.
Okay WTF. What is this 2008 quest design horseshit? Killing rats or drones in an area I've already explored? Then making me return there yet again for part 2 or 3 of the quest? Are you fucking kidding me? The game has done this repeatedly to me now. Absolute filler, bottom-tier side-quests that make the lamest Ubisoft sidequest seem downright clever in comparison. "Just skip them", you might say, but I always fear missing out on materia and such, and who knows if there is actually one side-quest out there that's worth doing and I miss it, I don't know in advance if it'll be a decent one or not and I do have a bit of a completist side sadly, so I do have to check them out. But optional is no defense for outright terrible content, anyway. (At least they do offer to teleport you back at the quest giver right after it completes, I'll give them that)
- Pacing, again - more padding shit
This game is sometimes pure torture to play. Remember all the forced slow-walk sections we complain about in Naughty Dog games? It has so many of those it'd make ND blush. Hell sometimes you can't dash around for no apparent reason. There's no dialogue you have to hear or vistas you are forced to look at, but still, you are moving like a turtle in this section because... reasons. Oh and the game loves to wrestle control away from you to force you into these "cinematic" little segment like that because, of course.
Oh remember those "can't go there, go back into the story/combat zone!" warnings from the PS360 days that annoyed us all? Boy does this game like to hold your hand that way too.
Look, a dead end, except your character could totally climb over that minor obstacle or even squeezed through narrower passages before? No matter, do a detour where you operate a bunch of crane mini-games in an incredibly tedious manner, adding several minutes to what should have taken 5 seconds to traverse. People made fun of the ladder/raft sections in TLoU, but FF7R takes this nonsense to parody levels and somehow make them even more boring. There's no challenge there, no puzzle to figure out, no simple excuse for more additional combat encounters or whatnot... it's pure padding, a total slog.
- The women.
Oh boy. Aerith and Tifa are both terrible, honestly. My expectations were low, since, well, I'm familiar with JRPG tropes, but they ended up being worse than I expected. I'm not really gonna go into Tifa's design because that's a tired conversation (I will mention that the camera is verrrry male-gazey around her though), but I want to talk about their body language/animation and mannerisms. They do not behave like people; they are waifu/anime school-girl caricatures. You know what I mean, right? The constant leaning forward with arms behind the back (no one does that IRL, ever), the raising of both fists at shoulder level in cutesy excitement, and so on -- stuff that actual adult women never do; hell, even kids don't behave that way, not past the age of 10. They are infantilized, saccharine, insipid, cutesy waifu bait. It's even worse with the high fidelity graphics, honestly, because it gives a horrible uncanny valley to everything and makes it stand out even more.
What irritated me the most is probably their running animation. It's parody level. They are not running or sprinting, they are prancing, with their arms flailing about daintily in some complete caricature of what it would look like if you asked someone to "run like a girl". Like, was this mo-capped? If so, who directed the mocap actresses so I can wish for them to step on legos every day forevermore?
Since we're on the women, I want to talk about Jessie a little bit. Jessie was not as bad as I feared, but was a bit of a missed opportunity. Her boob armour is obviously stupid and distracting, but whatever (yes I know it's the original design, it was bad then too), that's not what I want to talk about. Basically, she's turned into yet more waifu material for Cloud, and that's annoying. However, I will say that I actually find her far more likeable than Aerith and Tifa. She flirts aggressively, and is obviously horny for Cloud, but... the way she's written makes her at least more relatable/human than the other two, somehow? Like she behaves more or less the way I'd expect a normal, flirty woman to behave. The thirst gags ran for a bit too long, but it was at least kind of amusing, I guess. That said, they could have done a lot more with her character than reduce her to "bomb engineer who's thirsty for Cloud", and that kind of sucks.
Basically, a lot of the characters in FF7R are flanderized version of their original selves, I could talk about how they've done Sephiroth dirty too, but the women fare worse here.
- Stupid new shit
Speaking of flanderization... yes the OG had some cartoonish, goofy stuff of course, but nothing as cringy as Roche the douche. Who added this and why? That shit isn't funny or cool or entertaining. It's just flat-out dumb, like what a boomer thinks the kids think is cool these days or something (inbefo someone says "but you're the boomer"/Principal Skinner meme.jpg). It wouldn't feel out of place in Trails of Cold Steel, and that's honestly not a compliment. Even McBurn isn't that cringy, and his name is McBurn FFS, do you know how low of a bar that is? xD
- The music
I continue to be baffled at the constant praise for the soundtrack. It was incredibly disappointing in the demo, but I was promised the full game would change my mind. It sure has shit hasn't, 9 chapters in. Not a single track in the remake so far has been an improvement over the OGs except maybe Underneath the Rotting Pizza which is about similar I guess. New tracks that I don't recognize don't impress me either. Often gone are the punchy synths, replaced with generic and overdone orchestrations. Even when the guitar version of Still More Fighting finally shows up (during the Airbuster boss fight), they still felt the need to throw in a bunch of random choirs in there, just to make everything more bombastic and overwrought, and it's silly and out of place. Even Aerith's theme is weaker. The original had an elegant simplicity to it that worked perfectly, the remake slows it down and makes it a more soaring/swelling orchestrated type and it's frankly boring.
So... why am I still playing, you might ask?
Fair question. I guess I don't have a whole lot to play at the moment, it's free, and, being real honest, the setting and the nostalgia is doing all of the heavy lifting here. I do enjoy some parts of the game. Cloud's characterization seems strong and accurate to the original and I enjoy his "whatever, asshole" attitude as much now as I did then. Barret is very cool too and massively improved over the original. Traversing through Midgar in a fully realized 3D world is pretty dope (when they actually let me explore). Having played the OG about 2 decades ago, I still remember the major plot points but not all of the finer details, and revisiting the story has been enough motivation to keep going... for now, at least.
But this remains a pretty bad video game. Perhaps my opinion will change as I play more (doubt.jpg). I heard good things about this Wall Market section (though so far I don't see the fuss, it looks kinda cool I guess). Speaking of, I'm gonna hop on the TV and play that now. We'll see how well my opening post ages, I suppose. :D
