The padding is what has ticked me off the most. The original was laser focused with little fat while in Midgar, AVALANCHE felt like a group of ace (albeit goofy) operatives. The brevity of everything up to the airbuster fight was just right then but here in the remake everything gets kind of blown out and in a not good way at all IMO. They paint the group and the slums in a different light and tone not as a result but more a intended byproduct. It isn't that Shinra is all oppressive and that people feel so insignificant that they don't even consider going to the upper plates. You've got people with family up on them who regularly commute between them. And you even get Shinra sympathisers.
Losing that edge and grime because of the padding and stretching has me disliking the game far more than anything else.
Eliminate the fucking anime girl bullshit stuff would make a TON of jrpgs better games. I quite enjoyed the ops breakdown for why she didn't like it. Nice counterpoint to all the praise this game got.
Edit: Fixed gender, thanks mod, I need start using they when I don't know.
I thought the original was incredibly mediocre, the worst of the PS1 FF and most other square games of that era, but it's got nostalgia for it because it was a lot of people's first JRPG. This is a little better because the battle system is better. I may never finish it because Sonys broken cloud save system won't transfer to the PS5 for some dumb reason.
I think this is where I'm at too. Having played the original, nearly all of my fond memories of it take place once the actual game starts, i.e. when they leave Midgar. Here's hoping subsequent parts are less shackled now that we're in the real part of the game.
Eliminate the fucking anime girl bullshit stuff would make a TON of jrpgs better games. I quite enjoyed the ops breakdown for why he didn't like it. Nice counterpoint to all the praise this game got.
I agree with the pacing, but I loved everything else about the game. The combat is phenomenal, the music is amazing. I've played through it twice and probably will a third time when the PS5 patch comes out.
Same here! The combat alone put it in my top 5 of 2020.
Playing the game again on hard mode did it a lot of favors, I skipped whatever boring stuff I could and the combat was even better. Excited to do it again on PS5 in 60fps.
It's way to repetitious with that bit and other things like puzzles repeating themselves over and over again in the dungeon-y areas. The box moving and platform switching got really old really fast.
I don't agree with some of the points but I also have to say that overall I enjoyed FF15 far more than 7 remake despite the latter having the superior atmosphere and music. Really disliked the battle system in 7.
About the pacing, I remember feeling anxious during the Sector 7 sidequests like 'when is this going to feel as good as og FF7' but as soon as the second bombing run began everything felt great again and now that I'm done with it I'm aching to try it again on hard mode. I wonder if I'll feel the same, kind of just starved to play with the combat system again.
I can totally understand preferring turn based/ATB, can't understand preferring preferring full action though. Like you just can't get a grip on commanding a whole squad of your dudes if you can't pause and give commands somehow can you? Relying on AI partners like in YS7 onwards would be clunky af in comparison but you're also just attacking, dodging/parrying in those games.
I thought it was fantastic at launch and as far as JRPG's go, it's much better than your standard fare. Could have had more of an endgame but I was overall very satisfied with what I got. Gonna replay once the PS5 update arrives.
Remake was my GOTY last year, and yep, I'll happily acknowledge that it's got problems. The linearity, forced walking to mostly hide loading, and side questing in particular. I really wish they could've done more with it, exploring the other sectors and whatnot.
And the running animations are just ... strange. Not with Tifa or Aerith. Look at how Jessie leaves while saying "door's open!" at the end of chapter 1, or Johnny in chapter 9, assuming you get that quest chain. It's so weird.
But there's stuff in there I unconditionally love. The characters look and behave how I remembered them. Everything in Wall Market. Barret. The upper plate at night. The combat, which took about 1.5 playthroughs to really get my head around. Most of the music (I won't quote that post above but it's accurate).
I say all of this as someone who is not in love with the original - it's a good game, but not GOAT material. So the changes (strap yourself in OP, it's gonna get ROUGH) aren't fazing me ... yet. If you were someone who held the original in greater regard - I can completely see why you wouldn't like this.
So far, I haven't been crazy about it. The anime girl bullshit is really bothering me as well. I'm still planning to give it more of a chance, but I am really not impressed at this point. I'm glad I didn't pay for it.
I'm surprised anyone can come away from this disliking the OST. It's building off one of the greatest soundtracks ever and somehow is better. I mean just the variety alone:
It's one of the best OSTs of the past decade, and the sheer volume produced is staggering for one game that isn't an MMO or live service title.
The padding is what has ticked me off the most. The original was laser focused with little fat while in Midgar, AVALANCHE felt like a group of ace (albeit goofy) operatives. The brevity of everything up to the airbuster fight was just right then but here in the remake everything gets kind of blown out and in a not good way at all IMO. They paint the group and the slums in a different light and tone not as a result but more a intended byproduct. It isn't that Shinra is all oppressive and that people feel so insignificant that they don't even consider going to the upper plates. You've got people with family up on them who regularly commute between them. And you even get Shinra sympathisers.
Losing that edge and grime because of the padding and stretching has me disliking the game far more than anything else.
There would totally be Shinra sympathizers in Midgar. There are people who daily get spat on by fascist regimes all over in the real world yet root for the same people oppressing them. If anything the shading added really gave life to Midgar in a much more meaningful way. I wish we actually got to spend more time on the top plates. The entire segment with Jesse's family is easily one of the best chapters in the game to me. It gives so much more context to the Avalanche crew. Which is why it absolutely baffles me why people dismiss this game as being "stretched out" or "padding"
They did some good character work establishing the Avalanche crew as people you can actually care about so when it comes time for the actual plate collapse sequence the stakes actually feel huge and the results of that whole segment of that chapter feel impactful.
You have the right to think whatever you want, and I agree with a lot of it - but the music is without a question fantastic from start to finish and I won't hear otherwise.
I guess I'm confused. Who's salty? I made a statement that I believe is true about a game I didn't like very much in a thread to agree with someone who didn't like a game very much.
People can express opinions without being "salty", you understand that, right?
I'm surprised one can come away from this disliking the OST. It's building of one of the greatest soundtracks ever is somehow better. I mean just the variety alone:
I think that is the part that is in dispute. While I do think that Hiphop de Chocobo is the best thing ever, overall there are more songs that are pretty dramatic downgrades over the original than there are songs that improve on the original (though there are a few of those). In general, it ends up feeling less consistent than the original game's OST. In a vacuum, it is still very good, but you can't review a remixed OST in a vacuum (at least I don't personally think it makes sense to do so).
I think that is the part that is in dispute. While I do think that Hiphop de Chocobo is the best thing ever, overall there are more songs that are pretty dramatic downgrades over the original than there are songs that improve on the original (though there are a few of those). In general, it ends up feeling less consistent than the original game's OST. In a vacuum, it is still very good, but you can't review a remixed OST in a vacuum (at least I don't personally think it makes sense to do so).
I suppose if there are variations that you find disappointing that's understandable, but when there's so much great newly produced music (I believe every one that I posted was new to the remake), I'm ok with there being a misfire every now and then, even if I don't truly believe that to be true.
Morrigan
I saw you saying you were going to make this LTTP in another topic and I was really looking forward to it.
As expected, you've really managed to Unchain the Wolves (reference for you as a fellow metal head) here in the comments.
For my part, I think you're spot on with most of your criticism.
I hated the battle system as well, but unlike you, I never managed to wrap my head around it and after a grueling fight with Rufus that went on entirely too long and broke my spirit, I got rolled by the motorcycle boss three times in a row and just quietly turned the game down to easy.
What pissed me off the most about it is here you have this amazing mo-cap that is totally ruined by you having to constantly position and worry about getting slapped by some bullshit. On the flip side, because you can't just enjoy the game as an action game either due to all the bullshit menus you have to pop up constantly, you're in this forever unsatisfying limbo between action and menu. Most of the people I know seemed to love the combat though, so maybe it's just me. Of course not really enjoying the combat made all the back and forth you have to do interminable. I hated going back to places I had already been just to kill shit and I really hated some of the more boring levels like the underground laboratory.
The far bigger issue with me was the story, or rather all the superfluous added stuff; I didn't expect nor necessarily want a 1:1 experience with the original. I'm pretty ok with letting the original be its own thing. At a most basic level, I just wanted characters that I remembered fondly to be better fleshed out and locations that my imagination had filled the blanks in be fully explorable in 3D. In a way, that's what I got. To speak briefly to the second point, I was mainly happy with the 3D realization of the world. It ended up looking really cool overall, but I actually didn't like the Sector 7 slums since the bright sunshine took away from the oppressiveness of the plate above them. Wall Market was ok, but I found the layout really confusing for some reason and it really irritated me. I did absolutely love going to the upper plate though; I wish we could have explored more of the "nicer" parts of Midgar.
So, the story... again, I don't mind that it's doing it's own thing now, but I just don't like all these randos that keep showing up slowing everything down. I mentioned that I didn't care for Wall Market, and typing this making me realize part of it was having that damned arena and all the nonsense leading up to it.
I didn't care about the Chocobo dude or the woman or the dancer guy and if they were just trying to show slum politics, they did a poor job of it since we all know that everyone is under Corneo's thumb anyhow. The sidequests ended up being annoying too because I couldn't bring myself to care about the Slum Angel or waifu jailbait Kyrie because none of these made the world of FFVII feel more alive and deeper, which they absolutely should have if they were going to be added.
Don't even get me started on Shinra shonen and his holodeck of bullshit either. I also feel like the stakes aren't really there. I don't know if this pandering to a certain market where death isn't really allowed to be shown or if it's the way the story is going now, but in spite of feeling epic and grand, I rarely felt like anyone's life was in any real danger.
So, what about the core cast? Well, I played the game in Japanese and found the voice acting to be of very high quality and fitting to the characters. As for the characterizations themselves, I really like Cloud. He comes across as vulnerable and putting up a facade, which of course he is. There is an optional (?) scene with he and Tifa in the latter half of the game that genuinely moved me and illustrated who he is. I'm really looking forward to seeing his growth into a real hero. Tifa is great to me, but her design is a bit much. I guess she's going for the sexy bar proprietress thing, which, sure I can see, but it is distracting. The writing also leans a bit too hard into the whole nurturing mothering trope (big boobs and all), but I like that the game explores her rage against Shinra. I will be incredibly disappointed however if they just make her raison d'être Cloud though. I'm kind of on the fence about Aerith, though that could just be because I don't want to get too attached. Barret is so, so close. They make him a bit of the buffoon a few too many times for my tastes, but that he is a man of integrity and kind of a softie does come through. Here's hoping they do better in part 2. Oh, Red XIII isn't nearly as fun as he was in the original and I think his VA doesn't fit his character at all. The Avalanche crew sucks. None of them are believable because they're only allowed to be tropes. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but they do one of them real dirty too imo.
I guess that tropiness brings me to my next point: I played the game in Japanese so I guess I saw it as an anime with "realistic" graphics, but I can distinctly remember when Cloud escorts Aerith home and she does some crazy ass anime girl movement with her arms and fingers or some shit. I wondered how it would fly in the West. It seems like most people don't seem to care, but for my money it was awkward as all hell. The realistic graphics and mo-cap don't do anime-isms any favors.
Finally, fuck Sephiroth. What was once a cool and mysterious villain is now just Cloud's creepy ex who needs a restraining order. I know he's supposed to come across as malevolent and powerful, but he ends up just being annoying. It doesn't help that he has to appear in anything and everything and then in the most dramatic way possible.
Overall, when I finished playing it, I had a really bad taste in my mouth. Like you, I hadn't played the original since it came out when I was just starting HS. So I thought it would be a good time to not only revisit it, but also play it in Japanese. What I ended up realizing was that whooo boy was the original sparse! Your imagination is left to fill in a lot of the blanks particularly in some screens where the game is a muddle of ugly textures or there are just a couple sparse lines of dialog. Currently, I'm at Junon and I'm actually quite enjoying it, but weirdly, playing the OG has given me a better appreciation for VIIR.
At the end of the day, I think the biggest thing working against Remake is that they felt compelled to pad it out in some kind of misguided attempt to present "value." If they would have trimmed away a lot of the mindless trekking and backtracking and removed the new characters and plots that did nothing to flesh out the world, I think I would have felt a lot more kindly towards it. It's a good 30 hour game inexplicably trapped inside a bad 50 hour one.
Anyhow, I hope you can power through. Like I said, at the end of the day, I'm overall positive on the experience, but I feel like I really had to dig to get it and I'm cautiously optimistic that they will keep fleshing out the characters. It will be interesting to see where you land when you make it through and have time to mull over the experience in its entirety.
FF isn't a franchise that gets bonus points for having it in the title anymore. If anything it leads to extreme skepticism. There's a bunch of games that this can be directed at but I really don't think one in the FF franchise in 2020 would be appropriate lol.
Statements like this in general bother me, as if you're positioning yourself from somewhere immune to the title of the game, seeing through the bs. People just really like the game.
I personally really liked it.
You can probably like it better from the exact point you're on and onwards frankly.
The only thing I heavily disliked was the slow traversal and the huge number of ladders and narrow spaces to mask the loading times, which is probably going away on sequels.
There's a lot of love and dedication on this game.
I'm really enjoying the game surprisingly, the frustrating parts are definitely the pacing and waifu stuff for me though. Overall still having a great time with it, let's see if it stays that way.
If you just stick with one character and mash the attack button yeah games going to be boring. Characters can synchronize with one another in some extremely fun ways to setup some really fun combinations of abilities. You're supposed to be constantly switching between characters and setting up team attacks. I'm not sure how that is boring unless you're just flat out bad at the combat. And in that case that's on you not the game.
I mean, none of the characters involve any interesting decision making at all. It's a stupidly easy game that has the depth of a puddle. People who think there's anything worth playing in this game confuse me deeply, you could basically random input your way through it. Switch to ranged character to hit flying dude and otherwise just auto attack until the glowy symbol pops up and press it. Awful.
OG Midgar is like 4-5 hours. Maybe 6 if someone really takes their time and I'd say a cap of 8 if someone leaves their game running to go for a couple of walks or something. It's such a short section of the game.
FF isn't a franchise that gets bonus points for having it in the title anymore. If anything it leads to extreme skepticism. There's a bunch of games that this can be directed at but I really don't think one in the FF franchise in 2020 would be appropriate lol.
Statements like this in general bother me, as if you're positioning yourself from somewhere immune to the title of the game, seeing through the bs. People just really like the game.
It's not my intention to come off like that at all, but I don't think it's unfair for me to say that this game wouldn't have been as beloved, or as many flaws as it had overlooked had it been a title without FF7's pedigree.
I'm not cutting people down for liking it. If you like it, that's fine! I don't HATE the game, I just don't think it's very good.
OG Midgar is like 4-5 hours. Maybe 6 if someone really takes their time and I'd say a cap of 8 if someone leaves their game running to go for a couple of walks or something. It's such a short section of the game.
Can't agree on the combat or soundtrack. Both sublime. But the rest, it wasn't great. The new shit they added was mostly terrible. And ruined it for me.
Yeah I agree with pretty much all the points in the OP to varying degrees. I probably liked the combat more than you did (but still a heavy downgrade from the original game) and I probably liked the soundtrack more than you did (didn't love it though and think it's obscenely overrated around here), but the rest rings very true for me. Heavy emphasis on the slow walking bullshit, though. It's honestly very frustrating and just makes me not want to play the game. Constantly being robbed of your ability to play the damn game time after time is just so bad and it was to the point of parody in FF7R. I checked out of Naughty Dog's games after Uncharted 2 because I thought those games were pretty bad, but I don't remember this stuff being even nearly as bad in those first two Uncharted games.
Also, I love anime, and even I found Tifa and Aerith too anime in this game lol. I think I'm at the point where those types of anime mannerisms don't even phase me anymore in a lot of contexts (not really a good thing I've just been in too deep for too long now) but it sticks out so badly in this game with its presentation outside of those two.
Roche is a lowpoint for the franchise. Just an embarrassing character.
Full disclosure that I didn't play through the whole game. I got about halfway through before just not liking it enough to continue. I'm checked out of this remake series going forward.
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...
my problem with the remake in a nutshell. for as much as any other reason, i love the original ffvii because it's not realistic, in any way. it's a big, brilliant fantasy adventure, & will never look better than it does in it's original form, which, artistically, suits what it's up to perfectly...
I'm interested in giving the game another try when the PS5 port is out, but I'm genuinely a bit surprised to see so much praise for the combat system. I thought it was utterly mediocre and, indeed, "worst of both worlds" kept popping to my mind when trying to engage with it. Seemed shallow and unsatisfying. But maybe it'll click on the PS5.
I felt the same. Had it no higher than my 7th favorite game played last year, and I didn't even play 10 games to completion. It was my first 3D Final Fantasy so I had no nostalgia going in or coming out.
And yet...
I'm hype as hell for the update and can't wait to hop back in. Like the affinity crept up on me. I didn't enjoy the story or the characters. But I did love the combat and the vibes and I guess that's enough.
The pacing is bad at some points due to all the padding. Sewers and Shinra hq. But the rest pushed all the right buttons for me. Nostalgia helps obviously.
