ff7r is the "rebuild of evangelion" of video games - a game more concerned with talking about the relationship people have with the original than simply retelling the original
(I really enjoyed it, and am really looking forward to the second part)
One thing I will say is that the game feels focus tested to hell and back. There's arrow markers pointing to ladders and shit as if the player couldn't figure it out themselves. It's kind of bizarre and feels like a relic of FF13.
That's probably because the game is made by the FF13 people. FF10 and FF13 series DNA is all over this game.
I like Jessie as a character. It's pretty clear from Wedge's conversation with Cloud that her being super flirtatious is her acting as a character. She clearly likes Cloud but amps it all up because that's how she copes with how her life has turned out to be. There's also the side of her that's determined to do what she can to bring down Shinra.
I still say it's GOTY and the best FF single-player game since X (XV for me hit some high highs but the lows were really low where X is just all around great).
Respect OP's take, and the last chapter for me, personally, is the first time the game stops feeling like Final Fantasy VII. But I think if you didn't feel a great fandom toward the original, this one isn't going to strike you that hard either. It's obviously a grand departure from IV and VI in the level of realism in society, and Remake takes that a step further by fully realizing the slums as one big community where people have their own views and takes on AVALANCHE, Shinra, and the classist division between plate residents and slum folks. It was all just glossed over.
The characterizations are on point. Everyone is exactly as they were meant to be, with the exception of Sephiroth, and given where this story goes, that all makes sense.
It is also the greatest OST in gaming, and it's not particularly close.
All of that makes sense. I'm an ARPG guy that started out loving menu-based systems, and the marriage of the two in this feels like it was made for me.
It's funny looking back how FF7 fans wanted more realism in that world. FF7R looks pretty and the character models are nice, but in its DNA is still a goofy 90s game that involves a cartoony-looking guy who rides a dolphin and fights a giant a mecha-beast underwater. The Popeye-arm field models totally fit that world, but not sure if the post-Advent Children realistic-style would mesh with the more video game-y/cartoon-y aspects that helped make the original enjoyable.
Even if you didn't know about the goo during the sequence, once you fight Jenova and having her spew liquid around you can put it together for those who never played the original. For the uninitiated I can see it being a bit confusing, but part FFVIIR also has a subversive undertone for those who have played it and plays with player expectation. Of course someone who has played it can go oh that's a stand in for the blood trail. It's a T rated game, I doubt an actual blood trail would have pushed it to an M rating.
Again at no point did Shinra say that "Sephiroth left me here," the whole hanging part is an issue I'm not disputing that. There is no logic, I'm not arguing for the logic of it all. I'm saying that there is always a sense of jitteriness, confusion, unease in that particular scene. Jenova-Dreamweaver further enforces that the whole scene could have been a strange illusion considering it all leads to that fight.
I've also made it a point that the pacing probably the weakest aspect of the game. Certain parts go on for too long or are too self indulgent, I'm well aware of that. It's part of how modern AAA video games are more bloated. It's a consequence of having to mold itself to new modern AAA standards - something SE has trouble doing. They have to turn a Midgar into it's own game that conforms to these AAA standards and it suffers for that in many ways.
Even with it's problems it's still the most enjoyable Final Fantasy experience I've had in a long time. I've just come to accept that SE never truly recovered from trying to eclipse the success they had on the PS1 or the fumbles of transitioning to HD and ballooning development time/budgets that were brought forth during the transition to PS3.
This was their opportunity to course correct, wasn't it? But there's a reason why their games of the late SNES/PSX era are still considered their peak: creatively the company was at its best then, and the modern company just doesn't have the same spark. Of course, this time, they had the perfect blueprint, in the form of a game that was already their most massive hit... but unfortunately, the worst impulses of the modern day company reared their ugly collective heads and demonstrated just how far the company has strayed from those days.
It was 90% of an incredible game, but the 10% that isn't... hoo boy is it breathtakingly bad.
Calling it now, Episode 2 is going to involve time travel shenanigans right in the prologue and reset us back to before the end of the Shinra Tower stuff to course correct the Remake
It's disingenuous to say that the story telling of FFVII is lessened in the Remake. It's different but impactful in different ways, also a bit messier.
Everything people call padding in this game only seems like padding to them because it wasn't there in the original.
I'm not saying there isn't some padding, but you people really blow it out of proportion. The game has really good pacing. Like, if we consider pacing something that can be objectively determined (it can't), then yeah, this game has really good pacing. If you skip the sidequests the pacing is excellent, save for that one dungeon before you climb the Shinra tower. And that's just ONE dungeon.
Take the train graveyard as another example. Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith have learned that Sector 7 is about to be destroyed. It takes them three chapters to get there, during which time they fuck around in the sewers for ages and then stop to... help some ghost children and have a bonding moment with them? All while they know all their friends are about to die if they don't arrive in time? Again, the moments themselves are cool, but in the grander scheme of the story they fall apart, and they blow the game's pacing all to hell.
I feel like this is the clearest example of where the remake's storytelling is objectively worse. You can actually see the explosions and such on the pillar (I can't remember when exactly, haven't played it since release), and it still takes a long time to get there. Everything they do in this section just... cuts the tension. The original even gives you the battle music on the map, which I think is a nice touch to amp things up.
This was their opportunity to course correct, wasn't it? But there's a reason why their games of the late SNES/PSX era are still considered their peak: creatively the company was at its best then, and the modern company just doesn't have the same spark. Of course, this time, they had the perfect blueprint, in the form of a game that was already their most massive hit... but unfortunately, the worst impulses of the modern day company reared their ugly collective heads and demonstrated just how far the company has strayed from those days.
It was 90% of an incredible game, but the 10% that isn't... hoo boy is it breathtakingly bad.
I sometimes think that the limitations inherent in the 16/32 bit eras are what allowed me to enjoy JRPGs. FF7R feels very anime to me, in a way that a lot of JRPGs do these days, and I never got that same feeling about the original, or other games of that era. I realize it might be they always intended the games to feel this way, but if so... well, I guess I'm glad there was an era where there were stringent limits to it.
No, I call it that because it felt like, and was, padding. It stuck out like a sore thumb, because Cloud and co. had something more urgent to be doing in almost every case.
Calling it now, Episode 2 is going to involve time travel shenanigans right in the prologue and reset us back to before the end of the Shinra Tower stuff to course correct the Remake
Lmao. For real though, my impression is that a lot of players, if not a majority, seem to have liked the alternative timelines and gods of fate nonsense, so I can see them pushing forward with these kinds of things even more.
Especially given how people for some fucking reason want Zack or Aerith to live happily ever after, whether as a couple or not.
I have a ton of nostalgia for the original, so I was fully prepared to love this remake. While the great moments are REALLY great, the moment to moment gameplay became an absolute slog... to the point where I realized I wasn't having fun anymore and just stopped playing.
I'm fully aware it could just be my own problem. I notice as I get older I find myself enjoying shorter, faster paced action games over traditional rpgs... which was the other way around when I was younger.
Oh yeah, the music is unbelievably good. Best part of the game, and a well deserved award.
I've never been hugely nostalgic for the original FFVII. My "moments" with the franchise were with IV and VI.
That being said, I did finish it when it came out originally and do have some fond memories.
Remake is utter bullshit
Like, it's so bad at what it sets out to do that it could be considered fascinating if not for the fact that it's 30 hours too long. I got up to Ch.18 and had to put the controller down, literally, and walk away.
I'll keep it brief...
Pros
- Excellent combat system, though the amount of staggering/stun locking is borderline absurd.
- Insane visual fidelity in the opening and closing sections
- Some fantastic music at times
- They really nailed Cloud's VA/performance. Like, its better than it has any right to be.
- Jessie
And on to the cons:
- Square and the team wanted to do their own thing with the story and that's completely fine. But what they frankensteined together is pure indulgent, self masterbatory nonsense.
IT FUCKING BAAAAAD.
Any sense of restraint or brevity is completely non-existent here. I'm not just complaining about the length of the game, which is an issue in itself. No, it's that it takes SOOOO long to say absolutely nothing meaningful. Your side quests don't add anything meaningful, narratively speaking. You'll have extended cutscenes that don't move things forward. You'll have story changes/tweaks that just make things worse and undo the atmosphere of the original (President Shinra's death comes to mind).
The fan service is not charming. It's taken to absurdly ridiculous levels just makes everything longer and less coherent.
- Initially I was indifferent to Barret as a character and how's he's represented. As things went on tho, it really gets embarrassingly offensive and I'm surprised there wasn't more of a blow up about it.
- THE FUCKING LENGTH. It has NO RIGHT to be this long. There's nothing gained, only lost.
I REALLY wanted to love it. My kids liked sitting in and going thru the story with me but there were times were they literally just left the room. Even they "sensed" something was off with the game's pacing.
I'm sure there are some out there who have written thousand word dissertations about how it's good or not good. Won't be that guy.
Blows my mind that you can give a variety of intelligent and established points of genuine concern and have people pile up to defend the mindlessness built into the bedrock of this game. Is the software still running in 1.0? They released it and never cared enough to patch it in any way? Then people clamor over who gets to be first to defend being toyed with? There are so many easy ways to repair what Square-Enix have here.
Do these "fans" own stock in the company or something?
...Bravely Default 2 still look like a sane product. What I saw with VII remake very nearly broke me as an old fan of the studio.
No, I call it that because it felt like, and was, padding. It stuck out like a sore thumb, because Cloud and co. had something more urgent to be doing in almost every case.
Eh, your could spend hours in the Gold saucer, catch Chocobos and snowboard while a giant meteor was crushing on the planet. Let's not act like it's not like that in every FF ever.
I've never been hugely nostalgic for the original FFVII. My "moments" with the franchise were with IV and VI.
That being said, I did finish it when it came out originally and do have some fond memories.
Remake is utter bullshit
Like, it's so bad at what it sets out to do that it could be considered fascinating if not for the fact that it's 30 hours too long. I got up to Ch.18 and had to put the controller down, literally, and walk away.
I'll keep it brief...
Pros
- Excellent combat system, though the amount of staggering/stun locking is borderline absurd.
- Insane visual fidelity in the opening and closing sections
- Some fantastic music at times
- They really nailed Cloud's VA/performance. Like, its better than it has any right to be.
- Jessie
And on to the cons:
- Square and the team wanted to do their own thing with the story and that's completely fine. But what they frankensteined together is pure indulgent, self masterbatory nonsense.
IT FUCKING BAAAAAD.
Any sense of restraint or brevity is completely non-existent here. I'm not just complaining about the length of the game, which is an issue in itself. No, it's that it takes SOOOO long to say absolutely nothing meaningful. Your side quests don't add anything meaningful, narratively speaking. You'll have extended cutscenes that don't move things forward. You'll have story changes/tweaks that just make things worse and undo the atmosphere of the original (President Shinra's death comes to mind).
The fan service is not charming. It's taken to absurdly ridiculous levels just makes everything longer and less coherent.
- Initially I was indifferent to Barret as a character and how's he's represented. As things went on tho, it really gets embarrassingly offensive and I'm surprised there wasn't more of a blow up about it.
- THE FUCKING LENGTH. It has NO RIGHT to be this long. There's nothing gained, only lost.
I REALLY wanted to love it. My kids liked sitting in and going thru the story with me but there were times were they literally just left the room. Even they "sensed" something was off with the game's pacing.
I'm sure there are some out there who have written thousand word dissertations about how it's good or not good. Won't be that guy.
I agree that the combat is excellent in FF7-R. This bit surprised me the most, as I was not a fan of FF13 nor FF15 combat. (Coincidentally, FF7R seems to blend the two and it produces my favorite battle system as far back as I can remember!)
The art in the game was awesome, but the limitations of budget and time were apparent. Hello low resolution door and midgar.jpg
I'm on board with your other commendations.
What was Frankensteined and how was it masturbatory? I don't doubt that you believe this, but please offer some specific evidence to back up your claim.
Agreed that many of the side quests feel "Hollow" (see what I did there?). I was enjoying myself enough to be thankful for extra stuff to do, but I see your point.
What "fan service" are you talking about? Once again, I'd love some specific examples that articulate how they are "ridiculous" and make the game "less coherent."
I'm not going to touch Barrett as I believe others who are smarter and more affected by his portrayal can speak with authority here. Nor am I criticizing your criticism.
As far as length goes, can't you skip most if not all of the side quests? Optional quests aside, which sections made it too long?
Your last statement - that you won't be writing 1,000 words - if you felt compelled to start a new thread, why not elaborate on your points?
Eh, your could spend hours in the Gold saucer, catch Chocobos and snowboard while a giant meteor was crushing on the planet. Let's not act like it's not like that in every FF ever.
The pacing was more relaxed after you left Midgar. That's because in the story you weren't engaged in life-or-death races against time so much at that point in the game. It's really not the same thing as padding out the Midgar portion.
I agree that the combat is excellent in FF7-R. This bit surprised me the most, as I was not a fan of FF13 nor FF15 combat. (Coincidentally, FF7R seems to blend the two and it produces my favorite battle system as far back as I can remember!)
The art in the game was awesome, but the limitations of budget and time were apparent. Hello low resolution door and midgar.jpg
I'm on board with your other commendations.
What was Frankensteined and how was it masturbatory? I don't doubt that you believe this, but please offer some specific evidence to back up your claim.
Agreed that many of the side quests feel "Hollow" (see what I did there?). I was enjoying myself enough to be thankful for extra stuff to do, but I see your point.
What "fan service" are you talking about? Once again, I'd love some specific examples that articulate how they are "ridiculous" and make the game "less coherent."
I'm not going to touch Barrett as I believe others who are smarter and more affected by his portrayal can speak with authority here. Nor am I criticizing your criticism.
As far as length goes, can't you skip most if not all of the side quests? Optional quests aside, which sections made it too long?
Your last statement - that you won't be writing 1,000 words - if you felt compelled to start a new thread, why not elaborate on your points?
- About being "masterbatory"
Essentially it's overindulgent and overly pleased with it's own existence while not being overly concerned if it's entirely well paced, written or coherent.
- Fan service
Look this one is tough without pissing someone off, but I'll just say those involved are very much aware of it's somewhat mythological status with some folks. That's cool, but then you add things that muddle or don't service the core narrative/design merely to appease said fans, it's a slippery slope.
With Remake, for example, everything involving Sephrihoth feels like fan fiction that removes the original mystery with the character that was built in the original. There's this expectation because the status of who he is in 2020, you just have to stick the damn guy in the game as early as possible and that's what they did. It's cringy and corny in the way Advent Children was. I feel this is Normura just being Normura, but I've always found it cheesy AF, not "cool"
- About being "masterbatory"
Essentially it's overindulgent and overly pleased with it's own existence while not being overly concerned if it's entirely well paced, written or coherent.
- Fan service
Look this one is tough without pissing someone off, but I'll just say those involved are very much aware of it's somewhat mythological status with some folks. That's cool, but then you add things that muddle or don't service the core narrative/design merely to appease said fans, it's a slippery slope.
With Remake, for example, everything involving Sephrihoth feels like fan fiction that removes the original mystery with the character that was built in the original. There's this expectation because the status of who he is in 2020, you just have to stick the damn guy in the game as early as possible and that's what they did. It's cringy and corny in the way Advent Children was. I feel this is Normura just being Normura, but I've always found it cheesy AF, not "cool"
Thanks for the response. I'm still not clear on what you find overindulgent or masturbatory.
As far as Sephiroth is concerned: I think what this comes down to is an argument about whether they should have stuck to the original story beat-for-beat or taken a swing at something new (which is what they did). Given the entire central conceit of FF7R, which I won't dive into here, I don't believe they could have done it without involving Sephiroth more directly in the story from an early point.
I get the argument that Sephiroth's appearance in FF7R feels heavy handed for how early in the game it is, however I don't agree that it is "fan service" any more than remaking FF7 or doing anything FF7-related is fan service. The fandom has had 23 years to froth itself into a frenzy. Every side character has had volumes of fan fic written about them by now, so Square was damned if they did, damned if they didn't.
Do you fundamentally disagree with Square's decision to "Remake" Final Fantasy 7 (and take the franchise into uncharted narrative territory) instead of remaking it one-to-one but with updated graphics?
I'm making my way through it now, but i'm very conflicted on it. The story is interesting enough and the characters are okay. Some of the writing is solid, but alot of it is heavy handed or annoyingly long.
can't stand the level design. everything is hallways. some areas are such a pain because you lose control every few seconds for cloud to slowly climb or scoot through something or for them to talk for a few seconds.
battle system isn't for me and i dont love dealing with the skill tree stuff. dont really like the materia system either. its annoying how people are constantly leaving your party so you can get to a new area, enter a battle and realize despite everything being weak to ice, you no longer have tifa in your party who was the one equipped with it, so now you have to go swap it to cloud, etc. if you have more than 2 people the random battles dont matter in the slightest since you just mash square until everything's dead since by the time your ability/skill bar has filled up things are all almost dead anyway.
also, this game is randomly very ugly. main characters look amazing, but random NPCs look like trash and so do alot of random textures.
wish it was shorter. over all im still sorta enjoying it, but i cant imagine i give the next one a shot.
You aren't alone there OP. I thought the episodic nature itself was what I would dislike the most. I complained about it endlessly. Now I realize it was a waste of keystrokes because theres no way Im even going to bother with the rest. Could have saved myself the time.
Game of the year imo. And one of the best FF games, which was a pleasant surprise after the last few games.
Nice combat, graphics and presentation is high quality. Story was fine. Game is somewhat bloated, but not more than plenty of other games, so while it is a shame, it is not that surprising.
This was their opportunity to course correct, wasn't it? But there's a reason why their games of the late SNES/PSX era are still considered their peak: creatively the company was at its best then, and the modern company just doesn't have the same spark. Of course, this time, they had the perfect blueprint, in the form of a game that was already their most massive hit... but unfortunately, the worst impulses of the modern day company reared their ugly collective heads and demonstrated just how far the company has strayed from those days.
It was 90% of an incredible game, but the 10% that isn't... hoo boy is it breathtakingly bad.
Honestly I don't think they can correct course at this point. Just the reality of modern video game development, budgets, design, and SE in general.
The SNES/PSX era will never be matched in terms of creative peak, pacing, originality, scope. Part of that is how the story is delivered. Through text, game length, budgets, all were perfectly balanced in that era. Modern game development doesn't cater to the epic scale of 3-4 disk 50 hour JRPGs filled with CG. Now you have to watch characters talk and interact which you had to imagine back on the PS1 when you had Lego-Cloud trying to convey some humanity.
Being a Japanese game you can clearly see Japanese/anime inspired movements and emoting. I fucking love Tifa, but her body language in a lot of scenes are incredibly anime as fuck.
I whole heartedly agree with you, the game is flawed, and the lows are incredibly low. The pacing in particular is stopping me from calling it a perfect game. It's very much a different game from the original, for better or worse. I'm in the camp that enjoys that it's trying to be its own thing, while trying to stay faithful. It's a delicate balance that I don't think always works. It also adds parts that I did not know I wanted. DANCING FUCKING CLOUD had me yelling "Yasss slay Could slay" as a heterosexual male. Again, like you said, it's incredible at times, for reasons I didn't expect.
No, I call it that because it felt like, and was, padding. It stuck out like a sore thumb, because Cloud and co. had something more urgent to be doing in almost every case.
But that happens in EVERY game instead of those that go for a completely cinematic experience.
Every RPG has characters doing stupid stuff even though something urgent is happening lol.
Even western stuff like the beloved Witcher 3, come on.
People are cherry picking quotes from my posts and replying with stuff I touched on in other parts of the post they failed to quote.
Again, I don't mind people not liking the game, but some people here are treating it unfairly for sure, without much sense or logic to what they are saying. It's super silly.
But that happens in EVERY game instead of those that go for a completely cinematic experience.
Every RPG has characters doing stupid stuff even though something urgent is happening lol.
Even western stuff like the beloved Witcher 3, come on.
People are cherry picking quotes from my posts and replying with stuff I touched on in other parts of the post they failed to quote.
Again, I don't mind people not liking the game, but some people here are treating it unfairly for sure, without much sense or logic to what they are saying. It's super silly.
In the case of those other games, they don't have an older version of the game to compare against that doesn't have those same silly video game tropes. You can call that unfair, but it's fact. The remake does not compare well to the original in this regard.
In the case of those other games, they don't have an older version of the game to compare against that doesn't have those same silly video game tropes. You can call that unfair, but it's fact. The remake does not compare well to the original in this regard.
If the original didn't exist people would see these extra dungeons as just that, dungeons. They don't break the flow of the game.
And the character stuff is great, especially if you're a fan of the original. Can't really call that padding.
The original had stuff we could classify as padding as well, but it will never be called out for it.
Well yeah, I said that, the same post you quoted earlier:
If the original didn't exist people would see these extra dungeons as just that, dungeons. They don't break the flow of the game.
And the character stuff is great, especially if you're a fan of the original. Can't really call that padding.
The original had stuff we could classify as padding as well, but it will never be called out for it.
I'm pretty sure I would have been laughing just as much when the characters accidentally fell into a lab a second time even if I didn't play the original to know that neither lab existed before.
Things like turning off the lights, going through the sewers multiple times, the train graveyard, Aerith's shortcut to Wall Market that takes longer than running down the road, and the labs bring the game's pacing to a halt. The only thing knowledge of the original does is give context of how little they add to the journey. The mission with Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge fit into the story in a way I'd be surprised it wasn't in the original if I hadn't played it, while the rest felt very out of place.
I personally wouldn't say it's that bad. Combat was great, the animations were fantastic and an awesome OST. But what keeps it far from being perfect IMO, the pacing was just simply awful! Yes it's a $60 game, but each chapter feels like it drags on for too long. The train yard chapter and the dungeon before the escape from Midgar come to mind for me; those moments were just not engaging. Although this mostly has to do with the fact, this is literally just the first part of the Remake.
I personally preferred P5R as the better RPG of this year. I was at least personally engaged with that game through and through, in spite of that game's much longer length.
Well yeah, I said that, the same post you quoted earlier:
If the original didn't exist people would see these extra dungeons as just that, dungeons. They don't break the flow of the game.
And the character stuff is great, especially if you're a fan of the original. Can't really call that padding.
The original had stuff we could classify as padding as well, but it will never be called out for it.
And like I said, it's not just because of that. FFVIIR's padding feels, and is, more egregious than most. The dissonance between the direness of the situation the party is in and the mundaneness of the tasks they interrupt them to perform is more stark than in most other games I've played, and certainly more so than anything in OG FFVII.
I'm largely with you OP. I have yet to finish the game and I don't know if I will. There's additions I found really fun like the dancing minigame and some parts of the combat... But the button prompts for 'teamwork' door opening or lever pulling,... dodging the clutter on Aerith's floor... climbing the church roof to drop stuff... going through sewers... npcs taking up screentime but that I don't care to remember the names of and have no idea what their relevance to anything is... There's so much I saw as bloat that didn't work for me. I'm glad other people loved this version and am happy it works for them... but I'd love an abridged version of the game.
Also I know people have brought up the need for a patch to fix the softlock... But the subtitles in this game are bad and should have warranted a patch. I couldn't read a good chunk of the dialog on the backgrounds which doesn't help keep me engaged. Odds are some of those sidecharacters were alright... But since I couldn't read the subs they got blanked.
And like I said, it's not just because of that. FFVIIR's padding feels, and is, more egregious than most. The dissonance between the direness of the situation the party is in and the mundaneness of the tasks they interrupt them to perform is more stark than in most other games I've played, and certainly more so than anything in OG FFVII.
As much as I think the padding problems are mostly structural/design choices, I do wonder how things would have played out if they weren't hampered by load times. Maybe it wouldn't have felt quite as egregious without the various slow-shimmy load hiding; may have also freed up their area design choices a bit.
As much as I think the padding problems are mostly structural/design choices, I do wonder how things would have played out if they weren't hampered by load times. Maybe it wouldn't have felt quite as egregious without the various slow-shimmy load hiding; may have also freed up their area design choices a bit.
The dungeons in particular could have felt much more fun and would drag less if I didn't have to slow walk and run around so much just to reach a location right in front of me but is blocked.
Like I hate so much of the filler they added to stretch the game longer but I could have maybe had a better experience if the dungeons could just be fun to explore and didn't feel twice as long as they needed to be.
Like many, VII was a seminal experience in my gaming life when it played it in '97 as a 14 year old. While I had played several RPGs up to that point, enough to know they were my favorite genre and why I played video games, VII was a like bolt from the blue in what an RPG could do. I remember distinctly feeling that I didn't like the game upon completion, only to realize that I was just majorly bummed out that it was over. I think I did three full playthroughs eventually. While none of the other FFs ever came close to doing what VII did for me (making me realize I am *not an FF fan), I've always held VII in massively high regard.
I was understandably ecstatic when Remake was announced. Now, I don't expect any remake to be a 1:1 recreation of the original, indeed Lufia 2 is a top 5 of all time for me and I really enjoyed the DS remake, but I understand people who just want a fresh coat of paint on the original. That said, when a remake is botched, I don't consider that a blemish on the original. In the case of Remake however, things looked pretty great out of the gate. I've long since gotten over hanging on every piece of media and information released for a game leading up to launch, but the one thing that did stoke the flames of my anticipation was the demo for the Mako reactor mission at E3 a few years back. I remember feeling like the Remake was the game I was seeing in my mind's eye as a kid and I told my friends as much.
Strangely, once the game did drop, I didn't rush to get it, partially because I thought I would grab it on my usual TGS trip this year (LOOOOOL) and partially because I was a score of hours into Trails in the Sky The 3rd and loving it. A friend had purchased it, was loving it and wanted to talk about it, so he bought it for me and I felt compelled to drop The 3rd to play this.
Those cirumstances initially put me off to it, but, starting the game up and seeing the re-creation of that iconic opening sequence caused tears to well up in my eyes. I was playing it! I'll forego a play by play from here, but basically, I didn't end up enjoying it nearly as much as I was hoping I would.
As others have opined, I also found it bloated; while I enjoyed the new locations we got to visit that expanded Midgar and the deeper characterizations of nearly everyone, I found so much of the back and forth tedious, time-consuming and frustrating. Wall Market, a highlight of the original, was a chore in this game, and I dreaded having to spend time there. Of course, the trudge through the sewers and underground section of the Shinra building were miserable as well.
This problem was exacerbated by the battle system. I sucked at it and never wrapped my head around it. By the end of the game, I grew to loathe it. Normal fights could be breezed though, but bosses were difficult and long. Right after the Rufus fight, I was so burned out on combat, that after getting rolled twice by Motor Ball, I turned it down to Easy and never looked back. This, however, had the unintended side-effect of making the finale anticlimactic and, since I was just kind of over it at that point, the entire ending sequence played and I just sat there relieved that it was finally over.
When the credits rolled, I had a very bad taste in my mouth. I felt the game over inserted itself in areas it should have stayed closer to the original--at least what I thought the original contained. As for the characters, since I played the game in Japanese, I think they were overall well done. While anime grunting is anime grunting, at least it feels slightly better in the original. I liked that the characters were fleshed out, though I think Barrett was played a tad bit too much for laughs, Wedge was annoying with his っす's at the end of everything and Jessie was practically unlikable--act or not. The new characters basically uniformly sucked and added nothing of substance. The only character I'm remotely interested in seeing in future installments is Leslie as I felt his part was well-done. The bishōnen scientist should have died in the plate collapse.
Credit where credit is due, the combat looked awesome and the soundtrack was overall great. I enjoyed the atmosphere of the game, which I think captured the spirit of the original well. Still, I think I felt somewhere the original was overall far superior, so I went and started my first ever Japanese playthrough...
...only to find, that good lord, was Midgar sparse. The reason the E3 demo felt like what I saw in my mind as a kid was because my mind had to work a lot to flesh in the blanks. Areas that were sprawling and detailed in the remake were single screens devoid of scenery. Scenes that I remember being grandiose were actually two or three curt dialog boxes. Hell, the amount of time I spent from starting to leaving Midgar was 7 hours and 5 of those were in Shinra Tower. In the original, Midgar is an extended tutorial, plain and simple. This doesn't excuse the terrible amount of padding in Remake, but it helped me appreciate what Remake did add a lot more.
At the end of the day and in light of my revisitation of the original, I'm OK with the story and characters in Remake. I think it sucks that the stakes seem to be toned way down with seemingly horrific events having no consequences
Except Jessie. Freaking really? You had a chance to give this character some more growth beyond a shameless flirt and yet you let her literally die on that hill with no real growth? Also, why her? That whole sequence leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I'm ambivalent to Sephiroth, but once it was explained to me, I found the whole idea of the Whispers working to keep "Fate" as it was in the original and Sephiroth and maybe Aerith being in the know to that pretty intriguing.
When all is said and done, I'm in it for the long haul (though I really hope they can tune the battle system better so it isn't as obtuse and get rid of the bloat). The onus is on the teams to come up with something that respects the legacy of the original while still being engaging and exciting as something of its own and if they can't do that, well, there are bigger fish to fry in the grand scheme of things. Plus, my golden memories of the original can never be taken away from me.
I got into JRPGs through Lufia 2, Illusion of Gaia, Vandal Hearts, Wild ARMS and Suikoden. I didn't read gaming magazines at the time and didn't have many friends into the hobby, so I didn't realize what a big deal the Final Fantasy brand was. I remember seeing FF II and III at Hollywood Video, but found the graphics in the screenshots on the back of the display boxes to be too primitive in the case of the former and two drab in the case of the latter to ever rent them. When VII did drop and I fell in love with it, you better believe I tried more of them. IV didn't do much for me as it felt dated and quaint. I played V in the PSX Anthology collection and wound up hating it towards the end. VI felt scattershot and I have always disliked the evil for the sake of evil villains like Kefka. I was super hyped for VIII when it dropped, but ended up not getting really into and dropping it when Suikoden II came out a few months later. I eventually picked it back up, but it was never a favorite. I liked IX well enough, but found the character designs off-putting and some characters useless. I actively disliked X. XII was great and XIII was...not fun. I've really learned that I am not a fan of the franchise over all, though I do respect its legacy.
I'm pretty sure I would have been laughing just as much when the characters accidentally fell into a lab a second time even if I didn't play the original to know that neither lab existed before.
Well there's no way to know that because you did play the original. And you should be aware of that when approaching this game. Like I said already, the story has some jank to it and wears it proudly on its sleeve. It feels like a PS2 game, despite having some of the best looking character models out right now. And to me that's refreshing, especially considering it's a AAA game.
I'm just disappointed that people would rather have something that plays it safe.
And like I said, it's not just because of that. FFVIIR's padding feels, and is, more egregious than most. The dissonance between the direness of the situation the party is in and the mundaneness of the tasks they interrupt them to perform is more stark than in most other games I've played, and certainly more so than anything in OG FFVII.
Well that's on you, because a lot of people disagree? And I do believe that the fact this is a remake plays a large role in you feeling this way. Come on, the stuff you do in Witcher 3 while you should be urgently looking for Ciri is ridiculous (I keep bringing up Witcher because it's the last single player game I played lol, and everyone loves it here).
Video games are like that, and suspension of disbelief is often required because we need to enjoy the gameplay, not just the story. I don't have a problem with that, but okay, I guess most people do. I just wish they approached other games in the same way, and they don't.
I love the original FF7, but I'm not a huge fan of the remake. It's way too bloated for its own good. I don't think they justified splitting it up into multiple games.
I never played the original but had high hopes. Started off strong, but eventually around chapter 12 I had to be done. I was just so god damn bored.... it's a shame because there was some good wheat there, just buried amongst far too much chaff.
I really enjoyed parts of it, but the absurd amount of padding really dragged it out. I kept pushing past all the monotonous boring stuff to get to the good parts, but I finally broke on the second to last boss fight. I got to
Whisper Bahamut
and lost to him. When I saw I had to repeat all of it again.. turned it off and have not played since. I guess maybe they wanted to capture the old feeling of boss fights, but there is a reason that type of crap is not common in games anymore. Still no excuse for all the filler though, the game would have been vastly superior with 10 fewer hours of content.
Well there's no way to know that because you did play the original. And you should be aware of that when approaching this game. Like I said already, the story has some jank to it and wears it proudly on its sleeve. It feels like a PS2 game, despite having some of the best looking character models out right now. And to me that's refreshing, especially considering it's a AAA game.
I'm just disappointed that people would rather have something that plays it safe.
Well that's on you, because a lot of people disagree? And I do believe that the fact this is a remake plays a large role in you feeling this way. Come on, the stuff you do in Witcher 3 while you should be urgently looking for Ciri is ridiculous (I keep bringing up Witcher because it's the last single player game I played lol, and everyone loves it here).
Video games are like that, and suspension of disbelief is often required because we need to enjoy the gameplay, not just the story. I don't have a problem with that, but okay, I guess most people do. I just wish they approached other games in the same way, and they don't.
The point was that the game reusing the exact same trick of making the player fall down a hole into a lab when they were right in front of their destination is so laughable that it'd stand out to me in any game. I feel I can safely say that, because I laughed when KH3 did the same thing in the Frozen world, but at least that game was self aware enough to poke fun at it.
I'd also argue I'm asking for the opposite of something safe, considering I was hoping for a much more expanded Midgar to explore with new story elements that preferably made president Shinra a bigger threat. Despite the last chapter, the remake's design felt very safe, closely following the original game's journey in a bunch of FFXIII hallways while the new or expanded areas could mostly be removed without any impact on the story.
