I played the first FF7 remake game in 2023 on PC, with Japanese audio and Japanese subtitles. The original FF7 I played multiple times when I was young (in English). I had also completed the original Crisis Core (PSP, Japanese version) many years back.
Bought and started playing the FF7 remake, because it was on a big sale. Playing fully in Japanese, I can deal with the story quite well, but the text-only instructions often confuse me. In the past I have found these text-heavy JRPG style tutorials difficult even in English. I wonder if there’s a good reason for the complexity. If I think back to the combat in the original FF7, it’s was dead simple to get into: Turn based, each character gets an action. You clearly see that this enemy is resistant against normal weapons but weak against magic. You clearly see the parts of the enemy that can be attacked. I think these new action RPGs are built too much with the focus on real-time and looking “as if you were there”, to the detriment of puzzle-like combat.
Finished the Yuffie story, and so the first FF7 remake game as a whole (I think there is some extra content to be found by replaying, but I’m not sure I will bother).
So many things I’m not sure where to start. As a whole it was a great experience I spent something like 50 hours on. I liked the story and most of the additions they made to it. The battles were a bit “too much work” for my taste. I lost almost every boss battle once before beating it. But it was nice how I always felt like I won because I did something better the next time. I tried the Corneo arena house boss like 7 times before I won, but I didn’t mind it as much because the “commentators” in the arena were awesome (Japanese voice acting).
Similarly, the normal battles were a bit boring, but I guess for one playthrough it was not bad. The “classic” game mode I played was not a bad compromise with the original’s almost-turn-based and the real time action that modern AAA games all seem to need to do. I used probably like 80% of the materia in the game, skipping a lot of the yellow and purple which give new abilities. I thought it was too much work to learn to use them, considering I would probably unequip them at some point. For the same reason, I didn’t change weapons too much. I found like a total of 6 for each character but used just two. I thought the work to select the weapon upgrades was too much, and it seemed like many weapons had a fighting or magic focus, or something like that, so it felt like I picked a style for the character and so want to stick with it. Cloud’s and Barret’s original weapons are so iconic that I can see why they chose this kind of system, instead of the one in the original game where you would swap a weapon almost every time you got a new one.
The game was full of small quality-of-life improvements that modern games tend to have, and honestly I prefer that a lot more compared to bringing back the drudgery of playing games from the 90s. One thing I missed from the original game was that the maps rendered from a fixed angle were very atmospheric. Use of such prepainted maps was due to constraints of technology at the time, but they sure made the best use of the technique. There were very cool angles in some areas, and the places actually looked different. I feel like modern 1st/3rd person games always have the 3d environment look a bit same. Everything is ridiculously spacious, and the animations somehow still sometimes look just as clunky as in the old games. There’s so much detail missing compared to real world, that in a way use of painted 2d maps leverages the player’s imagination better.
About the remake graphics in general, my PC isn’t really the most powerful one, so I had plenty of lagging scenes in exchange for the 4k resolution. I think it was worth it, as the characters looked very nice, and the environments sometimes breathtaking. For example that time when the guys climb from the slum to top of the plate, showing the “pillar” and rest of the city being absolutely massive. The amount of steel required to build the place is ridiculous, but it somehow fits the game very well. FF7 is definitely my favorite Final Fantasy, largely because it’s more scifi and less fantasy. Actually I think games like this are more “cyberpunk” than the pretentious ones that just put all the tropes in a blender (Update 2025-05: eg Cyberpunk 2077).
Even though the game was full of long battles, the amount of cinematic story-telling was humongous, most of which I thoroughly enjoyed. In the credits it played video from almost every scene, and there was so much of it, I realized then. Some of my favorites/memorable ones:
- All the scenes with Jessie. Such a great addition to the cast.
- The darts minigame was great, I placed first.
- Aerith was a bit weaker story-wise, but still had some absolutely great dialogue.
- Aerith and many other characters had great voice acting, as expected of Japan.
- Johnny and most of the events in Wall Mart featuring him.
- Corneo’s battle arena commentators were hilarious.
- The dancing mini game was fabulous.
- I even liked squatting.
- In the Shinra building, the museum/exhibition was great
- Hojo was super creepy, though quite a bit different how I imagined him in the original (and maybe Crisis Core?)
- All the villains from Shinra were great, also I liked their battles story-wise: Reno, Rude, Rufus, and Scarlet (in Yuffie’s story)
- Kirie was great, and great looking. I actually spotted her in a train in one the early missions. I just thought she looked amazing for a background character and stopped to ogle her.
- All of Yuffie’s story. They got the character perfectly: The voice, the personality, the animation, the cute costume, the battle mechanics. Great music to go with it. When all these things hit together in the beginning of her episode, I actually cried.
- Condor Fort minigame was pretty good, although it ended just when I started to enjoy it (maybe there is more?).
- Great banter and off-hand dialogue everywhere, including in battle.
- Cloud and Barret were well acted.
- … And so many more things I don’t remember now.
There was obviously a ton of new things compared to the original came since this Midgar phase was like 5 times as long, but I felt like I saw the purpose of most of the things they added. In many cases it was what the fans wanted to see, sometimes it was to take a breather from something. Or extra content to not make some nice feature go to waste. Towards the end there was a lot of new stuff with Sephiroth, I think to bring some kind of closure since the game had to be stopped there, and the players would have to wait for years for the next game.
But alongside those good additions, there were also a bunch of things I did not like:
- “Whispers” were an over-used deus ex machina.
- No blood/dying. I always thought in the original game it was more of a technical limitation, and they removed some things like like the bloody death of the Shinra President (although I can’t remember if the amount of blood made any sense original game).
- Some annoying side characters: Two old ladies from the slums. Corneo’s right hand. Sonon was a pretty good foil for Yuffie and well-thought in that regard, but his story and demise were pretty poorly done.
- The side quests were mostly quite boring, especially in the first two slum areas before Wall Market.
- Too happy and innocent at times. Especially the 5th slum where the kids lived, although I think it may have been partly to create contrast to the following Wall Mart area.
- Red XIII did not convince me, although I’m not sure what would have been better.
- Tifa and Aerith did not have as strong personalities as Jessie or Yuffie.
- The music was quite weak. I think there were like three remixes of originals that I liked, and one or two which sounded almost like the originals (all of which I adore). The competely remixed songs that were collected as items were pointless, I didn’t like any of them.
- Sephiroth was weak, and too weirdly enigmatic. Maybe it was an issue in the original game, but it didn’t help to bring more focus to him now.
- The final stage with the Whispers being fought was terrible. I sort of understand it as an atmospheric ending setup, but I really don’t like those sudden fantasy bosses and levels that many games put in the end.
Googling about the game now, having avoiding all information before and during playing. Looks like I got the best looking dresses for everyone for the Corneo scene (in my opinion) without knowing how the whole thing worked. Apparently I missed a date scene with Tifa(?), but she’s my least favorite girl so whatever.
Spotted the following randomly on tvtropes. To be honest, I did not realize this kind of thing (lacking Japanese skills), pretty cool if true, but could also be partly a theory by an over-imaginative troper. I did see the things the remake changed about the plot, but I did not understand what the thing with Barret dying was about.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlternateTimeline
The ending of Final Fantasy VII Remake strongly implies that the game is not simply a “remake” of the original Final Fantasy VII, but also a Stealth Sequel by way of this trope. Throughout the story, the characters frequently cross paths with interdimensional beings called “whispers” (or “arbiters of fate”), whose role in the plot is to ensure that a specific chain of events (i.e. the plot of the original game) unfolds as preordained by Destiny itself. Any attempts made by the characters to change history (e.g. Sephiroth trying to kill Barret in the Shinra tower) are immediately thwarted (or corrected soon afterwards) by the whispers. This comes to a head in the final chapter, wherein the party chooses to fight and defeat the whispers so as to free themselves from the bounds of Destiny, thus creating an Alternate Timeline wherein Biggs is still alive and recovering in an orphanage, Aerith is possibly aware of Zack’s connection to Cloud, and Zack himself appears to be alive after defeating the horde of Shinra infantry sent to stop him and Cloud near the city entrance.
I think they made the absolutely correct decision to alter the original plot so that, among other things, they could rework characters that turned out to be fan favorites but die quite early in the original.
My friend was bashing the upcoming FF7 remake earlier today because of news from the producers that it was going to to be split into a series of games. “They fucked up the combat system too,” he said, “Square Enix can’t make any good games anymore anyway. Well, at least there’s no need to wait for the release anymore.”
My friend’s interpretation was that Square Enix is not competent enough to remake a 90’s game because these days all the development studios generally suck or something like that. I took my usual role as the devil’s advocate slash optimist and suggested that the remakes need a new approach to the game. Just making something for the sake of nostalgia wouldn’t be enough, as one key producer said. Fans think they just want more of the same old and will always get hostile at any signs of profound change. But in reality, just updating the audiovisual appearance would leave the fans cold.
The fans can’t imagine anything truly new for their franchise. But that’s what they are going to get and they are going to hate it until it comes out and then they’ll love it (generally speaking, not necessarily going to happen in this case). Suddenly the fans start saing that was exactly what they wanted, when the truth is that they don’t understand anything about creative business. Consider for example game series that made the switch from 2D to 3D graphics. Only after the successful switch, will the fans realize it was a good thing, previously being adamant that the series has been ruined completely. (Update 2025-07: I personally felt this way with Ace Attorney and then converted to adoring the 3d)
I’m not saying that FF7 remakes are going to be good, but that all the hip guys are going to say they will be bad and then, if they are stubborn enough, they will hold that opinion no matter what, because after all, opinions can’t really be proved wrong. I guess there are enough new cool games being made that a connoiseur can dismiss a game like FF7 remake as bad even if it was universally liked.