Beat Final Fantasy VII, the legendary JRPG and I'm mostly disappointed.
The story doesn't get good until you get to Nibelheim for the first time, which is about half-way through the game. Everything before that is more on the meh side.
Cloud is not an exciting main character. Dude's got serious mental problems. I also didn't like Barret. Always cursing and threatening, it was getting old quickly.
Also why are people making so much fuss about the Aerith scene?
Thank god the "remaster" comes with a x3 speed increase. Feels unplayable otherwise. Even then some ingame cutscenes play out too slow. On the other hand it's a bit too fast for running around and fighting, so a x2 would've been the ideal speed (with optional x3 or x4 for the rest).
Graphically it's a disaster and an attack on your eyes, but I guess that's what the proper remaster is for. Walking with 3D characters on 2D backgrounds can be extremely hard, about as hard as finding an exit in one of the background pics. Thankfully there's a fix for the latter when pressing Select, but I'm not sure if that was also in the original.
World map is quite boring, empty and forgettable. The two main continents look basically the same, there are barely any things to tell them apart when walking on them. It took me hours to know where some of the main places are located on the map because everything looks the same.
Talking about combat, I'm not a fan of the real time gameplay while you're slowly fighting your way through item, magic or summon menus. The UI can also completely block smaller enemies. Also I don't like the Materia stuff.
Lastly I think the mini games are mostly bad. Some were impressive for the time, for example when you're chasing behind Barret and Tifa on a motorcycle or when you're snowboarding. However the execution is absolutely terrible and not fun at all. I doubt it was good for PS1 standards.
On the plus side, the story gets far more interesting later on, even if the twist is completely ruined IMO.
The FMVs are nice and the transition between them or in-game cutscenes and gameplay is well done.
The villains are pretty good, some support characters (obviously not the ones listed in the section above) are good too.
7/10
I'm thankful I bought the game by using MS reward points. I don't think it's worth that much (€11 on sale). Got Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition for €8.50 and that's better in a lot of ways (while far from being amazing).
Last edited by Barozi - on 04 October 2019
