Final Fantasy VII Remake Review Thread - Current 88 Metacritic / 89 Opencritic

[JWeinCom]

Finished the game. Still not sure entirely how I feel about it. I'd put it on the lower end of the 8 range. At an 83 or so. Minor spoilers maybe.

Positives

-Mostly looks great aside from some textures and NPCs.

- Battle system is fun. It's mostly a matter of presentation as the looks and sounds make all the attacks feel satisfying to hit. The different characters feel very different and satisfying to control which actually fixes one of my biggest issues with FF7 where characters were mostly interchangeable in battle.

-Weapon system works well and makes getting new weapons exciting rather than simply a chore you have to go through whenever you get to a new area.

-Some of the added content is really good. Wall Market expansion captures the spirit of the original sequence while dialing it up to 11. Shinra's offices feel like an actual creepy evil corporation HQ rather than just an area of a video game.

There are also a lot of areas where the characters are improved. Barrett actually seems like a leader. Red XIII's hatred of him is amusing. Scenes like the one between Aerith and Marlene make you feel more attached to the characters. Characters have more interactions with each other, rather than just interacting with Cloud.

-Music is excellent.

- They kept a lot of the quirky and silly aspects of FF7 which was something I feared would be lost in the translation to a more realistic artstyle. You still have squat competitions with androgynous men, fight bizarre living houses, turn into a frog, and so on.

-"Dungeons" as the are feature puzzles and mini games to break up the monotony. They mostly range from just ok to good (except for the bike sections which are really good), but it's a nice change of pace from many other RPGs, where there is not much gameplay wise besides walk and battle. Even something like stopping to make a platform with mechanical arms helps keep the game interesting.

Negatives

- The battles never really get to be all that challenging. I never really felt pushed to consider any strategy more advanced than "equip whatever elemental magic the boss is weak to".

-Some of the added content is really dull padding. For instance the train graveyard goes on for a while, and really doesn't add anything to the narrative. There's a segment of Barrett just running through tunnels. There's an awkward lapse between the air buster being introduced and the actual battle.

-Side quests are pretty much universally uninteresting.

-This is an incomplete narrative. This is the first act of a story, and it feels like it. Midgar was mostly about establishing the characters and introducing the conflict, and that's done well here. But, there aren't any real complete character arcs and no real resolution to conflicts. Spending about 30-40 hours in the first act of a story is kind of pushing it.

Before people jump to the it's just one episode/part/w/e you want to call it, compare it to Mass Effect 2. That game is also part of a larger story. But, the characters mostly have complete arcs by which they change over the story. While the main overarching conflict (Shepard and Co. v Reapers) is not resolved, the specific conflict in this game (Shepard v. Collectors) was. There was a three part narrative arc (Shepard gathering allies, Shepard helping them work through all of their bullshit, and the final mission). So, even though this wasn't the whole story of Mass Effect, it was a complete narrative arc within that story.

Basically it's like Mass Effect 2 is like reading one of the Harry Potter books, whereas this game is like reading the first 300 pages of the Stand or something. Both are parts of a whole, but one is a whole part, if that makes sense.

-Kind of a bait and switch. There was every reason for fans to believe that this would be a fairly faithful retelling of FF7. Some things added, some things modernized, sure. And for the most part, it was... until it wasn't.

The last hour of the game or so is essentially fighting against the story of the original game. Even aside from how you feel about them sticking to the story, it was a jarring fourth wall breaking shift as you go from fighting an evil power company to fighting a physical manifestation of an abstract concept.

Some people are going to like the potential of being surprised in the next entries. For instance I'm actually more invested in Aeris (I prefer the old translation) as a character *spoiler for the original* now that I don't know if she gets kabobed. But, for those who were really looking forward to seeing the story of FF7 recreated with modern technology and gameplay sensibilities (what generally constitutes a remake) there is legitimate cause for disappointment based on how the game was presented and marketed.



So that's basically my opinion. There's a lot of good stuff in there, and at times the game is great. But it's got a lot of the same issues as when you try to convert a TV series into a movie or vice versa, where it doesn't quite fit the new format.