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Final Fantasy VII Remake is Epic (But Not Perfect)

 Reviews, Video games  3 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
May 082020
 

The Final Fantasy VII Remake was my most-anticipated game of 2020, and now I’ve finished my playthrough.

While it’s been pretty divisive among fans, I’m happy to say that I enjoyed the game. It’s not perfect, but it has a lot of good things, and the good ultimately outweighs the bad.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is a remake of the opening hours of the original Final Fantasy VII – the Midgar section. I did not enjoy Midgar in the original, so I was a little wary when the remake’s scope was first revealed. Here, Midgar has been expanded into a full-length game, with everything redone in more detail.

And… it works. Mostly.

There are sections of this game that are absolutely fantastic. I grew to care about Jessie, Wedge, and Biggs much more than I ever did in the original, and I loved spending time in the Midgar sectors. While the city isn’t open, you have several small hub areas that function like typical JRPG towns, even though they’re sections of a larger city here.

A handful of side quests are available at certain parts of the game, and while they aren’t great (and I wasn’t crazy about it having set points where the story encouraged you to go do side quests), I really enjoyed the worldbuilding in Midgar itself.

The NPC dialogue is fantastic. While each area has only a handful of NPCs you can specifically talk to, you hear dialogue and conversations as you walk around. This dialogue changes as you progress through the game, and it was great to hear NPCs react differently to me due to Cloud helping out as a mercenary. Beyond that, there are a lot of fun conversations you can overhear as well as foreshadowing for events later in the game.

It also helps contextualize Avalanche’s actions more than ever before, as you hear people react to the aftermath of the reactor bombing. Midgar citizens are suffering because of it, and the game doesn’t shy away from that.

Click for early Final Fantasy VII Remake spoilers
Even though Shinra caused the explosion to be much greater than it should have been, that doesn’t take away from the emotional impact. Barret and the others all believe their bomb caused the destruction, and they still make the decision to go ahead with the next one.

I mentioned the Avalanche trio in particular as characters I grew attached to, but it really did a great job with all of the characters. I was worried about Barret and Aerith in particular, but the remake kept true to their personalities and brought them to life. I was also pleased with how well they handled the Shinra characters.

Now, expanding a short section like Midgar into a full-length game requires you to add a lot of content… and yes, there is some padding.

It’s unfortunate, because some new sections left me thrilled with what the remake was doing, while others felt like they only existed to make the game longer. Parts like the trip with Jessie are great, but then there are times when you make an unnecessarily long detour – sometimes to the detriment of the game’s story pacing, too.

We’re in the middle of an urgent story beat; can’t this side story about ghost children wait?!

I think the Final Fantasy VII Remake would have been ideal if it cut out of those parts and stretched further into the main game’s story instead, but that might have been more difficult. Leaving Midgar is a good stopping point for a self-contained game.

Gameplay-wise, I felt it had a good progression and I enjoyed the combat once I got used to it. There are a little secrets to find, occasional mini-games, and a lot of goofy moments that delighted me.

Click for Final Fantasy VII Remake gameplay section spoilers
Yes, you can choose to walk up all the flights of stairs in the Shinra building.

You have no idea how happy this made me.

Nearly everything I wanted to see was there, with only one part from the original altered dramatically enough to disappoint me.

And then there’s the ending, easily the most controversial part of the remake. I am still conflicted about that. I have some thoughts and theories, but for now I’m still trying to gather my thoughts. I don’t mind what the ending did in concept, but its implementation doesn’t feel quite right to me. Still, I suppose it’s a credit to Square Enix that they managed to remake the start of Final Fantasy VII in such a way to get people speculating and theorizing about the next part.

The Final Fantasy VII Remake took 5-7 hours I felt were a slog in the original and transformed them into 50 hours of great character moments, epic scenes, and fun gameplay despite some pacing issues and confusion. I don’t know where we’re going from here, but I can’t wait to find out.

Final Fantasy VII Remake 8-Disc Soundtrack Revealed

 Video games  4 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Apr 012020
 

With the Final Fantasy VII Remake almost upon us (with people getting their copies any time between now and who-knows-when due to the current chaos), Square Enix revealed the track list for its complete soundtrack.

Its 8-disc soundtrack.

Okay, the eighth disc is a bonus disc included with the “Special Edit Version” that contains music from the in-game jukebox, but that still leaves us with 7 discs for the game’s main soundtrack, with 156 songs listed.

For comparison, the original Final Fantasy VII’s soundtrack contained 85 songs over four discs – and that was for the entire story. This Midgar-focused first entry of the remake already has far more songs, which makes me wonder how much music there will be once the subsequent games are also remade.

This is not to be confused with the mini soundtrack included with the Final Fantasy VII Remake Deluxe Edition. That is a mini soundtrack sampler that contains 12 songs. The full soundtrack will be released on May 27.

Peruse the track list at your own risk, since the titles of certain songs might imply spoilers for the game.

Speaking of spoilers, now is the time to filter Youtube and avoid Final Fantasy VII Remake discussions if you’re hoping to play it without seeing spoilers ahead of time, because copies are already out in the wild due to Square Enix shipping the game early to certain regions to avoid delays.

For those of you with digital pre-orders, the pre-load begins this Friday. I’ve debated about switching to a digital copy to play the game on its release day, but right now my love of physical games is still winning out.

Anyway, I’m excited by the sheer number of songs in this game (and I thought this would be a safe topic to blog about instead of news that could be mistaken for a prank today), and I can’t wait until I can play. Are you looking forward to the Final Fantasy VII Remake?

Thoughts on the Final Fantasy VII Remake Demo

 Video games  5 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Mar 042020
 

It’s been a long time since the public demo was first leaked/rumored, but now at last we can try out the Final Fantasy VII Remake demo ourselves!

I’ve played through it twice, once on Normal and once on Classic.

First off, the nostalgia from the music alone is unreal. I love the new version of the opening bombing mission theme, and it really helped drive home that this remake is really happening.

Moving on to more tangible things, Cloud and Barrett’s personalities feel on point so far, and I like what they’ve done with the Avalanche members.

I enjoyed the dialogue during the demo, and I’m looking forward to (presumably) getting to know Jessie, Wedge, and Biggs better across the course of the game. At one point there’s a little bit of background banter between Jessie and Biggs, and I hope there are more conversations like that in the full game.

Click for original Final Fantasy VII spoilers
Assuming things play out the way they do in the original, I hope the remake creates enough of a bond with them that it’s a real gut punch when they die.

Anyway, the public demo is missing flashbacks that will be present in this sequence in the final release, so I’m looking forward to that as well.

The gameplay feels pretty good. At first the camera felt odd, but it didn’t bother me much once I got into it. The normal combat system is interesting. It’s certainly action, but pausing to pick special moves and switching between characters made it feel slower and more tactical. I was also bad at it, so I’ll need to pay more attention to dodging and blocking if I go with Normal in the full game.

I tried out Classic mode for my second playthrough. Classic is locked into the Easy difficulty setting, so between that and the AI being much better at dodging/blocking than I was, fights were significantly easier (although I still had to heal myself occasionally).

Classic mode doesn’t feel like a true turn-based RPG, and battles against weaker enemies are a bit odd since sometimes the auto-attacks are enough to defeat them, but I still kinda like it. It’s… relaxing, compared to the regular gameplay mode, and it lets you really focus more on the choices you’re making. I’m interested to see how it feels later in the game when enemies get tougher. (I’d also like the ability to select Normal difficulty with Classic mode, but I don’t think they’ll add that.)

Overall I’m pretty happy with the Final Fantasy VII Remake demo. It doesn’t answer my major questions about how the bulk of the game will play out (how much exploration is there? what are side quests like? will the city actually feel alive?), but the start feels good and I’m looking forward to playing the full thing on April 10!

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