Damn. I remember when Square Enix showed off that tech demo of Final Fantasy VII running on the PS3 back in 2005 and when the Final Fantasy fandom started calling out for a remake. Here we are fifteen years later and that remake is a real thing and it's out.
For myself I was never a big fan of Final Fantasy VII. In 2005 I haven't played it yet and when I did I was underwhelmed. It's not a bad game. It's just good to me like a solid seven out of ten and yes that was intentional. It is the single most popular game of the franchise and the company because it was the first one for the PlayStation and the first 3D one though it sort of went subconsciously under my radar at the time it released. By the time X came out I remember saying to my brother I didn't even hear of Final Fantasy until VII, but I can't remember well. In fact, I don't even recall PlayStation existing before 1998 though it released in 94 which I still can't believe. I only remember 8-bit and 16-bit consoles back then. It seems crazy to me that 3D gaming was in the mainstream since 1994. Anyway back to VII. I played Final Fantasy VII I think somewhere between 2006 and 2008. Ten years after it released. I found VII entertaining and contained the mix of quirky humor and drama that the series is known for, but I was highly turned off by the main villain Sephiroth. He seemed incredibly cliche to me and I still don't get all that shit with Jenova. Since he was the driving factor of the plot I didn't enjoy it as much compared to the other FFs I played to this point. Still, it's Final Fantasy; my absolute favorite gaming series so I did feel some excitement about the remake once Square Enix officially announced it at E3 2013. That was such a surreal moment. One of the gaming things I will never forget. People have been talking and asking for a Final Fantasy VII remake since 2005 and seven years later they finally revealed it.
Like modern Square Enix, it was announced prematurely and took seven more years before it would actually come out. The fandom was wondering when it would actually come out because since the 2013 announcement information about the game had been sparse and even a couple of years gamers received no information whatsoever. There was some caution in this time as well since Square announced that the game would be released in episodes. I admit, my interest went right down when I heard that and I kind of stopped caring about it especially when they stopped releasing info about it. Even when the release date got announced I was fully expecting it to get delayed.
As released approach my curiosity was piqued a bit. The demo was really good, but I still thought the multipart approach was just milking it because VII is their most popular game so of course people are going to buy them all and I still do, but when quarantine hit I put aside my initial plans of buying it when the second part drops to buying it a week after release. I say I did think it was weird that they were turning Midgar, the part of the original game that was like 5 hours long until a full game and was worried about the pacing of all of that, but my worries were assuaged This is a solid ass game..
Though VII is one of my least favorite Final Fantasys I still got hit with nostalgia while playing this. First thing I got to talk about is how fucking good this game looks! When I booted up that demo man! Final Fantasy has always had a reputation of looking fucking incredible and they kept up that rep with this one. The shine on Cloud's Buster Sword is cleaaan. The character models on the main cast look so good. Now a lot of these NPCs is another story. I also like how you can see the materia equipped on each character's weapon integrating what is usually just a video game mechanic into the world. It seems like every other review out there talks about texture drops or pop-ins, but you won't hear me talking about it here or probably any review ever. Those are things I never notice. Even in those reviews when they showed examples I was looking like "so what am I supposed to see wrong here?" If you came here expecting me to talk about that I won't.
Moving on from the graphics let's dig in to the story. Considering the Midgar section of the original was about five hours long they made so many changes to the story this time around. We're given a lot more character interaction for everyone and backstory for some NPCs. The one that stood out to me most was Jessie of Avalanche. Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge didn't leave a lasting impression on me, but in the remake all of them get more screen time and Jessie is the standout. As mentioned, it's been many years since I've last played Final Fantasy VII, but I don't recall Jessie flirting with Cloud and if it was there it wasn't to this extent.
Her banter during the bombing mission was cute in the demo. I didn't notice this while playing the demo, but Jessie sounds like Futaba. Let me come find out that they have the same voice actress! I like Jessie's personality so much in this game I was like Cloud, forget Tifa, and Aerith go with Jessie!" We even got some backstory for her. In the segment where we go to her house we find out that her father was an employee at Shinra, but got in an accident that resulted in him getting mako poisoning so he's in a catatonic state. Jessie was also an actress before she moved to Midgar. There was some darkness underneath that light. When she died during the plate fall I wanted to cry. I felt nothing when Biggs and Jessie died in the original, but here when I got to know them especially Jessie, that hurt.
Just a couple of changes I didn't like about the story: I didn't like that Square made Shinra cause the explosion at the mako reactor to be bigger than it was supposed to be. It took the responsibility of the civilian casualties away from Avalanche. I think they were going for some corporate move to make it seem like a terrorist attack from Wutai through Avalanche so they could restart a war and get a mako reactor in Wutai, but they didn't really emphasize that in the story. I also didn't like how many extra Cloud headaches there were. They were in the original, but not nearly as often as it was in here. I'm surprised the characters didn't ask if Cloud had a serious problem given how often it happened. The biggest problem I had with the story though was the inclusion of the whispers. Oh my gosh these things are so bad. They come out of nowhere and disrupt the flow of the story without any explanation whatsoever until the very end of the game which results in that overly long final battle and that dumb alternate universe changing the timeline crap. That shit wasn't needed and I haven't seen a fan yet that actually liked it.
Alright, now that I got the negatives out the way back to focusing on the positives. So I really, really loved the Wall Market portion of this remake. Wall Market looks so gorgeous and grunge! This was my most anticipated part of the remake and it held up. I was only disappointed that I couldn't sit in the chair at the Korean BBQ spot and say I've had better dog food. The squat mini game was fun and the quests to get an invitation was cool too. I wonder if on a second playthrough if I'm able to get Chocobo Sam to get me the audition. I lost the coin toss so I had to go to the massage parlor.
Like a lot of others I was curious how the crossdressing scene would turn out in this game. Square did not shy away from a lot of the weird shit in the Wall Market scene and this was one of those times. They did remove the hot tub scene, probably for the bette, but I liked how the crossdressing scene was done. It was so extravagant and over the top and switching perspectives between Cloud and Aerith was cool too. This was actually very different from what I remember in the original. I think Aerith and Tifa were with Cloud and it was at the clothing store and not at the Honey Bee Inn. On my first playthrough I thought the dress you got was fixed, like there was only one, until I saw clips in other people's reviews that had completely different dresses than I did. I wish I hadn't watched those reviews though because that would've been a nice surprise once I replayed it. I'm not sure what triggers what dress you get, but I assume it depends on how well you do during the music rhythm mini game. I definitely am aiming for a better one because the basic black and gray one I got was honestly kind of ugly to me. Cloud would have not been turning heads in that one.
The battle system in VII is top ace. Now I am still disappointed that they went with an action-based system, but it's primarily because of the reason why they did so. Persona 5 sold gangbusters and even their own title Octopath Traveler did good with turn based systems. I'm not seeing where these people went who played turn based RPGs in the 90s and 2000s saying that they refuse to play them now. This action-based battle system is some really good shit though. Attacks definitely have a weight to them and each character feels completely different from the next unlike in the original where everyone feels like Freelancers with different limit breaks. The combat is easy to grasp and takes time to master. Even on Normal Mode you will get checked quick by enemies if you just carelessly press the Square button without thought. You have to strategically attack body parts of enemies to take away problem attacks and then you want to pressure enemies to put them into a stagger state so you can deal maximum damage.
All of the characters feel good to play, but at first I wasn't sure how to use Aerith. I got used to her, but I didn't make full use of her abilities until the end of the game where I used her Ward ability for the first time. That shit is powerful as fuck and I was mad that I just started to use it then. I also didn't use Tifa right until way later too. And the Materia system. The materia system was my least favorite progression system in all the Final Fantasys up until now. In the original I didn't like it because I felt it took so long to level up anything. It still takes a bit here and just as long for some of these materia like the stat boosting ones, but it's better overall and I feel there's more variety. I'm probably completely wrong about that since I haven't played VII in so long, but I definitely played around more with materia in the remake.
I also like how they made any weapon in the game viable unlike in most RPGs your weapon upgrades go in a linear path. The newest one you get is always the best one, but in VII R each weapon comes with their own stat buffs, decreases, and an ability so you have to make a choice in what you want to prioritize. I usually just go with ATK with every character except for Aerith because she basically has no physical attacks, but on my next playthrough I'm definitely going to play around a bit. Oh, and then you also have the upgrade system for each weapon where you can further add buffs to your weapons so the Buster Sword can eventually be as strong as the base version of the final sword by the end of the game.
There's also the expansion of content here. The areas of Midgar are larger and there are sidequests you can do. I have to agree that most of them aren't that entertaining to do. I really said "I know they are not making me look for some damn cats right now" when I got to the cat sidequest. I did a few, but ignored most of them. I do like most of the ones involving fighting though and I did enjy fighting summons like back in the old FF games. I did not see a lot of padding in this game unlike a lot of others, but yeah there were a couple of times where I did. In the tunnel section I did think they did the hand crane part just one too many times. I think just having two segments was fine enough given how long it takes to do each one. The third was where I got tired of it and within the Shinra building which looks freaking gorgeous, I thought that the door segment ran a little long. I was also disappointed that when we got to the president that the Masamune wasn't sticking out of his back. I was reminded this after I beat this, but it was disappointing that they removed the part where the group follows a blood trail and the headless Jenova. That would've been really cool to see with these graphics.
I do find it funny how I've played two RPGs this year that had a darts mini game and a grappling hook mechanic. Also both New Game +'s I have a problem with. With persona 5 Royal it was losing daily activities that made the time management important while with Final Fantasy VII it was losing the option to use items I like in battle such as grenades and Fuzzy Wuzzies without being overpowered on Normal difficulty. If I play on Normal I'm overpowered to the point of the battles being not fun and if I play on Hard I lose the option to use my favorite items. Oh, this review is sort of jumping all over the place now, but I just wanted to say that overall the Final Fantasy VII Remake is incredible with just a few moderate flaws mostly with whispers and the ending. Still, well if you're reading or watching this spoiler review then I assume you've already played this game. I'll definitely be replaying this myself in the future.
