This review contains spoilers
Excellent game. The elephant in the room is, of course, that calling it a Remake is a boldfaced lie. Certain people (massive fucking cowards whose taste I will never trust) hate this. They wanted a faithful remake, or they just hate Nomura, and while it's somewhat unfortunate that they still don't have anything resembling that to this day, I think what we got instead is way better. (And it's not like the original FF7 is hard to play, anyways.) This game is very distinctly a spinoff in the guise of a remake. As far as I know, the concept of a reimagining in the disguise of a remake was and still is a revolutionary concept in this industry. For that alone, I respect the hell out of Nomura and his plan. What's better is just how well it turned out.
I'll be the first to admit that this game has incredibly cheesy dialogue, stuff that had me legitimately cringing in the early game. But as far as characterization goes, I think this game has some of the best I've ever seen. Cloud is a really good example; how on earth do you convincingly portray someone as both incredibly cool and hilariously awkward at the same time? This game walks that line perfectly from start to finish. The only part of the game I can think of him being out of character was him being actually good at dancing during the Honey Bee Inn segment, and the rest of that scene is so good that I don't even care. The other characters got similarly excellent treatment; I don't think anyone in the cast got robbed, and I left this game feeling way more positively about certain characters than I did after playing the original.
Another big aspect of the writing that I loved was Shinra. The original game's plot about a violent terrorist organization blowing up reactors to save the environment is already extremely impactful to modern audiences, and this game was right on target with its portrayal of Avalanche, Shinra, and Midgar as a whole. To put it frankly, I don't think a game has made me think of Post-9/11 America specifically as much as this game has. The platefall chapter has Shinra troops crying out "We don't negotiate with terrorists". The same chapter has one of the rebels call them fascists, and I respect the hell out of the writers for actually using that word. You break into Shinra HQ and get a cheery tour video telling you a propagandized-version of Shinra's plan to take the promised land. Shinra and Midgar citizens alike accuse the terrorist organization of being backed by old, foreign enemies. It's not Disco Elysium levels of political allegory, but in general politics make up a very large portion of this game's pot and they're handled extremely well.
Now I'll address the Whispers. I actually guessed what the whispers represented well before it was confirmed in the endgame, which I think is a sign that the "twist" was done fairly well. I think these are raw as hell. Having a force in the game representing the will of the original story is such a cool way to do the classic Fighting Fate plot. Miraculously, the stuff going on with Wedge with them towards the end actually got me to enjoy his character, with the line "Just tell me that I made a difference" probably being my favorite line in the game for how well it combines the meta-themes and the general theme of uselessness that his character had in this game. Genius writing decision to have him be the one who survives the collapse, honestly. Wedge haters are all illiterate.
Let's move on to the gameplay. I don't love the ATB system. I think making normal attacks until you're allowed to do something interesting is, while technically action combat, very much still in the spirit of turn-based combat in that it's basically waiting until you can do something interesting. It is somewhat redeemed in that certain behaviors (or the use of certain materia) can accelerate your ATB gain, which incentivizes you to keep the pressure on the enemies, but in general I think the concept of ATB itself is weak, which is unfortunate because the entire combat system is built around it. What redeems this game's combat for me is, similar to the original FF7, the materia system is awesome. I think most materia in the game is reworked such that it works really well with the action combat, making it both fun to use and fun to strategize around.
AAA game design is surprisingly common in this game, and I don't like that. The most common thing is the use of squeeze-throughs, which alone are enough for me to not give this game 5 stars. These always take me out of it, and I inherently reject them because it prevents future versions of the game to have faster load times because you've gone for a hardcoded waiting period instead of an actual load time. Karmically, this was almost immediately made an issue by the existence of the PS5 upgrade.
In summary, I trust Nomura's plan and am very curious to see what Rebirth does going forward. fuck all the haters this is not for them
I'll be the first to admit that this game has incredibly cheesy dialogue, stuff that had me legitimately cringing in the early game. But as far as characterization goes, I think this game has some of the best I've ever seen. Cloud is a really good example; how on earth do you convincingly portray someone as both incredibly cool and hilariously awkward at the same time? This game walks that line perfectly from start to finish. The only part of the game I can think of him being out of character was him being actually good at dancing during the Honey Bee Inn segment, and the rest of that scene is so good that I don't even care. The other characters got similarly excellent treatment; I don't think anyone in the cast got robbed, and I left this game feeling way more positively about certain characters than I did after playing the original.
Another big aspect of the writing that I loved was Shinra. The original game's plot about a violent terrorist organization blowing up reactors to save the environment is already extremely impactful to modern audiences, and this game was right on target with its portrayal of Avalanche, Shinra, and Midgar as a whole. To put it frankly, I don't think a game has made me think of Post-9/11 America specifically as much as this game has. The platefall chapter has Shinra troops crying out "We don't negotiate with terrorists". The same chapter has one of the rebels call them fascists, and I respect the hell out of the writers for actually using that word. You break into Shinra HQ and get a cheery tour video telling you a propagandized-version of Shinra's plan to take the promised land. Shinra and Midgar citizens alike accuse the terrorist organization of being backed by old, foreign enemies. It's not Disco Elysium levels of political allegory, but in general politics make up a very large portion of this game's pot and they're handled extremely well.
Now I'll address the Whispers. I actually guessed what the whispers represented well before it was confirmed in the endgame, which I think is a sign that the "twist" was done fairly well. I think these are raw as hell. Having a force in the game representing the will of the original story is such a cool way to do the classic Fighting Fate plot. Miraculously, the stuff going on with Wedge with them towards the end actually got me to enjoy his character, with the line "Just tell me that I made a difference" probably being my favorite line in the game for how well it combines the meta-themes and the general theme of uselessness that his character had in this game. Genius writing decision to have him be the one who survives the collapse, honestly. Wedge haters are all illiterate.
Let's move on to the gameplay. I don't love the ATB system. I think making normal attacks until you're allowed to do something interesting is, while technically action combat, very much still in the spirit of turn-based combat in that it's basically waiting until you can do something interesting. It is somewhat redeemed in that certain behaviors (or the use of certain materia) can accelerate your ATB gain, which incentivizes you to keep the pressure on the enemies, but in general I think the concept of ATB itself is weak, which is unfortunate because the entire combat system is built around it. What redeems this game's combat for me is, similar to the original FF7, the materia system is awesome. I think most materia in the game is reworked such that it works really well with the action combat, making it both fun to use and fun to strategize around.
AAA game design is surprisingly common in this game, and I don't like that. The most common thing is the use of squeeze-throughs, which alone are enough for me to not give this game 5 stars. These always take me out of it, and I inherently reject them because it prevents future versions of the game to have faster load times because you've gone for a hardcoded waiting period instead of an actual load time. Karmically, this was almost immediately made an issue by the existence of the PS5 upgrade.
In summary, I trust Nomura's plan and am very curious to see what Rebirth does going forward. fuck all the haters this is not for them