I had never played a Final Fantasy game until I played this, something about 16 entries made it a little daunting to get into. But I had this in my PS store wishlist for a while, and bought it on a sale.
Overall, I quite enjoyed the game. The story does a good job of setting up the rest of the story, while ensuring that it feels like its own arc rather than solely one third of a larger product. The characters were good overall, some of the Shinra villains were a little bland, but for the most part the side characters are good, and the main cast of Cloud, Tifa, Barrett and Aerith are all great. Aerith was easily my favourite part of the entire game.
I was a little mixed on the gameplay though. I know I'm not very good at real-time combat RPGs, I really suck at any Souls-like games, but this game just seemed to be thoroughly split between really easy passages and annoying gimmicky minibosses. It could be my stupid brain that can't use critical thinking skills from years of CoD and Siege that makes me bad at these kinds of games, but I'm pretty good at turn-based RPGs, so I don't know. The split between real-time and turn-based elements is okay, but I really hope they improved on it in FF7 Rebirth. The level design also got old pretty quickly, everything funnels into setups for a mini-boss fights that I would just get mad and yell at. And most of the boss fights were annoying as well, and so were the bike chases. While none of this sounds very positive, the gameplay is well polished, the special moves are pretty cool, and when the game lets you get into a rhythm it is pretty satisfying.
Despite some gameplay hiccups, I still that found FF7 Remake was worth playing, and all the cutscenes with Aerith were easily worth the $25 I spent on this game.
Overall, I quite enjoyed the game. The story does a good job of setting up the rest of the story, while ensuring that it feels like its own arc rather than solely one third of a larger product. The characters were good overall, some of the Shinra villains were a little bland, but for the most part the side characters are good, and the main cast of Cloud, Tifa, Barrett and Aerith are all great. Aerith was easily my favourite part of the entire game.
I was a little mixed on the gameplay though. I know I'm not very good at real-time combat RPGs, I really suck at any Souls-like games, but this game just seemed to be thoroughly split between really easy passages and annoying gimmicky minibosses. It could be my stupid brain that can't use critical thinking skills from years of CoD and Siege that makes me bad at these kinds of games, but I'm pretty good at turn-based RPGs, so I don't know. The split between real-time and turn-based elements is okay, but I really hope they improved on it in FF7 Rebirth. The level design also got old pretty quickly, everything funnels into setups for a mini-boss fights that I would just get mad and yell at. And most of the boss fights were annoying as well, and so were the bike chases. While none of this sounds very positive, the gameplay is well polished, the special moves are pretty cool, and when the game lets you get into a rhythm it is pretty satisfying.
Despite some gameplay hiccups, I still that found FF7 Remake was worth playing, and all the cutscenes with Aerith were easily worth the $25 I spent on this game.