I wish I could say I enjoyed my time with this game, but I mostly found this to be a slog to get through. There’s definitely some passion and effort put into this, but the parts I enjoyed are so few and far between that it became a struggle to push myself through this game.
This game suffers from a lot of the same issues that turned me away from Sony’s exclusives. A significant amount of time is dedicated to these very slow walk-and-talk segments, ducking under debris, shimmying between walls, and other cinematic gameplay stuff that pretty much amounts to holding up on the control stick. I get that a lot of these are masked loading screens, but it got to the point where I wanted to uninstall the game every time I saw one of those blue arrows on the ground signaling it was time to spend the next 30 seconds shuffling down a narrow hallway.
Even ignoring that, a lot of this game really does feel like filler. Parts of the original that were short and sweet are extended to tedious lengths. The giant robot arm puzzles in the tunnels and escaping from the Turks at the church, along with the following sequence walking across the rooftops with Aerith, are prime examples of this. Most of your time is spent walking down barely disguised hallways or going up and down ladders until you reach the next enemy encounter. Midgar in FF7 was linear, but it was designed in such a way that you could suspend your disbelief and easily imagine it as a big city despite the PS1’s limitations. The pacing was brisk and there never was a dull moment. Remake in comparison stretches things out too much and adds way too much fluff that doesn’t really need to be there. I really didn’t need that train graveyard segment with the ghosts, nor did I need to chase a little monster guy through the sewers to help this twink who got cucked by Don Corneo.
I did like how they handled most of the characters, and despite all the awkward anime grunts, I do think the English voice acting is surprisingly great. Most of the story that was in OG FF7 is done faithfully, and some parts like Wall Market are fantastic. However, all the meta elements with the plot ghosts and Sephiroth really don’t sit right with me. Pretty much every scene involving them comes off as stupid and silly, especially the part before the final boss when Aerith starts spouting some vague Kingdom Hearts-tier nonsense about fate and all that. Regardless, at least the most important parts of the story are done well.
Combat is where I’m most ambivalent about, because while I get what they’re going for, it never really gelled with me. As an action game, it felt unsatisfying and kind of clunky due to little things like your attacks having little to no hitstun when hitting enemies, lack of clear tells for enemy attacks, being unable to cancel out of an attack animation to block, and so on. I get that this isn’t supposed to be an action game and you aren’t supposed to play it like one, and trust me I do know how you’re supposed to play this game, it just never really felt all that satisfying to me. A lot of it is just mashing basic attack to build up your ATB gauge, selecting a skill or magic, then switching to the next character while the other character’s attack animation is playing out. It gets monotonous pretty quickly.
The stagger system is also strange because in regular battles it barely mattered because most enemies will die too quickly to really take advantage of it. Meanwhile, in boss battles, by the time you stagger a boss, it’ll shift into the next phase and the stagger will go away. It does start to matter more for some bosses, but something about it makes almost every boss feel samey. Also, this is a very minor thing, but I feel like you barely get to use limits in this game. I think I used Barret’s limit maybe once or twice in my entire playthrough. Every time I saw the Limit option on the ATB menu, I thought to myself, “oh yeah, limits are in this game.”
There are definitely things I do like a lot, like how they handled the materia system and getting skills from weapons. They did a good job incentivizing you to switch up your gear and try different skills. I wish that some of the higher tier spells didn’t cost so much though, because they never felt worth using due to how little mana you get. Fighting as Tifa is probably my favorite part of the game. Her dodge is by far the best, and she felt the closest to playing an actual action game. Summons are also really cool and probably the most interesting implementation of them I’ve seen in a Final Fantasy game, although I do wish you could use them more. Locking them only to boss fights under specific conditions is pretty lame.
All in all, I think my main problem more than anything is that the game left me feeling bored half of the time. Playing this made me want to just go back and replay the original FF7 instead. What I’ve seen of Rebirth does look somewhat more interesting, if only because it looks like there’s a lot more variety and a lot more freedom. I can see myself possibly giving that a shot in the future, and maybe even having a change of heart with Remake. As for now though, Square Enix’s modern take on FF7 has failed to capture me.
This game suffers from a lot of the same issues that turned me away from Sony’s exclusives. A significant amount of time is dedicated to these very slow walk-and-talk segments, ducking under debris, shimmying between walls, and other cinematic gameplay stuff that pretty much amounts to holding up on the control stick. I get that a lot of these are masked loading screens, but it got to the point where I wanted to uninstall the game every time I saw one of those blue arrows on the ground signaling it was time to spend the next 30 seconds shuffling down a narrow hallway.
Even ignoring that, a lot of this game really does feel like filler. Parts of the original that were short and sweet are extended to tedious lengths. The giant robot arm puzzles in the tunnels and escaping from the Turks at the church, along with the following sequence walking across the rooftops with Aerith, are prime examples of this. Most of your time is spent walking down barely disguised hallways or going up and down ladders until you reach the next enemy encounter. Midgar in FF7 was linear, but it was designed in such a way that you could suspend your disbelief and easily imagine it as a big city despite the PS1’s limitations. The pacing was brisk and there never was a dull moment. Remake in comparison stretches things out too much and adds way too much fluff that doesn’t really need to be there. I really didn’t need that train graveyard segment with the ghosts, nor did I need to chase a little monster guy through the sewers to help this twink who got cucked by Don Corneo.
I did like how they handled most of the characters, and despite all the awkward anime grunts, I do think the English voice acting is surprisingly great. Most of the story that was in OG FF7 is done faithfully, and some parts like Wall Market are fantastic. However, all the meta elements with the plot ghosts and Sephiroth really don’t sit right with me. Pretty much every scene involving them comes off as stupid and silly, especially the part before the final boss when Aerith starts spouting some vague Kingdom Hearts-tier nonsense about fate and all that. Regardless, at least the most important parts of the story are done well.
Combat is where I’m most ambivalent about, because while I get what they’re going for, it never really gelled with me. As an action game, it felt unsatisfying and kind of clunky due to little things like your attacks having little to no hitstun when hitting enemies, lack of clear tells for enemy attacks, being unable to cancel out of an attack animation to block, and so on. I get that this isn’t supposed to be an action game and you aren’t supposed to play it like one, and trust me I do know how you’re supposed to play this game, it just never really felt all that satisfying to me. A lot of it is just mashing basic attack to build up your ATB gauge, selecting a skill or magic, then switching to the next character while the other character’s attack animation is playing out. It gets monotonous pretty quickly.
The stagger system is also strange because in regular battles it barely mattered because most enemies will die too quickly to really take advantage of it. Meanwhile, in boss battles, by the time you stagger a boss, it’ll shift into the next phase and the stagger will go away. It does start to matter more for some bosses, but something about it makes almost every boss feel samey. Also, this is a very minor thing, but I feel like you barely get to use limits in this game. I think I used Barret’s limit maybe once or twice in my entire playthrough. Every time I saw the Limit option on the ATB menu, I thought to myself, “oh yeah, limits are in this game.”
There are definitely things I do like a lot, like how they handled the materia system and getting skills from weapons. They did a good job incentivizing you to switch up your gear and try different skills. I wish that some of the higher tier spells didn’t cost so much though, because they never felt worth using due to how little mana you get. Fighting as Tifa is probably my favorite part of the game. Her dodge is by far the best, and she felt the closest to playing an actual action game. Summons are also really cool and probably the most interesting implementation of them I’ve seen in a Final Fantasy game, although I do wish you could use them more. Locking them only to boss fights under specific conditions is pretty lame.
All in all, I think my main problem more than anything is that the game left me feeling bored half of the time. Playing this made me want to just go back and replay the original FF7 instead. What I’ve seen of Rebirth does look somewhat more interesting, if only because it looks like there’s a lot more variety and a lot more freedom. I can see myself possibly giving that a shot in the future, and maybe even having a change of heart with Remake. As for now though, Square Enix’s modern take on FF7 has failed to capture me.