Such a disappointing remake of an iconic game. I only played the original a few months so I am not biased in terms of nostalgia or that I went in wanting to hate it, in fact I went in thinking I'd love it, even though I knew the story only went up to the end of Midgar I was certain the game could justify the 20+ hour playtime and have me come out of it looking forward to Rebirth as well as give me more content out of Midgar. Unfortunately it seems I had the opposite reaction coming out of this game.

I guess I should've seen this coming, but this game is absolutely packed with artificially long and bloated sections, and it just makes this game such a slog to get through. Whenever the game faithfully stuck to the original games story and events I found myself enjoying it a lot more, because it was following the quick pacing of the 6 hour Midgar section from the original, but then it's ruined by making a section way longer than necessary (robot hand, train graveyard, Wall Market etc) and it's just so annoying how close they were to a consistently good game if you literally remove anything which is new about it. I actually found myself liking characters less when they tried to flesh them out in new segments because it was so cringey and felt ultimately pointless, and whilst I can agree characters like Jessie, Wedge and Biggs might've needed a bit more characterisation, but the way they did it with Chapter 4 was not enjoyable for me at all, as Jessie has been turned into a weird and sexual character to Cloud whereas she used to be much more lowkey, and just comes across as trying to appeal to the horny anime fans who'd only like Tifa for one specific reason.

The other massive disappointment to me was the mishandling of Sephiroth and the inclusion of the Whispers. I feel like the Whispers speak for themselves, it's a really annoying attempt to be meta which makes the 'remake' confusing to newcomers, as well as ruins story-beats from the original which shouldn't had been touched in the first place, maybe if they didn't market this game as a remake I'd not mind as much, but this is the official remake of FF7 we're getting and instead of an actual story we get to deal with ghosts forcing the story to go along and annoying story beats which didn't happen at all, such as somehow bringing characters from the dead like Wedge and Biggs (and probably Jessie) which kinda devalues their whole purpose in the first place. In the original I just saw them as people you know who died fighting Shinra when the plate collapses and they give you the first proper more motivation to start your journey out of Midgar to battle Shinra and find Sephiroth, but to this game they're superhuman and can survive whole cities getting dropped ontop of them. I really don't get why we need to have characters who originally die survive, as it really feels like there aren't any stakes.

And Sephiroth appearing all the time in Midgar straight-up sucks, the best part about the original was having him being built up through word-of-mouth and the legendary status he'd gained through his time in SOLDIER, and instead of seeing him commit his acts you just witness them afterwards and you still feel how powerful he is despite never meeting him. When I played the original and you get to the top of the Shinra Building only to see the President has been murdered really did shock me, as the main villain of Midgar is dead and really gave me an idea as to what Sephiroth is like, and it leaves an impact on the story too for a good while as Cloud has no idea if Sephiroth has actually returned. However this time he just appears and taunts Cloud whenever he wants as well as openly does his killing, which leaves new players at a disadvantage as they don't get to experience the mysterious atmosphere he used to have, which still could've been done even if they are doing the Whispers/fate storyline. The excuse of introducing him within the first hour because 'everyone already knows Sephiroth' is such bullshit, and it's just because they didn't wanna risk having a whole game based on the segment where there's no Sephiroth without Sephiroth, as that's the villain everyone knows.

If I'm being honest I don't hate Final Fantasy VII Remake. I do however feel frustrated with it, as they take a good premise of updating the game of FF7 by adding more personality to characters so their deaths mean more, and more importantly giving a more modern method of playing the game similar to the RE2 Remake to those who don't like the old PlayStation gameplay. However instead it's turned into a boring, over-bloated, uninspired part of the FF7 story, which took the same amount of time to complete as it did my whole first playthrough of the original, but I somehow feel like I experienced the same amount as the 6 hours it took me to leave Midgar originally

People seem to not fuck with the platforming in this game due to its quirks, but I personally am all for it. It's like GnG in that you can't really correct your trajectory in mid-air (besides double jump or ground pound), which is definitely different to like 99% of 2D platformers out there.

Personally, I feel like the difficulty is vastly overstated for this game, at least for most of the game.

It's also got that Disgaea charm, aesthetic, and music, which is a bonus!

What I hate is the bosses. A lot of them are just meh while others feel kinda jank (mainly the huge ones). But they all have one thing in common and it's that they require a bullshit amount of mashing the goddamn square button to deal any damage. Prinnies in this game rely on death by a thousand cuts to win, and that means you will mash square a thousand times for every boss.

This is specially true for the final boss, which takes jack shit damage and has a tight 3 minute timer. I died 150 times on that damn boss alone, and it was almost entirely due to me getting sloppy trying to find moments to attack. Because you can't be patient and take your time with that one, you NEED to use every single opening you can to violate your square button if you want have a chance of winning this shit. Personally, I hope the people responsible for the final boss specifically never make an action game again.

Other than the meh bosses and reliance on mashing, I actually quite enjoyed this game. Enough that I will be going back in to (at least try to) go through Asagi's story. It's just that I feel that the final boss shortened the lifespan of my arms and my Vita...

Make It Sweet! is my favorite Cardiacs album.


Made me kinda emotional to see new to us NanaOn-Sha stuff in 2023 even if it's just some new demo screen cutscenes. NanaOn-Sha was really one of the best to ever do it. It's sad that they got stuck in license game hell and then they got stuck in crowdfunding hell, It's been said enough but the modern games industry really is such an evil force. Tear it all down.



Also just as a lil aside i found milkcan's archived 1999 website and it's really cute. http://web.archive.org/web/20010603133557/http://anex.sme.co.jp/MilkCan/cgi-bin/bbs.cgi I hope Whitney found the music video eventually.