Final Fantasy VII: Remake is exactly what it had to be, nothing less, and definitely not anything more.
With Crisis Core's recent remaster coming out, I had a couple of thoughts:
A: I first played Crisis Core before I first played FFVII. Now that it's been long enough that I've forgotten a lot of the particulars, maybe I should play the games in release order this time.
And B: maybe I should try to make some more progress in the remake...
The first ten hours or so are kind of incredible, but it gets old quick. Around the time I got to Wall Market I would play the game for about an hour, drop it for a few months, repeat. I did not play the game at all for the entirety of 2022, I played it for 3 hours on New Years Day 2023. I stopped playing just as the game dropped me off in another side-quest hub, and I'm not particularly eager to pick it back up.
To start with a positive, the soundtrack is very good; not just in the obvious sense that these are well-written songs, well-loved songs that we're all predisposed to like, but that the way they're handled in game is very effective. The way that many songs have multiple versions that weave together, in and out, as the tension of the immediate moment of gameplay demands. Ramping up as combat starts, settling back down as the smoke settles. Despite these kinds of techniques having been possible in games for decades I can think of very few examples of it being done this gracefully.
The game probably is the best "mainline" big Final Fantasy game in quite some time, maybe the best since IX (though I don't feel qualified to say this definitively because I haven't seen the credits of most of those games), but I think that says more about the games that have come out in the meantime than it does about this one. For better or worse there's a lot about this game that has been carried over from more recent entries in the series, whether it's XV's loading crawlspaces or XIII's crystarium. Most of the more positive aspects of this game clearly come from the simple fact that it is a game we like; these are characters we're already attached to, the materia system is one we all understand and have already decided decades ago is good, everything that makes this game enjoyable is a known quantity. We don't look forward and wonder "what" will happen next, we just wonder "how".
The combat is genuinely terrible, putting more "action" in Final Fantasy games was always a mistake and I'm tired of pretending it's not. This is bad. Barely halfway through the game mega-potions are the only restoratives that give you a meaningful amount of health, and enemies will perfectly lock on, hound you down, and cut your health in half with one attack. You'll go into the menu to use a potion and get killed before your animation goes through. You'll go into the menu to use an ability and get knocked back, wasting your AP. I'm tired of people saying that a game making you "feel" like you're doing something, whether it's in gameplay or in narrative choices, is actually anywhere near as valuable as giving you genuine agency: it is not. Being able to press a button to swing your sword, to block, to dodge, none of these have actually improved on Final Fantasy VII's combat, they've just catered to morons who have no brains or patience. Between a traditional turn-based/ATB system or pure hack-n-slash, this is the worst of both worlds.
The game sure does look nice. There's all kinds of sparkly effects flying all over the place every time you attack. Everyone's eyes look so pretty. But ya' know what doesn't look nice? Midgar. Hoo, boy! I am so tired of looking at Midgar. Midgar only works because it's the first part of a larger game, the fact that after a few hours of prerendered concrete and steel beams you're let out into the 3D greenery of the overworld, but you don't get that here. You get 30 or so hours of metal and dirt, and you gotta wait a few years for the rest. The plate drop segment loses all of its urgency because it's multiple chapters long, I just don't buy it. Virtually every addition that they've made to pad out the narrative feels like bad anime filler. I hate that the game still has to lean on the rest of the original, playing the main theme in town, playing jazz versions of songs on radios. It robs each element of Final Fantasy VII of its context, it cheapens both this installment and the next.
Somehow by bringing the game into the 21st century, with these fully realized, detailed 3D environments, they've only made it feel even more incongruous than the original. On the PlayStation, where the disparity in detail and style is obvious, I can accept these things, I can take them for what they represent. On the PlayStation 4, all of these elements beg to be taken at face value, and it just doesn't gel together. The voice acting is far from bad, and nobody is as annoying as some of the characters from X or XIII, but adding this additional complexity to the game's presentation opens so many doors for awkward moments; whether it's chatter in gameplay that repeats a little too often, or lines that could probably work but just get delivered a bit weird, or the timing of the line disrupts the conversational rhythm (even "you owe me a pizza" could work if it weren't for this).
I feel like I should like this less than I do, there's a lot of bullshit, but these are things I know. I clapped when I saw Sephiroth.
With Crisis Core's recent remaster coming out, I had a couple of thoughts:
A: I first played Crisis Core before I first played FFVII. Now that it's been long enough that I've forgotten a lot of the particulars, maybe I should play the games in release order this time.
And B: maybe I should try to make some more progress in the remake...
The first ten hours or so are kind of incredible, but it gets old quick. Around the time I got to Wall Market I would play the game for about an hour, drop it for a few months, repeat. I did not play the game at all for the entirety of 2022, I played it for 3 hours on New Years Day 2023. I stopped playing just as the game dropped me off in another side-quest hub, and I'm not particularly eager to pick it back up.
To start with a positive, the soundtrack is very good; not just in the obvious sense that these are well-written songs, well-loved songs that we're all predisposed to like, but that the way they're handled in game is very effective. The way that many songs have multiple versions that weave together, in and out, as the tension of the immediate moment of gameplay demands. Ramping up as combat starts, settling back down as the smoke settles. Despite these kinds of techniques having been possible in games for decades I can think of very few examples of it being done this gracefully.
The game probably is the best "mainline" big Final Fantasy game in quite some time, maybe the best since IX (though I don't feel qualified to say this definitively because I haven't seen the credits of most of those games), but I think that says more about the games that have come out in the meantime than it does about this one. For better or worse there's a lot about this game that has been carried over from more recent entries in the series, whether it's XV's loading crawlspaces or XIII's crystarium. Most of the more positive aspects of this game clearly come from the simple fact that it is a game we like; these are characters we're already attached to, the materia system is one we all understand and have already decided decades ago is good, everything that makes this game enjoyable is a known quantity. We don't look forward and wonder "what" will happen next, we just wonder "how".
The combat is genuinely terrible, putting more "action" in Final Fantasy games was always a mistake and I'm tired of pretending it's not. This is bad. Barely halfway through the game mega-potions are the only restoratives that give you a meaningful amount of health, and enemies will perfectly lock on, hound you down, and cut your health in half with one attack. You'll go into the menu to use a potion and get killed before your animation goes through. You'll go into the menu to use an ability and get knocked back, wasting your AP. I'm tired of people saying that a game making you "feel" like you're doing something, whether it's in gameplay or in narrative choices, is actually anywhere near as valuable as giving you genuine agency: it is not. Being able to press a button to swing your sword, to block, to dodge, none of these have actually improved on Final Fantasy VII's combat, they've just catered to morons who have no brains or patience. Between a traditional turn-based/ATB system or pure hack-n-slash, this is the worst of both worlds.
The game sure does look nice. There's all kinds of sparkly effects flying all over the place every time you attack. Everyone's eyes look so pretty. But ya' know what doesn't look nice? Midgar. Hoo, boy! I am so tired of looking at Midgar. Midgar only works because it's the first part of a larger game, the fact that after a few hours of prerendered concrete and steel beams you're let out into the 3D greenery of the overworld, but you don't get that here. You get 30 or so hours of metal and dirt, and you gotta wait a few years for the rest. The plate drop segment loses all of its urgency because it's multiple chapters long, I just don't buy it. Virtually every addition that they've made to pad out the narrative feels like bad anime filler. I hate that the game still has to lean on the rest of the original, playing the main theme in town, playing jazz versions of songs on radios. It robs each element of Final Fantasy VII of its context, it cheapens both this installment and the next.
Somehow by bringing the game into the 21st century, with these fully realized, detailed 3D environments, they've only made it feel even more incongruous than the original. On the PlayStation, where the disparity in detail and style is obvious, I can accept these things, I can take them for what they represent. On the PlayStation 4, all of these elements beg to be taken at face value, and it just doesn't gel together. The voice acting is far from bad, and nobody is as annoying as some of the characters from X or XIII, but adding this additional complexity to the game's presentation opens so many doors for awkward moments; whether it's chatter in gameplay that repeats a little too often, or lines that could probably work but just get delivered a bit weird, or the timing of the line disrupts the conversational rhythm (even "you owe me a pizza" could work if it weren't for this).
I feel like I should like this less than I do, there's a lot of bullshit, but these are things I know. I clapped when I saw Sephiroth.