Finally finished this one and I am glad to be done with it. I did not have the nostalgia to carry me through the outdated gameplay and vague storytelling.
Good: First off the music is a masterpiece. Nearly every song is perfection. Beautiful work.
I do appreciate more storytelling and even more important, character development. Not only for Cloud, but other party members are shown to grow; they learn from past mistakes, share trust, encourage each other. I did not complete Yuffie's missions, but I am disappointed Vincent's felt very bare boned.
Bad: I'm not going to nitpick every little thing that annoyed me because it would be a lot. I would be typing for awhile. My two major issues is the vague storytelling further into the game and the poorly aged mechanics.
There are multiple times the characters yell out, "what is going on?" and frankly, I have to agree with them. My excitement drastically plummeted once I left the first city. The storytelling becomes increasing vague with characters withholding information and talking in riddles/incomplete sentences.
Some of that could be due to the size of the game. Maybe they had to cut out dialogue or explanations? Maybe there's poor translation that I can't understand? Maybe it's simply a trope of JRPGs for the main cast to be vague as possible to create "mystery." I don't know exactly why but it's not great story telling. Thankfully late into the game, there are more explanations; certainly not for everything, but some explanation.
I HATE when games give you a wide selection of party members to form your team, only to have sections forcing you to play those under-leveled, mediocre members. Then you cannot see everyone in your group. You have to call them. But you can only call them in certain conditions. Then manually change their gear and materia, one by one. I haaaaaate this. Yay for modern quality of life changes we have now because this sucks.
31 hours isn't bad to spend into a JRPG and beat it. But I was struggling to finish it toward the end. I wanted the experience to be over. It damped my spirit so that I don't have much of an interest in Remake.
Good: First off the music is a masterpiece. Nearly every song is perfection. Beautiful work.
I do appreciate more storytelling and even more important, character development. Not only for Cloud, but other party members are shown to grow; they learn from past mistakes, share trust, encourage each other. I did not complete Yuffie's missions, but I am disappointed Vincent's felt very bare boned.
Bad: I'm not going to nitpick every little thing that annoyed me because it would be a lot. I would be typing for awhile. My two major issues is the vague storytelling further into the game and the poorly aged mechanics.
There are multiple times the characters yell out, "what is going on?" and frankly, I have to agree with them. My excitement drastically plummeted once I left the first city. The storytelling becomes increasing vague with characters withholding information and talking in riddles/incomplete sentences.
Some of that could be due to the size of the game. Maybe they had to cut out dialogue or explanations? Maybe there's poor translation that I can't understand? Maybe it's simply a trope of JRPGs for the main cast to be vague as possible to create "mystery." I don't know exactly why but it's not great story telling. Thankfully late into the game, there are more explanations; certainly not for everything, but some explanation.
I HATE when games give you a wide selection of party members to form your team, only to have sections forcing you to play those under-leveled, mediocre members. Then you cannot see everyone in your group. You have to call them. But you can only call them in certain conditions. Then manually change their gear and materia, one by one. I haaaaaate this. Yay for modern quality of life changes we have now because this sucks.
31 hours isn't bad to spend into a JRPG and beat it. But I was struggling to finish it toward the end. I wanted the experience to be over. It damped my spirit so that I don't have much of an interest in Remake.