Final Fantasy VII Remake is now my all-time favorite 8/10 game—it’s highs are so incredibly high that it could easily have earned a 10/10 rating if it weren’t for the padded out chapters that offer nothing but extended play time.
Where to begin... The characters in FFVIIR are each given compelling stories to draw the player through the game, with moments of pride and reckoning that always manage to pay off. As the game reaches the climax of its Avalanche-Shinra storyline, the ways that the beloved team characters wrestle with the fallout of their actions is compelling, and it challenges players to consider the ways idealism paints over reality with too broad a brush.
The character work is only enhanced by FFVIIR’s soundtrack, which I do not hesitate to name among the great video game soundtracks of all-time. One of the trademarks of so many JRPGs is a thematic soundtrack, and the ways this game’s music rehearses and remixes character and plot themes ensures you feel the weight of every huge moment.
I also need to mention that the cinematics in this game are gorgeous, especially during Chapters 12 and 18! Contrary to many skeptics’ expectations, the game stands on its own as a story, introducing so many compelling characters and storylines within the large city of Midgar that it satisfies even the most story-focused critic.
And finally (for the positives), FFVIIR contains an incredibly diverse and complex action mechanic, creating some of the most proud moments of my gaming career. Somehow, the devs managed to take the real-time action at the core of the game and introduce an easy-to-navigate, difficult-to-master command system that keeps combat diverse, while also creating tension moments when players most need their action bar to fill up so they can restore their party’s health. I personally have never found combat more central to my enjoyment of a game!
With so much positive to say, I still feel like this game should be a 10, but I cannot forgive a few large errors and one catastrophic error the game made... The large error is the way they padded this game out. The game generally follows a structure of “1 setpiece chapter, 1 traversal chapter, 1 open world chapter, 3 story chapters,” and then rinses and repeats. The setpiece chapters and most of the story chapters are brilliantly written and paced, but the traversal chapters and open world chapters are bogged down with side quests that ultimately contribute nothing to the story or the characters. For me, the especially bad chapters were the traversal chapters where you simply moved from A to B in the world map—I know these should have been times for character development, but I don’t remember any of these conversation that happened while I was mindlessly walking around boring environments like broken-down tunnels and junk yards.
And then there is the catastrophic error—botching the end of the game mechanically (I personally loved the end-game plot). As with many games that keep me highly-engaged, I set out to beat the game in a single sitting, realizing I had only a chapter and a half left. Unfortunately, the penultimate chapter was far more padded than I expected it to be, and then a series of crazy, over-the-top plot points and gameplay mechanics started firing off in rapid succession. During all of these cutscenes and gameplay novelties, I was unable to save the game, and when I needed to put it down to do some work, I lost all my progress. This was no fault of my own—the game should never require more than 45 minutes of play without offering some opportuity to save! Eventually, I made it past that, and playing the final moments of the game late into the night, I was all the way in on the plot, when I died due to a cheap boss move and it reset me 5 cutscenes and 35 minutes of gameplay back! Naturally, with my resolve to beat the game, I started it right back up, but now I found myself skipping any cutscene I could just to make it go quicker... It is such a shame for me that I loved the story for 30 hours of this game, and then they made me resent it by implementing uncharacteristically long progression barriers.
So is the story of how one of my all-time favorite games went from a certain 10/10 to an 8/10 in a single day playing its final 5 hours. If I were willing to spoil this game for y’all, I would share even more how awesome I think the conclusion of this game is for launching into this Remake Series, but I hope you all will discover that for yourselves!
Where to begin... The characters in FFVIIR are each given compelling stories to draw the player through the game, with moments of pride and reckoning that always manage to pay off. As the game reaches the climax of its Avalanche-Shinra storyline, the ways that the beloved team characters wrestle with the fallout of their actions is compelling, and it challenges players to consider the ways idealism paints over reality with too broad a brush.
The character work is only enhanced by FFVIIR’s soundtrack, which I do not hesitate to name among the great video game soundtracks of all-time. One of the trademarks of so many JRPGs is a thematic soundtrack, and the ways this game’s music rehearses and remixes character and plot themes ensures you feel the weight of every huge moment.
I also need to mention that the cinematics in this game are gorgeous, especially during Chapters 12 and 18! Contrary to many skeptics’ expectations, the game stands on its own as a story, introducing so many compelling characters and storylines within the large city of Midgar that it satisfies even the most story-focused critic.
And finally (for the positives), FFVIIR contains an incredibly diverse and complex action mechanic, creating some of the most proud moments of my gaming career. Somehow, the devs managed to take the real-time action at the core of the game and introduce an easy-to-navigate, difficult-to-master command system that keeps combat diverse, while also creating tension moments when players most need their action bar to fill up so they can restore their party’s health. I personally have never found combat more central to my enjoyment of a game!
With so much positive to say, I still feel like this game should be a 10, but I cannot forgive a few large errors and one catastrophic error the game made... The large error is the way they padded this game out. The game generally follows a structure of “1 setpiece chapter, 1 traversal chapter, 1 open world chapter, 3 story chapters,” and then rinses and repeats. The setpiece chapters and most of the story chapters are brilliantly written and paced, but the traversal chapters and open world chapters are bogged down with side quests that ultimately contribute nothing to the story or the characters. For me, the especially bad chapters were the traversal chapters where you simply moved from A to B in the world map—I know these should have been times for character development, but I don’t remember any of these conversation that happened while I was mindlessly walking around boring environments like broken-down tunnels and junk yards.
And then there is the catastrophic error—botching the end of the game mechanically (I personally loved the end-game plot). As with many games that keep me highly-engaged, I set out to beat the game in a single sitting, realizing I had only a chapter and a half left. Unfortunately, the penultimate chapter was far more padded than I expected it to be, and then a series of crazy, over-the-top plot points and gameplay mechanics started firing off in rapid succession. During all of these cutscenes and gameplay novelties, I was unable to save the game, and when I needed to put it down to do some work, I lost all my progress. This was no fault of my own—the game should never require more than 45 minutes of play without offering some opportuity to save! Eventually, I made it past that, and playing the final moments of the game late into the night, I was all the way in on the plot, when I died due to a cheap boss move and it reset me 5 cutscenes and 35 minutes of gameplay back! Naturally, with my resolve to beat the game, I started it right back up, but now I found myself skipping any cutscene I could just to make it go quicker... It is such a shame for me that I loved the story for 30 hours of this game, and then they made me resent it by implementing uncharacteristically long progression barriers.
So is the story of how one of my all-time favorite games went from a certain 10/10 to an 8/10 in a single day playing its final 5 hours. If I were willing to spoil this game for y’all, I would share even more how awesome I think the conclusion of this game is for launching into this Remake Series, but I hope you all will discover that for yourselves!