Im a huge fan of everything FFVII. Love the cast, the world, materia system, the movies, the games, all of it. I wanted to beat this in preperation for Rebirth since it looks like they're going to be touching a bit heavier on Zack and decided Id put it off for long enough. Over the course of a week and 14 hours of gameplay, I can confidetntly say this is one of the most annoying games I have ever played.
The combat is braindead and unfun and is made even worse by the absolute worst random encounter system I have ever experienced. All this just to feel zero progression outside of "number go up!". I kid you not I changed my materia loadout maybe twice this entire game. It was just the same rinse and repeat combat over and over, hour after hour. Im know there is deeper stuff with materia fusion and leveling up the DMW but there was nothing that couldnt be beat with just mashing and some magic so never felt compelled to check it out.
This made doing anything in any mission or dungeon extreamly tedious. I didnt want to explore these areas becaues I didnt want to participate in the awful combat loop. So every mission just boiled down to a "how can I finish this as quickly as possible to get to the next story beat." And those story beats, not that great either.
The story is a weird mix of showing you what you were told about already with Zacks backstory (him and aerith, stuff with cloud) and that part is a decent bit of fun. But the other half is giving him this halfbaked character arc that is presented in the most roundabout way imaginable. I could kind of see what they were going for and to the games credit it does stick the landing (ill talk about the ending in a sec) but for most of the games run time, its a lot of beating around the bush babbling about nothing or spewing ideals over and over again, thank you angeal (genesis's obsession with loveless was one of the worst parts of the game i dont care if the story is a parable or something it sucked).
The one redeaming aspect of this game was its ending. Not the final boss, thats up there with KH1 Ursala as my least favorite fights ever, but the actual closing scenes of the game. Zack's whole drive to be a hero pays off and we finally get to see Cloud become the guy we knew in FFVII. Spoilers - that whole scene of Zack's death and Cloud becoming his living legacy was really the whole reason I wanted to play this game and they really pulled it off really well, so genuine praise for that.
Overall, the ending was great, but it took 14 hours of some of the worst arpg gameplay to get there so even for the most diehard FFVII fans I can barely reccomend this.
(accidentally deleted this review, its back now)
The combat is braindead and unfun and is made even worse by the absolute worst random encounter system I have ever experienced. All this just to feel zero progression outside of "number go up!". I kid you not I changed my materia loadout maybe twice this entire game. It was just the same rinse and repeat combat over and over, hour after hour. Im know there is deeper stuff with materia fusion and leveling up the DMW but there was nothing that couldnt be beat with just mashing and some magic so never felt compelled to check it out.
This made doing anything in any mission or dungeon extreamly tedious. I didnt want to explore these areas becaues I didnt want to participate in the awful combat loop. So every mission just boiled down to a "how can I finish this as quickly as possible to get to the next story beat." And those story beats, not that great either.
The story is a weird mix of showing you what you were told about already with Zacks backstory (him and aerith, stuff with cloud) and that part is a decent bit of fun. But the other half is giving him this halfbaked character arc that is presented in the most roundabout way imaginable. I could kind of see what they were going for and to the games credit it does stick the landing (ill talk about the ending in a sec) but for most of the games run time, its a lot of beating around the bush babbling about nothing or spewing ideals over and over again, thank you angeal (genesis's obsession with loveless was one of the worst parts of the game i dont care if the story is a parable or something it sucked).
The one redeaming aspect of this game was its ending. Not the final boss, thats up there with KH1 Ursala as my least favorite fights ever, but the actual closing scenes of the game. Zack's whole drive to be a hero pays off and we finally get to see Cloud become the guy we knew in FFVII. Spoilers - that whole scene of Zack's death and Cloud becoming his living legacy was really the whole reason I wanted to play this game and they really pulled it off really well, so genuine praise for that.
Overall, the ending was great, but it took 14 hours of some of the worst arpg gameplay to get there so even for the most diehard FFVII fans I can barely reccomend this.
(accidentally deleted this review, its back now)