This review contains spoilers
The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII project was always meant to end with the remake of it’s cornerstone. A bold proposition, considering Square’s attempts to remake the game on both PS2 and PS3 were both halted by a simple fact: a game with the scope and detail of Final Fantasy VII cannot be faithfully envisioned in modern fidelity without an unholy amount of resources being poured into it. Not that Square is a stranger to damn near tanking the company off of massive Final Fantasy projects. It could not have been easy making the decision to develop the remake into multiple parts. People generally do not like when they experience an incomplete story, when its arcs and themes are left unresolved until the next part. While most multi-part adaptions try to manage this by having the next part be relatively shortly after, videogames are pincered by the ever-bloating length of development times. By its conclusion, the FF7 remake trilogy will be the product of a near 15-year development cycle.
The original Final Fantasy VII is a beautifully-told epic about identity and motivation, which remains as powerful in 2024 as it did back in 1997. However, since these themes are largely explored in the back half of the game, what does that make a restoration of what is essentially the game’s extended opening? Could they have played it all straight, making the perhaps easy decision to bank on nostalgia now and let those themes flourish nearly a decade later? Realistically, they could’ve gotten away with it. Instead they took an insightful re-examination of what Midgar is, to construct a brand new exploration of themes out of its scaffolding. What is left in the end, the Final Fantasy VII Remake, is perhaps the most respectful understanding of the original masterpiece we could have got: a contemplation of what it means to free ourselves from the shackles of our capitalist overlords.
From the drop, the remake takes a hold of its legacy firmly with its lavish remake of the opening. Despite beating the original game only the day prior, the sweeping shot of Midgar as the game's logo flashes onto the screen and the iconic theme swells still managed to enrapture me with emotion. Even now, it makes me a little tingly thinking about it. The entire game looks and sounds absolutely beautiful, with some of the best production values of any game I’ve ever played. Then, right into the bombing mission, and before long, you're thrust head-first into the combat. Let the battles begin.
The game makes a stark contrast to Square's previous attempt at a party-based ARPG mainline Final Fantasy. Landing blows on enemies feels satisfying and, wow, you actually have options on how to fight enemies! The recontextualization of the ATB system into a pause menu with an ever-expanding rolodex of actions to utilize how you see fit captures the feeling of the original’s combat while just being incredibly satisfying in its own right. And that’s just within each individual character, with the entire team synergizing together so well no matter the composition. It’s so easy to get into the zone of switching between characters firing off their ATB charges, focusing on the targets they’re best suited for, then switching over to the next.
The combat’s glory is never made as clear as in the boss fight. Each one has been amped up into an absolutely ridiculous display, ratcheting things up further with every phase passing in one big feast, audiovisual and gameplay alike. I greatly admire the restraint it must have took to hold off on their lavish rendition of ‘Fight On!’ until the Airbuster fight a good 10-15 hours in. These setpieces do reveal a few weird tuning decisions, particularly in regards to the stagger meter. It felt almost designed such that you pull off the stagger, get ready to wail on the boss, and then… the next phase is triggered almost immediately. It’s a minute thing, but there was a slight tinge of dissatisfaction each time, especially when it takes away your chance to pull off your Limit Breaks on the staggered foe. Limit Breaks are essentially impossible to use outside of bosses for some inexplicable reason, which sucks when they were such a fun (and consistently present!) element of the original’s combat.
When outside of combat, you’re sure doing a lot of… slowly walking down corridors. It quickly becomes apparent that FF7R’s biggest weakness is the box it put itself in from the jump, constraining itself to just being Midgar. While it’s the only reasonable span of the game it could be before going all the way to where Rebirth is ending off—and at that point like 70% of the game has been made—but oh my god is it samey. Chapter after chapter of sliding through tight spaces in tunnels, rubble, factories (a LOT of factories), laboratories, and other samey one-screen areas from the OG stretched into chapter-spanning excursions with a level of hallway syndrome rivaling The Thousand Year Door. Sure, it helps plays into the overall oppression of Midgar as an environment, but it quickly gets rather tiring to traverse. This is especially pronounced in the few chapters where the game pauses and asks you to do a handful of fetch quests that send you back down the same hallways as before (often several times). It’s hard to shake the feeling that most areas in the game could be shaved off a little and end up with a much tighter game that’s only 25 hours long instead of 35, one that ends up something closer to perfection.
In a saving grace, however, the many slow corridors are filled by the game’s surprisingly great script that make traversing them not just tolerable but even pretty enjoyable. While the original’s writing was pretty good, it languished in a horribly rushed translation and an unfortunate racist-feeling handling of Barrett. Here, here’s absolutely the star of the show, playing well against the expanded role of Shinra’s oppressiveness in the story. Plus, it’s just great to see him be Marlene’s dad. The entire cast (barring Tifa, whom I’m sure will get her dues plenty in Rebirth and especially the third game) has been fleshed out incredibly, getting way more opportunities to play off each other in fun ways. Traveling across the rooftops of Sector 5 with Aerith, having her tease Cloud as the beautiful music plays in the background was a really memorable moment in its understatedness. Even the sidequests, while by themselves fairly dull, have nice tidbits that flesh out the space of Midgar and end up coalescing into the final sidequest in such a well-designed way you just gotta respect it.
I already knew of the game’s plot divergences from years of being adjacent to soooooooooo much of the game’s discourse, but I didn’t know quite how, aside from the final boss. I will admit, it was a tough pill to swallow at first seeing the effects of the Sector 7 plate collapse, such a pivotal moment for the original, having its death toll greatly reduced. Still an important moment of course, but it lacked the same immediate impact. Reaching the end, however, it became clear I was having a moment of dissonance. I was experiencing the same plot beats (roughly) as I had a few days prior, but they were communicating an entirely different message to me.
The Final Fantasy VII Remake takes Shinra and builds it up as a unilateral force, one with eyes and hands everywhere, and asks the question: what can we do against that? And it ends up showing a bunch of small actions, not just by the main party but many of the side characters they build report with, slowly chipping away at Shinra’s impenetrable wall. The only reason so many survive the plate collapse is a Shinra guard seizing his humanity and opening the gate blockading evacuees. Parallel to it is Sephiroth, and ultimately the party’s, attempt to fight against the impenetrable wall of fate. Both seem like a perpetual state of being, where loss is inevitable, and yet beyond that is a vast world of possibility, where things can be better.
By shattering these walls at the end, both the part and the game as a whole open up a whole new world. One that can be just as exciting as the original adventure it’s based on, expanding it into something new. One where Avalanche still gets to have a presence?! One where Aerith, perhaps, doesn’t have to die????? And with most of my issues with the pacing and uniformity of the Remake being down to its very conception, Rebirth seems to have well fixed them. I have pretty good faith that by the end, unless something goes really wrong, the remake trilogy will go down as one of the most interesting, bold series of big budget games ever produced. I’m so glad I get to be here for it now.
The original Final Fantasy VII is a beautifully-told epic about identity and motivation, which remains as powerful in 2024 as it did back in 1997. However, since these themes are largely explored in the back half of the game, what does that make a restoration of what is essentially the game’s extended opening? Could they have played it all straight, making the perhaps easy decision to bank on nostalgia now and let those themes flourish nearly a decade later? Realistically, they could’ve gotten away with it. Instead they took an insightful re-examination of what Midgar is, to construct a brand new exploration of themes out of its scaffolding. What is left in the end, the Final Fantasy VII Remake, is perhaps the most respectful understanding of the original masterpiece we could have got: a contemplation of what it means to free ourselves from the shackles of our capitalist overlords.
From the drop, the remake takes a hold of its legacy firmly with its lavish remake of the opening. Despite beating the original game only the day prior, the sweeping shot of Midgar as the game's logo flashes onto the screen and the iconic theme swells still managed to enrapture me with emotion. Even now, it makes me a little tingly thinking about it. The entire game looks and sounds absolutely beautiful, with some of the best production values of any game I’ve ever played. Then, right into the bombing mission, and before long, you're thrust head-first into the combat. Let the battles begin.
The game makes a stark contrast to Square's previous attempt at a party-based ARPG mainline Final Fantasy. Landing blows on enemies feels satisfying and, wow, you actually have options on how to fight enemies! The recontextualization of the ATB system into a pause menu with an ever-expanding rolodex of actions to utilize how you see fit captures the feeling of the original’s combat while just being incredibly satisfying in its own right. And that’s just within each individual character, with the entire team synergizing together so well no matter the composition. It’s so easy to get into the zone of switching between characters firing off their ATB charges, focusing on the targets they’re best suited for, then switching over to the next.
The combat’s glory is never made as clear as in the boss fight. Each one has been amped up into an absolutely ridiculous display, ratcheting things up further with every phase passing in one big feast, audiovisual and gameplay alike. I greatly admire the restraint it must have took to hold off on their lavish rendition of ‘Fight On!’ until the Airbuster fight a good 10-15 hours in. These setpieces do reveal a few weird tuning decisions, particularly in regards to the stagger meter. It felt almost designed such that you pull off the stagger, get ready to wail on the boss, and then… the next phase is triggered almost immediately. It’s a minute thing, but there was a slight tinge of dissatisfaction each time, especially when it takes away your chance to pull off your Limit Breaks on the staggered foe. Limit Breaks are essentially impossible to use outside of bosses for some inexplicable reason, which sucks when they were such a fun (and consistently present!) element of the original’s combat.
When outside of combat, you’re sure doing a lot of… slowly walking down corridors. It quickly becomes apparent that FF7R’s biggest weakness is the box it put itself in from the jump, constraining itself to just being Midgar. While it’s the only reasonable span of the game it could be before going all the way to where Rebirth is ending off—and at that point like 70% of the game has been made—but oh my god is it samey. Chapter after chapter of sliding through tight spaces in tunnels, rubble, factories (a LOT of factories), laboratories, and other samey one-screen areas from the OG stretched into chapter-spanning excursions with a level of hallway syndrome rivaling The Thousand Year Door. Sure, it helps plays into the overall oppression of Midgar as an environment, but it quickly gets rather tiring to traverse. This is especially pronounced in the few chapters where the game pauses and asks you to do a handful of fetch quests that send you back down the same hallways as before (often several times). It’s hard to shake the feeling that most areas in the game could be shaved off a little and end up with a much tighter game that’s only 25 hours long instead of 35, one that ends up something closer to perfection.
In a saving grace, however, the many slow corridors are filled by the game’s surprisingly great script that make traversing them not just tolerable but even pretty enjoyable. While the original’s writing was pretty good, it languished in a horribly rushed translation and an unfortunate racist-feeling handling of Barrett. Here, here’s absolutely the star of the show, playing well against the expanded role of Shinra’s oppressiveness in the story. Plus, it’s just great to see him be Marlene’s dad. The entire cast (barring Tifa, whom I’m sure will get her dues plenty in Rebirth and especially the third game) has been fleshed out incredibly, getting way more opportunities to play off each other in fun ways. Traveling across the rooftops of Sector 5 with Aerith, having her tease Cloud as the beautiful music plays in the background was a really memorable moment in its understatedness. Even the sidequests, while by themselves fairly dull, have nice tidbits that flesh out the space of Midgar and end up coalescing into the final sidequest in such a well-designed way you just gotta respect it.
I already knew of the game’s plot divergences from years of being adjacent to soooooooooo much of the game’s discourse, but I didn’t know quite how, aside from the final boss. I will admit, it was a tough pill to swallow at first seeing the effects of the Sector 7 plate collapse, such a pivotal moment for the original, having its death toll greatly reduced. Still an important moment of course, but it lacked the same immediate impact. Reaching the end, however, it became clear I was having a moment of dissonance. I was experiencing the same plot beats (roughly) as I had a few days prior, but they were communicating an entirely different message to me.
The Final Fantasy VII Remake takes Shinra and builds it up as a unilateral force, one with eyes and hands everywhere, and asks the question: what can we do against that? And it ends up showing a bunch of small actions, not just by the main party but many of the side characters they build report with, slowly chipping away at Shinra’s impenetrable wall. The only reason so many survive the plate collapse is a Shinra guard seizing his humanity and opening the gate blockading evacuees. Parallel to it is Sephiroth, and ultimately the party’s, attempt to fight against the impenetrable wall of fate. Both seem like a perpetual state of being, where loss is inevitable, and yet beyond that is a vast world of possibility, where things can be better.
By shattering these walls at the end, both the part and the game as a whole open up a whole new world. One that can be just as exciting as the original adventure it’s based on, expanding it into something new. One where Avalanche still gets to have a presence?! One where Aerith, perhaps, doesn’t have to die????? And with most of my issues with the pacing and uniformity of the Remake being down to its very conception, Rebirth seems to have well fixed them. I have pretty good faith that by the end, unless something goes really wrong, the remake trilogy will go down as one of the most interesting, bold series of big budget games ever produced. I’m so glad I get to be here for it now.