nomura belongs in jail

love the moment to moment, the character interactions, the banter, the detailed locales, the music, the expanded history on stuff like the republic, the open world that focuses on fewer more meaningful things to do instead of a thousand useless things to do, half the mini-games

hate the combat, the other half of the mini-games, all the alternate world shit that only exists to justify changing canon (which i'm not even against, just feels like a nuclear overkill plot device), completely changing what the reunion means, the needless complications and changes to the scene after temple of the ancients with the black materia and sephiroth (barret knocks it out of cloud's hand, sephiroth picks it up, then he drops it again so he can make cloud give it to him???), the fact that zack is on the cover and the big mystery yet does absolutely nothing of value the entire game until a suddenly crucial final boss fight, a dozen or so more minor issues that are more about changes to what i personally felt were important themes and narratives from the original and are no longer such here (or poorly done), chadley. game feels like it constantly undermines itself emotionally by pulling the heavier punches that the original had (dyne's suicide, for one)

also no remake scene of sephiroth beaming cloud with a materia, flipping around, and flying at the camera, so. dogshit.