The quality of the chapters can really fluctuate. On one hand, the near-future chapter might be one of my favorite short game stories ever. On the other hand, I found the distant future chapter so miserable that it took me a year to get back into playing the game. I would say that it is more likely for a chapter to be poor over being good.

I honestly started the game really loving it, but as time went on, I grew more and more disappointed. I found myself especially frustrated with the Middle Ages chapter. Maybe it's my fault for going in with expectations, as I heard it talked up as "a great subversion of classic SNES RPG tropes", but I find it to be either the second worst (behind the distant future) or the worst chapter. The overall routing and things you need to do can be a bit strange, but that's the least of my complaints. It feels extremely like it's contemporary (now and in the SNES era), and I'm not easily wowed by "the hero turned into a villain" stories. It felt like it thought it was something much more than it was. 

Not only that, but it's hard to take anything that is trying to be subversive seriously when it still relies on age-old, misogynist tropes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's not fully in line with the tropes, but does Alethea exist outside of the men that surround her? I think the treatment of women in Live A Live is something to comment on as a whole. There is one decently written girl character (Lei), which is incredibly pathetic for a game about multiple places and time periods with multiple different batches of ensemble casts.

To be honest, I actually did not 100% finish the game. I got to one of the final bosses, found it aggravating, saw that all that was left was a boss rush and a final final boss, and called it there. The final chapter felt incredibly weak with no good payoff or reason for everything to be connected. It also felt very designed around the fact that the person playing it would be in love with the game, which is a fair assumption as the person playing had gotten to the very end, but still. I like hard video games, I like hard RPGs, the first Odio boss fight felt like a boring slog and grinding around the dungeon got absolutely meager results. It was not anything i wanted to put more time into.

I wanted to like it, and the game is interesting in concept, but it weakens as it goes on, and its charm does not last. It's an incredibly disappointing game.

Honestly, I have so much to say about this game but also so little. In short, this game is just another shitty compilation game. It's not some genius remake-sequel concept that Remake's ending teased... it just truly a bad remake. They glitz everything up with pretty graphics, epic cutscenes, and top-notch voice acting (and I mean, if there's one aspect this game nails... it's the voice acting because everyone is perfectly cast). But that all exists to hide how shallow this game really is. It's not just that this isn't as good as the OG, it also misunderstands what the OG was trying to convey in literally every big story beat. Genuine, heartfelt moments are ruined with over the top cutscenes that take you out of the moment, horribly timed and useless lore dumps, and long, flashy bossfights that take away from the sentiment of the moment. And it feels like they get worse as the game progresses. Like, I thought they messed up the Corel section by turning the tragic story of Dyne and his decent in madness into this Hollywood-ass "last stand" because godforbid our actions have consequences, but then Cosmo Canyon is somehow even worse. Red finding out the truth about Seto is one of the most poignant moments in the OG, but this game cannot let a moment breathe... they have to introduce this stupid as Gi Tribe nonsense to take you out of the moment. And then there's the ending... please don't get me started. It's so fucking awful. Not only is Aerith's actual death scene completely ruined because the writers couldn't help but do some fuckshit till the very last second (which btw, as a newcomer is probably gonna be so confusing) but they follow-up it up with so many long as fuck bossfights that you end up completely forgetting that she even died at all. And it's funny, because Jenova would've been a perfectly good final boss. I mean, every party member participates, there are multiple phases and it's a very fun fight... but nope. This is an FF7 game, which means we have to end on a Sephiroth fight.. and wait, there's more! Because this is a compilation game, we need Zack to be there and he has to epic and cool. In what is the most fan-fiction moment in the game, Cloud and Zack teamup to fight Sephiroth. And then Bizarro Sephiroth shows up because why not and we get what is probably the most irritating fight sequence ever before ending on another Sephiroth fight where... get this: Aerith shows up. Now, the fight itself was quite fun. But having Aerith shows up is so terrible on a narrative and thematic level, it's not even funny. It's just so bad, I'm kind of baffled. I really hate what they do with Cloud at the end too. The OG had a pretty honest and caring depiction of mental health, but in this game, Cloud just goes anime psycho and now we get Aerith's ghost parading around like she's Hannah fucking Baker. It's just so stupid. And you know, throughout the game the only thing I could ask is why? What as the point in doing all that shit at the end of Remake is Rebirth was going to be the same game anyway? Why remake the same game but 80x longer? Why add these dumb puzzles? Why am I doing any of these sidequests? Why does this game exist?

There are some merits to the game. The combat is genuinely really fun. Hard to remember that at times since the game throws so many bosses at you that I just get tired, but this combat is fun. The customization is fun. A lot of the mini-games are pretty enjoyable, as it the world exploration... until Chadley shows up. Seriously, I didn't have an issue with the guy in Remake because you could pretty much ignore him, but he just doesn't go away in this game. You cannot move around the world without his bothering you. Who thought that was a good idea?

I can certainly see myself returning to this game to finish up the stuff I left behind, because when I ignore the story, I actually do quite like it. The Gilgamesh stuff was really fun and I do want to see it again and I'd like to finish some of the other side content. It's the reason why I don't think this game is a 0/10, but this game is so frustrating. It butchers FF7 so hard. Nothing they add to this game means anything. It all exists for fanservice and that lack of artistic merit bothers me so much that it just muddies the whole experience. I think this may legitimately be my new least favorite video game of all time, and that sucks because I really, really wanted to like this game.

For context: I did not grow up with or during FFVII. The first time I paid interest to FFVII was actually around the time the remake came out. I saw the opening to it and thought it was neat, so I decided to check out the original, which I fully beat then played FFVIIR months later.

FFVIIR is a game I've grown to hate the more time and thought I put into it. 

The graphics are incredible, which should go without saying. The location design and art direction are wonderful. Wall Market at night is a jaw-dropping view.

The OST is perfect, and the fun remixes you find around the game are incredible. 

I do think some characters are improved and have more to them, but in the same breath, Aerith, Jessie, and Tifa almost feel like slight back-steps. The fan service and cute flirty moments feel worse than the original, but that just may be personal. Tifa in particular—I know her whole thing is being strong and sensitive; everyone understands this, and I like this aspect of her. I think she's a great counter to Aerith, but I feel like FFVIIR can push this characteristic to its limit, and it ignores how Tifa's kindness and sensitivity directly lead her to become a passionate member of Avalanche. All of Tifa's goals and aspirations have been ignored just so she can just be another cute girl who's Cloud's arm-candy. 

I think my main issue with Tifa is that she is emblematic of something in this game that I absolutely despise. Games adding gray morality to their stories has become almost a trend. Developers see other games do it and the positive reception nuance gets, but they don't understand that it's not going to work in every situation. Some grass-roots eco-terrorist group is just not on the same level as a fascist and imperialistic government. That's not even a political debate that has to be entertained since FFVIIR takes all the moments from FFVII where Avalanche did something bad and has Shinra do them instead. It's hard to not be incredibly frustrated when the game throws an aggravating section where townsfolk are crying, trying to make the player feel bad about their involvement in Avalanche, right after showing that Shinra was directly at fault. Near the end of the game, Aerith says something along the lines of "Shinra isn't the enemy!" which is just laughable since they lead to literally every bad event in the plot. From my knowledge, FFVIIR has the same writers as the original, I don't understand how they are messing up the Shinra plot so much.

Now onto the additions and ending. To preface, I am not fully for the wave of constant remakes, and I actually love when remakes try to shake things up and do something special. I adore when games acknowledge what they are and how they exist and tell a story about that. MGS2 is one of my favorite games ever, if not my absolute favorite. I love FFVIIR as a concept. Taking one of the most important games ever, one that people have wanted a remake of for ages, and messing with it and making it a story about being a remake of one of the most anticipated games ever is an incredible concept, but in practice it is less ideal. Hammering in "Fans are like evil ghosts that force the characters to suffer so the plot can go on how they want it to!" just feels lame. It is so blatant as well. They are shoving fifth-grade reading-level dialogue about fighting destiny so often that it becomes annoying.

Not only that, but in FFVIIR's quest for meta-narrative, it completely tramples over important events and meanings from the original game. FFVII was very aptly not about fate; everything that happened in that game had an inciting incident. One of the most important moments in FFVII is when Cloud implied Aerith sacrificed herself, and Tifa stopped him in his tracks because Aerith didn't. She died because someone killed her. That's it.

The desire to show Sephiroth every second and the constant teasing of later plotlines, all seem to be done to in Square's attempts to "appease fans". Even if it can be argued they succeeded, these changes ruin all subtly of the original game's plot and pacing. The constant push to keep a teen rating and tone down both Avalanche and Shinra removes the iconic grit and edge of the original game to make some kind of mascot in its image.

The writers put all their focus into this "meta-narrative" that they seemed to have dropped the main Shinra one, which is an absolute shame since the story of Shinra is more relevant than ever. Not only that, but I would argue that Shinra is the centerpiece of everything in FFVII. FFVII is about so many things: life, identity, the planet, etc. It is able to be about all of these things and feel concise since it is about life in a world with Shinra, identity in a world with Shinra, truth in a world with Shinra, the planet in a world with Shinra, I could go on. I've seen the theories, but I don't think anything FFVIIR leads to can justify what it's done and sacrificed. 

For some small and general negatives, some of the boss fights feel like they go on longer than they should have. The padding is incredibly apparent, and the ratio of good new content to bad new content isn't good enough for them to justify the game being stretched out to 30/40 hours. Just because something can be expanded on does not mean it should. At what point is it too much? The train graveyard area is less entertaining than some of the jobs I've had. That, combined with Tifa and Aerith constantly jumping into clouds arms, and the horrid pacing and slog to the big climax with the plate falling, made me want to bite my arms off.

A decent concept that entirely fails, and a story that treats me like a fifth grader at best and is frustratingly contradictory at its worst.

There is stuff about the game is dated, it took me a long time to get used to all the characters' different abilities and different builds i don't know if i could have finished it without a walkthrough BUT after learning how it all worked and keeping track of places to go with the help of a guide the game got really fun!
What a special game... one thing that I couldn't stop thinking about was that little silence that happens after every special cutscene, something about it adds to them, it was like the characters were contemplating what had just happened before leaving the scene... It's something that probably happens because of the game's age, but (for me) it added feeling to it, I also loved how many times during the story a scene could only happen after the characters went to rest in an inn or somewhere like that, and then, if specific characters were in your party, you would get a scene with them. I really liked that, it's nice to see the characters finding time to talk to each other about something that is happening to them and the world... not to make this paragraph longer, but that same thing applies to the scenes that happen inside of dreams, the way FFVI used dreams to show a character backstory or to show something that a character has been thinking about and was tormenting them was really good, this game had really some good characters (not edgar.), I really enjoyed seeing their story unfold...
Terra and Celes are one of my favorite FF characters now, they're both so special, and so many things in the story walk around them. It was crazy to see little references or other points of the story and characters from VI being also used in other final fantasy games I have played (VII and XV), Terra really was the blueprint.
This review is getting quite long, so to finish it I also want to comment about how cool that final dungeon and final boss were! The dungeon being a preparation for what was about to come was really interesting, making the player have to choose three different parties to cooperate and go through the dungeon, and at the same time, that makes you end up using characters that you didn't use before and also learn how to use them in your team better to make going through the dungeon easier... It was really cool, even though it made me nervous to think if the party with the characters I didn't use that much would survive the dungeon or not. That final boss was both so cool and so scary, each one of the different phases and then the music... What a cool boss fight. The credits cutscene was both very cute and fun, I will be thinking about this game and it's final scene for a while :-) Terra the worlddd- the opera scene song/celes theme still gets stuck in my head everytime im washing the dishes