Final Fantasy VII has vexed me for years. Several of my friends adored the game after its original release, but my own playthrough attempts always ended in confusion, boredom or outright frustration. I avoided RPGs for years because of that experience.

Fast-forward to December of 2021, and the PS Plus version of the remake became PS5 upgrade eligible. So after some encouragement, I tried again to find the joy in one of the most acclaimed and influential games of all time (with the obvious caveat that this is not the original, and only the first in a multi-part experience).

Right off the bat, the combat gave me trouble. Keeping track of each character and enemy, their stats, strengths/weaknesses, status effects, items, equipment, upgrades, proficiencies, materia, materia connections, abilities, spells, limit breaks and summons... it was too much for me then, and it's too much for me now. After giving it a good try, I switched to "easy" difficulty, which turned the game into a button-mashy hack and slash adventure. I found this preferable (I could actually make progress), if a bit repetitive.

But growing up, my friends never really talked much about the original game's mechanics... it was all about the world, characters and story. That's what I was most excited to experience.

The world is very compelling. Midgar's design is visually unique, beautifully rendered and functions well as a metaphor for the class disparity within… but it can feel surprisingly shallow. Persona 5, Shenmue and the Yakuza series have spoiled me with smaller areas dense in mini-games and activities; other games like Xenoblade Chronicles and Skies of Arcadia present expansive vistas to explore. By comparison, the FF7 Remake's environments feel like facades: Exquisitely designed hallways, but hallways nonetheless. Seemingly "open" areas are populated mostly with indistinguishable item shops, unremarkable enemy encounters, bothersome fetch quests and a very occasional (almost obligatory) mini-game or two ("whack-a-box," anyone?).

But a world is only as compelling as the characters within it. I think the developers did an amazing job upgrading the iconic designs of the game's cast, and while I've heard some criticisms of the English dub, I personally really enjoyed it. The game does a poor job of making the male team members lovable (or even likeable) until quite a ways in, but I eventually grew attached to almost everyone through the course of the story.

Speaking of story, that's where I found the game's highest highs and lowest lows. Chapters 5 through 9 were my personal favorite: There is a sense of momentum to the events that unfold, but also a wonderful contrast between bombastic action sequences and softer character moments. I really, really loved that stretch of the game: Taken on its own, I'd easily rate it five stars.

But the rest of the game felt bizarrely paced to me. The original's iconic opening is muddied by a half-hearted new subplot, there's a long-winded "secret" mission (that's only secret to one main character for some reason), two yawn-inducing chase sequences, way too many meandering underground mazes, and a baffling "conclusion" I only understood after some intense Googling.

Overall, the parts of the game I really enjoyed more than justified the time I spent with it. I'm intrigued enough by its story and characters that I imagine I'll eventually play Part Two. I'd be lying if I said I now fully understand the original's appeal, but at least this remake let me visit that mindset.

What FF fan didn't eagerly wait on this remake for years (and years and years...)? I know I could barely contain myself waiting the opening scenes and playing through that memorable first reactor in Midgar.

First of all, the graphics in this game were undeniably GORGEOUS, and everything I could have hoped for. The characters and voices were spot on, even the more minor characters--I fell in love with Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge. I liked how parts of the game were expanded upon, with the exclusion of some of the more annoying side quests, and overall I loved the game. It was only within the last few hours of game play that I became disappointed. Without mentioning spoilers, the final boss battle made me irate that it was even included. The entire original game spent four discs leading up to the ultimate showdown that I felt cheated in a way. Add to the fact that the bloody mess that was ShinRa HQ was left out entirely, and I was in a mini rage by the time the credits rolled. The battle system itself was mostly okay, but it tended to get frustrating at times when the spells or limit breaks were constantly missing the target (even when locked on) because the enemy would move at the last minute. I understand it being more of a challenge than its TBS counterpart, but there really felt to be an extreme lack of control that came down more to luck than anything. A lot of the enemies were only affected by magic and it would deplete much too quickly with zero places in the game to grind at all--if that is your strategy. The recovery benches were a nice addition, but sometimes few and far in between.

I waited so long for this game, and I loved it for the most part, but now I'm afraid of what more they could potentially change when--IF--the rest of the game is ever released.

Side note: The dance scene with Cloud made me laugh, even if playing it was slightly weird. Didn't make me uncomfortable in the least. Unlike Don Corneo who I cringed at every time I had to encounter him. * gag *

This may be my new favorite game of all time.

The story, the characters and the world all come together to create an amazing experience. I haven't played the original FFVII, so I don't have the nostalgia factor, but I have played other FF games and enjoyed them.

First off, I'm really glad they put out a demo. That really sold it day 1 for me, otherwise I would have waited for a sale on the game.

The gameplay is very fun. Swapping between characters is easy and the combo between using the commands menu and real-time action flows really well. The materia system is simple enough for anyone to use, but can be fun to play with to get all the different combos and deciding what characters work best with what materia.

The story is cohesive and broken up by chapters. There were a few chapters that were a little less fun than others, but overall the quality was very good. The side-quests are fun and not all fetch quests. They can be a little immersion breaking at times with what all is going on in the main story to pause and do some side-quests, but they are optional and you don't have to do all of them.

I really can't wait to see what part 2 has to offer. I'm hoping since they have a lot of the asset work done, that it doesn't take 5 years for the next part to come out. But if it's even close to the same quality of this one, I'm willing to wait as long as it takes.

I'm certainly not unique in saying that the original Final Fantasy VII is a serious contender for my favorite video game of all time. The reasons for that deserve their own review, but I will say that I've played it many times, and have become pretty familiar with its world and characters. The Materia system is one of the most inventive mechanics in the series, the music is incredible, and the story... Man, the story. I love that game.

Because of that, Final Fantasy VII Remake is a game that I took on with great anticipation when it first released. The pretty graphics are nice, but I mostly loved the concept of expanding portions of the game to give a greater spotlight to specific moments and characters that were not emphasized in the original game. And no section of the story had more potential to benefit from this than the opening hours of VII, which are spent exclusively in the grimy dystopian city of Midgar.

This potential is achieved somewhat, but its execution becomes a bit of a double-edged sword. So much so that I found Remake to be a bit frustrating, and I ended up dropping it. I only finished it now in anticipation of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and my opinions on it have not changed much. While Remake almost always succeeds in the moments where it's closely adapting the source material, it becomes apparent that when they expand on it or introduce new threads, things don't always pan as well.

Changes permeate the fabric of Final Fantasy VII Remake, ranging from the expansion of several minor areas info full-fledged levels, to entirely new subplots that pad out what was a 7-hour section of the story into a 30-hour game. Not everything is bad! I loved how the role of Jessie, Biggs and Wedge was expanded. Some sections, like Wall Market and the assault on Shinra HQ were given amazing treatments in this remake. Some entirely new sections, like the trip to visit Jessie's parents, felt very natural.

The new action combat system helps this. It keeps the ATB system of the original game, while letting you actively fight and dodge enemies in those moments where you are not executing special attacks and spells. The Materia system also makes a triumphant return, and it's as wonderful as ever. The new weapon upgrade system adds some additional depth, though I found the menu for it to be annoyingly slow and tedious, so I opted to use the thoughtfully included auto-upgrade option quite a lot.

What drags this remake down is when the changes don't work out so well. The very first story change in the game really sets the tone for me: As in the original game, you start as Cloud Strife, a mercenary aiding eco-terrorist group Avalanche in the bombing of one of Shinra Corporation's mako reactors. After the bombing, you get to see the great destruction that the explosion has inflicted on the people of Midgar. This gave quite an edge to Avalanche, who were dead set on saving the planet from Shinra, and were willing to accept collateral damage in their quest.

Jessie, the group's bomb expert, comments that she did not intend for the explosion to be so large, something that calls back to a single text box from the original. It's something that fed into her feelings of guilt for causing so much destruction, which I think was central to her small character arc in the original game. But in Remake, it is revealed that, unbeknownst to her, it wasn't an accident! It was only so large because of tampering from Shinra themselves. This change only serves to remove some of Avalanche's gray morality and paint Shinra as a maniacally evil organization at the onset of the story, which is completely unnecessary. In my opinion, it is a bad change.

Other sections completely interrupt the pacing of the original game. I am not totally against the addition of moments that have you take on mundane tasks for the regular citizens of Midgar. But is it really the best choice to interrupt the flow of the story in its most urgent moments? The stretch from Corneo's mansion to the destruction of Sector 7 is particularly painful to deal with, because it is so padded out at the worst possible time for the story.

Those kind of additions are not even the worst thing in Remake, though. This game really wants you to know that Sephiroth is a threat. It does so by showering you with an incessant amount of stupid hallucinations experienced by Cloud, completely misunderstanding the mystery that made Sephiroth such a compelling villain. Worse, the game ends with a climactic battle against Sephiroth himself, prematurely throwing you into what is the most climactic moment of the original game, and I fear that they really run the risk of diminishing his impact entirely in the future. (For a deeper analysis into what made Sephiroth work so well in the original game, I recommend the video "The Impact of Final Fantasy 7: The Game that Changed Everything" by Super Eyepatch Wolf on YouTube.)

And don't get me started on the "Whispers" subplot. This confusing recurring Nomura-ism pits our heroes against a horde of ghosts that want to... Uh... Prevent the story from veering too far from the original Final Fantasy VII? What? I would expect this horrendously fourth-wall-breaking writing in a Kingdom Hearts game, but in Final Fantasy VII? This addition did not click AT ALL with me. It felt extremely forced and self-indulgent. If you're going to change the story of Final Fantasy VII, just do it, you don't need a convoluted in-universe justification for it.

"People don't live in the slums because they want to. It's like this train. It can only go where the tracks take it."

This line, uttered by Cloud early in the game, is one that I think is quite iconic. It sets up some of the themes of the game (Though it's not THE most iconic train analogy in Final Fantasy VII, thanks Barret!). This line intentionally takes new meaning in Remake when we see how the developers chose NOT to stay within the bounds of the original Final Fantasy VII. But when you are trying to branch out from where the tracks allow you to go, you have to be careful not to derail the train, and unfortunately Remake becomes a borderline train wreck by its conclusion.

Its saving grace are the consistently great adaptations of moments from the original game, along with the wonderful and endearing interactions between these beloved characters. It also ends on a bit of a hopeful note that, unshackled from the pressure of having to stick close to the original game's story, Rebirth may take us into new and interesting directions. I just hope that the quality of these new directions are not as bad Remake can be at times.

I bought a ps4 just to beat this game when it came out. I ended up losing my copy during the first year and then buying it again on Steam.

There isn't a whole lot I can say that hasn't already been said about FFVII. The original game is the most important one in gaming history, as it really shot into the stratosphere of what was previously possible with games, both narratively and gameplay wise.

The remake does a clever job of being the same game but different.There is obviously some multiverse or time shenanigans happening here. To be perfectly frank, I think the ending was bizarre as hell. Having the whisperer ghosts show up periodically and then control what was happening, and then having them voltron into a giant superbeing at the end and then having to fight them in an atmosphere akin to what I saw in Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. And no one even asks why?! I guess when you are suddenly faced with a giant monster and have to fight for your life you don't stop to ask questions like what the hell is going on... But it was really weird and a very strange addition to the original story, but of course the story here isn't the same as the original.

The music has no business making me cry as often as it did. It has an unfair advantage over my tear ducts because it is music I heard when I was a kid, playing on an old crt tv in my bedroom, sitting on my warn out patio furniture gravity chair drinking orange twister and eating cheese danish toaster strudels.

I honestly didn't like the battle system. It was stressful for me! But I don't know how they could have designed it any better. A modernized RPG needs to have a fast battle system, especially one that has such a beloved history. There were a lot of options, and a lot of ways to fight. There were many upgrade paths for the weapons, and lots of techniques I can learn and use. But none of it felt AMAZING. It was good, but not amazing. Maybe a 7/10.

Played again in 2024 After bouncing off FF7 Remake pretty hard (see my review below) I decided to give it another go.

I am happy to report that this time around the gameplay clicked better for me. I still don't think its great, but I can see why people who don't like turn-based gameplay like this.

I LOVED the visuals, expansions and edits to some of the rough parts of the original story. The Honeybee Inn was spectacularly done, such a great way to keep the tone while removing the less great parts! Expanding some side characters was also really well done.

However, the game suffers massively from pacing issues. Major moments are all interspersed by chapters that are purely roaming ruins for 1+ hours. Big emotional moments that should inject the player right into the next scene hyped are delayed by slower boring extended roaming.

I also really disliked how they clear toned things down to keep a Teen rating. In the original game Sephiroth's presence is revealed in an really well-done and tense moment in Shinra HQ, exploring the floor upon floor of butchered Shinra guards. I remember thinking Holy Shit what happened. However, the remake removes all that for a ... toned-down reveal.

The story also ends on a very odd meta note, that didn't work for me.

Overall, I am glad I finally played FF7 Remake, I get why people love it, but I do think it is greatly overhyped.

I'll preface this by saying I don't think this game is made for me, or my tastes, and that has heavily impacted how I feel about it. I'm glad it has an audience who likes it, but that is unfortunately not me :(.

I love the original, which has definitely impacted my enjoyment of this version too.

All of those factors aside, here are my thoughts.

FF7 Remake is a gorgeous game. It is probably one of the best looking games I have played, up there with Ghosts of Tsushima. It was amazing to see locals and characters that I played with as a kid reimagined in modern graphics.

The audio and sounds is amazing too. While I don't love Barret's performance (it often falls into a caricature), the rest is amazing.

Character wise, I think the remake does an admirable job fleshing out some of the bit players from the game, Jessie in particular stood out.

But, that is were my positive things to say about the game end.

The pacing is off. Its clear that they are expanding a very short segment of the original game into a much longer game. Some of this is done well, with some expanded characters and sections, but a LOT of this extra content is frankly boring. It hurts the pacing, and adds garbage that I just didn't care about.

Blow up reactor one, get hyped, and then do busy work for the next 4 hours... wut.... Combats drag as you face wave upon wave in fights that have been extended to make them feel like a bigger deal. There is the addition of side quests, but all the ones I experienced were garbage.

That brings me to the combat. I hated it. It's "updated for modern audience," but to me its like they took bits from FF13's combat, bits from FF7 and just mashed them together with some action game mechanics. It creates a very weird gameplay flow, where you just click square, while occasionally dodging and blocking, then you build up bars to do fun stuff, which then slows. It didn't work well as an engaging system for me. It lacked the depth turn based combat did, and lacked the flash or responsiveness that action systems do.

There were several infuriating components to it too. Like when you did a limit, and because the animation is long, the enemy knocks you out, ending the attack before it happened. Or the fact that you get a cool summon, but only get to use it very infrequently. Or perhaps that in order to use things like potions, you need to be in combat, but can only use them once building up action bars. Little things like this just had me feeling like the game sacrificed all substance in the gameplay, to instead provide the most flash and bang. Yes all of the summons and limits look amazing, but if they can miss, often don't work, or are used so rarely you keep forgetting how to use them, its a problem.

Overall, it's a pass for me.

Final Fantasy VII is considered one of the greatest games ever made. Releasing in 1997, it made the PS1 almost a must buy at the time. It told a fascinating story with amazing characters, music, and moments. It shaped many childhoods and still lives up.

So when Square Enix released the long-awaited Final Fantasy VII Remake, it had to live up to the original by standing on its own (but also to not stray far away)

Final Fantasy VII Remake does live up... But also doesn't in some ways. The Remake covers the first 5 or 6 hours of the original but extends it to around 35 hours. There are some issues that arrive from this that I will get to

First off... The game looks beautiful. One of the most visually stunning remakes I have ever seen. The music is fantastic! Including new tracks and remixes of the original songs. The characters are a lot better. The original had famously horrible localization and some lines in the original seem weird. But the characters are a lot better written in this game... However, the acting (At least the English acting) is pretty meh to me.

The combat is amazing. It's no longer turn-based, but instead, it is a mix of both turn-based and real-time strategy and it is amazing.

However, there are many issues. The story isn't as good as it was in the original. Because the game is 35 hours (but based on the first couple hours of the original), there's a bunch of padding and filler that always felt like a waste of time. Like I mentioned before, the acting is pretty underwhelming. And the story is changed in small ways that sometimes make the plot better or usually makes it worse. And the ending is VERY DIFFERENT.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is what a remake should be... But because of some weird choices in the plot and a lot of padding, It doesn't hold up to the original. However, the game has great characters, music, and gameplay

Would Lightly Recommend

3/5

I don't know if I've had feelings for a game as complicated as Final Fantasy VII Remake.

I did not play the original game as a kid. In fact, my first FF game was XIII, which I only have scattered memories of. But I do have core memories of Cloud and his giant sword.

So I understand what FFVII is and what it means to people. And it's from an era when I first became really passionate about games. Pre-rendered backgrounds, text boxes, muted animations, MIDI sound effects and synth music. All of those elements from the original really speak to me. So it has produced a weird situation of having massive nostalgia for an experience I did not have as a child. Nostalgia by proxy, maybe?

And the reason I'm bringing this up is because it plays strongly into my thoughts and feelings around Remake.

The first thought it brings to mind is: holy shit, video games have come so far and in such a short period of time. I always have trouble articulating what I mean when I talk about this, but as I get older, time speeds up, long stretches of time seem shorter, that kind of thing. It's astounding to me that Jurassic Park and Fellowship of the Ring are just ten years apart, and it's also just as astounding to me that FFVII and Oblivion were ten years apart.

Seeing the small handful of frames, text boxes, and animations extrapolated into what Remake is, is impressive as all get out. The fact that no matter where you are in Remake (for the most part), you can look up and see the plates of Midgar in all their glory, or look down and see the slums in their highly developed detail, is, again, astounding.

So, I don't know how to cap that off other than to say, when I think of FFVII Remake, I think a lot about how far games have come and how amazing and impressive it is that this team was able to take what really amounts to a concept in the form of the original game and create the entire world that we see in Remake from it.

However...

This kind of game just is not for me.

While I absolutely relished being in the world, running through the streets of the slums and admiring the dieselpunk aesthetics of the mako reactors, I groaned just about every time I came across an enemy. I simply cannot get behind the combat gameplay. It feels so. Fuckin. Dry.

And pointless, too. I understand having to fight the Shinra soldiers in the beginning, but this thing that a lot of JRPG games do, where they funnel you through these really inconsequential and trite fights against random critters, is just a complete waste of time. Especially in the context of stories and plots as grand as those in FF: "My name is Cloud... I'm a traumatized soul who has joined a passionate and dedicated rebel organization to try and undo the corporate rape of the world and save the planet from capitalist greed! ... Oh look, a gaggle of sewer rats. Better fight them!"

I get it, it's this whole "you're on a journey and there are monsters to fight along the way," thing.

It's just not for me. And being completely honest, I don't understand who it's for, or the mindset behind it. And I'm not being hyperbolic. You know how people say they can't understand something when really it just means they disagree with it? This, I really do not understand how it's considered fun to be constantly sidetracked by fighting fodder, especially when you often don't have the ability to avoid that fodder, and where fighting that fodder provides little in the way of meaningful rewards.

Let me end this point by saying that even though this last paragraph was written with frustration at reflecting on my experiences, it's not meant to be dismissive. When I say I don't understand how it's fun, I mean that, so I welcome anyone who digs this kind of game to lend me their perspective or insight. Maybe I'm just approaching it the wrong way, or not engaging with it on its own terms. I'm happy to have my mind changed or perspective altered.

So, it's safe to say by now that what I liked least about FFVII was the combat gameplay. It wasn't too hard and it wasn't too easy. It was simply not fun and I found it fatiguing. I almost quit playing many times because of the combat and its participating in being mandatory. I was tempted to use Cheat Engine to 1-shot everything so I could just get on to the next bits I liked.

Which is the characters and the world. As I touched on before, these are superb and gripping. As soon as I finished the game, I started another playthrough, not with the intention of finishing it for a second time, but to quench my thirst. I wasn't done with Midgar, yet. I wanted to stay a little while longer.

And yet... the cutscenes. Again, as much as I loved the frame of the game, I'm not sure I'm the right kind of player for it. I don't have the patience required to really appreciate everything on offer. I hate when you get control of a character for 15 seconds and then have another cutscene to sit through. I think it's because for me, this is the video game version of being told rather than shown. Right? That's what they always say about good writing? "Show, don't tell."

When I think of the video game equivalent of that, it's, "Let me find it out for myself rather than sit through a cutscene where I don't have any agency or control over my character." If the most that amounts to is being able to have Cloud walk in circles during an important conversation, that's fine with me. The bottom line is that the second I can tell a cutscene has started, my interest and engagement have dropped by a percentage and that sucks.

I also know that's just how this goes, so I'll continue to try and deal with that for the sequel. And I know part of that is that I have severe ADHD, which is why the perpetual control of FromSoft games appeals so strongly to me. And I don't think FF games should cater to me. They're very good at what they do, maybe even the best.

But I feel how I feel.

FFVII Remake is impressive and impossibly detailed and developed. But the actual gameplay parts were misses for me, almost across the board.

I'll never forget Midgar, Cloud, his friends, and the engaging story the game tells, but I'll probably never play this one again.

Oh, and the music is dare I say unmatched.