Final Fantasy VII Remake

[danielmann861]

All those years of darts in Shenmue and Yakuza pay off for an easy trophy!

 

[Vivi-gamer]

All those years of darts in Shenmue and Yakuza pay off for an easy trophy!

I at first got the trophy within 7 throws but was damned determined to leave that bar with 6 throws - took me a good 15 minutes but finally got it :)

As for the game I'm having an absolute blast with it! Really enjoying the expanded events and really happy with the game so far - The wait for the next part is going to be very painfl though, might have to replay the original...

 

[orient]

I'm on chapter 7 now, still loving it. I gotta be honest, I did not expect this latest mission to go on for so long. It takes a couple of chapters and one long-ass "dungeon" with several mini-bosses to do the second reactor run. I'm coming up to the end of it now. Pretty epic. Keeping it turn-based would've been extremely boring with longer dungeons like these. It makes you appreciate how well they've crafted this new system.

 

[Sput Vas Normandy]

I still don't get why people loves FFVII remake but hates FFXV. I look at them and seems the same game to me, but with a skin of FFVII characters instead.

I mean, everybody trashed the combat system of FFXV. I look to FFVII and it's exactly that, why is okay now?

And I'm not trashing FFVII, I want to play it badly because I know I will like it, just as I liked FFXV (the story at the end was kinda mhe tho). I just don't get the hardcore fans

 

[danielmann861]

I still don't get why people loves FFVII remake but hates FFXV. I look at them and seems the same game to me, but with a skin of FFVII characters instead.

I mean, everybody trashed the combat system of FFXV. I look to FFVII and it's exactly that, why is okay now?

And I'm not trashing FFVII, I want to play it badly because I know I will like it, just as I liked FFXV (the story at the end was kinda mhe tho). I just don't get the hardcore fans

Can’t speak for that as I actually never finished FF15 personally. I remember getting side tracked by others games and never getting back to it.

From what I played of 15 I didn’t think the combat was bad in it at all though. I should one day go back to it and finish it.

maybe it’s the FFVII blinders and that people just love this game so much that they’re willing to praise it to high end even if it’s guilty of the same shit they deem other FF games to be bad for?

I come at it from a different perspective. I’ve always said I was more of a fan of VIII than I ever was VII, but I’ve been pretty blown away by what I’ve played of VII remake. It’s actually really made me like it more than the original game ever did. Not that I hated the original game, but I always felt VIII was my VII when everyone else hated VIII but loved VII.

 

[I Got Sriracha In My DNA]

Finally started the game and damn it's really good so far. Its easily the first FF game that immediately hooked me since FFIX. To be fair though I haven't played FFXV and from what I hear from the FF fans that stuck with the series past X that its pretty solid.

I admit I really would love it if Square made an FF6 Remake but we'll probably really damn old if that ever happens.

 

[Reprise]

I liked Final Fantasy XV. I got a lot of enjoyment out of it and did finish it, but the characters, story and pacing weren't great. I'm still only in the early parts of FF VII Remake, but so far the story and characters are just much better (as anyone would expect, since it's based on a classic). I'm not convinced it's amazing or anything though. The more I play, the less sure I am it's the phenomenal experience the first game was.

 

[spud1897]

I've been toying with the prospect of buying FF7R but haven't yet. I played XV and wasn't overly impressed though I did finish it . TBH I've never gotten into FF as a franchise, never really connected with it at all. The remake looks good graphically but I dunno I'm reticent to buying it in case I don't like it.

 

[Your Boy Leroy]

I just beat the game a few hours ago. Despite not caring much for the story or the writing, I really loved how the game came together as a whole. The characters and gameplay really pushed me to finish this and it was really satisfying. The narrative and the gameplay elements just intertwined in such a way that most open-world games don’t, if this is considered to be an open-world game. I most likely won’t play another Final Fantasy aside from the sequel to VII, but I’m looking forward to continuing it.

 

[hmjohnny]

I finished the game as well. I have a lot of thoughts on it. I mostly liked it, it was a good game, but as a "remake" to FFVII I have mixed feelings on it.

Here's a quick summary of my thoughts of things I liked and didn't like:

GOOD

1. I love all the remixes of the music. Music and sound design was excellent in general. I also liked getting the different jukebox songs and the album covers were great. I bet the artists had fun creating those
2. The graphics were good. This is a big leap from FFXV especially for character models. I really liked how the characters were portrayed, unlike Advent Children they looked like the original characters but with high fidelity.
3. The presentation was excellent overall. the cutscenes were all great looking and well done.
4. The art direction was really good. it felt like FFVII while still being modern looking. the level design wasn't identical but was able to capture the feel of the areas while still having modern sensibilities and working with the modern gameplay systems. I'll never get tired of looking up at those Midgar plates from the slums
5. Wall Market was awesome
6. The dialogue is much better than the original but still captures the tone and essence of the original dialogue. Everything is more fleshed out and the characters all have more depth to them.
7. The story in general is more fleshed out. I like the lingering aftermath of the sector 1 reactor explosion and Jessie having guilt about her explosives being too strong for example. It humanizes the bombastic story a bit
8. The combat system is good but takes some getting used to. It's strategic and you really have to pay attention to enemy weaknesses and stagger, you can't just button mash your way through the game. The combat was engaging and fun overall. you also can't really grind in the game so you are always around the right level which balances the difficulty curve
9. I liked that they kept the goofiness of the original but in a self aware tongue in cheek kind of way that doesn't completely alter the tone of the remake. e.g
   Spoiler

   How hellhouse was handled or the Wall Market scenes in general
10. Some of the expanded scenes were good I liked the addition of
    Spoiler

    the wall market trio and the coliseum. In general the new scenes added a lot to work building. Another good example of this is the museum in the Shinra tower
11. New gameplay ideas were welcome like upgrading weapons and learning their special moves, or certain boss gimmicks like choosing what to disable on the air buster before you fight it

BAD

1. Some of the graphics don't look as good as the rest of the game. It has texture pop in and LOD issues. Some non essential items have really low geometry. No joke Shenmue 3 looked better in a lot of areas especially for shop fronts etc. There was one area in particular, I believe in Chapter 6, where you are on the plate looking down on the slums and the "skybox" texture of the slums is so bad it looks like a PS1 game. This should have been rendered but they went with a static texture for some reason it looks horrible. Anyone who has played the game knows what I'm talking about
2. the tertiary character models don't look that great and don't fit in the with the art direction at all. It's not as big of a rift as Shenmue 3 but it still looks weird and out of place. I assume this is because they were outsourced and not done by the original team
3. the combat has some issues. I played the game on normal and while not difficult per se, you definitely had to be actively trying hard every battle. Only the lowest level rats were easy enough to button mash your way through, even regular enemy encounters could kill you easily if you weren't trying. You had to use plenty of healing items/spells in nearly every battle, understand and exploit enemy weaknesses and stagger enemies. If you weren't actively trying in every battle you would die. On the other hand easy mode is a joke and you can mash your way through the game the balance wasn't exactly there for me.
4. I felt that and boss battles went on way too long because they all had a huge amount of HP
5. The upgrade system is a cool new idea but it also makes choosing weapons kind of moot. The game wants you to buy and use every weapon because you can't get new special moves without it and you can't even tell if one weapon is better than another until you buy it and upgrade it
6. The combat system can't decide if it wants to be turn based or not. It mostly works but I feel like when you cast magic you're just a sitting a duck as the warmup leaves you vulnerable. worse, enemies can easily stagger you cancelling your attack while you are defenseless and wasting your MP/ATB. The worst thing is when you need to heal but can't even use an item without an ATB bar but the ATB fills up super slowly unless you are attacking. In that instance you don't want to risk attack so you don't go close to an enemy and just have to run around waiting for the ATB to take an action all the while the enemy isn't playing by the same rules. this made certain boss encounters a bit frusutrating and I spent half the time managing HP before it fell too low rather than strategizing against the boss.
7. The game is way too long. I appreciate the expanded sections, and doing this in high fidelity requires it to be more fleshed out and slower. but it's a 40 hour game from what was a 4 hour part of the original. It's bloated, has too much filler and that destroys the near perfect pacing that was the beginning of the game in the original. there are sections that aren't even in the original and small areas were expanded to be like an hour long. There is no reason the motorcycle part needs to be 30 min long.
8. The game expects you to have played the original. The changes of
   Spoiler

   introducing Sephiroth early on are for people who know who he is already. It also ruins the mystique and the great way he was handled in the original
9. The side quests are all pretty bad. Nearly every one is go there and fight these monsters. The one exception is the wall market quest which is a throwback to what you had to do in the original game
10. This one I'm mixed on: the Ending
    Spoiler

    This depends on how the sequel goes. it seems that they aren't intending to remake the original game exactly but had an ending that subverted expectations. This remake is definitely something new for players of the original as they now have to fight fate on the original story line. It's possible going forward may be siginificantly different from the original game. Some may see this as a bait and switch. I'm going to hold my breath on this one and see how they play it out. I'm just worried we are going into Kingdom Hearts territory with how ridiculous Nomura can make the plot.

I'm curious to see others thoughts on this for those that finished the game.

 

[danielmann861]

Haven’t finished the game yet, but I do hear you in terms of graphics. It’s a mixed bag, at times it can look absolutely gorgeous in motion. Some of the more bombastic scenes are just pure eye candy and the first tier character models are stunning to look at. But then you’ll find yourself in quieter moments in between and you’ll start noticing the lack of texture detail. Or you’ll notice NPC’s look noticeably inferior and almost generic next to the main cast.

say what you want about the sometimes caricatured NPC’s in S3 but they felt the least bit generic. They at least stood out (for better or worse) and had some character.









I mean sure, some of III’s NPC’s can be either grotesque or sometimes weird looking but at least they’re memorable. At least I remember Bailu’s Ringo Starr look alike

whereas some of the NPC’s in FFVII can be rather generic looking. Not to shit on FFVII but yeah, I noticed it when playing. Sometimes it can look really beautiful. Other times it makes you wonder “what happened? why are these textures either not loading in or set to ’low’ quality?” It’s a mixed bag.

 

[BloodyHeartland]

I feel like Square has this sort of Sonic 06 syndrome going on with how bad their NPCs have looked for quite a while. X and X-2 had a lot of goofy looking people but at least they had clothing that fit with the main cast.

 

[Your Boy Leroy]

The NPCs in this are strange. They just don’t seem to fit the style of any of the actual characters in the game. It wasn’t their lack of quality that got me, but their lack of art design. I think most of not all of the NPCs physically looked like normal people, whereas all of the main characters had that anime look to them. It just didn’t make much sense. It was like the FFVII characters were interacting with NPCs from some other generic troll/dragon fantasy bullshit RPG.

 

[orient]

I'm 20 hours in now, Chapter 9. Just reached the colosseum. Every second of Wall Market has been awesome, and I loved the vast majority of Chapter 8, too.

The combat is great and really well-balanced. Usually I don't play games for the challenge but I don't mind it here at all. The characters continue to grow on me. It's a very likeable cast, even if some of the animation and writing is a bit exaggerated and on the nose.

One negative: any time they inject light puzzle-solving into the dungeons it's just bad, and immediately feels like a B-tier 360/PS3 game. Flipping switches synchronously, maneuvering cranes etc. Thankfully they're always short segments and once you're done it's back on to the good stuff, but still...so unneccesary.

 

[I Got Sriracha In My DNA]

Ok. The Honeybee Inn sequence is pretty incredible.

 

[orient]

Yup, just finished chapter 9 and man, the last hour was incredible

 

[Sput Vas Normandy]

Alright I'm playing FFVII original (remastered version of steam actually). My only experience with FF saga it's FFXV and I liked it, so I'm totally blind and neutral rn.

About the game, I played nearly two hours. I gotta admit I already get why this game is so praised. Looks pretty legendary, the story it's seems very adult for it's age (even now kinda?) characters seems cool, music it's amazing, and I'm already crying because I know one of my waifus gonna die but I don't know who. And probably it's gonna be my favourite and I'll be so sad.

And this is weird, but playing only 2 hours and looking at the FFVII remake, I'm kinda thinking I'm gonna prefer the original. I really wanna play the remake tho, looks great to me, but Idk, it's just a feeling right now.

 

[Rydeen]

the story it's seems very adult for it's age (even now kinda?)

There were a lot of RPGs on console, before FFVII, and around the same time, that targeted more of a young adult demographic in the same way. Off the top of my head, some examples would be: All the Shadowrun games, Phantasy Star II (at least), Suikoden, Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, Vandal Hearts, etc. Lots of Japan only games like Illusion City, Linda Cube, Megami Tensei series, Dark Half, Front Mission, and so on, did so as well. FFVII had a monumental marketting campaign, so everyone knew about it, though.

A lot of what it tries to do narratively is also pretty old-hat, for the genre, as well. I was actually observing recently that Shinra's motivations are essentially the same as the Law-side antagonists' motivations in Shin Megami Tensei II (not that it's especially original in either case).


Something I'm kind of amused by with the remake is that it's structured in largely the same way FFXIII was, but now everyone's cool with that.

 

[hmjohnny]

Something I'm kind of amused by with the remake is that it's structured in largely the same way FFXIII was, but now everyone's cool with that.

I kind of agree with this. Everyone hated FF13 for this (Disclaimer: haven't played it myself) but loves the FF7 remake despite it being essentially on rails. It might be the case that people are willing to overlook it because it's FF7 and they have their nostalgia goggles on.

I have no problem with this kind of game structure btw, and the original Midgar section of FF7 was linear. I'm curious how they'll handle the next installments now that the world map has opened up. I'm thinking the structure won't change so I wonder how people will take to that.

 

[Sput Vas Normandy]

There were a lot of RPGs on console, before FFVII, and around the same time, that targeted more of a young adult demographic in the same way. Off the top of my head, some examples would be: All the Shadowrun games, Phantasy Star II (at least), Suikoden, Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, Vandal Hearts, etc. Lots of Japan only games like Illusion City, Linda Cube, Megami Tensei series, Dark Half, Front Mission, and so on, did so as well. FFVII had a monumental marketting campaign, so everyone knew about it, though.

A lot of what it tries to do narratively is also pretty old-hat, for the genre, as well. I was actually observing recently that Shinra's motivations are essentially the same as the Law-side antagonists' motivations in Shin Megami Tensei II (not that it's especially original in either case).


Something I'm kind of amused by with the remake is that it's structured in largely the same way FFXIII was, but now everyone's cool with that.

Yeah but I suppose the fact this was their 7th game made a difference too.