You know the saying that people tell you you know where you should be careful what you wish for, you might just get it. And for me that saying surely fits the wish I got when it comes to the long awaited fan requested remake of all time. That's right after years of hope and wishing after seeing the 2005 PlayStation 3 reveal trailer showing a Technology Demo of Final Fantasy VII one of the most iconic PSOne games of all time running on the PS3 to the 2015 E3 showcase that it was finally going to get a full blown remake for a new generation of gamers. So now here we are at long last with the highly anticipated Final Fantasy VII Remake on the PlayStation 4 which aims to expand on the many expects of the original and do things differently. By THAT I mean making it into an Action RPG and also making the so called smart decision of dividing the game into the whole Episodic route which by then my excitement and hype turned into disappointment. I always wanted a Final Fantasy VII Remake myself but in ways that make fully faithful to the original game, by that I mean just a massive graphics overhaul of the classic turn based RPG not an Action RPG that disregards everything that Final Fantasy VII stood for. Instead of expanding on the Lore of Midgar they padded Midgar out by adding stupid meaningless filler which ruins the storyline of the original and gameplay that tries to be mix of other things into one and is poorly executed. To sum the whole thing up is just a massive disappointment on multiple levels and I am going to take a large portion of your time to explain why that is, so buckle up because this is going to be a long painful ride.
So what we got here is basically the first part of multiple games that is going to rebuild Final Fantasy VII and it focuses on the events of Midgar meaning that it covers at least possibly half of disc one of the original game. In case you are not familiar with the storyline of Final Fantasy VII it follows former solider turned mercenary Cloud Strife who teams up with AVALANCHE an eco-terrorist group led by Barret against the Shinra Corporation alongside his childhood friend Tifa. The main characters are still relatable and memorable, Cloud Strife is socially difficult with some people and is cold hearted but however does what he does best whilst having hallucinations about either a powerful man named Sephiroth or his time as SOLDIER, Barret takes his love for the planet and has a massive grudge on Shinra and never forgives them. Tifa on the other hand is Cloud's childhood friend and she does what she can to aid him anywhere she can. The voice acting allows for both Japanese and English audio tracks but however the English Dub has entirely new cast which means you don't get to hear Steve Burton reprise his voice for Cloud and the new guy doing him does only what seems to be an impression of Steve Burton's voice. The other voices aren't really too bad with the exception of Sephiroth who despite being more threatening towards Cloud in the Remake his new English voice is terrible to the point that he just sounds bored and unnatural. This storyline still has the conflicts between both the Shinra and AVALANCHE factions and their reasons for fighting, plus it has the Turks and a small hint about the Ancients and the Cetra but however the Remake tries to expand on the storyline aspects of the original while introducing brand new characters and storyline pieces and changes that ruin the plot narrative and also make everything into a massive confusing mess.
Firstly it introduces new characters who are rather forgettable, Chapter 4 introduces a new character named Roche who is on a motorcycle and you face him twice and then he just disappears and no one brings up why he was there or why he challenged Cloud in the first place. Then you got Leslie who is secretly after Don Corneo who was responsible for his lost love or whatever and then you have Chadley a former scientist for Shinra who has found a way to create Summoning Materia which involves fighting one of those in a VR Headset which honestly makes no sense what-so-ever.
Easily the worst new storyline aspect that has been added to the Remake are the Dementors from Harry Potter, they call themselves Whispers named the Arbiters of Fate and apparently these Whispers preserve the flow of destiny and show up whenever someone is trying to change destiny. Because for whatever reason this storyline as elements where it is maybe possible to alter the course of destiny hence why only certain people who can change the that can see them. It is the stupidest plot device that anyone can throw into the game and the whole preserving and changing the flow of destiny thing is complete garbage and goes against everything Final Fantasy VII's storyline stands for. Plus this storyline aspect even ruins the ending of the game which I am NOT going to even dare talk about. Even the game knows this because when fighting those things for the first time Cloud remarks on how stupid it is. There is simply nothing to like or care about any of the new storyline aspects that they tried to add in and it makes the storyline just confusing and stupid.
Truly the moments where the storyline is at its best is when it realizes that it is supposed to follow the storyline of Final Fantasy VII. The best chapter in this whole remake is Chapter 9 where it follows the sequences in Wall Market where it is a late night entertainment district ran by Don Corneo. They did a signifiant job of expanding on the lore of it and making some smart changes where it remains true and faithful to the storyline of the original. You'll still see a cross dressing scene which became very important to the storyline where Cloud had to disguise himself as women to get inside and aid Tifa but not before taking part in a rather amusing dancing minigame. Of course there are other moments like when Cloud and the group are destroying the reactors where it follows what actually had happened in the original. The Shinra aspects of the storyline is actually pretty half decent with it going into depth about how Shinra handles all of Mako Reactors and their plans for Midgar. This actually makes me want to root for them instead of AVALANCHE, the AVALANCHE aspects on the other hand are very weak and aren't fleshed out like at all and doesn't make fighting for them even the slightest bit meaningful. The exception however is with Jesse who in this game her story has been gratefully expanded upon, she has been given a backstory, her interaction most notably with Cloud is fun to watch specially since you see her flirting with Cloud a fair bit. It feels like Tetsuya Nomura only read a rough draft of the original storyline alongside the pre-remake expanded universe and yet either didn't understand it or straggled to come up with anything new that would have benefited expanding hence the reason for the meaningless filler storyline.
The game is divided between chapters and there are about 18 in the whole game like I said covering the events of Midgar, the majority of the time you spend the whole game either advancing towards the marker that blatantly tells you where you have to go, fighting enemies or opening chests and smashing Shinra crates to reveal treasures inside along the way. For about 80% of the game you're just progressing through chapters in a linear fashion with only 20% of the game featuring your standard generic RPG fabled sidequests that add nothing of value. These involve fighting some monsters, mundane fetch sidequests and also finding some lost cats for some little girl. These sidequests are so bad and so unoriginal that even Cloud once again points that out that it sucks so it's like even the game knows it by trying to show some condolences for the player's time. At least the minigames are cool though and are the highlights of Final Fantasy VII Remake's gameplay, there's the fan-favourite Bike Chase & Squats minigames that make a glorious return and then you got new ones like the Push Ups which is a variation of Squats, the aforementioned dancing minigame which is very humorous to enjoy and lastly there is the Whack-A-Box minigame where you have to earn a high score by destroying as many boxes as you can within the time limit. Honestly I had more fun with this than any of the other content in the entire game. There are some puzzles in some of the chapters like in the chapter before the Airbuster boss fight it does have that switch time based puzzle from the original where you have to press the switches at the same time but otherwise the puzzles are pretty much straight forward and easy to solve.
Sure in the original game the Midgar portion was small and linear but at least the Midgar portion in the original had a storyline that was meaningful and plus it opened up mysteries involving Cloud, Tifa, Aerith all of Shinra and Sephiroth. It was linear also because you never got to see all of the other sectors and that is the similar case with Final Fantasy VII Remake. Let's be honest Midgar doesn't feel any bigger than it did in the original because they didn't even try to throw any kind of new areas to try and make it bigger, whenever you do enter a so called new area it is nothing more than just a big long massive corridor that's empty like the Shinra Warehouse where you just fight a gauntlet of enemies and eventually a boss but yet you never get to enter it. Another way they tried to pad the game out into a full length game was by cheaply making short areas from the original larger and making them more tedious by adding more enemies to fight against with pacing being slowed down by frequent cutscenes that drag on for too long than they should, thankfully they can skipped well at least some of them anyway. These include a train graveyard where it would take about roughly 5 minutes to get past in the original they extended it to an hour in the Remake thanks to a bunch of ghost related rubbish that isn't worth caring about. They even added a rather pointless chapter before getting to the second reactor where you have to wonder around shutting off light generators and linking power to the elevators just so you could get to the reactor and it is just super boring to get through.
That short section of the original where you climb to the top plate to reach the Shinra Building has been turned into a full length chapter and my word the visuals when you look at the sights of Midgar from the top view is terrible. This brings onto the issues with Final Fantasy VII Remake's visuals, now in all fairness the character models do look greatly impressive and look way better then how they looked in the original and the visual effects including the lighting and various attack animations look great. The issue is that aside from the environments that make them look like empty hallways and corridors is that you will come across some very low resolution textures which does make the game look last gen. I played the game on a standard PS4 model and not played it on the PS4 PRO and it doesn't excuse to how poor the game can look at times considering this game took 6 years to make and it is restricted to just the Midgar areas from the orginal. Square Enix games had always managed to pull off incredible graphics technology especially with what was done with Final Fantasy XV which came out 4 years before this and yet this game just simply looks dull in comparison. Least you do get plenty of the NPC's interacting and talking with each other as you are wondering around and you can listen to them talk about the struggles in Midgar between both Shinra and AVALANCHE groups and I do like that in some areas they play out a short detailed video on a TV projector or whatever. I do find it odd though to see Barret wearing sunglasses even during a night time raid, I have no idea why this done to Barret but whatever you just have to live with it.
Performance wise it runs fine at 30 FPS and I didn't experience any stuttering or any frame rate drops especially with large scale fights. I only experienced one bug where it tried to prevent me from progressing but it worked fine after I restarted the game but there are however long delays when starting a cutscene like it takes about several seconds after pressing a button to interact with an NPC to trigger a cutscene which is just awkward.
The classic Nobuo Uematsu music tracks have been remixed very well and the way the music shifts between exploration and action narrative to fit the situation is really impressive. I like the remixes of the main battle theme Fight On and also the Those Who Fight Further tracks and also scattered through out the game are music CDS that play out a remixed track from the original that you can collect which is pretty cool. It even has some nice original tracks of its own which are also nice but however the remixes of theJenova track and my personal favourite One Winged Angel aren't all that amazing and don't sound as good as the original or the remix tunes in Advent Children.
It is the battle system however where the game does the most damage to and where the gameplay doesn't deliver the most on. The combat system is giant hybrid mix between the Action RPG combat system like with the Kingdom Hearts and Tales of Berseria games but with the Active Time Battle System bar from the original on top of it. You take control of either one of three party members and you can switch back and forth between members on the fly at any time while the AI controls the other party members. In battle the ATB meter fills up as you attack and when it is full you can press the X button to bring up the combat menu and pause the action where you can use either a character's combat ability, a magic spell in cosponsoring to the Materia that a character has equipped or an item. You have up to two ATB bars in battle and can either use them to deliver attacks or save them for when you need to heal or revive a dead party member. You can also assign shortcuts onto the L1 button so that you can play the game like a full Action RPG combat system as well if you wish. You have controls for blocking, dodging and locking on enemies plus each character has a unique special ability which is done with the Triangle Button. Cloud has a Punisher Mode where he deals more damage but is very slow, Barret has a charge attack, Tifa has an uppercut which is used as a combo finisher and Aerith has Tempest which is a charged up spell. Yeah there are only 4 party members that you have in this first part of the Final Fantasy Remake which is a shame to be honest. As you are take damage the Limit Break fills up and when it is full you can use a character's Limit Break to deal massive damage.
Making a return is the Materia system where you can equip different types of Materia from Magic Casting Materia like Fire, Lightning, Ice or Healing or Revival, plus also abilities to Parry or a Deadly Dodge where you do a counter attack after performing a dodge roll. Plus there are Elemental Materia where you can either deal elemental damage or make you immune to Elemental Damage. You can set up the Materia to how you like it and there are plenty of useful Materia combinations that work effectively well once you find the right style that suits your playstyle. The good thing with the Materia system in this game is that any Materia you equip doesn't give out any stats penalties like in the original where if you equip too much Magic Materia it weakens your character's Physical stats so you can equip whatever as you see fit.
The game also introduces a weapon upgrade system which allows you to spend points earned from level ups to upgrade your weapons in something that reminds me of the Sphere Grid but better executed. Upgrading weapons grants upgrades like increased health, damage, improved stats, MP use reduction, being able to revive with 1 HP after taking a powerful attack and so on and it works really well and gives the game a much deeper customization over your characters.
The battle system supposedly tries to add strategy elements where you might need to use an ATB bar to heal up and recover or to save them for when it is time to deliver a full on attack but however the combat system has a ton of problems that really ruin it. First of all the controls, why is Square Attack this time? And why is Triangle the button this used for using a secondary ability and interacting with NPCs and switches when X is the one that opens up the combat menu.
The camera is atrocious meaning you don't always see what is coming at you and it's easy to get backed into a corner and just be peppered with attacks that you can't do much to avoid plus the camera swings around annoyingly making it even more of a problem. There are some fights where you have multiple enemies on the screen at once and trying to get a lock on the one that is close by to you is often a chore and you have to Lock on to enemies or you'll be swinging Cloud's sword or Barret's gun arm in the opposite direction. This makes some fights artificially difficult by throwing in too much at the player and not being able to see and react to what's coming at you. I'm serious this camera is worse than the camera in Tales of Zestiria as least in that game you could see what is coming at you like most of the time even in some of the most closed indoor environment where as here in Final Fantasy VII Remake you don't half the time or can't react fast enough to avoid taking damage.
Another issue is that you have to interact with the hybrid system constantly because the party member AI is among the worst in any Action RPG. They tend to stand around waiting to get hit, they don't follow up attacks after you or use any of their combat abilities like at all and you have to utilize commands when their ATB meters are full just to get them to do anything. There is not even a Menu that would allow you to customize the party member AI behaviour and all you get is a Materia called Auto-Cure which allows a party member to use a Cure spell automatically for you. So we have Action RPGs now that have basic tactics to change AI behaviours since Tales of Phantasia on the Super Nintendo and Final Fantasy VII Remake couldn't even be bothered to give us that. The only thing they are ever good is holding back most of the time or taking cover behind debris to avoid an enemy's super charged attack when necessary. There is even some fights with enemies that are too far away for some characters to hit or enemies that are aerial based and you have to switch to Barret or Aerith to be able to attack them.
What makes it worse is the return of the stupid Stagger system where you have to build up the Stagger Gauge just to be able to Stagger an enemy while they take hits like it's nothing. This is the same exact issue that I have had with the Final Fantasy games since the XIII titles and there is just no fun to be had when it comes to dealing with enemies that are complete damage sponges. Machines and combat mechs I would understand, giant enemies like a Behemoth maybe but small enemies like crabs or human Shinra Troopers from basic to Elite Troopers that take damage but yet act unfazed from it all no seriously I don't abide by that like at all and that to is another reason for the artificial difficulty. Later on in the game you came up against bosses that can literally deal a ton of damage to you and your party members before you can even try to build up the Stagger Gauge up and while it is cool that bosses have multiple phases which a cutscene that plays during the battle which effectively makes the boss fights look epic but however the Stagger Gauge resets and it becomes annoying to bring that meter back up again. Even if you do finally fill up the Stagger Gauge the enemy only remains for like ten seconds or less before they get back up again and it just becomes aggravating and it begs the question why even have a Stagger system like that to begin with. Final Fantasy VII Remake's combat isn't all about strategy or any kind of skill but rather patience inwhich all you do is mash the Square button repeatedly to build up that ATB bar inbetween pausing the action to combat menu and hope that the enemies go down before you or your party members do.
Another reason for the artificial difficulty is that there is hardly any areas to grind up for experience points besides the coliseum and combat simulator which don't happen till much later and that you are very, very weak despite starting with a ton of Health Points. The level cap doesn't seem excuse the challenge either, the maximum level you can be up to in this game is Level 50 like really. I know this is probably because of the short length of the game but come on you couldn't make the cap remain at like 99 or 100 or whatever, it's just ridiculous and doesn't make it that much Role Playing.
Seriously Final Fantasy XV and Tales of Berseria's Japanese release came out 4 years before this game and Tales of Berseria is a true prime example of how to make an enjoyable Action J-RPG thanks to a combat system that maintains an excellent balance of gameplay and challenge, it doesn't relay on damage sponge enemies unless you're fighting enemies that are resistant to certain attacks or when some bosses have attacks that can't be interrupted. Also Tales of Berseria like every single good Tales of game has friendly AI companions that is very reliable and plus you can easily set up their AI behaviour to either defend, go all out, target casters if they are about to cast magic or protect allies and cast healing magic if their health is low and you do not need to relay on menus or shortcuts to get them to do something. Lastly Tales of Berseria can be challenging on higher difficulties and the battle system is so rewarding when everyone is working together and taken down enemies effectively with great combos and aiding those in trouble where as Final Fantasy VII Remake has on the other hand has little to nothing in comparison to it.
This brings on to what is this game really meant to appeal to. It tries to add the ATB system from the original that was a Turn Based RPG to begin with on top of an Action RPG focused combat system making it like I said similar to the Kingdom Hearts games and also Tales of Berseria. It's like they were trying to make the combat appeal to everyone the same way Final Fantasy XV tried to appeal to everyone. A way they were trying to make the game appeal to everyone that loved the original is that the game has a “Classic Mode”. You'd think that with Classic Mode it would make the game play more like the original but it doesn't, what happens in Classic Mode is that it acts the same as Easy Mode but the difference is that your character is controlled automatically while you use either assigned shortcuts or the combat menu to do your abilities or whatever. Honestly it's a dumb insult to the original and you are making the game play itself for you and considering that the AI controlled party members are worthless to begin why would you want to have the game control your character for you. It's yet another pointless feature that no one put any thought process into and it makes you wonder if they this game should have been turn based to begin or action based instead of a hybrid combat system.
Guys if you wonder why Square Enix are still getting passes despite the terrible job they handle their games then now this is a perfect example. With each new Final Fantasy instalment they just keep straying further and further from the path and constantly trying out new things with each new mainline game to compete with other games in the genre and never honestly being well executed and this game is no exception. This is why the series despite having such high sales starts to make the series regress to the point it doesn't play like a game and make everything fall apart. Final Fantasy games are at their best when they stick to a familiar turn based J-RPG gameplay roots without ever needing to derail completely from the formula and when it does it ends up being something it shouldn't. This is why people need to try to be more honest with each new Final Fantasy game release instead of prising a game too much and overlooking many of the game's faults. It's like with the Final Fantasy XIII games again where people will give a high score on a game because it has a big popular brand name on top of it without noticing the major glaring faults. Don't give me any nonsense that turn based J-RPGs are dead because it is NOT, because we have Persona 5, Dragon Quest XI and Pokemon Sword & Shield that prove that turn based RPGs aren't dead. Also with the way they are handling the Final Fantasy VII Remake at the moment by choosing to divide it into multiple games means that we have to wait god knows how long to get the other parts and we have no idea if it is going to either be better or worse. Plus with this system it makes the game act as a shameless cash grab or people to pay full price for seeing that is got the most iconic game name on the front cover and by now Square Enix should ought to know better by now not to treat their games as cheap cash grabs.
And the reason I say is because the game is so short, like I'm not even lying that it takes less than 30 hours to finish the game on Normal plus with all of the side content on offer. Again this because it focuses on just the Midgar portion and resulted to padding out short areas from the original and generic RPG sidequests to make it a full length game. Unless you count unlockable trophies and also the unlockable Hard mode which you can chose if you are a masochist then there's no reason to play through it again.
Is it a bad game though? No it isn't a truly bad game like on levels of Final Fantasy XIII but it sure almost fells as linear as that but only just, it's just a massive disappointment like on Final Fantasy XV levels of disappointing. It has moments like bringing back the Squats and Bike Chase minigames, it has remixed soundtrack which still gives me moments of nostalgia of the original and the Wall Market section in Chapter 9 shows how faithful the storyline could have generally been. However with new storyline elements that doesn't expand around Midgar and instead goes into confusing and stupid unnecessary filler territory, gameplay and combat mechanics that suffers greatly from terrible AI party members, a stupid Stagger system and an atrocious camera doesn't give the first part of this so called expanded universe a good insight to how the rest is going to play out. This is the Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes of Final Fantasy games if that makes sense and unless you think it is even worth paying full price for 30% of the original storyline that's turned into a full lengthen game than save your money or something else or wait till they eventually release all of the parts together in one. Hopefully soon we'll get more news of Tales of Arise and when it is going to come out as I am more looking more forward to that coming out than more of Final Fantasy VII Remake.
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Game Score: 5.1/10
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Game Title: Final Fantasy VII Remake
Platform: PlayStation 4
Developer: Square Enix
Genre: Role Playing
Age Rating: PEGI: 16+
Release Date: 10th April 2020
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The Good Points:
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Fantastic Remixed Soundtracks of the original
Squat and Motorcycle Minigames return
When it chooses to follow the storyline of the original
Events in Wall Market are expanded faithfully
The Bad Points:
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New Storyline Elements and New Characters that are confusing, forgettable and stupid
Combat that suffers greatly from atrocious camera, annoying Stagger system and terrible AI party members
Classic Mode is a stupid joke that makes the game play itself
Low Resolution Textures
It's short and mostly linear
Too much meaningless padded out moments
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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