Game Title: Final Fantasy VII Remake Demo
Platform: PlayStation 4
Genre: Action Role Playing
Developer: Square Enix
Date of Game Release: 10th April 2020
Age Rating: PEGI: 16+
Final Fantasy VII the most beloved game in the Final Fantasy series of video game and it has went on become one of the most important games of the video game industry. It's a game that has helped the gaming industry popularise Japanese Role Playing Games for the world especially for the Western Video Game markets. Since that games release it has earned a massive fanbase even though some of the stuff that followed afterwards haven't been so good like the movie Advent Children and the spinoff games like Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII. Years later fans finally get announcements of the Final Fantasy VII Remake which was something fans have wanted for years and it's been something I always had mixed feelings since watching the E3 2019 Demos last year. This week Square Enix released a demo of the Final Fantasy VII Remake for people to check out so that it gives everyone a small first impression of the game is going to be like. Is it the epic remake that everyone is waiting for? Let's find out then shall we?
The Demo focuses on the first hour of the game where it takes place in the first mako reactor and the demo ends after the boss battle against the Scorpion and getting out of the reactor.
Starting off is the upgraded graphics moving from the original PSOne's graphics in 1997 with those blocky character models and then comparing to the updated graphics engine in 2020 shows how massively overhauled the game is. The redone quality of the character models are pretty sick and they look really realistic looking. The environments have received a massive overhaul and many of the details and plenty of explosion effects truly look stunning. That opening introduction where you see the train docking at the station before Cloud, Barret and the gang strike and head for the reactor I won't lie is really well done and it does keep plenty of the nostalgia of the original game's intro intact. It also manages to keep a steady frame rate with all of the action and explosions happening on screen at once.
The soundtrack is also updated for the remake as well and many of the updated tracks like the excellent Bombing Mission track and the battle themes and boss battle tracks are just incredibly epic. I do like that the dungeon theme tracks also turn into a battle theme track which works really well. The character dialogue has been rewritten and the voicework is pretty good, Cloud has still got that lone wolf attitude and a lot of his dialogue is really good and the banter between him and Barret is pretty funny. On the subject of Barret I do like that he has sunglasses which does look pretty cool and some of the things he says does come up as sometimes funny even if the guy never shuts up specially during battles. They also added in some new scenes to the remake and in the demo it showed the president and Heidegger in the Shinra Building monitoring the heroes on camera and it is really good so it seems like that they definitely going to be expanding on the Midgar portion of VII and it's characters which to some people might have felt they were a little underdeveloped so it will be nice to see what get expanded on in the Remake.
Final Fantasy VII Remake does look like a really redone remake thanks to the excellent presentation and considering that this is running on the PS4 it is impossible to fault the graphics of the game and it is truly impressive as I would expect from a Final Fantasy game. It's the gameplay however where I have a ton of mixed feelings for and it's one of the main things that I have not been looking forward to.
Instead of being a full turn based J-RPG like the original Final Fantasy VII Remake is an Action RPG where the combat is fast paced much like Final Fantasy XV but with some changes. You have buttons for attacking, guarding and locking onto targets while the ATB meter fills up automatically while you are fighting or guarding and when that is filled up you can then bring up the Command Menu which slows the action to a crawl allowing you to pick a command which such as using either use a character's combat ability, magic spell or an item which doing either action depletes one of two ATB meters and you have to let the ATB bar recharge to be able to use a command again. You can also use the Battle Settings menu outside of battle to set shortcuts to either a character ability, spells or items that you have to buttons without needing to go through menus to get the ability or item that you want to use in battle.
The demo has you controlling one of two characters Cloud or Barret, Cloud does high damage with his massive Buster Sword and Cloud can switch between two fighting styles. There is the standard form called Operator Mode which handles a balance of attack and defence while the Punisher Mode focuses primarily on offensive capabilities and can't block range or magic attacks. Barret focuses on range attacks with his arm cannon including enemies that are far away that characters like Cloud can't reach and can charge up for a powerful shot which deals a great amount of damage. You can switch between the party members on the fly using Up on the D-Pad and it comes in handy in some situations where a party member might get grabbed and you have to quickly switch to another character to help save him/her from being bound by an enemy and so on. Characters also have a Limit Break which is filled from taking damage and when it is full you can then activate a character's Limit Break attack which deals massive damage. The game brings back the Stagger system from Final Fantasy XV where damaging enemies fills up the meter below an enemy's health and if it gets filled up when you consistently keep attacking or using attacks that an enemy is weak against will cause it to stagger and become temporally exposed for major damage.
When you get to the lower part of the reactor you have a boss fight against the Guard Scorpion and the boss fight is much more challenging compared to fighting it in the original version. It jumps all over the place and has multiple phases which changes up the attack pattern including the Tail Laser. This time they actually put some effort into providing properly written hints that aren't misleading so that you can actually avoid getting hit by it. I remember in the original version where the English Translation made it confusing for players to tell what they had to do which caused them to attack the boss while its tail is up resulting in a easy Game Over, so it seems that they learn from that mistake and the game's characters actually provide useful hints to take down the boss and avoid the tail laser. It's also a challenge because of the barriers it puts up and have to take down the barrier by attacking it's weak point.
The combat system is a combination of Final Fantasy XV's combat but it adds the ATB system into it which is used for abilities and items which on the surface really isn't anything impressive to be honest. For the most part it feels like a button masher with a camera which I think is similar to Final Fantasy XV but so far in the demo I can see the action just fine and can react to enemy attacks to avoid taking too much damage but unsure how it will go for the full game. It does have it's issues, main thing that I don't like is that the enemies can often be damage sponges which can make some of the fights hard as they can get a couple of attacks on you easily which often results in losing a fair amount of Health Points. On a positive note the AI is capable of holding their own in combat and can attack and defend as necessary but they don't use abilities by themselves but you can issue commands to get the AI to use whatever abilities or items as you see fit.
The demo gives you three difficulty options which are Normal, Easy and Classic. Normal and Easy is the default combat system but when you select Classic Mode it's supposed to play much closer to the original PSOne game but in all honestly it's a mode where in case you still find the combat very difficult to control well select this mode and the game will control the character's movement and will do most attacks and defend and evade for you while you use either the Tactical Menu or use Command Shortcuts that you have assigned. To me it's like the equivalent of picking a difficulty setting where the game literally plays itself similar to Spider Man on PSOne's Kid Mode Difficulty or putting the AI on Auto in a Tales of game and that is what Classic Mode feels like to me in a nutshell. This difficulty setting is for babies who can't play the game and doesn't even resemble the Classic Combat from the original and it is kind of insulting and a sign of false advertising.
Lastly I think that the whole separated into multiple parts is really going to divide a lot of the fans because I feel that most people would have just wanted the entire game in one instead of being separated into parts, plus I feel like it is a cheap way of milking the fanbase. Yes I have been told that each game will be the equivalent of a full priced game and they did promise that will be plenty of content to compassionate but so far I don't feel that each of them might feel like the full game at all and instead feel that so much is missing especially the gameplay that made the original good. There are still some things the demo could have covered like Materia but I assume that seeing that it was only the starting portion of the game they couldn't cover that in the demo so it's something that is going to be explained in the main game and I have no idea how it is going to work in the remake.
So far my first impression towards the upcoming Final Fantasy VII Remake is very mixed. I do like that everything from the graphics and the soundtrack is all redone from the ground up and the idea that they going to expand on a things like Midgar. I also do like the voice acting and the redone dialogue but however the idea of separating the entire game into 3 parts isn't a sign of good things to come and the Action RPG combat leaves way too much to be desired and doesn't play anything like the original. Like I remember back then with the original game Final Fantasy VII was a 3 disc game because of the limited storage capacity and it had plenty of FMV cutscenes which were awesome for their time. We are on the PlayStation 4 and soon within months the PlayStation 5 will be released and in my opinion there shouldn't be any excuses to divide the game up into separate parts even if they are trying to make all three of those parts like the equivalent of a full game. Also I recently just looked online and read that Red XIII one of the other characters isn't going to be playable in the Remake at all which is dumb move on Square Enix's part. It might be because of the whole episodic approach but it does feel dumb to leave that character out. This game feels like it wants to be a Final Fantasy game for everyone much like how Final Fantasy XV fared before. I just don't see this game doing well with this kind of approach and the amount of damage that Square Enix has been releasing the past several years it's not to say that the other parts are going to be anything better or special after the release of the first part. Let's not forget, this is Final Fantasy VII the most iconic game in the franchise and to see it fall from grace like this especially with the whole being separated into multiple part is unforgivable.
I still plan on checking out the Final Fantasy VII Remake sometime after it is released but at the moment I am working on Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII on the PSP and I am on Chapter 8 preparing for some of the more harder side quests. I will do a full review on that game soon when I finished, well that is if I ever finish it because of the stupid DMW levelling system that is so luck driven. So if you like this first impression let me know in the comments what you think.
The demo is available to download now on the PlayStation Store so you have till 10th April for the full game of part 1 to be released so you have till then to check out the demo so that you can see if the long awaited upcoming remake was worth all of the hype.
Written by Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)