FF7 remake most important ever, and that's not a compliment

[DanteRL]

Oh... oh my... How could I've been so blind? How could I cherish the remake of a game I liked so much in the past? Now is clear that FFVII sucks! The internet needs more brave warriors like this guy to shine the truth upon us all!
I mean, who else would look at a game that's eighteen years old, and tell us that it doesn't hold up to today's standards? Only one interested enough in click baiting, that's who.
I mean, isn't better to remake a game that is really old, than taking one that came out like, 3 years ago? Let it be a success again.

It's not the first time I've seen someone bashing in FFVII, and always with the same argument about how it bothers them that people treat the game as an untouchable classic. I mean, fuck people for having personal preferences right? And is ironic that in his attempt to be "the different guy", he is just another one...

 

[Maximum Bert]

And that's before we get into the biggest and most baffling question: why? WHY are people so adamant in trying to label something as overrated or claim it wasn't as good as its fandom says? Where exactly did this "fuck our history" mentality pop up? This would be like trying to discredit cinema classics like The Godfather, Ben-Hur, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, The Sting, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Bonnie and Clyde, Patton, The French Connection, A Clockwork Orange, Deliverance, American Graffiti, Chinatown, Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and others just because they're old. And ultimately, this is what we would earn from it: NOTHING. We would, at best, have some guys getting a little self-satisfaction out of smugly proving one game is overrated. We don't learn from it, we don't suddenly get better games, it doesn't somehow erase FFVII being the biggest reason Sony's PS1 wasn't just a short-lived experiment, and it doesn't change how it is still the best-selling and most critically acclaimed game in the series.

I dont get this either. Odds are FFVII is not your favourite game of all time there are far to many games and tastes for one game to be considered the best or their favourite by a majority of people. There are plenty of other games people call classics which I think have huge flaws and are `overated` such as Mario 64, Zelda OOT (series in general), Planescape, FFIX, Mass Effect series and many many more.

That doesnt change the fact that for others they have had a different experience for them the above games are really that good I can point out the flaws all I want and call them overrated etc doesnt make the game any better for me or worse for them. They enjoyed it good for them I didnt (or at least as much) lets move on.

Its ok to question things but this opinion piece sounds like its trying to state his opinions as fact and really it sounds like he did not like the game and thats fine but for me and many others it did and continues to offer the greatest experience I have ever had in a video game and I have been wanting a remake for ages despite still finding the original as enjoyable and playable as it ever was (play it most years).

Dont like FFVII? think its overrated and a terrible game? dont buy the remake. The only reason I can think of for the piece was to insight views and provoke people.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

-You can pick a specific enemy, but there is no ground targeting. I may pick an enemy within group of enemies and then the enemy I targeted moved elsewhere and suddenly my AOE attack is useless.
-I believe Cura isn't target all, it's AOE healing. Which, like I said is problematic because your characters move independant of what you want to do.
-Yes, but why? Why would you have make it so a few healers do not have access to basic status healing spells? It's just busy work because up until Grand Pulse you mostly don't have the opportunity to pick your party and you're stuck with certain characters that don't have access to basic spells.
-If you never had a problem with the AI buffs, then you need to pay closer attention to what they're doing. If someone has buff physical and buff magic + buff whatever else, they'll cast them all in order on each character in turn regardless of what I want them to do or what would be beneficial. I'm not talking about them NOT having buff magic, I'm talking about when they do have it and still insist on casting buff strength on my healer. Or insist in casting Protect+Shell when the enemy does not in fact cast magic.
-All you can do is pick classes, they're not programable in the slightest.
-I'm saying that in the sense that there are no resources to manage. Healing up to full after every fight, no mana and no post battle status effects.
-I don't need to get to the /cap/ but when Piosona is at the top of a massive grind, I don't really have a choice, because it's basic healer capability.
-I don't remember any other main FF where if the party leader died it was game over, because there wasn't one.
-The thing is, because the AI is there, there's no reason to do /anything/ but press auto fight. If I could control them, maybe I'd hold off on doing certain things, or make them cast the right fucking spells, or try and time my heals.
-Tech points are badly designed because you get so few of them and you regain them so slowly that using them for anything other than Scan so that the AI won't piss about is a waste of resources. Eidolons are terrible and not worth the time and TP you'll lose having the AI figure out what's super effective against this boss or ruining the opportunity to use the tech point super heal should you need it.
-You did do the Eidolon fights yes? They're ambushes. I can't pick paradigms for people that aren't in my party. If I'm walking along a road and a Eidolon fight pops up out of nowehere (which they do, Bahumat and Vanilles Eidolon for example), the game throws you into the fight with 2 characters it picks with very basic paradigm setups. You CANNOT be prepared for this, and most likely will die. However, when you try again, the game gives you the option of setting up paradigms before the fight. Why not the first? Why do I now need to re set up my paradigms after the fight?

- That's part of learning the game, you kinda have to look at how the enemies move.
- No, like I said, it's one target or all, there's no AoE.
- Because you can't really start off with every spells and abilities? They all learn Esuna eventually. And like I said, antidotes are a thing. As for the fact you can't make your own party for chapters 1-8, it's to teach you how to use the different roles, and how the characters themselves have different use within those roles.
- Or, and stop me if you thought of doing that, change their role once you have the buffs you need. They don't use useless buffs until all the useful ones have been cast, and at that point they really shouldn't be left as Synergist.
- No, but it's a matter of knowing what they do in what situation with what role.
- So, you're complaining you don't have to waste time healing and using items after every fight? Seriously?
- Or, you can use items until you get the spell.
- I didn't say another FF game. I clearly said just 'game'.
- And that's your choice, but please stop pretending the game forces you to use it. Auto-battle is there for people who want to mash A to win. For people who want to actually do more and learn the combat system, there's manual input.
- That's you opinion. People who know how to play have no problems using their TPs.
- The game gives you the means to beat those fights. All you need to do is know how to use the different roles it gives you. As for the retry option giving you the option to make your own paradigms, it's there if you have too much trouble (did you notice how every fight works like this, letting you try different things with no penalty for failing?), although by that time you really should be able to do without.

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

and contradictions (aerith?s death)

What? What was contradictory about Aeriths death? And the story was only non-sensical if you weren't paying attention. You may miss things, but it wasn't nonsensical unless you just mashed throught the text

Millions and MILLIONS of people have said it before and i'll say it again: Why couldn't they just use a phoenix down?

Also, throught? what word is that supposed to be?

Given how Super Nova is a move....you figure it wouldn't be much of a issue to get her rezzed from a back stabbing.

 

[Drathnoxis]

FF7 had a great story, if you turned off at the end of disk 1 before everyone forgot all their goals and motivations to go chase a ghost across the world for no clear reason (I mean, they eventually hamfist it in hours and hours later to explain Cloud, but Avalanche just abandons their whole fight to go help him).

Spoiler

Sephiroth comes in and kills Shinra, frees Avalanche. Rather then maintain their victory and try and disable the remaining Mako reactors, all of Avalanche just ups and takes off after the guy who's done nothing but help them to this point. Meteor doesn't happen til ridiculously later, and only because the party was there to begin with. Even the vague justification of meddling with Shinra's pursuit of Sephiroth doesn't come up til 2 or 3 dungeons later in the cannon town.

Spoiler

Yeah, but by this point over half of Avalanche has been killed. Biggs, Jessie, and Wedge were all crushed by the city that fell on them as well as their headquarters. The only remaining members of the group are Tifa and Barret. Aeris and Red XIII weren't a part of Avalanche, Cloud would rather follow Sephiroth and Tifa wants to follow Cloud. That pretty much leaves Barret. Also, I believe at this point the 'promised land' had been discussed and Barret wanted to find it before Shinra so he could protect it from them.

 

[SeanSeanston]

It is a good game.
Quite good even.
Dont fight over subjective BS people !

Still... not even half as good as STALKER...
*cries in agony*

But yeah, I liked FFVII a lot.

Some people say this kind of stuff for attention though... I mean the worst I ever saw was some guy a while ago make an article about how Another World was a bad game xD

It was like a cry for attention and/or help or some such.

 

[Lightspeaker]

FF12 is FF10's battle system but allowing the player to automate everything so you don't have to constantly select everything from menus over and over again. What don't you get about literally being able to play FF12 exactly like FF10? There's no strategic puzzles in FF10 or FF12 for that matter. Some bosses or unique creatures require a slightly different broad strategy that doesn't require you to go turn-by-turn to execute. You fight the same damn creatures hundreds of times, you know what to do to beat them rather easily like use the guy with the blitzball to kill flying enemies or just use doublecast on everything with regards to FF10. And you somehow think each battle was a tactical puzzle, seriously? FF10 or any regular FF is not Tactics.

I pretty much find it outright hillarious that you think FF12 plays the same as 10. I'll just take this as proof that you haven't actually played either game from now on I guess because its either that or you're dramatically missing the point.

If you want I'll compare FF10 to Xenosaga II, which had a battle system that merited it being turn-based because you really had to plan out your moves, it wasn't terribly strategic or difficult either, but you at least had to think several moves ahead.

Haven't played Xenosaga. Not going to comment on something I've not played.

It takes probably at least millions of if-then-else statements to automate chess, a whole freaking computer was developed just to play chess called Deep Blue. Whereas FF12 (and FF10 with gambits) takes 5-10 if-then-else statements to play itself and can be programmed as such by players with no programming experience.

My PC runs chess vs AI just fine. So did my computer back in 1995. You don't need a supercomputer to run chess.

The point stands.

It's annoying as hell to play a game just doing the same repetitive inputs all game when you can easily program the game to play itself, it's a complete waste of my time.

In your opinion. There are hundreds of thousands of people that disagree with you. Proof: sales figures for Bravely Default. There is significant demand for this game style.

There's a reason why that particular type of turn-based combat is almost non-existent now whereas something like DnD's turn-based combat system that is much older is still used in games as XCOM uses DnD's combat system.

Bravely Default December 2013, Bravely Second projected 2016, Persona 4 Golden February 2013, Persona 5 projected late this year. All with virtually identical battle systems.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Rebirth games currently re-releasing on steam also have an incredibly similar battle system.

"Non-existent now" indeed. You really need to stop making stuff up when trying to hate on what you don't like...

 

[SeanSeanston]

Why?

That sounds really dismissive, but I just have never understood the demand for remakes in general. In this forum alone I've seen people want the first 3 Uncharted games to be remade, despite that being only a console generation ago. FF7 is older, but the devs have stated they are basically remaking the game to be on next gen consoles, so why not just make a new game altogether?

Well... remakes can be good sometimes. Like if the technology wasn't really there in the first place for X, Y and Z. Or if game design has moved on enough to make a game not tedious in some way.

Battlezone from 1998 was a good remake. Mind you, you could argue that it's hardly a remake at all... more of a completely new game related only by the fact the player can drive tanks. Still, you could argue that it's a logical progression of the spirit of the original (being in a tank, fighting other vehicles in a 3D warzone) and that it expands upon it in a way that is appropriate to the newer time, i.e. 1998 when FPS and RTS was big and 3D had just become not-terrible.

OR... it was unnecessary to tie it to the first game at all. I dunno. Sets out an intention maybe.

 

[Zacharious-khan]

Huff post is full of crap. Besides the 6 polygons used to make every character everything about it is basically ageless.

Story is Weeaboo nonsense but its a final fantasy game.
Gameplay is solid menu based combat which basically goes nowhere unless you're Paper mario, but it's a final fantasy game.

I would put it pretty top-mid tier as far as menuturnbasedroleplayinggames go and hey, no one can shutup about it.

and this entire statement is the entire problem with that article, it is devoid of content. The crux seems to be there were other games that were good but it wasn't the best and could be better not to say it's not good its just not as good as everyone says. remember the 90's? DONT YOU? It's drivel they are dangling their balls in your face while they collect on ad revenue from the billboard on the taint. I'm not even sure why i'm so mad right now screw it we're posting

 

[Zacharious-khan]

No it isn't. The music sounds like it was composed on an SNES and the gameplay has been superseded by real-time action combat.

there was action combat in games before FF7 came out, some people just like menu based combat. It's not like it just disappeared. The Etrian series, Bravely default, Shin magami tensei all menu based.

I guess if you need to cry about the music feel free to do so in the corner

this one right here
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[themilo504]

I find that people who have never played FF7, are often the ones who cry out about it being overrated and not that good. It's like a group of hipsters that stand around smoking cigarettes and talking about how games only really mattered when the graphics were so blurry and pixalated that it took real imagination to make the game worthwhile.

So let's tackle the points.

1. "It's just another end of the world story." Well yes maybe fundamentally. However one could argue that the "end of the world" thing is the only real constant the Final Fantasy series maintains through it's literally dozens of iterations. And really the end of the world threat is just a background to serve as your childhood hero turns into a madman and because of a shared traumatic experience, your band of heroes are the only people capable of stopping an almost God-like villain. It's like saying Call of Duty is just another Terrorist-murder brawl.

2. "The combat was just the dreadful turns based boring crap". True, yet the turned based formula was something that had always been a staple of the Final Fantasy and even JRPG's in general up to the point. Need I also remind you that turn-based combat remains in Final Fantasy games to this very day! Combat quite frankly has never been FF's best point, but that doesn't mean it is bad. As far as ATB combat goes, FF7's was solid and the strategy lied with how you developed your Materia combinations. People complaint that the Materia system itself was broken and too simple, but really, you had to go way out of your ways to overpower yourself. You had to grind sure, but you also had to hunt down the most power Materia in order to really break the game. Basically breaking the game was a player choice not a requirement.

Turn based combat can be fun if done right. The whole standing in a line thing was a limitation of the console and tech of the time. From FFXII and beyond, the turned based combat became more dynamic because it allowed characters to move around the battlefield. For this remake, that's really all they need to do, add some dynamic motion to the battle and characters as you input commands. Something closer to FFXII rather than FFXIII though because.....reasons.

3. "Ewww graphics" Any early era Playstation game will look pretty fucking dated now. Early 3D modeling was just not a thing to stand the test of time. This being the first 3D FF game you have to understand that. Same thing holds true for the first Tekken game. Frankly if you play a game for the graphics you are a shallow twit and your opinion of gaming has about as much value as a Starburst commercial on acid. Can you not like graphics or art style, yes, but saying a game is bad purely on that is stupid and you should feel stupid.


All in all I have high hopes for the Remake. Tradition of Final Fantasy remakes so far would suggest that they are going to not so much as overhaul the game, but rather "clean it up". The combat will be smoothed out and rebalanced, the story will be cleaner and probably contain voice over, the graphics of course will be made up to snuff. But overall it will be the same game, with all those moments you remember.

I personally don?t play games for the graphics and yet I still feel the terrible graphics ruin or at least weaken ff 7 considerably, the hideous backgrounds often makes it hard to see where you are going and what things are, and taking the story seriously becomes rather difficult when all of the characters models look unfinished, and the whole game is just really unappealing to look at which makes it hard to get immersed in anything.

Yes pretty graphics don?t matter as much as the gameplay or the story, but truly bad graphics can and will severely weaken a game, and if you honestly don?t think that?s the case I?m guesing you must have gone blind recently.

 

[CritialGaming]

@themilo504

Yes bad graphics can hurt a game. But I feel like you are looking at FF7 through the goggles of graphics today. FF7 was heralded for it's beautiful prendered backgrounds, and cinematic graphics. Those graphics in 1997 where pretty solid. Now of course, playing it as a gamer of the 2010's, the backgrounds can make things a little jarring and the 3d on map models can be wonky. Yet through those graphics lies a fantastic setting, story, and really fun (if abusable) mechanics. It is because these graphics are so jarring by today's standards that this game is a fantastic candidate for Remake.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I pretty much find it outright hillarious that you think FF12 plays the same as 10. I'll just take this as proof that you haven't actually played either game from now on I guess because its either that or you're dramatically missing the point.

"Under-the-hood" both games have the same battle system. Characters take actions in order based on their speed attribute in both games. You can literally play FF12 exactly like FF10 turn-by-turn if you want to and manually enter in all your characters' actions. All FF12 is an automated version of FF10's battle system. Put gambits in FF10 and it would play just like FF12.

My PC runs chess vs AI just fine. So did my computer back in 1995. You don't need a supercomputer to run chess.

The point stands.

How long would it take you to code your side to play chess without input from you? A lot fucking longer than coding your characters in FF12.

The point stands.

In your opinion. There are hundreds of thousands of people that disagree with you. Proof: sales figures for Bravely Default. There is significant demand for this game style.

Not my fault people like shitty things just like in movies, music, TV, etc. Games are no different. Xenosaga II had by far the best battle system of the series yet it was the least liked game. Resonance of Fate also sold over a million copies with good turn-based combat and it literally released the same day as FF13. Your point?

Bravely Default December 2013, Bravely Second projected 2016, Persona 4 Golden February 2013, Persona 5 projected late this year. All with virtually identical battle systems.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Rebirth games currently re-releasing on steam also have an incredibly similar battle system.

"Non-existent now" indeed. You really need to stop making stuff up when trying to hate on what you don't like...

I can name at least 10 RPGs for each one of those games that don't have shitty turn-based systems, the point is the old-school standard JRPG combat systems make up less than 10% of the market now. I wouldn't play Hyperdimension Neptunia if it had literally the best battle system ever.

 

[sumanoskae]

I've never played or had any interest in playing Final Fantasy 7, so I can't speak on it's quality. I've never heard anyone exalt it's quality in a logical, articulate manner. The highest praise I've ever seen has amounted to nothing more than "It made me sad".

I wouldn't be surprised if the people who claim to love this game are just being nostalgic, but I don't think this article is going to convince anyone; the author spends the first half of the text recounting the events of the year 1997, talking up Mario and Zelda, and occasionally mentioning the game that the article is supposed to be about.

When the author finally begins to give focus to subject of the whole fucking piece, he doesn't make much of an argument. "The plot is cliche" and "The dialogue is bad" are not arguments, they are conclusions; alone, they are unsubstantiated. What was the logical process that lead you to these opinions, author?

All the opinions presented about the game suffer from this lack of detail; "Now, to be fair, the series has never been about engaging stories, in favor of addictive battle systems, leveling up your party, and exploring the world while grinding from giant boss to an even bigger one." I was under the impression that story was considered to be the sole saving grace of the average JRPG.

Since when have people played these things for exploration? I thought all you could do in the over world was run into more shit to fight; essentially an experience identical to a linear story. Aren't we all basically in agreement that grinding doesn't make for engaging gameplay?

I guess I can't speak on the front of combat; I generally detest the combat in games like this, I've even suspected that people who play them don't even like it, just endure it. They aren't viscerally engaging; they're too slow and visually minimalist for that. They aren't tactically rich, they consist of a cycle of attack, heal, attack again. You don't have much in the way of options for customizing the characters, so there's no strategy there.

So whatever it is that I value in a combat system, I guess people who play these things want something different.

"It was gorgeous for the time though; that was the point, right? I understand that point but it was not comparable in visual beauty to other standout titles of its time." Why the fuck does this matter? So if it was just prettier, it would have made up for all the other things that were wrong with it?

"That's not fair though because it was such a massive game in scale, come on. Ever heard of the saying bigger does not mean better? Just because a game strives to redefine the way we experience games does not make it revolutionary, or even great, just as the first girl who gives you attention is not the end-all-be-all of girls."

I don't think anyone is going to argue that, despite all the things you've pointed out being wrong with this game, it's saving grace is that's it takes forever to complete. (And fuck you, my mom is great.)

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

There won't be random battles and the battle system will be quite a bit different.

You'll have to give me a source on that. Nomura said he wanted to tweak the combat system (so I'm guessing similar to FF10-2 combat system, which I'm okay with, because it's just a more fluid version of 7/8/9s, but there should be a toggle.) I've yet to read anything from Square or Nomura directly that says they've removing random battles. I have no reason to believe they'd change the combat system so much that it wouldn't even resemble FF7, because that would stupid. FF7 has a pretty feverish fanbase and gutting the combat system is unlikely to go down well. I'd be pretty pissed if it ended up being like FF13 or 12 and I actually liked 12s combat system.

Sorry to come back after all this time but it literally made no sense that the FFVII remake would keep random battles or an old FF turn-based system. All the proof is out there now. The game actually looks like a game I could enjoy actually playing.

 

[elvor0]

There won't be random battles and the battle system will be quite a bit different.

You'll have to give me a source on that. Nomura said he wanted to tweak the combat system (so I'm guessing similar to FF10-2 combat system, which I'm okay with, because it's just a more fluid version of 7/8/9s, but there should be a toggle.) I've yet to read anything from Square or Nomura directly that says they've removing random battles. I have no reason to believe they'd change the combat system so much that it wouldn't even resemble FF7, because that would stupid. FF7 has a pretty feverish fanbase and gutting the combat system is unlikely to go down well. I'd be pretty pissed if it ended up being like FF13 or 12 and I actually liked 12s combat system.

Sorry to come back after all this time but it literally made no sense that the FFVII remake would keep random battles or an old FF turn-based system. All the proof is out there now. The game actually looks like a game I could enjoy actually playing.

Did you just necro this thread to do a "told you so" on something you couldn't possibly prove or had any sources on at the time the thread was alive?

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

There won't be random battles and the battle system will be quite a bit different.

You'll have to give me a source on that. Nomura said he wanted to tweak the combat system (so I'm guessing similar to FF10-2 combat system, which I'm okay with, because it's just a more fluid version of 7/8/9s, but there should be a toggle.) I've yet to read anything from Square or Nomura directly that says they've removing random battles. I have no reason to believe they'd change the combat system so much that it wouldn't even resemble FF7, because that would stupid. FF7 has a pretty feverish fanbase and gutting the combat system is unlikely to go down well. I'd be pretty pissed if it ended up being like FF13 or 12 and I actually liked 12s combat system.

Sorry to come back after all this time but it literally made no sense that the FFVII remake would keep random battles or an old FF turn-based system. All the proof is out there now. The game actually looks like a game I could enjoy actually playing.

Did you just necro this thread to do a "told you so" on something you couldn't possibly prove or had any sources on at the time the thread was alive?

You ask me for proof, yet you had no proof yourself. Why would a new FF game have old FF turn-based combat when it's been over a decade since the last FF with that kind of a combat system? Why would a REMAKE be the same as the old game but with just better graphics? When the remake was announced, I didn't think for a second it would use the old antiquated combat system.