As many long time Escapist Magazine Forum goers will know, Final Fantasy 7 is my favorite game of all time bar none. I've made several threads in the old forum in regards to the Remake, from the announcement to several update threads every time we got a new trailer. To say I have been excited for this release is an understandment. I have clocked 47 hours in the game over the last 2 and a half days, completing the story and every side quest the game has to offer leaving only hard mode the last remaining challenge that I intend to tackle the moment I finish this review. Which might serve as a review in itself considering I've eager to go back to the game after literally just completing it.
However I feel like reviewing this is gonna be a bit more complicated than that. So let's break it down and review the easy parts first.
Graphics:
The game is breathtakingly beautiful for the most part.If you've seen the trailers you know just how good this game CAN look.Unfortunately the game is very problematic in this regard. The world itself as you play is littered with insane amounts of extremely low quality textures and assets. Outside of the main cast, the side NPC's, the ground textures, walls, clutter, and scenic elements seem to struggle to load.
I think this is a big more than anything though. I think the PS4 system simply can't load the assets fast enough, so instead it only partially loads them and hopes the player doesn't notice. Though even when lingering in an area textures will kinda pop it but never fully load. It's a strange thing that I believe can be fixed in a patch or for sure when the game gets ported to PC.
Quite frankly, if it weren't for the asset loading issue, this might be the best looking game ever made. Or made so far. It's gorgeous and the moments when everything works, the game is incredible to watch.
Thankfully in combat this isn't an issue, things like magic effect, particals of impacts, and the sheer beauty of the characters in motion is a sight to behold. I found myself struggling in some fights because I was so busy staring at the animations in awe that I forgot to keep playing. It's that damn good looking.
And credit to Square on optimization because I don't think I ever dropped a frame, at least nothing I noticed and I played on a base PS4.
Combat and Gameplay:
Again I have to give the game nothing but praise here, combat in FF7R is unbelievably fun and probably the best JRPG combat that has ever been put into a game. The action combat is just a thin blanket that covers the real depth of the TURN-BASED action system.The action is there to give players something to do to fill there ATB meter before using those ATB segments (of which each character gets up to 2 at any given time) you spend them to perform just about any action other than basic attacks and blocking. Which includes all magic and items. In this game if you are on the ropes and you have no ATB you cannot take any healing actions what-so-ever. This was something that had been a problem in FF15 where you could literally pause combat and instantly chug a potion to heal any party member. Not here. Your ATB is your lifeline and you need it for everything.
Because of this, you really have to think about the actions you are performing with every character at all times. Characters learn abilities from different weapons and collect those abilities as you use them. Once mastered you keep the ability even after changing to a different weapon. Mastering weapon abilities is how you expand the list of things your characters can do in combat (aside from equipping different magics) And every ability has a purpose. Some build stagger meter on the enemies, a mechanic that was hated in FF13 but given a much more toned down effort here, some deal burst damage, and some abilities increase your mobility or quickly juke an attack. Each character has a very different set of mechanics and abilies as well. No two characters have the same system, nor the same purpose in battle.
Barrett, for example, has a mix of utility abilities and offensive ones. For example he can increase his defense, but then he can also pull a % of the damage dealt to other party members directly to himself instead. This allows you to force him to take the majority of the punishment and thus you can have Aerith focus her healing upon him because you know where the damage is gonna go. However it's not that simple, as fights are much more dynamic than that and there is plenty of damage to go around.
You have to swap on the fly to every character over the course of a fight, either to just give them commands or to take control of them directly for a while to attack in a specific way or just for a change of pace.
The only place where the combat system falters is that the other two characters you are not directly controlling don't do much. The AI is not very good, and they mostly just block and try to minimize the damage they take. Which is helpful in a way but it also doesn't really build their ATB, so if you need a character ability in a pinch it might not be there for you if you aren't actively swapping. Admittedly this is a minor gripe, because the game wants YOU to control everything and if the AI was good, then it would feel like the game was not only playing itself, but that you also didn't have to plan ahead to use everyone's abilities. This dumb AI promotes the player to rapidly swap through all party members all the time, treating the game much more like a turn based system than the game appears. Like I said, the action combat look is a very surface level deal.
You must, swap to cloud activiate Braver, jump to Barrett before the animation even begins and use Focus Blast, jump over to Aerith to Pray, back to Cloud for basic attacks to build the meter back up. And over and over this goes, with each character ending up with 4-7 different abilities by the end of the game on top of several magic spells, limit breaks, and summons. The magic only adds even more management to this because you can completely customize the materia for every character with each character usually being able to have 7 or so different materia equipped.
Which brings me to the enemies themselves. Every single enemy in the game (114 different enemies in total including bosses of which there are 21) behaves differently, and some have quirks that you must figure out to overcome. Ghost enemies will vanish after taking a few physical hits for a couple moments before appearing near a character for a surprise attack.
If you seen the demo, then you've seen the first boss of the game, the robot scorpion. This boss has different phases with cinematic transitions that jump it between several different behaviors throughout the fight. I'm pleased to report that EVERY boss is like this, cutscenes will play that both change up the bosses tactics as well as give you a well needed breather in a lot of cases. While it might seem to be nothing more than spectacle, and it partly is, what it really does is give you a brief moment to get your barrings again as most of these fights are nuts. And they are all fun.
Story:
Ok......so here's the thing with this.
This is a Remake of a 23 year-old game. We know the story and we know that this game is such a tiny tiny part of the greater FF7 whole. The big question everyone had was, "How the hell are they going to expand this to make a full sized game?" And the answer to that is.....they didn't.
Look the story that is here is great. But they didn't really expand on Midgar or the story at all. At best, they filled in the blanks that you didn't get to see in the original game. They give you more character moments and some extra things to do between the bigger story beats. But the key moments that happen in Midgar are still just about all that happen there. Where the expanded run-time comes from is that everything is voice acted and full animated so huge sections that were just a bunch of text in the original are full on watched movies, which takes longer than just reading.
Now look the gameplay sections are more realized, you aren't traversing a 2D backdrop anymore, you are moving through full 3D environments and they took the liberty of putting exploration and puzzle elements in these sections to make it feel like more of a journey than going from point A to B. There are no random encounters to slow you down either, every battle is basically a set obstacle in your path which keeps the pacing in these sections done well as they give the characters enough time to banter with each other.
And character is what this game does best. I'd say that this first part of the Remake has one job, and that's to make you love these characters. A job it does beautifully. You'll love the cast by the end, and you'll want more.
Final Fantasy 7's story has an interesting beginning with just the Midgar section. If you take that slice of the original game and look at just that part, you have what is probably the most grounded Final Fantasy story ever told. Shinra is a evil corporation and you are part of a group trying to stop them. It's a pretty realistic goal for a Final Fantasy game, a series which end up having you kill God at the end.
That sort of doesn't happen here, but also happens kinda?
People who are fans of the original already are on edge because of the overuse of Sephiroth within the Remake. Sephiroth doesn't appear at all in the original game anywhere in Mdigar and the game only references him here and there. I will say that there is far less Sephiroth in the Remake than people might think. Sure he does appear very early in the game, and it's played up as kind of fan service as it hints at events and scenes that don't happen until well after the Midgar chapter is over. I get the feel that the Development team knew they had to put Sephiroth in, not only because he is one of the most famous villains in video game history but also because you couldn't do a full FF7 game without him somewhere. That being said, his inclusion is actually very well done. Fans of the original game will like all the future events that are hinted at, while newcomers to the story will be left in wonder as to what it's all about. Honestly I think it was a good balance and a nice compromising way to use the character without really leaning on him.
Alright I have to go into spoilers here so only read this if you don't give a shit about them or have already beaten the game yourself
Ultimately I'm very happy with what they did, but I'm also a bit sad. Because the characters are done so well here, and the story leads you on this great hook, you get to the end and it just.....ends but not really. You know there is more and it feels a bit of a bummer to not be able to continue. Top that off with a big fat ???? as to when the next game could come. Another 5 years?
My hope is that this game can be a jumping off point for the dev team and allow them to create the next part at a much faster pace than this game took.
When this Remake is all over.....I think it could be one of the greatest RPG sagas of all time easily.
Anyway have you played it? What did you think? Do you have any questions that I didn't cover? Ask away!
However I feel like reviewing this is gonna be a bit more complicated than that. So let's break it down and review the easy parts first.
Graphics:
The game is breathtakingly beautiful for the most part.If you've seen the trailers you know just how good this game CAN look.Unfortunately the game is very problematic in this regard. The world itself as you play is littered with insane amounts of extremely low quality textures and assets. Outside of the main cast, the side NPC's, the ground textures, walls, clutter, and scenic elements seem to struggle to load.
I think this is a big more than anything though. I think the PS4 system simply can't load the assets fast enough, so instead it only partially loads them and hopes the player doesn't notice. Though even when lingering in an area textures will kinda pop it but never fully load. It's a strange thing that I believe can be fixed in a patch or for sure when the game gets ported to PC.
Quite frankly, if it weren't for the asset loading issue, this might be the best looking game ever made. Or made so far. It's gorgeous and the moments when everything works, the game is incredible to watch.
Thankfully in combat this isn't an issue, things like magic effect, particals of impacts, and the sheer beauty of the characters in motion is a sight to behold. I found myself struggling in some fights because I was so busy staring at the animations in awe that I forgot to keep playing. It's that damn good looking.
And credit to Square on optimization because I don't think I ever dropped a frame, at least nothing I noticed and I played on a base PS4.
Combat and Gameplay:
Again I have to give the game nothing but praise here, combat in FF7R is unbelievably fun and probably the best JRPG combat that has ever been put into a game. The action combat is just a thin blanket that covers the real depth of the TURN-BASED action system.The action is there to give players something to do to fill there ATB meter before using those ATB segments (of which each character gets up to 2 at any given time) you spend them to perform just about any action other than basic attacks and blocking. Which includes all magic and items. In this game if you are on the ropes and you have no ATB you cannot take any healing actions what-so-ever. This was something that had been a problem in FF15 where you could literally pause combat and instantly chug a potion to heal any party member. Not here. Your ATB is your lifeline and you need it for everything.
Because of this, you really have to think about the actions you are performing with every character at all times. Characters learn abilities from different weapons and collect those abilities as you use them. Once mastered you keep the ability even after changing to a different weapon. Mastering weapon abilities is how you expand the list of things your characters can do in combat (aside from equipping different magics) And every ability has a purpose. Some build stagger meter on the enemies, a mechanic that was hated in FF13 but given a much more toned down effort here, some deal burst damage, and some abilities increase your mobility or quickly juke an attack. Each character has a very different set of mechanics and abilies as well. No two characters have the same system, nor the same purpose in battle.
Barrett, for example, has a mix of utility abilities and offensive ones. For example he can increase his defense, but then he can also pull a % of the damage dealt to other party members directly to himself instead. This allows you to force him to take the majority of the punishment and thus you can have Aerith focus her healing upon him because you know where the damage is gonna go. However it's not that simple, as fights are much more dynamic than that and there is plenty of damage to go around.
You have to swap on the fly to every character over the course of a fight, either to just give them commands or to take control of them directly for a while to attack in a specific way or just for a change of pace.
The only place where the combat system falters is that the other two characters you are not directly controlling don't do much. The AI is not very good, and they mostly just block and try to minimize the damage they take. Which is helpful in a way but it also doesn't really build their ATB, so if you need a character ability in a pinch it might not be there for you if you aren't actively swapping. Admittedly this is a minor gripe, because the game wants YOU to control everything and if the AI was good, then it would feel like the game was not only playing itself, but that you also didn't have to plan ahead to use everyone's abilities. This dumb AI promotes the player to rapidly swap through all party members all the time, treating the game much more like a turn based system than the game appears. Like I said, the action combat look is a very surface level deal.
You must, swap to cloud activiate Braver, jump to Barrett before the animation even begins and use Focus Blast, jump over to Aerith to Pray, back to Cloud for basic attacks to build the meter back up. And over and over this goes, with each character ending up with 4-7 different abilities by the end of the game on top of several magic spells, limit breaks, and summons. The magic only adds even more management to this because you can completely customize the materia for every character with each character usually being able to have 7 or so different materia equipped.
Which brings me to the enemies themselves. Every single enemy in the game (114 different enemies in total including bosses of which there are 21) behaves differently, and some have quirks that you must figure out to overcome. Ghost enemies will vanish after taking a few physical hits for a couple moments before appearing near a character for a surprise attack.
If you seen the demo, then you've seen the first boss of the game, the robot scorpion. This boss has different phases with cinematic transitions that jump it between several different behaviors throughout the fight. I'm pleased to report that EVERY boss is like this, cutscenes will play that both change up the bosses tactics as well as give you a well needed breather in a lot of cases. While it might seem to be nothing more than spectacle, and it partly is, what it really does is give you a brief moment to get your barrings again as most of these fights are nuts. And they are all fun.
Story:
Ok......so here's the thing with this.
This is a Remake of a 23 year-old game. We know the story and we know that this game is such a tiny tiny part of the greater FF7 whole. The big question everyone had was, "How the hell are they going to expand this to make a full sized game?" And the answer to that is.....they didn't.
Look the story that is here is great. But they didn't really expand on Midgar or the story at all. At best, they filled in the blanks that you didn't get to see in the original game. They give you more character moments and some extra things to do between the bigger story beats. But the key moments that happen in Midgar are still just about all that happen there. Where the expanded run-time comes from is that everything is voice acted and full animated so huge sections that were just a bunch of text in the original are full on watched movies, which takes longer than just reading.
Now look the gameplay sections are more realized, you aren't traversing a 2D backdrop anymore, you are moving through full 3D environments and they took the liberty of putting exploration and puzzle elements in these sections to make it feel like more of a journey than going from point A to B. There are no random encounters to slow you down either, every battle is basically a set obstacle in your path which keeps the pacing in these sections done well as they give the characters enough time to banter with each other.
And character is what this game does best. I'd say that this first part of the Remake has one job, and that's to make you love these characters. A job it does beautifully. You'll love the cast by the end, and you'll want more.
Final Fantasy 7's story has an interesting beginning with just the Midgar section. If you take that slice of the original game and look at just that part, you have what is probably the most grounded Final Fantasy story ever told. Shinra is a evil corporation and you are part of a group trying to stop them. It's a pretty realistic goal for a Final Fantasy game, a series which end up having you kill God at the end.
That sort of doesn't happen here, but also happens kinda?
People who are fans of the original already are on edge because of the overuse of Sephiroth within the Remake. Sephiroth doesn't appear at all in the original game anywhere in Mdigar and the game only references him here and there. I will say that there is far less Sephiroth in the Remake than people might think. Sure he does appear very early in the game, and it's played up as kind of fan service as it hints at events and scenes that don't happen until well after the Midgar chapter is over. I get the feel that the Development team knew they had to put Sephiroth in, not only because he is one of the most famous villains in video game history but also because you couldn't do a full FF7 game without him somewhere. That being said, his inclusion is actually very well done. Fans of the original game will like all the future events that are hinted at, while newcomers to the story will be left in wonder as to what it's all about. Honestly I think it was a good balance and a nice compromising way to use the character without really leaning on him.
Alright I have to go into spoilers here so only read this if you don't give a shit about them or have already beaten the game yourself
Noruma has a habit of trying to overcomplicate stories, he did it with FF13, FF15, and of course Kindom Hearts. Of course he does it here as well, with the shadow things you've seen in the trailers. These spectors are extremely confusing entities in the game because there are several sections in the game where they attack you, and come across as enemies. However towards the climax they do a lot to help you. It's explained that they are Watchers of Fate their role is simply to make sure that people continue on their fateful path. Which means stopping someone from doing something that would change their fate, or saving someone from dying too early. It's kind of a blurry bullshit line that really is stupid and the events of the game could have happened without them existing completely.
This is typical Nomura, these Watchers of Fate have no purpose but to make the story feel more complex than it is or that it should be.
Then there is the ending. Unlike some harsh people on the internet, I don't think the ending is terrible, but I do think it is unnecessary. You are not trying to escape Midgar like the original, but instead are trying to chase Sephiroth.....or more accurately Jenova. This ending is overly complicated because, while it does make sense to someone who's played and understood the original game, it makes no sense to someone who is new to this universe.Who are the robes guys, why to they look like Sephiroth sometimes, but other times don't? If you played the original you know it is because Shinra used alien DNA to experiment and try to make Sephiroth clones. However most of these experiments failed leaving shambling people as a result, but when the Alien Jenova escapes from the Shinra building, she uses these husks of people by tapping into her DNA that lies within them to something called the Reunion. Cloud is part of these husks though a much stronger attempt, Jenova uses the Sephiroth form to lead Cloud and his friends around the world to serve her desires.
I guess it ends up being an interesting compromise right? These sparks and hints are good, if a bit too complicated for a new comer, and they do allow them to throw in a big ending fight to cap off the first game. It could be worse, but it probably could have been done better.
This is typical Nomura, these Watchers of Fate have no purpose but to make the story feel more complex than it is or that it should be.
Then there is the ending. Unlike some harsh people on the internet, I don't think the ending is terrible, but I do think it is unnecessary. You are not trying to escape Midgar like the original, but instead are trying to chase Sephiroth.....or more accurately Jenova. This ending is overly complicated because, while it does make sense to someone who's played and understood the original game, it makes no sense to someone who is new to this universe.Who are the robes guys, why to they look like Sephiroth sometimes, but other times don't? If you played the original you know it is because Shinra used alien DNA to experiment and try to make Sephiroth clones. However most of these experiments failed leaving shambling people as a result, but when the Alien Jenova escapes from the Shinra building, she uses these husks of people by tapping into her DNA that lies within them to something called the Reunion. Cloud is part of these husks though a much stronger attempt, Jenova uses the Sephiroth form to lead Cloud and his friends around the world to serve her desires.
I guess it ends up being an interesting compromise right? These sparks and hints are good, if a bit too complicated for a new comer, and they do allow them to throw in a big ending fight to cap off the first game. It could be worse, but it probably could have been done better.
Ultimately I'm very happy with what they did, but I'm also a bit sad. Because the characters are done so well here, and the story leads you on this great hook, you get to the end and it just.....ends but not really. You know there is more and it feels a bit of a bummer to not be able to continue. Top that off with a big fat ???? as to when the next game could come. Another 5 years?
My hope is that this game can be a jumping off point for the dev team and allow them to create the next part at a much faster pace than this game took.
When this Remake is all over.....I think it could be one of the greatest RPG sagas of all time easily.
Anyway have you played it? What did you think? Do you have any questions that I didn't cover? Ask away!