yeah i’ll throw my hands up and admit i expected this to be trash but i’ve had a really good time (as of chapter 14, i’m very anxious about the finale going Full Nomura and having to edit this post)
to really oversimplify things my previous couple of ff7 playthroughs clocked at ~18 hours or so and i’ve gone a fair bit past that here but it doesn’t feel bloated besides the totally skippable kill ten rats stuff
still not totally sold on the combat but as it’s starting to open up and some of the more interesting materia is proving out at max level and you actually have more than a couple of slots to experiment it’s getting better
I had more gripes during the early chapters, which didn’t exactly go away but were outpaced by how good and well crafted the rest of it was.
After riding high through the second half I’m just…not thrilled with the way the finale/ending involved other stakes and spectacle
I feel a lot of love for what they achieved with this Remake, now what they played a few notes with throughout and then full chord at the end, I’m having a hard time harmonizing with…
credit to squaresoft for being able to charge $250 for a videogame once all four volumes or whatever have released, they finally restored the pricing curve from final fantasy -> II -> III in the US
fragment is the only completely garbage .hack game, it turns out when you make an extremely limited MMO out of a ps2 jrpg that’s already modeling one it fucking sucks
The first looks at FF7Rebirth/Revolution (…Rumination?) are going to be extremely telling.
Credit to their ability/opportunity here dual shocking expectations on the brand, you have to be bought in either nostalgically or pop culturally to digest, what’s most likely cooking.
I really want to hear what someone who has zero exposure to FF7 thinks of the remake. People have been obsessed with FF7 and a potential remake almost the entire time I’ve been alive and like, does this game still work if you aren’t primed for it?
I think I’m pretty ambivalent on the original (and most of the ways in which I’m more positive about it are in appreciation of all the early 3D stuff they crammed in there which specifically doesn’t translate to this) and I’m pretty happy with this remake. the English VA is really not good and the linear dungeons sometimes approach ni no kuni levels of “wow, you sure went straight there, buddy!” but it is a nice chewy sweet thing. they did a great job on the world & the writing & the systems complexity, pretty much all the characters work on a level that I had no strong prior memory of.
yeah, this does feel like a really good next-gen jrpg. like i’m just playing in classic mode but i absolutely love it.
it feels good knowing every time i get into an enemy encounter i can just hold down square and be done with it (akin to in the original where you just kept hitting x cuz it’s on attack to finish a random battle) or you can get into a more major scuffle and have fun doing cool attacks and spells and switching between different characters with different styles.
~btw, minor aside but i also keep wondering if this is what ffxv’s battle system was like and i just never cared enough? i feel like i’ll never give that game a good fun chance~
my initial biggest worry with an ffvii remake was that it was going to take itself way too seriously and give up on the ideals it presented with the original. i have been super pleased with the fact that this is absolutely not the case. characters are more fleshed out and because of that have a sense of humor, everyone in your party still wants to protect the planet, and cloud is just like a huge nerd who tries to say cool stuff. and the ways the remake strays from the original have, like toups said, extended on the part of ffvii that a lot of people remember super fondly.
yeah like, the cast are all very attractive and it really works for the story they’re telling? Aeris’ colours really pop off the screen in every scene she’s in, it’s impressive work.
they arguably foreground way too many narrative elements that don’t have a payoff yet and are kind of unsettling to leave unresolved but I think that’s just because this doesn’t have the inherent surrealism of trying to tell a 90s jRPG story with 90s jRPG production values
I feel kinda glad they even rendered very visible abs on her because I swore they weren’t even gonna do that much. I don’t think they did that much on Advent Children! She’s definitely more buff here than in a lot of prior depictions of her, and it is a nice surprise it didn’t go to those levels of cowardice, but it’s still a very low bar compared to how I think she should actually look like.
Gonna be churning a while, all the very good, bad…not much ugly, except for stuff like a couple ruuuuuff skyboxes (below Sector 4 lamps, late ruins). From stunning presentation in most areas and wayside treatment to a handful others, whether rushed or engine efficiency there’s just these…funny inconsistent veins occasionally popping up next to Stunning Detail.
Enemy and encounter designs were fairly strong, even annoying ones brought me to “hey your timing/response movement and inputs are actually being that engaged!”.
The battle system is overall a great move forward from XV’s, could still be sharply iterated on though. Camera work tends to stay fair til you’re attacking/tracking aerial enemies. That’s def a bit wonkier than I liked dealing with.
How so many battles proceed in that you’re essentially managing chaos at times is fantastic - but if you’re not gonna have skills/spells aoe more visible (through maybe small area grids or markers), then better parsing exactly what all is occurring, with something like more pulled back overhead/camerawork as @toups mentioned would’ve been gracious.
I don’t think “terrain use” as shown during the first boss was implemented again until another, right near the end, ha.
