LogFAQs > #963085999

Jen0125 posted...

I really enjoyed the remake

I didn't.

I was playing it at the same time as another Square remake that was released at roughly the same time - specifically, Trials of Mana, which was a remake of Seiken Densetsu 3 for the SNES. And despite the fact that Trials had a shoestring budget compared to FF7R, I felt it was the much better remake (and, honestly, the better game overall). Trials stayed true to its roots and basically faithfully translated the base game to 3D, while also adding a few new features that enhanced and expanded the game. It wasn't perfect and it had its flaws (especially the voice acting, which ranged from "just OK" to "atrocious"), but it did an excellent job of basically taking an old game and adapting it to modern gaming conventions.

FF7R more or less completely rewrote the plot of FF7 and committed the same sin that the Hobbit movies did 10 years ago by taking an old, perfectly paced story and stretching it out far, far too thin. All the new story parts that they added were boring, nonsensical, added nothing to the overarching plot and felt clumsily stitched on, never connecting back to anything. As an example, you spend an entire chapter turning off gigantic "sun lamps" on the Midgar plate in order to open some doors (which is a major "Wait, what the fuck?" moment in the plot, but let's ignore that for now). Tifa points out that they're creating great suffering for the people below (how, exactly, turning the lights off for a spell does that is never satisfactorily explained) while Barrett insists that it's for the greater good. I expected to see this plot point expounded on at some point, maybe during a future visit to the slums where you actually see or hear about the effects of what you did... but it never happens. Literally the entire episode is never referenced again after you finish that dungeon. The game wastes an hour of your time running this errand and delivers zero payoff for it.

And the game does this over and over. You meet this new biker SOLDIER and get in a fight with him, followed by a rematch a little while later... then he just disappears and never has any real influence on the plot. Don Corneo's bodyguard is given this tragic backstory that we have to waste time learning about, despite the fact that he's completely unimportant and the game never gives us any real reason to care about him. In FF7, the three ancillary members of AVALANCHE are basically just named NPC extras; FF7R has you spend hours with them, yet *still* never gets around to actually giving them decent characterization. I can literally sum up all three of them in one sentence each - Wedge is the overweight, "kind-hearted" goofball cat lover that is the butt of everyone's jokes; Biggs is the "cool guy" who helps out an orphanage in his spare time; Jessie is the former stage actress whose entire character arc is basically her wanting to furiously hump Cloud's face whenever he so much as breathes.

It's not all bad - the graphics are superb, the soundtrack is gorgeous, and the game has tremendous ambience, absolutely nailing the world of FF7. When the game stops fucking around and gets out of its own way, it actually gives a reasonably solid performance (though I felt the battle system was overdone and could have used some streamlining). If the game had cut out all the extraneous bullshit it felt like it had to tack on to pad out the runtime and had instead just followed the plot and pacing of the original FF7, I'd probably think a lot more favourably of it. As it is, I platinumed it, put it down, and have no desire to ever play it again.

My name is darkknight109, thank you for coming to my TED-talk.