LogFAQs > #973067533

#12. Final Fantasy VII Remake

oh boy

lets talk about it

Me personally - just such mixed feelings all around.

The stuff from the original game felt fresh and exciting, and everything new felt underwhelming and uninteresting.

And I honestly didn't mind if they changed things or did things different but damn... it's like at least don't make the game worse.

Like take the highway section for example. They somehow managed to make it boring in the remake. The big health spongey bosses kept coming, and I caught myself thinking like god is this over yet?

(I really wanna see a map of the chapter 18 highway in relation to Midgar. Midgar: eight sections, about a 5-10 minute walk to cross one. Also here's a 20 mile long highway with no exits that snakes back and forth.)

wait was there ever any payoff with that motorcyle guy? What the fuck was that about

ANYWAY, FF7R reminds me of some Shenmue style game design. A bunch of arbitrary hurdles they want us to jump over for the sake of length at every juncture. But at least Shenmue used that to make the world and characters more colorful. FF7R? Now whenever I think of Tifa, I think about jumping across the ceiling to get a keycard.

Everybody loves the combat, but I felt it seriously suffered from overdesign. There's a constant flood of information that creates a poor sense of feedback on what is and isn't effective, too many systems and cooldowns and character mechanics to manage in real time, and even then all the battles ultimately feel pretty samey for how much mental energy I need to expend. I'm not actually strategizing. I feel like a nurse trying to monitor a bunch of vital signs for a patient and responding to them constantly dropping.

Honestly my enthusiasm for FF7R as a "series" dropped significantly in the final chapter of the game. Nomura basically just wrote himself a ticket to change whatever he wants moving forward without ever really making a case for why anything needed to change. Meta narratives are insanely hard to craft well, and he fumbled it so hard.

I'm going to be surprised if Aerith dies. All of this - everything - felt like it started with the question, "What if Aerith didn't have to die?"

Also why couldn't you play as Red XIII?

And you wanna know what really sucks? Games like FF6 and Chrono Trigger will never need remakes to realize their original vision. Those games still stand as complete experiences that never felt hindered by the technology. So if they got shoddy remakes, there wouldnt be anything to lose.

With FF7 there was something to lose: it was hindered by the tech at the time, and we may now have forever lost the chance to see it truly unhindered by those limits.

8.4/10 i guess. Im really trying hard to be reasonable here.

And obviously the original FF7 has aged quite a bit by todays standards, but I still think its at least a high 8/low 9 in 2023. So yeah it kinda blows my mind that FF7R isnt as good as a game from 1997.

The ranking so far
#12. FF7R - 8.4
#13. FF1 - 8.3
#14. FF15 - 8.0
#15. DoC FF7 - 6.0
#16. FF2 - 3.5
#17. FF13 - 3.0

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/5/5/AAK53VAAEap7.jpg