In 1986, a man named Masafumi Miyamoto formed a Japanese video game company named Square. Most commonly known today as Square Enix. Much like any video game company at the time, Square’s goal was to create great games for millions of people to play. Square’s early days started off on the Nintendo Entertainment System and the first game the company made was Final Fantasy. One of the first role playing games to ever be released. It followed the player controlling a group of travelers, wandering around a mystical land, fighting fearsome creatures, and getting stronger as they progressed through the game. It was mind blowing at the time. I say “at the time,” because video games were very simplistic back then. As time went on technology began to improve and bolder ideas began to form in the minds of developers. They could create bigger worlds, write expansive storylines, and make their games more fun.
Square was one those companies that took advantage of the next console generation with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Final Fantasy VI, otherwise the third entry here in North America, was the plunge forward for Square. It was colorful, had characters you could actually care about, and plot with rising tension. Final Fantasy XI was when Square placed their name in the market. They created other fantastic RPGs like Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and even partnered up with Nintendo to make Super Mario RPG. After the completion of Final Fantasy VI, the team discussed what to do for the seventh entry. By now a new generation of consoles was about to start. These new consoles were capable of projecting 3D environments, storing save files, and having double the length of a game from the previous era. This new generation included the Nintendo 64 and a new rival, the Playstation. Originally Sony wanted to work with Nintendo to create their new system, but Nintendo denied the console they presented to them. Instead Sony went off to publish the console on their own and thus the Playstation slammed into the market. Sony partnered with several game companies to develop exclusive titles that would test the capabilities of the Playstation. Capcom made Resident Evil, Eidos Interactive made Tomb Raider, and Konami published both Metal Gear Solid & Castlevania: Symphony of The Night. All of which had huge impacts.
So there were alot of genre defining games on the Playstation. With a huge team of talented individuals, Square would set out to make the grandest Final Fantasy ever. It would have a better combat system, an amazing soundtrack, and become the most cinematic experience they made. In 1997, Square published Final Fantasy VII worldwide. It lived up to all expectations selling ten millions copies, breaking the mold for RPGs, and becoming one of the greatest games of all time. Flash forward to the present day and you’ll still see people talking about the greatness that was Final Fantasy VII. You have to remember it’s been almost 20 years since FF7 came out. We know that the public interests have changed and developers have changed. Square has published several Final Fantasy games since 7, and when I say “several” I mean they milked the franchise dry. Fifteen mainline entries, spinoffs, movies, merchandise, and even an online MMO. Square isn’t a team anymore, it's a multimillion corporation now. They started to lose the charm older games had and their eyes began to set on the green leaves flying into their pockets. They published good games, bad games, and some games they just sent out to die. Square Enix is a company I don’t understand why some many people love. I only like three games by them and they're the ones nobody cares about. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Nier: Automata, and Octopath Traveler. I never liked Final Fantasy, but the seventh game at least dragged my attention.
A promise Square made years ago was to make a remake of the seventh game, but they canceled production because they thought it was unnecessary. Overtime fans began to demand for a remake, and by 2015 they decided to make it. Soon it was revealed that Final Fantasy 7 Remake was in development and it would be as grand as the original. Gamers were amazed by the reveal, but the project would take time and careful planning. Several delays, several months spent working on a remake of a JRPG from 1997. Finally in 2020, Square Enix published FF7 Remake and everyone ate it up except for me. I don’t have any nostalgia for the original FF7 nor do I really care about it, but I was expecting a bit from this game. Some expectations were met and others weren’t. This statement is going to piss a lot of people off, but Final Fantasy 7 Remake is decent. I don’t think it’s terrible, but I don’t like it either. It just has so many glaring problems that no one seems to want to mention. Today we’ll be talking about a little bit about Final Fantasy 7 Remake and why it didn’t really click for me.
Story
We play as Cloud Strife, an ex-soldier who once worked for the Shinra Electric Power Company. Cloud wasn’t your ordinary soldier though, he was a SOLDIER. Wow this review is going to get confusing. The SOLDIER program consisted of elite warriors who fought diligently and possessed what seemed like super strength and reflex. Cutting down whatever foes stood in their way. The Shinra corporation helped establish the city of Midgar, a giant metal ring where the higher class people lived above in luxury and the lower class lived below in the slums where there is nothing but trash and poverty. Shinra built several facilities around Midgar to extract Mako energy, the magical flow of life that lies within the planet. Using Mako, Shinra created high tech machinery, Materia which allows people to harness the power of Mako, and fueled an entire city filled with millions of people. Unfortunately the harvesting of Mako comes at a cost as it slowly drains whatever life force lies within the planet. Killing it and all it's inhabitants.
Cloud no longer works for Shinra and decides to become a mercenary with his childhood friend Tifa Lockhart, and coincidentally they are hired by a group who opposes the works of Shinra. Avalanche, a gang of eco-terrorist led by Barret Wallace. Their goal is to blow up the several Mako reactors lying around Midgar and prevent Shinra from further hurting the planet. During their first mission Cloud and Barret successfully blow up the team’s first reactor and their actions are broadcasted on live television for all of Midgard to see. While the public is shocked by these events, for Avalanche this is considered a step forward. Barrett and his team are determined to blow up more reactors, but Cloud is just kinda there to eventually get paid. On the way back to base, Cloud bumps into a kind girl named Aerith Gainsborough, but he doesn’t know who she is yet. Trust me you’ll learn eventually, or if you played the original game you should know by now. Aerith seems panicked by something and once she communicates with Cloud, he witnesses several shadowy figures flying through the air. Cloud defends himself from these ominous beings and makes his way back to base, not questioning what mysteries lie with Aerith. Okay, I can’t spoil anything more than this so I’m just going to sum what happens afterwards. Cloud meets up with Avalanche and they now plan to blow up some more reactors. He keeps getting visions of a tall long gray haired figure with a deadly voice and what is practically an eight foot long katana, but this isn’t important until later. How about right now? Cuz if you played the original game you should know who this guy is and why he is so significant to the story.
Gameplay
Final Fantasy 7 Remake is all over the place when it comes to what it wants to. One second it wants to be an action RPG with challenging group encounters and boss fights full of spectacle. Next it wants to be something like Yakuza where you wander around a miniature open world and do activities that will do very little or nothing at all to drive the narrative forward. It’s not bad, it’s just different. How about we start with the combat, because it’s one of the many luring features for this game. At first I thought it was your typical third person combat. You have a basic attack button, a block button, and a button to dodge. What makes FF7 Remake’s combat interesting is the ATB meter, ATB meaning “Active Time Battle”. By attacking enemies you fill up your ATB meter, and by activating it you slow down time to a crawl. The battle still continues around you, but you can spend your ATB meter on special abilities, spells, or use consumables. Once you spend some of your ATB bar the fight goes back to it’s normal speed, but the character you spent your ATB bar with performs the command you selected.
So the developers tried to incorporate turned based mechanics into a high octane action RPG, which works until it gets annoying. We’ll touch more on this later. Each character you unlock has their own unique playstyle and can be useful during certain occasions. Cloud is your sword fighter. H has two methods of fighting, Operator Mode and Punisher Mode. Operator Mode lets Cloud attack in quick succession, move around freely, and dodge easily. Punisher Mode makes Cloud move slower and attack in slower succession, but increases the damage Cloud deals as well as inflict more pressure damage. There’s Tifa who is your basic brawler. Quick and good for keeping the pressure up on an enemy. Barret who fights afar with a gun that when overheating can perform a charged shot to do explosive damage. Then there’s Aerith who deals magic damage which deals a lot of pressure damage and supports the team using enchantments. You may be wondering why it's so important to keep the pressure up on an enemy? If you hit an enemy enough times or use specific elemental spells they are weak to you can fill a pressure meter. Once the meter is full the enemy is left wide open to attack for a few seconds. You deal massive amounts of damage when they are stuck in this state and if you're lucky you can kill them within seconds. The combat is about dishing out weaknesses before you can actually deal critical damage, which is fun for awhile.
The combat is fun for the most part and unique twists on series ideas, but what turns Final Fantasy 7 Remake down for me? Probably the mindless stuff in between. There’s Materia slots for your character which allows you to equip different spells for each character. By using certain Materia more often you can increase the effectiveness of them. Imagine the weapon familiarity system in Nioh, but it's for spell usage. There’s the equipment for your characters and how you can spend SP points on them to increase certain stats. Then there’s the towns you explore in between chapters. They have side quests, merchants, and the occasional random minigame. This stuff helps FF7 Remake feel like an RPG and even contains elements that the original game didn’t have, but some systems didn’t really feel necessary to be honest with you. Half the time you forget that you can upgrade your equipment or stick with the first Materia you equip. It becomes lackluster after a while and sometimes the game will make you do stupid things to pad out the run time. Like all this stuff was placed in between to make you more frustrated while playing the game. Some segments are even dragged out on purpose and you wonder if the game will let you get to the fun part? But we’re not done yet. We still have several other problems to talk about in the final section.
Thoughts
I can respect the Final Fantasy 7 Remake. I can see a lot of people having fun with it. It’s polished, almost everything works the way the developers intended, and it has that polish a Triple A game funded by millions of dollars should have. I don’t feel cheated for the money I spent on this and there’s a lot of content on offer. Final Fantasy 7 is important to JRPG history and it obviously holds a place in the hearts of those who grew up with it. The children who possibly received the game as a gift, got to witness an incredible story, and leave an impact on what video games could be. Final Fantasy 7 Remake isn’t bad, but I don’t like it. As a modern recreation of a retro JRPG it's great, but as a video game itself I didn’t have all that much fun. There’s a lot this game does wrong and I think these flaws are being masked by nostalgia.
The combat I thought was good at first, but got very tedious as the game went on due to various reasons. The dodge button becomes unreliable after a while especially since some enemies have homing projectiles that are unavoidable. Some enemies are just annoying to deal with and have attacks that knock you over easily and juggle you about. The way resistances work is stupid as enemies can be standing completely still and you can be wailing on them, but they’ll take no damage whatsoever. I know it’s a game about utilizing weaknesses, but at least some damage should be dealt. I can also view this as being troublesome for when you run out of MP to use magic and are stuck with using your basics. skills. Meaning you are completely useless unless you die, reload a previous save, buy a bunch of items which refill MP, and come back. You provide the option to utilize your most basic attacks especially since this is an action RPG. The type of games where you are encouraged to utilize your most standard abilities.
I like how you can swap between the different characters during battle and experiment with different approaches, but certain things about the combat worked better when it was turn based combat. The ATB system for example and how annoying it gets. It’s weird how the character I’m playing as at the moment can have three of his ATB bars full within seconds, but the other characters will only have less than their first bar ⅓ full. Meaning you have to swap to them, attack the enemy with them for a bit, fill up their ATB, and then perform a series of planned special moves. Kind of drags out the process and makes doing what you need to do at an exact moment difficult. Your companion AI is very dumb and will do very little to dodge incoming enemy attacks. This isn’t a game where your companions won’t take damage or damage will be reduced by a certain percentage if you aren’t playing as them. They will take the damage, so basically you are taking care of three little turds at once and it’s hectic for when all their health bars are low because the other two didn’t do a good job dodging. Performing special commands is also made worse for how it’s hectic to flip through the menu screen to select an ability. It’s not hard and time slows down when you do it, butlike I said you still get hit and you can be canceled out of selection if you initiate the command but get hit while doing so. It’s frustrating to say the least. Bosses are even more frustrating because later on they have abilities that reduce all your attacks or automatically parry you. The mechanics they utilize is what makes them annoying.
The towns, otherwise the miniature open worlds, I couldn’t really care about because the side quests aren’t unique and the rewards gained from them aren’t really worth it. I thought it would be nice if all the towns were connected so you could have this complete miniature open world to explore, but this only happens in the last few chapters of the game. What’s the point of making the game open to explore near the end? By that point you completed a majority of side missions and there’s not a whole lot to do. You may be saying, “What about the missions you haven’t done yet?” Surely you can do them now that you have time. Well if you don’t do side missions during the chapters they were assigned they get canceled. No, I’m not joking. They remove side content that could have been done in the miniature open world and make it more enjoyable to explore to mess around. This is a problem that Yakuza, a game that has a new entry practically every other year solved. New side missions are always being presented and they could be done at any time!
I’ve been complaining for a bit, so what’s at least one aspect about the game I like? The story, mostly. The story is the strongest aspect of this game and it knows how to tell one. The voice acting is great, cinematography is great, the presentation is grand, and it was good enough to keep me playing. Almost all of the characters are likable, one of my favorites being Barrett, a strong leader who stands up for what he believes. Some of the characters from the original who were simple background figures have well developed backstories and it helps flesh out the universe more. Give more reasons as to why they should care. Certain segments of the original story were extended and it helps give more detailing of what occurred and adds some emotion, but this brings a couple new problems to the table. Some segments tend to lag on longer than they really should and there are times the game grinds to a halt. Some characters they expanded on are great, but there’s a point where not every character needs a tragic backstory because some of them don’t play crucial roles to the plot and they just dump that information on you like your counselor or something. Cloud has a more active role in the remake, but he comes across as a bland character in my opinion. Only really there to play a mysterious vessel that can be brought up in conversations and add drama, but really it doesn't do much to contribute as a character.
Overall I didn’t like Final Fantasy 7 Remake nor do I recommend it easily to my audience. This is a thirty hour long action RPG with tons of cinematics, and by the end I was ready to be done. I had my fill and I didn’t want any more Final Fantasy afterwards. This game is drawn out longer than it should be and a ton of that time could have been cut done to provide a more streamlined, focused, and tighter twenty hour experience. I have played games longer than this, like open worlds that last fifty hours long, or Persona 5 which is a one hundred hour long game. However, the content they provided was actually worth my time and I felt invested with the world and characters. I didn’t feel invested with Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and I’m bummed out because I wanted to see why this game is important to so many people. I don’t like this, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have to like it. I give Final Fantasy 7 Remake a 6.5/10 for being passable.
Comments