Final Fantasy VII Remake Megathread - Intergrade, Rebirth, Reunion and more

[FudgemintGuardian]

I don’t know anything about the spoilers in this game yet but I will say Nomura, Kitase, and Toriyama did say in their interviews leading up to release that this game wasn’t a traditional remake. Also we know these men. “Remake” never meant remake as we know it but “remake” like to completely “make something differently” which is a valid definition of the word and we all should have expected this from day 1.

The problem with that though, is that we really had no reason to expect [REDACTED]. Maybe in hindsight, emphasis on "maybe", their words could be seen as such, but even then it's a huge stretch, and most people aren't going to pay attention to all that. Everyone knew this game was going to be different, with an expanded story, new characters, bigger locations, probably some plot points getting rearranged so it all works as a full game, but, since you said you don't know about the spoilers yet, I'll try to be as vague as possible and put it a separate spoiler tag.

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I don't think this is the "make something differently" you had in mind.

I'm probably gonna stay hush hush on this game and thread for now. I don't really have anything else to add, anyway. XD

 

[Noivern]

I'm still working throughout the game, I have a bit over 20h now and I'm about to start the Honeybee Inn stuff after the Coliseum.
My thoughts so far:

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Besides the RIDICULOUS decay in quality after Reactor 5 (seriously, after we get to the Church there isn't a single map that isnt filled with jpeg textures that wouldnt feel misplaced in a PS2 game), I'm enjoying it even though I have some issues.

- I really don't like how the magic system works in this game. Granted, I know the whole materia system is part of the original game as well, but I'm never really using magic comfortably here. Ethers are extremely expensive and quite rare so I can't exactly spam then as much as I want, and there's also the issue where I rarely have the correct element equipped on me when I actually need them, so most of the time I just put utility materia on my characters like heal, barrier, etc.

- It does become a bit more comfortable some time later after I ran around with Aerith for a while since one of her weapons gets elemental bonuses upgrades for all 4 eles and I just slotted all spells on her while keeping Pray as her main heal and having Cure on Cloud (since I never really use his mp and I just focus on the ATB skills instead), but thats more than halfway through the game.

- The difficulty started to spike out of nowhere after reactor 5 is done and it's starting to annoy me, lol. Mostly because I don't feel like the game is actually hard, but some aspects of it just feel unfair; mostly the debuffs. Enemies and even bosses are pretty easy to deal with most of the time until you get debuffed and then all of a sudden youre entire strategy falls apart, which feels extra annoying when Aerith is paper thin and unless I just stay on Cloud all the time, I get absolutely destroyed by mechanical enemies? The boss from the sidequest in the graveyard was specially annoying due to this.

- The house boss. I know some people are talking about this garbage in the net already (I heard a reviewer quit because of it? lol) and boy, that was the MOST stressing time I've had with the game so far, and my first game over too. What really annoyed me in this fight is that it's where I felt the difficult spike the most. I could read it's patterns and I could work through the elemental weakness gimmick, but all of it's attacks took waay too much HP from me, and it was SO hard to land the correct weaknesses and then react in time to all the bullshit it threw on me because the delays were so small. I realized some time later that it was better to just give up on trying to work throughout the elements after the second phase and just blast through him with Cloud while healing and that.. wasn't fun? I'm not really the best player and I'm sure people who are used to playing games on hard probably dealt with this better, but what started as a fun fight just became a monotonous chore that took a lot of time to beat. As in not many tries, just.. a really long fight for me.

- Another thing that I'm not really a fan of is how this game at times feels more like a walking simulator rather than a RPG. It's not soo bad because at least the scenary IS pretty (when you ignore the low quality textures), but it's a bit underwhelming to me when I finally get to an action segment and then barely fight enemies before it's already over. I assume the unlocked Coliseum is meant to be the way to grind levels from now on, but I wish I could just farm properly to get a few levels ahead and just blast through the game faster since the actual fights rarely take actual skill for me to enjoy them, it's either stuff gets absolutely destroyed so fast that I have to be careful so to not kill things before I can Assess them for Chadley, or they are a bit of hp sponges that rarely give me any trouble unless they start to throw debuffs on me.

That being said, I am enjoying the game. It's definitely not GOTY to me, but it's a good game, I may even call it one of the good Final Fantasy's. The best parts to me are the world, definitely. While I'm growing really sick of Midgar, they did put effort into making this giant mechanical town feel alive. The NPC's are super good, with their random chatter that actually contributes to the plot; The sidequests are pretty good, the story feels a lot better than the original and I specially like how political the game is. Original FF7 was already about that, but the remake took it even further and you can really feel the issues with that world, how corrupted Shinra is, and feel sympathy for the people in the slums.

I did get spoiled on the end and I'm curious to see how this will actually turn out now that I'm starting to get close to it, but since I'm not really a FF7 fan I'm not as hostile as others are to this.

 

[Zettaflare]

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[Mirby]

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wait are people really mad at the hell house boss? i loved that boss, one of my favorites especially since it was one of the most ridiculous enemies in the original game and perhaps in the entire series. it was fantastic

anyways i beat the game yesterday. it was fun, working (slowly) towards the platinum now lol

 

[Darkspawn]

I beat the game night before last. This has been my most enjoyed Final Fantasy game since 12.

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Gameplay: This should be the base system the FF series uses going forward. It is an excellent evolution of FFXIII’s system. The only changes I would make are to be just a little more generous with MP allowance and/or items that recover MP and to allow AI customization for party members like in KH. I also hope the next game doesn’t have as much forced slow walking.

Visuals: I didn’t notice as many of the texture issues as other people have, but I do hope they patch the game to fix some of that stuff so others will be satisfied. Overall, I think they beautifully recreated Midgar and the character animations in cutscenes are possibly the best I’ve ever seen in a video game.

Characters: I didn’t think I could fall more in love with these characters, but I was wrong. They absolutely nailed everyone’s personality in a way that was consistent with the original and then improved on it. Aerith, Barret, Biggs, and Jessie are the standouts for me. The new characters like Leslie, Andrea, etc. were welcome additions as well.

Story: I think they nailed it. They really proved why this story deserved to be remade and why breaking it into parts was necessary to fullflesh it out. When they changed things like President Shinra’s death (which may have been done to preserve the T rating,) they made the trade off worth it with the new character development.

As for the ending. I went in to this expecting (and dare I say wanting) them to add something to the end of Midgar for there to be a bigger finale and they more than delivered. They’ve now opened up the future of this remake series to the possibility of genuine surprises and original developments while it will likely still hit most of the same major plot points as the original. This is certainly a bold move that purists will hate, but I think is great to show that remakes don’t have to just be purely nostalgia driven like the live action Disney remakes. I don’t think the creators would do this unless they were passionate about the opportunities the ending will allow and that’s what I like to see.

Best quote: “Nailed it. I know. Thanks. Moving on.”

 

[Happyfunshineman]

I liked the game. I’m excited to see the rest of this series.

The ending is pretty weird. I liked it but I’m not sure if it was the right move to make.

 

[Sakuraba Neku]

Beat the game yesterday!
Unlike FF15 and KH3, this one was worth the wait. Solid game on all fronts!

Favourite chapters by order: 4, 12, 9, 3 and 15.
Most boring chapter by order: 6, 10 and 11

Overall, the most boring parts for me were the sewers and tunnels. Train Graveyard isn't better either.

The minigames are awesome!

Favourite boss battle is the last one, but defeat Jules in pull-ups was the hardest challenge of the game. I had my heart beating way too fast after hours of failed attempts and no retry option...

Favourite playable character: Tifa. After find out her potential, I didn't want to play with anyone else. She's feels more like fighting game character than a RPG one. Aerith was the worst one. Great character, grea theme, but lame to play with. She made things harder in the last chapters boss battles, where we are forced to play with her.

As for DLC, I would like a theater menu so I can see the cutscenes, an option to dance again in Honey Inn and a retry option for the minigames. Nothing hard to do, I suppose.

Their main focus now should be part 2 which I don't expect to come out before 2024, but I hope it covers more content from the original story than this one.

About the last boss battle:

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As much as I loved it, I couldn't stop questioning myself if Square-Enix weren't going overboard, considering this is just the first part. I'm expecting this project to be a trilogy, but if Sephiroth is the final boss in all parts will make it feel repetitive.

 

[Eonstar890]

Hello All! I have never played a Final Fantasy game before this and I have just now finished FF7R! Going into it all I knew about these characters was their appearances in KH, and lemme tell ya.. I like them WAY more in this title than I ever did in KH.

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So my first thought after finishing was to check this forum and see what people thought of the game here and I am surprised by the disdain many seem to have for the ending. I thought it was a great plot twist since everyone probably went into this expecting it to be the same as the original. Personally I'd rather experience something "new" instead of a HD version of something I have already played through. (I may also be slightly biased because Aerith is by far my favorite character in this game and I know she dies in the original.)

I really liked the gameplay for this game as well. Being able to play as all these different characters was so cool and I loved how they all had different roles. My only complaint on this would be materia setups. It was kinda hard to pick out what to use when element wise since you never really know what an enemy will be like, but I suppose that's more of a hard mode thing. I wish that the leveling up for materia was across the board tho. For example, once one fire material is level 2 then they all are versus every time you want a new fire materia its like starting from scratch. Overall though it was a very fun play through and this party system is actually something I have been dying to see in Kingdom Hearts! Like imagine this type of party system for Sora, Riku, and Kairi! I'd die of pure happiness.

I totally agree that sometimes the weird forced slow walking was annoying, but other times it made sense so eh I am not that bothered. The visuals looked great to me, and characters were very well developed. I can tell they put a lot of effort into making Midgar immersive and I loved it.

Super excited for the second installment! I am totally invested now in this story and where it leads. I dived into this knowing absolutely nothing about anything and can say I am happy with what I got

 

[Mirby]

I was also a bit surprised at how unhappy folks were with the ending. I enjoyed it and it gives a lot of potential paths for the other volumes to take. I'm still working my way to the platinum and discovering new things (did you know holding run while descending a ladder makes you slide down it at max speed?), it's pretty great.

 

[OneDandelion]

All of my friends seem to love this game so I acknowledge that this might just be a nitpicking issue by me. I am very biased when it comes to FF7 because I was exposed to it when I was very young, my cousins played it and as a result there is a very specific tone and idea I have in mind when I think about this game. The only other games that come close are TLoZ alttp and Ocarina of Time, and similarly (against popular opinion) I hated the sequel nintendo made for alttp.

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To keep this as condensed as possible. The tone does not match the original, at all, at any point in the game and as a result I have a very hard time even calling this a remake even excluding the massive changes they made at the end.

Bombing mission, the train graveyard, the sectors, shinra, etc etc the list goes on. You can put all of the major plot points on a list and mark them all off as you go, but if you don't get the same feeling from traversing between the major events you won't get the same feeling after you complete them.. This is common sense but significant when it comes to characterization and theme. In short the brutality of the slums was completely undermined and sephiroth is made out to be a completely different character. They spend hours upon hours making the president of shinra and his department heads out to be literal evil human monsters while humanizing everyone else who works at shinra with only a few lines of objection from Barrett - only to subsequently undermine this plot point (which takes roughly 25 hours to fully develop) and say that sephiroth is the only evil that matters.

The original had none of the anime tropes that plague this game, or the pacing issues, or the combat issues, or the bad dialogue that frequently oscillates between way too cringy and way too edgy. The original wasn't afraid to show the depravity of poor people living in the slums where as this one was determined to turn them all into nice guys who are nothing more than victims of their corporate slavers.

It didn't try to turn Sephiroth into an anime trope or shy away from his brutality:

Imo the remake was a waste of development efforts. It's a bad game that's getting really good reviews because clouds a badass, the graphics are cool, and the characters and voice actors did well.

But no one seems to be talking about the fact that they stretched a 10 hour segment of a 23 year old game into 40 hours without even making midgar an explorable place. I can't give this game a good score in good conscience when FF13 gets shit on for being a hallway simulator when FF7r is just as bad and doesn't even give you the courtesy of a reach around in the late game. Call me late to the party, but imo Nomura is a bad game designer and i'm sick of his time travel bullshit

 

[Darkspawn]

One of the things I’m most interested in Part 2 and on is how they’ll handle the party.

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In this game, we have the section where you trade off between Cloud/Barret and Tifa/Aerith using the PHS system in Hojo’s lab. I liked this because you get to see what everyone is experiencing unlike the original where the non-active party members are just who knows where until you meet up with them again.

So I’m wondering how they’ll handle the party in the future games, especially when the other four join. 9 characters is a lot to have on screen at once, so I think it would be cool if they were to split the group up and give them each their own adventures until they meet back up for the big moments like FFXIII.

This would help each character get adequate character development. In the original, most of the party members are inconsequential outside of their respective introductory or backstory sections since they had to be interchangeable based on who the players chose to be in their party. Alternatively, if you have all the characters together and on screen all the time, it would get pretty crowded and the character development would still suffer. So I think splitting the party up and giving them their own scenarios would be the way to go. It would also allow for more original story content while keeping Cloud’s journey mostly the same.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

I loved it. I loved the ending. This isn't a perfect game but it is a damn good one.

Leslie will be a party member in a future game. There. It has been said.

The dialogue felt so natural and the characters feel alive. The story had good pacing outside of some very unnecessary segments like the road to Wall Market, getting to Mako Reactor 5, some parts of the Train Graveyard. Even though you are on a linear path, I never felt like it was forced. There was enough variety and things going on that made it feel like a natural progression of the story.

I do think they should have kept the allure of Sephiroth being a mystery, but I get what they are going for here. There is a certain sort of allure in Sephiroth trying to seduce Cloud. He even took him to look at a heart shaped nebula on the edge of creation. That's romance, y'all.

But really, I get it.

Also in regards to Zack in that alternate reality with Champs the dog, well, I'm fine with that because everybody was asking the question "What if Zack had beat the infantrymen?" back when Crisis Core released. It's our own fault, really. We should have never asked the question because we never knew these men were crazy enough to answer it.

Now it is time to consume all FF7 media obsessively until Part 2 is announced. Also...why did I love this more than KH3?

 

[OneDandelion]

Leslie will be a party member in a future game. There. It has been said.

Now it is time to consume all FF7 media obsessively until Part 2 is announced. Also...why did I love this more than KH3?

As much as I disliked many of the changes brought in this remake I will say Leslie was the best new addition by far. And I just found out his Japanese voice actor is the same as Yozora's.

There is far more to like about this game than KH3, that's probably why

 

[Happyfunshineman]

So hard mode is pretty legit. When I first read the description upon beating the game, I thought it sounded impossible. It’s actually quite doable and is making me really appreciate and understand the materia system a lot better this time around.

Can we also agree that the mini game featured at the Honeybee Inn sequence was probably one of the best moments in the game?

 

[Mirby]

Yeah. I'm skipping the MAJOR boss chapters in Hard Mode to return to them later once I'm even stronger after clearing other chapters but I'm actually enjoying it a bit. I've done 5 chapters already lol

 

[Chaser]

So hard mode is pretty legit. When I first read the description upon beating the game, I thought it sounded impossible. It’s actually quite doable and is making me really appreciate and understand the materia system a lot better this time around.

Can we also agree that the mini game featured at the Honeybee Inn sequence was probably one of the best moments in the game?

Hard mode is 100x easier than normal mode because the game trains you in understanding how to actually play as the characters, and you’re right because of that in terms of how it made you learn how to use materia effectively.

I was surprised with how much ease I took down bosses in one go that I died to in hard mode. Also the

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hound encounter in chapter 17 had me lower the difficulty down to easy but this time I knew to magnify magic and bam, down those assholes went

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

As much as I disliked many of the changes brought in this remake I will say Leslie was the best new addition by far. And I just found out his Japanese voice actor is the same as Yozora's.

There is far more to like about this game than KH3, that's probably why

Leslie has good groundwork. I really do hope they deliver something good with his story.

lol that's true.

 

[Darkspawn]

Theory on the game, particularly the ending:

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I’m currently subscribing to the idea that Aerith and/or Sephiroth have had visions of the original game’s events due to their connection to the lifestream, prompting the appearance of the Whispers to prevent them or those they interact with from changing the course of destiny.

When the Whisper Harbinger is defeated, all the Whispers across time are destroyed with it since they exist outside of time. So that causes a ripple effect that undoes any impact the Whispers had on events, allowing for Biggs and potentially Zack and Jessie to live. Only those who were inside the singularity when they were defeated are unaffected by these changes since they were also outside of time, explaining why Barrett isn’t dead again, Aerith didn’t fall off the ledge in the church, etc.

So there is only one timeline in the remake, but it can now diverge from the events of the original since destiny can not intervene. While Aerith and Sephiroth may still know what was meant to happen, they won’t know what could happen if they start making significant changes. Also, anything that happens from here on will be set in stone. So I think they will be careful not to carelessly derail destiny and will only attempt to change something if they’re confident it would result in a better outcome for their respective goals.

 

[Mirby]

Yeah that sounds like a valid theory.

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Something occurred to me after I posted this: what if in future episodes we get a slightly older Zack as a full party member? That would be pretty awesome honestly, and totally a thing that can now happen.

 

[Chuuya]

I finished the game yesterday, and wow. Wow.
There was just so many good things, sure there were boring parts of the game, but overall it was a wonderful experience and I wouldn't mind getting it to platinum.

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I keep hearing some people hating on that house boss at the coliseum, I just can't believe it took me longer to beat that than fighting Rufus and Sephiroth combined. It was a very unique battle though, I had much adrenaline. Surprisingly, I didn't die to that though. No, I only died to Tonberry and the motorcycle chase right before the ending boss battles cause both of those I was too careless.