SPOILERS FF7 Remake was Actually Good but...

[Foxycian]

the ending felt little underwhelming, I played the prequel crisis core so I know what’s going on but most new players will probably be lost and wonder what’s going on at the end

I understand the back lash that this game receives right now but why some hate on the whole game? The only (biggest) problem of this game was the ending and Nomura bs making everything about destiny, as for the game itself it was good from chapter 1 till 17, only the ending felt underwhelming (then again the game wasn’t even over it’s just part 1) cause Nomura being Nomura making things complicated, I sure hope Nomura learned his lesson from all this back lash and doesn’t make random things in part 2, it’s fine to add new stuff but don’t make the game complicated, the complicated stuff may work for kingdom hearts but it certainly doesn’t work for final fantasy straight forward story.

 

[Sakuraba Neku]

Nomura really needs to stop over complicate everything, but at point it's like talking with a wall.
However he's not the writer or even the only director of FF7 Remake, so it's not fair to blame everything we don't like on him.

I never played the original FF7/Crisis Core so the ending changes didn't bother me as much as it did to the old fans.
I'm honestly glad they had the balls to not do a 1:1 remake, but that doesn't mean I'm not expecting something great.

 

[Darkspawn]

I understand not liking the ending, but these new elements are not in any way unusual for the FF series. We’re talking about a series that featured time travel, alternate dimensions, dream worlds, and villains with multiple versions of themselves long before KH ever did. The Final Fantasy series has never been straight forward.

 

[Mirby]

I understand not liking the ending, but these new elements are not in any way unusual for the FF series. We’re talking about a series that featured time travel, alternate dimensions, dream worlds, and villains with multiple versions of themselves long before KH ever did. The Final Fantasy series has never been straight forward.

Heck the very first title had time travel and a loop that had to be broken, and the second had an emperor that took over literal hell. It's been like this since the very start.

 

[Foxycian]

Heck the very first title had time travel and a loop that had to be broken, and the second had an emperor that took over literal hell. It's been like this since the very start.

No not really guys, ff7 story wasn’t this confusing the confusing part is Nomura, the whole game was straightforward until you reach the confusing part which is the ending, I already know what’s going on but new players certainly don’t, also about the time travel you mentioned, kh time travel is messy and confusing sometimes. From what I remember ff story was never confusing at least, the only ff game that feel is complicated is ffxiii-2 I loved this game but was not easy to understand felt like kh game.

 

[OneDandelion]

Just beat it. I was very forgiving throughout my playthrough of all the things i didnt like... until i hit the ending. Now i realize the game was just garbage. For hardcore fans of FF7 the redeeming aspects of the game are revisualizing midgar and remixes of the FF7 OST, but that can only take you so far. And while i like the combat system there were so many deficiencies involving it that i cant call it good either.

Square Enix seriously needs to learn a lesson in subtlety when it comes to storytelling. A little restraint would have gone a LONG way.

But maybe the biggest problem is that the tone of this game doesnt come close to matching the original. There is no blood at all and its often implied that cloud isnt actually killing anyone. The tone of sector 7 and 5 are not nearly as dark and dangerous as its predecessor either.

It ends up being more like a "reimagining" than a "remake" and its very unfortunate for me because my hopes were seriously misplaced.

Overall if im comparing it to the original im giving it a 5/10. If its anyones first time experiencing ff7 then it might be more like 8/10 - there is a lot to like but the imagery and intensity of the original has unfortunately been completely lost.

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the ending also seems to imply zack is alive so the ending of crisis core has been completely retconned

 

[Mirby]

How is it implied that Cloud isn't killing anyone? They literally return to the lifestream in their death animations using the same "dissolving into the lifestream" effect that we've seen as far back as Advent Children when Kadaj dies.

Also

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Crisis Core is not retconned. By defeating the arbiters we have broken the chains of destiny and created new timelines. There is the timeline we see in the ending with everyone heading out because Sephiroth isn't actually defeated and remains out there and another new timeline where Zack survives and makes it to Midgar. The original timeline of the original game remains intact too, or at least that's how I understand it. Crisis Core itself remains as it was, in the original timeline.

Breaking the chains of destiny as we did is kind of like in DC when Flash went back in time to save his mom and changed the entire timeline: one event was changed but it caused a ripple that affected everything in both directions of time (before and after the event too) of people connected to him too. Cloud and company broke their own chains of destiny, thus creating a new timeline that rippled back to save Zack, Biggs, Jessie, and others while also creating a future we haven't quite seen yet (which I believe Sephiroth alludes to by saying it hasn't been written yet).

Of course it's not the original game, it was never planned to be 1:1 of the original game. Remake is both more literal and more thematic here, with the bones of the original game but being remade entirely otherwise.

 

[OneDandelion]

How is it implied that Cloud isn't killing anyone? They literally return to the lifestream in their death animations using the same "dissolving into the lifestream" effect that we've seen as far back as Advent Children when Kadaj dies.

This is specifically a tone issue for me. Obviously Cloud is killing people in this game it would be absurd to suggest he's not. The problem I have with it is the game almost seems to go out of its way to never acknowledge it in the dialogue, and I know this because I was listening for it the whole time because I found it odd. Instead we are given many cutscenes where cloud or others leave their enemies unconscious and Tifa/Aerith consistently go out of their way to humanize the soldiers/employees of shinra. On top of that - because all of your enemies "dissolve into the lifestream" like disney characters the brutality of death is never really acknowledged. All are in complete contrast to the tone of the original game imo.

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The only comparison you have to make is in the events leading up to and including the death of the shinra president. In the original Cloud follows a trail of blood leading up to the presidents body skewered by sephiroths sword. In this game there is literally no blood, anywhere, and they deliberately switched out that blood with purple jenova goop in order to replicate the effect.

I'm not even attempting to jump into the multi time line theory. If it turns out to be true then SE has lied from the beginning in calling this a remake.

 

[Darkspawn]

No not really guys, ff7 story wasn’t this confusing the confusing part is Nomura, the whole game was straightforward until you reach the confusing part which is the ending, I already know what’s going on but new players certainly don’t, also about the time travel you mentioned, kh time travel is messy and confusing sometimes. From what I remember ff story was never confusing at least, the only ff game that feel is complicated is ffxiii-2 I loved this game but was not easy to understand felt like kh game.

I think it is important to remember you aren’t supposed to understand exactly what happened in the end yet. It’s a mystery set up to be explored in future titles that they want us to speculate on.

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The main takeaway you should have is that the party has defeated the planet’s will to maintain the course of destiny. Now it is possible for the future to deviate from the course. Everything else is supposed to be open to speculation until future parts explain it. KH’s problem is that it had a lackluster way of paying off on the lore and concepts it set up. The way this first part handled it’s world building and storytelling has me optimistic that there will be a good follow through for the unanswered questions it left us with.

Also, Nomura didn’t write the game. While I’m not going to pretend he didn’t have some impact on the story, Nojima is the one credited as the writer. So the Nomura scapegoat can’t really be used here like in KH.

 

[OneDandelion]

Also, Nomura didn’t write the game. While I’m not going to pretend he didn’t have some impact on the story, Nojima is the one credited as the writer. So the Nomura scapegoat can’t really be used here like in KH.

Nomura is the game director. You would blame the captain of a ship if it was traveling in the wrong direction wouldn't you? Maybe it's not his fault, but all of the games he's been associated with lately has been having the exact same problems so either its him or someone above him is forcing him into shitty writing decisions.

 

[Darkspawn]

Nomura is the game director. You would blame the captain of a ship if it was traveling in the wrong direction wouldn't you? Maybe it's not his fault, but all of the games he's been associated with lately has been having the exact same problems so either its him or someone above him is forcing him into shitty writing decisions.

Not if there are other people responsible for making sure the ship is on course. There are many people on this project making creative decisions besides Nomura.

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This is SE’s most sacred IP. I doubt any exec above them would let the creatives go off the rails of the original story unless they have faith in them to create something excellent and worthy of the original’s legacy. I get that SE hasn’t exactly earned anyone’s trust lately, but many consider this to be their last shot at recovering the FF series. They can’t afford to blindly risk this game’s success by making bold changes unless they know they are going to pay off in the end.

Personally, I’ve been wanting new and original story content in the FFVII universe that doesn’t have to fit exactly with the Compilation since Crisis Core and I’m excited to finally get that while simultaneously reliving the original story. The whole Whispers thing was all just a meta way for that to be possible. I honestly don’t imagine we’ll be seeing multiverses or time travel at all. It’s simply an altered history due to the destiny’s course being broken. From here on, it will likely remain as “grounded” as one can say the original is.

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[OneDandelion]

They can’t afford to blindly risk this game’s success by making bold changes unless they know they are going to pay off in the end.

Personally, I’ve been wanting new and original story content in the FFVII universe that doesn’t have to fit exactly with the Compilation since Crisis Core and I’m excited to finally get that while simultaneously reliving the original story. The whole Whispers thing was all just a meta way for that to be possible. I honestly don’t imagine we’ll be seeing multiverses or time travel at all. It’s simply an altered history due to the destiny’s course being broken. From here on, it will likely remain as “grounded” as one can say the original is.

For the first 35 hours of the game I wanted to agree with you. And I was excited for the new content of FF7 when I got this game. Midgar is one of my favorite fictional cities and if they were stretching the 10 hour segment of midgar into a full 40 hour game I honestly assumed when I bought it that at the very least midgar would be explorable to a degree like FF13 was.

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instead we:
-steal Jessie's comatosed dad's ID card and fight some lunatic on a motorcycle
-do fetch quest and kill monster quests on a linear map
-they stretch out the train graveyard, sewers, and other areas of the original that took maybe 20 minutes to get through and stretched them into 3 hour long+ segments
-Fighting your way through the Shinra building was gutted and thrown out the window and replaced with Hojo's anime lab

I honestly didn't want them to simply remake the original, I wanted them to do more to make midgar feel like a real place, but you're stuck running back in forth down hallways through 3 sectors of the slums for over 50% of the game. It is complete bullshit that they chose to prioritize filler content over any sort of exploration when the filler content literally adds nothing and this game only features midgar.

I don't buy for a second that this game took 6 years to develop either. Theres simply no way when so much material was copy pasted/recolored textures of industrialized hallways. There aren't even that many sidequests to do and the cities have severely limited interactions. The voice acting and main character models were the only things that looked to me like they had effort put into them aside from the oddly brilliant visuals of the out of place cutscene inside the shinra movie theater area.

 

[Darkspawn]

For the first 35 hours of the game I wanted to agree with you. And I was excited for the new content of FF7 when I got this game. Midgar is one of my favorite fictional cities and if they were stretching the 10 hour segment of midgar into a full 40 hour game I honestly assumed when I bought it that at the very least midgar would be explorable to a degree like FF13 was.

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instead we:
-steal Jessie's comatosed dad's ID card and fight some lunatic on a motorcycle
-do fetch quest and kill monster quests on a linear map
-they stretch out the train graveyard, sewers, and other areas of the original that took maybe 20 minutes to get through and stretched them into 3 hour long+ segments
-Fighting your way through the Shinra building was gutted and thrown out the window and replaced with Hojo's anime lab

I honestly didn't want them to simply remake the original, I wanted them to do more to make midgar feel like a real place, but you're stuck running back in forth down hallways through 3 sectors of the slums for over 50% of the game. It is complete bullshit that they chose to prioritize filler content over any sort of exploration when the filler content literally adds nothing and this game only features midgar.

I don't buy for a second that this game took 6 years to develop either. Theres simply no way when so much material was copy pasted/recolored textures of industrialized hallways. There aren't even that many sidequests to do and the cities have severely limited interactions. The voice acting and main character models were the only things that looked to me like they had effort put into them aside from the oddly brilliant visuals of the out of place cutscene inside the shinra movie theater area.

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I’m glad they kept it linear. It kept the story on track and pushed you to keep moving forward outside of the few side quest heavy chapters. I generally don’t really enjoy open world games, especially ones that take place in cities because they tend to lack charm and character compared to more linear games. It’s also too easy to get off track with the main story in games like that, which kills the stakes for me. The linear world of FFVIIR helps guide the story and build the world in a way that open world environments rarely do. Reminds me how I wish San Fransokyo had been more linear in KH3 as the open world didn’t do the story of that world any favors.

I thought Chapter 4 was great. The adventure with Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge was one of the most refreshing additions to the story. I loved that they gave us a chance to bond with them and appreciate their role in the story in a way the original didn’t. Roche was definitely a cringy villain, but it’s clearly the joke they were going for. It isn’t like the original was without cringy villains.

What did they “gut” from the Shinra building beyond the brief section where you have to sneak past the guards? All the other floors are in tact, just expanded upon. The floor with the Midgar model is now a museum, which had some welcome world building. Mayor Domino’s library floor is still there and now an optional interaction with him has been expanded on and explains why it was relatively easy for them to make their way through the building. The employee R&R and the meeting room floors are still there, as well as Hojo’s two floor lab and the executive suite. Seems like everything is there and has simply been expanded upon. Quite the opposite of being gutted.

The one thing I agree with is the train graveyard being too long. I thought the sewers were fine because the characters didn’t know for sure what was happening above them. But once they got to the graveyard, the pace should have picked up once they saw the pillar being attacked for a better sense of urgency.

 

[Mirby]

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They did take away the puzzles between multiple floors including that one puzzle with the various rewards depending on what gates or something you entered I forget. But there were a lot of puzzles there that were mostly skipped over. I did miss those.

 

[OneDandelion]

What did they “gut” from the Shinra building beyond the brief section where you have to sneak past the guards? All the other floors are in tact, just expanded upon. The floor with the Midgar model is now a museum, which had some welcome world building. Mayor Domino’s library floor is still there and now an optional interaction with him has been expanded on and explains why it was relatively easy for them to make their way through the building. The employee R&R and the meeting room floors are still there, as well as Hojo’s two floor lab and the executive suite. Seems like everything is there and has simply been expanded upon. Quite the opposite of being gutted.

The gameplay route of the building is designed completely differently.

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In the original you are actually infiltrating shinra HQ and trying not to get caught, there are employees/soldiers/monsters/machines throughout the building you fight, puzzles to progress, they get captured, shinra president gets skewered.

In the remake you are caught before you even enter the building and the mayor covers for you in order to allow you to bypass all of those things (except for the bizarre tifa jungle gym thing at the beginning). All of the floors in the building were just filler material used to stuff the building with a few things to see before entering Hojo's lab which they stretched from 2 or 3 rooms in the original into a 2-3 hour segment that didn't really do anything other than establish Hojo as a big time villain for the future which we knew anyway

And despite not even having an open world in this 100 gb game you can't even play as red xiii.............

 

[Darkspawn]

The gameplay route of the building is designed completely differently.

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In the original you are actually infiltrating shinra HQ and trying not to get caught, there are employees/soldiers/monsters/machines throughout the building you fight, puzzles to progress, they get captured, shinra president gets skewered.

In the remake you are caught before you even enter the building and the mayor covers for you in order to allow you to bypass all of those things (except for the bizarre tifa jungle gym thing at the beginning). All of the floors in the building were just filler material used to stuff the building with a few things to see before entering Hojo's lab which they stretched from 2 or 3 rooms in the original into a 2-3 hour segment that didn't really do anything other than establish Hojo as a big time villain for the future which we knew anyway

And despite not even having an open world in this 100 gb game you can't even play as red xiii.............

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Different does not equal gutted and most of the original concepts are still there but expanded upon. What you see as filler material, I see as a world building and plot developments that make more sense than the random puzzles from the original that can be considered filler because they did nothing to advance the plot, characters, or setting. They were just there for you to get some extra items and could mostly be bypassed. There’s also a lot more fighting throughout the building in the remake than there is in the original.

I would have loved to play as Red XIII, but I get why they didn’t since he wasn’t in it very long and it’ll be cool to have a new playable character from the start of the next game. What matters more to me is that his role in the story was even better than it was that section of the original.

I also really hope SE straight up ignores the people demanding an open world for the next game. It would most likely result in a game with the same issues FFXV had. I’d much prefer some thing along the lines of KH3 or DQXI where the environments have more space than they did in this game, but you still have zones to pass through. Open world games just never have the level of detail I want from an FF game.

 

[Mirby]

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Honestly I'm glad that Red XIII wasn't playable. It bugs me yes, but could you imagine if they tried to cram 6 weapons and a bunch of manuscripts for him to match every other character into just the last two chapters? And if they didn't give him the same amount of weapons and manuscripts then he'd be severely limited in options compared to everyone else. And you'd only be able to use him in two chapters also. It wouldn't be fair to him to limit him so severely in comparison to literally every other character.

I'd rather have him be an AI companion than be severely limited in capability by comparison.

 

[OneDandelion]

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Different does not equal gutted and most of the original concepts are still there but expanded upon. What you see as filler material, I see as a world building and plot developments that make more sense than the random puzzles from the original that can be considered filler because they did nothing to advance the plot, characters, or setting.

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The puzzles/obstacles made more sense for a team trying to discretely infiltrate a company. What doesn't make sense is that the mayor in the remake somehow had the ability to control and override all the cameras in the shinra building from his office....

I also really hope SE straight up ignores the people demanding an open world for the next game.

wow, i am actually shocked that anyone has this opinion.

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Honestly I'm glad that Red XIII wasn't playable. It bugs me yes, but could you imagine if they tried to cram 6 weapons and a bunch of manuscripts for him to match every other character into just the last two chapters?

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i would have forgiven this if the game was more of a game, but its not. It's told like a linear story and once it's over theres almost nothing to do. Maybe they will produce DLC that will fix this, but at the moment there is no point into putting time into hard mode unless you want the platinum trophy. Hard mode is literally replaying the game without items and enemies with buffed stats. If there was an open world late game like FFXIII or even if the story was created with a bit more flexibility there would have been room to bring Red XIII into the game for missions or even replaying old story missions with Red (just for fun, I know lore would not allow this).

But honestly the fact that Red is not playable in his own introduction arc even for a little while is disgraceful when this remake was designed completely around midgar. It seemed to be okay for them to create missions around finding cats, spending 2 hours turning lamps off, sympathizing with train graveyard ghosts, and stealing Jessies comatosed fathers ID but somehow there wasn't enough time to make RedXIII playable. I don't understand how fans of the original could possibly defend this.

 

[Mirby]

I think the main issue here is that you hold such a passion for the original game due to your history with it and thus had such high expectations for this that when it failed to meet your expectations with how they built it that you're having trouble understanding why anyone else wasn't as let down as you were.

And that's perfectly fine, everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But when you get hung up on thinking that nobody should defend any of the decisions made in the game because aren't too happy with them, it becomes less about sharing your opinion and more veering towards thinking that everyone should share your opinion.

That's just my view on this. Don't get me wrong, there were issues I had with the game but they were overall minor (I honestly am growing to enjoy Hard Mode but the complete inability to restore MP aside from draining a very small amount via one materia while in the middle of a chapter is a bit frustrating, especially in longer chapters), but I did enjoy what they did with the game.

I think one key thing to think about when you think of this game is to think of it as its completely own storyline and quest, and while it is a retelling of sorts of FF7 it is not FF7 and it helps to not compare it to FF7.

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If anything, the game's storyline itself kind of reinforces this idea with the Whispers attempting to keep destiny along its intended path (aka as the original game did things) and in defeating them and breaking free of their destiny it is almost saying not to compare it so strictly to FF7 and instead judge it based upon its own merits.

 

[OneDandelion]

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you guys like it so much. I generally don't bring up my negative feelings unless someones asking for them, I don't talk with my friends about all my critiques because they all generally loved it and I have no problem with that; but as a game, and as a remake, it objectively lacked in all of the things people generally expect from jrpgs. I've brought it up before, but if it wasn't FF7 and if it didn't have the history and fanbase that it already had, then imo people would not be happy with this game at all. It makes all of the mistakes that FF13 made and more, but isn't being crucified for them.

And I've beaten FF13 twice lol, I actually liked that game and could forgive a lot of the criticisms of it. But I have a really hard time finding the redeeming qualities of FF7r graphics and voice acting aside.