Final Fantasy 7 Remake - Both Brilliant and Flawed

so it took me a while but I finally beat the Final Fantasy 7 remake and if you've been following me closely in the last few years you know that I have not been the most supportive person when it comes to this game see I really like the original Final Fantasy 7 it's in my top 3 games of all time and to be honest I tend to not really feel anything for remakes of games that I already like though of course there are exceptions but the thing is I already went on that journey once before I don't need to do it again it also doesn't help that I have not enjoyed a square Enix game in many years I did not like Final Fantasy 15 I did not like Kingdom Hearts 3 and I generally don't like anything that Tetsuya Nomura makes so honestly I wasn't super duper excited for this game but despite all that I actually kind of liked the Final Fantasy 7 remake but I didn't like the whole game when it's good I loved it and when it's bad I really really really don't like it it sucks it's not fun at all now I'm not gonna be able to call this video a quickie because I'm gonna be talking a lot there's just a lot of [ __ ] to go through so this is just a normal old review oh and we aren't gonna get into spoilers until later I will warn you don't worry so first of all let's start with the gameplay right up to bat this game does not play like the original Final Fantasy 7 at all that's something you should probably be aware of but to be honest that isn't a problem the original game doesn't really have gameplay that's suitable for the current market unless your name is persona you'll be hard-pressed to get as many people interested in a turn-based RPG these days now a lot of people can call this game linear but that's mostly because the first chunk of the original game was super linear and yeah I was surprised to see while streaming that a lot of people don't know that this is not the full Final Fantasy 7 story this game just covers the first section of the original up until the party leaves Midgar and in the original I think this lasted like 6 hours I don't really remember it wasn't that long though but somehow this game is 35 hours long and this leads to a lot of moments that weren't in the original game sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes it sucks and I hate it I think the first third of the game is definitely front loaded with more fun moments than the later portions of the game that motorcycle battle with Roche is crazy and over the top the timed boss fights are intense and I liked whenever the game gave me a new character to add to my party but as the game goes on you start to notice the padding a little bit more for instance an area that you walk through for like two minutes in the original is now gonna have a full platforming segment followed by a string of side quests that were not present in the old game there are a lot of lame side quests and they just are not very good at all I didn't do the last batch of them because at that point I was about thirty hours in and I just wanted to be finished the padding isn't just in the side quests either you can usually skip the side quests but the padding can be found everywhere and it's not always skippable full-on chapters are often just made up of completely original content luckily the bad levels are usually right next to good levels so it isn't as bad but you'll still notice when the pacing of the game just grinds to a painful stop the worst of this is when you follow up the single best chapter in the game with the worst chapters in the game you have this multi-part journey through the seedy part of town where you fight in an underground tournament take part in a homoerotic squatting contest and cloud even gets a [ __ ] this chapter is [ __ ] crazy and it's everything I wanted as a fan of the original game but then after that we have a really long journey through the sewers with like really stupid puzzles followed by a train graveyard and it just annoys me because I know this [ __ ] wasn't in the original it's just here to waste my time and make the game longer part of me wants to replay the game from the beginning but then I remember this stupid level and I don't want to do that anymore a lot of these chapters are just so [ __ ] boring and not only boring but they're also really long this is my number one biggest problem with this game there is just too much padding I don't know about you guys but I'm okay with a game being 20 hours long if the whole thing is fun if you shaved ten hours off of this game you'd probably get rid of most of the boring stuff and you'd still be left with a pretty long game there are a lot of chapters in this game that I love I love everything that happens in the Shinra building I love the encounters with Reno and rude the moments where the game just chills out and lets you listen to what the characters have to say while they hang out but all this good stuff is sandwiched between moments that are just designed to make the game longer and waste your time and the problem is that during these long sections of the game deciding to just be boring for a few hours you start to notice other problems and now this is the part where we talk about the combat much like the rest of the game when the combat is good it's awesome and when it's bad it's very frustrating this game plays kind of like Kingdom Hearts if it was a little more tactical and I have to say that each character is pretty fun to play as chief it was actually my favorite to play as because it was just so satisfying when you got some of her mechanics down but while I like playing as everyone some of these fights were designed by a [ __ ] psychopath first of all the flying enemies are never fun to fight also some of these enemies have a ridiculously high amount of health for no reason the first few enemies that you fight just die in one combo but after that everybody is a damaged sponge and it's kind of annoying and it also doesn't help that your AI teammates are seriously the stupidest bastards I've ever seen it's like they're not even trying I tried using synergy materia to control their actions when I wasn't controlling them but it just doesn't work sometimes Aerith could you [ __ ] kick it into high gear do something [ __ ] Christ and no you can't tell them to do stuff when you're not controlling them that's just not an option I was baffled to see that you can't control what they do unless you're actively giving them orders in games like Kingdom Hearts or even Final Fantasy 15 you can set specific parameters that say like hey if a character gets weak you can save your MP for a heal or prioritize using your ap for offensive attacks stuff like that I spent time actually looking in the menu for these options because I swore they had to exist but nope you have no say over what your allies choose to do with their free time and it will get you killed and it also doesn't help that the AP on your allies goes up way too slowly now this is where I have to be an old man for a second and say that I honestly just really prefer turn-based combat can you believe that the last mainline Final Fantasy game to have turn-based combat was Final Fantasy 10 that game came out 2001 I like that turn-based combat allows for me to have full control over every situation if I lose in a fight I can be completely sure that it was due to my own mistakes in this game it feels like there is so much [ __ ] that is just completely out of my hands characters just die because I don't have the ability to reposition anybody I can only control one person at a time and when I'm not controlling that person they do whatever the [ __ ] they want you will die to some absolute [ __ ] in this game and it's most prevalent when the game is already wasting your time I think overall I'd say the combat is fun but it's just not for me it looks really pretty and sometimes you can pull off some pretty sick [ __ ] but I honestly do not like how chaotic and random it is I would be very happy if the next games just add options to control the party members when they're on their own I mean there were a lot of combat moments that I did enjoy like the solo shoot him up with Barret the subsequent fight with him and Tifa on their own the fight with Rufus which is anime as [ __ ] and I even enjoyed hell house I know people hate that fight but I have no idea why I loved it and while I'm saying nice things about the game let's move on to something that I have very few bad things to say about the presentation [Music] this game looks and sounds amazing and I know that's pretty obvious I could end it right there but I'm a professional all right I can get into it a little deeper than that the environments in this game are the perfect evolution from the original the Shinra building is honestly one of my favorites like when I was a kid and I was playing the original game this is what I saw in my imagination the cutscenes are as beautiful as you'd expect from Square Enix at this point but there are some funky looking textures in this game I got to mention them because people are gonna expect me to and just so you know I'm not playing this on a ps4 pro I don't know if that has any effect I really have no idea personally I don't really notice or care about the textures in this game unless they are really bad and they weren't really that bad most of the time for me there weren't any weird textures on the characters and those were mostly what I was looking at so it didn't really bother me oh and the music in this game do I even need to say it straight up I could listen to this whole soundtrack [Music] [Applause] it's like they took the same handful of songs and just remix them a million different ways that might not sound as cool as it is but it's really cool okay trust me honestly I hate when JRPGs have the same goddamn song for every battle I love the battle themes in Final Fantasy but after a while you just stop paying attention to them and that doesn't happen in this game the main battle theme is remixed it's thrown in randomly into songs where you don't think you're gonna hear it and most of the compositions are one-time only you'll hear them for one level or one fight and that's it enjoy the next one this soundtrack is surprisingly diverse and I loved it it is the single perfect thing about this game and with that I've exhausted everything I can say without talking about spoilers so now I'm not gonna be able to hold back we're gonna talk about the story the story in this game is divisive I think that's a pretty easy way to put it now if you don't know [ __ ] about Final Fantasy you're gonna be confused but I think you'll have fun things don't get really weird or wacky until the end and we're gonna wait a second to unpack all of that first let's talk about the beginning half of this plot a majority of this game takes the same general story beats as the original however there are tweaks here and there and those are also found in the way the characters are written the characters are amazing in this game and that's due in part to the excellent character writing the original Final Fantasy 7 was horribly mistranslated and it led to a lot of moments that don't accurately represent the story or the characters in this game we get a lot more time to flesh out everyone and when I say everyone I mean [ __ ] everyone jesse biggs and wedge had like two lines each in the original and now they have full backstories the Shinra executives were just evil mustache twirling Captain Planet villains and now they all have their own distinct traits and personalities and the main characters are treated with the best care and respect that I could have hoped for in the original game cloud was kind of sassy for like the first mission but then he was just like a normal guy in this game I loved watching him go from an absolute selfish dick to a selfish dick who's growing a soft spot for a few idiots to a man who genuinely loves his newfound friends and would die for them at the end of the game when he faces off alone against Rufus and the rest of the Shinra troops to try and give the rest of the group time to escape I was genuinely moved because you can watch the natural progression that these characters experience with each other now not everybody has a complete arc like cloud does but that's because this is still the first part of the story we have a lot more stories to explore for the future and that isn't to say the characters can't be good without their own unique character arcs Barret spends most of this game preaching about his beliefs and with the way he's written in this game you can totally see how he became the leader of this group it's easy to see that he fully believes every word that he's saying and it's nice that this game adds a little extra ambiguity on whether he's right or not the original game wasn't really interested in making you think hmm maybe the terrorists I'm playing as aren't totally right but this game constantly wants you to step back and re-examine things after the first mission your party cheers and they pat themselves on the back but you also have to walk through the chaos in the streets that you directly caused complete with towns folk above moaning the current conflict they're unwillingly put in the middle of I think this is my favorite thing about this game it recontextualizes the original game without feeling the need to directly recreate it it adds additional context to a lot of the events that longtime fans are already familiar with I love [ __ ] like this but as I played through the game I was plagued by one thing one plot element that I was afraid of from the start Sephiroth now some of you guys may know this and some of you may not but I have a love-hate relationship with Sephiroth I love suffereth when he's in the original Final Fantasy 7 and I hate him in everything else I think he's the biggest example of overusing a character his presence in the original game is so significant and that's because in the original game you hardly ever see him he barely gets any screen time you straight up do not see him for 95% of the Midgar arc the arc that this whole game is based on and in this game he shows up all the time now again they kind of make it make sense but this game makes the error of not explaining Sephiroth at all to the player spoilers the whole final chapter is devoted to him the overarching plot is related to him and we never learned anything about him in this game now for me I already [ __ ] know who Sephiroth is I'm not that confused but I'm thinking about the people who are playing this story for the first time honestly that's most of the people who are playing this game and I'm okay with the game keeping things ambiguous but they act like you should already know who he is in the original Sephiroth was more of a symbol than a person clad would say that he wants to grow up and be as strong as the legendary hero Sephiroth and then the incident happens that ruins clouds life and it's significant that it was caused by his hero Sephiroth starts as a symbol of the power cloud wants to achieve for himself and in the end he represents the power that cloud has to overcome and Sephiroth really doesn't give a [ __ ] about cloud in the original he hardly talks to you until he decides to manipulate you a little bit cloud and the rest of the party are just insignificant to him and in the original game outside of the final battle you do not fight Sephiroth because you're not on the same level as him he doesn't want to waste this [ __ ] time dealing with you and in this game he shows up every other level and you fight him in a sword duel for the final battle whenever he showed up through the course of the game I was kind of annoyed I get it when people think of Final Fantasy 7 they want Sephiroth newcomers still know about him and they want to see him they want to know what the hype is all about but I just explained the hype in the original game he was a good boss fight because we waited the whole game to fight him if each of these remake games have a Sephiroth boss fight he's not really gonna feel that special at the end so yeah I was mad that he shows up so much I was also mad about the ghosts I saw both of these elements as new [ __ ] that I did not like but then I kind of changed my mind in the last level of this game things go [ __ ] bananas earlier you learned that these ghosts that have been following you around are literally just plot ghosts they exist to make sure the plot of the original game occurs exactly how it's supposed to I had my suspicions about this and when I first heard the full explanation I was like well that's weird and um but then I thought about it this game states that the ghosts are a defense system for the universe and to some people that might sound like mumbo jumbo but it makes perfect sense in the world of final fantasy 7 in final fantasy 7 the planet has defense systems it has antibodies that take the form of giant monstrosity when something gets [ __ ] up the planet has ways to fix its it's also capable of shooting a giant laser to save the day the planet is a character in this game and it has ways to fight back so why would the rest of the universe be any different my first reaction was that this plot element comes out of nowhere and it's kind of overly convenient but it is built up to naturally and it does actually kind of make sense but then this plot element comes to a head after the final battle your battle with Sephiroth and the ghosts causes the ghosts to be destroyed and this was Sephiroth's goal all along because this is a Sephiroth who has seen the future the Sephiroth in this game is a Sephiroth that knows he's going to be beaten by this group of nobodies that he never considered to be a threat so now it kind of makes sense that he focuses on cloud a little bit more he needs to get clouds so worked up that he'll go into a whole new dimension and fight him so that the ghost can be destroyed because when the ghosts are gone it means that the natural order cannot be preserved and Sephiroth now has a chance to win and the more I thought of this the more I loved it and a lot of cynical fans think that since Biggs is alive then Aerith is going to live in the next game I personally don't think this is going to happen I think that Aerith is still going to die either way in the next game whether it be from the normal way she dies or in a fake-out or something but the thing that got me excited was the notion that now anything can happen before I was worried that I'd have to just watch a shot-for-shot remake of all the scenes that I remember I was worried I'd just get the same exact game that I've already played but this was already a new game with or without the ghosts it had the same plot of the original but about 80% of it was new stuff even with the ghosts around to keep the natural order going the game was still full of wild cards and I'm 99% sure the next game will go exactly the same way it's gonna mostly be the same story beats but with random new [ __ ] thrown in to keep us occupied and the thing is now if Aerith still dies I'll actually be surprised I'm actually not sure what's gonna happen the most exhausting thing about a reboot for a series that has a giant spoiler that everybody knows is that it can't surprise you anymore and they found a way to make it surprise you now I'm able to enjoy new stakes in an unknown era now when the heroes win and beat Sephiroth they have to do it without the help of the universe they have to do it on their own even though the odds are now stacked against them again the implications of this plot twist are just unending I just love thinking about it somehow the boys and girls over at square found a way to take a game that I've already played and make me excited for what happens next it hit me with an ending that didn't subvert my expectations for no reason it was just something I genuinely didn't expect and I know the twists aren't gonna stop there if they don't kill the same characters then cool I don't really care personally I'm just glad that I can experience a new story I get why some people would be upset about that some people genuinely just wanted a shot-for-shot remake of the original game personally I didn't really care about this game until people told me hey the ending is really weird and it's gonna change the way you look at this game when I heard that I was totally on board overall I have to say that I love this story and that's what saves this game for me it has a lot of dumb convenient things but it had a lasting impression on me and that's the number one thing that I rate stories on now one complaint is that it is just not noob friendly at all I cannot imagine anybody understanding this [ __ ] without having played the original this game surprisingly does not hold your hand in this last chapter and I think that's kind of weird they reveal that in an alternate timeline zach is still alive but we don't know who zach is in this game like you're not told at all so this incredibly significant reveal means absolutely nothing big still being alive doesn't really mean anything unless you already know that he's supposed to die in the original this game is supposed to be for new and old fans alike but the ending is specifically meant for the old fans and half of those fans are gonna be pissed off anyway as for me I'm an old fan and I think it's brilliant but hey maybe I'm crazy it's any way to wrap things up this game is really hard to classify the high points are out of this world and the bad choices are just too distracting to ignore I also accept that I'm a total shill for this game and it does affect my opinion a little bit I get to experience one of my favourite games with a new story and new thing to explore I just really really hope that the new one takes these mistakes and learns from them so for now I'm gonna give Final Fantasy 7 remake a seven out of ten [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The Cosmonaut Variety Hour

Views: 504,126

Rating: 4.8713741 out of 5

Keywords: Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Review

Id: 6LXqgX1EdVI

Length: 20min 55sec (1255 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 22 2020