Final Fantasy 7 Remake - Worth The Wait

it would be no exaggeration to say that final fantasy vii was one of the most influential role-playing games of all time a sublime fusion of gorgeous cinematic storytelling a vast and richly detailed world to explore an epic poignant moving adventure featuring deep explorations of identity friendship hope love and sacrifice and a cast of vibrant quirky likable characters with their own goals ambitions fears and dreams not all of whom make it to the end [ __ ] final fantasy 7 was one of those formative gaming experiences for me that arrived at just the right time in my life reshaping my perception of what games could be and the impact that good writing and strong characters can have on the audience it is was and always will be one of my favorite games of all time and yeah i know i'm going to get swamped with people telling me that chrono trigger or diablo 2 or final fantasy 6 were all better but shut up it was for me but let's be honest here it's not exactly a looker by today's standards and the cutesy graphics and basic text dialogue didn't exactly lend themselves to the kind of heavy dramatic scenes that the game became famous for as the years passed various spin-offs prequels and animated movies came and went but none of them really gave people what they were craving a proper next-gen remake of the original game square enix remained coy about it for years refusing to confirm or deny the possibility of a remake until at last in the summer of 2015 the announcement we'd been waiting almost 20 years for finally came [Music] [Applause] then everyone cheered or cried and we all sat back and waited for the game to appear and waited and kept waiting the years ticked by without an official release date and all that glorious excitement started to turn into concern especially when rumors of production problems and developer changes started leaking out it began to look like square had bitten off more than they could chew and maybe the remake was destined to become the duke nukem forever of the final fantasy worlds then finally in 2020 it happened the game came out and after nearly a quarter of a century of speculation we at last got to find out whether it had been worth the wait well most of us did yours truly bought the game and then promptly left it in a drawer unopened and untouched for months why you might ask well partly because i was busy with other stuff [Music] but mostly because i was kind of reluctant to play it if i'm honest i had this weird fear that it could never hope to recapture the magic and charm of the original or even worse maybe the original wasn't as good as my roast tinted nostalgia glasses had convinced me it was but just like tatiana time waits for no man and a few weeks ago it was time to put my big boy pants on fire up the playstation and give it a go and now that i've played it all the way through and seen everything it has to offer it's time for the drinker to deliver his final verdicts i [ __ ] loved it it was everything i hoped it would be it recaptured every ounce of the joy and wonder of the original and it reminded me why i love video games in the first place and at the risk of sounding like simple jack it just made me really [ __ ] happy i mean i'm not gonna pretend it's perfect or anything this kind of nostalgic trip down memory lane can only carry me so far there's definitely flaws in this game some more serious than others and i'll talk about them later in the review but for the time being i'll give you a basic rundown of the story and hopefully explain why this game succeeds so well at what it does so for those of you that have been living under a rock for the past 25 years or have absolutely no knowledge of video games final fantasy 7 centers around the former soldier turned mercenary named cloud strife yeah it's definitely a japanese game all right clown's been hired by an eco-terrorist group known as avalanche to help sabotage a dangerous reactor run by the sinister shinra corporation a monopolistic mega company that basically acts as a de facto world government and cares more about profit than human life so basically facebook only not as evil shinra are based in the industrial metropolis of midgar where their reactors literally suck the life force out of the planet and convert it into electricity how don't know anyway as you can imagine this is bad news for the planet so avalanches are there to put a stop to them by any means necessary also along for the ride is tifa your childhood friend and reluctant avalanche member and barrett the gung-ho leader of the group who tends to shoot first and ask questions later unfortunately before you know it [ __ ] goes wrong and you find yourself embroiled in all kinds of shady government conspiracies terrorist attacks kidnappings power struggles and an old-school dance-off against a gay nightclub owner so you can cross-dress your way into a crime wards brothel in the hopes he'll pick you to be his next wife i mean what can i say it's a japanese game naturally blowing up their reactors brings you into conflict with shinra but are they really the true enemy here or is there something even bigger at work and how is this connected to a series of violent flashbacks to a traumatic event in cloud's past along the way you also hook up with a mysterious flower girl named aerith after literally falling through the roof of her building who seems to have a past connection to shinra and knows more than she's letting on so far so final fantasy all the characters scenarios and plot elements are present and correct and in a lot of cases they've been massively expanded upon but then it all starts to get a bit weird and i guess this is where we sail into murky waters but fear not dear viewer the drinker is here to explain things to you see this game functions as less of a conventional remake and more as a kind of soft reboot of the storyline acknowledging the events of the original game but using them as a jumping off point for a new storyline ultimately heading in a completely different direction by the ends it starts out with little things like minor characters taking part in missions they weren't involved in before or surviving events that should have killed them or a cloud almost managing to prevent a major event that was supposed to take place and every time it happens these weird swirly ghost things show up to totally [ __ ] up your day what the hell are they and what do they want well the short version is that they're like guardians of time itself they exist to preserve the flow of events making sure that certain things happen in the right order and if anything or anyone tries to interfere they'll show up to get things back on track it's a bit like the tva from loki except you know not [ __ ] the further the story progresses the more events start to diverge from the original game and the more cloud and the others come into conflict with these things eventually culminating in a full-scale battle to defeat the entity directing them i love the idea that fate and destiny are tangible things that you can literally punch in the face yeah [ __ ] you destiny the end result of all of this is a kind of weird alternate timeline that left me with more questions than answers and means that everything is still to play for in the next installment and the more i think about it the more i realized this is actually a pretty cool way of handling a remake it would have been easy enough to just rehash the original story beat for beat without doing anything new or original but what would that really accomplish except to do the same thing again but with nicer graphics so many of the iconic moments in the original were memorable precisely because they were so unexpected nobody really saw aerith's death coming or the twist about cloud's backstory or the final epic scene that was so open to interpretation at the time all of these things are the kind of tricks you can only play once and shorten them out again would rob them of their impact now it feels like all bets are off and basically the story could go pretty much anywhere from this point the writers have successfully unlocked themselves from the constraints of the original story giving them the freedom to explore new ideas and go off in different directions but what makes this so interesting is that two of the game's major characters seem to know how things were meant to play out originally and are working to either restore or change the course of events where the [ __ ] is all of this going i don't know but i'm definitely interested to find out see the events covered in remake represent only a small fraction of the original game most players cleared the midgar section after the first few hours and that was when the game really opened up giving you access to a much larger world for the first time here though the entire remake is based in and around the city and there's definite pros and cons to this the increased focus on a smaller chunk of storyline it gave the writers more scope to explore their characters in greater detail and this is something the remake absolutely nailed characters like biggs wedge and jesse were only in a handful of scenes before and i genuinely struggle to tell you a single thing about any of them now they've got fully fleshed out personalities detailed backstories and real character arcs [ __ ] man there's even a romantic subplot with jesse if you make the right choices although she does go and die before you can bump uglies with her [ __ ] typical barra and tifa both get more screen time to flesh out their motivations and outlooks on life and the new graphics and voice acting allows for more complexity and depth than was ever possible before barrett's still gruff and single-minded but his relationship with his daughter gives him enough heart to make him relatable and when he's confronted with the devastating results of his choices he begins to question his motivations tifa on the other hand is a much more reluctant member of the group than before clearly torn about the morality of what they're doing and motivated more to protect her friends than any grander higher purpose also i love how the game mercilessly teases all the thirsty boys out there it seems like every five minutes either jesse or tifa will ask to speak to you in private and then they'll immediately [ __ ] off again without saying or doing anything of consequence i know what you're up to here square you won't get the better room oh dear lord yeah i think it's fair to say they did aireth justice with this one i honestly don't think it would have been possible to make this character more visually perfect if they tried which makes it even funnier when people totally roast her for being a plain jane later on only in a jrpg could this be considered unattractive in fact the character design in general is fantastic throughout this game managing to find a perfect middle ground between the super stylized manga of the original and the realistic proportions of actual human faces and the result is some of the most gorgeous character animation i think i've ever seen everything from the mannerisms to the voice acting to the look and feel it's all completely spot on and i can't tell you how satisfying it is to see classic characters like these remade by people who genuinely care and understand them and this kind of attention to detail is pretty [ __ ] important when it comes to the relationship between cloud tifa and aerith just like in the original game there's a kind of discreet choice system woven into the storyline where the right responses and interactions will bring you closer to one or the other there's no right or wrong decision here and which one you choose really just comes down to personal choice are you gonna go for the flirty confident free spirit with wisdom beyond her years or uh sorry i lost my train of thought there joking aside what's really impressive is how well the two characters are balanced out different but equal they're both charming and likable they both get interesting character arcs and moments to shine and when they have to work together there's no lingering undercurrent of hatred and jealousy holy [ __ ] a modern video game with female characters that are actually feminine compassionate caring and nice damn it feels like some kind of crazy indulgence these days and it's definitely a welcome break from the alternative combat mechanics are another area where i think they found a good balance between the old and the new the turn-based battles of the original game gave you enough time to decide your next move chain together complex attacks and quickly switch your strategy if things weren't going to plan but let's be honest it's not exactly a thrilling way to play a game like this the new combat system operates mostly in real time and relies heavily on physical attacks to keep the momentum going you can move around freely dodge and parry attacks if you get the timing right and even run away if the [ __ ] hits the fan but there's also an active time bar that gradually fills up allowing you to pause the action while you choose a bunch of special abilities spells or items generally it works well enough and i think it offers the best compromise between the two extremes even if most battles generally boil down to getting in close activating punisher mode and mashing the heavy attack button till everything's dead now all this shameless gushing on my part probably gives the impression that this is some kind of flawless masterpiece that's more satisfying than snorting cocaine from tatiana's cleavage while riding a gold-plated jet's key seriously give it a try sometime it's awesome but there are definite flaws in this game and it would be wrong of me not to mention them here so well here goes i mentioned before that the combat system offers a decent compromise between real-time and turn-based strategy but this solid structure is let down at times by poor ai on both sides basically your teammates have practically no initiative of their own they won't use magic or special abilities they won't cover you and they won't even heal themselves if they're injured this isn't much of a problem in basic fights but it really cripples you in the boss battles where you need everyone given 100 you have to become proficient at switching quickly between characters topping up health or launching heavy attacks and needless to say this kind of constant micromanagement can get pretty [ __ ] draining enemies also have this weird habit of targeting whichever character is under player control and ignoring the others so if you can keep switching quickly you can disrupt their attacks and stop them concentrating their fire again it feels like the ai is just going through a series of scripted actions instead of making intelligent contextual decisions and it kind of takes you out of the experience the breadth of this game is also pretty limited when i think about it part of the fun of rpgs like this is just heading out into the world and exploring the game environment doing little side quests and generally taking things at your own pace i kept waiting for the game to open up and let me do my own thing for a while but it never really happens you're generally confined to smaller self-contained areas for each chapter and while there are side quests to do most of them boil down to go to a place and find a person with a few battles scattered in between the rewards for completing them are usually not worth the time it takes to do them so after a while i kind of lost interest basically what i'm saying here is that free roaming exploration really isn't a thing in remake you're directed to each new location because the story demands it you're given only the party members that the game wants you to have and while you might be allowed to wander about for a bit it always feels like the story's hovering over you like an overprotective parent ready to give you a bollocking the moment you stray off course likewise i lost count of the number of times i was making my way through some corridor or big industrial facility and the game slowed me down to a crawl so it could get through all the scripted mission critical dialogue it needed to do it really pisses me off when games do this if you're gonna put me into a walking simulator for the next two minutes because you've got a bunch of [ __ ] i need to hear why not just put it into a cut scene instead so we can watch it and move on also and there's no getting around this you really need to have played the original to properly understand what's going on here yeah there's enough exposition and backstory that you could probably muddle your way through but honestly if you're going into remake blind then i suspect you'll miss the fundamental point of this new story the divergence from what came before there's other bits of the story that are just very obvious padding like the tedious robot arm puzzles where you've got to move blocks around and ferry area to different levels to progress it kills the pace and it just feels like an arbitrary time-consuming barrier that requires no real skill to get past graphically i'd probably describe this game as solid rather than spectacular like i said earlier you can tell that a lot of work went into the character design and some of the set pieces and cutscenes are genuinely awesome to watch but there's a lot of graphical rough edges that really feel like they could have been smoothed out you'll run into a lot of poorly modelled objects and low res textures they look like they were ported over from an early ps3 game sometimes the physics engine and pathfinding will forget what it's supposed to be doing and the facial animations for minor characters often have no connection with what they're saying it's a shame that janky stuff like this made it through when you can see what they were able to do with more vital parts of the game glitches and problems like this leave me with the impression of a project that was kind of rushed and probably would have benefited from another six months development to iron out the bugs but ultimately they're really just minor irritations in what's otherwise a really solid creative and worthy reimagining of a classic game ultimately the experience you have with this game is going to be very closely tied to your connection to the original if you've never played it or you didn't care for it back in the day then i suspect you'll feel a bit lost or disconnected from this one if like me though you've been waiting a long time to see an old classic reimagined with today's capabilities then i think you'll appreciate just how special this game is and like the original it feels like this came along at just the right time in my life having watched so many beloved franchises go down in flames under the onslaught of poorly conceived reboots and remakes usually made by people who never gave a [ __ ] about them anyway it's easy to let yourself become hard and cynical and disenchanted with basically everything today and let's be honest that's a pretty joyless existence for anyone and it's not how i want to see the world games like this serve as reminders that it can be done with the right people and the right intentions it is possible to bring back classic stories and do interesting new things with them it's possible to honour the legacy of past achievements but also look forward to an exciting new future of boundless possibilities it seems like everyone these days likes to claim that their bland generic rehash of old ideas is for the fans but remake seems to be one of the few ips that genuinely is you can tell that a lot of love and thought went into this game and whatever its faults and shortcomings final fantasy vii remake is a game that i'm genuinely happy to have experienced anyway that's all i've got for today go away now

Channel: The Critical Drinker

Views: 365,312

Keywords: review, square enix, cloud strife, tifa, aerith, romance, jessie, biggs, wedge, barrett wallace, shinra, mako, materia, cetra, red 13, hojo

Id: 3lHTajebJWo

Length: 18min 5sec (1085 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 08 2021