Developer: Square Enix
Available on: Playstation 4, Playstation 5
In recent years, developers have begun putting a lot more effort into remakes of old games. Instead of just simply re-releasing the game on newer consoles, they often now upgrade the graphics and music to take advantage of the newer consoles’ better hardware. Toys for Bob famously remade the Crash Bandicoot trilogy and the Spyro trilogy entirely from scratch after not having any of the code from the originals.
One may wonder though “is there a line in which developers can do too much?” If there is, Square Enix went miles beyond it with their remake of Final Fantasy VII. Final Fantasy VII Remake takes the first 6 hours of the original and stretches it into 30 hours. The rest of the remake will be released in parts at later dates. Square Enix hasn’t confirmed how many parts there will be, but from what we know it looks like it’ll be 3 parts total.
I’ve never played the original Final Fantasy VII, so I’m playing the remake from the perspective of a newcomer.
The game is 100GB large, which isn’t unheard of, but ridiculous nonetheless. The reason for this is, according to the developers, they refused to re-use assets where they could. Every area has unique buildings, citizens and sounds. Despite this though, I still noticed the occasional rough texture and there are a few places where the background is clearly just a large 2D image.
The story isn’t bad, but it is boring. The game proves itself to be completely incapable of creating any emotion whatsoever. Anytime it’s on to something, it finds a way to kill it, whether by sidetracking you to some random nonsense, forcing you into slow walking speeds or making you solve some weird puzzle with robot hands. The matter is made worse with its dialogue and voice acting. Neither are terrible, but they’re certainly not good. I found myself fairly frequently skipping cutscenes and impatiently sprinting to my destinations.
However, as I discovered, even after taking these measures, trying to make it through this game still feels like wadding through quicksand. It frequently forces you into slow walking speeds, even in places where it makes no sense to walk. Almost every animation in the game for things like opening doors and pushing buttons is extremely slow. The most infuriating one is the animation for crouching under tight spaces. The game puts these tight spaces everywhere, and they each take almost 5 seconds each.
The gameplay does has some nice touches here and there. When you trigger a fight with a party member you haven’t used in a while, the game gives you the opportunity to manage their loadout before the fight officially begins. Bosses with multiple phases always have health bars that represent the entirety of the fight, not just that particular phase. When completing side quests, the game gives you the opportunity to instantly warp back to the person you turn it in to.
In general, the system for side quests is very well thought out. The main story is linear and goes through chapters, like Uncharted, but a few of the chapters contain batches of side quests. The game is transparent with how many there are and how long they are. You never have to worry about missing any side quests, you never have to worry over whether or not you’re the correct level and they never waste too much of your time. The side quests themselves aren’t particularly interesting or fun, but it’s still a system that many games can learn from.
The game’s biggest strength is its combat. It’s real time, but it also cleverly imports some of the strategy from its turn based systems. Every party member has an ATB bar that’s filled by landing hits on enemies. When it’s filled at least halfway, characters can input commands like abilities, spells or items. Enemies have stagger gauges alongside their health bars, and each enemy has different weaknesses that causes the stagger gauge to fill up faster. Once it’s full, the enemy is stunned and all attacks on it deal additional damage until it gets back up. When the system works, it’s very fun and satisfying.
Unfortunately though, there are number of problems that makes this system not always work. Final Fantasy VII Remake uses the system where you press square to do a weak attack and triangle to do a strong attack, except it makes it needlessly complicated. Instead of simply making triangle do a strong attack, triangle activates a character’s “special ability”, which is basically just a strong attack made not fun. Cloud’s special ability, for example, is the ability to switch to “punisher mode” where (after a second-long animation) his attacks become stronger but slower. Why not just make triangle do a strong attack?
In general, the controls feel pretty stiff and there’s a long list of issues that can make the combat frustrating at times. You can’t interrupt attacks or animations to block or dodge. Additionally, most attacks onto the party members cause them to enter a stagger animation in which they can do nothing but accept the pummeling they’re receiving.
Sometimes, out of nowhere, you get combo’d to death. Some enemy attacks that are seemingly weak cause you to be stunned for upwards of 10 seconds. Sometimes commands can be interrupted if an enemy causes you to stagger while you’re casting it. Some attacks inexplicably cannot be dodged even if dodging them seems trivial. Basically, the developers don’t yet understand how to make a fun real time combat system.
Where the combat is at its worst is when you’re Cloud fighting multiple enemies alone. Normally you have help from the AIs. The AIs are very defensive, which is nice because they can draw enemy attacks away from you and you don’t have to worry too much about them dying. When you’re alone though, god help you. Fighting a series of soldiers alone as Cloud often goes about as well as you’d expect in a fight between a dude with a sword and 5 dudes with guns.
That being said, where the combat is at its best is when you’re Cloud in a sword fight against a single opponent. Those fights make you feel like a badass.
In spite of the many issues with the game, I was still enjoying it enough to keep me going. Then I got to chapter 15, and it all went downhill from there. Entering chapter 15, the game tricks you into thinking the end of the game is near. In reality, there’s still plenty of it left, and it’s all slower than ever.
It starts with you spending an hour or so fighting your way through enemies on a highway. Then, you come up with a plan to infiltrate Shinra’s HQ stealthily, immediately botch it and fight a ton of soldiers, navigate a maze of monkey bars and hanging lights to get a keycard, literally climb almost 60 stories worth of stairs, reach the receptionist who accepts that keycard you found and welcomes you to the Shinra tour, walk up 5 stories of escalators, realize you actually have to do the tour, walk back down, watch some stupid un-skippable movie, sprint through a museum, watch another un-skippable movie, meet the mayor, find the mayor’s accomplice, fight in a simulation to “prove yourself”, fight a couple of bosses and finally…you’ve reached a big chunk of exposition. I don’t actually know what happens because I had begun skipping every cutscene at this point; all I know is afterward I had a talking dog in my party.
Part-way through chapter 17, my patience gave out and I looked up the ending.
Summary
There are some positive points in Final Fantasy VII Remake. The combat, while frustrating sometimes, is capable of providing very fun and satisfying experiences. Additionally, the game implements a great system for side quests that’s transparent and respects the player’s time, even if the side quests themselves aren’t very interesting. Sadly, these things cannot save it from its boring story, poor dialogue and complete inability to keep the player engaged and interested. It could easily be salvaged and made better in the next installments of the remake, but I don’t have much faith Square Enix will do so.
Very good, informative review.