Review: FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE Breaks Some Limits
Revisiting the world of Final Fantasy VII in a brand new way with various changes to combat, story, length, and pacing is a risk that does a lot more good than harm. Square Enix has made a huge leap trying to make Final Fantasy VII Remake just as magical and interesting as the original while keeping both new players and lifelong fans engaged and entertained. I can see where a lot of fans are going mad with rage, I can also see the position that Square Enix is in by making this game at all. But in this review, we will be focusing on Final Fantasy VII Remake as its own entity and departure from the original and will talk about other factors in future articles.
This being a JRPG, the story is vital to giving players a reason to do anything in the game. FFVII Remake’s story is one of many complexities in character relationships, political battles, personal demons, and romance. That is a lot to handle, and it is mostly well-paced and explored throughout the game. It would have been nice for newer players if there was a bit more exposition dumping here or there just to make things clear, but overall, the story plays out well. The growth of Cloud is well seen and paced; it feels natural even though it may be frustrating at times what he chooses to do and say. It is necessary to say that this game is one of many parts of a longer story. We are unsure of the number of “Remake” installments there will be, but we should expect at least two more considering the Remake only covered the first 15%-25% of the original’s story. That being said, there were a handful of hours spent doing very tedious tasks and side missions that yield great rewards, but at the cost of halting the story's natural progression and fun. It probably would have been better to cut some of those less interesting hours out and either progress the story further or make the game shorter and cost less.
What’s a JRPG without a spiky haired protagonist swinging a sword? Never fear, because Cloud Strife and his friends are here! The combat in this game is a remix of sorts of the original’s turn-based battles. Battle now consists of action styled combat with lots of button smashing to fill up an ATB gauge, which when filled can activate special abilities, magic, summons and items. If players were just doing this with Cloud, it would be fairly stale. But players instead can bounce between various combinations of three characters, who have their own unique fighting style, variety of abilities and then juggle ATB meter usage. It can become quite an elaborate dance and complex/engaging battle when fighting larger enemies who require all characters to be fighting at their max potential. Yes, there may be some fights that seem a little too long, but for 90% of the game, combat is fun, flowing. and fruitful.
It wouldn’t be fair to this game if we didn’t also mention the materia system and weapon leveling. As simple as it is to use materia orbs and then see them grow in power, it still feels great to unlock more and more potent magic attacks as each orb level up. There is also a vast pool of materia to choose from throughout the game and just about all of them have their special uses and great combinations. This goes along with the weapon leveling; it is another simple, yet much needed addition that allows players to build the stats of their characters via their weapons however they see fit. They could even go so far as making various builds for characters just based on the weapons being focused on magic, attack, defense, or support.
FFVII Remake delivers a great story and amazing combat along with some stunning visuals and beautiful sound design. The lighting, smooth and flashy combat, character models and enemy designs are all something we’d expect to see out of a gorgeous, fully animated film. However, some textures, facial animation (at times), and other small things can look pretty sub-par. Every few minutes I would spot a not fully rendered object or some of the mouth animations would look particularly weird and robotic. It never ruined my experience, it just showed how ambitious this game's visuals are and the limitations of the Playstation 4. All that said, the audio was perfect from beginning to end. The voice acting (especially Tifa and Cloud), the sound effects, and the glorious music really sold the world to me, even when tasks got a little stale or visuals had their less than amazing moments.
The last thing to address are the not so great things. The biggest issue with the game is the side quest sections. The game has a great-paced story with fun missions, interesting bosses (even if they are just health sponges), and balanced combat, but it all that slows to a crawl when getting to a few areas where Cloud has to aimlessly wander around, doing at least a few side quests in order to get key items or progress the main story. I think it would have been much better if the side quests were a little more dull, but there were a lot more of them and they were almost all optional. This would allow players who want to grind through levels and get great items to do so on their own time and others who want just the main story to be able to proceed with little to no interruption. It just felt like these quests were hitched on in order to add 5-10 hours of gameplay to the game. The poor side quests combine with the puzzles of FFVII Remake, they are way too easy and just require a lot of running and finding keys or turning on switches instead of a real puzzle solving. The side quests and puzzles didn’t take away from my experience much, it just didn’t add anything either except a few hours of mediocre play time.
This is a great start of the future of the Final Fantasy VII Remake series, but hopefully, a lot of improvements will be made to make the experience even better. There is a lot of good here, the combat, visuals, story, and audio are all fantastic. It is just too bad the game seems to be stretched a little thin with the easy puzzles and lengthy side quests.
