Final Fantasy 7 Remake is a remake of the first 6 hours of 1997's Final Fantasy 7. Or more accurately, it's more of a reimagining as instead of being a direct translation of the source material for current hardware, it rearranges, changes and adds a lot of material, making something that's not quite a modern replacement for the original.
Firstly and briefly- The presentation - The game looks and sounds gorgeous. But it does come at a cost. In addition to taking up 80GB on your Hard Drive, expect a lot of slowing down the player's movement to give the game more time to load and only being able to play in Midgar. I suspect if the game wasn't aiming for such high graphical detail it would be easier for the game to create more and varied content.
Now onto Gameplay:
-Combat- The recent FF games have had a bit of rough time picking how they wanted their combat system to be. They didn't want to be fully turn-based like the older FF games nor do they want to be fully action based. FF15 tried to be something in between and didn't quite stick the landing with how it was too automated to be a fun action game and too easy to cheese to allow some strategic decisions of a turn based system. The FF7 remake nails this aspect. When you enter combat, you fight normally with basic attacks, blocks and dodges like an action game. Damage dealth fills up an ATB meter which allows the use of more powerful attacks, spells and items. You can assign these actions to a hot-key or use a menu which slows down time to a crawl allowing you to make decisions with more space to breath. You can also swap characters with the D-pad or use L2/R2 to issue commands to other characters without swapping. In fights, the main tactic is to fill up an enemy's stagger meter by exploiting their weakness, either by using specific attacks or spells. And since enemies have different patterns and ways to exploit weaknesses, it keeps encounters varied. Filling up a stagger meter renders an enemy stunned for a short while and increases the damage an enemy takes while stunned (starting from 60% extra damage and can be increased).
There are 4 playable characters- Cloud, who has a basic and balanced offense set and counter-attack stance. Tifa - who specializes in close range damage and stagger bonuses. Barret - who specializes in long range and is the tank of the group. And finally Aerith - who has the highest magic pool and ability but the lowest health.
The combat system does a lot right. Unlike FF15, it's not fully automated and requires the player to consider positioning and their regular attacks. Using items and spells are balanced by the ATB system preventing the player from just spamming their way through challenges. And the tactical side is preserved by having to swap between and use the abilities of different characters. You need to choose where and when to use certain spells or abilities as they can be interrupted, wasting the resources that were used to charge them up. It can be rush to co-ordiante 3 characters to use their abilities in spells in the perfect way or get one character to draw attention to allow the others to function. It's great. I especially love using Lifesaver on Barret to allow him to soak all damage for the party allowing Cloud and Tifa to wail on enemies without worry and letting Barret stand by and heal himself. I do have a few issues. Firstly, they can be a lot of particle effects and other visual effects when the hits and spells start flying which can make it a little hard to see certain attacks. The game does try and tell you the name of enemy attacks beforehand which does help alleviate this somewhat. Aerial Enemies are a pain to deal with using melee characters. Audio barks are also repeated a lot which gets annoying.
Secondly, against less threatening foes, your teammates don't really get a chance to shine. There are a lot of weak filler monsters in between the major ones that often barely pose a threat. And there's no way to customize each character's AI when not being controlled. I can't command Tifa from a distance to suddenly ignore all self-preservation and go all out on a measly were-rat that doesn't pose much threat to her, especially if she doesn't have any ATB. I can't tell my crew to play defensively or avoid getting in close for a while so they can be healed. This can make some fights feel more like babysitting the AI. There are some ways to tweak the AI with Materia but it's not really a good substitute. I'd like if there was an option in the command menu to assign a few AI commands like balanced (the current system), aggressive (get more hits in and take more risks), defensive (only go in for attacks if safe), Priotize Healing (if a party member gets weakened, use a healing spell on them) etc. I'd argue these would work fine for the game rather than automate everything as the player would have to choose beforehand when to assign what AI to work. An Aggressive AI may be a bad fit for a fight or phase of a fight where aggressive play is punished. Prioitize Healing may seem broken until you realize that some enemies can knock you out of a heal attempt if you're not careful and you may end up wasting MP.
Speaking of Materia, this is the game's spell system. They are specific items you can equip onto gear to gain their effects. For example, equipping a fire materia on Cloud's wristwear lets him use fire spells. Same for healing, ice, wind etc. Spells require MP to cast which some characters don't have a lot of. Some Materia can amplify other materia. For example, magnify Materia can be linked with Fire Materia to hit multiple targets with a single blast. Or Maginfy can be linked with Cure to heal multiple party members at once. Some Materia instead use just abilities so no MP usage but require more set up and time to use. Materia can also gain experience and level up. Levelled up materia allows the user to choose a different version of the spell or increases its potency depending on the materia. For example, A Level 1 Fire Materia only lets you use a Fire Spell for 4 MP and a quick charge time. A Level 2 Fire Materia gives you the option to use Fire or the much stronger Fira for 12 MP and a longer charge time. A level 3 gives you the choice between Fire, Fira and the even stronger Firaga for 24 MP and even longer charge time. Some Materia like Pray which restores 10% of all party member's HP at level 1 just increases a higher percent at higher levels.
This system is great and gives a lot to experiment with. It also keeps weaker spells somewhat relevant later on. You may want to use a quick Fire Spell to interrupt an enemy's attack or to help stagger them rather rely on just Firaga. It also affects equipment choice and some pieces of gear may have worse stats but make up with more Materia slots or better synergy between slots.
Sadly, while combat is great, everything outside of it is more mixed.
Most levels are basically corridors with very little room to explore or deviate. Navigation is even automated with Cloud and co automatically jumping or climbing as needed and slowly shimmying. I disliked it in God of War 2018 and FF13 and I dislike it here. It makes the game feel dull outside of combat. So much time is wasted slowly walking around. If this is because the game is having a hard time loading all this stuff then I'd rather there be an option to knock down texture and lighting quality significantly just to speed the game up or something.
The only time I felt the loop of exploration and combat worked well was in chapter 4 in the sun lamps level. Here, Cloud and Co must disable 4 sun lamps over Sector 4 to allow them to power an elevator. The level is divided up into many criss-crossing platforms with branching paths to explore, a few puzzles and other challenges to solve and only a few healing benches with some somewhat tough enemies which requires some resource management. You can see the lamps early and need to find the routes to navigate to them. This is the only point in the game that I felt it used its limitations to its advantage and made a good game around them (despite technically being filler with regards to the story). I wish there were more segments like this because as the game currently is, I feel that you could replace everything outside of combat with a cutscene/movie and swap over to combat when the time comes and have the same result. I understand the original FF7 wasn't exactly much for gameplay in these sections but at least those were far more brief.
Some chapters like 3 and 6 take place in a Hub-World where you can do side quests. On paper this makes sense. Since Midgar is now 30-40 hours instead of the 5-7 it was in the original, it makes sense to expand the areas in the original to give the player more of an attachment to it and to tell more stories in it. However, the execution is lacklustre. Most of the hubs aren't that interesting to explore, being boring corridors next to each other. There's not much to interact with regards to civilians or characters. The side quests here are also generally not that interesting, being basic kill or fetch quests with NPCs with not much of a story. Plus, you already fight many of these enemies as part of the main story anyway so them being side quests hardly makes them novel or interesting. I understand that for games like this, there aren't many mechanics that a side quest has to play around with. It's not like, say, an Elder Scrolls game where there can be 10 different ways of solving a quest based on your build and dialogue choices. A Game like FF7R only really has going to a place and combat as the mechanics a side quest has to work with. For the "going to a place" side, the game could either take some cues from chapter 4 and test the player with having to navigate an area or introduce some puzzles. But the game does still demonstrate a few neat ideas that shows it can work. I'd argue the best way to make combat focussed side quests interesting from a gameplay perspective is to twist the rules or enemy the player is fighting. This is why Chadley's VR Bosses and the Collesium are good. The bosses are a great test of your combat skills and the colosseum is a gauntlet of somewhat distinct foes that require you to manage your resources well. One Side quest in Chapter 9 has the squad going to a place in Sector 5 to stop Corneo's goons and they bring out this single Frog thing that walks really slowly but can 1 shot you with a single knife strike. If you try to fight it from range, it can freeze you in place and slowly waddle towards you. It's great because of how much it twists a regular encounter while still being fun and novel to fight. If there were more enemies or encounters like this, the side quests would be more interesting. Of the 27 side quests, I'd gladly cut most of them if there were like 7 good ones. The mini-games like darts and squats are decent fun though but take too long to restart if you want to 100% them. The motorcycle levels go on for too long. They could be shortened by half.
Regarding the story - a big aspect I've seen online is the decision to set the game entirely in Midgar. There are issues as a result of this: Much of the game is padded much more compared to the original. Levels like the Trainyard, the second return to the sewers, Hojo's place are much, much longer which can be boring to play and halt the momentum of the story. I've seen many proposed solutions like "set the ending after Midgar or up until the end of the first disc. However, I feel those have their issues.
After Midgar, the original FF7 essentially became a full open world game and the story also slowed down considerably to allow the squad to slowly pick up clues on Sephiroth. From a game development standpoint- how do you deal with that? The remake already took 5+ years and a huge budget just to develop Midgar in 3D and higher fidelity than as it takes 80GB. In order to end where disc 1 ended, the remake would need to develop a massive open world but also have minimal story development for much of chapters 19-22 minimum before ending. So ending where it currently does is the best option out of all possible ones. Setting it after Midgar is likey too much to develop in the timeframe, but setting it before isn't enough. But it's easier to pad something smaller out than it is to make more first.
As an aside, If it were up to me and if the game had to be set in Midgar no matter what, I'd propose the game be 15-20 hours with bonus challenge modes and the like. I'd rather have a short and sweet game that feels padded. But I imagine doing that would get backlash as well from players.
As for the story itself, I'm mixed on it. I love the characterizations of the main characters. Some side characters are expanded considerably like Jessie or have more screentime (with limited character development in the case of Biggs). The presentation and cinematography of many sections look and feel incredible. And many aspects of the story like corporate monopolies, class inequality and environmentalism are just as important now as in 1997. But much of the execution has some issues.
The big new aspects is the Whispers, The "arbiters of fate through the will of the planet" that keep the events of this story in line with the original. For example, when Cloud is about to kill Reno, something that doesn't happen in the original, these ghost things appear and knock him and Aerith away. When Cloud and Tifa prepare to sit out the second bombing mission, The Ghosts show up to injure Jessie so Cloud and Tifa have to come along like they did in the original. I've heard the reason for their inclusion is two-fold, the first is to offer a meta-commentary on fans of the original FF7 who refuse to have any changes. The second is how it canonizes the remake and any changes coming forward. That since the Whispers are gone by the end of the game, the "gloves are off" as it were going forward. Anything can potentially happen in the story. Maybe the player, upon realizing this, tries to save Aerith in FF7R Part 2 and Tifa dies instead. Or some other wacky thing. The ending implies Sephiroth knows he lost in the original timeline (i.e The 1997 FF7) so he's trying to change fate to let him possibly win. That's honestly quite cool.
I have a few issues with this. Firstly, in-universe, it doesn't really make much sense. The characters don't seem to think or care much about the Whispers until they show up. They also are inconsistent when they do show up. Which makes whenever they show up feel closer to an in-universe Deus Ex Machina. In Chapter 18, Aerith gives this whole speech about how Sephiroth is now the bad guy and is trying to use the Whispers and the whole squad follows along and it feels so out of character for them all. Why now are they caring about Sephiroth or how do they know what's even going on or stopping the Whispers or facing Destiny? Especially Barret who gives his "I Spit in the face of Destiny" line despite literally only being alive because of Destiny. The characters shift from being quite grounded in the world to feeling like they are in a Kingdom Hearts game for an entire chapter. Even thematically, this is odd because our heroes are supposed to be on the side of the planet yet they are fighting the literal will of the planet.
Secondly, even from a meta-sense, I'd argue it's too messy. It makes an already somewhat convoluted story even more so since you now have to factor time-travel and alternate realities as part of the story itself. A new player would be even more confused by what's going on and would probably need to be told the full story of the original to grasp what's going on which potentially spoils the story for them. If the goal was to deviate from the original game and show that would be a thing, I'd argue it would be cleaner to just deviate from it and use that as the primer for the audience. The story already has characters like Biggs and Wedge survive when they didn't in the original so that aspect was already placed. This would already indicate to returning fans that the story would be different while still being easier to follow for new players while still keeping the original FF7 intact and parallel should they ever want another take on this story.
The story also feels somewhat sanitized if that's the correct word? Like, in the original FF7, when the Sector 7 Plate fell, it was this sombre and depressing moment. The cutscene itself was quite silent except for the screams of people. And of course, there were no known survivors. In FF7R, the scene is made much more bombastic with Cloud and Co escaping with intense music. The named side characters from prior chapters all survive which does somewhat limit the story. Even Biggs and Wedge survive which, while helping with that idea from earlier that the game is free to tell whatever story it wants, does somewhat lessen the idea of loss and consequence that FF7 was about. Also, what are Biggs and Wedge even going to do in Parts 2 onwards? They're in Midgar when the rest of the crew are elsewhere.
The story is also expanded and padded in some areas. Some feel worthwhile like Jessie's backstory or climbing Shinra since they either explain more about the characters and world or build up anticipation for what's coming next while still fitting in and continuing the story. But some feel like they got the wrong set of priorities. Like in Chapter 9 when the squad need to get info from Corneo and have to travel the sewers with Leslie and thus learn more about him. Ignoring that the sewers are already reused from a prior chapter, complete with the same boss as last time, why spend time on Leslie? He's not important to the overall story going forward and the whole ordeal gets us grappling hooks. Hell, I'd rather the story reuse Wedge or someone who had more screen-time so at least his survival gets more used here (it's also odd how he gets into Shinra HQ when it was so difficult for the squad).
In Closing, I'm quite mixed on FF7R. The game looks fantastic and the combat is great and some parts of the story are good. But the rather boring navigation, padded nature and messy new stuff drag it down. Still, since the Whispers are gone now, I'm looking forward to how Parts 2 onwards handle the game. Will they be open world and address the rather boring navigation? How will more party members affect the gameplay? How will the story change going forward? I just hope more severe improvements are made even if I have to wait 6 more years for it and on a console that finally comes in stock by then.
Next up for me is either Battles of Prince of Persia or Assassin's Creed 3 Liberation. See you then.
