Final Fantasy VII Remake - Review
Final Fantasy VII has been on my radar for a very long time. It have read about it more times than I can count and it was supposed to be this grand, epic, amazing experience so I figured that I should try and play it some time. Not being a console person, I haven't grown up with the Final Fantasy series, in fact, I had almost no experience with it at all, apart from a brief look at XIII at a friend's place. By now VII is available on Steam so there's no reason I couldn't just buy and play it but I must say the graphics seemed like a big deterrent to me. They didn't age that well.
So when I read that a remake was coming, this seemed like the best of both worlds. For some reason though, the remake is split into three parts, probably to give more room to the story (aka make more dollares) so not sure what to make of that. I didn't pull the trigger on it right away because I am not in the habit of spending 60 bucks on a game, thank you very much, but waited until the second part of the trilogy was out and the first one was on sale and now here we are.
Overview
The game takes place in Midgar, a cyberpunk city built on two levels, the slums below, the upper classes above. The whole city is controlled by a corporation called Shinra who seem to run everything, including factories that convert a resource called Mako into the energy the whole city runs on.
The player assumes the role of Cloud Strife (yes, really), a former SOLDIER (whatever that means) turned mercenary who joins a group of ecoterrorists in their mission to blow up one of the Mako reactors. Over time, others join the party as well.
If you think, this is a pretty short overview, I agree but there's really not much more to be said. The game doesn't exactly give you a lot of details about anything, but more on that later.
Gameplay
The game is split between combat and non-combat. In the latter case, you direct your leading character (mostly Cloud) from a third person perspective around the world. There is no overworld but a fast travel system to reduce backtracking. Unlike many modern games, this one is not an open world game. In fact, the level design is very linear which is a nice touch, I think.
The combat system is an interesting one which I haven't seen like this before. You get to control one character at a time in realtime and can move, attack or block any time as you see fit. Using abilities makes use of an Active Time Battle (ATB) system which is represented by a gauge. To charge this gauge, you need to attack enemies (or block their attacks) and once it's charged enough you can cast spells or use abilities, like special weapon-specific moves, heals or all kinds of other things. All of the characters in your party have their independent ATB gauge that needs to be filled and each party member has their own abilities, weaknesses and strengths so juggling all this during a hectic fight can be a handful. Luckily, you can pause the game at any point to get a breather and select your next moves which makes it quite a bit less frantic.
Each character has a starting weapon but can unlock more as you progress through the game with each weapon having different purposes, stats and special moves, adding more complexity. What's more, there are limit breaks which are powerful abilities you can trigger after having received a certain amaount of damage and there are summons you can unlock later in the game.
I quite like the combat system, it's very immediate and is action-packed but includes a lot of variety. I didn't excel at it but it rewards getting used to the mechanics of blocking and not mindlessly mashing the attack button (I still did that a lot, to be honest).
Apart from running around, talking to people and killing things, there's nothing to be done, though. The game includes a number of sides quests in several chapters but these also only revolve around running around, talking to people and killing things. Okay, occasionally you have to find something but there's not a ton of variety gameplay-wise.
Visuals
The game is very pretty. I played it on my Steam Deck (what else?) and it both ran well and looked amazing. The setting is also very appealing, especially when you see the upper city of Midgar high in the air above you, it felt like the game communicated the scale and gravity of the events to you which I loved.
The effects and animations during fights are also great, I think, they were a pleasure to look at. The same goes for the character models although it struck me how overly perfect especially Aerith and Tifa (and probably Cloud) look but maybe that's just me.
Characters and Story
There are four playable characters in total and a bunch of NPCs, some of which you'll interact with frequently and others that are of less importance. In general, the characters are surprisingly one-dimensional and thus uninteresting, in my opinion. Cloud is the apparently grumpy but actually kind-hearted ex-military hero, Barrett is the hard-shell-soft-interior idealist (who has a little daughter to drive the point home even more forcefully), Tifa is the somewhat naive but exceedingly kindhearted woman and Aerith is the somewhat goofy damsel in distress. Oh and Aerith is actually an Ancient that can do fancy magic. Don't know what that means? Yeah, me neither, the game doesn't really tell you. The group of ecoterrorists that Barrett is a part of are a bunch of equally idealistic bozos (who in time also turn out to be damsels in distress), Shinra is the evil, megacorp, ruining the environment and killing the planet for their personal gain, although we never get to know how exactly their actions damage the planet or what this Mako everyone is talking about actually is.
In general the game has an anticorporate tone with the corporation in question some big, evil thing with evil people in the lead who are evil because they can. Did I mention they were evil? We never learn anything about their motivation to do basically anything. I mean sure, a lot of it is abot profit but it remains a bit vague.
And then there's the main (?) antagonist of the game: Sephiroth. A name I knew long before I touched any Final Fantasy game, his reputation preceded him because his impact in the overall videogame history has been this profound. So I was very disappointed when I realized that that, at no point in the entire game, the player is told anything about who Sephiroth is, what his deal is or why I should be fighting him, apart from the fact that he is obviously evil because he looks and acts like JRPGs imagine evil people look and act. He just randomly appears in memories or Cloud's hallucinations (no idea what those are about) and everyone is mighty upset about it but I have no idea why. The only thing I know at this point is that he is a war hero and Cloud seems to know him from before. That's it.
In general, there's not a terrible lot of substance to the story overall. There's a bunch of terrorists who blow up a reactor. The corp that runs it does evil stuff and drops a whole part of the upper city on the slums where the terrorists live (overkill much?) and blames it on them. Cloud finds a damsel in distress somewhere, discovers that she is somehow a crucial part in all this, tries to protect her, fails at first, wants to get her back and gathers the others to save her and cut a bloody path through the whole corpo headquarter while doing it. That's basically it. Sure, there's a bit more going on but not much.
Don't get me wrong, I found some of the characters quite endearing, I liked Aerith and Tifa but some others, especially Barrett annoyed the hell out of me. But what bothered me more is that there's no nuance anywhere, no grayscale, only black and white, it's just so... meh.
But what bothered me most and what I've mentioned a few times now is that the game never bothers to tell you what anything is about or who anyone is. Yes, I'm exaggerating but after finishing the game I have no idea what the deal with Sephiroth is or what he was doing with that thing at the end of the game (or what that even was), what Shinra was doing or planning the whole time, what Mako is, what these Ancients are and where they come from. I am aware that "show don't tell" is a principle but "don't show don't tell" is the feeling that I got here. I read that this is normal and answers will be provided in the second or third game but I really don't appreciate being left in the dark for the most part, I expected more closure from a complete game. I also didn't understand the next-to-last final battle at all. Neither what I was fighting or why.
Conclusion
It might not sound like it but I did overall enjoy the game. The gameplay, setting, visuals, soundtrack were enticing enough to keep me interested throughout the game. The locations were well-done, the fights were challenging enough and fun enough to want to keep doing them as well. The thing is that all the positive things I enjoyed throughout the game were overshadowed by all the unanswered questions and unexplained goings-on, especially later in the game. I know, this is just part one of a trilogy but this is just not a great way to go about it, I think, especially since we're talking about a full-length game here. So whereas I did enjoy my time, I'm not sure if I would recommend playing it to anyone or rather it highly depends on what you want out of the game. If you're like me, you'll enjoy most of it but be frustrated overall by the end.
Oh and also: Jesus H. Christ, if you're going to kill off an NPC, just freaking do it! By the third time Wedge was supposedly dead, I stopped believing anyone would ever die in this game, it's worse than Star Wars. I don't even remember whether Biggs and Jessie are still alive. I do remember a dying-like cutscene for each but given how the game deals with this stuff, I wouldn't be surprised to find them jumping around in the sequel.
And speaking of the sequel: I looked it up on HowLongToBeat. The difference between "Main Story" and "Main Story + Sides" is 43 hours. And the difference between "Main Story + Sides" and "Completionist" is 75 hours. Go figure. This game is reputedly so chock-full of unnecessary fluff that I'm going to steer clear of it. Maybe I'll play the original some day but I think some time will have to pass before I'd feel ready to try. We'll see!