Is it worth it?

[Raistlin]

Shockingly, I still haven't played FF7:R. I have enough games on my backlog to last for a dozen pandemics, and my initial thought was to wait until Part 2 is about to come out to play them at once, because I was skeptical that it'd be good enough to make me want to replay if Part 2 takes forever.

So I'm curious as to overall thoughts about the game from fellow nerds. I browsed through this forum a bit and didn't see a consolidated reviews thread, and I didn't want to look through threads that would contain spoilers. What did you think about the game? Is it worth it to play now? Would you replay it?

[Lord Golbez]

It's actually kind of a difficult question for me to answer. Why? Well, because it's definitely a quality game the majority of which is good and is fun to play throughout most of the game. Sounds like it should be any easy worth it right? Yeah, except there's some shitty plot decisions that leave a sour taste and that affect the whole course of the game enough that they shittily color the 90 percent of the game that is in and of itself good.

[Wolf Kanno]

It was okay. I never was in love with it, and I feel the most honest criticism I can give is that the overall experience was just not tailored for someone like me who doesn't like ARPG combat, overblown cinematics, and obviously FFVII in general.

I feel my biggest criticism is that VIIR just overstays it's welcome. It tales a six hour experience and tries to stretch it out to a thirty plus hour experience and that's just not an easy thing to do. Maybe if I never played the original, I wouldn't get that feeling. Yet being familiar with the source material makes it painfully obvious how much they stretched this game, and I honestly would have preferred if they hadn't since I feel the level design and overall pacing suffered for it.

Combat isn't bad. Not my cup of tea, but not so boring that it's easy to dislike. I find the biggest issue is that boss fights are all overblown except for the ones against the Turks and Rufus. The rest are boring because they're mostly annoying HP sponges that force the fight to go on forever. They're constantly being interrupted by cinematics whenever they go to new phases and every boss in this game has at least three phases in their fight. I mean in the time it takes down the Scorpion Tank boss in the remake, you could have started VII and probably be at Tifa's Seventh Heaven bar. Regular battles are often better, with a nicer balance and more challenging experience. Materia is a mixed bag as only the conventional elemental spells and healing materia will probably get a lot of use on regular mode. The rest are designed to get more mileage on Hard Mode.

The plot is... well I'll just say the whispers are a dumb idea that feels like something out of Kingdom Hearts, but ignoring that, the rest of the story changes are not too bad. Some sections have been better thought out, more character interactions, and minor characters get some serious lip service in the game. Wall Market does get overhauled to be more culturally friendly and I honestly feel they did a good job with it considering it's one of the bigger departures from the original in terms of details. Honestly, the whispers are the only major story issue I have with the game. Many of the other story changes I felt were for the better or were at least respectful of the original. Though I do feel the Shin-Ra building was less interesting in the remake than in the original.

Overall, if you're a big fan of the original, I don't think it would hurt you to check it out. If you were someone who could take or leave the original VII, maybe hold off for awhile. If you're someone who liked and appreciated the Compilation of VII, you'll probably dig it.

[ham]

I feel like its more catered towards FF7 fans even if the reception of it is somewhat polarizing. I'm a pretty big FF7 fan boy and I felt like it was a good game but I'm a bit chaffed at the multi-segmented releases. Mainly because I feel like it'd be better just to release an entire game then release them episodically. My enjoyment stems from the plot choices they made during the remake but I feel like I am one of the few that's okay with it.

As a game in itself, I think the battle system is pretty fun, there were some challenging fights. There's definitely some things they can improve on like the camera work and the AI's decision making in battles. It sort of forces you to cycle through your characters to make a strong impact as the battle progresses. Another mechanic that I didn't appreciate was the cinematic breaks in combat.

[Aulayna]

If you like FFVII: Yes. How you feel about the battle system, how faithful the plot is/isn't to the original game, and other changes, will purely be personal preference.

If you don't like FFVII: No, this is still FFVII at heart and if you didn't like the OG this isn't going to suddenly win you over.

[WarZidane]

If you like FFVII: Yes. How you feel about the battle system, how faithful the plot is/isn't to the original game, and other changes, will purely be personal preference.

If you don't like FFVII: No, this is still FFVII at heart and if you didn't like the OG this isn't going to suddenly win you over.

But I didn't like the original, yet love the remake. :p

[CimminyCricket]

Yeah dude, it's pretty good so far. My favorite parts so far are getting to explore things I only saw from one angle or to really see how massive Midgar is.

[Psychotic]

I really enjoyed it and had a lot of fun, and it produced comfortably the best battle system from a Final Fantasy game since X-2. It's a beautiful game and made me have ~feels~.

My biggest criticism is the same as WK - a lot of places feel stretched and drawn out, so the pacing is a little off and it messed with my head a little. If the game says to you OH MY GOD WE GOTTA DO THIS THING, don't worry, it's not urgent, the thing is likely two long dungeon crawls away from you.

[Del Murder]

I'm about 80% through it and like it a lot. If you just accept it for what it is, an update/expansion of the first 10% of FFVII, it's really enjoyable. The battles, characters, events, are all very fun to watch and play.

[Shiva95]

I personally love the OG, but I think the remake is gonna be better in the end. The first part is just Midgar, but I still love how they expand the characters and their relationships much more in the remake, and when I compare og!Midgar to r!Midgar, I already prefer the remake.

[Vyk]

I'm a stupidly huge fan, and I'm trying to only play the game when I'm in the right headspace to be completely absorbed, but I don't find a lot of oportunities for that when I'm not just tired. Let alone adulting and giving attention to my fiancee or cat. But when I do find those moments, I feel like a kid again. FF7 wasn't my first, but it was probably my most formative FF experience. And so far this game is more than I could have hoped for. But I'm only about 13 hours into a 35'ish hour game. It could take a couple of turns later that leave a bad taste. But so far, everything it's done is just extrapolate on what was already there. Explore places and scenarios more deeply like what would happen in a book. It's almost like if FF7R were a novel, and FF7 itself were the movie. When I finally got to play as TIfa in my party, I teared up. She's ludicrously fun to play as. It just felt so right. And honestly, you're stuck with Cloud most of the time, but even he feels more right than he should. And I've said it before, if this game wasn't FF7 and they were just making an action RPG set in some industrial punk future, it would still be a fantastic game. The only gripes I could see would be creative decisions, but they pulled out all the stops. My only real complaint so far that I've personally experienced is some of the difficulty spikes for certain quests. Mostly side quests, actually. I feel like maybe they're supposed to be done in spurts, but I'm afraid of taking the story too far and losing access to them so I complete them all in one go, and usually the last one in an area is quite a step up from everything else and generally takes me a few tries to beat whatever amped up enemies are in those fights. That can get frustrating, but it pales in comparison to how much fun I'm having every other moment. Falling in love with the characters all over again and in some surprisingly new ways. Jesse, Biggs, and Wedge are a treat to be around now

[Raistlin]

Thank you all for your perspectives. I'm glad to see the largely-if-qualified favorable reviews, as I have been cautiously optimistic about the remake. Like Vyk, FF7 wasn't my first RPG, but it was an early and very formative one. And as much as I've criticized the original (especially for basically everything that happens after disc 1), it's a fun game that I played multiple times as a teenager.

[CimminyCricket]

Just give into the peer pressure and get the game

[JJ Strife]

Yes absolutely worth it. It's my game of the year so far. (although based on everything I've seen about Cyberpunk, I think that will take the crown by year's end).

It's far from perfect but they really nailed the core parts of the game for me. Characters are absolutely perfect, environments are excellent, storytelling and pacing is excellent (except for the dodgy ending), gameplay is great.

I don't think waiting for part 2 makes sense really. I mean first of all I think it's gonna be a 4-part thing, not a 3-part thing. So you'll end up waiting quite a bit anyway. We also have no idea how long it'll take. It frankly could be 3 years between games.

[Example]

It's a game you'll have a blast playing through the first time but struggle to enjoy replaying.

[Loony BoB]

I have long said that "This is not the greatest game in the world, this is just a tribute." Go in with zero expectations. Enjoy the expanded lore of the existing characters. Get annoyed at some stuff, too, if you want. Just go in without hype and lower your expectations. It's a seriously incredible game and although I'm not a huge fan of some of the changes, I loved most of what was added to what we already knew. I like stuff that was added, not so much stuff that was outright changed... But at the same time, I like that it means we know we can be surprised at times, too.

[Levian]

I didnt enjoy ffxiii or ffxv, I’ll feel silly if I buy this one and don’t enjoy it either.

I hope that was helpful.

[Jiro]

I think the formula for this is actually quite easy. The more you hated Final Fantasy XIII or Final Fantasy XV, the less you should play Final Fantasy VII Remake. I found it incredibly cathartic to play through Midgar again, to see the new stuff alongside the old, but I think ultimately what I loved the most was experiencing what a prestige game recreation looks like from a design standpoint. Like, there are people at Square Enix whose job it was to overhaul UI elements for precisely one 9-minute gag.

I watched this Hu4H5ykBP0I which has a lot of unbelievably lengthy explanations about points I largely align with. It really feels to me like Final Fantasy VII Remake is just another step along the path of Square Enix slowly conditioning fans into accepting the game that they actually want to make, which isn't an RPG at all. And, y'know, I think I'm happy to come on this journey with them—not just because I find its design fascinating, but also because I genuinely enjoyed the experience.

[CimminyCricket]

I hated ​FFXIII. It's the only one I played, but never beat. XV was amazing and I loved it. The combat in this one is a little in between.

[Nice]

I think you should play it and form your own opinion. I agree with an earlier post that it overstayed its welcome. That, along with a few other decisions made by SE, killed the experience for me. The game was too long and too bloated.

[Lord Golbez]

I don't agree with that comparison at all. From a gameplay perspective, FF7 Remake is pretty great while FFXIII is bad and FFXV mediocre to boring. From a story perspective the remake is mostly that of the original, which is great. FFXIII and FFXV were mediocre to boring on the story front from what I've seen. I've never felt compelled to finish either 13 or 15 but I easily finished the remake within a couple weeks. FF7 Remake has some significant missteps but they bear no similarity to those of the other 2 games so I see no reason why there would be a correlation in disliking them.

[Wolf Kanno]

Honestly, I liked FFXV more than the VII Remake. :wcanoe:

[Jiro]

I don't agree with that comparison at all. From a gameplay perspective, FF7 Remake is pretty great while FFXIII is bad and FFXV mediocre to boring.

What the hell does this mean from a design standpoint, though? 'Yeah, when it comes to gameplay, we're looking for one serve of Great please.' Final Fantasy XIII was practically, if not literally, a trial-run for the linear structure that VII Remake employs. Most of the chapters, outside of the sidequest hubs, are following a singular path with short detours containing treasure—quite literally the thing that XIII was criticised for when it released. The combat is a far more polished version of the one deployed in Final Fantasy XV, which I think is good enough to convert even the detractors, but still remains an enormous departure from the original.

You seem to be suggesting that Final Fantasy VII Remake is Final Fantasy VII and therefore good, but this is a gross misrepresentation of what the game is actually like to play. Imagine saying Halo Wars is just like playing Halo Reach because there's some content overlap. They're fundamentally different game experiences with significantly different emphases. I'm glad you enjoyed VII Remake but there are hundreds of incredibly shouty people on the internet whose main point is the Remake is not Final Fantasy VII and is therefore bad; there would be none of them if your same logic applied.

[Christmas]

Is it coming to PC anytime soon? :(

[JJ Strife]

Honestly, I liked FFXV more than the VII Remake. :wcanoe:

XV with all the DLC is about the same quality as this imo. On launch it was an absolute mess though.


Is it coming to PC anytime soon? :(

The PS4 exclusivity was for 1 year. So I'm guessing we'll see other platform releases around April 2021. I bet they'll skip Xbox One though, cos they can't be bothered to optimize for it. They'll just do PC, PS5, SeriesX

[Lord Golbez]

FFXIII had no towns by about 10 hours in which is as far as I got. That makes the game a continuous uninterrupted dungeon run. That alone is a significant difference from the FF7 Remake. If we're talking about linearity , I think there's a better comparison to be made with FFX. FFX also largely follows a single path with small detours for most of the game, but unlike 13 and similar to the remake it isn't a continuous uninterrupted dungeon.

The combat is a huge departure from the original. My only point is that FFXV combat is not fun, while the remake's combat is. Also, even with a vastly different battle system they've still managed to capture a lot of the intricacies of the material system.

I'm definitely not saying the FF7 Remake is good because it's FF7. I'm not even saying it's good. I'm saying the bad things about it are different than the bad things about FFXIII and FFXV, so there's no reasonable expectation that if you liked/hated one, you would like/hate the other. So maybe you hate some things that are common to all three, but that doesn't mean it follows that people who hated 13 and 15, should avoid playing the FF7 remake or vice versa.

I'd also like to point out that the Midgar section of FF7, which is what this game covers, is extremely linear. There's very little opportunity for backtracking and plays out much like the remake in terms of various points of no return until you advance the plot. Is it likely that future parts of the remake will play out pretty similarly? Perhaps, but right now the linearity of the remake is not much of a departure from the section of the original game it covers.

[JJ Strife]

FFXIII had no towns by about 10 hours in which is as far as I got.

It had no towns for the rest of the game either.

XIII-2 had some awesome towns though! You should play that if you hated XIII.

[Fynn]

Idk man I disliked XIII but XIII-2 was somehow way worse

[Aulayna]

Is it coming to PC anytime soon? :(

Sometime from April 11th 2020 onward as Sony have a 1-year exclusivity deal on it right now.

[JJ Strife]

Idk man I disliked XIII but XIII-2 was somehow way worse

I rate them about equally (8/10 ish) just for different reasons. The second game is way better gameplay wise. I think it was worse in terms of story, pacing and characters though. The first game still feels very much like Final Fantasy with its whole band of misfits going on an epic adventure thing.

Lightning Returns had great gameplay too. The story just felt like it was created by a random word generator.

[krissy]

yea it is
i got it used and i'm already clocking a dollar per each hour of entertainment

[Vyk]

I didn't really care for the whole of XIII, but I wasn't interested in checking out the possibly more refined sequels after the bad taste of the first. And I've only played demos of XV and I've kinda been interested but not really. I mean the concepts behind the plot didn't really grab me. I just want to try it because I haven't, and because it's a Final Fantasy game that I haven't played. But what I have experienced has been pretty meh. Nothing to judge the entire game on, but still. I have an impression. Neither of those opinions relate to how I feel about the remake though

I still think if the Remake were a totally separate game with different characters and altered plot, I'd probably still love it. With the way the story evolves, and the slightly linear narrative, and crazy fun action combat, I would compare it to a beefed up Neir: Automata, just without the open world to explore, and instead that open'ness is kind of put into towns and hub areas. The towns sometimes feel completely legit, somewhat bustling, lots of life and activity. Very believable from a JRPG standpoint. Almost reminds me of like Yakuza or something. Lots of stuff going on sometimes. It's probably different for each person, but I feel like they focused on the pacing and openness where it counts, rather than just going whole hog

And the refinement of the characters, while still somewhat trope'y are still some of the best from a JRPG perspective outside of something like a good Tales game, or a toned down Persona game or something. Not stellar or fantastic, but still unreasonably good

[Big D]

FFVII Remake is probably the biggest disappointment I've ever had from a video game. It has a lot to recommend it: a stunning recreation of Midgar, excellent new portrayals of major characters, and a lot more lore and story.

What threw it were things that felt like minor annoyances at first: Incredibly long, drawn-out boss fights that started out feeling epic but ended up becoming tedious, frustrating and dowright boring by the end. A bloated, padded story that's laden with fetch-quests and distracting busywork. Minor characters from across the FFVII expanded universe who who get thrust into the spotlight in a way that suggests we're meant to know, and care, about them deeply.

But most damning for me were the major story changes. It's not until near the end that the remake's story starts to come apart, so for the longest time it feels like they were actually being honest when they promised a faithful reimagining of the original. It was a profound disappoinment to discover that there might've never been any intention of actually remaking FFVII beyond the outline of the Midgar plot.

Whatever comes next might be a re-telling of the original story, or it might be outright fanfiction made up on the spot by the new writers. But no matter what option they choose, it's guaranteed to have a whole lot of nonsense piled on top of it.

You might love it. You might hate it. You might find a bit of both. The biggest thing I found was that I was wrong to get my hopes up and buy into the hype.

[krissy]

i hope you're wrong about the nonsense


i disagree about story direction becoming fanficcy. someone said this is more of a sequel than a remake, which would make perfect sense; parallel universe and timelines stuff going on.

i think the boss fights being drawn out is a playing preference, but they actually become a lot quicker once you figure out weaknesses and stagger tactics for the specific bosses. i'm running through them a lot faster the second time around on hard, and that's including dying more often

i actually like the idea that they won't just re-created the same old scenes with updated graphics and voice acting. i'm interested in seeing a new version of the story through a different lens. if i wanted to play ff7 again, i would do it (and i am doing it haha, slowly).

i guess these are personal preferences though, and it makes sense to be disappointed if you were expecting just the same story. but to me it's more of a meta narrative (so far) that has a lot to do with the fanbase as well.

i do agree that the side-quests sometimes got boring and weren't interesting. they were going to try and incorporate some sort of yakuza style gameplay but forgot their set-pieces weren't made for it. and the forced walking segments were UGH. i get you're probably loading the level during but it's boring when you're trying to just run.

[JJ Strife]

But most damning for me were the major story changes. It's not until near the end that the remake's story starts to come apart, so for the longest time it feels like they were actually being honest when they promised a faithful reimagining of the original. It was a profound disappoinment to discover that there might've never been any intention of actually remaking FFVII beyond the outline of the Midgar plot.

Whatever comes next might be a re-telling of the original story, or it might be outright fanfiction made up on the spot by the new writers. But no matter what option they choose, it's guaranteed to have a whole lot of nonsense piled on top of it.

You might love it. You might hate it. You might find a bit of both. The biggest thing I found was that I was wrong to get my hopes up and buy into the hype.

This was my major fear upon completing Remake. That we just wouldn't end up getting the rest of the original story, and therefore it essentially means we'll never get a proper remake of the original.

Some of the comments of the director/producers have put my mind to rest though. Mostly. Kitase said the story will continue as we know it:
https://www.vg247.com/2020/04/28/final-fantasy-7-remake-part-2-story/

In some of the much older comments, they did say they couldn't change too much about the main story because they knew the fans wouldn't like it. And then in the recent Guardian interview, they did reiterate that they really wanted to keep people guessing between installments.

I think all of that points to the fact that the rest of the story will largely remain the same as the original.

[SoulTaker*]

Its fun and feels like the game has a message worth paying attention too. The last portion of the game are quite intense and I must say it brought some emotion out of me from sorrow to exhilaration.

I will say there is not much replay value, especially when there are sp many A+ titles being released. But if you have the spare change and time its a fun journey with the homies again