Is it worth it?

[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 Tim Rogers video literally yesterday 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.

[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.

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.