It’s been almost 30 years, and now the Final Fantasy 7 remake is out for everyone. I always said I’d buy the remake when it came out, but ~$500 was too much (for the game plus the console it required). When it came to PC (via the Epic Games Store), I was a Mac user. Now it’s out on Xbox and Switch, and I’ve played through it on the former.
Of course, I loved the remake from the start, from the expanded opening showing the dystopia and the lack of plant life, the extra scene where Aerith’s flower is stepped on before she can pick it back up, and of course the characters having voices. But then, shortly after the intro movie, I started to notice changes I didn’t like. I’m fine with you not being able to rename characters. All I really changed was “Aeris” to “Aerith,” correcting the translation mistake, but the remake already does this. (I also corrected “Red XIII” to [redacted] (spoiler) so when you get his real name, you get funny dialogue where Cloud asks “Who is [redacted]” and the other character says “[redacted] is [redacted].” It’s not important, it’s just funny to me, but it bothered me that after you learn his real name, you still call him Red XIII, so I always named him what his real name is from that point forward.)
Then after the first part of the training mission, we get back to Seventh Heaven, and I don’t even have the option to give the flower to Marlene. I thought that option was special in the original, but the remake doesn’t allow it. We’re not giving it to Tifa because at no point does Cloud see Tifa like that — yet. It doesn’t make sense. He has the flower because Aerith made him take it. Cloud’s basically ace at this point, and he doesn’t want to lead his childhood friend on. He just wants to get paid and move on. Aside from discarding the flower, which isn’t an option, giving the flower to Marlene makes the most sense. Cloud sees that everyone in Avalanche has hope. Marlene only sees her daddy and his friends (who she also likes) go out and leave her alone every day. So you want to give her some hope. Having Cloud give Tifa the flower by default was the first half of my first issue with the remake.
In the original, Cloud loses some of his edge around the second mission. Meeting Aerith in the church, meeting her mother, the interaction with the Turks, and the whole Don Corneo business changes him a bit, and he lets more of his human side out. Not in the remake, he just stays an asshole through the whole thing, which runs through the Shinra HQ escape. Minor spoiler, but only for those who played the original and understand the context. You escape from Midgar HQ, you do the road scene, and instead of fighting the boss after, you fight the boss still on the bike. Then you fight Sephiroth for some reason and… that’s it. It’s over. You gotta wait until June for the second part, unless you pay $700+ for a PS5. And no one has the third part yet, even if you pay the steep fee for early access. We’re not even sure if the third part will be further delayed on other platforms. So that’s another issue — even those who paid the premium to access the second part early don’t know when they’re getting the third chapter, or even that the third chapter will be the final chapter. It’s all up in the air.
What really convinced me the remake was kinda bad wasn’t just the extra mission with the new Soldier villain (which is just training you for the bike mission at the end), but it was after Aerith is taken (sorry, minor spoiler) and you talk to her mom and you get her back story. Even with the voice acting… I remember thinking this scene hit so much harder in the original. But, buying Remake on the Xbox came with the original, so after I finished Remake, I fired up the original and started playing. It only takes about an hour or two to get to this scene. To do everything in Remake takes 20-40 hours in Remake, but it only takes about 3 hours in the original, due to all the fluff that was added. (Some of that fluff is good, but most of it literally exists to waste your time.) I got to that scene, and it hurt my heart nearly as much as it did the first go-around in 1997. I think it’s the music. The music in Remake simply sucks. The music in the original was hot garbage because it was MIDI. I remember paying $40 to import the CD, then I found a 10MB pirated copy online. All the songs in MIDI except “One-Winged Angel” which was an MP3. I played the songs on the computer and the CD in my CD player. Sounded the same. But anyway, Nobuo Uematsu has since re-released music from Final Fantasy VII, with a full orchestra, and it sounds amazing. You don’t get that in the Remake. You get boring, drowned-out songs. You also get this random ass song with vocals by Yosh from Survive Said the Prophet (Japanese rock fans know who that is) but you can never hear the song, even in the trailer. You have to go on a streaming service and look up the song and play it outside the game. It’s not just weird. It’s bad. The music was such an integral part of the original game, warts and all, but they couldn’t get that right. And Aerith’s back story just fell flat. It could have been amazing with the newer, non-MIDI, orchestral recordings, but we didn’t get that.
If I said I wasn’t going to play Rebirth when it comes out in June, I’d be fucking lying. Of course I’ll play it. But I’m already to the Temple of the Ancients in the original. The original is ugly and the music is MIDI, but it doesn’t completely disrespect your time (there are too many battles, but they can be disabled, but you shouldn’t disable all of them), and it’s still a great game. And it doesn’t shut down on the train tracks leading to the town with Barret’s back story like the original PC release did. They either used the fix from the Ultima Edition (a pirate release), or they fixed it on their own. Either way, you can play past that point now. You can probably play the entire game legally now without original hardware. That wasn’t an option before — either you were emulating the PS1 version or you were running the Ultima Edition, even if you bought the PC release because no one ever played the PC release past Disc One. It just wasn’t possible to proceed due to an unpatched bug. Fortunately, digital releases such as Steam, App Store, Xbox, PlayStation, and others, do allow patches and so the game was fixed. Anyway, of course I’ll play Rebirth, and I’ll play Reunion as well — what I assume the third one will be called, given the context and the pattern — and I damn sure can’t wait to see what the new World Crisis scene looks like (that’s not really a spoiler, and neither is this: if you have to go to the bathroom when you’re fighting Sephiroth for the last time, pause during the match, because you won’t get a chance during the nine minute cut scene that follows. At least it was 9 minutes on the PS1. It’ll probably be longer in the remake. And I can’t wait to see it. And I can’t wait for someone to recut it with better audio.
I’ve tried Remake once or twice, and cannot adjust to their “action battle” system. Give me old turn taking to make sense of things.
I definitely think they sorely mishandled the story with so much “addition”. They completely lost the feel of “less is more”, like only seeing the results of Sephiroth’s warpath instead of seeing every pixel of his presence.
I didn’t even bother with Rebirth. A while ago I thought “I’ll just wait until the full story is actually out, I don’t buy into this piecemeal bs” But now, I really don’t think I’ll ever play it from what I know.
I played Remake, then played the original FF7, and then played Rebirth. They’re not very comparable games, but I think I enjoy Remake/Rebirth more than the original.
But I acknowledge that I don’t have the nostalgic attachment to FF7 like others do. To me, I feel like the original game did not age well. I’ve played every other mainline Final Fantasy game (except for 11) and I honestly think 7 is the worst of the PS1 trilogy.
I also wouldn’t treat Remake/Rebirth as separate chapters of an incomplete game. They’re all full-size games. I beat the original FF7 in about 2/3 the time it took me to beat Rebirth.
So whereabouts does Rebirth leave off?
And yes, Remake is the length of a full game, but it also leaves the story incomplete. It might be better to think of them as parts of a trilogy.
Sure, but do we not consider the installments of a trilogy to be complete products in their own right?
Like, I don’t think it would be fair to say a similar product like Dune is a waste of time because they set up for a part 3 that has not yet come out, when the original Dune movie was just a single film instead of 3.
The original Final Fantasy VII was a “lightning-in-a-bottle” moment in gaming history.
FFVII came at a point when Nintendo’s most beloved 3rd party partners had felt wronged by Nintendo’s semi-monopoly / greed - in that Nintendo had continued to charge a massive premium on cartridge production for anyone who wanted to sell a cart to run on their systems (think Apple pre-USB-C where everyone who wanted to make “Lightning Port” accessories basically had to pay Apple a premium every time they built any iPhone / iPad accessory), and this had only worsened with the N64 due to the increase in hardware costs (some SNES games like Chrono Trigger were already $80-$85 in the mid-1990s which was VERY expensive for the time). So 3rd party partners were willing to pivot to take a risk with SONY who was relatively unproven in video games (and who also had a very big chip on their shoulders thanks to Nintendo backing out of a hardware deal with SONY at the last second so they literally set up shop to poach 3rd party partners to bring exclusively to their new PlayStation project).
FFVII also came out at a point when there was excitement and a rush to produce new “3D” (polygonal mesh-driven assets) visuals as opposed to “2D” (traditional sprite sheet-driven assets) visuals, and the amount SquareSoft (before they merged with the Dragon Quest “Enix” guys) was willing to spend to invest in making these kinds of assets for a video game - at least at the scale they were attempting - was unheard of at the time.
Hironobu Sakaguchi had been at the helm of the Final Fantasy JRPG series for more than a decade, and had just lost his mother. FFVI was already a masterpiece in storytelling (which is the main thing that JRPGs brought to the table in gaming), but he had decided to try and tell a story that resonated with the same sort of feelings he had in losing his mother.
All that combined :
- the first new big SquareSoft JRPG for the “32-bit” era
- launching on MULTIPLE CDs (also a somewhat new and novel concept) instead of a cartridge
- the first to do some 3D graphics instead of 2D sprites for visuals (though backgrounds were still pre-rendered sprites)
- the first to incorporate SOME real orchestration as opposed to pure MIDI-style instrumentation
- Sakaguchi’s loss inspiring him to add that aspect to the story - which lead to one of gaming’s most impactful moments of all time at that time in an era when “storytelling” still had not evolved much… we had yet to get cinematic games like Metal Gear Solid yet - which kind of was the first truly movie-like experience with full voice performances and advanced emotive animations from character bodies, and camera actions designed to mimic cinema.
So any remake would NEVER live up to the original, because even the original cannot live up to itself anymore - because the original’s story relied on how voices played in your head, rather than some actor maybe not being up to snuff, the graphics not aging very well b/c of how early-on it was in the creation of polygonal assets and animations - which simple emotes were used to represent deeply moving emotions in some cases that you had to “imagine” as being more detailed than they really were (like with how characters may have sounded in your mind), and how there wasn’t really anything of equivalent cinematic awe in gaming that had been released yet to compete with the story-telling of JRPGs like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, and Earthbound (Mother 2).
I think taking on the challenge of remaking it is interesting, but I always would rather an effort be made to make something new, rather than rehash anything - even things that I grew up loving… because nostalgia is always chasing a ghost… and ghosts never live up to your hopes and expectations.
All that being said, the thing I had the biggest issue with was the “style” of the characters in the remake. They are inherently very stylized in the original, and there seems to have been zero effort to maintain any of that “style” from the original, because it seems the modern interpretation was to toss out any possible “style” arbitrarily in exchange for more “realism” in the character designs… think “Disney live action remake” adaptations of characters vs their original animated character styles.
Here’s what I mean… I wanted Barret to look like THIS :
…instead of this :
Yeah, making Barret look like a real guy was certainly a choice. I don’t mind it, but yeah, he was always supposed to be larger than life.
I had more beef with the way Cloud looked. He just looks silly. He did look kinda silly in the original, though. Cait Sith probably got it the best, still looking like an animated toy, but at least looking cooler. And Red XIII looked great in the remake. Aerith was on point, but there was something a bit off with Tifa.
The rest, I didn’t know most of that. I knew about the hardware and Nintendo/Sony stuff, but not the back story with the developers and writers.
They’re completely different types of games. It’s hard to compare.
No. They’re milking Final Fantasy 7 fans. FF7 remake reminds me of the Rebuild of Evangelion movies. An pointless remake, they got it right the first time.
I just wanted turn-based with updated graphics…
I feel like Square has been done with turn-based for a while. I think Secret of Mana had the “best of both worlds” in that you could freely move, but you had to wait for your attack gauge to rise before you could hit at full force (and you could charge it for stronger attacks). FF7R kind of does that as well where you can only do your special moves (or even use items) if your ATB has filled at least one space (and some actions require 2). So in a sense it was turn-based, you just didn’t have to sit there and take damage (unless it was an unblockable AOE attack, of course).
I always felt like, with turn-based, if you had the right strategy and stats, you could win any fight. It wasn’t about player skill, it was about player knowledge. Knowing what attacks are more effective, learning the enemies, but if you suck at gaming, you have all the time in the world to enter the commands, the enemy will wait their turn (and then you have to wait your turn, like chess or something). I just don’t like having to take the hits (regardless of Materia like “Cover”). Still, I do agree, it’s another way it feels like Remake has taken the soul out of the original.
I played Remake when it was included in PS+ back in ~2020, and I played the original right after (I was very confused by the ending sequence of Remake at the time). I have yet to play Rebirth, but I’ll get to it after a replay of Remake and before part 3 comes out.
I thought very little about the story differences between the two. The part that stood out to me was, politically, why people would support Shinra at all (a change in Remake), as you hear more from the average resident of Midgar. And I thought they gave you more time to get attached to all those doomed folks in your band of eco terrorists before they die.
I’m way into prog rock, so the soundtrack was just better for me in Remake. Maybe it’s not as good as the orchestral version of the original soundtrack, but that wasn’t in the original, so I only have the MIDI to compare it to. The main theme sounds fantastic, way better than the original actually, and you still get that Kansas-esque battle theme against the robot when you’re scaling the tower. Loved it. Going from either of those back to the original MIDI is cute, but it’s a downgrade.
The story changes are because this isn’t a straight upgrade meant to replace the old game. This is a game whose story is about the reverence for the original game. Or at least, that’s what it sets up in Part 1, and I can’t speak to Part 2. As for wasting your time, yeah, it does that. I had a great time skipping the side missions in Remake, and from what I heard of Rebirth, that’s probably what I’ll do again, since that content is pretty phoned in. The original game’s version of wasting your time is a random battle encounter rate that’s set too high, plus the macguffin hunt right before the end of the game.
FF7 was one of the moments that changed gaming for me when I played it way back. I dabbled with a few other RPGs at the time, but after this it got me to revisit and really appreciate the others and i felt rewarded for doing it. I have a bias towards the game so I was super excited to see and know a remake was actually happening. Then we got it and to me it was also special in its own way. Maybe more in the way of letting me remember just what i loved so much about the first all over again. It wasn’t the same, it had its quirks, but overall it felt like a success to me. The care they had with the big moments was spectacular and it couldnt look better either. My only complaint would be the entire game was linear, which is absolutely ok considering the masterpiece rebirth is. I also love the fact that this game is not just a remake which i would imagine you figured out by now. I wont go into it, but it absolutely is its own thing and at least to me it’s exciting to see how this comes together in the end. The music is also incredible and compliments it all very well.
Yes, but mainly because I never played the OG and don’t have the nostalgia goggles I feel would be required for me to enjoy it as much.
I finally played through the game on my PS1 a few years ago. It was fantastic. I wanted to re-start and play immediately. Conversely, I have played the first few hours of Remake four times now and give up. I don’t like the combat. I don’t like the story. I don’t like how it has changed into a bog standard quest log type thing. I even tried to play again just a few weeks ago.
It’s funny because I liked the combat just fine in Final Fantasy XV. I like the real-time stuff. It’s not what I expect for 7, but it beats when you’re on the open world and you’re trying to figure out where to go and every 3-4 steps it’s a fight. It’s disorienting, and frankly poor game design — one of the few faults I have for a game I love. The turn-based is okay, not my cup of tea, but I don’t mind how FF7 does it.
Another thing I didn’t like about Remake was the music discs. The music’s already not great, why do I have to buy it? Then, I scour every inch of the game and still I miss a few? I didn’t even wanna go back with the chapter select to get the achievement, though I may later.
