Final Fantasy 7 Remake Review

Final Fantasy 7 Remake! the long and I do mean long anticipated awaited release to the 1998 classic PS1 RPG(1997 in japan) that never went away and remains Square Enix’s biggest cash cow. while people have been asking for this since the an E3 showing of what it could look like during the PS3 era, it wasn’t till 2015 or 1016 that Nomura announced they were officially working on this remake. between this and kingdom hearts, he was certainly divided in how to spend his time. But before stepping into the review I think it’s important to cover some stuff on FF7 as a whole as well as where I stand on it before getting into the review of the Remake.

Final Fantasy 7 was quite the heavy hitter when it came out and yes as the number implies, this is the 7th installment of the franchise. in 1987 the first was handled by Hironbu Sakaguchi and the short version was he titled the Final Fantasy as it literally was a last ditch effort to make something successful for square and came from a personal passion to make something as a last ditch effort to avoid bankruptcy. with the success of the first Final Fantasy 5 other Final Fantasy games would come out not as sequels but as their own stories anyone can jump into and they certainly held a fantasy element in being in a world of magic. However after Final Fantasy 6 a new shift would come abound and bring in what I like to call to the sci fi modernisc era of Final Fantasy. While Sakaguchi was still in this project as the producer, this would also be the big debut for Yoshinori Kitase and Tetsuya Nomura who would go on to be the biggest factors in what pushed Final Fantasy into it’s new and still current era of creating stories and worlds that are a blend of modern society and fantasy with sci fi elements and they would go on to work on other Final Fantasy projects and Nomura would do some other square projects such as kingdom hearts. Final Fantasy 7 made big waves and impacted an entire generation of gamers that are still impacted by it to this day and Final Fantasy 7 also paved the way for Japanese RPGs to become more known in the west such as dragon quest, Chrono Trigger and so on. to this day Final Fantasy 7 is the biggest selling final fantasy in the franchise as re-releases of this game boosted those numbers and while granted even though people still get introduced to it today the story didn’t have the same impact as it did for those who played it when it came out and sad to say I’m among that latter too since i started on 8 and went on up and didn’t play 7 till after advent children was out and didn’t finish till after I beat Dirge of Cerberus. for me and from what I could tell Final Fantasy 7 while certainly has dark moments and moments that remain memorable to this day and the characters are pretty memorable. mostly. I couldn’t but feel like 7 while breaking new grounds was also trying to be that middle ground between the old era of final fantasy and the new era of final fantasy we still continue in today. yes I know 9 tried this too but that’s a topic of another day. anyway with the success of 7 and even though other FF titles did not sell as high as 7 they did sell amazingly well and were recieved well and have their own fanbases to them. Final Fantasy as a game definitely has the classic way of playing RPG games and is pretty much one of the leading RPGs that pushed the ATB system which is basically a system telling you to hurry the hell up and pick an attack or you’ll get attacked by the enemy. it had a lot of systems to give the player many ways to develop the characters and while yeah the characters all had names, one of the things about FF7 to 10 was you had an impact in naming the main characters so their names were always changable till in the mid 2000’s their actual names started to stick more like glue primarily cause of 10 but pushed more with kingdom hears, advent children, and dissidia where naming the FF characters was no longer an option. now instead calling them your own name or something like “ASSFART” all FF characters have names and identities to them now.

Back to the main point, even with FF7 success technology evolved and Square wanted to experiment more with technology and who better to be the guinea pig than FF7. first we got Advent Children as a movie and well… let’s just say that’s gonna need its own review to talk about what went right but entirely missed the point of its own story and wasted its potential in a way. Along with that came a mobile game for cell phones based on the Turks where you got to learn the actual backstory of the turks followed by Dirge of Cerberus where we learned a bit more about Vincent Valentine aka every woman’s emo husbando that is voiced by steve blum which did passable but again people felt it missed the mark, we also got a set of OVAs based before the events of FF7 that lead up to the point of Cloud Killing Sephiroth in nibelheim which by that point and probably should’ve picked up on with advent children is noticing how unlike other FF games by that point FF7 had a bit of identity issue. the original FF7 story was as I said that middle ground of the old and new eras but that also kind of showed how perhaps the characters didn’t get all the developments or were as thought out as most remember as for one thing the antagonists could at times be…. overly cartoony far as anime style villains go and even down right dumb in some cases. the game play still holds up good but I think the story is where there seems something of a disconnect with what people idealized, know, and want for FF7.

now granted obviously FF7 remake was being done as another cash grab but the fact they took their time on it shows a lot was worked on to not only improve but also modernize and set character tones for FF7 to feel like there’s a consistency with them since all the new stuff and spin offs the FF7 characters appeared in had a consistent feel to them where as the original was still it’s own thing. it’s kind of like noticing in how there’s a big difference between the original comic ninja turtles and the 1987 ninja turtles cartoon and the other turtle cartoons that came later on. So in a way doing a remake does make some sense if they wanted a FF7 story that would feel consistent in tone with the other FF7 spin offs and other games they appeared in with how these characters are handled today. So, with all that said I think we can finally move on to the review of Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

The Story: Now in terms of the story, it does for the most part play out the same as the original where granted certain things were either cut out or expanded on which makes sense cause again the original for all the good it had did have it’s own flaws as a story that do prevent from being great. certain expansions such as biggs, wedge, and jessie were a welcome change and again mainly due to how these characters were handled in other FF spin offs in later years and how they are presented and executed is what brings us to how we are seeing characters like Cloud and Tifa and even Sephiroth in this remake. not cartoony or 90’s anime edgelord cloud but as characters who did have actual problems that the original showed but again with what they had to work with and how it came out that may have flown over some people’s heads.Sadly however we do have the same issue with Shinra execs. mainly president shinra, scarlet, and heidegger. Heidegger while supposed some kind of war hero and military expert literally comes off as someone who was likely the worst soldier and only got his possession due to a lucky break since his choices in handling things for the shinra security force make other similar military characters we’ve seen in final fantasy seem competent where they’ve at least outsmarted the heroes in those stories where as heidegger… just wow they really couldn’t develop this guy better? Scarlet I get what her deal is but man it’s amazing how much they let her get away with since there should’ve been a way to handle how she is at the company and how she acts in public. President Shinra for a guy who we fight against in this first part of the story and again well aware of him in the original but in the remake to his credit they do present him as someone who has been through a lot in his life and those experiences are what led him to be the man he is. even though his experiences should’ve had him keep Hojo on a constant leash to at least give the misdirection he is in control of the situation. Hojo still comes off as how the hell does anybody trust this guy? like does no one see the shifty eye personality he’s got going on? like does no one see him laughing and smiling even when something like Jenova got stolen as a red flag? I mean compared to Orochimaru, Hazama from blazblue, mayuri kurotsuchi from bleach who all have genius like intellect know how to keep their intentions hidden. well mayuri may have similiarities to hojo but at least with mayuri you can definitely say his habits and need for knowledge and science can put him on either good or bad depending on how you want to view him. Hojo is pretty one dimensional despite the remakes attempts at trying to temper down his creep factors which came out better than dirge of cerberus at least. Also is it me or does he look like Jeff Goldblum? lol they kept iconic moments in this even though shinra’s decision to drop the sector 7 plate just to kill 5 people from avalanche was a stupid one since even if you want to put them as the ultimate corporate company that controls the world would have more backlash than they could handle realistically. especially when reeve points out the costs and again I feel like that they could have done better in handling their desire to seek the promise land while maintaning public images better to avoid suspicions. The biggest change in the story would have to be the whispers and the way Sephiroth appears in this game more frequently than the original and oddly enough these were intentional. The Whispers serve as a metaphor to represent fans who are against changes to the story or whatever which is fine except that they never really impacted much. they’re just kind of there and nothing the characters did would’ve changed the overall story. I don’t think biggs, wedge, and jessie surviving would’ve changed the fact Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Aerith, and Red would still had to leave Midgar to chase down Sephiroth, or even the whole thing at the church would not have really changed the outcome or direction of the story. in fact it’s not until the last few chapters after sephiroth kills president shinra that these changes impact things. I guess one can argue perhaps Sephiroth is changing the outcome of his loss but he could also know that perhaps the future timeline we saw in advent children and dirge of cerberus didn’t work out too well and does at least want the world to survive even if it is just so he can continue existing to fight Cloud again and again. but part one 1 does end how most remember them leaving midgar ends. they have to go hunt down sephiroth like the original only 2 differences. first one being is that our 5 heroes so glimpses of the future. whether they can make sense of any of those future glimpses to prevent them now that the whispers are defeated and out of the way is something we’ll see in part 2. the other change is that supposedly Zack surviving that last battle against shinra soldiers and trying to get cloud to midgar where many believe this may have caused multiple timelines or at least 2 of them to exist. but we’ll see how part 2 plays out whenever it comes out.

The gameplay: Needless to say the gameplay is pretty good. if you’ve played through the 13 trilogy and 15 then most of this should be familiar to you. from the combat to the menu system and even the way you change characters during battle. one of the noticeable things is that the AI enemies are automatically set to attack the player. meaning anyone you control is auto targeted and while that does add some pressure It also does make the AI predictable in many regards and don’t have any sense of free movement in how they will fight or how they’ll target your party. Speaking of AI, the Party AI is one of the worst I’ve seen. like one of the worst. every now and then they’ll try to do something to help but everything from item usage to even their special attacks have to picked by you the player where that’s fine to add some extra command and urgency when you figured out the enemy weakness and how to do the most damage to them but… sadly unlike in kingdom hearts or even in FF13 and 13-2 and FF15 where you know the AI in your party is dependable enough to act on their own FF7’s Party AI is severely restricted cause of the game’s need to make everything player influenced. I’m hoping they do away with this and just let the AI have more options in how to act where the player should only influence their actions till it’s needed. Exploration is well while there is some freedom to explore this is sadly limited whenever the main campaign story is happening. when that’s happening you pretty much aren’t allowed to go to other areas to explore till you’ve at least cleared the story portions of course it doesn’t help you’re restricted to just exploring whatever section you are in for the chapter. it’s not till after the sector 7 plate falls you have the most freedom to explore but you only have the 9 side quests to do and arena tournament as an option. oh right, there are side quests to do much like in FF 13-2, lightning’s return, and FF15 but unlike those other 2 where you have all the time to do and complete them, you’re pretty much out of luck if you continue the story but didn’t finish those side quests where you’d have to wait till you unlock chapter select to do them again. from the beginning of that chapter. So yeah a lot of good strides but also has a fair share of issues in how they handled this. For some positives each character does have a unique way of playing such as cloud utilizing his operator style and punisher style which is slower than operator but hits harder and his blow is turned into a physical counter stance or if you equip him with the nail bat Cloud will go for a Slugger style of combat and make home runs on enemies, Barret and his arm guns will fire bursts of bullets on foes making him great for long distance and leaving small damage that builds up fast and his overcharge skill firing 3 powerful shots and like cloud he also has 2 arm weapons more suited to melee where he gives up long range and becomes a close range hitter. Tifa is the brawler type who has fast and powerful strikes that can build up the stagger meter on foes quickly and I would pay to them add her in tekken or dead or alive lol, Aerith being the white mage also has a long range attack and skill but specializes more in delivering magical damage or healing depending on you.

The Characters: Now it should be made clear that while the changes I mentioned are there, this is for the most part Cloud’s story. yes the other characters have their stories as well but they aren’t as much of the focus in this part since we are focusing on cloud much like the original only it’s a bit more personal by comparison and there aren’t any extra voices in his head. no no that’s changed out for seeing sephiroth at almost every turn he makes. All that said there is something to say about the characters, while it is true these are similar to the original way they were written but there’s no denying the characters have been changed to suit as I’ve said before the way they’re presented now. with Cloud it’s not much of a difference but the way he’s presented is certainly different from the way he was in the original where at best most can say he’s a bit of an asshole and he cusses a bit more than the original or even advent children. Tifa for the most part is relatively the same as well but something about the way she’s presented here is certain different and no I don’t mean the change to her outfit or boobies, I mean in terms of the way her character is executed feels different from the original. not a change to her character but just the way she’s executed feels different is the best way I can describe it. Barret… well to start off yes, out of all the characters Barret has had the most radical changes however this wouldn’t be the first time given after advent children and dirge of cerberus Barret has been going through a few various changes in how he looks in the spin offs. his previous design was in the mobile app game for dissidia final fantasy which tried to make him look a bit more like the original FF7 but still looked different from it since I feel like Square Enix is trying to move away from the Mr. T looking design he had. Although that would’ve been ironic casting for this remake lol but despite that Barret’s design as well as original mannerisms are mostly altered for a more modernized black man that’s fighting a cause compared to his 90’s version. He is definitely loud and short tempered but I think Nomura and his team were able to find something almost everyone can settle on for Barret’s new look where he keeps his muscular frame and rough loud voice but leaves room to express he’s a nice guy who loves his daughter marlene. Aerith from what I recall in the original was a sweet and kind person and we all know her impact in the story and how she’s presented in other spin offs such as kingdom hearts is sweet but can be a bit forceful in her own way, in this remake however her personality while still keeping some of her original charm where similar to cloud and tifa has had some changes in the way she’s presented and executed where you do get more of the vibe she’s able to manipulate things in a way given how she gave cloud the whole walk around for most of the story and she can be a bit more cynical in how she views hojo compared to her original at least. I guess in a way they wanted change her up a bit to where she can come off as a bit more believable to those new to FF7 and I guess I can’t fault them for it where I know Aerith has some moments of having her limits but I guess they felt they needed to change somethings about her character and really more out of the way to present she’s very street smart. also she cusses a bit more too. I don’t need to talk about the shinra execs and we’ll save Reeve for when he becomes more relevant in later parts. Now comes Sephiroth, Now obviously right off the bat you can tell from the way he moves and talks that something is very different about him from the original. and that’s because there is. far as his part in the story goes, there’s no denying Sephiroth already knows the future in how things will play out for him and because he’s always being cryptic it’s possible there is some truth to what he’s saying in how the planet is dying and he doesn’t want to live in a empty world if there’s no cloud to entertain him. that sounded more gay than I intended it to be lol anyway Sephiroth is obsessed with getting Cloud to do something for him that will change things in a big way from what we know. for the most part I do like how we don’t know what to expect from Sephiroth since as a character that’s been one of his best qualities. always aware of the truth before others picked up on it then just either says nothing or leaves subtle hints mostly to cloud. So overall Sephiroth was good in this one and I even enjoyed the fight with him.

The Music: It should go without saying the Nobuo really had to go above and beyond to not only use the original score but to find a way to make it sound new for this remake and as always I say he succeed. a lot of the music is collectible and most of those songs are for characters and areas we don’t see yet in the story. so I don’t have to explain it but pretty much say definitely worth a listen.

and That’s FF7 Remake and how was it? Well it certainly has flaws I hope they’ll improve on in the next part that according to source they’re already working on or been working on at least and some narrative choices still have me both disappointed and amazed and while not all the characters are handled in the ways I hoped they would be overall FF7 Remake is definitely an experience. is it the same kind of experience as the original? No. and it’s cause of the lightning in a bottle argument. you can’t capture the same thing twice and I think Nomura for all his good and bad qualities realized that and rather than try to capture the same feeling went with what they loved about this project originally and gave it a new kind of life to give a new kind of experience that ‘s still flawed but overall something definitely good and visually is impressive where you can tell a lot of the recent FF7 spin offs along with the success of other FF spin off games and FF13 trilogy and FF15 were big contributing factors to make this remake what it is. so in my opinion my overall score and rating for this first part of the FF7 remake saga is an 8 out of 10 with a recommended seal of approval to buy and experience this game for yourself to see if it is worth the price.

thank you all for reading and as always leave a comment on your thoughts about the remake in the comments below.