Review #777: Final Fantasy VII Remake

 Now with extra belts.

 Alright, let's face it, there was no way Final Fantasy VII Remake could match expectations, especially considering that this is part 1 of what was supposed to be a trilogy until Nomura professed his wish to turn it into a Kingdom Hearts sort of multi-short stories kind of story, which means that this is part of a whole competing against a full game. With this game they turned the entire Midgar chapter into a 30-hour RPG, new characters, new scenarios and even a bit of filler that goes nowhere and we'll have to wait until the next part to see if it led to anything.

 It's a bit of a spoiler, but it's something you should know when approaching this game, this is a sequel, not a remake. Very early in the game you'll start seeing a few events that don't play exactly like they did before until a few Deus-Ex machinae spirits show up to change it. It's part of the plot, and yes, it feels like someone traveled back in time or something. And most stories get ruined when Time Traveling is involved. Everything that concerns this new nuance to the story is absolutely disappointing. We wanted a remake, not a sequel, but Square being Square just couldn't do anything that quaint, they had to add their own pompous spin on it. On the other hand, everything that expands on the old characters is absolutely amazing, they managed to get the personalities of all the main characters right, and added a ton of new scenes for them to showcase it. They added a lot of banter between the main characters, when exploring and walking around, and it's so much fun hearing them play off each other. Biggs, Wedge and Jessie have new personalities, but considering they were paper thin on the original, this suits them just fine, and made them much more endearing. Chapter 4 is entirely devoted to them, as Cloud embarks on a new mission to help Jessie with a personal matter while the other two hang around. It's really good and involves none of their silly plot ghosts. When you meet up with Aerith you get to go around the Slums helping people and the orphaned children that like Aerith so much, and it feels very natural. Even earlier in the game Tifa shows you how to take on missions, and that too was well integrated into the story, expanding on how Cloud's life on the Sector 7 slums would be. Basically, everything that stays true to the original is very, VERY good, the developers clearly understood the characters, even if Nomura went full Nomura with Rufus' design and gave him a few unnecessary belts. Oh, and did I mention they even crammed a fight against Sephiroth? Yes, this early into the game. No gusta.

 That said, in quite a few ways, this game feels a bit more like a beat'em up, like Square's own The Bouncer, than an RPG. Final Fantasy XIII caught a lot of flak because of how linear it was, well... this game is mostly made up of hallways, even the few towns you visit are simple collections of hallways. To be fair, JRPGs are very linear for the most part, and Midgar was the original game's most linear part, but not only are you supposed to move on a straight line from A to B, but you'll do so mostly through cramped tunnels, tight corridors and oppressive hallways. Something that infuriated me to now end was that a few times I wanted to explore, or realized I walked through the right hallway instead of the one that might've had some goodies at the end, but the game would prevent me from going back because I had to keep moving on a straight line to further the plot. A few times, during the out-of-town excursions, the fix would be to walk forward until I cleared a new story bit, and then the game would relent with its invisible walls and let me return to whatever cranny I missed and wanted to check out. Compounding the linearity of this design is that there are very few sections that would count as dungeons, and most sidequests don't require going further away than the road you came from. Chapter 14 opens up a bit and lets you go around most of the game's world. It also marks the point of no return once you proceed through the story.

 Since the game only covers the Midgar chapter... only Barret, Aerith, Tifa and Cloud become party members, with Red XIII fulfilling a guest role in the final chapters. Which sounds a bit lame, but it makes sense, because the developers found a way to make every character feel very different from one another. Cloud's basic square attacks are fast and have decent reach, but you can press Triangle to enter Punisher mode, which slows you down to a crawl, but makes your slashes super strong. Barret shoots with his gun arm(Or has a very slow, and powerful 3-hit combo with his few melee weapons) and you can use Triangle to unleash a short burst of super powered projectiles, however, it has a cooldown period...that you can decrease by finding opportunities to press triangle while on cooldown. Aerith's basic attacks are projectiles too, while her triangle attack is a chargeable area-of-effect attack. Tifa, oh boy, Tifa is a blast. She's very fast, and with a very small health pool, but her basic attacks can be comboed with her special abilities(more on this later) and her triangle attacks depends on how many times you've used Unbridled Strength, an ability of hers. Each character is very different, so I understand that it would've been a waste of resources to make Red XIII a fully playable characters for such few chapters.

 On another note, the game's presentation is spotty to say the least. Character models are on point, and monsters look amazing, everything else... looks pretty bad. NPCs look very basic and mundane, to the point that every main character, ally or enemy, stands out against them, their lowered polygon count not doing them any favors. But it's the environments that really stand out, they have very, very ugly textures. I hate it when people used to say "Oh, this game looks like a PS1 game", but have you ever played a PS1 game? No, no you have not, otherwise you'd know how dumb you sound. But it's no exaggeration to say that this game has a few PS2-level textures. Things like the door to Cloud's apartment or Aerith's flowers look SO bad, and the game loves to zoom on Aerith's ugly flowers during cutscenes. Heck, even environmental objects don't look quite right, with wheels that aren't even round! And I'd understand if they did it to keep a 60 fps framerate going, but the game caps at 30. A very stable 30, but still. I'll always claim that gameplay triumphs over graphics, but it's quite off putting how much these beautiful character models stick out from the rest of the game, and since the game's cutscenes sometimes zoom in on these ugly objects... makes me think that there might be a bug that prevents the textures from loading correctly. Thankfully, the art direction is really good, and as long as you don't try to stop and admire the details, you'll probably enjoy what you see.

 I've talked about how characters play, but not how the game actually plays. Well, there are two modes: Exploration and Battling. Exploration is pretty self explanatory, you just move around while occasionally going through mandatory modern-day loading devices like small crevices you must slowly cross and the such. Thanks to the previously mentioned banter between characters, these sections are pretty fun. That said, anything that involves moving through hand-rails on ceilings is absolutely dreadful, they are SO SLOW. The final part of the game has a particularly egregious section with Tifa that's slow as molasses, and you don't even get endearing banter between party members. Man, speaking of the final chapters, they feel so bloated. You spend like two hours just walking around while a ton of exposition is dumped on you and you have to move at the game's pace. Walk and watch. Walk and watch. The new Mayor character, Domino, was pretty dumb too. Oh, and there's a glitch if you decide to spy on the air vents that might soft-lock your game, so save before entering the vents. It happened to me and I dug around a bit and it seems to be quite common.

 Combat is quite fun, it runs in real time and you take control of any character from your 3-man party member. It's a bit silly that the party caps at three considering that the game only has 4 playable characters, but the plot will decide your party at all times. Enemies will focus almost exclusively on whatever character you are controlling, so you are more or less expected to swap with the digital pad every now and then. The AI allies are pretty rudimentary, they will only use their basic square attacks and block incoming damage, nothing else, it's not like Tales of where you can tinker with their AI parameters. That said, you can press X(Or R2/L2) at any time to open up the menu and direct them to use a spell or an ability. When you go through your menu the game keeps going in real time, but when issuing orders(Or when selecting a target for your abilities/spells) the game will slow down, allowing you to comfortably make your decision.

 As with the original game, you can customize everyone's spell loadout by equipping Materia on their weapons and armors. Different weapons/armors have different slots, sometimes you'll even get linked slots that let you mix a few Materias for added effect. You can't mix Ice and Fire Materias, for example, but you could link Elemental+Fire on your weapon to add a fire effect to your attacks, or put them on your armor to absorb Fire damage as health. There are a ton of new Materia to play around with, although they mostly have to do with enhancing new mechanics, such as your dodge and block or 'automatic healing' from party party members when someone's health drops.

 Spells, item use and abilities are governed by the ATB gauge below each character's health bar. You have up to two gauges, but most abilities only use one. The ATB raises much faster when YOU play as the character, encouraging you to swap between your playable characters to get the most out of their participation. Limit Breaks return in this game, receive a ton of damage, fill the gauge and then you can use a powerful super move. It seems characters have two different Limit Breaks, and you unlock theirs second one by beating their solo Colosseum fights. That said, the gauge resets between battles, unlike the original, so you'll probably only get to use them during boss fights. Each character can equip a Summon materia to summon a powerful ally for a short while, but it can only be done once a few specific conditions have been met, so it's not something you can rely on, although you'll probably get to use them during most boss fights.

 Dealing damage is built around the Stagger gauge. You'll notice very early on that enemies soak up damage like there's no tomorrow, they are very spongy, so you'll notice that as you land attacks a gauge below their health fills up. If you're lucky you'll see them enter 'pressured' status, in which you'll hurt them harder and build up their stagger gauge even faster. Once full, they'll get stunned for a few seconds and receive extra damage. As you learn abilities with your characters you'll find that some are better for crowd control, some for dealing straight damage and others for building up the Stagger. I'm a bit torn on the stagger mechanic, on one hand, I really, REALLY enjoyed the extra long boss battles, like 5 minutes and upwards lengthy fights, they are very fun because the combat itself is very fun, and during boss fights you get to get the most out of your strategizing. But, BUT, I found that battles against common enemies dragged a little too long. They are too short to get the most out of the stagger system, but they are too long since they can withstand quite a few attacks. That said, bosses have multiple phases, and every single time they change phase... their Stagger gauge you just spent minutes building up resets. Lame.

 The last element regarding combat comes down to weapons. You can find up to five extra weapons for each character, for a total of six weapons each. Each weapon has a unique ability, and if you use that ability repeatedly you will eventually learn it for good, meaning that you can use any ability with any weapon. You learn abilities pretty quickly, thankfully. Sadly, weapons are not progressively better, but rather, each weapon has different pros and cons. A weapon might be weak but boost your magic attack power, another weapon might be weaker in both but allow for more Materia slots, etc. This kinda sucks because once you find a weapon that works you won't ever switch to the other ones, so you'll use the same looking weapon for most of the game. I played Tifa and Cloud as physical attackers, so I used Tifa's second glove and Cloud's third sword for most of the game, only switching weapons to learn abilities. As you level up you also earn Weapon points, and you can upgrade weapons by spending them(Every level up grants you 5 points per weapon, so no weapon gets left behind), which is rather neat. That said, it would've been nice to be able to see what upgrades each weapon has without going into their upgrade menus, which takes a few seconds to load.

 Besides the fact that this game is a sequel, the other biggest problem with the game is the camera. When locking onto enemies it might sometimes get stuck on a very unhelpful angle, and when outside of battle, since most of the game is running around through corridors and tunnels, you might have a few problems seeing your surroundings. Wall Market is particularly bad about it, because it has a lot of mini hallways and the such, and it's easy to get lost due to the camera being so zoomed in on Cloud's back. And mind you, I'm someone that didn't think Evil Within's camera was bad or annoying, so that should tell you that I'm not one to complain about cameras needlessly. Thankfully you have full control over the camera, so you turn it around and twist it around until you can see what's in front of you.

 While the game has given me plenty to complain about, the reality is that the game's highpoints vastly outweighs its negatives. Character interactions are SO good, it's really hard not to fall for these characters all over again. The combat at its best is SO much fun, and at worst its more than decent. The graphics might be a bit lackluster, but dammit, I couldn't stop smiling while I played the entire first chapter, because this IS Final Fantasy VII as you've never seen it before. Every story piece that expands on the original game's plot and character makes for a more involved narrative than before. It's a shame that Square couldn't help themselves and just make a simple remake and had to be all grandiose about it. For the next part, I hope they give us more open-ended environments, like Dragon Quest XI, better and more interesting sidequests, make common enemies less spongy and do something about the camera.
 8.0 out of 10