First and foremost, in 1997 little old thirteen years old me played Final Fantasy VII at a friend's house and was hooked. In an era where Google wasn't something you could use to look things up, I learned every bit of the game and how to accomplish everything. I've played it through countless times, so my opinion at least should hold some weight on this.
Remake is, visually, what I always wished it could have been in the 90s but never believed gaming would ever get to. The gameplay mechanics in battles felt very smooth, and even the slowdown when navigating the battle menu for spells or uncontrolled party members didn't break up the intensity of those fights. That said, some of the battles seemed to throw unneccessary challenge too often, one enemy in particular drove me nuts by not only flying all over the screen, but also being immune to physical attacks until using magic on it and then vice versa. It's fine but when there's multiples of them freely moving around it can be easy to lose them or get disoriented and it felt too grindy. Even so, the battle mechanics overall felt fantastic throughout the game.
Some areas of the game felt too dragged out though. And not the ones you'd think. The chapters with side quests didn't bother me, even though some of them were hopelessly dull (I'm looking at the cats and tracking down kids ones in particular) but most had charm. No, areas like the train graveyard and Hojo's lab felt terribly long, and not in a fun way. I'm glad they added depth to areas from the original but it was obvious they did those two in particular to shoehorn another boss in at the end of each.
From a narrative perspective this did a phenomenal job of filling in gaps, retelling the story well, adding small hints of taking from the Crisis Core PSP prequel game to further story telling, and adding in things to make some of the original games actions make more sense. Shinra pegging Avalanche as part of a conspiracy with Wutai to gain the people's trust was a good example of expanding on something small to make the story flow better. Seeing Aerith go to get Marlene and showing us how she got her to safety was much better than the originals off screen moment followed by Tseng and Aerith showing up in a chopper minutes after climbing the pillar. The pillar coming down and the characters reactions were more impactful than in the original because you spend time with the people of Sector 7 prior to it.
Then there are the "whispers". That's what I'm not a fan of. The explanation that they're a manifestation of destiny meant to ensure certain events play out a specific way felt like a very cheap way to push characters in a particular direction throughout the story instead of writing more sensible scenarios and was in far more ways a cheap way to give the Midgar portion of the story a more grandiose ending than it needed. To have to basically go into a pocket dimension to fight against destiny and Sephiroth just because you're cutting off the Remake into parts and wanted to show fan service to the originals ending and shoehorn a Sephiroth fight in was jarring because it never felt natural in the narrative (not that it wasn't fun to play because it was).
The additional scenes for Hojo gave him much more substance as a character who in the original (and prequel) was quite important but never felt that way from the little screen time. It's clear in this version that he knows who Cloud truly is, and that addition into this remake helps cement the prequel events as well because Hojo was essentially responsible for Cloud being as he is.
The worst transgression of this title is not allowing us control over Red XIII in the game. I understand their thinking was to not get us attached to using the character when he enters the story so late, electing to hold off on it until the next installment, but for such a fan favorite character to be there and not controllable was still a massive disservice. It's bad enough the scope of this project is so large we have to wait for installments, but in a portion that involves one of the beloved characters why prevent us from using him ourselves even in a limited way? Felt wrong.
Overall, the remake was outstanding, it's clear they want to stay as close to the original as possible in this remake. There are tons and tons of tiny nods to small trivial things of the original that many people will miss. They're clearly doing justice to their prequel story to make everything come together in the remake, even if those nods are small. The characters are far more likable, have a lot more depth, and the combat is a joy. Aside from a few overly long segments, the lack of control of Red, the whispers and destiny, and the unbalanced use of Sephiroth this early into the narrative, the game is amazing and a must play for any fan or anyone wanting to get into it the first time.
However, I still have to only give it a 7 out of 10 for the reasons above. They don't take away from the amazing quality of the game, but they do hurt it at times, and it would be irresponsible for me to blindly give it a 9 or a 10. I highly recommend it regardless.
I do worry about the future installments. If Midgar was this massive, what happens when they let us out into the world... I hope this project is not too ambitious.
Remake is, visually, what I always wished it could have been in the 90s but never believed gaming would ever get to. The gameplay mechanics in battles felt very smooth, and even the slowdown when navigating the battle menu for spells or uncontrolled party members didn't break up the intensity of those fights. That said, some of the battles seemed to throw unneccessary challenge too often, one enemy in particular drove me nuts by not only flying all over the screen, but also being immune to physical attacks until using magic on it and then vice versa. It's fine but when there's multiples of them freely moving around it can be easy to lose them or get disoriented and it felt too grindy. Even so, the battle mechanics overall felt fantastic throughout the game.
Some areas of the game felt too dragged out though. And not the ones you'd think. The chapters with side quests didn't bother me, even though some of them were hopelessly dull (I'm looking at the cats and tracking down kids ones in particular) but most had charm. No, areas like the train graveyard and Hojo's lab felt terribly long, and not in a fun way. I'm glad they added depth to areas from the original but it was obvious they did those two in particular to shoehorn another boss in at the end of each.
From a narrative perspective this did a phenomenal job of filling in gaps, retelling the story well, adding small hints of taking from the Crisis Core PSP prequel game to further story telling, and adding in things to make some of the original games actions make more sense. Shinra pegging Avalanche as part of a conspiracy with Wutai to gain the people's trust was a good example of expanding on something small to make the story flow better. Seeing Aerith go to get Marlene and showing us how she got her to safety was much better than the originals off screen moment followed by Tseng and Aerith showing up in a chopper minutes after climbing the pillar. The pillar coming down and the characters reactions were more impactful than in the original because you spend time with the people of Sector 7 prior to it.
Then there are the "whispers". That's what I'm not a fan of. The explanation that they're a manifestation of destiny meant to ensure certain events play out a specific way felt like a very cheap way to push characters in a particular direction throughout the story instead of writing more sensible scenarios and was in far more ways a cheap way to give the Midgar portion of the story a more grandiose ending than it needed. To have to basically go into a pocket dimension to fight against destiny and Sephiroth just because you're cutting off the Remake into parts and wanted to show fan service to the originals ending and shoehorn a Sephiroth fight in was jarring because it never felt natural in the narrative (not that it wasn't fun to play because it was).
The additional scenes for Hojo gave him much more substance as a character who in the original (and prequel) was quite important but never felt that way from the little screen time. It's clear in this version that he knows who Cloud truly is, and that addition into this remake helps cement the prequel events as well because Hojo was essentially responsible for Cloud being as he is.
The worst transgression of this title is not allowing us control over Red XIII in the game. I understand their thinking was to not get us attached to using the character when he enters the story so late, electing to hold off on it until the next installment, but for such a fan favorite character to be there and not controllable was still a massive disservice. It's bad enough the scope of this project is so large we have to wait for installments, but in a portion that involves one of the beloved characters why prevent us from using him ourselves even in a limited way? Felt wrong.
Overall, the remake was outstanding, it's clear they want to stay as close to the original as possible in this remake. There are tons and tons of tiny nods to small trivial things of the original that many people will miss. They're clearly doing justice to their prequel story to make everything come together in the remake, even if those nods are small. The characters are far more likable, have a lot more depth, and the combat is a joy. Aside from a few overly long segments, the lack of control of Red, the whispers and destiny, and the unbalanced use of Sephiroth this early into the narrative, the game is amazing and a must play for any fan or anyone wanting to get into it the first time.
However, I still have to only give it a 7 out of 10 for the reasons above. They don't take away from the amazing quality of the game, but they do hurt it at times, and it would be irresponsible for me to blindly give it a 9 or a 10. I highly recommend it regardless.
I do worry about the future installments. If Midgar was this massive, what happens when they let us out into the world... I hope this project is not too ambitious.