Finshed
Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS4 Pro)
Disclaimer: I finished the original game on dec 23rd 2020 according to the Steam cheevo, I loved it (think I gave it 9/10 and would still do), so my memories of the original game is still fresh, so my experience with the original game has no doubt affected my experience with the remake,.
Positive things first. The graphics are for the most part great and in some areas straight up gorgeus, however certain objects looks kinda muddy/unclear in certain places like the devs forgot to add textures to them and in the later chapters the city of Midgard looks straight up like a JPEG, laughed at that. However overall the grapgics are great. The music is nice, but certain melodies was annoying to listen to. I liked mostly the music that I remember from the original game, overall the music was decent overall. I did laugh when Barrett at times started singing the original game's finishing music theme when enemies have been defeated and since the game's combat isn't turn based I somewhat missed the finishing music from the original game.
The combat and in general the gameplay was fun and good during the first 5-8 hours (took me about 24 hours to finish the game), but then it got really repetive and boring regardless what sort of materia I used (materia is some sort of weapon upgrades giving you access to new abilities you can use, you pickup materia throughout the game, you can also buy them and unlock materia through challenges given by NPCs). Well I did not ever quite fully understand what materia is. The combat thanskfully never got fully repetive and boring, but it was not really something I looked forward to, combat was overall decent and okay, but a mixture of repetiveness, boring and uninteresting regardless what materia I used, what weapon I used and which character I played as.
I could play as different characters, Cloud had the buster swords (and other swords you pick up) which was the most fun, Tifa could kick and beat with knuckles/hands, Barrett could shoot with minigun and Aerith could use spells with her stick thing. I hated fighting as Barrett and Aerith, felt lack of impact on enemies and it was just frustrating. Weapons and armor are upgradable by using points (increase weapon abilities) and buying better armor. So upgrading weapons and armor was actually nice.
Considering Midgar lasted like 5 hours in the original game and I used 24 hours to finish Remake means made up story stuff and fillers and areas being too long for it's own good. I really disliked that. There are chapters that were completely uninteresting and fillers to get the game to be longer without needing to be. Areas that are too long and I really disliked that. The only good thing from the filler content is that some characters got more fleshed out, otherwise the pacing was really bad in many chapters, sometimes contant cutscenes that didn't have to be there, unncessary slow walks. Some of the chapters (at least 2) was filled with side quests, did some, they were okay, but nothing special. I did like how lively and good the town in Midgar look (again, great graphics).
I really disliked the pacing, the fillers, the too long areas, the slow walks, makes me not want to replay the game anytime soon, completely unnecessary.
Story was good and really interesting (at least the part I remember from the original game and some characters that got fleshed out), ending was super weird and I don't really have any thoughts on the ending other than "okay, let's see where this is going, it's gonna be weird, but Im optimistic". 2 deaths that I got sad over which I did not get sad over in the original (fleshed out characters) and another death which was really stupid because the character became alive like 5 min later again. I did know that the ending has been controversial, people expecting the original's ending, but what has happened feels like a sequel or a reimagine of the story, not a remake. Basically I don't know what to feel about the ending, but the fate of certain characters feels like a cop-out (Square "oh you think some characters are dead? well it's....complicated".). Too much crazy shit at the end that didn't make much sense to me.
Landing on a score for the game was much harder than I thought. The game overall looks great, sounds great (most of the time), world feels like it's living and because I overall liked the story (I really loved the original game because of the story), everything else feels either bad (fillers, pacing, long areas, slow walks), or just above mediocre (combat was fun, yet uninteresting and and somewhat repetive) or have really no feelings about (crazy ending and twists).
Score: 6.8/10
I thought about giving it a 7 or 7.5, but the more I think of how the original game played off in Midgar, the more I feel 6.8/10 is justificed for myself.
