Final Fantasy VII Remake

If you’ve been in the video game community long enough, you’ve likely heard of Final Fantasy VII and its impact on the perception of RPGs. While I wasn’t really around for the initial hype, I wasn’t even five years old when it released, I had always been fascinated by the lore of the game and the subsequent Compilation of Final Fantasy VII media. When I did try to play it on PS1, I didn’t get very far into Disc 1, so I saw Final Fantasy VII Remake as a chance to experience the full story and jumped at the opportunity, even with the hard sell of its episodic release plan. I enjoyed playing this first game, which covers and expands on the Midgar portion of the original game, but I have to admit that it wasn’t quite what I expected.

Cloud Strife, a mercenary and former SOLDIER, joins the eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE in opposing his former employer, the Shinra Electric Power Company, and its efforts to power the city of Midgar by draining the planet of its life essence, mako. In the aftermath of their bombing of a mako reactor, Cloud is haunted by memories of Sephiroth, a SOLDIER formerly hailed as a war hero, and meets a florist named Aerith Gainsborough. Cloud plans to leave AVALANCHE after receiving his pay, but the appearance of mysterious robed figures sets him down a different path.

Memories of Sephiroth (Tyler Hoechlin) haunt Cloud throughout the game.

From what I remember of Final Fantasy VII, Remake does a great job of expanding the Midgar portion and making it feel like a complete story. It more or less follows the original story, but does its best to add more depth, which includes exploring the full aftermath of what happened to the people of Midgar after the mako reactor bombing. Based on how the characters were depicted in other media, I also really liked how this game restored their original characterizations, which are all strong in their own right. It’s particularly nice to see Cloud go through a full character arc where he gradually warms up and expresses a full range of emotions, which includes a somewhat goofy side. Part of his development is also integrated into the gameplay itself, such as him slowly picking up on what a high five is and getting to execute one with Aerith once he figures it out.

Expanding on the events of a small portion of a larger game to achieve a 42-hour experience does, of course, lead to some deviations from the original story. This didn’t bother me on a conceptual level, since a remake would still have to do something new to stand out, but the quality of these changes is somewhat questionable. For instance, I’m aware that near the end of the game, one character casually spoils a major reveal from much later in the full story of the original game. In spite of the game advertising itself as a perfect jumping-on point for new fans, I recognized moments that would only leave an impact if you were already familiar with both the original game and Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. In an effort to avoid spoilers, I won’t get into too much detail on that point.

This leads me to the ending, which I have very mixed feelings on. It’s hard to really explain without getting into spoilers. However, I’ll say that while I can see the flaws in it from multiple perspectives, I understood what the developers were trying to do and want to see where their decisions will lead them in future installments.

On the visual front, Final Fantasy VII Remake looks absolutely beautiful. The character and environment designs translated very well to modern hardware and it’s clear that a lot of care and attention went into making everything feel just like the original game while still adding its own twists. This loving recreation does make the occasional low-res texture stand out, however, most noticeably a few doors in an apartment building. I also noticed some texture loading would occur if I outran the pace at which the real-time assets loaded; the only consolation is that I only saw this on ground textures.

The environments are incredible to look at.

There was also a noticeable attempt to translate the gameplay from the original while also modernizing it, which results in a unique hybrid of action-based and turn-based combat.

From my frame of reference with the Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy VII Remake’s combat feels like a polished version of Final Fantasy XV. You can have three characters in your party at any one time and can switch between them on the fly, allowing you to take direct control of them. Each of the playable characters, Cloud, Barret, Tifa and Aerith, have unique weapons and abilities that emphasize the different roles they play in combat. Cloud is a close- to mid-range swordsman, Barret fires bullets from long-range, Tifa is a close-range glass cannon fighter and Aerith is a healer with her own long-range magic attacks. As you go through the game, you get a better idea of how each character plays, so true mastery over combat requires you to know the right times to swap between characters to either take the heat off other characters or have better precision over their attacks. Additionally, you can activate the Commands of other party members, including spells and abilities, at any time.

Time slows to a crawl when selecting or directing commands.

Of course, you need to keep an eye on each character’s ATB bar to see what their options are. During combat, both naturally and with each hit landed on an enemy, each character’s ATB bar increases to fill two segments. Just about any Command the characters use depletes at least one segment, be it spells, abilities, Summons or item usage. The refilling process goes by faster when directly controlling a character, though I noticed that it won’t refill naturally while the player is dodging. With this in mind, the ATB bar adds an element of strategic resource management, forcing the player to contemplate such decisions as whether to activate a healing spell or use the ability of a Summon, the latter of which also depletes a character’s ATB.

Staggering enemies by using their weaknesses
against them also helps tremendously.

Whatever spells and additional abilities are available to a character, however, is tied to whatever Materia you choose to equip them with. There are different types of Materia that play different roles, like offensive Materia that add spells and abilities to characters or support Materia that add passive buffs or enhance connected Materia. With each enemy defeated, the party gains AP that level up the Materia they currently have equipped, so the decisions you make early on can easily pay off in the long run. You can’t just give characters any amount of Materia you want, however, as each character’s weapons and accessories have a certain number of slots to place them, so part of the challenge with the system is figuring out the optimal setup for each party member. During my playthrough, for instance, I emphasized Aerith’s healer role by giving her as many protection and healing spells as I could while allowing her to quickly and efficiently activate her own healing abilities, effectively making her an infinite healing machine.

The Materia you equip to your party plays a big role in gameplay.

Unlike the original game, each character’s weapons can now be upgraded by expending SP earned from leveling up or obtaining manuscripts. Each weapon has a Core and gradually unlocked Sub-Cores, each of which require a proportionately larger amount of SP for unlocking any of the bonuses associated with that Core. These bonuses range from increased damage output to buffed attack and defense stats or even additional Materia slots for that weapon. This allows you to customize your weapons to suit your playstyle and your changing priorities.

The new weapon upgrade system at work.

Fortunately, the game includes two mechanics that make balancing weapon bonuses and Materia less of a nightmare than it would seem. Whenever you acquire a new weapon, you’re able to automatically play around with an amount of SP equal to the cumulative total you’ve already obtained (ex. if you’ve already gained a total of 100 SP, you automatically have 100 SP to play around with). This ensures that no weapon is left in the dust and you can more freely pick the one you feel is the best to use. Additionally, when you equip a new weapon or accessory, you have the option to transfer any Materia from the one you’ve previously equipped, as long as you have the room.

Each character’s weapon also has a unique ability associated with it, normally only accessible by having that weapon equipped. However, if you become proficient in that weapon’s ability, which involves using it whenever you can, then that ability is permanently learned by that character and you can go back to whichever weapon suits your fancy.

Reaching full proficiency in a weapon's ability
lets you permanently learn that ability.

Two modern spins on the game that I greatly enjoyed were the vending machines and benches, both of which are usually located next to each other. Vending machines allow you to stock up on items, naturally at the cost of Gil, and can help make sure you’re well-stocked before tackling a tough boss or dungeon. Benches are similarly beneficial, as sitting at one will refill your HP and MP. Finding one usually felt like a godsend and I can’t imagine the experience without them.

Benches and vending machines are a real lifesaver.

An additional innovation I would really like to see in other games is the camera calibration. When you start a new game, you're given the opportunity to rotate a camera around an object and change the settings to get the style of movement you're comfortable with. It removes the need to figure out the hard way whether or not the camera is inverted (I'm not a fan of inverted controls) and lets you get into the game much more smoothly.

As for the level design, it’s a sort of non-linear linearity. By that, I mean that the paths are fairly linear, but there’s still some room to explore and find hidden content, some of which isn’t accessible until later, such as chests in the back alleys of Sector 6. While I did find myself missing the true open world from Final Fantasy XV, this style suits Final Fantasy VII Remake better, as it more closely emulates the experience of the original game. This also allows it to better recreate certain moments from the original, including the choice of whether to take the stairs or elevator when ascending the heights of Shinra HQ later in the game. While the staircase doesn’t provide any unique rewards, I found the scene’s humor worth the effort.

One last thing to bring up is the difficulty. I played on Normal and though it didn’t feel particularly difficult for the most part, it did provide a decent challenge and I ended up dying a handful of times, all of which felt like my own fault. If you find that Normal is too easy for you, beating the game unlocks an additional Hard mode with its own stipulations.

Of course, as much as I like the gameplay, there are a few drawbacks. Related to the non-linear linearity, there is a fast travel system to more easily get around Midgar, but this doesn’t show up until Chapter 14, and even then, you have to complete a side quest to avoid paying any Gil to use it. Since this chapter ends with a point of no return, there’s not much time to actually take advantage of the fast travel. The only reason to use it, then, is to help make grinding in specific areas or other side quests easier to accomplish.

As for the side quests themselves, they’re okay. Most of them are pretty standard affair, collecting items and slaying monsters. Because of this, the more unique ones stand out, mainly the tasks given by a new minor character, Chadley. His tasks, while occasionally a little cryptic, provide some great Materia for the player to use throughout the campaign and are usually worth the effort.

Chadley's tasks are usually worth the effort.

Regarding the combat, a couple things really bugged me as time went on. When characters can use a Limit, it feels like you have to switch to controlling that character for the attacks to have a greater chance of properly connecting. Even then, I noticed a distinct lack of invincibility frames throughout the entire animation. This might be more realistic in a sense, but it’s frustrating when you go through a lengthy animation and then get slammed by a powerful attack at the last second before the Limit has a chance to actually go through.

On that note, it’s possible for enemies to interrupt any of your commands if they hit hard enough. Again, it’s likely realistic and has a place in action-oriented gameplay, but the annoying aspect of this is that you don’t get refunded the cost used for that command. This, naturally, includes Limits, which take quite a while to build up. Additionally, there’s no enemy tracking on physical attacks, so trying to hit a moving target can result in a lot of whiffing (on top of not getting refunded the cost).

It would be a shame if the enemy moved out of the way at the last second.

There’s also this odd holdover from the Summon system of Final Fantasy XV. At least one of your party members has to have low HP first, which adds a sort of timer represented by a gauge that fills up. When this gauge is full, you can then perform a Summon, but you don’t have complete control over which Summon is available to you from the ones equipped within the party, seemingly dependent on the amount of available physical space.

Powerful Summons like Shiva may not always be available to use.

Even the Materia system has a couple issues. One is fairly minor, that it seemingly takes forever to get enough AP to level them up, but the other a little less so. Completing a task for Chadley gets you the Steal Materia, which lets you steal items from enemies. It’s presented as opening up new opportunities, but in reality, only one enemy, a boss at that, has an item worth stealing that you can’t otherwise buy in a shop.

Before facing certain bosses, it’s possible to hold a button during a cutscene to bring up the battle menu to better prepare yourself the moment the cutscene ends. While I liked this feature, it felt underutilized, since there are plenty of moments where the game suddenly triggers a cutscene that then transitions into a fight, with no time to prepare for it. In these situations, including for some major bosses, you have to just know what to equip beforehand or learn too late and die just so you can have another try and properly equip your party.

One last issue, more of an observation really, is that the game’s design is a little dependent on the postgame, which takes the form of a Chapter Select feature. What really prompted this was still collecting Moogle Medals as a random drop long after exiting the last chapter where you can spend them, which I guess was supposed to provide incentive to actually use Chapter Select. There’s also the fact that the level cap is 50, but if you complete everything, you’re only in the mid-30s by the final boss, so taking advantage of the Chapter Select’s EXP and AP boosts are the only way to reach the level cap more quickly.

As I noticed more of this game’s issues, I found myself wishing for certain innovations to return from both Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy XV. While some of them would’ve made the game too easy (an opportunity to use a Phoenix Down at no HP before a true game over, Curaga healing the whole party) or would be potentially out of place (Leaf Bracer, EXP Walker), one that would’ve solved the problem of planning for fights would be “Prepare and Retry” from Tetsuya Nomura’s own Kingdom Hearts III. With this, it would be easier to rearrange Materia and equipment on death and retry the fight without having to sit through unskippable events first.

Prepare & Retry is an innovation I can get behind.

One more minor thing I kind of wanted was the ability to pet Red XIII. This doesn’t detract from the game’s quality in any way, and I don’t know how well it would’ve fit in, but I like the idea of petting an animal companion, especially since other games like Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and Assassin’s Creed Origins/Odyssey allowed me to do so.

Since I don’t know where else in this review to say it, I did make the observation that the credits of Final Fantasy VII Remake felt very much like that of the Kingdom Hearts games, down to the font and flying text. I assume this is related to Tetsuya Nomura’s role as the Director, as he was with Kingdom Hearts, since I’ve made a similar connection with Zone of the Enders and Hideo Kojima’s role as the Producer for that series. This doesn’t really affect the quality of the game, but I thought it worth sharing in some way.

With all of the gameplay aside, I’m aware that the voice cast established by Advent Children and other spin-off appearances was more or less completely replaced for this game. This didn’t really bother me and I thought the cast all did an amazing job with their performances, as they’re clearly capable of a wide range of emotion and, if the staircase scene is any indication, different states of fatigue. Their delivery also helped give the banter and dialogue life and humor to help them stay memorable. If it means anything, I also didn’t notice at first that Cloud was replaced, since Cody Christian sounded like Steve Burton, though I now appreciate how he put how own spin on the character’s voice.

Cody Christian had a great performance as Cloud.

As someone who owns a physical copy of the original Final Fantasy VII soundtrack, I thought the music in Remake was also stellar. There’s a clear love for the original score, especially with Nobuo Uematsu returning as one of the composers, but the new remixes and additional tracks all showcase an incredible variety of sound to fit every possible situation and help it stand apart from the original. A number of tracks lingered with me afterwards, especially the music from the final boss fight, which I consider a success. I’ll probably try to score a physical copy of the soundtrack sometime if I can get it at a good price.

It would be great to have this at a reasonable price.

I enjoyed my time with Final Fantasy VII Remake overall, in spite of the issues I brought up, but I’m at a crossroads with how easily I can recommend it. I would easily tell anyone reading this to consider getting it for the stellar gameplay and music, but I know the story won’t appeal to everyone. In spite of how the game was advertised, newcomers may be left scratching their heads with the nods to Compilation of Final Fantasy VII while diehards may feel uneasy about the changes to the original and the ultimate direction the story seems to be heading. Either way, I’d tell anyone reading this to try the demo first and then consider a purchase based on whether or not you like that.