Final Fantasy VII “Remake”

By Thomas Diefenbach

Its finally here – oh my god oh my god oh my god!!! Something that I know everyone has been waiting for since it was first announced back in 2015! The remake of maybe the greatest JRPG ever made.. though.. it wasn’t really a “remake” was it, more of a retelling? But more on that later. I’m pretty big on staying away from as much hype and information as possible about games that I’m really looking forward to in the lead up to release, I did it for this, I’m doing it for Cyberpunk 2077, and its not a trend I plan to stop. So here’s my virtually blind account of my experience of the Final Fantasy VII ‘remake’.

When I was a young man, my Playstation One was one of my first consoles and I fell in love with RPG’s the moment I discovered them, and I can’t even begin to imagine the number of hours I sunk into the original Final Fantasy 7, both on ps1, or when they launched it on PC, and then removed the pc download for it a few years later so you can’t download it anymore! Breeding my army of golden Chocobo’s to race at the gold saucer, grinding to beat Emerald, Ruby, and Ultimate weapon, exploring the ancient forest… ah the memories, so I think I have the qualifications necessary to voice my opinion on the remake, a game I went into with an equal share of trepidation and excitement.

So, let’s get this out of the way straight out of the box… this isn’t a remake of the original game, it’s a retelling, by which I mean it’s the same general story, but certain things have been retconned, changed, or expanded on, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing!  But it ISN’T a remake. Cloud is still his brooding “ex SOLDIER” self who couldn’t handle a personal relationship if it was a ridiculously oversized sword, Tifa looks more like Tifa than she ever has in any iteration that had come before if ya know what I mean, Aerith is just as naive as ever.. though now she seems to have a tinge of stupidity mixed in, Barret.. well what can I say about Barret, I don’t know if anyone could fit the stereotypical black preacher role, with a gun for a hand, better than Barret, and Red XIII, well, you don’t get a lot of time with him so I’ll save my judgement for now. The relationships Cloud has with your core party members didn’t seem to be expanded on too much, but his relationships with the other members of Avalanche became quite deep and meaningful, Oh god… no, in particular Cloud’s relationship with Jessie. Now in the original 1997 FF7, Jessie was little more than a throwaway character, now she has a deep, rich background where she left Midgar to try and be an actress but came back after her father was in an accident, there’s a mission where you sneak into her house to discover that the father was now basically a vegetable, all due to Shinra, giving her a real reason to hate them, and motivation to join Avalanche, a fact she hides from her mother. On top of this, she has become a playful flirt, and genuinely one of my favourite characters in the game. Biggs has become a loveable rogue who puts on a hard outer shell but really has a heart o’ gold and spends his off time helping out at an orphanage, and Wedge.. well.. Wedge is a lovable fat goofball who has a lot of cats!

Square Enix manages to capture a lot of the charm of the original, and treads around topics that would be considered controversial these days with elegance, enter Don Corneo’s mansion, which gives me hope for the later instalments when Cloud starts to… You know, and some really dark shit starts to come out. The combat is smooth and responsive, though I personally wouldn’t mind seeing a system like FFXII’s gambits, where you can set behaviours for the party members you aren’t controlling, because the  Auto-Heal material honestly didn’t seem to do much. And material, Oh how I’ve missed ye, perhaps my favourite magic system in an RPG to date I’m glad to see its glorious return with seemingly as few changes as possible because it was perfect as it was!

Now, my biggest gripe with this game is its length. People out there are saying they get around 40 hours of content out of it – I played it on classic mode, guideless, did all the area missions that I could find, spent time frolicking through the zones to try and find as many goodies as I could, and still had it knocked over in 28 hours. I understand that this is just part one, and it’s a logical place to end part one with leaving Midgar, but to me, A seasoned gamer, 28 hours is nowhere near long enough for an RPG style game, maybe it’s perfect for the casual’s out there, but it’s not even close for me. I went into this not even knowing it was in part, I was expecting this to be my life for the next month, because nowhere on the box does it say “PART ONE” no, it just says Final Fantasy 7 Remake.. so when I did beat Rufus, and motorcycle fight my way out of Midgar in a testosterone and mako induced fury, I was confused when I was suddenly fighting Sephiroth in what felt like the end of the game.. then the credits rolled.. and I realised this for what it was… a bit of a cash grab on Square Enix’s part. The content of the original Final Fantasy 7 if treated like this could result in five or six games without a problem, which could be years apart, and still not have the same level of content. Then there is the issue of save data transferring from one game to the next, especially considering the next will be most likely released on the Playstation 5 instead of the 4.

All this being said, I enjoyed myself immensely in this game, it felt challenged when it needed to, though I can’t wait for the tougher fights in later instalments, come at me Emerald Weapon, because there wasn’t a point in this game that I truly felt challenged. The expansions of the story are great, especially the political plays made by Shinra to incite the people against Wutai, setting up the next game nicely. Sephiroth, while still a badass loses some of his mystique as I fought him at the end of this game – it kind of feels like ‘where do we go now?’ we’ve beaten the big baddy, and I worry that they will just throw him at us over and over again with no real character progression. Midgar really felt like a real city, even if a tad linear, with the people of the slums feeling really oppressed by Shinra rule, and Avalanche really feels like a freedom fighting, borderline terrorist, group that won’t get lost in the rest of the game.

Ultimately, my impression of the Final Fantasy VII remake, “PART ONE”,  is this – if you’re new to the game and haven’t played the original, but have heard about it, or are interested in picking up a new RPG that’s a bit shorter, 100% this is the game for you. It’s a fantastic play, full of great character relationships, only mild fanservice, fun combat, a strong story, just make sure you pay attention, and beautiful graphics, BUT if you are a hardcore Final Fantasy vet.. it might be best to wait until the next few parts are released, I know how hard that could be, but if you are a vet, you are going to have the time of your life playing this game… and hit a crushing low when you realise it’s over so quickly.