Final Fantasy VII REMAKE Catch All

Reading both of those quotes also doesn't specify that "work has begun" is beyond "conceptual stage", or pre-production.

I've said it before, but given that Kingdom Hearts III also had a co-director, I believe Square Enix has learned not to allow him to work on a project solo and to have people help keep him in check. He's got a habit of changing his mind and just making stuff up on a whim. Not only is this in the history of XV's development, it's why Kingdom Hearts is known for having a crazy story. Dude's said in interviews he can't keep his own lore straight and basically will retcon stuff on a whim because he had an idea to go this way instead of that.

I just had a fight in FFXII that perfectly illustrates that FF has long been about killing you once with a cheap tactic and making you do a fight again.

Rafflesia in the Feywood. The whole game you have gambits set up to use magic to heal, damage, and clear status effects. This boss daps all your MP immediately and leaves you scrambling to adjust. Easy win once you die and swap your magic heal macros to item heal macros and swap in physical attackers.

I've been largely avoiding or skimming this thread (because spoilers) but yesterday I finished the Honeybee Inn and Don Corneo.

I was worried. I'm a cishet male but a progressive one (I'd like to think), and thought I'd be cringing. (Especially because that Tifa character model speaks to a certain, er, target audience.) But let me say, try to avoid spoilers; I think this section was done well and parts might just delight you, especially if you don't see them coming.

Speaking more generally, I'd agree that I'm occasionally feeling some cheap deaths from not knowing the best materia or a boss's tactics; but I always feel like I can do better the next time and I have yet to feel frustrated, especially knowing how easily I can drop to Easy or Classic mode if desired. I enjoy how differently each character fights, and knowing their strengths (and choosing the right one to control in each situation) adds a nice tactical wrinkle; and once I realized how quickly your main character can "draw aggro," switching just as a defensive tactic became an interesting layer.

I also just think the thing looks beautiful and has great music, and I'm enjoying slowly walking around certain sections and just seeing the sights.

I have very few complaints overall. I think my biggest one is that the third and final “odd jobs” section is poorly timed and kind of halted a lot of forward momentum.

I think my very favorite aspect is that it fixes my primary mechanical complaint about the original game. I have always felt that the characters were essentially interchangeable if you just swapped their Materia. I do not feel that the small stat differences and limit breaks are meaningful enough to differentiate them.

The remake, each character feels unique and deeply developed on a mechanical level.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I have very few complaints overall. I think my biggest one is that the third and final “odd jobs” section is poorly timed and kind of halted a lot of forward momentum.

I think my very favorite aspect is that it fixes my primary mechanical complaint about the original game. I have always felt that the characters were essentially interchangeable if you just swapped their Materia. I do not feel that the small stat differences and limit breaks are meaningful enough to differentiate them.

The remake, each character feels unique and deeply developed on a mechanical level.

I agree with pretty much all this. As someone who loved the original, has played through it three times, and has a unfortunately good memory for these sorts of things the remake's pacing feels very odd. I'm currently in the final sequence and I have no sense of if I have a few hours left or another 10 just because the game inflates everything. Some of this is excellent (interactions with your crew, walking around the top plate, and aftermath of the big event are highlights) while others are just odd.

On the subject of pacing, I think it isn't all that dissimilar to the original. There were plenty of side distractions in the original game that would potentially bring all momentum to a standstill, especially toward the end of the game. If we look at the "third act" (for lack of a better term) or perhaps the end of the "second act" in the Remake, it, too, seems to work in that fashion; the side quests are just that, side distractions that can be ostensibly ignored in favor of just progressing through the story. As such, the player has agency over how that pace is directed.

I take full responsibility for how long I got stuck in that part of the game because I just had to do the optional content, understanding that I could simply carry on with the story missions and come back later.

Unless I missed something, Chapter where we get the final set of side quests considers them as optional, so there's no need to stop and do them right there and then, especially since once the game is finished the first time players can select chapters to go back to in a NG+ fashion and complete any side quests they may have opted out of the first time around.

As for pacing during the final section, if we consider...

Spoiler:

The Shinra Building as the final portion of the game, it didn't seem all that different from any other JRPG's final section/dungeon; they are often terribly long and make one wonder just how much longer there is to go. Hence, why I always try to attempt such sections in JRPGs on a day off when I have a good 3 to 6 hours to devote to it. The original's final dungeon itself was long enough, though not compared to other FF's, let alone other games in the genre.

Well, just finished Chapter 12. Some thoughts.

Spoiler:

I think they belittled Wedge. He falls to his death in the original, has a few parting words, and eventually gets crushed by the plate or just succumbs to his wounds. Why they needed him fall 5 stories, brush it off with a bandage, and then meet his fate herding cats is beyond me. Why did they feel the need to pull their punch on Wedge's death?

Another thing about cutscenes in general. Why does everyone just stand around and not talk and not finish sentences in the middle of a crisis? I've felt really good about everything so far, but to see Cloud just stare at an attack helicopter that's shooting at him for a solid minute is frustrating.

My last gripe is the music at the end. So far, the score has been on point. But, when the pillar is blowing up, there's this intense boss music going on throughout the whole scene until the next chapter. Again, in the original, there's no music until the shot of the plate falling from up high that fades into President Shinra watching from his tower and listening to classical music like any good Bond villain. Missed opportunity if you ask me.

These are minor issues though. They only stand out because I expected so much from such an intense section of the original. Loving this game so far!

Spoiler:

Chuckles to self about Grenn's post

I've reached the final part of the game. The literal "Point of no return". I'm very conflicted right now. I'm having an extremely difficult time separating the original from this and the game knows it. Excited to see where this goes tonight.

Vector wrote:
Spoiler:

Chuckles to self about Grenn's post

I've reached the final part of the game. The literal "Point of no return". I'm very conflicted right now. I'm having an extremely difficult time separating the original from this and the game knows it. Excited to see where this goes tonight.

Bear in mind, everything else about that chapter was phenomenal, and those are very minor complaints. I'm just having the same issue with separating the two games sometimes and the pillar mission is one of them.

brokenclavicle wrote:

On the subject of pacing, I think it isn't all that dissimilar to the original. There were plenty of side distractions in the original game that would potentially bring all momentum to a standstill, especially toward the end of the game.

I wonder if the complaints about the pacing in the remake are inspired in part by familiarity with the original. Specifically, that the portion of the game covered by the remake is all of four to six hours in the Playstation game. And that's counting some of the tedious padding like the run up the stairs and the weird table-rebuilding mini-game! If you've played the original, you're carrying into this game the knowledge that they've had to quadruple the length of the experience, so the padding is more obvious.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
brokenclavicle wrote:

On the subject of pacing, I think it isn't all that dissimilar to the original. There were plenty of side distractions in the original game that would potentially bring all momentum to a standstill, especially toward the end of the game.

I wonder if the complaints about the pacing in the remake are inspired in part by familiarity with the original. Specifically, that the portion of the game covered by the remake is all of four to six hours in the Playstation game. And that's counting some of the tedious padding like the run up the stairs and the weird table-rebuilding mini-game! If you've played the original, you're carrying into this game the knowledge that they've had to quadruple the length of the experience, so the padding is more obvious.

That's 100% where a good portion of my pacing issues come from. The Hojo section felt like needless padding that contributed nothing other than some battles with different character combinations and more Red XIII, for example. I actually like the sidequests and quite a bit of the additional content, though. I really don't like the "walk & talk" sections that are frequent in the game and that may be my biggest complaint. Every time they've made me slowly push Cloud along only to encounter a cut scene has made me frustrated. They do it too frequently.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
brokenclavicle wrote:

On the subject of pacing, I think it isn't all that dissimilar to the original. There were plenty of side distractions in the original game that would potentially bring all momentum to a standstill, especially toward the end of the game.

I wonder if the complaints about the pacing in the remake are inspired in part by familiarity with the original. Specifically, that the portion of the game covered by the remake is all of four to six hours in the Playstation game. And that's counting some of the tedious padding like the run up the stairs and the weird table-rebuilding mini-game! If you've played the original, you're carrying into this game the knowledge that they've had to quadruple the length of the experience, so the padding is more obvious.

It's a combination. The section of the original game after Wall Market was kind of poor pacing, considering it fulfilled a "gameplay need" (it had been a while since Reactor 5, after all) but interrupted the narrative pacing. It was just less noticeable because, at most, the story was delayed for thirty minutes. Even then, the narrative itself isn't interrupted.

Spoiler:

In the Remake, the game is constantly having Tifa assure herself that Corneo is lying while they're in the sewers, but as soon as they're in the train graveyard they're immediately side-tracked by a sub-plot involving ghosts of children, including two boss fights. The more realistically rendered world also shows the explosions and gunfire around the pillar, and while there's a couple comments regarding it, the characters don't seem to be filled with panic, nor does Tifa have the sort of "Oh no, it's actually happening" reaction you'd expect after trying to convince herself it was a lie.

So they took a moment that was already padding and made it worse rather than figuring out a way to maintain the narrative tension.

Granted, I think that's the game's lowest point in terms of pacing, and is in part due to the original game's structure. It was always going to have issues in a stretched out retelling of the narrative. I think experiencing that allowed me to more accept what Vector had issue with, because at that point I understood how this game was going to work.

It could easily have been 20 hours with the optional side quests. But everything has been stretched out in order to hit that "justifies the $60" experience. And, as you noted, without prior knowledge of what's coming up, it's probably easier to just accept what the game is throwing at you.

Even without knowing the original game, parts of the Remake felt very padded.
On the other hand, after having played the original, it also had some padding. Like some of the levels/mini-games in the Shinra building felt quite unnecessary.

Remake did that part better. Only to move the padding to the Hojo section instead.

Shadout wrote:

Even without knowing the original game, parts of the Remake felt very padded.
On the other hand, after having played the original, it also had some padding. Like some of the levels/mini-games in the Shinra building felt quite unnecessary.

Remake did that part better. Only to move the padding to the Hojo section instead.

Since I just got through that part last night, this is what I kept thinking. It's an odd choice.

I still think the most glaring padding was when you had to do side quests while Arith got her dress made. Run around to the pharmacy, take medicine to three random people who are completely unimportant, unnamed, and never appear again.

farley3k wrote:

I still think the most glaring padding was when you had to do side quests while Arith got her dress made. Run around to the pharmacy, take medicine to three random people who are completely unimportant, unnamed, and never appear again.

So...I didn't have those sidequests. I had a different set. Mine were very short. That main questline has two different sets of sidequests you can complete (1 set for Sam and another for Madame M) depending on your choices throughout the chapter.

farley3k wrote:

I still think the most glaring padding was when you had to do side quests while Arith got her dress made. Run around to the pharmacy, take medicine to three random people who are completely unimportant, unnamed, and never appear again.

Apparently if you get the other side quest path in that section, the quests aren't quite as egregious. Still, I didn't mind the excuse to hang out longer in Wall Market. I liked that whole area.

The Hojo sections seems an interesting point of divergence in opinion.

Spoiler:

I felt it could have been a bit shorter, sure, but also, when a certain mechanic involving Red XIII came into play, thought that it would be silly to use it only once or twice. Would I have removed that mechanic all together? Yes. Was the tread through that section boring? Not really. The battles were interesting mechanically, though some could be very frustrating upon first attempt. I actually made a connection that may or may not be real or canon:

The creatures we fight, the four-legged ones, given their aspect, and what Red XIII says about killing them because he knows what's in store for them, well, it makes me think that we're actually looking at mako/jenova mutated members of his tribe. I think I had thought about the fact that they looked somewhat similar back in the day, but this seemed to drive it home for me.

If feels to me like it got an update to anime trends more contemporary with the way they present Hojo; still cartoonishly evil in that "scientist only cares about the science" sort of way, but a reasonable extrapolation from how that cartoonishly evil character had been portrayed in the original.

There are enough visual hints/callbacks/easter eggs in the section for those who played the original, as well. Some scene composition continuity and consistency that wasn't to be found in the original.

I've enjoyed some of the extended sections so far. Like the trip through the subway system, then across the catwalks under the plates, to get to the Sector 5 reactor. The length conveys a sense of scale, and the conversations seem like the sort of things that Tifa, Barret, and Cloud would talk about en route to a mission like that. It feels appropriate to me.

I agree about the train graveyard section, though. It seemed kind of out of left field

Spoiler:

Unless it's supposed to be exposition for Aerith being different / special, which is sort of hinted at before by things like her massive garden in the middle of the slums. I do like the unfolding of her character and her mystical abilities, rather than having the game come out with "I'm the last member of a dead race."

Blind_Evil wrote:

I’m at chapter 13 and got access to the

Spoiler:

Leviathan

VR battle. He’s wiped the floor with me three times. Is there something I’m missing? Seems like my party just isn’t strong enough to make a dent at this point. I read a guide and it basically just said use thunder and cure and pray. Thundaga was only doing like 150 damage.

I wasn’t feeling side-questy for a while and took a break from the game. Started up again a few nights back, finished all the chapter 14 side content, and beat him first try. From the jump I figured I would be trying again with elemental lightning on Barrett’s gun but he fell anyway. The side stuff boosted me like 9 levels, to 32!

Ready to head to the building now. Excited to do so, I love it in the original.

I finished last night! I have a lot I'd like to talk about, but I'll spare you all; experience it yourself and make your own judgments. I will only say that the game pretty much expects you to be familiar with the story of the original; going into this one blind, without at least reading a summary of the original, is probably a bad idea.

I would like to briefly discuss mechanics, though, to offer advice and ask questions.

The game doesn't explicitly mention that the active character draws aggro, but it's pretty noticeable; and in a way, swapping characters to keep one from being overwhelmed is part of the strategy. You also build ATB way faster when you control a character, so frequent swapping is the way to get them some ready charges, so they can use items (or drop abilities on staggered foes) when you need them in a hurry. Buffs and debuffs really matter (you can poison a surprising number of bosses); so does using the right materia, especially certain linked combinations (Magnify x Barrier!).

With time, I felt like I mostly got a grasp on combat and effectively using Cloud and Barrett. Cloud, for me, is about managing his stances. (You've got to keep Steadfast Block materia on him and use Punisher mode a lot.) He was my go-to for enemies that use a lot of melee attacks.

For Barrett, the game doesn't tell you: But if you time recharging his "overcharge" with the reload animation for regular attacks, it combines them; this allows you to pour out bullets faster and use overcharge more. A combination of Steelskin and Lifesaver makes him a phenomenal tank; later in the game, Regen and the Provoke materia make him even better for eating damage for the rest of the group alive. My MVP.

Unfortunately, I never quite "got" Tifa and Aeris the same way. It seems like Aeris is meant to be your magic user, but her ATB gauge is pretty painful to fill without her drawing aggro (which she can't survive). I can see how Tifa is meant to be great at filling ATB and single-target damage, but perhaps because I never got dodging right, I always struggled to keep her alive. She ended up in a healer role; if Cloud or Barrett ran low, I'd switch to her, build two ATB gauges really fast, then switch out before she drew too much aggro and let her heal the others.

There is one very weird random difficulty spike in this game during a non-boss battle. Some advice: when you have to fight six bloodhounds at once with part of your party missing, just drop it to "Easy" or "Classic" difficulty. Somebody screwed up balance on that one. I'll also confess to using "Easy" for a couple of arena and VR battles, just out of impatience.

I like that "Easy" mode existed and was ridiculously easy, so people who aren't into the combat nerdery like me can just enjoy the story. But (as was mentioned upthread) I do wish we could switch materia mid-battle. A lot of big battles you kind of have to expect to die the first time, so you can come back with a more effective loadout.

beeporama wrote:

I finished last night! I have a lot I'd like to talk about, but I'll spare you all; experience it yourself and make your own judgments. I will only say that the game pretty much expects you to be familiar with the story of the original; going into this one blind, without at least reading a summary of the original, is probably a bad idea.

Don't hesitate! You can always spoiler-tag it. I know when I finish the game -- which will probably not be for a couple weeks -- I'll want to chat about it too, and I'll be going back through the thread and looking at people's takes. I'll bet there are plenty more around here who'd like to discuss the ending.

Magnify and Barrier together sounds really good. So far I've just been using Magnify to have Aerith cast a party-wide cure.

I'm getting better at the combat too. I definitely like playing Tifa a lot, she can be really effective at pressuring and staggering enemies. With Aerith, I feel like due to the aggro, I need to take direct control of her very briefly, sling a spell, and then get back in the enemy's faces with Cloud or Tifa.

Now that I have a better handle on the game's combat, I can't wait to play a little more with Barrett when I get back to the game (likely this weekend).

I made Barrett a tank and then threw a provoke on him and after a level or two on it he can pretty consistently keep enemies off of Aerith. Also, I've found that blocking is more consistently helpful in mitigating damage than dodging.

Finished on Friday evening. Really really really enjoyed my time. Excited for what's to come but won't jump in without hearing from others here. Also probably won't have a PS5.

Spoiler:

I hated the Whispers, however. I was very intrigued but when it became glaringly obvious you are fighting a literal giant metaphor for fan expectations from the original. I wish they just did away with that whole conceit. Fighting fate itself was too much for me.

However, I'm just not a fan of anime tropes. This game increasingly leaned heavily into those. FFVII was pretty proto-anime and handn't settled into complete anime tropes until XIII. So the ending felt like a big tonal shift I just wasn't onboard with.

I think you might have some rose-colored glasses on the anime tropiness of the franchise, Vector. It was that way long before XIII rolled around.

LastSurprise wrote:
beeporama wrote:

I finished last night! I have a lot I'd like to talk about, but I'll spare you all; experience it yourself and make your own judgments. I will only say that the game pretty much expects you to be familiar with the story of the original; going into this one blind, without at least reading a summary of the original, is probably a bad idea.

Don't hesitate! You can always spoiler-tag it. I know when I finish the game -- which will probably not be for a couple weeks -- I'll want to chat about it too, and I'll be going back through the thread and looking at people's takes. I'll bet there are plenty more around here who'd like to discuss the ending.

Given encouragement, I'll go with something that isn't a spoiler: I liked some of the story changes and found the new central conceit interesting. However... Final Fantasy games are usually bad about this, but Nomura in particular likes to set up complex, arbitrary metaphysics to support his plot, then fail to explain them. If the backstory and motivations of characters were bizarre and complex in the original, they're downright inscrutable now; in the final chapter, I wasn't sure what various characters knew, didn't know, or were trying to accomplish.

After finishing, I had to spend an hour or two poring over old wikis to remember the plot of the original, so I could kind of understood what had happened. Had I done that research beforehand, instead of expecting REMAKE to retell the story, I might have enjoyed it more. Given the age of the original, they might have been well-served making REMAKE more accessible to people who weren't intimately familiar with it. But people put up with Kingdom Hearts, so, what do I know about the importance of a clearly told story?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I think you might have some rose-colored glasses on the anime tropiness of the franchise, Vector. It was that way long before XIII rolled around.

I think it was the video game tech didn't catch up completely until XIII so I was able to have blinders on. I don't like anime but I like Final Fantasy VII and therefore Final Fantasy VII isn't anime. The same can be said for FFX.

beeporama wrote:

However... Final Fantasy games are usually bad about this, but Nomura in particular likes to set up complex, arbitrary metaphysics to support his plot, then fail to explain them.

Nomura has also been fond in his games of using the final cutscene or secret true ending to make dramatic revelations that upend the status quo and force a reevaluation of the world and its metaphysics, and the characters and their motivations. It's a great trick for ending a story in a way that leaves committed audience members eager for the next chapter and future discovery of what it all means now, but the drive to end every story that way and the constant upheaval that trick necessitates means that things become confused and contradictory very quickly.

Spoiler:

As interesting as I find it on some level that this game makes a deliberate point of shrugging off the obligation to follow the exact narrative of the original, I'm not particularly encouraged that it ends on one of those inversion-of-the-norm notes that has propelled Nomura's other work to popularity and infamy in equal measure.

I think that's actually what gives me pause going forward.

Vector wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

I think you might have some rose-colored glasses on the anime tropiness of the franchise, Vector. It was that way long before XIII rolled around.

I think it was the video game tech didn't catch up completely until XIII so I was able to have blinders on. I don't like anime but I like Final Fantasy VII and therefore Final Fantasy VII isn't anime. The same can be said for FFX.

To be fair, what is and isn't anime tropiness changes with time, and when Final Fantasy VII released there was a lot of imitation of Evangelion (in superficial and less superficial ways). There's certainly elements of presentation that feel more like an over-the-top "now that's what I call anime" style in the remake than what you get from the original game. It also helps that Yoshinori Kitase was pulling directorial influence from films like Jaws when handling the Sephiroth reveal.

Based on my reading of Tetsuya Nomura, his favorite non-anime films, and examining his style, he's... well, all style over substance, and that shows strongly in Kingdom Hearts and even my knowledge of The World Ends With You (dude's got a very, very limited protagonist range if Sora is the only one that doesn't seem to need a therapist to talk about his depression with). And in terms of anime influence...

ClockworkHouse wrote:
beeporama wrote:

However... Final Fantasy games are usually bad about this, but Nomura in particular likes to set up complex, arbitrary metaphysics to support his plot, then fail to explain them.

Nomura has also been fond in his games of using the final cutscene or secret true ending to make dramatic revelations that upend the status quo and force a reevaluation of the world and its metaphysics, and the characters and their motivations. It's a great trick for ending a story in a way that leaves committed audience members eager for the next chapter and future discovery of what it all means now, but the drive to end every story that way and the constant upheaval that trick necessitates means that things become confused and contradictory very quickly.

Spoiler:

As interesting as I find it on some level that this game makes a deliberate point of shrugging off the obligation to follow the exact narrative of the original, I'm not particularly encouraged that it ends on one of those inversion-of-the-norm notes that has propelled Nomura's other work to popularity and infamy in equal measure.

This is certainly not unique to him, but other anime and JRPG's have done it better and without being sequel bait. There's a lot of Japanese media where the biggest twists or reveals are saved until the end. In fact, I just played Tokyo Xanadu Ex+, and that story technically doesn't even "begin" until the final chapter.

I feel like Nomura was a good character designer whose designs got away with him and was suddenly given the ability to direct games, and he was one of the least people qualified to be in charge of an actual story. Tossing in ideas for the story or characters? Sure. In charge of things? Eeehhhh....

Given that they're all creations from Japan, most Japanese games are going to have a bit of "anime" to them (whatever that means, honestly). It just so happens that Nomura's got a very particular flavor he likes, and it often belongs in the pages of Shonen Jump.