- Release Date: 10th April 2020
- Developer: Square Enix
- Publisher: Square Enix
- Platform Played: PS4
- Platforms Available: PC, PS4/5, Switch 2
Final Fantasy VII remake shoves you into the role of a terrorist, blowing up stuff and causing lots of people to be hurt, murdering guards who are just doing regular jobs and protecting civilians. Alongside the stoic, bland Cloud are a bunch of really annoying characters, after a short period I just wanted rid of them. Your reason for doing this is money, as Cloud is a wanabee merc/mass murder-for-hire.
You then get a more relaxed section with Tifa, doing odd jobs around a town (including looking for kitties that you can’t pet). Tifa isn’t as annoying as the other Avalanche people, but it’s kind of odd that she’s gushing over Cloud’s abilities with a sword when she’s killing giant scorpions, dragons and other creatures with her bare fists. In this section you’ll start noticing some strange graphical issues. All main characters look amazing, but for some reason all signs are really low quality so you can’t actually read them, and the mirror/sink in Cloud’s room looks like it could have been ripped directly from the original game.
The next few missions are all far too long, getting to another reactor to blow up (with a really bad bike section). Lots and lots of very long corridors and tedium. There’s potential for a nice view, as you get to look at the city below…but the skybox is so sloppily done that everything is distorted and is really distracting to see. After these long sections, you blow up a reactor and it bigs up a big boss…but you have to go through more tedious corridors to get to it.
Then you get separated from the annoying characters and get to meet someone new: Aerith. She’s immediately far more interesting than anyone else so far. The next section is also extremely nice, just doing missions for people, helping kids, picking flowers. It’s all just nice. There’s a tunnel section (which has oddly pumped up amazing music) and then get to the Walled City: a place where criminals run amok. This section is amazing. The combat sections have some wonderful commentary, and the Honeybee Inn is just a wonderful segment of the game.
Shortly after this, it goes back to tedious corridors and sections that outstay your welcome. There’s a significant moment (which uses one of those annoying “win in gameplay, lose in cutscene tropes) ruined by a random out-of-place kat king creature (even for fans of the original game who know of this character, this must be an odd moment to place it).
The rest of the game is mostly more tedious corridors, although walking around the Shinra Building is actually interesting. Then another bad bike scene and a final section that doesn’t really make much sense.
Fun
