FFVII was the first RPG I ever played. As an immigrant from a poor Balkan country, I never had access to computers and the only console I had ever played until 1997 was Atari 2600, which was a clone with built-in games (although it did have a slot for cartridges as well). I did buy an SNES after much convincing my father, against the advice of my friend. It was basically EOL at that point, but the price was right for our family's budget.
I borrowed the same friend's PS1 and had a blast with Resident Evil 2. Then he lent it again for FFVII.
When I started it,it seemed so stupid. Short, polygonal characters, lots of text and no context. Still, I kept on going. I discovered a whole new world of video games I hadn't encountered before. Began slowly immersing myself into it, and reading up on it at the middle school library's PCs. (486 running win 3.11 and slooow thrashing pagefile due to what was probably 4mb or less of RAM). Once I got started, there was no stopping me. I bought the official strategy guide, learned how much fun the materia system was, got emotionally involved when Aeris (Aerith) died, and spent more than 100 hours in that first game, and with some internet sleuthing, used the mega potions glitch to help me fight the mega bosses. At that point, the final boss was a cakewalk, with the most powerful summon a few times.
Lest one thinks it's nostalgia talking, I ended up playing it again twice more all the way to the end throughout the years.
The remake held my interest for a bit, but didnt like the new combat system, so lost interest . I'll try and pick it back up when the 2nd part, Afterbirth, is released.
Don't bother with FF7R, it sucks. I tried so hard to like it, as FF7R is my favorite game of all time. But it's just a bad game.
1. It's a remake which completely diverges story wise and gameplay wise from the original. So not a great thing off the bat, because it's a "remake" which is really a new game with an FF7R coat of paint on.
2. The game was needlessly padded out to try to justify why they split the game into multiple installments. That might've been fine if the new content was good, but instead there is so, so much boring filler content which exists just to pad the length of the game. It's a 40ish hour game iirc, and at least half of that could have been cut (and the game would've been better for it).
3. The story goes way off the rails and ends up with some fourth wall breaking stuff that is just plain amateurish in its writing quality. And to add insult to injury, the fans of the original who wanted a faithful remake are not so subtly implied to be the villains.
4. The combat is... ok for what it is. I don't like action combat. But it's very poorly tuned. For example, take Air Buster, a boss fight that takes a few minutes in the original. In FF7R, it's a 10 minute fight. It's the same basic strategy - it's weak to thunder, so use that a lot (and your abilities that add stagger, which is obviously not a thing in the original). Then the boss will be staggered, and you can unleash limit breaks to do big damage. The problem is, it's 10 minutes of just doing that. Nothing new or interesting happens, just hit the boss with chip damage until it's staggered, then do real damage for a few seconds, repeat for 10 minutes. It's not horrible as a system but it's really badly tuned.
So yeah, you're not missing anything with FF7R. It's just a really bad game, which isn't worth your time or money.
I enjoyed my time enough with Remake, but it's relied waaaay too much on having prior knowledge of FF7 and its extended universe. Remake threw Sephiroth in your face within the first hour of gameplay, without much explanation of who the guy is. In the original, Sephiroth was just the subject of whispers and rumors until you got an up-close look at him in the flashback after you've left Midgar.
That is because if you don't know the story of the original, you don't even realise that the loop is there. (That's not meant to insulting - the game is specifically written that way.)
Throughout Remake, the game toys with the knowledge and expectations of the player who's familiar with the original - in ways that are sometimes moving, subtle, beautiful and elegant (e.g. Chapter 8), sometimes ridiculously clumsy and terrible (e.g. Chapter 17). But it is written so that a new player wouldn't even know there is a whole layer of the story that they have missed. That is why so many players who don't know the original never even realise, even after they finish Remake, that it is not a "remake", in the sense of a modern version of the original; the word "remake" in the title is wordplay, and the game reveals itself to be a requel. I've watched quite a few streamers start with the Remake, love it enough to go back to play the original, love it, then go back to replay the Remake - and start seeing this whole layer that they didn't see before, didn't even realise was there. It would be a lot better if Square Enix were honest and clear about this, but I guess they know they would sell far fewer copies if they told everyone how much of the story depends on knowledge of the original and its spinoffs. It doesn't mean Remake can't be enjoyed on its own - it's written so that its story makes some sense on its own - it's just that you miss out on a lot if you don't know what came before. (I mean, they're now saying that Rebirth can be enjoyed on its own too, without having played Remake. What they never bother to make clear is that "can be enjoyed" and "best enjoyed" are very different things.)
<spoilers>It is wrong by the original story, but Remake doesn’t follow the original story - it is more along the lines of “what if sepiroth projected himself back in time to mess with the timeline and ensure that his original plan succeeds?”. Most of Part 1 features weird ghost things which block any attempt to stray from the original timeline, but they die at the end of Part 1, so I’m expecting Part 2 to go far further off the rails</spoilers>
Hm, that’s interesting. That could be awesome. And although I loved the idea of a remake, it seems right to have fun with it and diverge from the original a bit.
See also Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, in which time fuckery-duckery is involved to tell a different story with the same characters. I rather liked it, but I guess I was in the mood for something different from seeing a rehash of the comic or movie.
I enjoyed your story, but I do want to make one correction. The upcoming second part to the remake is called "Rebirth", not Afterbirth. I think that would be a very different game indeed.
I played FF7 three times during my pre-pubescent years. Along with Chrono Cross twice, Chrono Trigger, FF9 and FFX. (I could not get into FF8's story or magic system.)
I really wanted to like FF7 Remake but stopped around 2/3 way through Midgar.
I don't know whether it's my lack of patience with with single player RPGs at this age, or whether it was just not a good game. I find I can only really get into the odd competitive multiplayer game these days because of the community & friends factor.
That said I always found I enjoyed FF7 much more after getting out of Midgar and having a semi-open world to run around in, versus the more on-rails experience of Midgar. I suppose I'll give the next installment a go.
Permanently missable secrets and a lot of farming are things that lose a lot of interest. I'm having trouble with ALL square games, there is just too much farm.
The revamped FFVII on PC (own it on Steam) and I believe on consoles (not the remake) has boosters and random-battle skipping, as well as other features (like fast forwarding, I think). It makes it more approachable and less time-consuming to get through the game. The random battles time fillers are practically eleminated, and understandably make the game a breeze, as well, which removes much of the challenge.
As a teenager, I had plenty of time to explore the ins and outs. Nowadays, especially since I hit 40 recently, I realize I don't have the patience for such nonsense, either. My Steam backlog is at almost 3000, meaning I'll need a few more lifetimes to do them justice. Nowadays I'll just focus on one or two games till I finish them, and sometimes, when not tired or sleepy, sample others. The thought of games like Factorio fascinates me, but also turns me off. Especially the rogue-like genre games.
Square has updated, I believe, all their FF series games with this in mind. These features are optional and can be enabled/disabled on demand, as well.
Oh you are on a similar boat as mine. The problem I have with the remake is that it's not turn based, this means it has to compete with other action-based games and I have more interesting games to play in that department.
The old one had a very interesting materia system, that is still unique.
I'm like you, I have 1000 games to play and I usually go super deep in what I play, so it's rare I finish anything before 50 hours. Given that, I'm at a beautiful point where I cannot play games that are just good, only great games.
I do love factorio, although I think dyson sphere program is better (lighter and more interesting).
In 2020 people were complaining about lack of games, while I had my incredible year with Ori and the blind forest, ori and the will of the wisp, dyson sphere program, hollow knight and xcom 2. That was my best year probably.
Sorry for the wall of text. All of this to say, square enix doesn't innovate, I prefer indie gamea, gameplay for me it's everything. Plot is nice, but i'd rather watch on youtube if the gameplay is average.
And yeah, if there is farming that's not fun, I drop the game or occasionally I look for cheats to skip the farming.
This allowed me to play monster hunter iceborne endgame, which requires thousands of hours, in single player and by enjoying it way more (very strategic when changing build doesn't cost a fortune). Had a great time with it, but I was about to drop it when I realized how much farm it needed
I borrowed the same friend's PS1 and had a blast with Resident Evil 2. Then he lent it again for FFVII.
When I started it,it seemed so stupid. Short, polygonal characters, lots of text and no context. Still, I kept on going. I discovered a whole new world of video games I hadn't encountered before. Began slowly immersing myself into it, and reading up on it at the middle school library's PCs. (486 running win 3.11 and slooow thrashing pagefile due to what was probably 4mb or less of RAM). Once I got started, there was no stopping me. I bought the official strategy guide, learned how much fun the materia system was, got emotionally involved when Aeris (Aerith) died, and spent more than 100 hours in that first game, and with some internet sleuthing, used the mega potions glitch to help me fight the mega bosses. At that point, the final boss was a cakewalk, with the most powerful summon a few times.
Lest one thinks it's nostalgia talking, I ended up playing it again twice more all the way to the end throughout the years.
The remake held my interest for a bit, but didnt like the new combat system, so lost interest . I'll try and pick it back up when the 2nd part, Afterbirth, is released.