I finished the game today and the final battle and the extensive sequences leading up to it really cemented a lot of the opinion that I had been forming up to that point but kind of kept at bay due to seeing what else the game had to offer. Basically I was keeping my cool hoping that it was all going to come together in the end.
I have been a fanboi of Final Fantasy since I first talked my friend into buying it out of the display case in Montgomery Ward's back in the early 90s where he threatened that if the game sucked, I would have to pay him back. It was Final Fantasy 2 and it ended up becoming a favorite of both of ours.
Final Fantasy 7 was an epic adventure on the PS1 and its fame is the reason why it was that particular entry that Square-Enix decided to remake on a grand scale. It took them absolute ages to complete the project and finally it was finished in 2020. It is already the best selling game of the year (up to now) and it seems almost every reviewer is giving it crazy high marks for quality. After completing the game I fear that reviewers have been compromised / paid off because this is NOT a great game.
I want anyone reading this to understand that if there is anyone out there that is going to try as hard as they can to like this game, it would be me. I used every ounce of my patience to try to find the good points about this game (of which, there are some) but at the end of the day I believe that Squenix has once again tried to reinvent the bicycle and have failed for the last time as far as this Final Fantasy fan is concerned. The story being great and all is not enough for me to forgive some crucial problems with this game.
You are only controlling stuff about 40% of the time
This is my biggest beef with the whole game. There are cinematic cutscenes that add to a game's overall ambiance, then there are games that really overdo it as far as the cinematic scenes are concerned, then there are games that annoy the crap out of you with how frequently they take control away from you, and then on the top shelf of absurd is Final Fantasy 7 remake.
I really lost my cool with this aspect of the game because you'd get into a battle, it was somewhat fun, and then halfway through the battle the control is hijacked and you are forced to watch some cinematic interlude that doesn't add anything to the overall game. Some of these sequences are EXTREMELY LONG, and then you will get to fight like one mob, only to be greeted with yet another 10 minute short film... these come so often that you start to get upset that this game has a story at all... It may as well be Detroit: Become Human because that is about how much the game you are controlling.
Combat is a friggin mess
I had mentioned before that this is not turn based, Squenix has yet again refused to return to a formula that worked for them and instead has opted for trying to create something entirely new. There's going to be some people out there that say they don't want turn based but I think that a majority of FF fans are quite ok with it and actually prefer it. Regardless of how one feels about the turn-based system, I think everyone can agree that we do not want a combat system that feels broken - and that is exactly what is happening in FF7.
Let's forget the fact that some of the enemies, such as this actual house that you have to fight, are just plain dumb, but then you have a convoluted control system that necessitates changing from one character to another in real time. However, when you do this, there is a good chance that the character you are switching to is going to be facing the wrong direction or the camera angle is going to be too tight in certain corridors that you spend an inordinate amount of time simply locating your enemy. This problem is compounded if there are multiple enemies and you are simply trying to focus on one of them.
The AI that controls the characters that you are currently not using is almost completely useless and they will do almost no damage unless you are directly controlling them. Also the enemy AI is just stupid and consists of the fact that it ALWAYS draws aggro towards whatever toon you happen to be controlling at the time. Once you figure that out, it is extremely easy to mitigate damage by simply switching back and forth between characters with no real strategy.
Because this system doesn't really seem to work, or maybe could work if it was a multiplayer game (it isn't) the devs seem to have realized that the combat is not very good and therefore a majority of the battles are extremely easy.
Better stock up on Phoenix Downs (item that raises you from the dead) because this is really all you need to win every single battle in the game. You simply change control to another toon, raise the person who just died, and keep hacking away at whoever you are fighting. Except for the very final battle, this is the only strategy you ever need to win everything in the game.
The gameplay is completely linear
It just seems so crazy to me that in this day and age a Final Fantasy game would be released that requires you to stay on a certain path.
At one point in the game you are introduced to Chocobos, that enable you to fast travel. This gives you the untrue impression that you are going to be returning to previous areas for quests and what not but alas, that is not what happens at all. Once you leave a certain chapter, there is no going back to previously accessed areas.
Even in this chapter, using the Chocobo fast travel points involves a cinematic sequence (of course) that you are going to skip every single time. I skipped itt the first time it was shown to me. Then it takes absolute ages to load the area - which is probably the 2nd most annoying thing that will ever happen in a game.
The side quests are completely optional and trust me when I say that most players are going to opt to not do them because mostly they consist of "run way the hell over there, fight this one thing, and then run all the way back to where you gott the quest from." The quests also have nothing to do with the main story, the rewards are pretty useless for the most part, and all involve some level of once again, short films that you have to watch. I skipped most of the side quests because they were not fun.
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in this dialogue it doesn't matter which option you choose, the game carries on the same.. this is true with every choice i have seen in the game as well
This is already too long so I am going to wrap it up here by saying one other negative aspect of this game is that it has zero replay value. I was actually relieved when the final credits went by because in the last 2 hours of the game, you are maybe in control of the action for a grand total of 20 minutes, the rest of it is a movie.
It pains me to say this, but this game looks impressive, but is frustrating to play. I found myself shouting at the TV multiple times when "playing" this game because it isn't a game, it is movie that you occasionally get to control, and to make matters even worse there are very few trash mobs in the game and this makes it very difficult for you to level up. It seems that almost everything is a boss of some sort. There are 19 boss battles in this game (22 if you count the final battle as the 3-tier battle that it is) and unless you go looking for them, I would bet you would be lucky to have 50 non boss battles after a full playthrough.
I can not recommend this game to anyone because here i am, a massive Final Fantasy Fan and I can honestly say that I enjoyed very little of the entire experience. It isn't challenging, it is frustrating, there is nothing to master because the controls and camera angles make it pretty difficult to ever "git gud." I never got good and I completed the entire game whilst only having to restart a battle 2 times.
Basically, if you had issues with Final Fantasy XIII and XV, you are going to have a bad time with this one as well.
