Videogame Review: Final Fantasy 7 Remake
This game is awful — aggressively so — and the sad part is there are signs that it could have been great. The combat is actually pretty fun. Unfortunately they opted to have battles play out right on the map instead of cutting to a separate field. This constrains the level design and gives environments a bland same-y-ness. The music is okay and the graphics are nice. Unfortunately the actual game narrative is tedious. It’s no surprise given that they are stretching out the original FF7’s first five hours into fifty. The pacing is slow and the stakes feel small. There is so much padding I couldn’t even be bothered to finish; I watched the ending on YouTube. The fact that Sephiroth is shoehorned in makes it worse. He was such a great villain in the original because the game took its time slowly building his mythology allowing his presence to loom over the narrative ominously before the player actually encountered him.
FF7 Remake is one of the greatest wasted opportunities in the history of gaming. All they had to do is update the graphics and maybe swap in the better combat and music. It would have been an absolute classic. Instead we get this trash that doesn’t even bother to tell the same great story, bizarrely opting for some time travel Kingdom Hearts nonsense. It exemplifies everything wrong with modern Square Enix. It prioritizes cinematic cutscenes and trying to look cool over faithfully updating what was already an amazing game. The original is still fun and even has lots of cool mods now on PC. Don’t waste your time with this bastardization.
Grade: D-
