The original Final Fantasy VII is a game that is really dear to me. It was the game that got me interested in the Final Fantasy series as a whole. I was introduced to FF through a family friend shortly after my mom's passing in 2000. I didn't really know it then, but perhaps I used FFVII and its constant sense of loss in the game to the personal real life loss I was dealing with that the time. Either way, I spent over 100 hours on the original for PlayStation, and the first game where I maxed out the clock timer. Though I've been playing RPGs like Lufia 1 and 2 and Pokémon Yellow before I was introduced to Final Fantasy, so it was not my first introduction to RPGs, but it was certainly the one that started my lifelong love for the genre. Final Fantasy VII is not my favorite Final Fantasy game (hello IX), and I do think it is overrated and the game being milked to death, but it doesn't overwrite the fact that it's an objectively good game. Since FFX-2, I don't play most FF sequels and spin-off games, so I can't give my opinion on how Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus etc affects the plot. With that being said, here's my thoughts with the remake.
Remake Thoughts (no Spoilers):
I feel like Final Fantasy VII Remake was a fun polished game from start to the end of this installment. Almost every moment from the original is there, all of the story beats are there. The memorable characters, songs, victory poses, etc all make an appearance in one way or another. The battle system is fluid but simplified from the original. Limit Breaks have been changed to only one per character, are all cinematic (assuming you're in control of that character) and other ones like "Braver" have been shifted to be standard ATB abilities.
I still feel a lot of the game I feel was unnecessarily padded, like the Hobbit film trilogy or like a college student that was assigned to create a 20 page paper and begins to run out of creative steam around page 16 or 17 and feels like they need to add more paragraphs/sentences for the sake of filling in that missing space.
There's nothing inherently bad with linear games, as this section of Final Fantasy VII was linear, and I wholly expected this to be similar, but they did a lot of things to hide that linearity, with sidequests, odd jobs, additional characters, and banter between the main characters after battle. The battle system felt like a polished mix of FFXIII's Stagger system, and FFXV's Active Cross Battle system, and you can tell the team learned a lot from criticism from prior titles of the game. If this game design direction is the future of Final Fantasy, I would be comfortable with that.
Remake Thoughts (Spoilers): (Highlight to Reveal)
Who is Roche and why should I care? I feel like characters were unneccessarily added and then thrown away with little explanation, or perhaps more info about them was cut in final production.
I feel like the Enemy Skill materia was underused throughout the game. From the first moment I obtained it to the end of the game, I was only learned one enemy skill and it was in the third to last dungeon.
I also noticed from a game design standpoint that the enemies tend to favor hitting the character who is mainly in control by the player, so more often than not I switched characters to the one with the highest HP and went from there. The pairing of Manawall with All materia (forgot what it was called in the Remake) also made a lot of encounters really REALLY easy. (I am only speaking from Normal mode) - So I didn't have a lot of issues that a lot of the other editors and reviewers had when they went through their playthroughs. Especially the "dreaded" bloodhound fight in one of the later chapters.
Speaking of later chapters, I honestly feel the last chapter was unneeded. I feel the epic one on one fight with Rufus Shinra and the bike escape could have been it and stopped there, but it seems the writers and game designers wanted a way to resolve the issue with the ghosts. A friend slightly spoiled before I got there that the final boss was going to be Sephiroth, and they tried to put a final epic boss feeling and even reuse parts of the original FFVII, but I really don't think that fits for Part 1. It just seemed convoluted.
In the original FFVII, after the bike scene the party goes to the town of Kalm where they learn more about Sephiroth. It's been 23 years since then and most people know who Sephiroth is now, but I feel the way they handled him throughout Part 1 making him this constant nag rather than a scary background character in the original was un-necessary. I honestly would have kept it the way the original had it and make you get immersed with the feeling Shinra was the main enemy and cut it at the end of the bike chase and as they walk into the wide open world.
A lot of people have hangups about how the ending went with showing Zack being alive still, carrying Cloud to Midgar or with Biggs and Wedge surviving the previously fatal blast. I honestly feel that this is just them in some kind of alternate timeline or a distortion of Cloud's memories. If Zack is still alive, why does Cloud still have his gear and sword? I just think it's a sign of his hallucinations and not necessarily a revision of canon. Or maybe Biggs and Wedge die later on in part 2?
I also really like how you can do a New Game Plus of sorts and be able to go back to prior chapters and previous sections to complete quests or re-gather missing summons.
Conclusion:
Going into this and mentioned multiple times in interviews, we knew that Final Fantasy VII Remake was going to be split into multiple games. What we don't know is how is this going to happen? Will Part 2 be a standalone game like the FFXIII trilogy or FFX-2? Will it operate as DLC expansion packs like FFXI and FFXIV? How will part 2 carry over player progress? When will part 2 be done? How many parts of Final Fantasy VII will there be? As of this post, Square-Enix has remained silent on the issue.
I do recommend playing Final Fantasy VII Remake, both for newcomers and veterans of the series. It does feel like a new Final Fantasy game but with familiar characters and settings. However, I do have recommendations. I don't believe this should be a replacement of the original Final Fantasy VII, but a companion piece to the original. In fact, playing the remake just motivated me to want to get another copy of the original for the Switch. The original still holds up as a game and should definitely not be ignored, even if the English translation is poor and the graphics aged terribly.
I'm also concerned about the future of the series as whole and the way they market things. Do we expect the inevitable next entry to the mainline series to be a split game over multiple installments for the sake of telling a full story with lots of content? We'll have to see how future entries of the Final Fantasy VII Remake saga go. I'm cautiously optimistic.
