Final Fantasy VII Original verses Remake

[Narkalui]

Final Fantasy VII was surely the greatest came ever made (for me anyway, UFO and Zelda Ocarina of Time come close but not close enough).

Back in '97 the notion that you would pay your hard earned cash for a game with the knowledge that you only buying a part of it would have been abhorrent. Today I expect developers and publishers look back 23 years at a game so massive it takes an average of 150+ hours to complete, available in its entirety for one fee, and have palpitations and panic attacks!

I myself never managed to finish FFVII, I could never work out how to breed Chocobos so never got the prized Gold Chocobo and so never got the necessary Knights Of The Round meteria or the Final Attack meteria.

So, my question is thus: has anyone played both the original FFVII and the remake? And if so, how do they compare?

 

[HareBrain]

Surely anyone who played the original would regard the remake as a blasphemous abomination? No, just me?

I've only played the remake in my head, but I can imagine that one point of comparison would be that you'd have to listen to all the not-terribly-great dialogue, rather than click through it quickly (especially on replay).

Final Attack meteria

Bah! I missed that one, even on my "do everything" replay. Never even heard of it before.

 

[Narkalui]

If the possessor of the Final Attack died in battle they would automatically attack with whatever meteria was linked to the Final Attack. I'm given to understand that the trick was to link it to the Phoenix Summon, effectively making the entire party invincible.

yeah apparently the remake used real time combat (curls lip in contempt)

 

[Antemurale]

The remake is real time but you go into a kind of bullet time to issue commands. There is an option to have it handle the real time aspect automatically, leaving the player to just issue commands.

I have played through about half of the remake so far. My wife started telling me "funny" stories about how she accidentally deleted her brother's highly invested save file when they were kids. Knowing how absent minded she is to this day, I stopped playing almost immediately and I am waiting for her to finish with it before I pick it back up. But she is split between that, Animal Crossing, and Persona 5 Royal. I'm sure I will finish one day.

To the point where I am in the game, there are some changes to the story. However, the Midgar arc/disk 1 in the original game was very much an extended tutorial, so I don't really mind the changes since they are mostly tied to fleshing out characters, retconning the extended FFVII universe, and giving the player more attachment to both the cause and motivations of AVALANCHE as well as its members. Rewritten and fleshed out Jessie, for example, is a viable competitor to Tifa and Aerith for the player's attention/affection. SOLDIER as an organization too gets a significant fleshing out. Where before the only introduced members were Cloud, Sephiroth, and Zack, now there are other SOLDIERs present in the story that serve to give the others a baseline for power levels and, I suspect, to give some hint that all SOLDIERs and candidates are at least a little broken - manifesting either emotionally or physically.

FFVII was an essential part of my childhood, so I had my reservations about the remake. But I feel that the director(s) remained faithful to the original while adding to it meaningfully. That said, it doesn't break enough ground in my opinion to be a viable standalone if it were to be released in a different setting with an identical story. The player is expected - at least to some degree - to have familiarity with the original. The core of the game is very much an engine powered by nostalgia. Unless you are a die-hard fan of the original and its extended universe, I would wait for the inevitable holiday discounts.

 

[Narkalui]

The last time I bought a new game was in 2007. I was never going to buy it, but I must admit to a certain amount of curiosity...

Did they leave in all of the adverts for Turtles Paradise?

 

[Antemurale]

I haven't found any, but most of those didn't start popping up until you got out of Midgar. There are a lot of Loveless ads posted around though, and the expected Shinra propaganda. Overall the general ambiance of the cityscape feels more alive and believable than it did in the original, but compared to 1997 technology I guess that isn't saying much. My imagination could also be filling in the gaps on that front though.

 

[Night_Eternal]

I'm loving the game so far, though much of that is due to the fleshed out story and characters as opposed to actual gameplay. I do find the battles pretty fun, though trying to get into random encounters like in the original I find a little harder to do with how the incorporated the enemies into the game.

Hated all the Wall Market stuff, but that was never my favorite part of the original anyway.

Oh, and add me to the Jessie Rasberry fan club. Confident, assertive-but-friendly women are my weakness.