What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

[Zevox]

Just finished up Final Fantasy 7 Remake. I would say I definitely enjoyed it a great deal - it's probably fair to say that it's now my favorite Final Fantasy game. (Though bear in mind that was a low bar up until now; previously I'd have called FF1 my favorite, because the series has never much impressed me before.)

Besides the AI criticism I gave before, I have to say that its combat comes together extremely well. I'm quite impressed that they managed to put together an action-RPG combat system that feels so thoroughly influenced by both action game combat and RPG elements, yet doesn't end up feeling like an awkward, half-assed mish-mash. In many ways it kind of raises the bar on the action-RPG subgenre in general, honestly. Sure, there's enemies you can deal with just by mashing basic attacks, but plenty that are better dealt with in more varied ways. Almost every ability you get on each character feels useful in its own way, with very few feeling pointless or obsoleted even by the end - even lower-tier magic can still be useful after unlocking higher-tier versions due to its much lower MP cost and the fact that it'll still build significant stagger bar on enemies weak to it. That stagger bar in general felt like an excellent addition as well, enabling some moves to be better at building it than dealing damage and feel like they have a solid purpose there, others to exist to be big damage-dealers for once the enemy is staggered, and giving a satisfying flow to battles. Bosses whose discrete parts you can attack to affect the fight in various ways or build extra stagger meter was a great design element, too - by and large I thought the game's boss battles were pretty well-handled. The materia system was pretty good too, though there were certain materia that I question the usefulness of (why is there one that's just poison spells? Who is ever going to equip that over so many other useful materias, given the limited number of slots you get?).

About the only additional criticism I have gameplay-wise comes from something I noticed late in the game - why the hell, in a game with four playable party members, can you never exceed three actually being used in a single fight? It was so strange how they bent over backwards to keep Barrett out of the party for certain fights once the group had joined up in full near the end. And to be fair, I liked the part where the party was split into two groups of two that helped each other advance, but come on, the full party should've been able to participate in a couple of those end-game boss fights.

Story-wise, also pretty impressed. Again, I don't know the full story of the original FF7, since I only played partway through it once and don't remember a lot of even what I did play, so I'm sure there's plenty of allusions/foreshadowing that I'm in the dark about, but it does make me want to know the answers to those mysteries, while still leaving this game feeling like a satisfying overall narrative (ending it when you leave Midgar seems to have been a good choice for that, I'd say). And all in all the character work in the game is impressive. By the end I do like pretty much all of these characters - still like Cloud the least, but even has his moments. Jessie in particular impressed me for how much more impact her fate had in this one than the original. Wedge did indeed eventually get to be more than a walking fat joke, which was a pleasant surprise by the time it happened; albeit they also still never stopped doing that, to my annoyance. Even minor villains and supporting characters get memorable personalities and roles.

Honestly, it almost makes me want to pull out my PS3 and go back to the original game, see if I can get through that in full for once, so that I'm up to speed on what's actually in the original and what's expansion or new additions, and so that I'll have some idea what might be coming in the next installment. Not sure if I will, but weighing the possibility. In the meantime, probably going to try out that hard mode I apparently unlocked, see how that handles.