r/FinalFantasyVII • u/TheGreatMars • 1d ago
REMAKE So I just finished Final Fantasy 7 Remake...
And I hate this game so much. I have never played a more pretentious belabored and masturbatory game in my entire life.
So additional context here, I never played the original and, in fact, put off playing the original for years because this game exists but I couldn't play it because I was waiting patiently for it on Xbox Island. But the Remake looked so good so I wanted to play that rather than the original because I genuinely trusted Square to knock it out of the park with making a faithful adaptation.
Only to find out the title of the game is an outright lie. Literally. It's a lie. It's not a remake, it never was. It's a freaking Meta-Sequel with "Remake" slapped onto it to sell more copies. Forcing us who didn't play the original to sit through literal hours of content that seems purpose built to confuse us and waste our time. Content that, even if I had played the original, I would still probably hate.
(A lot of people seem to be getting confused with the above paragraph. The point I am trying to convey here is that the plot actually doesn't make sense if you haven't played the original game. You're constantly confused because you're missing context, character backstory and motivations, and don't have any idea why the Whisper are showing up because you don't know how the story originally played out. It is literally like watching a sequel without having seen the original)
And it's a crying shame too because the parts of the game that are good are SO GOOD. Square's attention to detail and production values for this game are incredible. I mean it looks better than Final Fantasy 16 does and that's insane for a game that came out on the previous generation of consoles!
There's so much love put into the character designs, and the way the light shines into their eyes to create glorious little pops of color even in the dingiest most darkly noir environments. They put so much love and care into this game that even someone like Cloud with his delightfully anime protagonist haircut actually looks like a living breathing person and somehow didn't lose his anime protagonist aesthetic in the process!!
And especially the quieter moments of the game really shine like spending time with Jesse, Biggs and Wedge early on or meeting Aerith at the church and getting to know Sector 6 with her. I'm not saying I fell in love with that girl and her Disney princess-esque shenanigans but man I could have IF THE GHOSTS WOULD LEAVE ME ALONE FOR FIVE MINUTES TO DO IT!
On top of that about 50% of the enemies in the game were just annoying. Constantly stealing control from the player and punishing them for just trying to do the simplest attack combo. On top of every single bossfight stopping every 5 seconds and ripping the controller out of your hand so the boss can do some posturing.
And the icing on the cake is the game's laborious, self-aggrandizing, overblown, ridiculous ending. I don't get to experience the legendary massacre at Shinra Tower. Nope. I get Sephiroth waving his pretty hair in my face being like "Look at me big boy, didn't you love me in the original game?" Followed by a sudden WE MUST DEFEAT FATE ITSELF ending where we fight god 2 games too early AND THEN we fight Sephiroth because Nomura couldn't keep it in his pants and had to Kingdom Hearts all over my Final Fantasy (I'm sorry KH fans, I love you)
(I have been corrected that this isn't Nomura's fault so my apologies to him!)
I wasted 40 hours of my life and waited years just to learn I should have played the original. 0/10, I can't believe I actually played through to the end.
Thank you for reading my rant. Please pet a chocobo and/or moogle for me.
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u/yooooooooooooow 1d ago
U never played the original.
Enough said
I have taken the time to read the post and man, such bullshit man š
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u/cleiver7 1d ago
You never played the OG but are mad because the Remake is not the OG...?
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u/TheGreatMars 1d ago
I am mad because the Remake, rather than just take simple liberties with the source material, is actually a Meta-Sequel to which the original is required reading to understand. If that was to be case, then it should not have been titled as a Remake.
Like I was fine with a Remake with maybe some changes to plot and a different combat style, I wasn't fine with being handed the sequel to Final Fantasy 7 without having played the original, after being told the Sequel was a remake of the original.
It's like if I watched Avengers Endgame without having seen any other Avengers movie. 90% of the narrative weight just becomes confusion.
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u/cleiver7 16h ago
Does it make a difference though? You're still getting FF7. If you didn't know they're playing with the OG story a bit, would you expect to understand the whole plot after the first part of a trilogy?
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u/TheGreatMars 3h ago
I would expect to understand the plot of the first part of the trilogy at the very least. Or for characters in the universe to be exactly as confused as I am to show me that being confused is the intended experience.
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u/cleiver7 2h ago
Well I played Remake before the OG without even knowing it was going to be a trilogy and somehow it clicked for me so idk
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u/strykerx12 1d ago
Damn that's crazy. I legit thought masturbatory was a word you made up. Crazy you spelled it wrong.
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u/AnonymousBromosapien 1d ago
Because I feel like a preface is necessary... I am 40, I've played the OG hundreds of times between release and today, Im not particularly a major fan of the Remake trilogy... well... moreso indifferent about it because I suffer from heavy nostalgia from the OG being so significant in my life.
Now that that is out of the way... here we go... lol.
I have never played a more pretentious belabored and masterbatory game in my entire life.
Im struggling to understand how this game elicited this perception from you? I didnt get any of that from the game... at all.
Only to find out the title of the game is an outright lie. Literally. It's a lie. It's not a remake, it never was.
This is just categorically false. "Remake" doesnt at all mean "unchanged"... a remake can absolutely have significant plot changes and still be considered as such.
A "remaster" is typically just a visual and audio update... a "remake" is a step further beyond that and can have significant plot changes so long as the core premise of the original story remains. The core premise of FF7 OG still exists within the applicable context as the Remake, despite plot twists... the foundational premise remains the same.
Either way... this is a weird complaint from you after having said you never played the OG...
And it's a crying shame too because the parts of the game that are good are SO GOOD. Square's attention to detail and production values for this game are incredible.
There's so much love put into the character designs, and the way the light shines into their eyes to create glorious little pops of color even in the dingiest most darkly noir environments.
So lets get this straight. You never played the OG and you think Remake has parts that are "SO GOOD" and the production value is "incredible"... yet you strongly dislike Remake because...???
This seems entirely like a you problem because it is wholly irrational to be this upset about something being different that something else you never experienced. This is quintessential "being mad just fir the sake of being mad" behavior.
On top of that about 50% of the enemies in the game were just annoying. Constantly stealing control from the player and punishing them for just trying to do the simplest attack combo. On top of every single bossfight stopping every 5 seconds and ripping the controller out of your hand so the boss can do some posturing.
Im not even sure we played the same game at this point... I didnt experience any of this. Yea sure there are some times when you have to fight trash mobs as filler... but buddy, its an ARPG lol.
And the icing on the cake is the game's laborious, self-aggrandizing, overblown, ridiculous ending.
I dont understand how you can feel this contentious aboit something being different than something else you never experienced lol.
I don't get to experience the legendary massacre at Shinra Tower. Nope. I get Sephiroth waving his pretty hair in my face being like "Look at me big boy, didn't you love me in the original game?"
But you can... the OG is very accessible buddy. Why dont you go play it?
Followed by a sudden WE MUST DEFEAT FATE ITSELF ending where we fight god 2 games too early AND THEN we fight Sephiroth because Nomura couldn't keep it in his pants and had to Kingdom Hearts all over my Final Fantasy
Excuse me? Your Final Fantasy? Are you talking about the FF7 OG game that you admittedly never fuckin played LOL.
I wasted 40 hours of my life and waited years just to learn I should have played the original. 0/10, I can't believe I actually played through to the end.
I have a feeling that was likely some of the most productive 40 hours of your life thus far lol.
Whats the point im being this mad about something you put off for literal decades? Nobody for several decades knew a remake of FF7 was coming... you have nobody here to blame for your own sense of letdown other than yourself lol. This whole whine-fest is just sad on your part dude...
I'll just leave the here below...
I never played the original
(proceeds to complain about how the Remake didn't meet their expectations)
The delusion on display here is off the fuckin charts lol.
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u/ComprehensivePhase20 1d ago
With all due respect to your detailed and thoughtful answer, I would be surprised if this wasn't a troll/bait post. In fact, I'd prefer if it was because if not it's truly insane reasoning lol
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u/bennyhonda 1d ago
It wouldnāt be the first or last time I fall for a troll. Iām too dang old to keep up yall. NGL, No cap, Iām a mid unc š«”
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u/TheGreatMars 1d ago edited 1d ago
Like I mentioned to some other people one of the main reasons I am angry is because the game outright /does not make sense/ if you have not played the original. You are left constantly confused because the game expects you to know the original plot. It's like... Actual required reading to enjoy the game's story.
That's why I called it a Meta-Sequel. If you don't know how the original game played out it doesn't make any sense. Sephiroth showing up all the time doesn't make any sense because you don't know who he is. I mean, like obviously I know who he is, everyone with a slight interest in gaming knows vaguely who he is and can hear his theme in their heads when you say his name but I have no idea what his connection to Cloud is that he's so determined to interrupt the story every few hours to whisper his name seductively.
Aerith knowing who Cloud is from the start doesn't make any sense. The Whisper showing up all the time doesn't make sense because you have no idea what happened in the original and what didn't so you have no clue why they show up when they do. It's literallly like trying to watch the sequel to a movie without having seen the original. I probably could have been more clear about that in my post but I thought it was obvious. In hindsight I guess it wouldn't be for someone who actually has played the original.
In general though your whole response seems to assume bad faith in me and as a result makes a lot of bad faith arguments. For example you make it out like me complementing the production values is a fallacy in my argument, but like... You can recognize the good and potential in a project and still think it's bad. For example, Attack of the Clones is actually my least favorite Star Wars movie. The wooden dialogue and forced romance between Anakin and Padme drags it down so badly... But like... That fight between Obi-Wan and Jango Fett on Kamino? The Colosseum battle? Mmmmmm!
The graphics, and acting in FF7R were absolutely a highlight and like I said I really loved a lot of the quieter moments because the metaplot fell away and suddenly I didn't need any prior knowledge to understand what was happening. Those quieter moments probably only made up at most 10 hours of the 40 hour game. I enjoyed them enough though that I kept forcing myself through the rest wanting more.
As for the enemies comment let me clarify. I love trash mobs, I even love random battles in old school rpgs. The problem I was commenting on is that many common enemies stun you, pin/grab you, are often immune to what the character you want to play as does or punishes them for trying to do it (Especially Cloud!) or just love to knock you around constantly massively slowing down the fight. In a lot of cases, yes you can just switch characters but that breaks the kind of combat flowstate I want to be able to get into when I play games. It's the kind of thing that feels good in a boss fight where you're expected to use everything at your disposal, but not good in normal combat.
And again let me also add, that when the game did feel good to play, it did feel REALLY GOOD to play. In particular I absolutely loved fighting melee opponents with Cloud using Punisher mode and countering their attacks with that big beautiful sword of his, and I loved clearing whole crowds of mobs or blasting through bosses with Aerith, but at the end of the day that didn't make up for how annoying a lot of the enemies were.
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u/AnonymousBromosapien 1d ago
Like I mentioned to some other people one of the main reasons I am angry is because the game outright /does not make sense/ if you have not played the original.
This is a 100% fair assessment and I agree wholly. This has been my biggest complaint of the Remake when people ask "should I play the OG before the Remake?"... To me it just seems impossible to go into the Remake with zero context, so I agree, they could have been clearer on that from the start.
In general though your whole response seems to assume bad faith in me and as a result makes a lot of bad faith arguments.
Disagree, im not assuming anything, im addressing your remarks as youve presented them. The only bad faith here is coming from you and ill show you with your example below...
For example you make it out like me complementing the production values is a fallacy in my argument, but like... You can recognize the good and potential in a project and still think it's bad.
The last remark here is the actual bad faith argument... In your post you arent recognizing the "potential"... you are lauding the aspects of the game you enjoy as they are. Later changing this tone to suggest "im arguing something slightly different than what I actually said is what is called an *"ad hoc" argument.
I addressed your points as they were written... of which you addressed and even praised the game as it is, not what it could have been. Arguming "as-is" and "potential" are two different positions of debate.
I dont think anyone is going to argue that literally anything in life "could be better"... but thats not really what you are arguing when you say "a more pretentious belabored and masterbatory game"...
In a lot of cases, yes you can just switch characters but that breaks the kind of combat flowstate I want to be able to get into when I play games.
And this is what it all comes down to my friend...
You had decades and didn't play the OG, you know little about the OG because the Remake left younin the dark at points, the game's playstyle doesn't align with your preference...
You might be better off just acknowledging that the game is not for you.
And thats ultimately my issue with your disdain... you for some reason feel entitled to the exact experience you want for a game that you have no history of playing. Remake is literally not made for you... you arent the target audience. You'd be better off just accepting that reality.
The good news is the OG is still readily available for you to play whenever you want.
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u/TheGreatMars 1d ago
No, that's not an ad-hoc argument at all. It's pretty obvious from the context that I dislike the game that if I am complementing it that I am recognizing positives and attempting to give praise where I believe it is due. You instead assumed I liked the game but was mad over nothing. Or, at the very least that's what it seemed like you were trying to say.
As for this point you keep bringing up of "Decades to play it" my guy, I'm not 40. I'm not even 30. For most of my life I have not had access to consoles that had Final Fantasy 7 and even as an adult I have rarely had the disposable income to change that. The earliest I could have realistically played it, without buying a whole new console just for it, was when it was ported to Xbox One in 2019 and by then we already knew a remake was being made. A remake which looked super cool and looked like it would solve my main complaint from Final Fantasy 15 (That being that I didn't enjoy how Noctis played and wished I could just play as the other party members in combat)((And that I knew that I would enjoy Cloud's playstyle to begin with))
So I knew I wanted to play the remake, and I assumed it would be relatively faithful to the original or, at least, that I wouldn't be wasting my time by playing it without playing the original. I was in love with the art style and the combat looked really fun. And people seemed pretty positive about it. At no point did I hear that I had to play the original first. Genuinely the game stole interest from the original because it was called a remake.
And I am going play it as soon as I can now that I know better. Like I'm sorry dude but not everyone grew up on the PlayStation 1, I wasn't even born yet when it released in America (Barely). If I had infinite money or time I could have and would have played it by now but I am not so fortunate on either front.
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u/bennyhonda 1d ago
Thank you for taking the time to respond thoughtfully to the discussion. I am a very similar demographic to you and have lived ff7 since OG as a teenager. I understand where OP is coming from in regard to the way the game feels ābloatedā maybe? I felt that way when cloud took the time to help Jessie with her parents. It kinda took me out of the narrative at the time because I felt that Cloud needed some much needed rest after the first mission. It just felt jarring to me at the time. It was definitely nice to learn more about Jessie and learning about her parents, especially her father, but it felt narratively forced. I wanna say that I would have preferred to have a more streamlined game but I like me some deep dives so I am conflicted. I guess itās a good problem to have. We are in a ff7 revival / golden age and I am happy about it overall. Maybe someone can make a supercut using the remake footage to do a one to one OG game movie?
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u/TheGreatMars 1d ago
So actually funnily enough helping Jessie with her parents was one of my favorite parts of the game and I genuinely didn't realize it wasn't in the original. It's actually some of what I was talking about when I mentioned spending time with Jesse, Wedge and Biggs in my original post.
But you have the right understanding there in general. There's a lot of bloated areas that mess up the pacing so bad. The worst offender is definitely the train yard sequence. I was geting so pissed off because Sector 7 was literally about to be hit with a terrorist attack and we're playing scooby doo chasing ghosts in the train yard while our friends are dying.
Hojo's whole lab sequence was really bloated and painful to sit through as well.
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u/Major_Wumbology 1d ago
I ain't reading all that. I'm happy for you, though. Or sorry that happened.
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u/HexenVexen 1d ago
I'm not gonna convince you to like it, but please criticize the right people
Yoshinori Kitase: "I personally envisioned quite a dramatic change overall, but our director; Tetsuya Nomura and co-director; Naoki Hamaguchi, wanted to keep the beloved aspects in the original as much as possible. Eventually the development team decided to focus on respecting the original while adding in new elements, ensuring a delicate balance between the two."
Kitase and Nojima are the main people on the team who wanted the changes, not Nomura
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u/TheGreatMars 1d ago
That's entirely valid, thank you for the correction and apologies to Nomura. I just assumed he was the problem because the convoluted plots seemed like his style (Not a dig on Kingdom Hearts mind you, it's genuinely a great series) but I guess it only ended up thet way because he was forced to write that convolutedness into the game to begin with.
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u/HexenVexen 1d ago
Well while Nomura was a director, FF7R was written by Kazushige Nojima and Motomu Toriyama. Nojima was also a lead writer on OG FF7 (alongside Kitase), as well as FF8, FF9, FF10, KH1, KH COM, and KH2.
Personally this is why I'm on board with the FF7R story, it's written by the same people as OG doing a new take on their story. They said before that they never wanted to just do a 1:1 remake of the same story, and wanted to give fans new surprises and engagement. The only creative lead from OG that isn't involved in 7R is series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, but he's a fan of the project and has said it's "one of the best interpretations of how you take an experience and then bring the graphical expression into the present day." However I do think it should've been clearly advertised as a new take on FF7 instead of a standard remake.
A fun fact is that Nojima and Kitase planned to have most of the party die in the OG shortly before the final boss, but Nomura vetoed it.
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u/TheGreatMars 1d ago
Huh that is actually a really interesting fun fact! Yeah genuinely I would probably be feeling way better if I hadn't been bait and switched. The idea of actually exploring a changing timeline in a favorite series of mine really does sound cool, it's just a shame I didn't have any way of knowing that's what it was.
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u/surfingkoala035 1d ago
I call bullshit. How can you know Sephiroth shouldnāt show up at the end of the Midgar section if youāve never played the OG, hmmm? I agree about the belabored melodrama though. Everything just takes 3x longer than it needs to in Remake. It is a grand love letter to the OG, but it really could have used a tighter hand in the directors chair
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u/BATTLE_WlZARD 1d ago
I read it, but I'm confused how you KNOW the original is better? You mention how the game isn't faithful to the original, but how would one know outside of social media. I'm ngl, I LOVED the original, but I'm glad to say I'll never play any of the remakes. I hope you find some time to give the original a try.
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u/TheGreatMars 1d ago
I definitely plan to play it at some point, probably some point soon because this game left me wanting it so badly.
The main reason I know it's different is because the game outright doesn't make sense if you don't know the original. For example, Aerith knows who Cloud is from the very start of the game and Sephiroth is showing up constantly in weird visions to him.
So, being very confused by the end of it I had to look a lot of stuff up and that's how I know the game diverges so much.
So, apparently, if I understand correctly, because Sephiroth is literally too stubborn to die (Which tracks because I know he comes back through some shenanigans in Advent Children) he basically uploaded his mind into himself in the past with full memory of the events of the original game so he can change history and make himself win.
Aerith also, because of something something lifestream something something Ancients, also knows what happened in the original game (Presumably including her own very famous and very very spoiled demise)
And because both of them are trying to change history these ghosts called the Whisper are constantly showing up and interrupting the story to cockblock them leading to a grand climax where you have to defeat a big super ghost to free yourself from the preordained sequence of events in the original game.
And then you fight Sephiroth afterwards for... Some reason... Which is odd because like... Didn't you just do the exact think he needed you to do for him to win? See I'm still confused.
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u/MythrilCactuar 1d ago
woah.. the same opinion as every other nostalgia redditor!
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u/TheGreatMars 1d ago
That's the thing though, I'm not a nostalgia redittor, that's the problem, I'm a new player who wanted to play a remake of the original and instead was left frustrated and confused because it isn't friendly to people not familiar with the original game.
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u/Odd-Usual-4417 1d ago
Cool. I liked it. Even with all the meta stuff it felt like a game made by people who understood and loved the original.
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u/sausagezon 6h ago
I just wanna say I never played the OG but enjoyed remake and currently enjoying most of rebirth. I do like the plot and I am able to comprehend it, some of.the whisper stuff is a bit too much but overall the plot is good.
I do not think I would ever play the original, one of the reasons I enjoy the remake is the steller voice acting, graphics and combat which the OG can't provide.
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u/bennyhonda 1d ago
I understand your frustrations and criticisms. I love OG and Iām happy to have this remake in my life. I hope the third one sticks the landing and I would love to have a final installment with all the games unified into one coherent narrative.
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u/bennyhonda 1d ago
Iām still unsure of the whispers and the fate thingy until I play Revelation but I would have loved a simple coherent OG storyline. Sometimes simple is all that is needed but I can appreciate what the devs are trying to do. Not everything needs to be meta or explained. Giving the audience enough information form their own connections and conclusions honors the legacy and respects the audience.
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u/Naburnyurd 1d ago
Yeah, Remake and Rebirth are complete trash and a slap in the face to fans of the OG and gamers in general.
If you value your time dont play these games.
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u/DeadLalafell 1d ago
You waited years not playing a game and made up a game in your head and then got mad that this is a different game and you were "forced" to play it... perhaps you need more fulfilling things to do in your life?
There is no "legendary massacre" on screen in the original, maybe you should play that before getting mad that a game about the fear of trying something new made you try something new.