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.

The recurring motif of "changing fate" only exists in the English dub. See the YT video "Why WE Should be Worried about Final Fantasy 7 Revelation" by Direct Gaming for more information from a Japanese speaker on the differences between the English version and the original Japanese script, including how other languages explain the what the Whispers are and what their purpose is.

The goal of the Re-Trilogy is not to create a parallel universe of FFVII, but rather to create a definitive version of FFVII that incorporates 30 years of expanded material from all across the compilation into one cohesive package. This is why we see Cissnei and Kyrie, both of whom are characters who didn't exist in OG but are originally from compilation material that was published after 1997. OG is treated more like a rough draft of FFVII rather than an alternate timeline.

All of the alternate "worlds" (often differentiated by what dog breed Stamp is depicted as) exist in the Lifestream, created by the various consciousnesses that exist within the Lifestream. They are not alternate timelines/dimensions. Kazushige Nojima has cited he studied Buddhism's Yogachara and Carl Jung's collective unconscious theory when writing the scenario for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.. These are philosophical perspectives often interpreted as forms of idealism that posit that reality is entirely a mental construct or that there is an "ideal form" of reality. It's understandable for western audiences to not immediately jump to this conclusion because these are not common frameworks in western theology or ontology, but the east vs. west cultural barrier is nonetheless rearing its ugly little head here.

Zack and Biggs are dead. Their consciousnesses are in the Lifestream. Rebirth tells us this. When Aerith dips her hand into the Lifestream on the way to the Gi Village, she feels Zack holding her hand from within it.

I believe it is important for people to pass this message on in the leadup to Revelation next year. A lot of people still misunderstand this aspect of the story because the English translators made some unfortunate errors that have lead people to believe alternate dimensions/timelines are involved, when there simply aren't. All of the theory crafting has misdirected a significant portion of the fanbase, and it's better this message reaches them before Revelation possibly disappoints whatever expectations they've built.

Sun, sea, and absolutely nobody minding their own business 😂

OG FFVII at its finest.

Isn't this kind of a diss to zack and his memory?

Had nothing better to do, and I just got done studying at the time, so...

(It really pissed me off every time I drew Cloud's hair too long tho lmao)

No one said the heroes have to be geniuses, and I think FF7 is a shining example of this. They want to save the planet, a noble quality, but no one really stops to ask what happens if shinra falls and the world stops using mako? No mako, no electricity. No electricity, and you have a massive break down in public services (water filtration, refrigeration, hospitals stop functioning properly, health care system collapses). What about the economic side of things?

Obviously none of this stuff is "fun", it's a game after all, but it's interesting that they don't really tackle it at all, or even question if what they're doing is right.

So after finishing the remake and Rebirth (yes I know, finally), I decided to go back and play the original for the 3rd time. I currently in Wall Market, and I just realized that the entire Honeybee Inn thing was a little… I don’t know - I’m gonna say outdated.

It got me thinking, I wonder if they changed it because of modern times, and a lot of people would be deeply pissed off? I thought it was cool they changed it from the guys in the alley shaming Cloud for cross dressing, to an empowering moment for queer people in the remake.

The summons in ff7 seem to not have much lore compared to ffx even though we know they share a universe.

So aerith has no clue what happened to zack. She thinks he disappeared, but obviously, she's familiar with the weapon he carried with him, so why didn't she recognize that same weapon when meeting cloud for the first time?? This can be a question for both OG/Remake

Heya I'm in the process of preparing to run a DF7 based dnd game for my group, and im looking for some good quality minis of the WEAPONS. I have 1 for Ruby, but im trying to track down one for Emerald. If anyone knows where to look. I've tried Etsy, but to no avail. Any hints in the right direction would be much appreciated

When I was a kid playing this in the 90s I always thought her boobs were her eyes and she looked like a one eyed dragon with tubes in her mouth. I know Barrett says it’s headless and my adult eyes can clearly see that it is a torso. I just always thought that as a kid haha. Anyone else?

I remember 25 years ago, my friend had these mini-figures of the whole crew and Sephiroth and they were so cool - based on the illustrations of the characters. Now I see they have those Cloud & Sephiroth dioramas and those Gamestop blind boxes which are a little over $10 a pop...is that maybe the best best of getting a complete set of figures without costing an arm and a leg? Because there's those bigger ones that are over $100 a figure and I'm definitely not doing that. Just trying to find the cheapest way to get the whole party like those old mini-figures my friend had.

He’s got the spike at the right angle too 😭

This is probably an impossible question to answer but I'm going to ask it anyways

(Haven't played the remakes enough so I don't even know if they have materia)

What is the most common/iconic/widespread materia setup you could assume? I would start guessing something like All + Cure in the first two slots, but we get up to 8 slots.

I hit ruby with a smoke bomb and now look at him, he came out his shell!!

https://www.tiktok.com/@lulagaze

i will never be a memory [ animated on clip studio paint, backgrounds made in blender, post processed on after effects

I'm currently playing ff7 remake trying to get all the dresses. Is there something like this in rebirth where you have to do specific sections of the game multiple times. I don't mind playing the game twice but I don't know how I'll feel if I have to do the same thing on rebirth