Final Fantasy VII

With fate now untied from the cast, I don't think they can follow the OG plotline. It wouldn't make sense. Yes we are going to see the same locations, because duh it's the same world. However, the order or even necessarily the same events happening? That's what I doubt. The cast is starting an "unknown journey," and so no one knows what's going to happen from here. I think this is truly a new spin of "what-ifs" from here on it. What if the party didn't stop at Kalm? What if they don't see the Midgardsormr killed on a spike? (Which doesn't even need to happen anymore). What's the trail they are going to follow to eventually lead to Seph now? The nostalgia is going to come from revisiting old locations in new HD content.

The Zack scene is a glimpse of another timeline that exists outside of the one seen in Final Fantasy VII Remake. Cloud and his friends didn't change the past when they defied the leader of the Whispers, only their future. Zack is still dead in the current timeline and his adventures with Cloud in Midgar have happened in a lifetime that we won't get to see.

The one thing that gave me shivers was the Jenova piano jingle while in Hojos Lab.

See? This is a reboot/sequel, now you can change parts of the original story, you have this power and only you, as a true OG fan, will apreciate the subtle and big changes!

That ending was a complete mind ***. WTF?

Graphics - 7/10
Far from the best looking game I've ever seen but also not the worst current gen title either. That said, any good is heavily marred by technical limitations and horrendous texture streaming bugs. Oftentimes environmental and character textures look like they were ripped out of the PS3 era. Lip sync looks like the character's lips are trying to escape their faces half the time. Spells and particle effects look good, main cast and important side characters also generally look good but they are not immune to the texture streaming problems. Large world segments that are supposed to be impact end up looking horrendous as a result of this as well; namely, any scene where you're told to look out over Midgar. The most distressing example of this is when you're climbing the tower in Sector 7 before the last few chapters of the game and Barret tells you to "remember this view". No problem, I can remember all 12 pixels. This has to be resolved for part 2 and beyond.

Combat - 6/10
Horrendously imbalanced and two dimensional but still slightly above average. People said an action combat system would alleviate the bread and butter, cut and dry turn based combat shortcomings but, alas. Fights are either monumental damage sponges that take ages to beat by attrition or laughably easy one shot fodder. There is no in between. A handful of the game's multitude of poorly designed bosses stood out as fun encounters, but most of them either pigeonhole you into a certain strategy that is often annoying or makes the fight a faceroll, or they're so heavily scripted that you can't even afford to stagger and combo them before they enter a phase transition and wipe your progress. Trash in general is ***tier as expected with a couple of standout exceptions that required me to pay attention to them. Defensive options ended up being hold down block and parry to avoid getting staggered, or just eat the hit and brush it off because the dodge roll has to be the absolute worst I've ever experienced in a video game. It provides nothing for using it, if it has iframes at all they're so minuscule that I never managed to have them absorb an attack. Dodging things like spells is better done just running in circles around the boss so that the initial projectile can't hit you. Parry and COutnerstance, on the otherhand, give you a large amount of super armor, charge your ATB, and in the case of Counterstance deals significant amounts of damage to the enemy, making anything other than running in circles or using those two options a complete waste of time. This could use improvement in part 2 and beyond.

Other Gameplay - 5/10
Average. Run of the mill busywork quests that have only the faintest hint of side story attached to them. The rewards are almost completely meaningless outside of plot-related developments that are tied to them and thus demand their completion. Running from point A to point B can be a trial in itself, but that will be touched upon later. Minigames range from infuriating to very easy but I can't say I minded their inclusion. Puzzles in the various dungeons and story segments were basically nonexistent due to how barebones and handholdy they were. Other side content such as the Colosseum and VR Simulator feel tacked on with a bunch of rinse and repeat battles that hold little impact to your overall progress and, if it weren't for the trophies, I wouldn't have bothered.

World - 7/10
The setting is great and they definitely nailed the atmosphere and overall design of Midgar exceptionally well. It did, however, fall apart the more I played. Every zone is essentially a winding hallway with little side halls that normally have a treasure chest, boxes, or a materia at the end. Design of some of the well-traversed areas like Wall Market is utterly infuriating and makes doing side quests and collecting items a chore. So many boss arenas and battlefields in general turned into narrow corridors where using the hamstrung defensive options at my disposal became pointless, and many attacks could lose their effectiveness entirely. Every single summon is fought in the same generic cyber arena as well, no set pieces of ambiance whatsoever to add to them. I honestly can't imagine part 2 opening up and becoming more freeform in the next part but I hope to all *** they find a way to do it because an otherwise well crafted world was completely wasted by having you view it through a narrow slit in the fabric.

Characters - 10/10
The one part of the game that I can find little to no fault in. Even side characters have a decent amount of depth to them, but the main cast and primary side characters really shine. I found myself giving way more of a *** about some characters in the remake than I ever did in the original, particularly non-Barret AVALANCHE members. Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge (Biggs easily being the weakest of the 3) are given a much more clearly defined role this time, and it pays off. It also makes the plate fall gutpunch far more impactful overall. Side characters like Marle, Johnny, and Mireille are delightful, whereas others like Kyrie are totally forgettable in this installment. Big figured like the ShinRa executives and Corneo are captured wonderfully as well, and even though most of them get very little screen time, you get a good sense of their personalities in just the minute or two that you get to see of them. As for the main cast, Aerith's personality here was very surprising as she never struck me as such a sassy jabberon like she is in the Remake, but she grew on me eventually; there's a lot more that will happen with her character over the next installments though, I'm sure. Tifa and Barret were as I would have expected from the original and they were captured well, and Cloud grew a much more fleshed out personality from the original, which is great. Character development was fefinitely the highlight of the game for me.

Story - 6/10
Oh man. It starts out strong, playing to the nostalgia organs and giving you all the right kinds of adrenaline surge. New characters and concepts are organically mixed in as you go and it all feels natural... except for those *** phantoms. The Whisperers. A literary device straight out of the Nomura Handbook of Overdone and Unecessary Plot Elements. There is no reason for these things to exists, there is no reason for the "changing fate uwu" overarching plotline to exist. But, surprisingly, that isn't even my main issue here. The Whisperers themselves are the problem. They start out as overpowered, ridiculous manifestations of either the developer's will or the playerbase's, depending on your interpretation; a fourth wall breaking shitfest whose only purpose is to keep the story going exactly as you'd expect it to go from the original. This begins to slowly unravel, though. Things slip through the cracks. Characters survive when they shouldn't, things happen in ways that are not as you'd expect. That's all fine though, I don't mind it. I mind the device used to get us there. The Whisperers are *** stupid and there's nothing anyone can say that will change my mind. The implication that Aerith could be some time traveling usurper of fate is also extremely *** dumb but somehow less offensive to me than the existence of the shadow cloaked hoodlums constantly invading my gamespace and shitting up the already poorly-rendered environments. I can only hope to all *** that dispelling the Shadow Lord/Sora's Heartless and his cronies at the end of part 1 means we won't be dealing with them in part 2+, but that seems like a foolish thing to expect. I'm not as up in arms about the result, aka greatly diverging the plot from the original, as some people might be, but the method by which it is being achieved is horrifically transparent and stupid to me and I can't overlook it. Other things that bothered me, though less intensely, include the sudden reveal of Biggs' survival at the end (we saw him take his last *** breath...) while leaving best girl Jessie buried under 50000 tons of concrete and sheet metal; Cloud's ability to see into the *** future for some god damn reason; Barret being killed off only to be revived like 2 minutes later; and the most tragic thing of all, no *** dogs to pet.

Overall - 6.8/10
Above average but not as remarkable as it could have been. Hopefully the glaring issues are mitigated or completely addressed in part two and beyond. We'll be waiting a while before we find out. There's probably other ***I will think of in the coming hours/days that I didn't include in here.