I grew up playing Final Fantasy VII. I probably played it around 10-12 years old and again on ios a few years ago.

WOW! What a classic.

I decided to play the remake on my Steam Deck just ot revisit the game and see areas of the game reimagined.

They did a great job in this aspect, but overall I feel that the game has not been fun.

So far, it is just walking from place to place while having the occasional battle. 99% of the time you can mindlessly mash a button to find the battle.

The few boss battles that come up can be interesting and this is where you start to learn the mechanics as they are not needed up until this point.

But, there are many sections that are long for the sake of being long. Like making you walk slowly in certain situations, like walking up to 7th Heaven, or making you hold a button to interact with something when 99% of things just require you to press the button once.

My biggest disappointment in the game is that the gear I unlocked and leveled up, do not carry over to the next game. Once I learned this, I stopped caring. They really should have let you bring over your characters.

Anyway, I am near the end game now and will probably finish it since there is not much left, but I will not be playing other iterations of this game. I might just watch a speed-run or a “let’s play” to see the different areas.

  • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    2·
    17 days ago

    I absolutely adore the remake games. They both follow a type of game-design that makes me feel like I’m playing something from the PS2 era again. Both the good and the bad. Makes me feel like a kid in the best kind of way.

    The games do have some trouble with time-wasters. It’s both improved and made worse in Rebirth. Luckily, in open world fashion, a lot of it can actually be ignored in Rebirth. And if you don’t ignore it, you get rewarded with actually good side-content. And Rebirths fast travel is good to the point you basically never have to travel anywhere “the long way” twice.

    I have the same problem with the combat being too easy. It wasn’t too bad with Intergrade as I was new to the combat system, but with Rebirth I am absolutely crushing enemies. I’m deliberately sabotaging my character builds to make it more challenging, but I really wish they didn’t lock “hard” behind ng+. Coming from the first game, you should be able to jump into the second at that higher skill level from the start. But no.

    Don’t worry too much about your stuff not carrying over. The characters do not get reset to level zero, and no abilities. They start with a little less than what you have at the end of Intergrade, but a lot of the stuff you’ll have gotten by the end of Intergrade, is what you have at the start of Rebirth. And then over the course of the second game, you get a lot of NEW stuff, rather than just re-aquiring the stuff you had in the first.

  • missingno@fedia.io
    1·
    17 days ago

    I haven’t played it, but I’m bothered by Square Enix’s aversion to FF’s turn-based roots. What kind of ‘remake’ changes genre entirely?

    • JackDark@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      17 days ago

      This is my biggest problem. I don’t like the real-time combat. When I originally played the demo of part one of the remake and discovered it was real-time combat, I went into the settings to change it to turn-based, only to discover there was no such setting. Stopped playing pretty soon after that.

    • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      16 days ago

      It’s a modern game, nobody but people who played the original would play it if the combat stayed the same. There are many criticisms of the game, but the change in combat isn’t one of them.

      • vividspecter@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        16 days ago

        Feels slightly hyperbolic. Atlus’s games are mostly turn based and seem to have sold in only somewhat worse numbers compared to FF7 remake (Persona 5 in particular). One series (Yakuza / Like a Dragon) even switched from action combat to turn based.

        Anyway, I found the combat to be kind of forgettable and didn’t really add to the game, although I understand there have been improvements in the second game.

  • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    17 days ago

    I loved the combat system, so I enjoyed every fight in game (except flying monsters in the first game if you didn’t have barret around). I think it’s my favourite hybrid combat system that allows both tactical and reactionary attacks and shines the most when you’re juggling between characters to get the ATB gauges up on everyone as quickly as possible so you have more toys to play with constantly.

    The Yuffie DLC (Intermission) then expands upon the traversal mechanics and team based combat mechanics which were a whole lot of fun. A lot of this carried over to Rebirth as well but expanded upon again. Still ended up with Yuffie being one of the most fun to play though because she was originally designed to play mostly solo from her DLC, but having a character that is more fun to play isn’t a bad thing obviously.

    Story wise, without spoiling too much, I love how, much like a lot of the mechanics, tries to expand upon old elements rather than outright replace them. And the story being some kind of pseudo-sequel where meta-textuality enhances the experience it ensures that these games are not replacements of the original. Which makes me laud it up in the highest regards. If they had just tried to replicate everything I think it would’ve felt even weirder it trying to be a wholesale replacement of the original like a lot of standard remakes try to be (think resi and silent hill). I don’t know how others can replicate what square is doing though since a lot of it is rooted in it’s story and doesn’t deviate far from the elements introduced in the original and the compilation games. Resi could not have replicated this intertextuality between versions of the game. You could argue silent hill could due to its story elements but they just focused on making it an enhanced version of the original.

    I think I’m starting to ramble too much now so I’ll start to end it. I think the fact I can ramble about these games and gush about them so much shows how much I love them.

    Other than astro bot rebirth was one of the most refreshing breaths in gaming for me, despite me more often than not despising both large open worlds and ubi style towers. Yet I felt compelled to almost 100% the game just due to the amount of fun I was having that I could just not get anywhere else.

    And now I have two extra games (eventually three) I can regularly replay for my FFVII itch, alongside the original which has been a bi-yearly ritual to replay since before my age was in double digits. I couldn’t be happier. Though Rebirth will always be the highlight when replaying just due to the combat overhauls they made which in retrospect makes the first look like a tech demo.