Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

[weaselus]

Checking in to say my opponents' take on FF7R is justified and properly defended by Val the Mafia Boss. If it is very disappointing to you guys, you gave sufficient reasons why.

Even methoexetamine has a point. (not a strong one)

I concede you are allowed to think poorly of it.

It would be nice if you could understand that some people's preferences ARE being catered to. I am one of them, especially after modding in PS1 characters.

FF7R is a "Star Wars" type experience in game form, like FF8, FF9, and unlike FF10 and less so FF12, which gives off strong Star Wars vibes but was butchered pre-release. Cipher can probably tell us about the tortured history of FF12, FF13, FF15 AND FF-Type Zero.

As such, it succeeds.

And as most games are a waste of time, FF7R is less so.

Now if the above is hard to parse or the arguments are not obvious, please don't respond. I wasn't talking to you.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

FF7R is a "Star Wars" type experience in game form, like FF8, FF9, and unlike FF10 and less so FF12, which gives off strong Star Wars vibes but was butchered pre-release. Cipher can probably tell us about the tortured history of FF12, FF13, FF15 AND FF-Type Zero.

In what way? When I think of Star Wars', I don't think just about the fantastic aesthetics, but the very tight pacing. Every single moment of the movie is ushering you to either a new major revelation, a confrontation, or off to see a new vista. A huge amount of stuff happens in that 2 hour runtime. Lucas was always saying to make it faster. The prequel movies are longer and go for more of a historical "epic" movie feel but still is relatively swift and has stuff happening. And without trying to sound repetitive, but that is what the first discs of the PS1 FFs were. Near constant excitement as you were being ushered from setpiece to setpiece. It is FF10 where that momentum dissipates, as you now start going several hours without much happening or excitement. And then you have FF12 which is incredibly low energy and worse, 50 hours of it, with several long stretches of the game feeling like slog. The stretch from when you first take control of Vaan in the waterway until exiting the prison. The long hike to Raithwall's tomb. The very long hike from Dalmasca to Mount Bur Omisce. The very long hike from Dalmasca to Archades, and then to the Great Crystal. I suppose if you count those Disney fanfic shows like the Mandalorian in which hardly anything happened for a 10 hour long season that should have been a 2 hour movie at max, then I can see the resemblance.

[GhostCow]

This game is **** and anyone who likes it should be made to suffer for encouraging them to continue down this path instead of making the proper remake we deserved

[ArcaneLurker]

It's good mixed with **** which makes it worse than just being ****.
Their prior attempt to make a Game of Thrones type game sucked, because the combat was smoothbrained, and the RPG elements were non-existent. Whether you like or hate GoT-style settings, there was less "diversity" in that. Now they have a game with decent combat, but certain figures have also inserted & changed stuff from the OG to "suit a modern audience," and that comes with the kind of awful taste that always comes with those types of people.

A mix between FF12 and FF16 as a setting, with FF7R style combat, would be the kind of thing I'd enjoy, but it would require a change in management, and a change in international pressures.

[weaselus]

FF7R is a "Star Wars" type experience in game form, like FF8, FF9, and unlike FF10 and less so FF12, which gives off strong Star Wars vibes but was butchered pre-release. Cipher can probably tell us about the tortured history of FF12, FF13, FF15 AND FF-Type Zero.

In what way? When I think of Star Wars', I don't think just about the fantastic aesthetics, but the very tight pacing. Every single moment of the movie is ushering you to either a new major revelation, a confrontation, or off to see a new vista. A huge amount of stuff happens in that 2 hour runtime. Lucas was always saying to make it faster. The prequel movies are longer and go for more of a historical "epic" movie feel but still is relatively swift and has stuff happening. And without trying to sound repetitive, but that is what the first discs of the PS1 FFs were. Near constant excitement as you were being ushered from setpiece to setpiece. It is FF10 where that momentum dissipates, as you now start going several hours without much happening or excitement. And then you have FF12 which is incredibly low energy and worse, 50 hours of it, with several long stretches of the game feeling like slog. The stretch from when you first take control of Vaan in the waterway until exiting the prison. The long hike to Raithwall's tomb. The very long hike from Dalmasca to Mount Bur Omisce. The very long hike from Dalmasca to Archades, and then to the Great Crystal. I suppose if you count those Disney fanfic shows like the Mandalorian in which hardly anything happened for a 10 hour long season that should have been a 2 hour movie at max, then I can see the resemblance.

I agree with everything you say!

Especially about the other final fantasies.

The problem is Enix; they killed Square. I haven't liked a Final Fantasy since FF9.

FF10 was a tremendous downgrade in all aspects but graphics, and was their first corridor game.

FF12 was literally 3/5ths of a game, with terrible low energy as well.

FF13 had female Cloud and crystals. Hard pass.

FF Type 0 and FF 15's scenarios were written by Nomura. I accuse him of being a witch, alongside Yoko Taro, the MegaTen team, the Lobotomy Corporation devs, and many others.

One of the original Square directors went in to recut both games. Because in both the antichrist was the protagonist.

Nomura has wanted to publish a game with an antichrist protagonist for at least twenty years. Look it up in interviews.

I believe he is not just an edgy writer subverting expectations. My money is on him being a committed occultist.

(For a primer on witchcraft in media you can look up a site called vigilant citizen.)

-------
I agree the original Star Wars pacing is great and really important to enjoyment. But you are downplaying the esthetics.

The bigger primary draw of Star Wars was the setting and characters. Other similar franchises are the Lord of the Rings or (recently in the spotlight) Dune. And they exploded in popularity.

There is a reason there are a hundred successful Star Wars games: people like to hang out in that universe.

FF7R is a way to hang out in Midgar with the most interesting part of the cast (but you must mod out DEI fuglies and change Cloud's hair to not look like a host - I may be shallow but don't bash it until you've tried it.)

Further, the portion of the game I played had the pacing of Commando.

-----
OK, I am convinced that I am highly partial to FF7's world and these specific characters. I think you won the argument.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

FF10 was a tremendous downgrade in all aspects but graphics, and was their first corridor game.

Almost all FF area maps were corridors, especially the PS1 games where it was a game of trying to figure out which thin strip part of the prerendered background is traversable. The difference is that the older games had the pretense of being able to move in any direction with the world map that connected the area maps, but the world map was becoming increasingly devoid of substance after FF6. There is nothing outside of Midgar. But yeah, the world map presentation did help give the feel that you were traversing a huge world and better portrayed the scale of the setting and the geography. FF13's downgrade from FF10 is that it doesn't have a tracking camera or constantly changing camera angles to help spruce up walking down the corridor like FF10 did (sorta like changing screens between prerendered backgrounds like on the PS1), so you just have a camera behind the character walking down the same corridor the whole time.

FF13 had female Cloud and crystals. Hard pass.

Lightning was not like FF7 Cloud, who was dorky. The Advent Children movie and Kingdom Hearts reinvented him as being very "stoic" like we see him in FF7R. Lightning isn't stoic like NuCloud either. She has a lot of outbursts. She is mostly irritated because she is on a timetable trying to save her frozen sister, but keeps bumping into her husband's fiancé who she doesn't like and the borderline dead weight boy.

FF Type 0 and FF 15's scenarios were written by Nomura

The FF15 we got was not written by Nomura. Nomura envisioned a very different plot about Noctis' family being mafians who ruled an always nighttime city and worshipped a death god, and that Noctis would have to fight his fiance. The Versus 13 project got ripped out of his hands by the suits and reassigned to Tabata, who made the story that we got.

I accuse him of being a witch, alongside Yoko Taro, the MegaTen team, the Lobotomy Corporation devs, and many others.

One of the original Square directors went in to recut both games. Because in both the antichrist was the protagonist.

Nomura has wanted to publish a game with an antichrist protagonist for at least twenty years. Look it up in interviews.

I believe he is not just an edgy writer subverting expectations. My money is on him being a committed occultist.

I cannot think of any particular Japanese pop artist who is explicitly "satanic" in the way that the boomers meant. I think Nomura, Takahashi, and the SMT creators just thought that these aesthetics were cool. Rather, it is that Japanese society as a whole has rejected God, which creates the truly satanic theme in their art in their art - satanic not in explicit worship of satan, but as in being about the rejection of God and the triumph of Man over all. The Japanese unashamedly created really emotional, introspective, navel gazing works about heroes agonizing over the tragedies of this fallen world and trying to find a conclusion to this. But because the Japanese have rejected God, the moral conclusion their stories almost always comes to is about trying to tout the triumph of Man. So you get a lot of anime and JRPGs that end with the music swelling and the hero giving a speech about how mankind needs no gods and that mankind alone can accomplish anything through determination and/or togetherness as they destroy the villain. The most truly satanic Final Fantasy games is not FF15, but the PS1 FFs, FF10, FF11, and especially FF14, as their stories revolve around a lifestream/mothercrystal at the center of the planet that souls of people reincarnate from over and over (sometimes as lesser beings like rats) until the lifestream/mothercrystal burns out (which eventually it will) and then that's it. That FF world is doomed and there is no one true God to save you. And then the narrative (ESPECIALLY FF14) hits you over the head about how this is supposed to be a good thing and you are supposed to accept it. FF14 hammers you on the head with this for not one, not two, not just three, but three and a half expansions (ShB, Endwalker, the Golbez story, and Dawntrail). And it is dressed up in a pretty veneer of heroic looking characters giving speeches about this while emotional music is playing and strawmanning of the opposition. I struggle to think of a worse JRPG morally off of the top of my head.

And then there is the heavy death cult messaging in Shadowbringers and Endwalker.

Would you elaborate on this?

I might have misspoke. I am not quite referring to the death cult in the way like how Brian Niemeier refers to it online contemporarily.

I will have to get a little into the weeds here for this to make sense.

► Show Spoiler

In Shadowbringers and Endwalker, it is revealed that mankind as it exists in the present is in a fallen, objectively inferior state to what it originally was. The ancients were immortal, held authority over creatures, and there was no death or war. Also, everyone was a powerful wizard.





Somehow, despite this paradise, one wizard is moody and decides to end the world, causing The Final Days. Most of the world is destroyed but much of the ancient wizard population sacrifices themselves into aether to fuel a summon, Zodiark, which stops The Final Days. The survivors then begin working on a plan to get their people back out of the summon, which seems plausible given how there is all this gnostic soul stealing and body hijacking going on in the game, and aether seems to be able to converted into anything, and your body being physically destroyed isn't the end of the world since a new one can be created for a soul to inhabit, and we know the ancient souls survived inside Zodiark. So it's like FF10 where Yu Yevon sacrifices the populace of Zanarkand to create Sin and win the war and Bevelle, but here it is reversible.

To get the ancients back, the survivors decide to sacrifice the new lifeforms that have begun appearing in the post-cataclysm world. I don't think we ever got any confirmation on what exactly these were. Venat simps presume that they were sentients, but we don't see or hear about any non-human sentients when travel back to their era in Endwalker. So it sounds like they were just random animals. The ancients can't just liquidate Zodiark into aether and turn him back into all of the sacrificed people because Zodiark is still needed to prevent the The Final Days from happening again. So additional aether is required.





Enter Venat, who the narrative pretends is a hero, but if you stop to think about the plot for more than 10 seconds, you realize that she is a crazy megalomaniacal rebel and the biggest mass murderer in history and is responsible for almost all of the tragedy that happened in the game. She decides that sacrificing these lesser lifeforms to resurrect their dead is wrong, and that they have to "accept their loss and move on" (paraphrasing, but it's a common spiel by the so-called heroes throughout ShB and Endwalker). What? To prevent the sacrifice of these other lifeforms, she has her 12 syncophants sacrifice themselves to create their own summon, Hydaelyn, which she then hops into and uses to attack Zodiark. Ofcourse, Zodiark is powered by the entire ancient populace, so to win Hydaelyn/Venat casts a spell that subdivides the world and everything in it (except herself) into 14, effectively killing literally everyone and everything except four people. This is the Sundering.





In the post Sundering world, every man is 1/14th of what he once was. Body. Mind. Soul. Magical talent. Everything. They have also lost their immortality, their authority over creatures, their wizard powers, and so on. And people are now divided. So now people are getting eaten by monsters, and people now die of illness and old age, and there is now war between people and death and suffering, and so on. Man is now in a fallen state. And then if you take the Nier mobile game crossover event as canon, then people in the immediate post-Sundering world didn't even have bodies and couldn't even speak. Everyone was just some goo.

Fortunately, three ancients, Elidibius (the speaker of the ancients' ruling body), Emet-Selch (most powerful wizard who ever, ever lived), and Lahabrea (wizard engineer who drew up the blueprints for Zodiark, also runs a prison), managed to evade the Sundering (I don't think it was ever explained how. During ShB it was theorized that they might have been on the moon when the world was sundered, but then Endwalker reveals that the moon was also sundered into 14 lesser copies too). These three Unsundered are ofcourse horrified at what has happened, and embark on the long an arduous task of restoring the world. Which means merging all 14 pieces of everyone and the world back together into one. And then, ofcourse, get their people back out of Zodiark (which has now been divided and imprisoned into 14 copies across 14 moons).





Whenever a shard world is merged/rejoined back into the main one, everything in it (people, animals, forests, civilizations, continents, etc) is liquidated into aether which is then added to its Source shard counterpart. So technically these subdivided people are being murdered, but your subdivided soul gets merged with your main soul. You, the player character, merge with one of your subdivided counterparts, Ardbert, so you are now both the same people and you could act as Ardbert in one scene.





Anyway, the Unsundered are the overarching antagonists you fight throughout the game as they try to restore you. Venat/Hydaelyn rewrites history and begins presenting herself as a benevolent goddess (when she is actually a rebel wizard) and gets people to worship her as a god. The storyline ends with you killing all of the Unsundered and preventing mankind from returning to its pre-fall state of no war, no death, paradise, etc. The narrative unironically passes this off as a good thing.

TL;DR is that the world view became quite twisted in ShB and EW. On the surface, characters are espousing empty words about "have hope" and "move forward", but in the end there is no actual hope. Your actions prevent the restoration of mankind, condemning humanity to forever languish in poor health and conflict and death. All the gods are fake and you shouldn't pray to anything ever. There is no afterlife (you reincarnate over and over until your planet's lifestream dies) and all of the worlds will die eventually so there is no eternal hope. The heroes constantly tell villains "you have to accept your loss and move on from the past!", and then the heroes will bend over backwards to save their preferred people. G'raha went back in time to prevent the 8th calamity. As far as he knew, everyone born after the 8th Calamity would have been erased had he succeeded. The Void arc began when the Scions and Vytra jumped into the Void and began slaughtering Voidsent willy nilly. From our perspective they were not truly alive and did not deserve any consideration. Just like the Sundered to the Unsundered! Hien floods his country's capital city, killing many innocents like painters or servants or chefs and so forth (not just Garlean soldiers), but he's treated as a hero, but when Fordola orders an artillery barrage on a tower that has become occupied by the enemy she is labelled as evil. And so on. So it seems that yes, killing the wrong people is in fact a good thing, with who the "wrong people" are depends upon your feelings.

Sorry for the long post. I tried condensing it down. There are other aspects that bugged me that I am probably forgetting right now. It does remind me a lot of how Trails' narrative soured me the further I went in, particularly with Ao no Kiseki's/Trails to Azure's ending which was very similar in how the protagonists rejected an opportunity to objectively improve the world state and tell people who want a better world to shut up and "you have to move forward!", but then hypocritically bend over backwards to change things when it suits them. It's morally bankrupt.

[methoxetamine]

I struggle to think of a worse JRPG morally off of the top of my head.

[Oyster Sauce]

I struggle to think of a worse JRPG morally off of the top of my head.

name one thing he did wrong

[weaselus]

You are explaining aspects of occultism that I did not know about. I will fill in a few more for a complete picture.

Japan is one of the few remaining pre-Christian societies; they were never touched as a people by the grace of God. They are a window into the old, slave world that existed before the Incarnation. That world was entirely ruled by witches regardless of continent.

Their tastes in games and anime show an overwhelming interest in magic, which is abhorrent to God. How can I get something by circumventing established cause and effect. Most of the media I ever consumed is saturated with the desire to have the strength of an angel (a real-world angel of God) without the moral strength that He requires.

Here is my addition to your post: 98% of witches are not overtly satanic and never were historically. But they are all social darwinists, for all the thousands of years we have had human societies. Darwinism infers that might makes right and is abhorrent to God. Everything is allowed as long as you win. If you win, you were right. Survival of the fittest.

From such a philosophical position, one's notions of good and evil no longer align with God's. Occult systems all focus on fearlessness and a (gradual) abandoning of norms. The end product, should they succeed, is a haughty being who cannot tell good from evil. (For a celebrity example: Alistair Crowley)

Let me reemphasize that witches divide otherworldly beings into benevolent, malicious, and neutral. And one trades with them. And cohabitates with them. This is the most terrible mistake possible.

The fearlessness that is pursued is the loss of the natural instinct that drives humans to flee from their natural predator. And the instinct to not commit massive, soul-withering errors.

Most of the witches I am aware of are very charismatic. They are successful, wordly types. They are the life of the party, if politicians. They do not discuss their religion, because it is hermetic. And they themselves do not think they are satanic, since according to them only a fraction of the spirits are overtly malicious, and they are taught to avoid them.

And Japan and South Korea are chock full of them. Need I mention India or Africa. They should be expelled from the west for that reason alone. But since the West was taught this was all imaginary, we now suffer the hexes of our predators and maybe that is why things have become so bad.

[Oyster Sauce]

You are explaining aspects of occultism that I did not know about. I will fill in a few more for a complete picture.

Japan is one of the few remaining pre-Christian societies; they were never touched as a people by the grace of God. They are a window into the old, slave world that existed before the Incarnation. That world was entirely ruled by witches regardless of continent.

Their tastes in games and anime show an overwhelming interest in magic, which is abhorrent to God. How can I get something by circumventing established cause and effect. Most of the media I ever consumed is saturated with the desire to have the strength of an angel (a real-world angel of God) without the moral strength that He requires.

Here is my addition to your post: 98% of witches are not overtly satanic and never were historically. But they are all social darwinists, for all the thousands of years we have had human societies. Darwinism infers that might makes right and is abhorrent to God. Everything is allowed as long as you win. If you win, you were right. Survival of the fittest.

From such a philosophical position, one's notions of good and evil no longer align with God's. Occult systems all focus on fearlessness and a (gradual) abandoning of norms. The end product, should they succeed, is a haughty being who cannot tell good from evil. (For a celebrity example: Alistair Crowley)

Let me reemphasize that witches divide otherworldly beings into benevolent, malicious, and neutral. And one trades with them. And cohabitates with them. This is the most terrible mistake possible.

The fearlessness that is pursued is the loss of the natural instinct that drives humans to flee from their natural predator. And the instinct to not commit massive, soul-withering errors.

Most of the witches I am aware of are very charismatic. They are successful, wordly types. They are the life of the party, if politicians. They do not discuss their religion, because it is hermetic. And they themselves do not think they are satanic, since according to them only a fraction of the spirits are overtly malicious, and they are taught to avoid them.

And Japan and South Korea are chock full of them. Need I mention India or Africa. They should be expelled from the west for that reason alone. But since the West was taught this was all imaginary, we now suffer the hexes of our predators and maybe that is why things have become so bad.

This is all true

[weaselus]

I struggle to think of a worse JRPG morally off of the top of my head.

name one thing he did wrong

Summoning Ifrit in any of the games has you ally with a demon, depicted in its realistic glory.

In general, modern media seeks more and more accurate depictions of the enemies of God. These hurt the subconscious and make a person callous with time, willing to accept monstrous aesthetics.

At the same time, media is very naive in its portrayal of the Light Side, as in, what does an angel look like. About the only game I know that did it reasonably well was Heroes of Might and Magic 3.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I do not see a problem with aesthetic depictions of Harry Potter magic spells or Final Fantasy summons. It is things that aren't real, no different than Superman lifting cars to save people or Gandalf igniting his staff to see in the dark. Change the aesthetic, reword the lore however you like, it's the same. I'd think it'd be cool to fly or shoot fireballs from my hands - maybe we can ask God to let us do that in the new world - but I am under no delusion that I could accomplish that in this life. Any kid who jumps off a rooftop hoping to fly, or reciting chants from a wicca book hoping to cause something to happen had fundamentally worse problems than seeing pop media with that aesthetic. They had a spiritually impoverished upbringing with parents who didn't want to actually parent, bad or nonexistant catchesis at Church, etc.

The moral panics that hyperfixated on the aesthetics classically associated with evil - Harry Potter magic spells or kids playing D&D in the basement as if they sre going to be wiccans reciting spells, gorey mortal kombat finishers, etc - focused on the wrong things and only allowed the true evil to become more covert and insidious. Just like how the Hays Code failed, making movies visually look clean at a glance with no overt sex or gore while the subversive messaging of the narrative was still there and festered. It's a Wonderful Life, Bonanza, the Charlie Brown Christmas special, etc, were ridiculed for their Christianic themes and good heroes and good fathers. These came out during the Hays Code when you would think such content would be the norm, not the exception. The people convinced themselves that they had done a good enough job and checked out while their children saw nornalized depictions of weak or absentee fathers, singles, "found family", heroes never praying to God for their troubles, a godless worldview as you said where only victory or satisfaction in this short material world matters and not your eternal soul and honor, etc. Now we live in a world with no high production value art with a Christianic worldview is being produced at all. ****** "Christian art" with heavy handed messaging like God's Not Dead or those "Christian rock" bands and so on appeal to no one, succeeding neither as art or as a way to get people to consider their worldview. And combined with the moral panics fixating on the wrong things, only helped to innoculate people against the truth. All of these dozen or hundred billion+ USD franchises like Pokemon, Genshin Impact, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Final Fantasy, etc. We should have produced that, high production value art reflecting our worldview that would have helped turned people against evil and to God on a mass scale. But now the enemy control the means of production and the distribution channels, so the window of opportunity has elapsed.

[Norfleet]

as in, what does an angel look like.

[weaselus]

After a heated discussion on here - "what are these forum critters smoking?" - somebody on /v/ said FF7RI is the only exciting Square Enix game in forever. That is exactly my take.

The Square Enix merger, precipitated by the dismal "Spirits Within", was a disaster. Square lost creative control of all their properties and lost their magic touch. No Square Enix games have been excellent, while previously Square Co. pumped out hit after hit.

What did Enix create before the merger? Star Ocean is probably their best franchise, and it is lackluster - closer to Tales Of rather than Final Fantasy.

SO1 and SO2 are boring to play in 2025; I played three quarters through the Star Ocean 2 PSP remake more out of determination than excitement. SO3 was their most ambitious title and had the best plot twist. (This reflects a personal preference for science fiction over fantasy in most cases, and also a pretty well-known opinion that authors deconstructing Tolkien mostly dropped the ball on creating top-shelf fantasy. )

To me FFX was a great disappointment, comparable to FF13 many years later - the first corridor RPG. After the sprawling worlds of 6, 7, 8 and 9 you get this? The rustic characters and cramped locales did not help. Even if I like the underwater and beach level designs as much as the next guy, a grand sea adventure this was not. It was also seriously short. Every Final Fantasy since FF9 has been two thirds of a game.

Enix are unable to scope their projects; something Square were masterminds at.

FF13 had a female Cloud.

That probably lost most of the western audience. How would you like to experience Dune from the point of view of a female Quizats Haderach?

Netflix will film this scenario one of these days for a few hundred million and then quietly write off the loss.

What is good about FF7RI?

Action movie archetypes played straight:
Stoic young man who is ex-military? Check.
Gorgeous down-to-earth love interest who has a dark secret? Check.
Mysterious Princess Leia type? Check.
Evil corpo-empire oppressing the common man? Check.
Massive scale high tech setpieces? Check.
Chases and heists galore? Check.
Loudmouth rival with a heart of gold? Check.
Quippy dialogue played straight, without winking at the camera or excessive brooding? Check.
Quips are not obnoxious? Check.

Congratulations to the English

localization

team; they knocked it out of the park. I always go with Japanese voices, if available. The reason to switch to English voices was that ambient dialogue was not subtitled.

Once in a blue moon, the English localization is better than the original. Two examples that come to mind are Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust and Drakengard 2. After you have heard the liberties the localization cast take with the material, the original Japanese dialog sounds dry and undercooked. Good actors are capable of improving a script on the fly. Case in point: Borderlands 2's Jack was improvised by his voice actor. You couldn't possibly have thought Anthony Burch had a Jack in him, could you?

Movie-quality script? Check. That's an oxymoron with Japanese games, since most translations struggle, and the original was not written by a professional scriptwriter.

Now on to more debatable reasons to like the game:

The battle system

is better that the original. Turn-based is home for me, but I would argue real-time with skills is an upgrade. You have to consider positioning, timing, and have a greater variety of targets. I found myself aggroing enemies Dark Souls-style. The stagger-topple-break system from Xenoblade is more rewarding here, because the results are not guaranteed, but rather have to be earned through correct timing. Blocking is mandatory and complex.

Environments

are "good enough". I was gawking at cars and kei trucks. A little generic, but serviceable.

Also, I am in the camp that approves of the changed

story.

I would have been unhappy if the remake felt like I am repeating the game.

On paper, the time janitors sound horrible because they are just traditional spirits, but as part of the mix of experiences that is the game flow I would call them "inoffensive".

The music

is awful. My theory is people who actively dislike the game are more aural than I am. The original tracks gave strong cues on what to feel and set up a scene's mood. The remixes in the remake are like sewage: formless, unmelodic, overwhelming and obscuring the original track's mood. They are noise presented as music.

The only main cast design I approve of are, unsurprisingly, Barrett, Biggs and Wedge. Biggs is

Charlie Sheen

, complete with short pants.

Now on to the problematic rest of the

cast

Cloud's

hairdo is emo and does not match the spiky hair archetype. Fixed with a mod:

SpikyCloud.png

All the female leads have been nerfed multiple times with a nerf hammer to the face and body. This reeks of DEI commissars having repeatedly rejected the developer's designs for insufficient "inclusiveness".

Tifa

is a major letdown of the butterface variety. Except here she also has a "butterbody" problem. She is obviously modeled after Anri Okita and is not the pinnacle Caucasian brunette everybody knew her as. (Compare to Dissidia Tifa.)

AnriOkita.jpg

DissidiaTifa.jpg

Granted, Anri Okita is exceptionally attractive-but nowhere near the ceiling for Caucasians.

DioraBaird2.jpg

Further, original Tifa had the Okita body, which is a 10/10 in many books and mine. Compare to FF7RI's runty body:

TifaDisgraced.png

Solution: I waited years for face mods to Tifa and Aerith. They did not materialize because, as the only face mod author of the Dissidia Tifa mod explained, he took 170 hours to mod the face. But a recent mod looks like this, and that's what I use, together with an iris recolor to subdue the Asianness:

SportyVoluptuousTifa.png

Aside to gentlemen with yellow fever: Anri Okita and EVERY Asian female that is posted on the internet has had plastic surgery. No exceptions.

Aerith

has a very harsh, masculine, equine set of features. Her nose is overlong. Her eyes are tired and angry looking. Coupled with her piercing gaze, the model's presence is that of a Karen, or even androgynous like that of a ladyboy (Nien and Lynn from triples). This caused scandal in Japan at her design reveal.

Aerith 3 Versions.PNG

You can see that the middle design was a result of tweaking the original design on the left, evidently under duress. The rightmost design is a "dehorsified" version of the middle design. The overall look is hostile, mature, and unpleasant. Multiple attractiveness markers have been tweaked negatively.

Solution: Use Scarlet's model over Aerith's

Scarlet.png

This definitely hits the spot for hag lovers like me.

Jessie's

model is also deplorable. Beyond having a nerfed design, she was given a bandana.

Jessie.png

What ethnicity is this? North African is the closest I can get. Unless gypsy/Pakistani/Pajeeta etc. Her mom is a white beauty, her dad is white as well, but Jessie has been whacked with the DEI hammer.

Solution: use out-of-the-box Tifa as Jessie. She, too, looks out of Cloud's league.

Recap

Disclaimer: I am still in the honeymoon phase with this game and have not finished it.
My current verdict:
Best modern singleplayer game for lovers of high-budget JRPGs. Chock-full of action movie tropes played straight. Extra value to be had if you are not a Final Fantasy fanatic.

Character designs and music hold this game from fulfilling its potential. Mod on PC to tame the offensive parts and enjoy. If you are looking for a *good* game from Square Enix, this is the top one they have by a large margin.

[Kalarion]

The Square Enix merger, precipitated by the dismal "Spirits Within", was a disaster. Square lost creative control of all their properties and lost their magic touch. No Square Enix games have been excellent, while previously Square Co. pumped out hit after hit.

What did Enix create before the merger? Star Ocean is probably their best franchise, and it is lackluster - closer to Tales Of rather than Final Fantasy.

There's this little-known series, you probably never heard of it, it's called Dragon Quest. Dragon Quest 3 was fun, 4 was a great game with some departures from standard JRPG tropes (at least in America, I don't know if there was generational play in Japan at that point in time, much less the germ of Reccetear-likes), 5 was more of the same fun, 7 had great systems but was hampered by being too long with bad filler.

On the SE side, Dragon Quest 8 was acceptable but very grindy slop. 9 was genuinely fun, 11 was excellent (yes Sylvando is a flaming ***, the game and storyline itself were still really good).

[Tangerine]

The Square Enix merger, precipitated by the dismal "Spirits Within", was a disaster. Square lost creative control of all their properties and lost their magic touch. No Square Enix games have been excellent, while previously Square Co. pumped out hit after hit.

What did Enix create before the merger? Star Ocean is probably their best franchise, and it is lackluster - closer to Tales Of rather than Final Fantasy.

There's this little-known series, you probably never heard of it, it's called Dragon Quest. Dragon Quest 3 was fun, 4 was a great game with some departures from standard JRPG tropes (at least in America, I don't know if there was generational play in Japan at that point in time, much less the germ of Reccetear-likes), 5 was more of the same fun, 7 had great systems but was hampered by being too long with bad filler.

On the SE side, Dragon Quest 8 was acceptable but very grindy slop. 9 was genuinely fun, 11 was excellent (yes Sylvando is a flaming ***, the game and storyline itself were still really good).

If only there were some way to look up what it was involved with...

[weaselus]

The Square Enix merger, precipitated by the dismal "Spirits Within", was a disaster. Square lost creative control of all their properties and lost their magic touch. No Square Enix games have been excellent, while previously Square Co. pumped out hit after hit.

What did Enix create before the merger? Star Ocean is probably their best franchise, and it is lackluster - closer to Tales Of rather than Final Fantasy.

There's this little-known series, you probably never heard of it, it's called Dragon Quest. Dragon Quest 3 was fun, 4 was a great game with some departures from standard JRPG tropes (at least in America, I don't know if there was generational play in Japan at that point in time, much less the germ of Reccetear-likes), 5 was more of the same fun, 7 had great systems but was hampered by being too long with bad filler.

On the SE side, Dragon Quest 8 was acceptable but very grindy slop. 9 was genuinely fun, 11 was excellent (yes Sylvando is a flaming ***, the game and storyline itself were still really good).

Yes, I forgot about Dragon Quest being an Enix property. If anything, that makes the Square-Enix failures even more obviously systemic.

Once upon a time, I beat Dragon Quest 8 out of curiosity about the big ruckus in the media. All I saw was a game for eight-year-olds.

Games that are squarely aimed at children - Pokemon, Mario, most Nintendo franchises, Dragon Quest, etc. - are not video games in my book. They are time-wasters for your offspring.

However, since they cause infantilization, you may want to keep your children away from them. Give them shmups and beatemups instead, and you will be raising them in proper 80s fashion.

Or don't allow them games at all, for that hallowed pre-modern-era radiance. Your sixteen-year old will be rugged and genteel like your grandfather.

[methoxetamine]

After a heated discussion on here - "what are these forum critters smoking?" - somebody on /v/ said FF7RI is the only exciting Square Enix game in forever. That is exactly my take.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on Rebirth since I don't like Remake but love Rebirth

[Cipher]

Jessie's

model is also deplorable. Beyond having a nerfed design, she was given a bandana.

What do you mean by this?

[weaselus]

Jessie's

model is also deplorable. Beyond having a nerfed design, she was given a bandana.

What do you mean by this?

The hair band covering her forehead. It looks like a bandana for women

[weaselus]

After a heated discussion on here - "what are these forum critters smoking?" - somebody on /v/ said FF7RI is the only exciting Square Enix game in forever. That is exactly my take.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on Rebirth since I don't like Remake but love Rebirth

I just visited Aerith's Mom's house. Have had a blast all the way through hanging out with Scarlet, rather than horse-face Aerith. That would have been underwhelming.

I expect I will like Rebirth no less.

Here is a high point from my current run, like it's 1997:

Wake up in the abandoned cathedral. Reno and some Shinra goons burst in.

RenoAndGoons.png

Reno, a charismatic guy, laughs at Cloud's assertion that he is a SOLDIER First Class, and attacks with incredible speed and agility. My inner commentary: "Cloud is a Constitution type, Reno; your ninja moves are not going to cut it." Parry his attacks in Obliterator mode, then end the fight with a stagger and a limit break, erasing half of Reno's health bar like we are playing Tekken.

Cloud is about to execute Reno when Aerith stops him.

CloudTakingDownReno.PNG

Reno spends several more minutes in cut-scenes looking like he was literally beat to death, then slinks away.

RenoLeaving.PNG

That's reactivity as far as I am concerned. The environment (Reno) changed its attitude and fitness status as a result of Cloud's choice to end him. I am so used to poorly made games that I fully expected Reno to shrug off the near-death experience he had and depart with some snarky comment.

(Disclaimer: the perfect fight described above happened on the fourth or fifth try. Before that I jobbed like the snowflake Reno said I was.)

I also like how the characters are painted, fleshing out personality quirks that had to be inferred in FF7. Cloud is a stone-cold killer. Although Reno tried to back down after his defeat, Reno's victory would have resulted in Cloud's death as well.

But because Cloud the Reaper is a victim of Shinra's experiments, he is morally justified, like Neo in "The Matrix" against the minions of the system.

The other party members act as an external conscience for him, which he obliges again and again. He is prudent enough to defer to others in critical situations.

Recap: I don't think I would have been able to dominate Reno if my ward was Aerith. I suspect I went above and beyond for Scarlet.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

FF7R was made after all of the Nomura and Kitase FF7 spinoffs like Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus, which flanderized the SOLDIERs like Genesis and made them into DBZ or Naruto or Bleach levels of crazy superhuman speed and capability. Reno in FF7R is the first character we meet with superhuman speed, and Reno does not call himself a 1st class SOLDIER, therefore Cloud definitely would not be. It's also arguable that even without superhuman speed, a real 1st Class SOLDIER would be a master of using materia and would thus be able to defeat a few grunt soldiers with some skill or esoteric knowledge they do not possess.

Cloud is not a stone cold killer, and neither was Zack. And in this remake series, the heroes (who are TERRORISTS BLOWING UP CITY BLOCKS) explicitly do not kill any Shinra personnel they come across while blowing up the Mako reactors, which is comical. I think this is the first time in the Remake series that Cloud tries to actually kill someone.

[Oyster Sauce]

Jessie's

model is also deplorable. Beyond having a nerfed design, she was given a bandana.

What do you mean by this?

The hair band covering her forehead. It looks like a bandana for women

[Tangerine]

What do you mean by this?

The hair band covering her forehead. It looks like a bandana for women

You're not smart enough to understand his sophisticated point.

[Cipher]

Jessie's

model is also deplorable. Beyond having a nerfed design, she was given a bandana.

What do you mean by this?

The hair band covering her forehead. It looks like a bandana for women

...but that has always been there. Her original design in PSX had it too:

Concept Art:



Original sprite:

[weaselus]

Reno in FF7R is the first character we meet with superhuman speed, and Reno does not call himself a 1st class SOLDIER, therefore Cloud definitely would not be. It's also arguable that even without superhuman speed, a real 1st Class SOLDIER would be a master of using materia and would thus be able to defeat a few grunt soldiers with some skill or esoteric knowledge they do not possess.

Cloud is not a stone cold killer, and neither was Zack. ... I think this is the first time in the Remake series that Cloud tries to actually kill someone.

@Val the Moofia Boss You make several points I respectfully disagree with. I am responding on how I read the characters from my own playthrough, which is as action movie heroes. FF7RI again shows (like a mentioned in a previous post about Isekai) that Japanese games are good at portraying the psychology and necessity of violence. To wit:

1. Reno is not rank-and-file; he is a combat-oriented secret agent happy to throw his weight around (field agent for the martial organization that is Shinra; has an ego weapon made by Shinra specifically for him). Which SOLDIERs have ego weapons? He is the equivalent of a James Bond. He is also responsible for scouting SOLDIERs and forcing them into service (and therefore knows all the notable SOLDIERs). The fact that Cloud wiped his squad and him in the matter of seconds strongly suggests that Cloud is a one-man army.

2. Cloud beat Reno with sheer brute force, as a Soldier 1st class would. First-class soldiers are competent at everything, so they can exploit a weak point in any opponent. Cloud is a shock trooper to Reno's agent.

3. Stone-cold killer does not mean "murderer" but rather a person who is acclimated to violence and its aftermath. Veteran troops of all armies are stone-cold killers. Did you think Cloud carries a horse-slayer to save lives? He has already killed hundreds in my game.

4. The job of a soldier is to defeat the enemy. By Japanese and American combat doctrines, the moment you pull a gun or a sword, you are forfeiting your life for a chance to defeat the enemy. This is the "Live by the sword, die by the sword" Scriptural warning. Because Cloud takes arms in defense of others rather than himself, he is morally justified, and he has fully accepted the soldier's burden (something that Tifa has a problem doing herself and is a major theme in the game).

[weaselus]

@Cipher @Oyster Sauce
The problem is this DEI-nerfed creature is not believable.

They did not need to use 4/10 Pakistani mystery meat for the Jesse design.

Weird clothes look ugly on ugly women. This is not news.

The original sprite/chibi model looks like a white woman with blue eyes, so use the semblance of somebody like Cameron Diaz or Denise Richards. Jesse is on the level of famous lead actresses.

[Oyster Sauce]

@Cipher @Oyster Sauce
The problem is this DEI-nerfed creature is not believable.

They did not need to use 4/10 Pakistani mystery meat for the Jesse design.

Weird clothes look ugly on ugly women. This is not news.

The original sprite/chibi model looks like a white woman with blue eyes, so use the semblance of somebody like Cameron Diaz or Denise Richards. Jesse is on the level of famous lead actresses.

you're delusional

[Cipher]

@Cipher @Oyster Sauce
The problem is this DEI-nerfed creature is not believable.

They did not need to use 4/10 Pakistani mystery meat for the Jesse design.

Weird clothes look ugly on ugly women. This is not news.

The original sprite/chibi model looks like a white woman with blue eyes, so use the semblance of somebody like Cameron Diaz or Denise Richards. Jesse is on the level of famous lead actresses.

But that's why I specifically asked you to clarify what you meant about the bandana comment, which implied that the bandana wasn't there and that "giving" her the bandana was the worse offense, even over her face. It is fine if you didn't know that the original had it, but please don't try to now back pedal and act that the comment was entirely related to everything else besides the bandana.

"Weird clothes look ugly on ugly women" but you didn't say that. You said that the problem is that they "gave" her the bandana.

[weaselus]

@Cipher @Oyster Sauce
The problem is this DEI-nerfed creature is not believable.

They did not need to use 4/10 Pakistani mystery meat for the Jesse design.

Weird clothes look ugly on ugly women. This is not news.

The original sprite/chibi model looks like a white woman with blue eyes, so use the semblance of somebody like Cameron Diaz or Denise Richards. Jesse is on the level of famous lead actresses.

you're delusional

Nice.

This is where you exit the conversation.