In battles, you will usually control Cloud at the start, but you can set it so you start things off with whoever else is in your party. Remake has all the technical power needed to realize Midgar in incredible detail - well, the parts you can actually visit. A couple of decades since, and it sounds so quaint. The game tried to wield camera angle transitions between computer-generated backgrounds and added dramatic tension through the incredible soundtrack - or lack thereof. The original FF7 had cinematic ambitions before it was even really all that possible back in 1997. In this first installment, he’s just a guest party member. Aerith, mysterious flower girl, is a bit too consistently chipper, but her character gets some of the funniest lines, too - typically at the expense of angsty Cloud. Red XIII, a giant feline character that joins your party late into the remake, also has some zingers, but we’ll have to wait for part two to hear more from him - and actually use him. Barret, leader of rebel group Avalanche and with a gun for an arm, is still rather cliched and shouts a bit too much. The storyline is different in parts (especially the final acts) but generally keeps the soul of the original.Ĭharacters are more well-rounded than the original. You might still be controlling Cloud, the mercenary with a mysterious past and a rather consistent migraine, but this is no beat-for-beat remaster of the original. There are no more turn-based battles they’re replaced with a system that pulls strands from Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts, and fuses them with FF7 moves and quirks. It was going to retread the same story, the same characters, but rendered at a level unimaginable when the game was first released in 1997.
Even after I’d played the demo and previewed early parts of the game, I wasn’t sure whether Remake could deliver that FFVII experience: I knew it would only encompass the opening few acts of the original, that you wouldn’t go beyond Midgar, a huge steampunk metropolis that never lets you forget how big it is. Would they ruin the memories we had of the original? With this episodic delivery of the remake, it felt like a new way to take fans’ money. The good news is that Final Fantasy VII Remake delivers.
#FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE AMAZON SERIES#
If you’ve followed the announcement, the first impressions, demos and countless documentary videos from the team behind it, you’ll know it’s a big deal for the company, for the Final Fantasy series and for people obsessed with the game - like me. Decades in the making, Square Enix’s refreshed vision of Final Fantasy VII is here.