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Hey folks! I'm gonna be logging my thoughts on playing FFVII Remake, arranged and hashtagged all neat-like. I wanted to collate my ideas given how big VII is in peoples' minds.

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I have little personal attachment to 7, but a lot to FF in general. I thought it would be interesting to share my opinion as someone who's not bought in on 7 alone, but thinks a lot about these stories.

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I know the broad strokes of 7's plot, and have been spoiled on the tweaks and twists made for 7r. However, other people responding may not, so please be careful and restrict big spoilers to rot13.

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I decided to start this thread in ch4, so I'll be summarizing my thoughts up to that point. After I finish chapter 4, I'll be breaking the threads up chapter by chapter. Feel free to poke me for more details on the early stuff!

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First, the intro: I have to say I wasn't feeling the orchestration? The sweeping shots of midgar and the wastes were tailor made for extra credit time, and give a sense of the setting well. However, the music feels disconnected.

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It's like I'm at a Distant Worlds concert watching it projected behind the orchestra, not a cohesive whole. Unique/bolder arrangement would have worked better for this.

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Tutorials and reactor are fine, though combat hits a snag already when you're just holding square and waiting for hp to empty from your gun. I really wanted more from the Scorp wrt stagger! It gets the idea across but there's no big dumb fun moment to just unload damage

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It's a great character intro to Avalanche tho, especially Jessie and Cloud. I'll echo other ppls thoughts that tipping Shinra's hand early mostly serves to blunt our party's culpability and begin avoiding moral problems.

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Moral problems like killing just. So many shinra goons. It's black comedy how much they get sent to die. Combat starts to pick up here though, and the setpiece running through topside is good

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Sephiroth shows up already, says some WILD shit about killing cloud's family, and makes me more interested in him than 20 years of supplementary materials have ever done. Sephiroth barely has a character, so this take is already great. Looking forward to more

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Aerith's scene also very well done, the dark souls ghosts are A Bit Much on top of the other juggling balls in the air; they work better if you know og 7 and go "wait what" than standing alone rn. I like that whenever cloud has dialogue options, they're all jerkish

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Barret's train scene emphasizing his aggressive qualities rather than his true-believer fervor is underwhelming. In general, from his modeled hair to speech, it feels like they felt they could leave him half baked?

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Let tropes fill in spots while they turned attention elsewhere. It's distracting to me, just like these train people looking like they come from a different universe to the party.

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Also gonna say, as of chapter 4, Wedge has 50% of his scenes invoke his weight or gluttony. Wedge is not respected by the game, and him being The Fat Guy is part of that. Jesse is openly thirsty and that's poked fun at, but it's not centered in barbs the way Wedge gets.

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The Slums are already leagues more engaging, I love the design and worldbuilding. The foodtrucks everywhere outside the station contrast the run down shops— early design markers of the class themes

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Tifa is great! You really get a sense of her character early, and I like the tweaks to make her more characterized at this point. Right now, to flesh her out more in midgar, she's getting extra attention to the fact that she's the most involved with the community

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Her objections to the bombings/violence are rooted in being the person most directly seeing the collateral damage, but she still believes in the cause, and she's reaching out to Cloud because she doesn't know how to handle this conflict

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It's an immediate, empathetic hook and I hope they don't brush past it. Tifa is genuinely kind and that's often my favorite quality of characters. Also she's the most fun character to play as so far?? By a *lot*. My fightgames brain really hooks into her rhythm.

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Some of the slum scenes have a strange disconnect between stellar VA and animation that doesn't match the vocal energy. That plus the low res, N64-looking textures distracted me a lot.

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Chadley is here, and I immediately dislike this teen. Dude practically pulled out his skull calipers to tell Cloud he was genetically predisposed for swords. These types of minor challenges help give mini-goals in fights, but sometimes they turn into checklist chores

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Otherwise, sidequesting and talking to the residents was great. The kids are all better designed than the adults, the landlady owns, and Prelude (edm) is better than Hip Hop de Chocobo.

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Bouncing ahead to the bike scene, repeat everything I said about Barret, Wedge, and Jessie in your head. The bike itself is inoffensive, but doesn't feel great? It's a gameplay diversion that would have been stronger, later.

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I love Roche tho, love everything abou this wackadoo SOLDIER addicted to motorcycles, please just canonize SOLDIER as a mgs bossfight production factory

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Summons are a wrinkle on top of the other mechanics, but the combat isn't particularly complicated. The difficulty is knowing when an attack is gonna bounce your hp to the bottom, and healing before that.

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It's more about satisfyingly setting up a stagger -> damage bomb, which does feel good even if it's not that deep. With multiple characters, I'll at least stay engaged for a while! Last mechanics bit: weapon upgrading is Crystarium With A Worse UI. It's on Auto now.

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Catching up to my live play now, this whole Ghost section is strong for the sense of disorientation but weak for how unsatisfying the ghost fights are. They mostly just delayed my popoff rather than ask for strategy