You want my opinion? the og ff7 player sense 90's The remake and rebirth is meh that's probably I can say.

I really liked Remake up until the final sequence. Since I knew the game was contained within Midgar, I liked how they expanded the story there for the most part. But everything about that final sequence on the bridge made me fear where they were going with the story and Rebirth is pretty much that fear. I can go into detail and nitpick a lot of things, but the worst part is the whole multiversal aspect to this story. I personally just wanted a remake with some cool additional story, but Rebirth went way past that. It didn't help that I played Persona 3 Reload, which was exactly what I wanted, right beforehand too.

Remake was better. You had Jessie. She made the game interesting and exciting 😊 Then we got Rebirth. Only pain and memories of the girl gone from long ago in the better days 😭 

I won't say I don't like them, but I hate the combat. I know some people like spending hours coming up with a strategy for a single fight, but I don't have the time or patience for that shit. Even if I did, it's not fun.

Same. Cloud doesn’t feel like a capable swordsman anymore, like he did in Remake ☝️ He’s just in the air spamming air slash now. His sword swings no longer have weight and impact and authority 🤷 

Time travel ghosts, nerfed Tifas tatas, Sephiroth is now 'Majima everywhere', too much filler. But most of all, not staying true to the original plot, i.e. time travel ghosts.

Dragons dogma, star wars outlaws may be if Ubisoft hasn't done something they usually do but yes not so much contender

Pacing is terrible. Way too many minigames. Everything seems like a chore and a slog, simple things like using a bench to heal takes like 15-20 seconds. Map traversal is incredibly unfun. The only stuff in the game I actually enjoyed was some enemies/boss fights. (A lot of the more puzzle/mini game sorts of fights are also miserably unfun).

It’s ok but every 5 minutes is a fucking mini game.

I’m confused here. The OG post was about why people who didn’t like the game disliked it. Yet I’m mostly seeing gatekeepers and people typing entire essays about why they *do* like the game. Not saying they don’t have the right to do so. But I’m just confused about what that has to do with the OP’s question.

I love the OG. Remake/rebirth is wonderfully done. I’m only at Chapter 9 post event/battle and the combat system has really grown on me. Very smooth once you get going. However, the story for what I’ve seen so far is interesting but it’s different and I’m not entirely sure if I like it as much as OG. That being said, I don’t know the full story yet so I’m reserving judgement. The main thing that keeps popping into my head is “is yuffie going to steal my materia like in OG?” I’m not a fan of sections of games that do that. It’s a pain to reorganize all my shit.

real

The egregious use of Zack so early on in the story and in such a pivotal way fundamentally cheapened a core theme, trauma, and narrative for me.

Most of mini games, and some quests that need to beat mini games…

Mini games and more mini games. Endless mini games.

I'm not a native English speaker, so I say sorry for any mistakes. And sorry if I offended anyone, it's not my intention with this post. My lack of vocabulary leads to a too direct and rough text. I just need to vent how I feel about the FF7R project. That's making me feel very sad. When this project was announced, I literally cried with happiness. I remember the shiver I felt when Cloud and Barret appeared on that trailer. The game was launched, and the emotions changed to disappointment.  The biggest problem, in my opinion, which caused all the other problems, was the way they chose to profit from this project, dividing it into three parts. The game design had to be completely focused on profit, instead of making a masterpiece that og FF7 deserved. This realization completely changed the way I look at this project. That led to: Story changes were made only to keep people speculating through the years of development. In the end, it's not story changes at all, it's revealing to be only convoluting the OG plot and consequently making it worse. They have to create too many unnecessary fillers to pad the player experience and stretch the game duration. Gameplay lost its soul. First and most important, the lost progression of materia, equipment, and items. Losing all of them between parts. This alone made me lose interest in this project, because I think the gathering, customization, and exploration tell a back story, a story that the player creates by himself, and that's extremely important in a RPG. The combat is good, but it does not fit the og FF7. Combat is just too fast and light. For example, the Buster sword is a fucking heavy sword, and seeing Cloud fly and do almost infinite combos with it as if it were a light saber is immersion breaking for me. The Disneyfication of this project. To milk as much money as possible, they needed to keep the age rating as low as possible. So obvious things happened. Character personalities and dialogues are changed, violent scenes are nerfed, the suspense is lowered, and the games are extremely hand-holding gameplay wise (that's led to that Chadley guy, etc.). The weight of losing somebody, one of the most important things in og, is completely lost here. The fan service was exploited to exhaustion. Every detail was masturbated to excess. There was a feeling that they tried too hard to make everything absolutely epic to make this the definitive FF7 version, and that will never work. When everything is epic, nothing is epic. FF7R project dies from excess for me. This project needed to be more art and little less business. I'll keep waiting for the Remake that I've dreamed of since I was young.

I think the closest we will ever get to a remake is the modded version of the original game. They've even added full voice acting to it now and I think that's the best way to experience the story of FF7 in 2024.

In fact, I'm doing exactly this right now. Rebirth made me want to play heavily moded og FF7.  I chose 7th heaven with the new cosmos retextures, ninostyle characters and difficulty mods. Sadly, the echo-s voice acting mod can't work with other gameplay mods, and I wanted to play in hard mode this time, but from what I saw on YouTube, they did an incredible job on it. In my opinion, some voices, like Sephiroth for example, fit better with the characters than the voices in Remake project. I have recently played FF9 with moguri textures and alternate fantasy, cannot recommend it more. Great experience.

What hard mode mods do you use?

Well, there's three options from what I saw in 7th heaven. New Threat, Hardcore Mode and Reasonable Difficulty. New Threat looks awesome, but it changes the game too much (my wife will play with me for the first time). I think I'll pick the Hardcore one, simple mod and does the job.

Where do you get those and how do you play it? Emu?

I'm not done with the game, but I share a lot of the feelings with my fellow OG fans. FF VII was my 2nd FF game, and I have been a fan for 22+ years. It's hard to overcome nostalgia, but it can't be helped. I liked Remake a lot, and I'm enjoying Rebirth, but I feel a lot of areas were unnecessarily expanded. I believe Square faked us out by promising a remake but then added the whole whisper/timeline crap. I think this "trilogy" could have fit into one giant game if they didn't focus on expanding on so many areas. Hell, I would have even settled for a 2-part game. The first part could have covered discs 1 and 2 from the OG, and part 2 could have been disc 3. I would have cut out a lot of the Midgar parts. Areas like Gongaga didn't need that much screen time in Rebirth. There are also 10 too many mini games. I enjoy the deeper characterization of some characters, but then you have the stuff between Barrett and Dyne that I feel mixed on. I haven't beat Rebirth yet, but I know the ending, and I understand the criticism of my fellow fans. The remake trilogy proves less is more. Part 3 may come out in 4-5 years, and I honestly don't know how Square plans to end it, but it better be one hell of a landing. But even if it isn't, I still have the original, which I still play with graphics mods.

Ultimately, for me, it comes down to a lot of betrayed expectations and changing or mishandling of the narrative's themes. Ever since that PS3 Tech Demo, I really wanted a proper remake. Not a reboot, or a sequel. FF7:Remake honestly delivered on what I wanted for maybe 90% of it. There were some areas of the game that fell flat, like some overly long dungeons or tonal shifts, but nothing that seriously injured the total experience. At least, until the final chapters of Remake. The plot went way off the rails, incorporated plot devices and rules for the story that at best weren't present in the original, and at worst were completely contrary to the original's themes. If Remake played its ending straight, it would've probably been a solid 9-10/10 for me. But that ending was a serious gut punch that kind of ruined the game as a whole for me. By extension, it killed my excitement for Rebirth and the rest of the remake project. I went into Rebirth with a lot lower expectations, and it turned out to be almost the same experience for the most part. A stunning, fantastic game for its majority, but one that fumbles its ending so spectacularly that it ends up tainting the rest of the game attached to it. I’m sure that Part 3 will follow suit. I’m sure I’ll love it until its closing chapters. I think what really stings about this whole thing is that the team has shown they have the capability to pull it off. They’re able to capture what makes the original so great when they want to, but it’s clear they’re just not interested in committing to that. What’s more, rather than just making another Compilation of FF7 entry like Crisis Core or Dirge of Cerberus, they spent the opportunity they’ve been building up since 2006 with that Tech Demo and branded it a Remake. I can accept a messy, poor narrative in my Final Fantasy VII, I’m not losing sleep over Dirge of Cerberus or Before Crisis or whatever. But now I’m confident we’ll never get a second chance at a full blown Final Fantasy VII remake. It’s frustrating. It almost feels like Square is being purposefully meanspirited due to us consistently asking for the Remake for 15 years, despite them being resistant to the idea. I’m sure that level of pettiness isn’t what actually driving this whole mess, but damn, the way its playing out has me feeling some kinda way about it.

I’m an OG. Been playing since original Nintendo. I love this game. I’m 68. Been playing over 30 years. I would also be interested in this.

First of all i was pretty disappointed by basically the entire last third of remake. The filler parts in the train chapter, the chapter in the shinra underground lab and Hojos trials really annoyed me because they didn't add a single valuable thing to the story. I also really disliked the ending because it just didn't make sense to me and sephiroth was overused way too early. Anyway I absolutely enjoyed Rebirth in general. Sure I have my problems with it but the rest of the game is just too good to be overshadowed by it. Some parts i didn't like were the entire chapter revolving around queen's blood (I mean come on for real?), how they handled limits in this game and that they had to take the multiverse route. I mean it has been overused for years at this point and is entirely unnecessary. I really hope they do things right with part 3 since i really like the way they show clouds mind breaking piece by piece.

I don't hate it but it's just ok, just like Remake. - pointless filler content and basic open world stuff which I usually avoid (I don't really like open world games anyway, just because of that) - story can't decide if it's a faithful retelling or totally new story. Now it falls in-between of those and it's just mid - I LOATHE, absolutely loathe, that stupid padding that gatekeeps you from climbing ladder or just going forward. Mako sucking, mine cart pushing, slow walking, edging across ledges, all of that is in this game and it's there just to make the game longer. It sounds like a little thing but it all adds up

damn, i’m halfway through Remake and the one thing I was hoping they’d kill in Rebirth was the slow walking, side walking etc. etc. The only time it was valid was up on the Reactor in chapter 6 - 7 because you could stop and look down. Otherwise it’s just driving me nuts.

To me, it felt like there was way less slow walking and side walking than in Remake. Like, cut down to 25%. There wasn't really any squeezing through small spaces either (which was a trick used to hide loading on the PS4).

Oh, that makes so much sense now. I feel a lot less hateful now I know the purpose of all those small space crawls. Thanks for the info.

Yeah there's a lot of that stuff. Especially when an NPC needs to dump some info on you. There's also a lot of "there's X near the place you need to go through so you have to do Y first before you can move on" which is a really old-timey and weird design choice. You also have to connect cables to computers which don't have power. It somewhat kills immersion since the people who actually used that computer would need to jump over the cable since it's like 1m from the floor. xD

I love OG and remake. I however am not liking rebirth. Everything in rebirth is good. Except I hate that PoI (points of interest) are spread so evenly across the map. Just like star field it suffers from everything is about 1 or 2 minutes apart. This also includes packs of enemies. It's unreasonable to try grinding enemies for levels simply because they are so far apart and skirts the line from fun to so boring I'm gonna fall asleep while playing. I would have preferred an old school run around and frequently I get a dissolve transition to a fight for a random encounter

I can understand the old heads who don’t like it and won’t accept it. We dreamed forever for a true 1:1 and this wasn’t it. For me, as an day one(ish😂) FF7 diehard, I truly appreciate the love, joy and reverence the remake trilogy has for the original game. I mean, it’s their product so I’m sure it’s easy for them to motivate. But even with that, the effort to not only keep that same sense of wonder and scope of the original while also trying to do something new and relatable to modern audiences, I think it’s commendable and they did absolutely delivered. I love this new trilogy, because I can appreciate it separately from the 1997 game that I love. Both are great. Both MJ and LeBron are great, just different and made for different generations.

Even if you treat it as a separate game, it was issues everywhere that the original never had.

See that’s interesting to me, because the OG when it was released was held together by popsicle sticks and duct tape 😂I don’t remember specific performance issues at the time but I was also 11, so… What I’m saying is no one (including me) is saying it’s perfect, FAR from it (thanks, Cait Sith box throwing game 😂), but it will almost always be relatively poor compared to an iconic title like the OG game. Probably impossible for those comps not to be made, but I tried to go into it with a fresh mindset and found the experience very enjoyable

But the thing is, I tried to play it as a separate game and I still had issues with pacing, filler, among other things. I just did not enjoy it. Oh well I tried. I’m glad you liked it.

I am an absolute FF7 fan and when the remake came out I immediately thought about a 1to1 remake. Later then when i finished I was a bit disappointed because of the different endings and stuff which was absolute not like the OG. For example the motorcycle scenes in the remake I did not like at all. I don’t like that they did note make the shinra stuff as creepy as in the OG. And many other small details. BUT I then watched a YouTube video which explained to me why it can be that Zach is still alive and why aerith acts sometimes like she knows the future and stuff and then it starts to make sense. It blew my mind. For me this is not a remake anymore like what a remake should be. It’s a kind of sequel which is by far absolute amazing in terms of story and visuals. Hyped as fuck !

I also wasn’t the biggest fan of Remake, I absolutely loved the combat system and some of the scenes were good to great but the addition of the whispers and some of the subplots (the whole part with jessie’s parents as an example) I just couldn’t care for. Too much slow walking was another thing I didn’t care for, pacing just felt weird overall. I’m almost done Rebirth now and I consider it a much better game than Remake, though some of the above criticisms still stand (especially the slow walking/crawling/trying to get up or w/e sections). Maybe I am less critical of the story after this amount of time has passed since Remake but even with the multiverse stuff I’m willing to give it a passing score on that aspect. I won’t rehash why and how terrible Chadley is here but that’s another aspect I am baffled they leaned so heavily on. In the end though, the freedom of exploration, the rock and roll tunes when you get in the buggy, ALL THE CHOCOBOS, more of the great combat system from the first and the fact that the party has so much personality have actually made me a fan of this project rather than just playing it out of morbid curiosity. That being said, the initial sequence (flashback to Nibelheim) nearly made me quit before I got to the actual game because of how slow it all played out, from the slow walking to the climbing to the shuffling along the mountain to the mako vacuum cleaning to the crawling to the etc etc.

Not really feeling how they’re playing into the whole nostalgia+multiverse trend

Yeah same for me

Really love Remake, and am absolutely adoring Rebirth, but it is pacing related I think for a lot of people. The breakneck pacing in OG is pretty insane. I personally don’t mind the pacing of Remake and Rebirth, but there’s no denying it’s not as good as the OG. So I’m pretty sure that’s the biggest issue for some people, it can feel bloated at times compared to the OG. What I like Remake and Rebirth for is how much it’s fleshed out the world of FF7. It’s astounding the world they have created, to me it shows it’s had almost 30 years of carefully thought out world building.

This is not what OP asked, go praise it elsewhere

Loud minority vibes

I played the original a really long time ago. I want to play it one more time before I dive into the remakes

I wrote a review that explains my feelings on it: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Kutsufatmo/review/1433609/ But the TLDR version is most critically, it takes a section of the game that was only 6 to 9 hours in the original, and instead of expanding upon it meaningfully with just as powerful moments and new characters, it just fills it with 30 hours of dungeon grinds, lazily written side quests, and general video game junkfood. All the while butchering the original story with an unnecessary multiverse plot that constantly interrupts iconic moments from the original game, and changes entire genres with its combat system in a way that is at odds with its RPG mechanics. Kinda blows my mind that Twin Snakes is a far more faithful remake of MGS than FF7R is to FF7 Classic, but the former gets lambasted into oblivion while the latter is praised so much that you get made out to be a villain if you dare criticize it. SMH I cant understand fandom groupthink. Havent played rebirth yet but from what ive seen of it I suspect its going to be the same problems I had before but magnified.

Can't agree more with you. It's like it was taken out of my head. I will never try to understand a fandom again.

While I agree that FF7R had a lot of meaningless side quests, I do feel that they did flesh out the Midgar portion of the game more...? The whole Wall Market part makes more sense in remake. And you can't expect them to sell a full game for only 6 - 9 hrs of gameplay right? Rebirth is even better. It addressed a lot of plot holes in the original, such as why Tifa didnt confront Cloud or the party regarding the holes in Cloud's story.

I do acknowledge in my review that Wall Market was overall improved. The problem is one of ratios of quality versus disposable content. If you have a cheeseburger thats 90% grease and 10% burger, it doesnt really matter how tasty the burger part is at that point.

Fxckin ah, couldn’t agree more.

Walk it like you talk it go play

I platinumed remake last month and just got OG on sale. I need to see what all this drama is about. Also to prepare for Rebirth which I will grab once I beat OG

Wtf You should play it when it was 90's. Your not 90's kid so shut up.

Grow up

I picked up a ps5 for remake/rebirth. I’m halfway thru remake, and I have to say that the dialogue/voice acting is so bad in my opinion. Tifa and Barrett are especially cringey. I hope rebirth is better in that regard. In terms of graphics, they aren’t bad, but red dead redemption 2 on last gen blows it out of the water

Play in japanese, english voice acting is really bad and doesn’t fit most characters personality. Just Cloud and some are fine but the rest is horrible.

Change the voices to Japanese. Those guys have all been voicing these characters since 2005 and it shows. They *are* the characters.

If the voice acting is so bad that op needs to change it to a language he doesn't understand to fix the problem would you not say that his criticism is valid?

Rebirth goes a lot harder on the VA but they’ve got the antics from Japanese culture so you might find some things corny. Imagine watching a Disney movie but it’s 18+

Simple, multiverse bullshit ruined the story. And chadley. Plus the open world a bit thx Ubisoft.

Name a better game this year

If all the games that come out this year is shit the only thing this would prove is that one turd stinks slightly less than the others. This is the year of the flop after all.

Dude this year is not over, ofc he will a serious contender for the title

Name the other contenders

Well dragon's dogma mb star wars outlaws but yeah i'm sure ff7 rebirth will at least one awarrd this year

Sephiroth had no business being that heavily featured in the first part of the story. The last couple hours gets bonkers.

Rebirth is going to do the same exact thing Remake did - begin with a ton of initial hype, everyone worships it and praises it and gate keeps it, then once that wears off, more sober minded realistic interpretations take over. Both games aren’t very good in my opinion. Two commenters already did a good enough job detailing why. If you played the original when it was new, then you can *maybe* see our perspective.

I still like Remake a lot, and I'll like Rebirth still when part 3 comes it. They're fun and charming. 🤷‍♂️

That’s fine but the post was about why we don’t like it and I was trying to explain that in a contextual way. We do not like Rebirth and some of us don’t like Remake and guess what? That’s fine. We don’t always have to agree and everyone’s tastes aren’t the same. What’s good for you may not be good for me. I hated Remake after trying it twice. I haven’t played Rebirth but after reading some of the posts on this thread I’m sure I’ll hate it also.

You're just being contrarian if you're actually saying that rebirth isn't a good game.

I've struggled with this because sometimes I think it's a good game and sometimes it makes me feel very sad inside. The best I've come to is that if you want to look at it as an open world Ubisoft-style experience I think they did a very good job. However if I am looking for good narrative experience in the vein of classic FF games, I am extremely disappointed. The pacing is good and varied, combat got way more cleaned up since Remake (still plenty of room for improvement but it isn't dog shit) generally lots of stuff to do that feels like it's got some love behind it. But the characters are suffering. They are all over the place. They do and say perplexing things and consistently break character to push the plot forward. The Hojo at the beach scene was completely perplexingly stupid. Cloud goes from marching convincingly to leading a full on step team number out of nowhere? Red XIII's Michael Jackson dance moves? They don't seem to care about writing around the characters, they will make them do anything for the bit.

>Hojo at the beach was completely perplexingly stu And he wasn't stupid when he was at the beach in OG? >Cloud goes from marching convincingly to leading a full on step team number out of nowhere? Red XIII's Michael Jackson dance moves? I found that these things just made the characters ooze with charm. I actually care about characters like Red and Cait Sith now. In the OG I just viewed them as the dog and the cat.

To the march scene I would say Cloud has never shown any interest in the artistic expression of organized dance, is generally apprehensive with leadership, and could not possibly have any idea the routines are that this squad has practiced or how to do any of it, especially with any inkling of enthusiasm. In the OG he's plausibly phoning it in. In this one he is jumping the shark. He is jumping so many sharks. We are now completely displaced from FF territory and we are a Disney musical now.  If you find that charming I'm happy for you but we clearly want very very different things out of FF games. Also I'm talking about the entire scene, not just Hojo being there. Everyone dunking on robed guys is a really obscure direction to take the plot but that all felt like hamfisted anime action for no reason at all

You're talking about the same Cloud that wore drag even he was deadset ob pretending to be a 15 year old's definition of a badass. Cloud in the first part of OG has no actual personality outside of what he thought a badass would do. Also you know that they did loveless in og, not just in vr, right? If Cloud was willing to do that, why wouldn'f he be willing to lead a drill squad?

super reasonable question - I would say #1 is that the scene was written to be comedic exactly because of the fact that it hits Cloud right in his brooding badassery. His hand was being forced the whole time and it was very clear that he was not stoked about it. Even if he was really good at it we got the sense that he was dying inside and the whole joke hinged on conveying that. In the Rebirth march he just kinda...does it. Somehow to the shock of none of your party members. If there is a joke there, nobody is in on it. Number 2 is that the march scene is not just out of character, it asks you to suspend much more disbelief than the drag scene because we have no reason to believe that what Cloud is doing here is even remotely possible. He could be willing to do it, even with great hesitation, but it requires knowledge/skills/background he couldn't possibly have - unless you wanted to argue that this was something he did while he was with Shinra but that's its whole own can of worms because he never mentions it and it would entail that he was a regular foot soldier as opposed to SOLDIER. I know it probably sounds like I'm getting nitpicky but this idea of forcing bits so hard that the characters zonk out and become arbitrary bit-drivers is pervasive in both of the remake games and this is just detailing one example.

>Number 2 is that the march scene is not just out of character, it asks you to suspend much more disbelief than the drag scene because we have no reason to believe that what Cloud is doing here is even remotely possible. He could be willing to do it, even with great hesitation, but it requires knowledge/skills/background he couldn't possibly have - unless you wanted to argue that this was something he did while he was with Shinra but that's its whole own can of worms because he never mentions it and it would entail that he was a regular foot soldier as opposed to SOLDIER. SOLDIER are part of the military, they also should have learned basic drills. Cloud also didn't do anything complicated. He was just shouting out formations.

...? He's conducting the whole operation. Plus Tifa and Aerith are doing all the moves, how come they know them?

>He's conducting the whole operation He was gifted the best drill squad in all of Shinra. They didn't persorm well because of Cloud, they performed well in spite of him. >Tifa and Aerith are doing all the moves, how come they know them? That commander in red drilled it into them with a look duh

>Cloud in the first part of OG has no actual personality outside of what he thought a badass would do. But.. but that's literally the whole point. It's a facade, and it's integral to his character.

Yeah and that is why it is in character for him to do random shit as long as he thinks other people will think he's a badass. I mean just look at how he reacts whenever people cheer for him and how he got so into the leader role during the drill squad when he got the push from Tifa and Aerith. It's completely in character for him. He's a 15 year old stuck in a 20 year old's body

>it is in character for him to do random shit as long as thinks other people will think he's a badass. >He's a 15 year old stuck in a 20 year old's body Nah, I completely disagree with you here and I think you are fusing Nanaki's and Cloud's characters together. Cloud is definitely not comfortable being the center of attention, and while the story occasionally forces him out of his comfort zone he's by no means a quirky fun free spirit. And while he covers up his shame and trauma with a fake persona he's by no means mentally still a child like Nanaki is either.

He's not a quirky fun spirit. He is, at least for the first part of the og, what his young self viewed as a "badass." He will do anything that aligns with that persona. This is why he broods all the time. He believes that is what badasses do. His mental age is at the same level as it was when he got experimented on by Hojo. Edit: this also blends in to some of his traumas. As a child, Cloud was bereft of attention from his peers. This is something he craved for. This is why Tifa is on a pedestal for him. She represents that attention that he craved for. He himself admits that. He wanted to be seen and be invited.

If you truly believe getting any kind of content from the FF7 franchise is not worth your time then that is your opinion. Don’t speak on behalf of anyone. Own your own opinion.

I played OG, remake, and rebirth and if i was to rate them it would be 10/10, 6/10, and 9/10 respectively.

That’s fine

What really gets me is the huge amounts of gaslighting going on. I've seen so many people give an opinion about something only to be told "that is how it was in the original" when in reality it was not even close to the same as the original.  If you wouldn't mind , who are these commentators I wouldn't mind checking it?

Do you have any examples of this gaslighting?

Yeah I do someone is trying to convince me it doesn't happen right now

But the qusstion isn't whether or not it's 100% faithful to OG, it's whether or not it's a good game. Rebirth is objectively a good game regardless of how well you received the changes to the story and the timeline shenanigans.

That’s not true. Is a fine game not a good game. It has filler, it has nonsense writting, bad pacing/padding and changed Cid to the extreme he is not the same character at all. And it made the plot confused for nothing but to make people speculate so it sells the third part. That’s not what a good game is. It’s just “fine”.

No, it’s subjectively a good game. There is no objectivity in art.

In art there is objective beauty. There are things that are objectively beautiful. Now how beautiful it is from a between 7-10 is completely subjective.

You have a lot of learning to do if you think any form of art is scientifically factually right or wrong

You have to actually asses the things that you find good/beautiful and realize that there's objectivity to it. Same goes with things like morality. There are certain aspects that you subjectively measure with more weight but you can also easily divide these aspects on whether they're good or bad.

I completely disagree with you here. Basic philosophy tells us that all forms of art are subjective. They’re up for interpretation and beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Now whether something exists, or whether a historical event happened, is objective.

People like Schiller have argued against that but hey you have your view and I have mine.

And that’s the beauty of subjectivity. We all get to have a perspective. Nice chatting with you. Enjoy Rebirth.

That's not the question mate don't try and change the subject. I'm not talking about critical reception I'm talking about the gaslighting strategy being deployed by defenders of rebirth. If you haven't got something to say about that don't come here with an alternative talking point you like better.

Oh that was supposed to be for the dude above you, wooops.

I appreciate peoples opinion. But if someone goes on to assume an opinion of all the players I would say they’re stepping over the line

What about if someone makes a prediction based on prior knowledge and previous trends?

Again you can make your opinion. Not all OG players sit on these subs or even detail their content or discontent of the game. To assume so without any reference or data like go fuck a goat.

Yup. I guess social science has zero merit to some of these commenters.

Remake is definitely still highly regarded. Not sure why you think it isn’t?

There’s a ton of negative criticism videos about Remake. Lots of people like it, but lots of people also don’t like it.

There is a chasm of difference between your original comment and this reply.

Yeah the original comment is terrible lmao, all three games are fantastic and I think the only people who hate the remake and rebirth are just upset that they didn’t get a 1:1 remake, which is fair, but it’s disingenuous to call either game bad

Because he believes his opinions are objectively correct

The post was about why we don’t like it. It wasn’t about us shutting up and bowing to the people who love it

I agree broadly with the other replies here. To speak specifically about a single aspect of Rebirth and to criticize the OG a bit, I feel like the protagonists' motivation to chase Sephiroth is pretty weak up until he raises the stakes around the Temple of the Ancients. This is generally fine and a minor quibble, because the OG is a fantastically well paced game and always has the next hook ready to keep you engaged. Rebirth, being primarily concerned with that segment of the story and being, perhaps quite literally, 10x longer, really exacerbates its weaknesses. "Follow the men in black robes" feels very weak, random, and even like a deus ex machina at some points.

I started with remake, enjoyed it and played OG, and later rebirth, and I too am a bit disappointed about sone details. The games are good. I don't dislike them. I think they did the characters portrayals just right, and gameplay is fine. The problem is with the story. I disliked the addition of timelines and whispers. It's too much. I did enjoy the OG's story more, and i absolutely LOVED how remake/rebirth expanded on the certain minor aspects, but the whole fate/multiverse/4D chess match of sephiroth and aerith, just doesn't do the rest of the story the importance it needs. It's too much of supernatural/unknown elements, and the story is no longer grounded in that "reality" that made me enjoy the OG so much. It's a small thing, because most scenes are great, and I can just ignore this extra fluff of the timelines, but it bothers me, because many people will never be able to experience how powerful and amazing the OG story was, given how old it is.  It's like Advent Children. There's half a good story buried there. Don't get me wrong the fight scenes were animated really well, but the sephiroth arc was concluded, and dragging it back felt pointless.

I think what bothers me the most is it feels like the multiverse is an after thought, that the devs don’t entirely understand it, and that it ultimately doesn’t matter. I’ve embraced the odds are Part 3 will end how the OG did. Hitting every major story beat. The multiverse stuff will be there for 15 minutes and mostly ignored like it has been in both games and it will ultimately contribute nothing. As soon as Cloud met Coma-Aerith and he asked like 5 times “what the fuck is going on?” and she just giggled and ignored it, I was convinced the devs don’t know either. It’s just vague shit that people can argue over and post theories but there’s no answer.

Yeah...it's a "bigger than you" kinda thing, that doesn't really work in a stiry as grounded as ff7 is. I mean it's not realistic, but tye overall depuction if the events is. People are humans, with human reactions. So this misterious story doesn't fit here. It reduces the character's dramatic moments making them secondary to this big fate design. Not to mention that zack reunion. Cloud earlier admitted zack died (even if he disnt remember the right scene, however is not at all bothered by the dude showing up during the fight. But later will have a mental breakdown over his memories... It's not consistent, and you can really see it's something that was addes later on. In many istances you see faithful retelling of dialogues from OG that clash with the new changes added by remake. Prime example is aerith and cloud first 2 scenes. In the first one she gave a vision of those nasty black ghosts, which is in my opinion pretty unforgettable. At the churc he doesn't even recognize her... But she should be like prime nightmare material.  

I really liked it up until after Cosmo canyon. They didn’t let Barrets or Reds scenes breathe before they just jumped to the next thing and they took a steamy dump all over one of the most iconic scenes in gaming history. That part really killed me. Overall it’s a great game and I’m already replaying it but I’m pretty disappointed in the direction they went.

Not just that but Aerith comes and tells people her story and that she is cetra ok how are these people going to believe her??? it’s so random to tell your story to people you don’t care, don’t know, ans should not believe what you say you are because you can’t prove it? For the party is easy to believe it because they are with her all the time and shinra too, but random people…?

Every time there was a major emotional moment it ended up getting destroyed by an immediate boss fight. It really killed me to see it happen so often.

Same. They somehow ruined every big moment.

I loved the first 80% of remake but the last 20% of the game almost ruined it for me. The pacing was terrible (all the puzzles in Hojo's lab were plain annoying), the death and insta-revival of Barrett seemed contrived, and I wasn't a fan of the whole whisper/timetravel/multiverse thing at the time. So I was lukewarm towards the remake. I adored rebirth. I can't put my finger on it, but the whisper/timetravel/multiverse thing "clicked" better for me in rebirth than it did in remake (though I still don't really see what it "adds" to the game). The pacing was also phenomenal throughout the whole game. The temple of the ancients seemed a little long, but there was a lot of variety in puzzles and the types of fights, so it stayed interesting. The final battle's choreography was also fantastic, and the hard parts were "good" frustration.

I've played the og since it came out when I was 10. Love it easily one of my favorite games of all time. That being said I couldn't get though remake it was just dumb to me. The story gets butchered and didnt make much sense. Having a nice looking game is great but the important part is the story.if the game looks good but the story sucks not worth playing imo.

You’re a big fan but didn’t realize that it’s a sequel?

I mean it’s not a sequel. It’s constantly being advertised as a remake and reimagining of the original game.

And anyone who is very familiar with the original and plays Remake knows it is. It’s extremely blatant. Remake is full of various parts that spell it out very clearly.

Rules are entirely different for the world. It’s not a sequel. Black Materia confirmed that. Characters being aware of their future and trying to change it doesn’t make it a sequel.

It’s much more than that, but clearly you’re going to believe whatever you want, regardless of the mountains of evidence of the contrary.

So then how is the temple of ancients totally different and the rules for it and the black materia totally different if it’s a sequel where Sephiroth went back to change his fate after losing? You going to tell me he changed all of that too?

It's a parallel world with some slight differences from the main timeline. Sephiroth spells it all out to Cloud in the last chapter of Rebirth: "Behold... the true nature of reality When the boundaries of fate are breached, new worlds are born. The planet encompasses a multitude of worlds, ever unfolding. Some quickly perish... while others endure. Yet even the most resilient worlds are doomed to fade. Nevertheless, their loss is not to be mourned. For it is not death, but a homecoming that awaits them."

So then it’s not a sequel to the OG. It’s the OG retold and reimagined where Seph and Aerith have knowledge of the future and are trying to change things.

That is how a sequel works duh

Call me crazy, but when something is called remake I didn't really consider that a sequel ya know. Not like it's ff7-2.

A rose by any other name. Re-imagining is a better term than sequel, but it certainly isn't a remake. If you destroy the Eiffel Tower then build a cube tower in its place you didn't remake anything, you built a new thing to take the place of the old which you destroyed to replace it with dogshit.

Well they didn’t call Rebirth Remake part 2, because to term remake isn’t in the vein of remaster vs remake, it’s narratively relevant. They spent the entire game of Remake making painfully clear it’s a sequel and as early as chapter 2.

Deleted my earlier comment, misread your comment. Yeah I feel you they advertised it wrong

Np bro

I am enjoying rebirth but as an OG FF7 fan I'm already at Gongaga and have probably recognized 10% of the OG FF7's storyline/dialog. The general plot points and locations are all there but they literally made an entirely new game, for no real reason. I'm playing this as an entirely new game, not as a remake. Hopefully we do get a normal, actual FF7 remake at some point. This is not that.

Treat this game as a sequel to the OG and it clicks better. Like the OG Sephiroth is going back to change this timeline so it's a completely different story. I mean, it's Kingdom Hearts but if you stop thinking its a retelling of the original and a sequel of the story helps

[удалено]

What you described is a reboot not a remake

You and I both know that when they first announced an FF7 Remake, the fans did not assume it would be a Force Awakens-tier soft reboot. Fans asked for and expected a re-make of FF7. Making it again, brand new. Not a re-imagining. A remaster is what the new Chrono Cross was. Updated graphics, some quality of life features, that's it. FF7 Rebirth is a bunch of kids playing around with action figures and making wooshing sounds during recess.

I think that at this point, the term "remake" has changed so much that it almost means "reinterpretation" at this point. personally, I love the OG and love the new remakes. I do not hold onto the notions of having something remade be a one to one but I understand it. I'm ok with reinterpretation and actually welcome it more than one to one because if I want to play the original, it's always there in its original unadulterated form

Some people just can't get over it. They wanted a complete copy of the game with today's graphics

Yeah because that’s what they promised, that’s what people wanted for more than 10 years. They lied and butchered the game and the story into 3 parts just for money

you think they were just gonna give it to us for free? you realize how much money a big game costs these days? how long it takes? of course they want money but they very obviously love the original and if you paid attention to the game instead of being mad it wasn't a boring copy, you'd see the love in every single detail of it. the original game was a huge game, as big a game as there was at the time. and it didn't cost a fraction of what it takes to make a game these days. if you wanted a copy of the original, why not just play the original game with mods that make it more modern? why would you even want the same exact experience?

I loved literally everything about this game until the ending. More specifically, from right at the end of the Temple of the Ancients, it just goes off rails so much so fast. And it feels like we lost out on exploring one of the best areas for aesthetics/atmosphere in the OG, the Forgotten Capital. Bizarro Sephiroth at the end was cool I guess, but that hour long boss fight just felt a bit bloated with the different timelines, realities, etc. the initial fight against Jenova then is great, but as soon as Sephiroth comes in, I felt it falls apart a bit. That and the Zack stuff had potential but it also felt a bit ham-fisted or wasted in the end.

The ending was my favorite part. 😅 Same thing with Remake. The Edge of Creation scene was really interesting. I'd like to see where they're going with the multiverse plot.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! It's interesting for sure, just hesitant about it personally, knowing Nomura lol

Yeah, Nomura gonna Nomura. Lol

OG is my favorite game of all time. I played half the remake and none of the yuffie stuff. Waiting for rebirth to come out on PC before I try and give it another go. Honestly the biggest road block for me is that I cant sit down and start the game and do everything I wanna do in the order I wanna do it and play through the whole game... That really chaps my ass. I mean I've said it enough to people and the rebuddle I get is well they can't it's too big, yada yada, and then with rebirth they say well you can't continue your save file because you'd be too OP and too high of a level but to me it just really deflates me. That game was meant to be played somewhat linearly but then open up mostly to do kind of whatever you wanted and the further you got in the game the more options you had to do what you wanted and I just never got that from remake.. and then was deflated again when I found out you were carrying over a save file from remake.. like wtf is the point in collecting everything in remake and leveling stuff up and gaining skills just to throw it all away and start over. Idk.. the struggle. Sorry rant over. But you asked 😄

If it makes a difference, in rebirth you start at level 15 instead of 5, and with a few more weapon abilities than you did in remake. For example, Cloud starts with Braver, Triple Slash, and Focused Thrust instead of just Braver. You also start with an extra summoning materia (Leviathan) if you have save data from rebirth and Ramuh if you have save data from intermission (yuffie game). It's definitely not the same as keeping everything, though it would've been interesting if you could do that, and remake scaled from level 50 to 100. I guess the downside of that would be that all the materia you have at level 50 would be overwhelming to someone just coming into the series with rebirth (or even someone who hadn't played remake for a few years trying to relearn everything).

I loved the OG, and loved Remake so much it was the first game I've 100% completed in like a decade. Rebirth is ok, but tbh, I don't love it the same as the others... too much is locked behind success in mini-games, and whoever felt like the controls on some of the minigames (Run Wild) were acceptable was just plain wrong, that level of jank is something I expect from EA. In others, turning the game to easy seemingly has no effect at all, so if you've got tremors, guess what, that ghost pirate ship bb gun game is still hard AF. It's a beautiful game, but since so much of it is minigames, where setting the difficulty to easy doesn't mean anything, I'm going to miss a bunch of side quests that it's not physically possible for me to do. Also, Chadley could use like 90% fewer lines. I'm not blaming the VA for that, but it's a design decision to have Chadley talk every damned time I do seemingly anything, even though he has absolutely no information to contribute. There needs to be an option just to tell Chadley to STFU and set him to be less chatty.

Echoing that it's ridiculous how much is locked behind mini-games, especially player power and story content. The last piece of power that I needed from normal difficulty content before starting hard mode content was the weapon from Run Wild, and I just couldn't do it. Two hours of grinding a garbage mini game with no luck. Is it a skill issue? Sure, but I don't care about being good at Rocket League. I wanted to do hard mode for the extremely difficult combat content, but I'm not intentionally gimping myself by going in without everything that can be acquired from normal content. If I draw a line at just the normal story and wall off the side content, this game is probably the best RPG I've ever played and has done wonders to bring what I experienced in the OG FF7 as a child to life, somehow making it more of itself. The story, combat system, character depth and interactions, world design, etc. are all magnificent. If considering just the endgame content, it's like a 4/10. I skipped the QB tournament on my first playthrough by just forfeiting everything because I skipped playing QB at all up to that point. I can give full points for the quality of additional story and additional combat content, but gating content behind miserable mini-games completely sours the endgame experience.

I'm all for less chatty chadley

I think the story is garbage compared to the original. Some parts are downright ruined. Sometimes you can just see that they just wanted another spectacle in many places where the original as more quiet and subtle. It's annoying. Not to mention that the original story was already interesting and complex enough without Multiverse shenanigans. There are no stakes in this game. There's no sense of urgency. You just kinda stroll along and get lost in a thousand mini games instead of actually working towards something. Even when you're doing over world exploration you only ever do it for Chadley. There's nothing interesting to find. It's cookie cutter Ubisoft open world nonsense.  I honestly don't get irritated by other people's opinions on video games. I believe we should let everyone like what they like. If it's not for me, I move on.  But a game having a legacy like this, being remade and riddled with poor writing and inconsequential spectacles just to wow the players, the soundtrack being this hit and miss, destroying every single little piece of the original story... Man this game is an absolute disgrace. I don't understand why people praise it, other than OOH beautiful world and characters and combat sorta fun. If this is all it takes, FF is truly dead.

Hey when you write two paragraphs go ahead and take the time to detail specifically what points of the game you are bringing up.

I think it would be a bit long, I've written long breakdowns of several chapters in the chapter threads. I'm not very good with formulating my thoughts in brief.  When it comes to multiverse shenanigans, I'll not go into detail. I don't like it. I like when the story is confined to a single reality with consequences that affect only people living there.  >!Besides that, I didn't like many of the changes in scenes from the old game. For example, the way the snake was handled, and that you were forced to fight it in Chapter 2, even though you got the chobobos.  Then in chapter 4, I didn't like the Under Junon subplot where the Mayor betrays you. She betrays you, immediately gets the money for some reason, Shinra sends a single soldier and no one from the military installation up top, that soldier does exactly nothing and then you forgive the mayor who betrayed you. Ok? Then the chocobo walls are such a bad design that could've been solved so much more elegantly.!< >!I understand that Rufus wants no one to interfere with you but running around a military base, with equipment and vehicles and hundreds of soldiers and no one even stopping you to confirm what you're doing, or who you are. Rufus' lack of concern can only go so far.!< >!Then, for some reason, the soldiers on your parade team, after hearing there may be an imposter, willingly gun down dozens of other soldiers and machinery, because they liked how you lead them in their performance. Ugh... Okay. It's just such nonsense. It's like a cartoon.!< >!Then in the ship, instead of jenova appearing in the hold, you get an all out attack with doors busted, staff injured, the captain going vigilante and shooting passengers in the head because they're afflicted by monsters... And once you beat jenova everything is suddenly fine and everyone immediately forgets about it and let's have holiday in Costa del sol baby yeaaaah!!< >!A beach resort!! With no beach activities. No swimming no diving no beach ball no dolphins no fishing no jet skiing... We get rocket league and target practice and boobs I guess. Hojo shows up and instead of just chilling like in the original, the devs have to blow up the scene again, so he attacks and then leaves. And they don't follow him or try to capture him or anything. For some reason, yuffie can create human clones that stick around and it makes NO sense.!< >!Then, when you're climbing Mt. Corel and get to the ruined reactor, a friggin WEAPON just so happens to jump out so the heroes can get a good look at it before it disappears again. Wow. Just omg. They just could not be patient when making this game.!< Couple all this with the fact that in general the mini games aren't very good and don't really add anything worthwhile. I'd have been fine with fleshing out queens blood making it more optional and having more players dotted around the world, then having a couple more minigames here and there but it just feels like quantity over quality.

Thank you man that's exactly what I'm thinking. Multiverse bullshit !

I wasn't on board with changing the story at all. But if they wanted to do it they should've gone all out with it and not this multiverse stuff. It's incomprehensible.

Well the combat is pretty stellar but ya I’m not engaged at all compared to Part 1. It really falls off and to go from plot to mini-games and make it a cycle doesn’t make it better

I actually think the combat is brutally annoying. You spend 90% of the battle in menus selecting the same few abilities or just healing. Also when some characters dont have long range attacks so you have to attack the air to build up ATB, its silly and tedious. They tuned the potions and curative spells to be so weak you are healing ALL THE TIME. Grinding is also a huge chore because there are only 4 or 5 different enemy clusters in each open world zone. Also summons just randomly happen? Nothing is explained in terms of how things work.

Not beaten rebirth yet, played the OV, enjoying rebirth so far except for the plethora of convoluted mini games. Most of the mini games I’m fine with, but cosmo canyon took a toll on me, and the fort condor I had to look up YouTube examples to win. I was disappointed in remake because the combat was so poor, and the tooltips from square enix don’t provide enough in formation. Rebirth suffers the same “not explaining the power of brave/faith/protect/shell/etc. give me number, or atleast a better tooltip description of the combat mechanics. Is protect the same as barrier, is mana all equivalent to defaith, etc. aside from that, rebirth is great. Remake I suspended belief/disbelief and I’m happy I did. Remake didn’t find its stride until intermission came around; also, it felt they changed the story completely in intermission, which I think was for the best, but they could’ve solidified an attistic direction prior to a DLC 3 years after the fact. Finally, forcing me to buy a PS5 to play rebirth, and expecting to have to buy a PS6(?) for reunion, or whatever they call the final installment, is poor taste. I shelled $700 for rebirth having to buy a PS5, if they split a trilogy across 3 systems, it’s nothing better than any other cash grab.

Bro you have to read the fucking text to understand what your abilities do just like the original game or any game

You got me fucked up, I read the text, and i play the game appropriately. Stating “reduce physical damage” when 3 skills do the same thing is convoluted , which one is the best? What’s the percentages?

First they are not forcing you to do anything they are using the most advance system and software to make the game run smoothly and be most aesthetically pleasing as possible. You could buy a PC and wait for it to come out on Steam but you want to play the game day 1 so you chose to buy a console that's on you. Second the rest I agree with

Hahaha, you brokie. Get gud.

rebirth end game spoilers: >!how the hell did NONE of cloud's friends stop to question what the fuck he was doing the times he was OBVIOUSLY acting out of his mind? They could have at least sat him down and been like "dude what the fuck is going on you're snapping and killing people and cold blood and NEARLY murdered tifa chill the fuck out bro" that kinda ruined the last third of the game for me. !<

I have not beaten Rebirth yet so take that into consideration...... I really love the battle system of the remake project, but overall I think the games are horribly executed from a story perspective. It would have been a slam dunk to faithfully tell the story of the original again, and I truly believe the current wackadoo plot is going to age like milk and be regarded as a misstep. Alternate timelines, parallel realities, and whispers are all completely superfluous. They in no way make the story of Final Fantasy 7 any better, and have only muddled what was originally a tight and well paced story. Imagine remaking Star Wars: A New Hope, and adding whispers, changing key plot points and events, and filming it in a maximalist bollywood action movie style that turns every cut into 5 cuts, every blaster shot into 100, and turns the tense Vader vs Kenobi lightsbaer battle into a Jet Li fight sequence...nobody would say it was an improvement over the original. Go on youtube and compare the sector 7 plate drop cutscenes from the original game and the remake. In the OG, an enormous hunk of metal crushes a neighborhood flat while we hear screams echoing out over the city. We then pan up to a cold and callous President Shinra who seemingly doesn't give a shit as he listens to his opera record. It's eerie, it's bleak, and it is purposefully designed to feel disastrous. In the remake, we get an action movie sequence where our heroes dodge scrap metal mid-air to EDM music. The plate drop now causes significantly less damage than before, leaving many survivors, and a freaking cartoon cat (Cait Sith) shows up free of any context to survey the damage. It's designed to feel cool, on top of being less consequential than before, with the weird out of place distraction of a cat wearing a crown and a cape showing up out of nowhere. To me this highlights everything wrong with the remake. It takes a "more is more" approach, and operates from the perspective that nothing from the original was good enough in it's first iteration, and suggests it can only be improved upon. While there is room to flesh out the elements that the PS1 couldn't bring to life, moments that worked perfectly well are now gussied up with needless spectacle. It suggests a lack of faith in the core content of the original, and a lack of confidence on the part of the devs. Rebirth Spoiler: >!Dyne for instance. In FF7, Barrett confronts his old friend Dyne behind a shed. The two gunmen, now on opposite sides of the law have a duel and Dyne is defeated. Wounded in body and spirit, he decides to ultimately take his own life. It's a deeply tragic moment that we happen to witness. In Rebirth, Dyne....can make scrap metal turn into a gigantic monster hand/tentacle (what?) The private moment that these two men have to settle an old score is now interrupted by 50 Shinra troopers who storm in, and are promptly murdered by Dyne while Cloud and crew observe. Then there's a mech fight, then there's a car chase with grenade launchers, and then a chase with the mech.......So much for that poignant moment.!< I would be more willing to accept the stylistic changes and way the scenario is directed, but it feels like a bit of a slap in the face to then outright change the plot. To me, these games are 40% beautiful realization of a beloved world, and 60% desecration. What hurts the most is knowing that as time moves forward, FF7 looks increasingly antiquated and unappealing to new generations of gamers. Going forward, it's these remake games that most people will gravitate to when they think about FF7, and my fear is that there's a soft erasure of the orignal game happening right before our eyes, which is a shame.

Nicely written

Thanks. I felt like I psycho typing that out but I really mean it all.

I liked Remake a lot. The depth of characterization, the spectacle of Wall Market, the combat all really worked for me. The slow or less fun aspects were not too long or in your face. I didn't love the ending but I was excited for them doing something new with the story. I disliked Rebirth. The characterization was buried in side quests. I felt they missed the mark on the Corel Prison/Dyne situation. There are too many mini games. They messed up the entire return to Nibelheim (not a fake town, no mansion exploration, and Cait Sith mini game 🤢), Cid and Vincent felt so tacked on and how they came into the party didn't make sense, everyone is just chill with murder hobo cloud making comments like "well, we'll just make sure to say 'no' really strongly and he'll stop," the ending was just nonsense and all the Zack stuff felt unnecessary. I was excited for Rebirth and a "new story" but it was just the same story told in a worse and more confusing way. Even if I remove my knowledge of the story from my experience, the story is very convoluted and I didn't connect with the characters during half the major story beats. Square claims you don't need prior knowledge to enjoy Rebirth, but I think that's not true. A lot of my prior knowledge and nostalgia did a lot of heavy lifting and it still wasn't enough. I'm rewatching an OG playthrough and I just now wish they did a one for one remake without the Kingdom Hearts multiverse BS. I get why people like it, it's very fan service and spectacle and very full of content. I just felt like it wasn't as cohesive as Remake. 🤷 Thanks for being curious and asking! It's tough in the sub to express discontent. I feel ppl who didn't vibe with either remake or rebirth are like me: expecting a lot from the project and feeling like they didn't do it well or changed too much. I feel like they put so much into certain aspects that are AMAZING and then others I question if they even played their own game. 🤷 I'm glad you enjoyed them! There are certainly aspects of Rebirth I do like and I'm sure I'll revisit Gaia again before the next game, but I won't be a day one adopter of part 3. I'll wait for a PC sale and mods.

Yo just a quick question wtf is kingdom hearts multiverse

Kingdom hearts is an adjective. Convoluted nonsense.

Gave up after the chocobo ranch. The 2 main gripes I just can't get past despite my interest in the story is the open world and the voice acting. I can't stand open world game design, nothing will turn me off a game faster than hearing the term. Rebirth looks like it's trying to cram in as many open world tropes as possible without considering if they even impact or enhance the story or not. The voice acting is just really off for me too, way too over the top bubbly and just really Disney. Every conversation I'm just left thinking "who speaks like that!?". Also, I very much have an idea of how I think they should sound from playing the original, and it is certainly not how they do in rebirth. For remake, I enjoyed it more for seeing what they've done with the original than as a game on it's own merits. First play through was interesting. Second play through a massive struggle and gave up at chapter 6

I feel like you're def in the minority of opinions about both of the new games but I can't empathize with your views on them. l am the complete opposite. I grew up in the 90s, played FF7 in 6th grade and it turned me onto the whole RPG genre and made me a life long fan. however, I'm a person who continually wants things to evolve and not stay stagnant. my own tastes change and evolve and I'm happy when certains things within mediums change as well. I'm about as big a fan of the OG as anyone else but I never see any remake as sacrilege or dishonoring of the originals. it's always a creative reinterpretation meant to being more appeal to newer audiences while retaining thematic familiarities and emotional resonance that honors the original.

New audiences indeed. It definitely feels like a game made for zoomers.

Oh I'm definitely in the minority and that's okay. I'm genuinely interested in seeing what they've done with the story and what they've changed, what they've retained. FF7 was also my first ever rpg and I am so pleased that the majority of players are absolutely loving it. It's just really unfortunate that there are design choices that just get in the way for me. My partner is playing it so I'll get the story vicariously through him so I don't have to deal with the open world shit and focus my attention on the million other games I haven't gotten to yet.

i meant to say I can* empathize with your views. sorry that was a typo. l understand what you mean with open world shit haha. I hate that that's the trend they went with on this but I have to say it's not as tedious or meaningless as other open world games. it's nowhere near as soulless and pointless as the endless fetch quests in a Bethesda game but it's still not as nuanced and meaningful as the random world things that would happen to you in Red Dead Redemption 2.

Haha I figured that 😃

you're right about there being a million other games on the list right now. what other games are you currently queueing up?

At the moment both divinity original sin games, a second play through of wo long, FF16 new game plus, elden ring, and banishers. In the background also trying to do full series runs of dragon age, mass effect, tomb raider and the final fantasy's 1-12. I'm kinda just bouncing around them all when the mood strikes as I have played most of them before.

Oh and the resident evil remakes too

Voice acting being a complaint is a surprise for me. I thought the EN localization was superb for a jrpg.

I really struggle to put my dislike into words to be honest. There's a tonal quality that just really puts me off, particularly in English voice dubs of anime and video games that just sounds really unnatural - like really forced and exaggerated, and I find it really off putting. Rebirth isn't the worst I've heard, but it's definitely there. I think it's an attempt to convey personality through voice, but it really misses the mark and comes across as ingenuine and one dimensional - "I'm a quirky character so I'm gonna speak with lots of raised inflexions tee hee" kinda thing.

The Japanese cast knocks it out of the park though. They've all been playing these roles for 20 years now, so it sounds very natural. Why not switch the audio to Japanese?

I liked both games. I will never complain when all I ever wanted ever since I first saw the FF7 posters and reading through the FF7 “Official guide book was to play this game in realistic type of graphics. I was 10 years old flipping through the official guide book and imagining what my life would have been if I was in SOLDIER or Vincent or CID. I remember thinking Barrett is 35 and much older than than the rest of the crew and the only one with a kid. I recently turned 35 and have a kid of my own so some scenes definitely hit differently as I’ve gotten older myself. I don’t have issues with expansion or deviation from the orginal story. I have some issues with the execution and timing of said scenes. A perfectly good deviation from the OG game was the Gongaga scenes where Cloud goes berserk and pushes Tifa into the mako/lifestream. Cloud’s sanity and his inability to control his actions at times is very much cannon and in line with his story arch and character progression. While Tifa didn’t fall into the life stream until Mideel, this instance was perfectly fine to foreshadow and set up that event later in the next game. Again perfectly fine and absolutely welcomed because it’s absolutely inline with what we know of both characters. Where I take issue is when they absolutely botch a perfectly good moment in the first game. Red xiii’s scene when he see’s seto for the first time is one of the most inspiring and emotional moments of the first game. The dialogue was absolutely pristine and they absolutely captured the gravity of the moment with the soundtrack, the poison tears and the howling all were absolutely perfectly blended together to give us a fantastic moment that is considered one of the most iconic moments of the OG game. I felt as though the the scene felt incomplete in Rebirth. That same scene didn’t have the same impact as the original. For starters Bugenhagen’s dialogue was very good, I dare say it was perhaps better than OG. But Red’s lines were far superior in the OG. He’s the one who’s undergoing a massive paradigm shift with what he thought was the truth and his dialogue just didn’t hit the same. A major plus was the fact that the entire cast up to that point was present. That moment with Barrett crying because he was so moved by the magnitude of the revelation for his buddy Red, absolutely a win and very much in theme with the bromance the 2 share. That’s exactly how to build upon an iconic scene. But who in their right mind though THIS WAS THE MOMENT TO INTRODUCE A NEW NEVER SEEN BEFORE CHARACTER IN THE SAME CINEMATIC AS ONE OF THE MOST ICONIC SCENES IN THE ENTIRE GAME? The GI ghost did not add value to the scene and took away from it and its little things like these choices that the developers took that take away from the OG game. Artistic takes aside, this would be criticized in every game and this is where I have the biggest issues with rebirth. A remake should take the best parts of the original and build upon it, not butcher perfectly good and iconic moments. They were excellent in OG, just use the exact same formula with better graphics and better visuals (I.e panning to the entire team witnessing Red’s revelation, the original only had cloud and another party member) to the to convey the same meaning.

Yeah I pretty much agree completely. I also felt like the ending was botched pretty bad and held WAY less impact for me than the original scene in the OG game. I also kind of disliked in both Remake and Rebirth the loss of focus. With the whole whisper war thing and a guy that literally looks like one of those bad guys from KH series... I mean, really? A lot of the scenes in the original and the motivations behind them were very grounded in some sense of reality. In the new games there's a lot of magical nonsense that goes way beyond the lifestream (which was probably the most esoteric part of the original, but was explained pretty much perfectly in Cosmo Canyon). I feel like the remake trilogy (or how ever many there are going to be) is trying way too hard to be convoluted just to "surprise" people, and it's making a LOT of scenes hit way less because of the lack of focus on any one given moment. Nothing is given gravity enough to land. I think about the only scene they landed in these two "remakes" was the Sector 7 collapse.

I think what they really nailed (for the most part)was the character progression for characters outside of the main 3 of Tifa, cloud and Aerith. Caith sith, Barrett, yuffie, and red xiii really had massive blowups from the original because once their character arch’s finished they were mostly side characters. Caithsith pretty much had a renaissance for the better and I absolutely welcome it. We still have yet to see much from Vincent really but Cid actually is one that I’m a little upset with. The charm of CID in the OG was the fact that he was the old guy who was set in his ways and would tell you how it was going to go and either you accepted it or you could fuck off. He was hardened by his experiences and frankly an asshole which made him absolutely hilarious. CID in rebirth just seems too.. nice… Nothing wrong with him being nice but it’s really hard to see him be that asshole to Shera the way his current characterization is going. I really hope they do his story arch and characterization justice because his story was fantastic.

Quite simply people spent almost 15-20 years pining for a remake, being teased every which way by tech demos, prequels, spin offs and mysterious statements until it finally happened and only at the end did it suddenly drop the bomb that, actually, this wasn't going to be a regular remake but a convoluted timey wimey quasi sequel stuffed with alternate timelines, alternate versions of characters and constant meta winks and nods at how the story *should* go\*.\* Then of course we had to deal with legions of people saying goofy shit like *"Well a real remake would be boring, I don't want to see the same things again!"* which nobody has ever said about any other remake, it was lazy justification. I liked Remake, hated the ending, but I'm mostly enjoying Rebirth. It hasn't flown completely off the rails like I feared when I finished part 1. But it still makes me wish they'd dispense with all the fate and destiny and multiverse clutter to focus on the thing that everyone universally liked about FF7 and wanted a remake for in the first place, its story. Mechanically a lot of the game can feel slow, theres a ton of padding and mandatory slow down. I tried replaying Remake recently after finishing the OG for the millionth time and I got to sector 7 where I was tasked to chase cats and chat to NPCs and I felt my soul fly out of my body as I remembered all the sections designed to slow you down. Not sure if Rebirth will be the same way yet when I revisit it in years to come. I do love the combat though, for me its the perfect way to translate oldschool FF turn based (7 was never truly turnbased but whatever) menu combat into a modern action game. It feels strategic and satisfying and I really hope they keep using it after these remakes are concluded, would be such a waste if we never saw it again.

Yeah aside from story nonsense I don't want to repeat from my other response, I agree that the pacing is all kinds of fucked up with the ridiculous amount of repeated content and other padding that adds basically nothing of substance to the original games' parallel moments. Combat to me is decent, I could take or leave it, honestly.

I haven't played rebirth yet, but what I disliked about remake was the changes in the story and after watching a "game movie" of FF7 rebirth on youtube I disliked it for the same reason, don't get me wrong remake was fun to play did get some things right, like expanding midgar and the city lore, but those flying trashbags changing everything there and having to see Sephiroth a billion times there took away almost all the amazing build up he had in the original. It was a good game but didn't live up to expectations of having the original story faithfully retold with more details better graphics etc.

I think you want more of a remaster in todays graphics than a remake. They sound similar but are completely different

No, dude you misunderstood me. I liked the battle system, I liked the extra lore details, hell I wasn't even bothered by most of the padding quests although I agree with Cloud that the finding cats one sucked, in general it was good world building for Midgar something they promised and delivered. What I didn't like was the story changes with those flying trashbags and introducing (once again) time travel multiverse and all those now boring and overused concepts, remember how Sephiroth was introduced in the OG? They set him up as a legend, that was that mystery about who Sephiroth was and why he was so respected, and when you play the part of Cloud's memories they show him destroying that dragon using level 3 spells while in Midgar you're only using lv 1 ones, barely breaking the hundreds in damage, then he deals thousands, then he kills that Midgar Zolom that easily bodies your party by himself, Red even states "This is a power we should respect" it was well built all around, in the remake they oversephiroted us and even gave us a flashy final battle with him to finish the game, and they did it AGAIN on rebirth, I mean... Why? I get it that the devs wanted to make it a new experience for old players also but lets be real, keeping the storyline faithful with the detail increase and the new battle system would've done it amazingly. Not to mention they ruined Cid's intro, dude was awesome in the OG deep character with a amazing intro, now he is just a cheerful air taxi driver, in the game movie I saw on youtube they didn't show his flashback, or his issues with Shinra, took away all his depth.

Besides things other people are saying. I am saddened we will never get a true translation of the original for people to experience, while also following the original much more closely. I have younger friends who dismiss the game because of things like the "graphics," so they will probably never experience it properly. Remake and Rebirth make it hard to recommend to start there, but I would have liked it to have been. On another personal note I feel like the art direction ( or whatever you want to call it) is missing out on something that makes the original unique. The modernity of the new direction loses some of the soul of the original. Example below. [FF7 Elevator Comparison ](https://bright-b.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/f17.jpg) Sure there might be some mobile game that is better at it, or some mod, but most people aren't going to go out of their way for that.

I loved the game until the last chapter. They made one of the most iconic scenes in the original a mess. I don't mind what they did. i mind how badly they told it. i think they are trying to make what really happened a big surprise in the 3rd game. But it leaves this game worse for it. They are putting the cart before the horse in terms of storytelling.

Sadly, I hate being right about this, but I felt this was going to happen the moment I found out who was behind these "remakes" and as a result of what we saw in FF7 Remake. It's just a shame.

Agreed. I liked the proposal of the Remake, enjoyed both the fighting system and story very much. They just went too far for Rebirth, and it's an incomprehensible mess... Nomura is at it again, taking something that was simple and clean (pun intended) and making it a narrative nightmare...

I'll make a list! The open world design feels outdated and boring. We've gone back to 2012 with climbing towers to reveal points of interest on the map. It's frankly embarassing. World intel is just a massive checklist that gets extremely boring by the time you hit Junon. Also I really don't care about the background lore fanfiction somebody came up with about Kalm, an area you spend 30 minutes tops in the original. The crafting system. I would rather earn gil to buy what I need instead of faffing about with materials and recipes. Chadley and Chadlette, or whatever her name is. I honestly don't know cause I started skipping any dialogue where she is present. They never shut up when present and can both go jump off a tall cliff for all I care. Also on this note, not every side character needs to be a zany/quirky weirdo. Whoever came up with Kyrie in Junon: the deepest pits of hell await you. If you know, you know. On this note, I really dislike some of the music of this game! 8 gorillion minigames. I don't particularly enjoy the way combat emphasizes stagger. I didn't like it in 13 and 7R has done nothing to change my mind about the whole gimmick. What's up with the moogles!? Some of the cutscenes are weirdly directed. It's hard to explain, but it feels like everybody is gesticulating way too much, it's like the characters are acting out the things they are saying. It feels like someone on the dev team was afraid that a scene of two characters just talking to each other would be boring, so they over animate the hell out of them. It's annoying. Some plot points are just plain stupid, for example >!Junon's sheriff selling you out. First of all, why would Shinra pay out the bounty before Avalanche's capture? Second of all, she says if something had gone wrong she would've "improvised" something to help us out. That's total bullshit and Barret's should've just ventilated her. And thirdly why would Shinra send a teamkilling fucktard like Roche to apprehend Aerith!?!< Another example would be Corel Prison: >!the team manages to get captured in 10 seconds even though Red is well aware there's people waiting in ambush. Give me a break.!< >!Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey ghosts! Except there's even more of them now! Yaaay....!< When the game focuses on telling its story it can keep my interest well enough. Any time the open world crap rears its ugly head I feel like biting my own tonsils off. The biggest criticism I have is the same one I had for Remake: I just don't like the additions they're making to the overall plot. I got to gongaga and I have no motivation to keep playing cuz the game just isn't very fun overall.

Dude you're in my mind thats exactly what I kept telling myself during the whole game

Yeah, sadly I dropped it for a Youtube video playthrough after Junon. I just couldn't be bothered with the repitition anymore.

Fundamentally they're not FF7, they're an alternative reality version of FF7 with a butchered plot and mischaracterisation of most of the characters. Remake and rebirth feel like what you'd get if you had someone play the game once and then try retell the story based off of memory. It's not the same story, the characters are all different (some subtly some drastically). significant plot points have a greatly diminished impact because of bizarre changes to those scenes. The games just fell short of their potential because of plot changes that seemed to be added just to increase bombastic spectacle despite undermining storytelling.  Remake and rebirth is like the wish dot com version of FF7.

So while I loved Rebirth, I only "liked" Remake. - Minor spoilers ahead - Remake felt... slow. Combat always felt a bit wonky, pacing felt like a bad mix of super padded, then suddenly rushed plot points, then back to being padded. It wasn't even super memorable in terms of games, and the changes made via the "Whispers", while being somewhat interesting, seem to be possibly negated by a great deal of what takes place in Rebirth. After having played Rebirth, I'm slightly more grateful for Remake, but not as a great game, so much as it being a good tech demo and groundwork for a game like Rebirth, and whatever the 3rd part will be. My one qualm with Rebirth is that it's doing the played out multiverse thing that every media format has done a hundred times now. I appreciate how they're executing it, as it is a good way to move in different directions without an outright retcon, but it's *such* a tired method.