Final Fantasy 7 Remake: 8 Things NOBODY Wants To Admit
2. It DOES Need To Exist, Compared To The Original
Perhaps one of the saddest consequences of the Final Fantasy VII Remake is that it'll encourage a whole new generation of players to revisit the original, only to discover that - and as an enormous fan of the series, it absolutely pains me to write this - it's aged drastically.
Like, forgotten potato in a cupboard drastically.
Veterans will overlook what have since became 'flaws'. Newcomers will not. The lack of analogue control. The constant random battles. The agonising pace of said battles. And the grind. Oh boy, the grind.
Final Fantasy VII Remake, as much as us old-school fans wanted it, couldn't just be 1997's game dragged into the 2020s. That's hard for us to admit, which is sort of the point of this piece.
Is the new battle system perfect? Not at all, and the suggestion turn-based is old hat is something of a canard. But can it be sold to modern gamers in the previous guise? Not hardly.
Though I lament the demise of pre-rendered backdrops and the fixed camera, it almost seems a waste to recreate these historic environments with a billion polygons only to then restrict them to a bird's eye view. It's arguably less atmospheric - a static shot of a slum felt that much more oppressive - but it's certainly more marvellous. A free view lets the player stop and take in these glorious sights - so long as they aren't made out of paper, anyway.
Changes are a necessary evil, then, and for the most part, they're in service of a fresh take here. But what about changes to the story? Well...