I've never been a fan of Final Fantasy or JPRGs in general, but I bought this on a whim for the stupidest of reasons, and I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
If it's an option, I usually choose to play Japanese-developed games in Japanese, but here I switched over to English after getting to Sector 7, as the amount of subtitles onscreen while walking through town was just too much. I ended up being impressed by most of the performances, and really grew to like the majority of the characters. Extra points to the localization team for using actual children to voice many of the kids in the game instead of an adult woman trying to sound young. It does still have my Anime peeve of never letting characters just be silent. Even with the beautifully realized faces and expressions effectively conveying thought and emotion on their own, they still feel the need to punctuate every moment with vocal feedback of some kind (Hm? Uh huh. Wha? Right. Okay. Eh? Got it. Oh. Sigh). The physical acting is great - just let it breathe, for God's sake.
I absolutely love the look of this game. Yes, there are some blurry textures and low poly models here and there, and the generic NPCs are not in the same realm as the main cast, but otherwise the visuals are fantastic. Even mundane industrial interiors look incredible. VFX are top notch (though arguably a bit overdone). Animation for both combat and navigation movements is excellent. Characters feel like they have mass and are grounded in the environment; it feels good just running around the world.
I enjoyed the story for the most part, but there were several scenes I found extremely frustrating. In several key moments, bad things happen because: a) Characters behave in a totally irrational or out-of-character manner, or b) Characters that are just offscreen apparently don't exist anymore, or are just standing around while the bad things slowly unfold. These kinds of moments make me very conscious of the narrative in a way that pulls me out. It's clumsy storytelling that makes the events feel like a means to an end rather than an organically unfolding scene. There aren't a ton of these instances, but they were definitely blemishes on the overall story. I have these issues with the Yakuza games as well.
Overall, though - I loved it. I can't wait for the next installment of the remake, and even though I've only experienced a small portion of the original FFVII's story, I finally understand why these characters are so iconic and mean so much to people.
If it's an option, I usually choose to play Japanese-developed games in Japanese, but here I switched over to English after getting to Sector 7, as the amount of subtitles onscreen while walking through town was just too much. I ended up being impressed by most of the performances, and really grew to like the majority of the characters. Extra points to the localization team for using actual children to voice many of the kids in the game instead of an adult woman trying to sound young. It does still have my Anime peeve of never letting characters just be silent. Even with the beautifully realized faces and expressions effectively conveying thought and emotion on their own, they still feel the need to punctuate every moment with vocal feedback of some kind (Hm? Uh huh. Wha? Right. Okay. Eh? Got it. Oh. Sigh). The physical acting is great - just let it breathe, for God's sake.
I absolutely love the look of this game. Yes, there are some blurry textures and low poly models here and there, and the generic NPCs are not in the same realm as the main cast, but otherwise the visuals are fantastic. Even mundane industrial interiors look incredible. VFX are top notch (though arguably a bit overdone). Animation for both combat and navigation movements is excellent. Characters feel like they have mass and are grounded in the environment; it feels good just running around the world.
I enjoyed the story for the most part, but there were several scenes I found extremely frustrating. In several key moments, bad things happen because: a) Characters behave in a totally irrational or out-of-character manner, or b) Characters that are just offscreen apparently don't exist anymore, or are just standing around while the bad things slowly unfold. These kinds of moments make me very conscious of the narrative in a way that pulls me out. It's clumsy storytelling that makes the events feel like a means to an end rather than an organically unfolding scene. There aren't a ton of these instances, but they were definitely blemishes on the overall story. I have these issues with the Yakuza games as well.
Overall, though - I loved it. I can't wait for the next installment of the remake, and even though I've only experienced a small portion of the original FFVII's story, I finally understand why these characters are so iconic and mean so much to people.
