Frankly, I imagined she was tougher in the original but perhaps that was just my projection(there's always room for that without voice acting).
Her characterization in Remake isn't completely absent some nuance but at times it still comes off as pandering to fanfic writers to me.
It's a matter about having way more dialogue but all centered of she either being insecure/worried or in love with Cloud, there's nothing beyond that on her. Like for example, when you wake her up first in the sewers in the OG she's just like "this sucks!", it's barebones as fuck but it gives a different tone on her character, Her she have more dialogue but she's like "but what about you and Aerith...". They centered too much in her shy and insecure trait from the original and her crush with Cloud that it ended up changing the character IMO
Compare to all the new scenes of Aerith and the difference is huge, you can see a lot of different faces of Aerith personality during the game, more than in the original.
Yeah, it absolutely kills me to say this, but despite her VA being great, they absolutely butchered Tifa's character to make her into some "waifu." She's not allowed to react to stuff beyond being sad and meek (anger at Shinra beyond clenching her fist once? anger at Sephiroth? trying to keep Cloud in sector 7? nah, that's too aggressive, she just has to be sweet and understanding).
What's more, every moment where she displayed confidence or took action on her own in the original has been replaced by someone else doing it for her, and she is constantly portrayed as completely useless and in need of saving by whatever other man is in the scene. The vast majority of the time it's Cloud grabbing her and pulling out of the way of something falling even though it adds NOTHING to the scene beyond wanting to have another moment of her being completely useless, but Barret gets in on it too and they even have Leslie push her out of the way of Abzu! Leslie! Tifa can't do ANYTHING by herself in this game.
They try to pull some BS "oh she's totally empowered, go girl" by giving her two moments where she displays her strength by punching random enemies that mean nothing to the plot at all (the Eligor fight and one of the test subjects after saving Red XIII). It's like they wanted to distill her character down into a friendly shy girl trope and chopped everything else about her off. The stupid ending I can compartmentalize as stupid new stuff, but I can't ignore Tifa's characterization in the same way. It's absolutely the worst portrayal of any of the characters in the game and made me mad as it went along.
Basically this.
Tifa was always the soft-spoken, considerate girl who could beat stuff up. Aerith was the one with more agency despite being the healer archetype.
It was deliberate role reversal based on their aesthetics. If anything, Tifa does more this time around than in the original. Fleshing out her character only shows that she's always been demure and supportive towards Cloud. Which I guess doesn't resonate with some people's image of her.
What more she does in this one? They added her being worried about Avalanche subplot, which is a subplot for Cloud's character development, not hers, and cuts a moment from the original where she had some kind of agency over Cloud.
The problem is that fleshing out that aspect of her personality with new scenes ends up being the only thing remarkable about her, they forgot to add more depth about her other than being worried about everything and crazy for Cloud, comparing to Aerith where you can see here being sassy, kind, sweet, aggressive, etc etc.... Tifa is just a one not character, other than some random "kicks a monsters" that seems to be put because devs were aware they had nothing more for her.
I know about the role-reversal but, I don't deny that, I'm just saying they went too far with it in this game.
