3/5 ★ – Frank_S's review of Final Fantasy VII Remake.

“Not yet Cloud” the Video Game Final Fantasy VII Remake is one of the most frustrating games I have ever played. I can see the potential for this game to be great if not a masterpiece, But it, unfortunately, falters at every possible point. I have never played the original so maybe a lot of my problems can be traced back to that game. However, if those things are bad that also makes them bad here and open to be criticised. But from what I’ve researched, I think a lot of problems are exclusive to this game. The game basically breaks down into two main parts. Gameplay and story. So to make this easy to understand (and to write) I’m going to break this review down into those two parts. First gameplay and then story. The combat system is a really awesome idea. Mixing a hack and slash system with a more traditional turn-based JRPG system is something quite unique. When this system works it can be really fun. Switching between characters and using abilities and spells in synergy as you overwhelm the enemy feels great. However, that feeling is rare. This is due to many factors so let’s start off with the camera. The camera is not very good to put it nicely. It’s just too close to your character to be able to see all the battle information you need. You can zoom it out a little from the settings, but the fact that they even have that as a setting kind of shows they don’t realize the importance of the camera’s distance. Without fail, every fight I got hit by things that I just could not see due to the camera, and because of the way aggro works in the game switching characters doesn't really help. Enemies prioritize aggro on the player-controlled character. So when you switch to get a better understanding of the battlefield you can’t rely on knowing what the enemy you were just fighting is doing. Sometimes as well it’s even more unreliable as they just don’t change aggro for 20 seconds for seemingly no reason. I feel like if they added a top-down strategy type view that you could use to really get a feeling for where enemies are and who they are attacking could be a big help. Coming off the camera, let's talk about the lock on in this game. It might just be the worst lock on I have ever seen. It just doesn’t work. There are two types of lock on, Soft and Hard. The soft lock on is always on. It helps your character's attacks connect to enemies. If you are close to an enemy or have your camera slightly off it will lock to them. This works about 50% of the time. Sometimes you will be nowhere near an enemy and barely looking at them and you will soft lock to them, and sometimes you will be right in front of them looking right at them and you will just attack the complete opposite ways. It’s annoying but I understand as it's only a soft lock on. If you really want to focus on an enemy, that's what the hard lock on is for right? Wrong! The hard lock pretty much works the exact same way as the soft. So many times I have been locked on and they continue to attack nothing. All the hard lock on does is mess the camera up even more as it kind of follows the enemies but then also seems to just de track them seemingly at random. I think this happens when you try to move the camera naturally but why? The whole point of a hard lock on is to lock the camera to the enemy. The lock on and the camera are very important but the most important part of the gameplay is the flow of the combat and battles. The game flows pretty well when there are the same or less amount of enemies as characters in your party. But as soon as the enemies outnumber the party it becomes a bit of a mess (unless they are a real weak and you use clouds' triple-slash ability). As there will always be enemies that you can’t see (going back to the camera problems) and your uncontrolled player characters will struggle to prioritize the enemies that you want. I have seen some people say that if you lock on then change to another character the previous character will hit the locked on target. I don’t know whether my game is just busted or this is just a lie because it sure never worked for me. But this would actually be a very helpful mechanic that I hope is in the next game (or works properly). Carrying on from flow, I want to talk about the flow in boss fights specifically. I’m really torn on bosses in this game. As they can feel really satisfying to beat but often the drag of the fight wears me down too much. Boss fights in this game are so long. This isn’t helped by the fact that it never looks like you are doing damage removing the feel of progression in the fight. Due to the fights being so long that it often just becomes a war of attrition towards the end as you constantly use any ap points (A meter that charges over time to let you use spells. abilities and items) to heal your party constantly as you just don’t want to have to do it all over again. Abilities often feel pointless against bosses as well as they seem to only be susceptible to spells. This removes a huge part of the combat and starts to make the bosses even more samey. This isn’t to say all the bosses are boring. Many are quite fun but many feel tedious and sometimes a bit unfair, with many having none dodgeable high damage attacks. Lastly on bosses and combat as a whole. I wish they would show when a boss is going to go into a new phase. Often when a boss enters a new phase it often becomes immune to damage. This is really annoying when you finally stun them and decide to use your abilities to deal damage but midway through the attacks, they go immune, wasting all your ap points. This makes stunning even less effective as you don’t want to go all out in case they suddenly stop taking damage. But as I said, the gameplay is only one half of this puzzle. The other being the legendary story of Final Fantasy 7. So did they do a good job here? Well yes and no (just like the rest of the game). I’ll start with some basic no spoiler thoughts then go into spoilers. The main issue here with the story is the pacing. The game is constantly killing its own momentum by having an important point happen then seemingly forgetting it happened while you run around for a few hours doing pointless quests. Then for another important moment to happen and rinse and repeat. This might be okay in the early game as it doesn’t want to throw too much at you but his pattern continues to the very end. So what kept me going if the pacing was all over the place? One, the mysteries that the game is setting up (more on that in Spoilers) and the other, the characters. I generally love all the characters. They just feel so enjoyable to watch and interact. Even if Cloud is the dumbest idiotic guy to have ever lived I’m happy they like him as that means I get to see them. Although the characters are fun to watch it does also reach a point where you would like to know more about them to invest properly, alas the game never gives you what you want. So that's about as much as I can say without spoilers, So FULL SPOILERS! The pacing really does suck. Let's give some examples. So about halfway through the game, a plate of the city is dropped into the slums. It’s an awesome and emotional part of the game with side characters you have gotten to know all dying and the town you called “home” being crushed under rubble. Not to mention they kidnap Aerith, one of your friends. So what happens after this huge moment. You walk around doing pointless jobs then chase a troll in a sewer for 30 minutes followed by getting back a story from some random ass character that we will never see again. I don’t care that you lost your wife, doorman, they just stole my friend. This is made even more infuriating as the game refuses to explain any of the main characters' backstories. We only get Aerith’s in the last section of the game. To best describe why this is so annoying I'm just going to list off all the questions I have. Why is Barrett an eco-terrorist? Who is Marline's mum? Is she adopted? Did her mum die? Is that why Barrett is so mad? Does that mean Shinra killed her? How did Barrent lose his arm? What's the cloud relationship to Tifa? I know they grew up together but how long have they been apart? What's Cloud’s relationship with Sephiroth? Did they fight together? Were they friends? I know he seems to have burned down his hometown, but how old was Cloud when that happened? Tifa seems to know who Sephiroth is but how well does she know him? Why was Tifa in a cowboy outfit in that flashback with Sephiroth’s sword? That is just the tip of the iceberg on questions they don’t answer. The real main problem comes from Sephiroth and Cloud's “flashbacks” (At least I think they are flashbacks). Who the Hell is Sephiroth? He’s a soldier and what? All he does is so up every 3 hours and says “Not yet Cloud” and “Join me Cloud”. I Just don’t care about him as I know nothing about him or his relation to Clouds. Not yet cloud becomes the catchphrase of this game as just as you think you are going to get some answers you don’t. Half the time this happens because characters just don’t react normally to things. One example of this comes when you are in the Sector 5 slums. You talk to an NPC that mentions Biggs’s name (a side character). Any normal person would question them as they know a biggs, and that could be the same guy. But no cloud just acts like she never said anything and they move on. Another great example comes near the end of the game. You finally see Sephiroth again. He starts saying more lines than normal and it seems like it’s finally going to go down after 25 hours of nothing. Then for the first time, it seems like Tifa also sees him. It really is going down. Oh, wait, no it's not. He cuts the bridge and you all get separated. You do link up with Tifa quite quickly though, however, she doesn’t mention Sephiroth at all. Okay, maybe I imagined her seeing him. Oh, wait, no again! About 2 hours later after you just did some pointless ass quest killing things for doctor Bojo or whatever he's called, completely killing momentum. Tifa says we have to find Sephiroth. WHAT! Why did you not mention it until now? Didn't he burn down your home and you thought he was dead. I think if you just saw him seemingly alive you would mention it! This is just how the whole of the game is. It thinks it’s cool but never seems to tell you why it is. I did not care at all about the final boss because I have no investment in Sephiroth. Also, how did Cloud get back to Midgar? HE WAS AT THE EDGE OF THE COSMOS! After all that ranting though. Like I said it still has some great moments and fun moments. The real draw for this game is its strange charm. With its unique combat and unique world. Where it could be this terrible terrorist attack one moment and a dance sequence the next. You really never quite know what it’s going to throw at you and that's fun in itself. I do hope they fix a lot of these issues in the next game though as the charm of this game will have faded and I’ll know what to expect. Really all I hope for is something to happen that I understand. I can’t take another game of “Not yet”. Extra note: The OST is a banger.