[fishtacos]

FFVII was the first RPG I ever played. As an immigrant from a poor Balkan country, I never had access to computers and the only console I had ever played until 1997 was Atari 2600, which was a clone with built-in games (although it did have a slot for cartridges as well). I did buy an SNES after much convincing my father, against the advice of my friend. It was basically EOL at that point, but the price was right for our family's budget.

I borrowed the same friend's PS1 and had a blast with Resident Evil 2. Then he lent it again for FFVII.

When I started it,it seemed so stupid. Short, polygonal characters, lots of text and no context. Still, I kept on going. I discovered a whole new world of video games I hadn't encountered before. Began slowly immersing myself into it, and reading up on it at the middle school library's PCs. (486 running win 3.11 and slooow thrashing pagefile due to what was probably 4mb or less of RAM). Once I got started, there was no stopping me. I bought the official strategy guide, learned how much fun the materia system was, got emotionally involved when Aeris (Aerith) died, and spent more than 100 hours in that first game, and with some internet sleuthing, used the mega potions glitch to help me fight the mega bosses. At that point, the final boss was a cakewalk, with the most powerful summon a few times.

Lest one thinks it's nostalgia talking, I ended up playing it again twice more all the way to the end throughout the years.

The remake held my interest for a bit, but didnt like the new combat system, so lost interest . I'll try and pick it back up when the 2nd part, Afterbirth, is released.

[bigstrat2003]

Don't bother with FF7R, it sucks. I tried so hard to like it, as FF7R is my favorite game of all time. But it's just a bad game.

1. It's a remake which completely diverges story wise and gameplay wise from the original. So not a great thing off the bat, because it's a "remake" which is really a new game with an FF7R coat of paint on.

2. The game was needlessly padded out to try to justify why they split the game into multiple installments. That might've been fine if the new content was good, but instead there is so, so much boring filler content which exists just to pad the length of the game. It's a 40ish hour game iirc, and at least half of that could have been cut (and the game would've been better for it).

3. The story goes way off the rails and ends up with some fourth wall breaking stuff that is just plain amateurish in its writing quality. And to add insult to injury, the fans of the original who wanted a faithful remake are not so subtly implied to be the villains.

4. The combat is... ok for what it is. I don't like action combat. But it's very poorly tuned. For example, take Air Buster, a boss fight that takes a few minutes in the original. In FF7R, it's a 10 minute fight. It's the same basic strategy - it's weak to thunder, so use that a lot (and your abilities that add stagger, which is obviously not a thing in the original). Then the boss will be staggered, and you can unleash limit breaks to do big damage. The problem is, it's 10 minutes of just doing that. Nothing new or interesting happens, just hit the boss with chip damage until it's staggered, then do real damage for a few seconds, repeat for 10 minutes. It's not horrible as a system but it's really badly tuned.

So yeah, you're not missing anything with FF7R. It's just a really bad game, which isn't worth your time or money.

[the_snooze]

I enjoyed my time enough with Remake, but it's relied waaaay too much on having prior knowledge of FF7 and its extended universe. Remake threw Sephiroth in your face within the first hour of gameplay, without much explanation of who the guy is. In the original, Sephiroth was just the subject of whispers and rumors until you got an up-close look at him in the flashback after you've left Midgar.

[internet101010]

I did not play the original but did play the Remake. I went into it completely blind and I did not feel out of the loop at the end of the game.

[steve_adams_86]

That’s bizarre. How is he introduced in the remake? That seems all wrong, but maybe it makes sense.

[aquova]

I enjoyed your story, but I do want to make one correction. The upcoming second part to the remake is called "Rebirth", not Afterbirth. I think that would be a very different game indeed.

[duskwuff]

OP may be thinking of a different game:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/401920/The_Binding_of_Isa...

[okdood64]

I played FF7 three times during my pre-pubescent years. Along with Chrono Cross twice, Chrono Trigger, FF9 and FFX. (I could not get into FF8's story or magic system.)

I really wanted to like FF7 Remake but stopped around 2/3 way through Midgar.

I don't know whether it's my lack of patience with with single player RPGs at this age, or whether it was just not a good game. I find I can only really get into the odd competitive multiplayer game these days because of the community & friends factor.

That said I always found I enjoyed FF7 much more after getting out of Midgar and having a semi-open world to run around in, versus the more on-rails experience of Midgar. I suppose I'll give the next installment a go.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Permanently missable secrets and a lot of farming are things that lose a lot of interest. I'm having trouble with ALL square games, there is just too much farm.

[nullindividual]

FF7 just isn’t that good. But when a piece of media is your first foray, you will look back on it with nostalgia glasses.

FF7 story is bland, simplistic, characters are semibaked. It is a product of its era, with meant poorly written characters and stories.

[norwalkbear]

The remake lost my interest too. The new story seemed insulting to fans