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I'm enjoying the game a lot so far, I've arrived at chapter 14.
For a little historical context: I've played Final Fantasy 7 once, at the tender age of 12, after playing Final Fantasy X and VIII. So it being my 3rd Final Fantasy, it was never the mind-bending, formative experience it was for so many others. So I'd say, I'm a loose fan of the original. I've forgotten big parts of the storyline, retaining only in the broadest of strokes of how the story unfolds; so I wouldn't even notice most deviations from the original plot line. Yet I was worried, because so much could go wrong - from an over-adherence to the original, to veering too much into edgelord realism for the sake of it, ditching the amazing mood of the original in the process, to completely going off the rails into the deep end. It's not easy to rebuild a lighting in a bottle, I guess. But, amazingly enough, despite my huge skepticism, they really won me over big time.
As I said before, I don't remember all the story beats, so I was surprised that the plate of sector 7 really did go down - I completely forgot about that bit in the original.
So yeah, the changes definitely don't make it worse, which is tremendously relieving. Then there's the things they chose to expound upon and I*AM*A*FAN. The fact you can see more of how people on the plate live, and how they made more room for the Avalanche crew to shine. Just amazing. And the the parachuting was just beautiful as well.
Then there's the fact that you can actually *be* inside the slums, look upwards, look at the plate - graphically, it's beautiful. They really nailed the overall look as well, especially for the main cast. There is a noticeable gap between "rando" and important person, and sometimes a disconnect between the different aesthetics, peaking at the moment when Cloud in all his anime glory stood in a suburban house. But then again it kinda adds to the charm that made the original so unique, and overall it meshes surprisingly well. They weren't shying away from the goofiness the original often reveled in, none of Midgar's quirky character is lost, and they really put great care in it to making it feel very alive. Even the German voice acting is pretty ok, even for the non-main cast
So yeah, imho the staff definitely had the necessary sensitivity to go about this remake to make sensible choices..
*(Like compare the dialogue in FF7R to P5R, there's like worlds between. Granted; Persona is standard JRPG Genre-fare perfected with all it's quirks, while FFVIIR goes all out trying to be, like, actually good.)
tl;dr
I was very skeptic about this whole endeavor, BUT the staff really showed us that they understood what made FFVII so fun in the first place and took great care to elevate the experience to the current generation by putting careful additions where they made sense. And even being wary of the changes in the beginning, I came away thinking that they are implemented rather nicely, carried through phenomenally strong story-telling. I came away liking them!
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[spoiler="also, I've noticed 3 glitches/problems/things"
Little glitch, not on switch, iCloud Twitch, Insta Share on Youtube bitch
Some wacky Foley sound problem (which was later identified as her model dragging a chair around for whatever reason)
this one might be the most egregious, as it's a cut-scene?
Now, a mega interesting conversation would be comparing VIIR to Final Fantasy XV... as gameplay wise, FFVIIR's Midgar section would have been the part of Insomnia, which was cut (if that makes sense, what I'm trying to say...?) Like, both games have the same overall structure, but while FFXV chose to cut chapter one and give us a broad-strokes bullet-point rund-down of the rest of the story, FFVIIR goes all in witch chapter One. The archetypical FF, in a way starts in a huge metropolitan city, and then expands out into the world.