A remake with a lot more stuff.

User Rating: 8 | Final Fantasy VII Remake PS4

Good

- voices were done really well.

- visuals look stunning

- boss fights are challenging. Switching chars to counter certain attacks is fun

- the ATB gauge maintains the turn based element in the real time combat. This separates it from games like tales

- the shop refilling the necessary items on discount reduces the menuing which I appreciate.

- I loved the auto weapon leveling. It greatly decreased the amount of menuing I had to do. But it's still there for those who like customization.

- once I got a hang of the combat, the fights can become quite exhilarating.

- Glad to see the pay homage to Zack at the end.

- the themes of the various areas were unique. One second I'm in a steam punk reactor setting, then a busy clubbing street, then the slums, then a haunted factory. There was a lot of diversity, keeping it fresh.

Bad

- countering should have been explained more in depth. Doesn't seem like I can counter all attacks. What can and can I not counter??

- some of the gestures are weird. Not human like. Over done. Kind of like anime.

- Jessie is way too flirty. It's awkward watching her flirt even in front of her avalanche team members. I'm not even in wedge and Biggs shoes, but I'm weirded out in their stead.

- some of the movement animations were ridgid. Especially the transitions from real-time movement 2 a cutscene. Last of Us 2 is an example where that transition is done seamlessly, well FF7 still carries on that rigid transitions you see and old RPGs. Facial animations of NPCs are mostly very rigid.

- the game is very linear.

- not being able to cancel an attack combo into dodge roll is inconvenient. But maybe it's to force the player to plan ahead before attacking, which if is the case, then forgivable.

- whenever clouds block animation faces the opposite way of the incoming attack, it looks very weird. I wish they would have made Cloud automatically turn around oh, so that at least it would look like he was blocking the attack. Although the attack is still considered blocked, it just visually looks weird.

- the lever puzzle is so shallow and boring and it doesn't work properly I clearly matched the timing, but it still didn't work many times, which was frustrating.

- aerith is too overly positive. To the point where she doesn't seem human. Even her "angry" emotion is not angry at all. She's like an android.

- feels like I'm watching a chick flick. There's so much focus on romance and flirting themes. The flirting is too blatant. I like when it's hinted, not when it's so obvious.

- teammate AI really dumb sometimes. Don't evade or defend properly. And builds docus meter so slow.

- parry attack has no i-frames, meaning if I parry an attack I can potentially be killed by another incoming attack during my counter attack. This makes parrying unsafe at times. Cloud should be invulnerable during the counter attack. Either that or let me parry the second hit.