Not Quite Final Fantasy VII Reboot

I think it was my 14th birthday, with some birthday money in the wallet I went with my dad to the local computer games store and had the aim of buying a Playstation. I had looked at the deals and found one that included 2 controllers a memory card and any two games. Those two games I selected were Gran Turismo and Final Fantasy VII.

I was initially more drawn to Gran Turismo with the ability to start off with a smaller car and modify it to include various performance items, which I have no idea even now how they improve performance for the car but it made the numbers bigger. I played it a fair amount and it was a good game to play with multiple people and showed the grahpics capability the Playstation had over my Mega Drive significantly.

Final Fantasy VII I played a lot of, with a few friends of me commenting on the story, I hadn’t played many games which had an investment in the story other than the classic LucasArts adventure games like Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max hit the road with most games concentrating on gameplay.

It was to say the least the first RPG that I had played, and when I did get round to properly investing in it then it was safe to say Gran Turismo got in the back seat to Cloud Strife.

The story was amazing, not to spoil anything but it had something which got me invested in the characters to the point of having ones I preferred in my group more than others based on personality rather than my usual need to do things based on min maxing strategies and the whole game took around 100 hours to complete which I did, multiple times in fact with varying levels of completion.

When the remake was announced I was pretty excited for it, popped it on my Amazon Wishlist and thought “Well nothing else needed on this, I kinda need to get this when it comes out”, when the day came Animal Crossing beat out over it and probably for a reason which is worth going into and then came the reviews and information about it.

The story has been updated with other characters (cool), the fighting changed (cool) but it does end up essentially finishing just after you leave the first main city with what would be Disk 1 (I have been playing more on the PS Vita with it previously so the concept of disks is a bit lost there) and that has me confused.

What I liked most about it was the completionist aspect of it to go to little villages to get the top materia, limit breaks, race chocobos and such but I do not think there is a whiff of chocobo in this game if that is the case as that only really happens once you get out into the countryside and the chocobo ranch.

It is a little underwelming, I do intend to still pick it up but I think for my own sanity I will wait until all three “disks” are released and then play through it, with the PS5 over the horizon that could be the device I do this with as well.

Overall I am happy with what I have seen with it, the graphics are amazing and I am trying to avoid any spoilers about anything that could be extra but I do not want to have that feeling of completing that and knowing that I have only gone a bit way through the story - a bit like putting in an extended edition lord of the rings film and not being bothered to put in the second disk (Thanks digital media for solving that) in that I will want to put in that second disk and find that giant snake and chocobo - but I would have to revert to the original if I want to do that.

I hope they make more, and I might pick it up to encourage them to do that but it could be a half written story, I hope it isn’t.