Final Fantasy VII (1997)
My second favorite FF game. My first exposure to it, and to the FF series, was watching Advent Children as a child. Screenshots of Rebirth my own, screenies from Remake taken from Coeurl Whiskers. All rights belong to Square Enix.
Spoilers incoming
I went in already spoiled for everything that happens, but when I got around to actually playing Remake a couple years ago, I had the time of my life. I loved Cloud and Tifa, but unexpectedly found myself loving Aerith the most; as she was barely in AC, I hadn’t actually felt any emotional attachment to her. Before her, when all I really knew of FF7 was AC, my favorite was Tifa.
The Aerith in og and the Aerith in Remake are so distinct from each other that it’s a little shocking. Tifa is mostly the same in both, though I enjoyed her way more in og. She’s more confident and determined in og, where in Remake she’s hesitant and shy. Aerith in og is out of the loop; she doesn’t know what’s going on any more than anyone else does. She’s even a little annoying! But in Remake it is exceedingly clear that she knows way more about what’s going on then she’s letting on. She’s ominous and offputting in Remake and the knowledge of what’s about to happen weighs really heavy on her (and the audience) in Rebirth. It’s so interesting that they decided to do that with the remakes and it’s one of the few things that I actually enjoyed about the game.
Anyway, as much as I love FF7, I really did hate playing Rebirth. I did make a genuine attempt to 100% the game, but this worked against me as I got frustrated very easily with it. The gameplay felt repetitive, the side quests often felt like busywork (a problem I noticed but could excuse with Remake as it extended out the first three hours of og into a 30hr game), and I hated Queensblood (the card game. . .). Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t actually finish all the side quests; despite the literal 100hrs I put into it, I wasn’t actually good enough at the combat to get the Genji Armor, which I will forever be mad about. Rebirth made me like FF7 less, which I didn’t think was possible.
It also made me hate Sephiroth. He’s cool and scary in Advent Children because he’s legitimately dangerous and over half the movie is spent building him up. He’s cool and scary in og because he spends half his time being dangerous and ominous and the other half laughing his ass off at and fucking with Cloud. In Remake and Rebirth he’s like. Ugly cute? I guess? I was bored of him by the time I was half way through Rebirth.
In summary, don’t bother with buying the remakes, play og and watch someone else play the rest like god intended.
I'm gonna look for the let's plays I watched of the games and add the links here, I guess.
