Scratch my old rating, I'm bumping this to 4.5 stars now that I have completed my playthrough on hard. The pacing of this game is still undeniably fucked (especially compared to the original), but it's significantly less bothersome the second time around.
The thing is, I was so enamoured by the world, story, and characters of this game that I binged my first playthrough in a matter of a few days, which takes a poorly paced game and makes it even worse. Being forced to fight a million bullet-spongey bosses and having to go through the many blatantly drawn-out and uninspired connecting levels that bridge the game's more interesting areas and set pieces hence frequently felt like a chore to someone like me, eager to advance the story. Moreover, it took me quite a while to befriend this game's combat system on my first playthrough, so the damage was already done by the time I had really started to appreciate it for what it is. But with the gameplay being a much stronger intrinsic motivator for my hard playthrough, I at least enjoyed most of my combat encounters this time around. Doesn't mean I don't still want to have a word or two with whoever thought it a good idea to bloat these levels with boring filler obstacles that are always repeated three or four times over. Even the mostly enjoyable banter between the characters couldn't entirely redeem some of these levels for me—I mean Christ, I'm half-convinced that these slow ass robot arms are a subtle form of psychological torture, and you'll have to trudge through this area three fucking times (not even counting mandatory backtracking) for 100% completion.
One thing that I'm also not too hot on is the game's insistence on sluggishly "cinematic" character controls (outside of combat, that is), and, tied to this, the overabundance of physical loading gates that require painfully slow animations to overcome. Moreover, there is a constant struggle going between this game and the player over who gets to control the player character, and while the frequent transitions between cutscenes, semi-controllable sequences and fully controllable sequences are remarkably smooth on a visual level, the controls often lag behind, leading to many moments of delayed responsiveness (aka the mortifying ordeal of pressing a button with no in-game response). Constantly being forced to slowly walk or jog is very annoying as well, which I suspect might also be partially tied to loading issues, but maybe the developers were also afraid that the player would simply rush through their carefully crafted environments. Alas, they worried in vain: as someone who can spend hours in photo mode, I absolutely love to slow down in games and enjoy the beautiful scenery and atmosphere whenever presented with the opportunity—but I just don't want to be forced to do it through sluggish controls. Relatively realistic character movement can be appropriate for certain types of realistically told, cinematic games like The Last of Us (which also intrinsically pulls this off better), but when it comes to bombastic action titles where your character performs outlandish acrobatics while wielding a sword the size of a snowboard, I vastly, vastly prefer the smooth, quick, elegant, responsive controls of something like NieR: Automata.
So far these control issues are related to non-combat sequences, so let's look at the other side of the coin. As I said, I ultimately enjoyed the combat enough to play this a second time, intrigued by the additional gameplay constraints on hard that really force you to master the combat and not rely on item spam. Either way, I'm happy to say that Remake is for the most part an outstanding action title. Turns out that using abilities in bullet time is a surprisingly effective (not to mention visually spectacular) synthesis between modern action game sensibilities and the active time-based roots of the original title. Changing between party members in real time also adds a welcome layer of variation and tactical possibilities that I greatly enjoyed. That said, while overall I do love the combat here, it effectively capitalizes on its excellent premise only about 80% of the time. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details, and so the remaining 20% could still feel really stupid and frustrating even the second time around: there can be way too much annoying stunlock, dodging oftentimes doesn't feel as effective as it should, the camera and lock-on mechanics can feel rather clumsy at times—nothing fundamentally broken, but still in definite need of further refinement. Also, it would be nice to have savable, character-specific loadouts to avoid manually switching Materia between battles. A whole lot of time spent in menus in this game.
As for the game's sights and sounds: obviously spectacular. Killer soundtrack, stunning vistas, seemingly infinite animation budget, some of the best damn lighting I have seen in any game. Yeah, there are some texture issues here and there, but they rarely distract from the overall impression.
I'm not interested in discussing the story in any depth here, so I will only briefly touch on a few things. Firstly, of course the premise of a tight-knit group of earnest resistance fighters (who are also all sexy bastards) opposing an authoritarian, ultra-capitalist regime is totally my shit. The plot may be a bunch of fucking nonsense, but that is hardly important, because as long as you have interesting themes, characters, and worldbuilding to ground your plot, disbelief can be easily suspended. I'm also very much digging the tonal shifts between the game's over the top theatrics, joyful frivolity, and occasional moments of quiet beauty (the rooftop stroll was possibly my favourite moment from my first playthrough). Lastly, I'm actually quite fascinated by the meta-narrative that is interwoven here. Clearly, this part features a ton of setup for some big departures awaiting us in future installments, and while this could still potentially end up in disaster, for now I am cautiously optimistic, given the immense effort that Square is pouring into this remake saga, coupled with the genuine care and understanding this first part has already displayed for the original characters. I hope that the upcoming parts will continue this balancing act of deconstructing the traditional remake while also staying true to the original game, so that we ultimately end up with two complimentary versions of FFVII. Faithful, high-quality remakes like Bluepoint's 2018 Shadow of the Colossus are certainly nice to have, but in general I think that treating remakes as an opportunity for meaningful evolution and commentary is a more worthwhile direction to go for this art form.
Anyway, could have been an easy 5.0 star game without all the aforementioned caveats, even top 10 material.
The thing is, I was so enamoured by the world, story, and characters of this game that I binged my first playthrough in a matter of a few days, which takes a poorly paced game and makes it even worse. Being forced to fight a million bullet-spongey bosses and having to go through the many blatantly drawn-out and uninspired connecting levels that bridge the game's more interesting areas and set pieces hence frequently felt like a chore to someone like me, eager to advance the story. Moreover, it took me quite a while to befriend this game's combat system on my first playthrough, so the damage was already done by the time I had really started to appreciate it for what it is. But with the gameplay being a much stronger intrinsic motivator for my hard playthrough, I at least enjoyed most of my combat encounters this time around. Doesn't mean I don't still want to have a word or two with whoever thought it a good idea to bloat these levels with boring filler obstacles that are always repeated three or four times over. Even the mostly enjoyable banter between the characters couldn't entirely redeem some of these levels for me—I mean Christ, I'm half-convinced that these slow ass robot arms are a subtle form of psychological torture, and you'll have to trudge through this area three fucking times (not even counting mandatory backtracking) for 100% completion.
One thing that I'm also not too hot on is the game's insistence on sluggishly "cinematic" character controls (outside of combat, that is), and, tied to this, the overabundance of physical loading gates that require painfully slow animations to overcome. Moreover, there is a constant struggle going between this game and the player over who gets to control the player character, and while the frequent transitions between cutscenes, semi-controllable sequences and fully controllable sequences are remarkably smooth on a visual level, the controls often lag behind, leading to many moments of delayed responsiveness (aka the mortifying ordeal of pressing a button with no in-game response). Constantly being forced to slowly walk or jog is very annoying as well, which I suspect might also be partially tied to loading issues, but maybe the developers were also afraid that the player would simply rush through their carefully crafted environments. Alas, they worried in vain: as someone who can spend hours in photo mode, I absolutely love to slow down in games and enjoy the beautiful scenery and atmosphere whenever presented with the opportunity—but I just don't want to be forced to do it through sluggish controls. Relatively realistic character movement can be appropriate for certain types of realistically told, cinematic games like The Last of Us (which also intrinsically pulls this off better), but when it comes to bombastic action titles where your character performs outlandish acrobatics while wielding a sword the size of a snowboard, I vastly, vastly prefer the smooth, quick, elegant, responsive controls of something like NieR: Automata.
So far these control issues are related to non-combat sequences, so let's look at the other side of the coin. As I said, I ultimately enjoyed the combat enough to play this a second time, intrigued by the additional gameplay constraints on hard that really force you to master the combat and not rely on item spam. Either way, I'm happy to say that Remake is for the most part an outstanding action title. Turns out that using abilities in bullet time is a surprisingly effective (not to mention visually spectacular) synthesis between modern action game sensibilities and the active time-based roots of the original title. Changing between party members in real time also adds a welcome layer of variation and tactical possibilities that I greatly enjoyed. That said, while overall I do love the combat here, it effectively capitalizes on its excellent premise only about 80% of the time. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details, and so the remaining 20% could still feel really stupid and frustrating even the second time around: there can be way too much annoying stunlock, dodging oftentimes doesn't feel as effective as it should, the camera and lock-on mechanics can feel rather clumsy at times—nothing fundamentally broken, but still in definite need of further refinement. Also, it would be nice to have savable, character-specific loadouts to avoid manually switching Materia between battles. A whole lot of time spent in menus in this game.
As for the game's sights and sounds: obviously spectacular. Killer soundtrack, stunning vistas, seemingly infinite animation budget, some of the best damn lighting I have seen in any game. Yeah, there are some texture issues here and there, but they rarely distract from the overall impression.
I'm not interested in discussing the story in any depth here, so I will only briefly touch on a few things. Firstly, of course the premise of a tight-knit group of earnest resistance fighters (who are also all sexy bastards) opposing an authoritarian, ultra-capitalist regime is totally my shit. The plot may be a bunch of fucking nonsense, but that is hardly important, because as long as you have interesting themes, characters, and worldbuilding to ground your plot, disbelief can be easily suspended. I'm also very much digging the tonal shifts between the game's over the top theatrics, joyful frivolity, and occasional moments of quiet beauty (the rooftop stroll was possibly my favourite moment from my first playthrough). Lastly, I'm actually quite fascinated by the meta-narrative that is interwoven here. Clearly, this part features a ton of setup for some big departures awaiting us in future installments, and while this could still potentially end up in disaster, for now I am cautiously optimistic, given the immense effort that Square is pouring into this remake saga, coupled with the genuine care and understanding this first part has already displayed for the original characters. I hope that the upcoming parts will continue this balancing act of deconstructing the traditional remake while also staying true to the original game, so that we ultimately end up with two complimentary versions of FFVII. Faithful, high-quality remakes like Bluepoint's 2018 Shadow of the Colossus are certainly nice to have, but in general I think that treating remakes as an opportunity for meaningful evolution and commentary is a more worthwhile direction to go for this art form.
Anyway, could have been an easy 5.0 star game without all the aforementioned caveats, even top 10 material.