This is a PSA:

Do NOT play the PSP rerelease of this game.

Play the fan-translated PS1 version of the game instead.

The original version has:

-A fun and experimental semi-automatic battle system that only requires player input to set-up commands, and pause to edit them. This allows for fast action, natural discovery of teamwork fusion attacks, and player experimentation with the card/negotiation system.

-actual challenge that ramps up as you play and makes the player think about their compositions and actions.

-loading screens only during loading saves and loading up the game

-a far superior UI aesthetic and generally more unified vision with regard to visuals, music, and battle voice lines

-is amazing

The PSP version has:

-a butchered version of the combat system that forces the player to repeatedly input the same commands at the start of every turn for no reason whatsoever

-absolutely no challenge, even on hard mode.

-loading before every fight

-slowed down battle animations

-script censorship

-if you see reviews calling this game a slog to play, it's cause they played this one
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I personally played the psp version twice, not knowing at all about these differences. I played the ps1 version once and it was like a whole new game. I don't know how they fucked up the psp version so bad with the combat and balancing, but I've heard the psp version of the sequel is much better (although the fan translation is yet to come out).

The one downside of playing the ps1 version of this game is that the fan translation has a little bit of that old 2000's era language in it in places and can feel like a bit of a relic (uses the word "gay" as a kind of insult for the sake of a translated pun(?) in a few places, among other stuff, but overall wasn't the worst and otherwise felt well-done and accurately localized, the translator is a bit of a legend in the realm of fan-made localizations).

I might be the only person around that feels this way but I highly prefer the gamecube release of this game to the HD rereleases because the camera angles are actually static on gamecube, but for the HD rereleased, they zoomed in on the backgrounds and had the camera pan across them as the player moves through them as an approach to widescreen conversion.

Giving the player visual priority in the movement of the frame makes the visual dynamics completely different and changes the whole atmosphere of the game.

When the camera is not panning to match the players movement, the player feels the world and reality around them is not built for them, is outside them, and that they are fighting against a system and world that is hostile to them. When it tracks and pans to their whim, they have more implicit visual agency which severely detracts from that sense of dreamlike isolation, stillness, alienation, and horror.

Also the game just looks fucking amazing on gamecube, easily the best looking game of that generation. I wish there were more prerendered games like this, not even in the horror genre but just more static, cinematic walking-through-frames kinds of games.

This is the best gacha game I played. It felt open and fun and interesting. SaGa style storytelling fits the gacha structure surprisingly well.

But it's still gacha and I couldn't really get into it. Just the sheer amount of icons and popups and login bonus shit bombarding me at the home screen turns my brain into oatmeal. Sometimes seeing these gacha games makes me feel old for not being able to keep up with the amount of sheer fast data being presented to me. And yet at the same time sometimes it makes me feel too young to play it because I'm not old enough to be spending my time spinning slots or whatever it is these things do. I'm only 23.

Back to the dragon quest casinos I go

I couldn't get very far with this game before getting absolutely fatigued with it but I think it utterly fails at capturing the aspect of ff7 I really like the most.

Other than the fact that the original is one of the most earnestly introspective games, had commentaries on nearly every archetype presented in the game, is chock full of content and plot with perfect pace, and manages to utterly demasculate and break down the shounen jrpg hero figure, the original final fantasy VII bucked the tone of the action hero fantasy by both playing up the heroism and swashbuckling with a thick, palpable layer of melancholic and innocent irony.

Irony is often something cynical, something too adult or hardened. A way of coping with the world. But the irony in ff7 was pure, a kind of return to the true nature of what people are. It's not judgmental, it doesn't have expectations, and it's not cynical or bitter. It's simply a sense of peace, with life, oneself, loss, defeat, heroics, struggle, hardship, passion, all the products of friction between a human being and the world around them.

The remake simply lacks that tonally. For the best possible example I can think, watch the moment in the original game near the beginning after the first bombing mission, where every exit of the screen Cloud tries to exit through, he gets cut off by troops and the player is presented with the choice of running or fighting at each turn. It's a straight swashbuckling scene, the hero is cornered at every turn and the choices are weighed against him over and over, and like some of those great heroic stories and films, the hero's not really in any danger; we've seen cloud oneshot those goons earlier with ease, it's purely an aesthetic situation. Yet, the music is utterly at conflict with the scene. It's somber, it's innocent, it's complicated, and very, very subtle. There's something amiss. The scene begs the player to expect a deconstruction, a demasculation, and the undoing of what people know and expect from the game without overtly stating it. It acts as the prelude for the game later changing its own writing and having the player reevaluate what it stands for.

I don't care about nomura ghosts, action combat, new scenes, or any other changes as long as the game gets that one aspect right. That one tone that only the original ever had. I couldn't detect it, so I gave up. I could be wrong, and maybe find that core spirit somewhere else in the game if I come back to it. Or maybe the remake just plain goes for something else, and maybe that's worth it in the end. Still, I feel something's missing.

Also a few other notes, the sidequests Suck ass. Going from ff14 ARR to 7r felt like I was moonlighting one job for an even shittier one. Not recommended!

All else said, that combat system is like the complete evolution of what kingdom hearts started on the ps2. I'm happy it's gotten this far. Mechanically this game plays like everything I wanted when I was 12.

Final fantasy has always been a game about putting all your ideas and the sum total of everything you have to say about a theme and design into one game. Every game in the series is both the first and final game in its own franchise. Those designs and ideas could have anything, any kinds of gameplay systems or plot ideas as long as it grandly tells a story with roleplaying and mechanics. I welcome the real time combat, as it's the series trying to understand and remix what else is out there and put its own spin on things by creating a newly aestheticized experience of combat. Final fantasy 20 might have no combat it in at all. Be ready for it!