LogFAQs > #979302327

Beat the game today. Best I've played in years, and Square's best since the early 00's. A proper adventure with plenty of silliness and good characterisation, some good level design in there too, and the battle system loop with synergy abilities and limits is excellent; a real step-up from Remake which I already enjoyed. The OST is up there with the best I've ever heard; the range and quality, and how it's deployed, is quite extraordinary - must be one of the biggest soundtrack projects undertaken for a single release (i.e. excluding MMO expansions). I even enjoyed the mini-game spam and forgave some of the wacky control schemes - Queen's Blood and Chocobo Racing were superb. It reminds me what these party-based RPG/adventure games can be, and could still be in the future. I really love nothing more than engrossing myself in a good one.

But it comes with

(Ending Spoilers)

butchery of the most iconic scene in FF.

The way it missed makes me think about the nature of modern popular culture and how the dynamics around it facilitate so much more interest in what a work could mean than how it is what it is. The original scene was a blunt whack over the head which even the most unobservant player could understand - sword through the heart; death; rage; mournful music; swift battle; funeral; move on. They ignore that altogether and do something that would never have been executed as it has been in the 90s. SE tried to remake FFVII with the 21st century's technology, but they've also remade it as a work of popular fiction to appeal to the world of online fandoms, which changes it much more (and, IMO, for the worse). There's definitely a better way of articulating what I'm getting at.

Also there's some serious jank in a section in Chapter 11 which particularly frustrated me. The game would have benefitted from a good editing job plus performance and UI refinements.

I'm going to give the platinum a good attempt.