amolbhatia50k
Sneaky bum time - Vaccination status: dozed off
I'm quite disappointed by FF7. As a disclaimer, I've grown to be a pretty finicky gamer. If I actually complete a game from start to finish, it means I genuinely loved it. In most cases though, the moment I lose interest, and it starts feeling like a drag, I put the game down and just read/watch the ending. As a second disclaimer I do not enjoy turned based combat however Persona 5 somehow made it fun for me.I've been trying to play this on and off for about two months now, it's a struggle to be honest. This is not a good game and I'm baffled why it's considered that by a lot of people. It's been nothing but corridors of unappealing browns and greys, filled almost exclusively with mindless padding. I'm not just talking about side quests, which are inane, but normal progression stuff.
Just now I've had a couple of sequences where I had to move around agonizingly slow mechanical hands to proceed. Seriously, it felt like it took ages. This in the middle of another long, boring corridor section. Who on earth thinks this is even a mildly enjoyable activity? Yeah sure there's the nostalgia factor and seeing these characters interact in 2021 is great, like a childhood dream come true, but the actual game around it isn't any better than FF XIII in my opinion. Before I played it, I feared that the only way to create an entire, lengthy game from the Midgar section was to include staggering amounts of filler. Imagine my lack of surprise when that's exactly what this is.
It's a massive shame because I do enjoy the story moments and big set-pieces. For that reason alone I'm going to keep playing this for as long as I can stomach it but, man, I seriously don't understand how anyone can consider this a good game.
Now back to FF7, I was actually enjoying the game up to the 20 or so hour mark. The game looks superb, the combat was alright and the storytelling/dialogue was very well done. Until that point, I was conveniently side stepping the truly horrendous side quests. But the longer my game time grew the more any patience I had in me for the game mechanics due to sheer novelty factor slowly died. The whole loop of enter corridor fight three creatures via turn based combat rise and repeat was too much for me to take. And there's shitloads of such sections in the game just like that. Then the whole entertainment market wall Street thing and the dancing was vomit inducing. After that I was pretty much done with it. The story which seemed pretty tightly woven at the start was now falling apart at the seems completely with completely unnecessary and cringeworthy detours.
All in all, I'm surprised this got the ratings it did. In terms of packaging, visuals and all it's excellent. But as a video game as you rightly say it's got enormous holes. For me I'd rate it a lot higher if it were half the length. I was done by that point and another 10 hours of that would have been torture to be honest. I'd also add that I finished Remnant and nearly finished Subnautica after I started FF7 which says something too. Finally, I did watch the cutscenes to see where the story goes and it's really all over the place.