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blog #videogames ##Final Fantasy
Not sure I cared much when this game was announced in 2015. Playing Final Fantasy XV also didn't help restoring my faith into Square-Enix. To be honest I originally hadn't planned on playing this one at all. Well, until the news got out that it wasn't a remake after all. I mean at least no matter its quality it wouldn't invalidate the original Final Fantasy VII, and people would still have to play that so they could say they had played and witnessed the story of this classic of Playstation history.
So I got to play Final Fantasy VII Remake after all. I was curious about the new direction the story would go in, and how well they translated the original's atmosphere into a 3D world with HD visuals. Still cautious I went in with low expecations. And still found myself disappointed.
The Final Fantasy series has been reinventing its own gameplay mechanics with each new game ever since Final Fantasy XII, and the most recent entry Final Fantasy XV is no exception to this. It starts as unusually as it could get, dumping a full party on the player instead of slowly introducing party members over the course of the game. Then the game never tells you much about how the three guys that the party comprises met - you have to watch a series of anime shorts to learn that. The plot in general is as thin as you can imagine from the way the game starts. You can easily beat the game in 20 to 30, if not even less, hours unless you go out of your way and deal with the game's vast amount of optional content. Personally I'm not a fan of the story and the way it is told. In the early game you spend most of your time going from place to place, triggering the occasional cutscene that doesn't tell you much, and then near the end there's all the action and exposition that explains the villain and their motivation. All lumped together into the last few hours of playtime. The writing's pretty lousy with characters that have ridiculous, if any at all, motivations for their actions. Noctis the protagonist is after a girl he hasn't met in a decade and only knows from his childhood memories, while collecting mystic weapons to power up and be the hero that saves the day. The villain is a bad guy because he absorbed all the world's evil - very human and relatable. The party hangs out with Noctis because they're his friends and its their job, and there's barely if no development at all on that front.
Still, the post-credits scene left me with teary eyes, so it's not all as bad it may sound. Despite the lack of actual story events to properly introduce the cast, all the banter between the characters on their journey works very well to allow the player to become emotionally invested in the party. That gives plenty of motivation to see the rather lackluster story through to its end.