Final Fantasy VII : Haunted [Chapter 11] {Walkthrough/Gameplay}
Channel: theRedLad
Date: 17/01/2022

Final Fantasy VII
Chapter 11 : Haunted 
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IGN Review : The fact that remakes of both Resident Evil 3 and Final Fantasy 7 arrive just a week apart is pretty incredible, especially because they couldn’t be more different in their approaches as far as a “remake” goes. While RE3 is a mostly faithful modernization of its original, Final Fantasy 7 is less a remake and more a complete reinvention. It swaps turn-based combat with exciting real-time action and expands the first leg of the original story by dozens of hours – including with a bit too much filler and some convoluted new plot points. The long wait for this revival may not be a perfect reunion, but with or without nostalgia in play, it’s still a great JRPG in its own right.

Of course, Final Fantasy 7 Remake is actually only the first in what is planned to be a series of as-yet-unknown length that will, if it’s ever completed, retell the entire story of the 1997 JRPG classic. This game only covers the events that take place in the city of Midgar, where Cloud Strife and his freedom-fighting allies battle the evil Shinra corporation that run it. That means roughly the first five hours of the original have been stretched into a campaign that took me more than 33 hours to complete, and there are still a few optional stones I left unturned.

It’s an odd decision that undoubtedly results in some structural problems, but also gives the city and its heroes more time to become fleshed out as interesting characters – even smaller ones like Avalanche’s Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge have time to become nuanced and compelling co-stars. This new telling regularly jumps between shot-for-shot recreations of the original, welcome expansions to existing sequences, and brand-new scenes that offer either enticing new perspective or pointlessly dull padding that frequently makes you retread previously explored areas.

Thankfully, the guiding star through areas new and old is FF7R’s combat, which more than proves itself to be endlessly engaging across dozens of hours and against more than 100 different types of enemies. I’ll admit that I was initially sad to hear this remake wouldn’t use the original Final Fantasy 7’s turn-based Active Time Battle (ATB) combat, but the way that iconic system has been transformed into real-time brawling is exceptional. And though you only directly control one character at a time, you’ll constantly be giving orders to and swapping between two more mid-fight.

While you can hack away at enemies all you want with the square button, doing so charges up your ATB bars, which you can then use on unique weapon abilities, equippable spells, and items. Pulling up the command menu to pick one of these things slows time to a crawl, letting you comfortably pick actions for your entire party in the middle of combat – but that persistent slow creep forward adds a tension to every choice that truly reminded me of the frantic decision making the original elicited. (There is a “Classic” mode difficulty option, but all it does is automate all your actions in combat apart from ATB use, making it a strange middle ground I didn’t enjoy.)

Every character also has a unique ability mapped to triangle that doesn’t use ATB – for example, Cloud can switch to “Punisher Mode” for extra damage but reduced speed, while Tifa can unleash a big finisher that’s powered up by one of her abilities. You can also dodge and guard at will, and you’ll need to do so a lot. Though it never got super challenging on Normal difficulty, there’s enough nuance to it that just mashing square to unleash flashy basic attacks won’t get you too far.

In addition to a health bar, enemies have a stagger gauge that stuns them and increases the damage they take when full. It’s a system we’re seeing more of nowadays, but the clever twist is that every enemy’s stagger gauge fills in a different way. Sure, some of the more basic guys like Wererats and Shinra soldiers you just need to hit a lot, but others might be weak to a specific elemental magic, require you to dodge a certain attack, or cripple a body part in order to stagger them. Those differences keep combat fresh the whole way through, and I loved learning the puzzle of how to take down each enemy.

That variety is a big part of why FF7R’s boss fights are so incredible, too. These cinematic showdowns are as intimidating as they are exciting, always multi-phase confrontations that rarely left me mindlessly swinging my Buster Sword. It’s incredible to see how returning bosses have been reimagined as well, with what were once throwaway creatures like the sewer-dwelling Abzu transformed into epic confrontations full of newfound personality. These bosses have unique moves to learn and avoid alongside weak points that need to be taken down in strategic order with the right moves.