After a long time in my Steam-library, I finally started to play and actually got into the masterpiece that is Final Fantasy VII. The game is really good, but the port itself could be much better.It is basically the same thing as the previous PC-version, but with minor improvements such as 1080p graphics, slightly better video quality and after many complaints, the PS1 music instead of those terrible low-quality PC MIDIs. There are many things that could have been done better. Here's a little list that the Steam port didn't do well and could do it better:
-The button names: One thing I found quite annoying, especially with mini-games, is that the game doesn't say the actual name of the button and instead uses what they're used to. For example [Menu], [Switch], [OK] etc. I can understand that in the early era of PC games this might have been a hard thing to do, but why not implement it today? While playing with a Xbox 360 controller, it's especially annoying since the button layout is quite ridiculous. Why not just change it to [X], [A], [RT] etc? No, instead we get a screen showing which buttons do what prior to the title screen, only for keyboard.
-Framerate: The framerate in Final Fantasy VII is quite weird. On the title credits it's 60 fps, in the world it's locked at 30 fps and in battles it's locked at a mere 15 fps. Why didn't they improve that? The battles would look so much better with the higher framerate itself.
-Have the original music... from the start. The PC MIDIs were quite terrible. Eventually Square Enix released a patch that changed the music to the original PS1 versions. The reason I didn't buy the Steam version of FFVIII is because the game uses the PC MIDIs too, despite the fact that Square Emix promised the PS1 music.
-Some kind of HQ filter: As many of you might know, most of the environments in the game are pre-rendered 2D images of 3D environment. They are very pixelated, which is fine for its time but nowadays it is quite bad looking. Don't get me wrong, I love retro games with pixels, but the low-res in this case can make it quite an annoyance while playing on a bigger screen with 1080p. It sometimes is unclear what and where things are. Why not just have a simple texture filters like in emulators?
But enough things that could be better with the re-release. Let's get to my initial point:
Final Fantasy VII is without a doubt, one of the best games ever made, and seeing so many remakes being made nowadays, I would really like to see a true remake of this game. While the game is still great, it is quite outdated by today's standards. The controls in the overworlds is quite bad, the environments as previously mentioned, don't look that great anymore and the character models aren't good looking. While all this might be charming for us who enjoy old games, it might make new audiences stay away from the game. But that's not even why I want to see a true HD remake of this game. It's that the fans really deserve to get to play in the FFVII with next-gen graphics and orchestrated music. Just think about how great the Planet would look like if all environments were actually 3D environments and all the character models would be high polygonal. It would make an already great game even better. Even the controls and gameplay mechanics could be updated as they're not the greatest anymore. All that would be great for new audiences and a giant treat for the long-time fans of the game.
I heard rumors that they're making a remake for the mobiles. I hope it's false! I want to see it on PC, PS4 and maybe even WiiU.
