For me, the game peaked around Chapter 4. I was loving the hell out of it, until they introduced Glenn Lodbrock. From that point on, the game just became a mess in a lot of ways. There are things for sure I like about the game. World Design of course is great. It was great seeing character interactions. The battle system finally won me over (after hating it in Remake). But I have some major complaints. For one, the soundtrack. They drowned out one of the greatest soundtracks ever made with less than memorable generic shit for a lot of it. Some of remixes, such as Temple of the Ancients REALLY suck. It's a downgrade, even from Remake. The menus are really bad too. How come I can't change my party from PARTY. How come I can't upgrade my Weapons from UPGRADE WEAPONS. Some very shit design work there. Anyway, it's probably best to give my opinion chapter per chapter
Chapter 1: Pretty good retelling of the Nibelheim incident. I hated the part where Cloud's mobility got reduced though. And there is something to be said for Sephiroth not talking about how Cloud and the other non-Ancients were "traitors". It felt like a key part of him Othering the world in the original. A key part of his motivation
Chapter 2: Loved it. At this point, I felt the potential for what I was going to be playing. Loved Kalm. Loved exploring the Grasslands and outside Midgar. Was pretty stoked and full hype mode
Chapter 3: Pretty straight forward chapter. I liked it well enough. Enjoyed the Mithril Mines theme quite a bit.
Chapter 4: Was enjoying it until they introduced Glenn... Parade was great. But then of course they have to make everything so over the top with the escape from Upper Junon, rather than them sneaking onto the ship.
Chapter 5: They turned the cargo ship into a cruise ship, which okay that's fine. I enjoyed the tournament quite a bit. But the lead up to the Jenova fight wasn't very cool. Lacked any tension or punctuation.
Chapter 6: Pretty chill. I enjoyed going around Costa Del Sol. However, I didn't like they turned Hojo being on the beach into a "thing". It was fun just having him chill there in the original. Probably shouldn't have been a chapter.
Chapter 7: Decent enough Chapter. Exploring Corel was nice, as was the climb up the mountain. Splitting the party kinda sucked on the mountain, but overall it wasn't bad
Chapter 8: Gold Saucer was hype... but why is it Silver? Felt like an odd change. The Dyne section was handled terribly. They ruined it by having his death go from being a suicide to a sacrifice. And then the Palmer fight and chase afterwards killed any sort of moment for reflection the scene could have had.
Chapter 9: God awful. Low point of the game. The reactor dungeon was fun but having to do it basically twice felt like a time waste. Gongaga sucks to explore. Story sequence towards the end was stupid. By this point they were starting to lose me pretty hard
Chapter 10: Pretty good. The Cosmo Canyon stuff was well handled. Enjoyed the Gi dungeon, though pairing red with barrett felt... arbitrary. The Gi village afterwards wasn't too bad. Sort of like the idea of it.
Chapter 11: They completely botched the Shinra Mansion. Any sort of tension that location had was destroyed by placing Dexter's Lab in the basement. And having Cait Sith be the party leader killed any tension. The whole reason for going in there was kinda dumb too, since they needed a computer was kinda silly, especially since they don't even use that information.
Chapter 12: Mostly okay. The date was pretty great (I got Tifa). However, the arena stuff was WAY too much. If it had ended with just Don Corneo it would have been whatever. But then having Turks and Rufus, it just became exhausting. And lacked any sort of subtly in the betrayal that happens there.
Chapter 13: Too long. Too exhausting. Lacked atmosphere. The Tseng scene sucked. The end of it was sanitized. The wheels started to come off.
Chapter 14: A big fucking mess. Besides the Aerith death stuff (or not death stuff? who fucking knows) it was just way too noisy and confusing. The final boss fights were waaaaay too exhausting. You have a multi-phase Jenova fight followed by a multi-phase Sephiroth fight followed by another Sephiroth fight. It was too much. Complimented by some really confusing and opaque storytelling that was non-commital as fuck and you get something unsatisfying.
There is not a single moment from the original game that was handled better in this game. Which is a problem. Everything was for the worse. They've turned FF7 into The Hobbit film trilogy of video games. There might have been a good game somewhere inside this, but it got lost along the way by noise. The new plot elements were not needed and are detrimental to the emotional core of FF7, without adding anything new or doing anything meaningful different. None of the Unknown Journey content really amounts to anything of value, other than setting up probably some last minute copout happy ending at the end of Part 3 a la Kingdom Hearts 3.
I think really the saddest thing about this is that FF7 was already a complex confusing game. They had an opportunity to elaborate on plot details that were vague or confusing from the original game but instead chose to double down by dropping another super complicated layer while pussyfooting around by being as vague as possible.
I sound like I'm being negative, and I probably am. I did enjoy myself. But this game is not a masterpiece, and if anything it is just more proof to me that I do not enjoy modern game design. Things were better in the 90s when design was more focused and restrained. No doubt when Part 3 comes out, I'll play it and then be done with the Remake trilogy. And in the future, when I want to experience FF7, I'll go back and play the '97 and not this. If anything, I think I'd like a fan retranslation of the original game.
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