welcome back everybody to another episode of direct comparison in today's episode we're taking a much more in-depth look at the recently released Final Fantasy 7 remake and seeing how it stacks up to the original game from 1997 now of course this is a remake of a game that was made over 20 years ago so we should expect to see improvements visually in just about every field so while I'll still cover the basics of the game's presentation a major focus for this particular video will be on the story the gameplay and the overall scale the experience along with a few sound samples as always towards the end bear in mind that the Final Fantasy remake that's available now is not the full Final Fantasy 7 experience it instead only covers the portion of the story within Midgard which by itself is only a fraction of the original Final Fantasy 7 because of this I'm going to be restricting this comparison to only the Midgar area and will be disregarding any environments or characters introduced after that part of the original game alright so to keep this comparison off let's begin by taking a brief look at the presentation starting with our character models now of course as I already mentioned back at the beginning of March when looking at the demo all of the characters have been completely reimagined using squares far more advanced technology characters that were composed of only a few polygons before are now more complex with high resolution textures tons of tiny details and more advanced animations with the demo we were only given a small glimpse at some of the characters including the lead protagonist Cloud Strife who looks a lot less like Popeye the Sailor and more like a normal person his outfit also appears much darker more in line with his appearance in the original cinematics Barret the massive loud mouth with a gun for an arm is expanded even further with new straps and cloth along his arm to help show how the gun is staying attached and a few other small details like a pair of dog tags hanging around his neck and new sunglasses to help give him a bit more personality Tifa looks practically identical she's still sporting her mini skirt and small tank top but her red eyes are now emphasized a bit more and her hair is slightly shorter we could spend hour going over all of the characters and how they've been improved but I think you get the point they retain all the characteristics you remember while expanding upon them it's a really confident reimagining of these unique designs and one that does so without ever abandoning their core personality and this of course extends to all the enemies you'll face too from shinra's police force to the giant sewer monster everything has been restored here even some of the enemies that were so absurd before that I wasn't sure they'd be included and while some enemies like the house aren't regular combatants anymore and reserved for special encounters during missions they're still given a respectful presence in the action and just like our hero characters retain all the iconic features that fans will remember there's even a few new enemy types that I'll talk about in more detail with my final review next let's briefly go over the environmental design now with the original game the environments were built using beautiful pre-rendered background images with a few lights and fire sprites added on top to help provide more depth the character models walk over top of these pre-rendered scenes moving in and out of the screen to simulate traveling under and over objects in the background it's silly looking by today's standards but it really was incredible exploring all these unique locations each with their own distinct feel and personality assisted further by the absolutely incredible soundtrack no longer held back by the same hardware limitations the remake reimagines all the original games in Midgar locations with every iconic street corner and structure being greatly expanded upon with significantly more detail the collapse expressway for example a tunnel filled with a bunch of wrecked cars and giant robot hands is now much longer with even more debris and robot arms scattered throughout that can even be controlled directly one of the most interesting changes though is woolmarket in the original wall market looks like a bunch of makeshift structures built out of tents and debris all on top of what looks like a fairground this area is filled with several different shops to visit like bars restaurants and a gym all with NPCs to talk to and things to interact with and while all these shops are retained in the remake wall market doesn't look like the same it looks like one of the larger settlements in the fog game with lots of tall buildings neon signs and more storefronts scattered throughout it's certainly more impressive looking especially when you first arrive though it's still a big departure from its original design still everything is very clearly inspired from the original the Dons mansion interior looks identical to the original pre-rendered background as do locations like the sector 5 Church the Mokka reactors and various aspects of the Xinhua building but a few alterations have been made throughout to benefit the flow of the story and gameplay which shall expand upon more in a bit as far as everything else visually it's pretty self-explanatory the original games lighting for example is basically non-existent with different shades being used in the overworld screen to create shadow and depth while some very basic ambient light is used for the battles the remake however incorporates a whole bunch of advanced lighting methods including volumetric lighting and screen space reflections to help give the floors of the xinhua building a more polished look they're not necessarily the best lighting effects out there and often caused characters like cloud to look a bit washed out in the image but it's still impressive all things considered and helps to give the dialogue sequences a far more cinematic feel and then of course we have our effects that look absolutely incredible in the remake with particles flying everywhere as cloud sword clashes with metal robotic enemies the original game of course has things like fire and electricity but not to this degree and not with this many enemies on screen at once but all this is to be expected the original game predates the remake by over two decades so let's turn our attention away from the visuals and towards the overall structure starting with the story now for those of you who have never played Final Fantasy 7 or just want all the story changes to be a surprise bear in mind that this section will have some spoilers but I'll try to be vague for some of the more major story related changes so starting off we have the mokou reactor bombing mission which feels just about the same Avalanche disembarks a train fights their way to the reactor and sets a bomb all the characters including cloud wedge Biggs Jess and Barret are present and even hang out in their same spots as they did before but clouds sudden mental breakdowns as he's planting the bomb are more vivid this time and far more frequent throughout the game cloud will see several mysterious visions whereas before the game only had a few brief dialogue bubbles pop up throughout now I won't show the actual visions themselves but you've probably already seen them with cherish for this remake and it does seem like a very strange move to incorporate that specific character so early on in this remake series it's sort of explained towards the end but that's a topic I'll save for my final review later on the next major change is that the bomb that cloud plants doesn't blow up the reactor it barely even leaves a dead instead a new cutscene shows that Shin rabe was watching the attack all along and purposely destroys the mockery actor themselves after the bomb fails to do its job by doing this the game is a bit more black and white than before Avalanche previously was in a gray area where they were committing eco-terrorism to save the planet but were also jeopardizing innocent lives this concept is still very much explored throughout the remake as the characters still think that they were responsible but from the audience's perspective there's less reason to question the motives of characters like Tifa or Baron but the bigger change comes after the Mokka reactor mission in the original game players meet up with Aerith in the city streets as they're playing the scene of the crime this happens the same way in the remake though instead of Erath just walking away peacefully she's now attacked by a mysterious invisible enemy a swarm of ghostly entities called whispers that look like they're straight out of Harry Potter now again I don't want to give away too much but these new characters serve a major role in the remake story yet we're never actually featured in the original game making them one of the biggest changes that have been made after an extended sector 8 escape sequence the remake continues on the same track with players boarding a train with the Avalanche members and heading back to their headquarters in the slums but instead of following them down into their secret lair using the pinball machine cloud is instead forced to wait upstairs a nice change considering it never really made sense why they didn't invite him downstairs to their base of operations anyway from here the game deviates heavily from its source material players are asked to build up a reputation in the slums few hours doing a few interesting quests and getting to know the townspeople more this is a really nice change as then not only lets players connect more with various members of avalanche but also helps to make the events that unfold later more impactful and even if you think you know what I'm talking about because you played the original you'll still end up being surprised as some characters may have a different fate than you remember the remake even adds entirely new missions to the game including one more cloud tags along with Biggs wedge and Jess for a secret mission to gather bomb components again expanding upon the relationships a lot more the game gets back on track when cloud heads out with Baird and Tifa to target another reactor and even has an identical split boss fight with the air Buster machine on the catwalks though the interaction between the team and the president of Shinra is handled a lot different way the president no longer appears in person but instead via a massive hologram projection additionally he reveals that cloud and his friends are being broadcasted live to the people of Midgard in his attempt to put all the blame on the eco-terrorists it's an interesting extension to the story that makes them a much more cunning foe but again the general premise is still the same and the end results are identical the game continues this trend all throughout with cloud and Aerith meaning again then filing Tifa to wall market and cloud cross-dressing to gain access to the dawn but there's a few minor changes like cloud and Erath end up helping a lot more in the sector 5 slums and cloud has given address not by the old man at a clothing shop but by the owner of the honey bee Inn during a dance performance and then the biggest deviation happens at the very end where the game takes a complete 180 and becomes something different entirely again I'll expand upon this with my final review more but just know that it won't end how you think now let's talk about the gameplay design Final Fantasy 7 from 1997 is a turn-based RPG will players walk around a map screen talking to NPCs and grabbing items and being thrust randomly into turn-based battles the battles force players to choose from a list of commands split up into distinct categories including physical attacks magic summons and items these commands can only be activated when a cool-down timer has beset in the bottom right corner of the screen but these commands work independently for each character in the battle including the enemy additionally magic attacks require specific magic points to trigger which can be replenished by consuming items like ether now the goal of each battle is obviously to drain the enemy's HP down to zero and doing so requires proficient knowledge of that enemies weaknesses strengths and other important attributes knowing this you can plan your text accordingly avoiding certain types of attacks and balancing healing and magic with the occasional powerful Limit attack that's built up after receiving damage wares can manually configure each of the characters using three types of equippable weapons armor and accessories and then of course there's bacteria that can be slotted into weapons and armor it allows the player to perform special abilities like launching fireballs or lightning the remake takes every aspect of the original game's combat design and tweaks it so it's more involved while it may look like an oversimplified Pekka / reboot the remake doesn't play anything like Devil May Cry or God of War smashing the square button won't get you very far against more challenging enemies what it does do though is help to fill a new bar called the ATP gauge by filling up this gauge players can use our command menu or new hotkeys to use things like potions magic and more powerful attacks the idea here is to replace the old game's long wait times with some dodging and slashing something that works surprisingly well while still retaining the classic turn-based attack style thanks to the way the command menu pauses the game slightly while you set up a coordinated attack with your party enemies also feature a new stagger bar which is filled rapidly depending on the type of attack used and the frequency of the text performed if an enemy is vulnerable to a certain type of attack the notification that says pressure will appear encouraging more aggressive attacks from the player if done properly the enemies stagger bar will be filled and cause them to be stunned temporarily with each hit adding to a percentage of the amount of damage being dealt this system is key to the combat in the Final Fantasy 7 remake as taking advantage of it can mean the difference between an long drawn-out battle with lots of wasted phoenix down revives or a decently long fight with only a few bumps and bruises because of this reward combat system a few of the old moose have been reworked slightly and put into different categories clouds braver limit break for example is now one of the attacks that requires a single ATP segment to trigger and tifa's weird slot machine mechanic used to chain her attacks has also been removed in favor of a more fluid combat system designed to take advantage of the new stagger mechanics Barrett and Aerith are designed a lot more around ranged attacks for these characters you'll often find yourself looking for room to send a powerful text or target weak points while also supporting the rest of the team with cure materia and other items unfortunately red 13 the laboratory experiment that you meet in the Shinra building is not playable and instead functions as a guest fighter controlled entirely by dai he only shows up at the very end so it isn't too big a deal but hopefully we'll see him playable in the next game overall the comment is a huge improvement over the original design as it takes everything that worked and expands upon it with a more involved style that being said fans of the original who aren't as skilled with timed dodges and effectively managing characters in battle may find this new version way more challenging with some battles lasting upwards of 30 minutes with no checkpoints in between and this is only for the Midgar sections just imagine what the next few remakes will be like to make up for this huge increase in difficulty 3 McNown offers benches that players can sit down at to rest and instantly recover both health and magic for their entire party along with a vending machine that can be used to purchase items like potions using collected Gil wares can also find these items more frequently in the game world especially inside piles of shinrock crates that can be smashed open or from completing optional side quests at certain points in the story while still not necessarily an open-world game the remake does offer a few elements synonymous with that genre of game the slums of Midgar offer a few interesting new additions like minigames to play music to collect small quest to discover and lots of Secrets hidden throughout you can even travel between areas using chocobo fast travels which are accompanied by a loading screen playing that iconic chocobo fan finally let's listen to a few sound comparisons which game do you think has the better overall audio design [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Thank You Dalia murder [Music] boring ringing ring ring [Music] 'we can take this on the jump any weapons platform but need to hit it with magic that should give us an opening [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] don't overdo it and that wraps up this episode up to read comparison overall the Final Fantasy 7 remake is a beautiful reimagining of an iconic classic Square Enix had a lot riding on this as it's one of the most cherished titles from the original PlayStation era and while it's certainly disappointing that the remake is only a fraction of the original experience it still works extremely well the entirety of Midgar in the old game only took me about 6 hours to play through whereas the remake took me nearly 40 hours and that's not 40 hours of boring side quests every time I hit the record button it was another 15 to 20 minutes of straight action with sections like the sewers or the Mokka reactors taking way longer than the source material this is the perfect example of how to remake a classic well it's certainly nice to have an original game cleaned up with nicer graphics but all the original level structures and mechanics left intact it's even more impressive when a developer goes above and beyond and finds a way to bring that classic experience into the next generation of gaming but what do you guys think are you impressed with the Final Fantasy 7 remake or were you expecting more let me know in the comments section if you want to catch my full review later on don't forget to Like and subscribe for more videos posted every week [Music]