Recent reviews by neirdAE

A beautiful story about love, loss, and closure.

Recommended, BUT MAKE SURE YOU TURN OFF SQUARE'S CLOUD SAVES.
So, let me first get something out of the way: I never played this as a kid. My first time playing this classic was in 2020.

Overall, I do recommend this game, but I have issues with it. Some issues are with the game itself, and some issues are with the port. Port issues: first, anybody playing with a Nintendo Switch Pro controller is going to be disappointed. This port does not support or recognize the Switch controller at all, even though any other game launched through steam has no problem, including if I launch the Epic Game Store launcher to play Dauntless. There is no legitimate way I found to make it work(more on this later).
Second, the controls are clunky. The game does not pay attention to your set buttons. It lists buttons as [OK] or [SWITCH] or [MENU]. So if the game is teaching you how to unequip Materia, it says, "Press the SWITCH button to unequip." This is extremely unintuitive, especially when minigames pop up. "Press OK, CANCEL, AND SWITCH in order to do a squat." Okay, I'm going to have to look at my configuration to know what you mean.
Third, and the reason for the capital letters at the beginning of this review, is that Square's cloud saving sucks. I lost 20 hours of gameplay because the save files synced wrong. My friend had the same thing happen, and lost even more time. So do yourself a favor and disable it.

Now I'm going to review the game itself, for those like me who have never touched it. I have not actually beaten the game yet, (Partially due to the save erasing itself) but I have a pretty good idea of what this game has to offer.
This game did not age as well as The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, another classic from just two years later. FFVII really tried to show off the graphics capabilities of the original Playstation, and it did. There are fully animated movies that look really good for 1996. But outside of the movies, the models are wonky. Character's arms are shaped like long hourglasses. It can be hard to tell where this path is that you need to go.
Gameplay itself is pretty good. The combat runs like Chrono Trigger's, with each character having a bar fill up before they attack. The party characters don't feel very different in combat, though. Actions and spells are granted though "Materia," which allows the character equiping them to use the corresponding action/spell. The physical characters are interchangable, same with the two ranged ones. Since any character can use any spell or action, there is literal 'plug and play' to the characters. There can be some interesting trade offs, like a weapon that grants high attack power, but won't allow you to use spells, but most of the time, you're going to want the Materia slot.
The story is great. It has problems sometimes, where you have to do a clunky, one-time minigame to progress the plot, and get old after a while. But eventually, you get invested, and twists start happening, even before the famous death scene.

Now I'm going to share some knowledge with you. There are mods for this game. You can't find them on the Steam workshop, but are easily found on Google (not sure if I can/ should do direct shoutouts here). They fix nearly all the problems I've mentioned here. But there is a cost: no Steam achievements.
I'll let you decide which is better. But for me, the mods I found after losing my motivation because I lost 20 hours of gameplay took this from a 3/5 star game to a 5/5 star game.
Overall recommendation: Buy if you're nostalgic. Mod or buy the remake if you want a better, more balanced and complex experience. Either way, disable cloud saves.

I liked how, even when the hacking needed to be as fast as possible, it was completely and easily doable with my average typing skills.

I knew what the twist was the in the second area. Still, short and sweet.