Final Fantasy VII's New & "Improved" PC Version Is Now Available, But It Isn't Exactly Getting Off To The Best Start

Maybe it's getting the built in cheats that the console versions have? Square Enix are really weird about parity for different versions and infamously some that have cheats on PC don't have on console (I think 10/10-2 is missing them on PS4 at least) and vica versa.

Hopefully it turns out to be a complete remake of the game during all the assets from Ever Crisis and using the old battle system but I think there is more chance of accidentally having a million quid transferred to my bank account than that.

@Glassneedles IIRC the Switch version has a 3x speed up mode while the PC version doesn’t have anything. So if they’re adding that I would be most grateful! 😅

I just hope this doesn’t break all the mods I’ve got installed! 😂 I also wonder if they’ve finally fixed the music cutting out when Cloud remembers his confrontation with Sephiroth. Apparently that has been broken since the PC version was first released in the ‘90s!

Damien, probably worth noting that there is a distinction between remake and remaster. Remasters usually fine tune existing assets (making them HD etc). Remakes will usually involve new assets.

The recently released FF7 games have been remade. They’re remakes not remasters 🤓

Not directly related to the current Steam version, but this brings back memories of trying to play this game when it was finally released on PC back in '98. I didn't have a PlayStation, so I was crazy excited about finally getting to play this.

Everything went fine until the Chocobo race, which would just crash my computer every single time. And there's one mandatory race, so this was game-breaking.

In those days, PC gaming generally meant spending 80% of your time troubleshooting and 20% of your time actually playing games, so I was used to this kind of nonsense. But I tried everything and just could not get it to work. Whatever conflict my hardware was creating was insurmountable.

In frustration, I finally took all the discs to one of the computer labs at school and quietly installed the game, hoping nobody would notice.

It ran, but these machines had no real graphics acceleration so it must have been at like 5 frames per second. Still, that was enough to let me muddle my way through the race and generate a new save file on the other side of it. I quickly made a copy of the file, uninstalled the game, and hightailed it out of there.

At the time, it felt like I was committing some kind of nefarious espionage. In retrospect, I don't remember why I didn't just use one of my housemates' computers to do the exact same thing. But the mission was a success, and I was finally able to move on with the game and finish it.

Happy times.

They is another PC version in the Windows Store (unfortunately not a part of the "play anywhere" program) which is basically the modern PS4/Xbox port and it is better than the 2013 which is basically the 90's PC version. I guees they will bring it to Steam. Cool that they offer is for free for current owners, they did not do the same for FF8.

@Razieluigi Cool story, thanks for sharing. Back at this time there was no admin privilages and we could install everything in school computers, to the point where almost 50% of them had one virus or more.

@Razieluigi first time I completed FF7 was through that PC version. At the time I had a projector my dad had “borrowed” from work and I went through the whole thing projected 100+ inches on my wall slightly askew as I had the projector at an angle and it only had vertical keystone correction.

Good times! Also got up to the final dungeon on FF8 with the same set up before my save got corrupted and I couldn’t be bothered to restart.

@Sketcz Especially as a mega-fan of FF VI, the hype was intense.

Still had a great experience despite the fumbles, and I've played it multiple times since. It's one of those games where I like the characters and world a little more than the game itself (I've never loved the Materia system, honestly), but it's a classic for a reason.

I wish they would release a version in sd resolution and with a propper new translation

@heligo

They aren't really even remakes. They are ground up new games, that just happen to share part of a story bible/premise sheet. Just like how Super Castlevania 4 isn't a "remake" of Castlevania 1.

Note, this is not intrinsically a bad thing. You can do some really worthwhile and interesting things by going back to the pitch sheet and starting over from scratch ( see: various Falcom games like Oath in Felghana or Trails in the Sky 1st ). However, I kind of hate the way the FF7 "Remake" especially has distorted the conversation about remakes, where any game which isn't trying to be completely different than the original is somehow lesser.

It is 100% just a very very slightly tweaked, if changed at all, version of the Steam release from before. And "to provide a better experience" is just their way of saying they're doing this to make the 7th Heaven mod launcher and all of it's mods incompatible.

There is only one reason they're doing this, and it's to keep people from using the many, many mods available to make FF7 look and feel better.

Square-Enix has routinely been making "updates" to things like the Pixel Remaster, which only updates shuffling the position of assets around so that the mods break. That's all this is, and anyone expecting anything different is in for some huge disappointment when they find that this is nearly identical in features and looks to the prior version, but shuffled around and rendered in a new engine that makes mods no longer work. Square-Enix has a long-standing vendetta against the modding scene. This is absolutely 100% the only reason they did this, nd the only real change you're going to notice. Mods will be broken and 7th Heaven mod launcher will no longer work.

@metaphysician The reason anyone whines or complains about Remake and Rebirth and the upcoming third game is because they are selfish, ignorant, sobbing crying little manchildren who can't cope with their toxic nostalgia being even minorly altered in any way, These people are ironic only in the fact that they're actually being less mature than actual children today about the entire thing. The new remake trilogy is absolutely phenomenal, end of story.

This will be the third time it's been available for Steam. I'm not sure what the changes are to warrant this? 🤔

Yes, this is exactly what I want. There are music videos on the SE youtube channel of the game being played in its original resolution with perfectly crisp pixels and it looks fantastic. I appreciate they don't have the CG assets to recreate the backgrounds in full HD/4K, but just upscale it with nearest neighbour pixels (or at the very least, give users the option to play it that way), rather than the smeary upscaled backgrounds with the razor sharp polygon models over the top. And yeah a fresh, authentic translation would be the icing on the cake.

@metaphysician
Yeah i definitely preffer to treat them as more its own thing, while i do feel like peoples criticism and comparisons when it comes to the story changes is valid (as much as they tend to get brushed off as "nostalgia" in a lot of conversations) as it is they are some of the most fun ive had with a single player FF since the psone games and if FF17 ends up following a similar style i would personally be fine since i found it the better of the "action" focused games due to heavy emphasis on RPG elements.

yeah it did also kind of distort the talk about remakes though on the flipside i also imagine the idea of "remakes" before the game came out was more "better graphics" and a lot of remasters were being refered to as remakes, it felt like at the time remakes like some of the Ys ones, or wild arms alter code F were lesser known so the idea of a remake which went back to the drawing board was a bit more jarring for a lot of people, though seems more common nowadays with the likes of the Trials of mana and Romancing SaGa 2 remakes.

i do feel like this is one of those situations where its definitely more something that can exist alongside the original since its not trying to "replace" it, though when it comes to the psone FF games im not the biggest fan of the modern ports due to issues like the high-res character models clashing with the original-res backdrops alongside other minor issues though fortunately on the PC side they can be fixed with mods it does make me wish that they got updated remasters more in line with some of square-enix's later remasters.