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Final Fantasy VII - Steam Release
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13-07-2013 1:10am#1Hi,
I've bought Final Fantasy VII on Steam today. I was one of the many who owned the game in 1997 for the original PlayStation and subsequently for the PC. I spent many hours on PlayStation playing it when I should have been doing homework, but it was so addictive and the story was so compelling.
However, then they ported it over to the PC a year or so later, it was awful. The codec they used for the FMVs was crap, the extra dithering added by the game was crap, it actually looked better on the PlayStation. The PC version was also riddled with bugs and as time went on, newer systems struggled to play it (there were patches made to help but overall it wasn't great).
So today I'm on Steam checking out the summer sale to see if anything was worth buying. Going through the pages of games and suddenly, my jaw dropped! It came out earlier this month and they've made some subtle changes to it. You can criticize them for not doing a remake, but to me it doesn't matter right now. The fact is, they made most of the right changes and released the game for €12.99 (or $11.95 if you VPN to the US), so it's not a bad thing.
Here's a video I made of the first 30 minutes of gameplay:
(best watched in fullscreen and 1080p)
Here's the link to it on Steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/39140/
The differences compared to the original PC port are:
=======================================
- There is higher resolution and quality FMV (Full Motion Video)/Cutscenes, which was lacking in the original port, which also due to a terrible codec and dithering being used, resulted in it looking crap compared to the original PlayStation version.*
- Filtered textures in battle.
- The character models are a lot cleaner looking and seem to have been re-rendered in a higher resolution.
- The UI has been fixed up nicely to look good on today's higher screen resolutions, also.
- Cloud saving so you can continue your game on another PC.
- Requires a free Square Enix account to play, which you can sign up for upon launching it for the first time.
- The music is wave, likely recordings of the original MIDIs, so it sounds as it should without needing to configure a MIDI device (MIDI has very limited native support since Windows Vista).
What has not changed:
=================
- The regular background textures are not filtered and look a bit tired from upscaling, however, they wouldn't look any better if you played the original PC port.
- The gameplay; it's exactly how you remember it, if you played the original on the PlayStation or PC in the late 90s.
- The original frame rate has been preserved.
* I've uploaded a screenshot of an FMV from the original port and Steam version so you can compare. The dithering on the original is done in-game as when you play the movie file in your favorite video player in Windows, it doesn't have it. But even without the dithering, the Steam version's FMVs are noticeably better, but unfortunately not HD.
Original:
http://i.imgur.com/PXbG44X.jpg
Steam:
http://i.imgur.com/YUMC0Cn.jpg0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxuCnhFHn_EComments
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