What Makes a Game Great / My 2020 Game of the Year

What makes a game great?

It is a game that makes you say “this makes me feel something“. It is a game that calls to you, draws you in and makes you say “I want to understand more about this”. It is a game leaves you with the feeling “I want to experience more of this”. It is a game that, when finished — whether beating a boss, playing a level, completing a round — leaves you thinking “okay, I just want to play that again”.

With these criteria I wholeheartedly give my 2020 Game of the Year award to Final Fantasy VII Remake.

I really wasn’t expecting to have it ascend to the position it currently holds with me — my Favorite Final Fantasy Game. I have played through and beat it twice now, and beating it the second time I just thought “okay, I should probably play something else now …“, and during the credits was reminded of so many different parts where my mind went to “that’s my favorite part! no, wait that’s my favorite part! I want to play that again!”

FF7R really focuses on having an incredible Character driven experience; it’s not also an open world, infinite character customization, unlimited side quest game. It has some of those elements (as any AAA title has some character driven elements), but they are there in just a small amount to give some extra spice. By focusing on their critical element of Character and letting that drive the whole game it ends up as a very clean game. I never got tired of the characters and thought the script and acting was done excellently throughout — the touching scenes were touching, the funny bits were actually LOL funny, the interactions were interesting and and drew you further into the world.

Combat is always fun and you get really different play styles with each of the playable characters — they each have their specialties and you really need to play with each character in a different way to use them to the best of their abilities. The materia system continue to work excellently at letting you maximize levels of magic, but keep a cap as to what you can do — you have your limited slots and just can’t have any character that’s The Best at everything. Similarly magic is quite powerful when used correctly, but is very well balanced and has it’s drawbacks — casting time / interruptions, spell cost, specialized functionality. Hard mode is … stunningly challenging. I’m attempting to summon the courage to tackle each chapter that way.

This game really shines when it comes to Aesthetics; it looks and plays smoothly and always keeps you within the look and feel of the game. The soundtrack features a remixed version of many songs from FF7, but most of my favorite tracks were new originals made just for this remake. There are so many tracks and variations that play throughout the game; the complete soundtrack clocks in at 8.5 hours of music and 156 songs. The music varies in style a few times, and is impeccably well placed — it always enhances the scene and draws you further into the world. The graphics are consistently top notch and keep you in the game world. There are fancier graphics out there, but I don’t know that they will do a more effective job at holding immersion. The Eyes — I’m pretty sure they had a whole team of people focused exclusively just on designing and rendering the eyes, and their work and focus shines. Every time you get a facial close up you feel just more drawn into the world and want to take a screen shot.

Additionally, this game has only ever had a few very minor patches released for it (nothing that I could ever tell what was updated), and it doesn’t have any significant pay-to-play or pay-for-costumes content. The “Digital Deluxe Edition” gets you early access to two weak summons, and some outside the game content — mini-artbook, mini-soundtrack, PS4 theme. Again, they could have turned this game into a Final Fantasy Costume Simulator and chose not to because it would have weakened the overall experience.

This game is a crowning achievement for the Square Enix; everyone who contributed to it should be exceedingly proud of what they helped create.