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General Discussion / Final Fantasy VII (original) - Now on PS4
« on: 2015-12-06 17:52:20 »
With so much talk about the remake lately, I wanna discuss the new port of the original game to PS4. This port seems surprisingly competent.
Pros:
Cons:
It's not a perfect port, by any means, but it's clear they have put far more effort into it than Square Enix usually puts into their ports. I would go as far as to say this is the best version of this game currently available without mods.
Pros:
- Runs at native 1080p with anti-aliasing.
- A fast-forward button to run the game at 3x speed.
- Upscaled font.
- The framelimiter works correctly (unlike the PC version).
- They have centered field screens to have smaller black bars at top and bottom, instead of one big one at bottom.
- All the high quality FMVs and other improvements made to the Steam version have carried over.
- Trophy support.
- Uses PlayStation button labels instead of [Switch], [Cancel], etc.
- Analog support by default. Movement is still confined to 8 directions, but you can use either the stick or the D-Pad, and the stick auto runs if you push it all the way, or walks if you push it partway.
- Cheat button to refill HP/MP/Limit during battles.
- Cheat button to disable random encounters.
Cons:
- No widescreen support. Not even a half-assed "stretch" mode like you can get with Aali's driver, let alone a proper wider viewport.
- Will probably never be moddable.
- The line widths in the upscaled font are inconsistent.
- They have changed the save format, so it's unclear if BC will ever work with this.
- Battle scenes still run entirely at 15fps like PC (instead of 15fps for the 3D viewport and 60 for the menu like on PS1).
- It's ~4GB even though it doesn't need to be that big (Steam version is ~1.5GB).
- Battle scenes are not properly centered, and still have one big black bar at the bottom instead of smaller ones on bottom and top.
- They have not added any new spelling or grammar fixes, so Cloud still tells you to "Attack when it's tail is up!"
- Button mapping can't be changed.
It's not a perfect port, by any means, but it's clear they have put far more effort into it than Square Enix usually puts into their ports. I would go as far as to say this is the best version of this game currently available without mods.