I know there were a great many complaints about the first Assassin's Creed game, and they're mostly well warranted. I, however, had a great experience with the game. The wonder of playing an open world game set in an historical era was such a mind-blowing experience that I found it easy to look past the repetition, the janky climbing mechanics, and the various other problems the game shipped with. Honestly, new IPs as ambitious as the first Assassin's Creed game deserve a little leeway anyhow, since they're attempting to accomplish so much while starting from scratch. Nevertheless, the game was severely flawed, and it rightfully got some flak for it.
Assassin's Creed II is lovingly devoted to the era which it depicts
Assassin's Creed II, when it released, was a perfect example of why the medium of video games is filled with successful sequels. It's difficult for a studio to nail everything in their first try when, many times, they're starting from the ground up by building things like graphics and physics engines from scratch. So much time focused on the building blocks of a game leaves little time to flesh out the more dynamic aspects on top of those, which is why the first game featured so much repetition. Assassin's Creed II, however, improves upon everything that the first game promised. The graphics were superb at the time they released. There were literally no other open world games that looked this good, and they even stand up pretty well today. The cities were beautiful, they were alive. Florence is not a city that's changed much, and they completely nailed the feel of what I imagine it would be like at the turn of the 15th century. Platforming is improved, it's quicker, and it's more intuitive, but it's unfortunately not fully polished in this effort. When it works, it's improved massively over the previous game. The campaign itself is a meaty, lengthy game that's packed with content. You're visiting multiple cities here, you're visiting the beautiful Tuscan countryside, and the game is spanning decades. As somebody who's visited most of the areas depicted in this game, I can confidently say they've nailed the feel of the entire region. Ezio as a character is interesting, he's charismatic. He's an easy guy to root for, and his story begins personally and eventually emerges into a grand scale. He's been dealt a raw deal, but he lets things slide in a way that feels simultaneously incredible and admirable. Combat and player management has been expanded upon from the first game as well, as armor management, weapon and gadget management, and new costumes are all greatly designed. Customizing your Ezio is one of the most satisfying parts of the game. Combat is built upon from the first game, and now feels far more in depth. Probably the single best mechanic in the game is the build-your-own-stronghold aspect with Ezio's family villa. It's very addictive, and the visual change you experience in the small city is one that's immensely satisfying. As you invest money in building up your walled city, the population increases, the streets are cleaner and brighter, and the city is louder and more bustling as a result. I didn't realize quite how much it changed until I began a new game and saw how murky and depressing the place was when you first arrive there.
One specific thing I'd like to highlight here and really stress is just how good the soundtrack of this game is (see above video). It's been mentioned before but I haven't seen anybody truly do it justice, yet. Jesper Kyd absolutely kills it, and sets the bar so highly here that he can't hit the same heights of quality in AC: Brotherhood or AC: Revelations. The music all fits the settings so superbly that I really can't imagine playing this game without it. Half of the reason the world is so immersive is the setting, the ambient nose, the lighting, and the architecture. The other half is all soundtrack. No exaggeration. The music is all ambient, and very low-key, but it flows like a satin ribbon, enveloping your brain and keeping you floating through the streets like you're walking on air. It's just so effective at immersing you into Ezio's world. It breathes life into an already beautiful world, and Kyd's dismissal as the series composer is a big part of the reason why Assassin's Creed III seems dead and less alive to me. The Florence theme in particular is utterly spectacular.
This game, though, is certainly not without its flaws. Free running control has aged poorly since 2009 and can be frustrating at times, especially when attempting to move quickly. This makes any races and chase sequences an annoyance at best, and downright infuriating at worst. Ezio simply doesn't always go where you want him to, and story mission chase sequences are often purely trial and error as a result. Most frustrating would have to be Ezio's tendency to inexplicably stop when scaling straight up a building, and look the left at nothing in particular. This happening during a chase is especially frustrating. At times the camera is a massive pain during combat sequences, getting stuck behind buildings and spires. I also had an issue with the lack of a quick checkpoint restart option and fewer and further between checkpoints. It makes the light stealth gameplay here a frustrating experience at times.
To put it with as much brevity as possible: This game is an experience. It's a thoroughly atmospheric, immersive delight that will transport you straight into this time period and make you want to do nothing but walk the streets of Florence and pole through the canals of Venice for hours on end, with no goal in mind more than collecting a few treasure boxes, seeing the sights, and listening to Jesper Kyd's wonderful score. I love this game.
Final Fantasy VII's extraordinary atmosphere will leave you reeling
I grew up as a young child in the '80s playing the first Final Fantasy on the NES with my father. I was too young to read, so he had to read the dialogue to me as we played. As I grew and learned to read myself, I spent hour upon hour with the sequels, Final Fantasy II (IV in Japan), and III (VI in Japan), both for the SNES. I have a strong memory involving the time I walked several miles to my friend's house after school because he had a new PlayStation, and a copy of Final Fantasy VII, a game that I was hugely excited to experience given my history with the series. I had spent the past few months reading about the game in various video game publications and was hyped out of my mind to try it.
It was autumn, 1997, and I was 12 years old at the time. 15 years ago. I've replayed the game a dozen times since then, and mostly recently delved back into the Steam port to examine how the game has aged and how well the port runs.
The very first thing that I noticed about the game was the chasm between how well the audio design and soundtrack have aged versus how poorly the graphics have. It becomes clearly apparent that sprites have aged far better than polygonal characters when comparing this game to an older, sprite-based games in the series such as Final Fantasy VI. Sprites carried a certain charm to them, and remain tolerable despite their lack of beauty. Polygons, for lack of a better description, just look strange and ugly. Their blockiness represents a human character far more poorly than even a sprite can. To compare it to Hollywood, sprites are like Disney cartoon of the '70s, while polygons are like the bad special effects of the '80s. The audio, however, has aged gracefully. Nobuo Uematsu's haunting, elegiac score (see above video) has always been perfect for the game, and I remembered how fond I was of it the first time around immediately upon starting the game again.
The characters are generally well-realized, if not helped by some shoddy translation. Cloud is such a deep and human character that it's worth playing through the game just to witness his growth. By the end of the game you come to realize how deeply flawed a person he is, and having such a flawed hero leading the game was something that was quite groundbreaking for JRPGs at the time. Sephiroth's villainy hasn't shown age, either. He's still one of the best gaming villains in history, a title well earned through his enigmatic actions and intriguing backstory. Some of the characters lean more heavily towards comic relief, like Cait Sith, but are still given the depth they deserve in a game as large as this one. Each character's backstory is engaging. I will always fondly remember being shocked at how much depth was given to Red XIII, a character you meet in a lab early in the game who seems at first to be nothing more than a cool-looking, speaking attack feline. Cosmo Canyon looks amazing, the background music is fantastic (see indented video),and the story it tells about Red XIII will hook your emotions immediately.
It's obvious what to expect from the gameplay. This game is purely old school JRPG. It doesn't bother me, as it's a type of game that I once had a huge affinity for. I can jump back into the more slowly-paced, active turn-based battle systems any time and still enjoy it. To others, it may be a bit more tedious. This is especially true regarding random battles. The tedium of random battles may be intolerable for others that are more used to the real-time fare of old cRPGs or more recent Western RPGs. It's difficult for me to be objective enough to say. I don't mind random battles even now, but I never have.
One thing I will tout is the materia system. I've always loved it. It's my favorite form of character development in any Final Fantasy game, and it holds up. Growing your materia through the management of your weapons is so much fun, and the high-level materia such as Slash-All and Double Cut really make you feel all-powerful toward the end portion of the game. They're scaled very well.
The main complaint from my latest replay is an issue that never seemed to bother me before. The control of Cloud through the various pre-rendered areas is absolutely atrocious. Pressing up on the directional pad will sometimes cause him to go left or right, and pressing right or left on the pad will sometimes cause him to go down. There's no clear indication of when this will happen -- It's unique to each area. This becomes particularly annoying in areas where random battles occur. Very often I'd find myself doubling back due to this, and fighting far more random battles than I actually had to.
I wouldn't be able to conclude this without mentioning the cutscenes and minigames. The idea of rewarding players with a CGI cutscene during certain parts of the game was a fresh, new concept at the time of the game's release. Seeing the devs at Square flaunt their graphical prowess was mind-blowing, and the cutscenes were unlike anything in video games at the time. They truly were rewarding, and I remember being so impressed as a 12-year old first playing this game that I recorded them on a VHS tape for later playback. The minigames were also groundbreaking, but have aged poorly. Bad control plagues many of them, specifically the motorcycle and snowboarding games. But the inclusion of these changed the genre for years; the lack of minigames in a post-Final Fantasy VII JRPG would be a strange omission for a later title.
Final Fantasy VII has got its problems. In some cases, it's aged beautifully and become the historically powerful title that gamers expected it to be upon its release. Final Fantasy VII brought RPGs as a genre into the mainstream. The graphics and control, however, will be nearly unbearable to any gamer going back in time to play this game for the first time.
I do have some complaints specifically regarding this Steam port. Every resolution that isn't 640x480 windowed looks terrible. They've upped the resolution on the characters and NPCs, but the pre-rendered backgrounds are the same so they look awful in any other resolution. And don't even think about going to 16:9. All it does is stretch the picture to fit the screen.
There's also a persistent black bar (pictured above) along the bottom of the screen that is only ever filled in when accessing the menu. Imagine you're watching a film in letterbox, except that there's only one black bar on the bottom of the screen and no matching bar on the top. Just awful.
On top of the graphical issues, Square's ridiculous DRM is present. You must log into Square Enix when you first start the game. People already hate Uplay. Why would Square do this? It's an idiotic move.
People have also mentioned the music quality being subpar compared to the PS1 version, but it honestly didn't affect my experience at all. I definitely noticed the music being a bit different, it didn't seem any worse than the original game.
Despite the wear of aging and the shoddy port, I still believe this game is a must-play for anyone who liked the original or any gamer looking for a history lesson. There is still enough depth in the characters, immersion in the environments despite their age due to a phenomenal soundtrack and great art design, and player investment in the story. Like an old painting, Final Fantasy VII continues to be historically relevant and is worth seeing and experiencing if only to recognize the influence it had on present day gaming. The paint has aged, and the artwork is unfortunately not quite as vibrant and stunning as it once was, but with the right mindset you can still experience it and be moved.
