So as many of you know, I absolutely adore this game to no end. Though of course it shows its flaws 16 years after it was launched, but hell, it’s still got a memorable story and cast, great music, and it’s just a lot of fun. It’s one of those games that deserves a high-definition remaster, but Square-Enix seems to just want to shove Lightning down our throats instead to make up for the failure of Final Fantasy XIII.

So instead of remaking the game, Square has been very busy finding means of distributing the original instead. On the PS3, you can get the original PSX edition. Last year, Square re-released the PC version from their site. It went quiet and not very noticed…until yesterday, when it launched on Steam. Here’s what happened.

If you go to the game’s discussion board on Steam, you’re going to find nothing but complaints. The most common complaints are about the music, the functionality, and the DRM.

First off, the music. The video trailer for the game featured on Steam’s page has the high-quality music used in the PSX version of FF7. But instead, the game is running remastered version of the original PC game’s MIDI files. Now, the original launch of FF7 on the PC was considered a major disaster primarily because of this; the MIDI files meant the quality of the music and sound depended directly on the quality of your computer’s sound card, so the quality ranged from “oh hey this is almost as good as the PlayStation version" to “OH MY GOD MY EARS ARE BLEEDING PLEASE MUTE". The MIDI files have been updated, but the problem persists.

For those of you who have been to my streams, you’ll remember when I would try to save my game but it wouldn’t let me, right? Well guess what? That carried right over! The files aren’t saved locally, and are instead cloud-based, and they’re on Square’s servers instead of Steam’s. Square’s servers aren’t the best, so every now and then, you won’t be able to connect properly, no matter how good your connection is, and you’ll be stuck sitting around for a good 10 minutes just trying to save. CONGRATS SQUARE THANKS FOR FIXING THAT. There have also been issues with backgrounds and text boxes not loading, game not booting up at all, black screens, weird black bars at the bottom of the screen, and more.

Now, the DRM. When you play the game, you have to link either your Square-Enix account or your Facebook account. Square has its own game distribution system, not much like Steam but kindasorta, and it’s where FF7 was distributed a year ago. If you already have a Square account, then linking it is no big deal. But if you don’t, you have to either sign up for one, or use your Facebook account…and if you link to your Facebook, it asks to post on your behalf. If you don’t want to sign up for either…too bad, no game for you. Congrats on wasting $12.

Has the game been IMPROVED? Kindasorta. The translation has been redone (no more “this guy are sick"), and the game runs really nice and smooth.

But it still has that pants-on-head retarded Character Booster. And cutscenes are still the old ones from launch. It would’ve been nice if they had redone those. It would’ve been nice if they had redone the whole game. But I guess that’s never going to be the case. With all of these problems that plagued the game last year and are cropping up again this year, it feels like Square isn’t trying to let us relive a great experience we had in gaming, and are instead trying to completely sour people’s feelings towards it so we’ll stop asking for an HD remake.