I can't quite put my finger exactly on what it is, but after having done an OG FF7 replay in the last year and having it fresh in my mind I find myself kind of put off by the tone of the dialogue and atmosphere in the remakes. Part of this probably comes from the presentation of the original: being an early PSX game it's often rather audibly quiet with a steady BGM theme playing while text boxes silently appear and disappear, with no accompanying sound effect. The visuals are often (though definitely not always) darker and more muted in color, and when combined with the ecological and world-ending threats the party is facing it creates a game that conveyed to me an atmosphere of dread as you venture across these communities are all either the devastated victims of exploitation or a vacuous theme park for the rich as they use luxury to escape the reality of their own dying world.

Meanwhile the remakes take a rather different tact: everyone and everything is very loud, bombastic, and colorful. Those silent dialogue boxes are replaced with overenthusiastic line reads, that atmosphere of dread is replaced with this feeling of the entire world being a theme park version of the original. Every settlement is both a victim of exploitation, and also a place of amusement for you the player to engage in half a dozen mini games and side activities and general goofing off. And while those were definitely elements that existed in certain places in the original game (Golden Saucer most notably), here it's like that attitude has spread to encompass the entirety of the Planet

I don't necessarily think any of this is bad or that the game is unfitting as a remake as clearly it's getting some pretty significant praise from most corners of the internet gaming sphere. And in terms of pure combat mechanics I still find this one of the best takes on a party based Action RPG around. But for me in particular it's like my favorite snack food is back on shelves after years of being discontinued, but they changed the ingredients and it just doesn't taste the way I like it anymore