How's FF rebirth? Also Xenoblade enjoyer
I played it for 140 hours, loved every second, halfway through by that point, I love that Cloud and Tifa's chemistry is much more overt, but very on point giving their differing personalities, you'd believe it was Cloud's difficulty with communication and giving Tifa mixed signals is the reason that they didn't pair up sooner. Aeriths interactions with Cloud are more awkward, like she's trying to force chemistry that isn't there, and she just makes Cloud feel awkward, it's made obvious that she's projecting Zack onto Cloud which isn't fair on Cloud, it's these efforts at nuance that I like.
None of this was in the original and as result, they were all more blank slates with basic personalities, making them easier to project onto instead and I think this causes the main issue people have with the characterisation in the remakes.
10/10 as an OG fan, that the remakes scratched a specific itch I had that the OG game just didn't hold up anymore for me, it's very surface level in terms of characterisation compared to advent children and the remakes. Many could say this ruins them but I disagree, they weren't very deeply written in the OG for the most part, might be why it seems cloud had a personality change, it's more so that he has one now, same for Tifa, she's actaully a well written character that confronts cloud sooner about his story of nibelheim not making sense because she doesn't remembering seeing him and it's odd that she doesn't remember him in the original. It fixes plot holes. All round great.
Currently not playing it due to university assignments and exams, but i'll get back to it, slowly playing xenogears for an hour or so each evening on my vita at the moment.
Xeno games are S tier though, and monolith is a massively underrated dev.