It’s a totally different set of issues of class inequality and a commentary of capitalism and environmentalism with some discussions of race and stereotyping in the original. It was made in Japan sure but was a plain old polygon character adventure.

Remake is less about those things (maybe as a way to force them into the sequel) and more about being a sexuality and gender identity anime. Which, hey, sure those are important issues but that’s not what the original was. It is a huge shoe horn to me and maybe I should have been more specific. I didn’t play the other more recent ones so maybe that’s what I should have expected.

Edit: Not to mention it’s all in Midgar which was the worst and most tedious part of the original.