User Reviews

The game is a fantastic re-imagining of the classic with many changes that I really did enjoy. Though I would have claimed it impossible, I found Tifa and Aerith to be much improved characters. That being said I found Barret, who once was my favorite, to be somewhat annoyingly idealistic and kind of one dimensional. Cloud and Red 13 have promise as both seem to be slower in development, but I look forward to the payoff.

The battle system takes a little to get used to, but is very very good. In the original you could allow your build to over power the enemies. In the remake brute force wont always win. Learn early to block, dodge, counter, and stagger.

The "end game" feels a little strange as it is a chapter based replay system. I always like a free roaming end game where I can change the members of my party with a new game+ option. Ohhh and one where I can use items.

Now for the lingering whispers and the alternate reality. The whispers change this from a remake to an alternate reality in a style like the Star Trek re-imagining. A world where we are left wondering if Aerith will still die. and if Zack will be a playable character or have events turned him into an antagonist. The main questions though are how did Sephiroth see his impending failure and demise, and will we be left feeling strangely disappointed by the possible removal of one of the most meaningful deaths in video game history?

Not going to lie, when I heard that the game was going to be split into different parts, I was kind of disapppointed. However as I started playing, it was clear why that needed to happen. This game was packed with 100x more content than the original! There was no way they could have fitted everything into one part!

Anyways, here's three that was great about it for me! The game dove much deeper into each character's personality, story, and the dialogue between each character really showed the different relationships each character had to each other. This made it a lot easier to relate to the different characters, especially the side characters such as Wedge, Jessie and Biggs.

The chemistry between Cloud and Tifa, Jessie, and Aerith made the game more interesting, and added the right amount of romance into an action packed game. Even if Cloud had a personality of a potatoe XD. The slight curiosity between the three girls about Cloud's relationship status was remarkable. The flirting from the females definitely made the game feel more alive! They really thought this one through!

Now, the ending, OH BOY, THE ENDING! (POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD, STOP NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED AND DO NOT WANT SPOILERS!) This was totally unexpected and was such a great surprise for me! Throughout the whole game, I was secretly wishing that something like this would happen. I kept asking myself, "Wonder if they could change the ending to this game? Take a different direction with some of the things that will happen in this game." BUT, told myself, "there's no way they would do that, they already set the future of this game in FF7 Advent Child, that's how it's going to end." When the ending hinted at the change that I secretly wanted for the game....CHILLS, LITERALLY CHILLS.

Honestly, I can't believe how much work Square Enix have put into this game! Can't stop thinking about this game, it feels like the time that I watched Avengers Infinity War, and have to wait a long time for Avengers Endgame. Cannot wait to see where they will take this in the next part that will come out! Just....please make the ending as good as Avengers Endgame, and not like the last season of Game of Thrones ;) XD.

First and foremost, in 1997 little old thirteen years old me played Final Fantasy VII at a friend's house and was hooked. In an era where Google wasn't something you could use to look things up, I learned every bit of the game and how to accomplish everything. I've played it through countless times, so my opinion at least should hold some weight on this.

Remake is, visually, what I always wished it could have been in the 90s but never believed gaming would ever get to. The gameplay mechanics in battles felt very smooth, and even the slowdown when navigating the battle menu for spells or uncontrolled party members didn't break up the intensity of those fights. That said, some of the battles seemed to throw unneccessary challenge too often, one enemy in particular drove me nuts by not only flying all over the screen, but also being immune to physical attacks until using magic on it and then vice versa. It's fine but when there's multiples of them freely moving around it can be easy to lose them or get disoriented and it felt too grindy. Even so, the battle mechanics overall felt fantastic throughout the game.

Some areas of the game felt too dragged out though. And not the ones you'd think. The chapters with side quests didn't bother me, even though some of them were hopelessly dull (I'm looking at the cats and tracking down kids ones in particular) but most had charm. No, areas like the train graveyard and Hojo's lab felt terribly long, and not in a fun way. I'm glad they added depth to areas from the original but it was obvious they did those two in particular to shoehorn another boss in at the end of each.

From a narrative perspective this did a phenomenal job of filling in gaps, retelling the story well, adding small hints of taking from the Crisis Core PSP prequel game to further story telling, and adding in things to make some of the original games actions make more sense. Shinra pegging Avalanche as part of a conspiracy with Wutai to gain the people's trust was a good example of expanding on something small to make the story flow better. Seeing Aerith go to get Marlene and showing us how she got her to safety was much better than the originals off screen moment followed by Tseng and Aerith showing up in a chopper minutes after climbing the pillar. The pillar coming down and the characters reactions were more impactful than in the original because you spend time with the people of Sector 7 prior to it.

Then there are the "whispers". That's what I'm not a fan of. The explanation that they're a manifestation of destiny meant to ensure certain events play out a specific way felt like a very cheap way to push characters in a particular direction throughout the story instead of writing more sensible scenarios and was in far more ways a cheap way to give the Midgar portion of the story a more grandiose ending than it needed. To have to basically go into a pocket dimension to fight against destiny and Sephiroth just because you're cutting off the Remake into parts and wanted to show fan service to the originals ending and shoehorn a Sephiroth fight in was jarring because it never felt natural in the narrative (not that it wasn't fun to play because it was).

The additional scenes for Hojo gave him much more substance as a character who in the original (and prequel) was quite important but never felt that way from the little screen time. It's clear in this version that he knows who Cloud truly is, and that addition into this remake helps cement the prequel events as well because Hojo was essentially responsible for Cloud being as he is.

The worst transgression of this title is not allowing us control over Red XIII in the game. I understand their thinking was to not get us attached to using the character when he enters the story so late, electing to hold off on it until the next installment, but for such a fan favorite character to be there and not controllable was still a massive disservice. It's bad enough the scope of this project is so large we have to wait for installments, but in a portion that involves one of the beloved characters why prevent us from using him ourselves even in a limited way? Felt wrong.

Overall, the remake was outstanding, it's clear they want to stay as close to the original as possible in this remake. There are tons and tons of tiny nods to small trivial things of the original that many people will miss. They're clearly doing justice to their prequel story to make everything come together in the remake, even if those nods are small. The characters are far more likable, have a lot more depth, and the combat is a joy. Aside from a few overly long segments, the lack of control of Red, the whispers and destiny, and the unbalanced use of Sephiroth this early into the narrative, the game is amazing and a must play for any fan or anyone wanting to get into it the first time.

However, I still have to only give it a 7 out of 10 for the reasons above. They don't take away from the amazing quality of the game, but they do hurt it at times, and it would be irresponsible for me to blindly give it a 9 or a 10. I highly recommend it regardless.

I do worry about the future installments. If Midgar was this massive, what happens when they let us out into the world... I hope this project is not too ambitious.

This review contains major spoilers. Please skip if you have not finished the game.

Fans have been waiting for this game for a long time. People wanted a straight recreation of what was originally presented in 1997 but with new graphics. What we got was a tongue-in-cheek remake/sequel hybrid and I love it.

The game itself is incredibly fun. The combat system is smooth and enjoyable yet complex. It incorporates the old materia system into something fresh and I'd argue it's the best combat system we have ever seen in a Final Fantasy game. The characters are brought to life with stunning visuals and good voice acting that can be a little cheesy at times but very much in line with an anime-like style. I agree that there are parts of the game that drag on a bit too long but at the same time, people waited for this for years and what they got was tons of content. As such, the story doesn't play out in an ideally efficient and smooth manner, but the original was the same way!

Now to the story: I just love that Square Enix took it in this direction. They obviously wanted to expand on the universe and create a surprise that would be both nostalgic but also breathe new life into the franchise. The idea of alternate timelines are floating around a lot lately in movie narratives but it's still an interesting idea. I'll admit, it was a bit hard to follow just what the heck was going on during the ending at first playthrough, but I ultimately don't mind the Kingdom Heartsy tone.

My hat is off to Square Enix for not just succumbing to the fanboys/girls's demands. It's quite a bold move to forge an unexpected path for one of the most popular games of all time. All the more reason why I love the title: Remake - they're redoing this story, and I can't wait to see what comes next.

I will talk about the PC version.

I got 650 hours on ff7 Ps1 so i can compare, and 40 years playing video games. I am not just a ff7 original addict far from it. I play many more games, and am one of the best tank of Division 2 worldwide for example.

This way, you know what is talking.

The combat system and materia system are very good.

The graphics, musics and the design are astonishing.

But, for the game it self :

way too much boring story about XYZ way too much movies, cut scene, walk there ... 95% filler.

It is a corridor game with too many limitations.

You can't go there, you can't have more than 1 materia on this style, you can't properly farm, you can't duplicate materia ... ... ...

The summon system is awful, you can't control them, they are just here, can't die, can't be attacked almost, and you do not feel them at all. They are just here to be here and hit. This is very lame and put them at the lowest position into the game. And honestly they are almost all the time useless. You can't summon them when you want. You can't upgrade them.

FF7 was for me a game who open the players to freedom and farming was easy, cool and simple. On this one you simply can't farm. The essence of the game was to : go wherever you want, run in circle and kill random zone enemies to upgrade stuff and learn new stuff, steal new stuff and so on,

here NOTHING! You go there, kill the bad guys, and that's all. When dead, it is almost impossible to get more. What is absolutely boring and a poor choice of game design.

In PS1 you get 600h of pure gameplay to upgrade everything and you can get more than 150 combinations to do whatever you want with your stuff

Into the remake you got 45h of 3D MOVIES !

And less than 9h of gameplay.

The story is good, but we do not want to watch a movie we want to play.

Sorry, but any good mmo gives you 90% of gameplay and 10% of movies into ff7r you get 95% of movies and corridors.

When you finish the game, you unlock hard mode, and this mode is the most stupidest mode i ever played this last 40 years. You can't use ITEMS anymore. What a good idea, into any mmo's and particularly ff mmo's all players will COLLECT stuff any stuff, and now you have the hard mode on and you can't use them, what put the MONEY , the ITEMS and everything useful you have found this last 20 hours into a big trashcan.

And now we need to redo the game a second time to unlock stuff in hard mode ??? Sorry but no thank you. Game design is very bad on this point, because there is no point to do it.

The story will stay the same! There is no DER RICHTER like ff10, there is no real purpose to do it except 1 summon -_- and when you got it ?

That's all. There is the simulator, there is the arena ok ok but they are limited spaces with exactly the same enemies at the same moments at the same places what ti is extremely boring.

So to be simple, hard mode is : upgrade your stuff more for almost no purpose. And mash the skip button because 45h of cut scenes are coming AGAIN! Well ...

i am disappointed.

After 22 years waiting for that, it is a correct game but a bad rpg.

Without freedom, without customization, without a real purpose ...

i really hope : when all the opuses will be released, the game will be complete and we will have "at last" something extraordinary.

But for now it is a blablabla rpg with way too many limitations and i am not motivated to redo it just for scraps.

I really wanted to get into this one after everything I heard about how it was "the best story in gaming" but I just couldn't get into it. I beat it so I can say that it only got good near the end, the gameplay was not very forgiving to my play style, the game weirdly has no balls even though it killed off Jesse thanks to not killing Barrett and Biggs even though they should've been dead. The arsenal is a massive pain in the ass, the camera was hiding the debris leading me to get owned by the death beam multiple times. I'm sorry but I couldn't get into this game like everyone else, I can only give it a 7/10. Edit: 5/10 because the sequel demo looks like the exact same game.