2026-07-17 || Tags: gaming review
I've never written a game review before, nor do I really read any, but here is an attempt at an review of Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
I really enjoyed the game overall. It took me 30 hours (basically on the dot) to complete on Normal with going after basically all of the side missions).
Overall... It was fun! If you own it already, definitely do think it's worth playing.
I don't think there's much replayability. Not super important given how much game there is on your first play.
This game is... obviously... a remake of Final Fantasy 7 (FF7)! Square Enix (the company that makes FF games) decided to switch it up quite a lot for this game. Original FF7 is very squarely (haha) in the JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Game) field, whereas FF7 remake has so so much more action to it. In this new version, there is the ability to actively respond before or as enemy characters are taking their actions. This includes blocking, dashing, and the ability avoid enemy attacks.
Original FF7 has absolutely none of that. Original FF7 is pure JRPG.
First and foremost, graphics are fantastic. I'm not really a guy that think that matters (and it doesn't), but I will not deny it looks beautiful. I have nothing more to say - they are great.
Normally, I am very cynical of remakes. Across all media (movies in particular). It annoys me that people just can't get together to create something new. In this case though, (and I will put my hand up to say this is partly nostalgia), I don't mind it. This new retelling does add quite a lot to the story and the game that I and many others love very much.
Apart from the new blocking/dodging, I love all the systems. The way you deal with materia and equipment is great (except the "Unknown Boss Weaknesses" below). It's great that they basically just imported it directly from the original. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
It is a well known feature of JRPGs that levelling up and grinding is required. In this game, I never felt like it was the case. And if you ever did, you can go to the settings and turn on double experience to make you level even faster. I had this turned on for the last 1/4 of the game. I don't think that the last 1/4 requires grinding (or even a single repeat of a battle at all), but it certainly doesn't with the very sensible "cheat" of double XP on. (I wouldn't really call it a cheat at all).
This is more a comparison to the original FF7, but the way they implement side missions is great. I went away for a week in the middle of playing this and it was great to come back and have the side quests actually present in a log that you could follow. There was literally none of that in the original FF7.
These are presented roughly in order of how much they annoyed me. It would be good to keep in mind that while there's a lot to complain about, I do still recommend the game.
Stories fucking suck. This is a very personal thing, but I do not at all care for stories in games. Carmack has an excellent quote:
"Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but its not that important"I cannot agree more with this. And unfortunately, for me, FF7 remake (and actually most all FF games, including FF7 original) is very story focussed. None of the story really interests me.
Fortunately, you can skip all cut scenes (of which I think I skipped all after the first 10 or so).
This is partly tied into the above. There are so many sections when you have to walk your character (extremely slowly!) down planks, across small pipes, or you need to shimmy down tight corridors. These sections take waaaay too long (especially when, diegetically, the "player" character is capable of jumping 10m in the air) and just suck.
Again, not a whole lot to say other than the default controls are so very very set up for controller and if you don't have one (I don't), you can actually feel that the original game designers barely even tried to play the game on anything other than controller.
Having started FF7 Rebirth (the sequel to FF7 Remake), you especially feel this.
Twice in the game you are forced into a minigame where you are on a motorcycle and need to attack other motorcyclists and/or protect your team makes while you do the former.
The minigame itself feels dull. You aren't using the amazing team you've built up - the minigame stands on its own. So even if you're feeling good about your set up, no matter how strong you are, no matter how much you've levelled up, you're still stuck with some kind of default, boring characters.
The default controls suck with this even more.
When you finish the game you are able to replay any chapter you want to and they give you the option, if you select a chapter with a motorcycle section, to skip it. I think that says more than anything I could write.
Most (basically all?) enemies have weaknesses and some have resistances. If you are unlucky enough to have the incorrect materia (the items that dictate what spells you can cast) and simply cannot hit an enemy's weakness, you cannot change. While you're in the battle, there's literally nothing you can do.
This leaves with some options:
This puts the player in a weird position of either just trying without the ability to hit the enemy's weaknesses and push through, or to die or reset (same effect) - dying/resetting giving you the option of changing your setup before you restart the battle again.
For most of the game, I did the latter - just struggled. For the last 3 chapters I did the former though. IGN provides far too accurate walkthroughs about what you should equip and at some point it feels a bit silly "wasting" time entering battles with unoptimal equipment.
This is not particular to the remake version. The original has the exact same "problem". I put problem in quotes because I think this is a deliberate choice for the game designers as to how the game should work. FF7 Rebirth alleviates this by giving most (all?) characters with some free, but weak, elemental attacks that do not require specific materia/item set up.
Picking roughly half of the first disc (i.e. first 1/6th of the original game), was a deliberate choice. This section of the original FF7 is very much "on rails" - by that I mean there's no open world, you have to follow basically the one path that is provided by the game. FF7 Remake follows this as well. You do not have any option to go run through some grass to find monsters, there's no option to try run towards another town, there's no where to run other than forward (and through the bloody slow walking simulator part!). While I was playing, I really felt like this took away from my agency as a player.
I put this title in about 20% because I just love the term... but it is as true in this game as it is in any other. The narrative (explained through through the urgency of the story as well the NPCs (non player characters) who also remind you things are urgent) sets out how important it is to continue to push forward. There's nothing wrong with urgency. What is annoying is at the same time, the game rewards you quite heavily to explore and duck down random pathways not towards the goal by giving you materia and items that you cannot come back to pick up.
A lot of games have this problem, and it really frustrates me a lot. I'm not a game designer, but I don't understand how you can't both encourage the story to progress but at the same time reward the player for exploring. I don't know, but I guess the reason is that it's just too much trouble for the writers/designers to try write this sort of thing.