I will state this now, I have never played the original Final Fantasy VII, I didn’t own a PS1 until the very end of the machines life and quickly traded it for a Gamecube and in the years between, I have never had the appeal to go back and play it, which means for this, apart from that one moment everyone talks about, I went in blind. The question is, did years of hype hinder my experience or help it along?

The game starts out with you, as Cloud Strife, following behind a group of freedom fighters, or terrorists, depending on your point of view, as they seek to take down one of the many Mako reactors that are powering the massive city of Midgar. While the bomb they use does go off, a larger conspiracy is happening behind the scenes and the result is that the explosion is given significant oomph, which in turn creates a far greater mess than the members of Avalanche expected. Cloud, who is being paid to be there, escapes with Barret, Jessie, Wedge and Charlie Sheen, I mean Biggs, and once outside they can see the devastation that their actions have wrought, it is a poignant moment, but rather than dwell on it, they need to escape the upper city and return to the slums below. Over the course of the story, the direction it heads in, changes many times, to begin with, it seems that Cloud has far more aspirations, thus he need for money, but he soon changes that tune when a friend from the past asks him to help out.

Once Aerith is introduced, Cloud’s motivation changes again and while it is fun to see him in elements that he has no idea about, it highlights on the games biggest problems and that is pacing. The game struggles with it from start to finish, the story ramps up and then throws on the brakes, only to ramp up again, before finding another reason to stop again. While changes to the story direction are fine, as a good story will evolve and venture in new directions, the pace of the one here is hard to justify, for example when Cloud meets Aerith for a second time, he has just been separated from his friends, after what can be best described as a major moment, but he is content to play as a flower delivery guy for a bit. The pacing is also impacted in the general gameplay beats as well, some of it makes sense, others not so much and most of the time it is because Cloud is shimming along a wall, or crawling under something, the problem is, it just feels weird.

Perhaps one area that feels amazing, is the core gameplay, the combat, it was great, there is no way to say otherwise, from the first battles to the last, the mechanics are amazing. Those who are fans of turn based, will know that you can still play that way, as the game will handle the rest of the combat, letting you dish out attacks when your ATB gauge is filled, or the more powerful Limit Break, but for those who want to play the game, you can engage in real time battles, something made me happy. The reason is simple, turn based battles are boring, there is very little you can do while you wait for your turn, but now, while you wait for the option to unload a massive attack on enemy number 1, you can focus on wailing on the other enemies around you, then once you are ready, you can unleash your attack of choice. As you play through the game more options become available, including summons, but the basic mechanic is still the same, just the cost might increase, be it MP for your magic attacks of ATB bars for Summon attacks, which of course are far more rewarding.

When you are not in combat, the gameplay is broken down into two distinct parts, shopping for gear and weapons, or completing side quests and while most of the latter are helping people with random tasks, there are occasionally Materia to discover. While I only did the bare minimum of helping folks, because I did not care, the ones that I did do were fine, even if they left me with the feeling of a generic fetch quest. The ones where I would find a Materia at the end were far more fun, as they were usually tied to the mainline quest I was doing, but the reward was gameplay altering, as long as they were used right. Equipping Materia was not something I thought of doing early on, to the point where I skipped over the tutorial, but I eventually spent some time in there and found that getting the right balance of Materia for each character, was something that I enjoyed. The same could be said of upgrading weapons, while I did not do that as frequently, I did enjoy being able to upgrade later game weapons, without having to grind for hours, thanks to the game giving you a bunch of points.

For all the good though, there are some rough parts, I have mentioned it before, but the game throws brakes on at the most random times, and sometimes there is not reasonable idea as to why. I can understand a character wanting to take their time, when they are shimmying across a narrow ledge, that is fine, but it is more than that, you can be running and then Cloud will stop, crouch down and amble under something and then let you proceed, the problem is that if I am running, he should slide under it. But it is not just there, there are times, when the game comes from a cutscene where you are stuck there, while the game loads back up the HUD elements, which sometimes can be a second or two, but there was an instance where I counted into the double digits, which is not good. The other issue is really more of a peeve than anything, but it was annoying that the game lead me around by the hand, if I was in a bit of a maze, the map would tell me where paths were, simply by showing everything and if looking in the world, if I saw a ladder, I knew I could climb it, without issue if there was an icon at the ground, it would have been great if they were gone, by default, just to let me experience the world.

Perhaps the one area that cannot be faulted, almost, is the presentation, the game is stunning from the opening logo and music, to the end credits. The character models are detailed, so much, that if you walked into a room and just saw the game in motion, you could easily be fooled that it was a movie. The locations are as wonderful as the characters, from the smaller locations like Seventh Heaven bar, to the sewers beneath the slums and the heights of Midgar, each location shines, but perhaps none more so than Wall City, it has so many faces, that there is always something new to look at. With such detailed characters and worlds, you might think the game is perfect visually, sadly this is not the case for one simple reason, the detail and what I mean is that the game thrives in the massive vistas and detail rich shots, but when the camera gets closed to anything not a character, the detail fails. There are textures everywhere that are super blurry when the camera gets to close, you can also notice when the textures load in, if the camera is too close as well, which highlights these imperfections.

The audio side of the presentation is a much smoother experience, though there is once concern, but first the music, now I might not have played the original game, but over the years, so many of the tracks have found their way into collections of videogame music, so I have heard many of the themes before and now I have context for them, I can appreciate them even more. The coolest part is that, even with my knowledge of Aerith’s Theme, I can still just enjoy it on its own, that is how wonderful the music is. The voice work on the other side is mostly amazing, there is a lot of warmth in all the performances, but there are problems, one issue is that the tone sometimes does not match the animation, leaving characters feeling upbeat, but the onscreen look is not as happy, or vice versa. Another problem is that the games animation can’t keep up with the audio, most of the major story beats are fine, but there are far to many instances of it looking like a bad Hong Kong dub and each time I saw it, I was pulled from the experience. The final issue is with Barret, now it might be his character, but he goes from hard ass, to softy, to something in between more often than a yo-yo goes up and down and it is really maddening, as you never know if he will yell in joy or just because he can.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is a fine game, it looks amazing, has a wonderful combat system that allows for a variety of playstyles, but it is hampered by the pacing. The presentation issues are noticeable, but in the grand scheme are not major, but the pacing is a big problem, throwing on the breaks, or directing characters to side quests that are not important at all, feels wrong. Those who have played the original might be more forgiving than I am, but given the hype for the game, I was expecting a little more than I got.

Review copy provided by Square Enix