Review: Final Fantasy 7 Remake is a bold remake that takes big risks

I’ve walked through the slums of Midgar and gazed up at a steel sky. Now, it’s finally time to talk about it. 

Final Fantasy 7 Remake has been in the making for a very, very long time. Its development can arguably be traced all the way back to 2005 - when Square Enix showed off a technical demo remaking the original game’s opening for the PlayStation 3. They opened the floodgates right there, kicking off almost a decade of rumours that a remake of the classic 1997 PlayStation game was on its way. 

Well, we’re finally here. One could argue that this is the biggest remake ever made - if only because of the sheer amount of fans clamouring for it. In scale, it’s absolutely massive as well. This remake fleshes out the Mako-churning metropolis of Midgar with absurdly gorgeous visuals. It expands on familiar environments with fierce loyalty, and adds entirely new ones for good measure - sometimes, even to its detriment. 

Before we go on though, some housekeeping is in order. This review is as spoiler-free as it can be, but if you're trying to go in absolutely blind - maybe skip the portion about the story. We also received a copy of the game for the purposes of this review. Now, let's dig in!

The story so far

This isn’t a full remake of Final Fantasy 7. While the trailers haven’t done a great job of making that clear, the game only encompasses Cloud’s adventures in Midgar - which is more or less just the first five to six hours of the original game. This remake blows Midgar up to the size of a full-length Final Fantasy game and make no mistake, it’s ambitious enough to feel like one. 

The story follows a mercenary named Cloud Strife in Midgar, a city powered by Mako (the planet’s natural resource) and run by the Shinra Electric Company. That essentially makes Shinra rulers over the city, exploiting the planet’s resources for their own gain with barely any resistance from its citizens. I say barely, because we are soon introduced to the eco-terrorist group Avalanche. Cloud teams up with Avalanche to make a quick buck by bombing one of Shinra’s power reactors, kicking off the events of the game. 

The rest of the story unfolds more or less the same way as it was told in the original game, and I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t experienced it yet. I will say that aspects of this game are bound to be highly controversial with fans of the original. The story doesn't quite reach Kingdom Hearts-levels of convoluted, but it gets uncomfortably close at times. Certain additions feel extremely unnecessary, taking big risks that might take literal years to pay off. 

Midgar, expanded

Final Fantasy 7 Remake brings Midgar to life beautifully - but it has its issues. There are plenty of new additions - such as new characters, environments and bossfights that keep things interesting even if you already know how the story goes. The game stretches out six hours of story to around 25 to 40 hours (depending on your dedication to sidequests and exploration) and sometimes, that actually works out pretty well. 

Environments feel breathtakingly huge, thanks to the development team’s keen eye for detail and some truly stunning visuals. Just walking around the Sector 7 Slums and being able to gaze up at Midgar’s gigantic steel plates is jaw-dropping. The game is chock-full of moments like these, even in its smaller and more linear areas.

However, I did notice several technical issues. While the game ran silky smooth on a base PlayStation 4, a couple areas suffered from poor textures. It was jarring - you would enter a beautiful environment filled with lush greenery and flowing crystal-clear water, and then see walls of pixelated rock in PlayStation 1-like quality. The game also seems to have trouble loading dialogue scenes with NPCs, causing a long and awkward pause to happen every time you try to interact with them. Hopefully, a Day One patch will fix these issues.

Unfortunately, stretching such a thin portion of the story so far makes the whole product feel bloated. There are entire chapters of the game that run for hours longer than they should have. Huge swathes of the game just felt unnecessary and unfun - mostly consisting of awful minigames and filler content. I didn’t mind these moments in small doses, but the first two-thirds of the game really feels like it’s just stalling for time.

Places like the Wall Market are blown up in size and become downright amazing as a result. Conversely, other environments like the sewers and the path to the Wall Market feel aggravatingly padded out with environmental puzzles and minigames. The Wall Market was worth it, though. It’s by far my favourite part of the game, filled with familiar sidequests and of course, an iconic cross-dressing section that is as hilarious as it is heartfelt. 

Friends forever

Cloud meets a lot of people throughout his adventures in Midgar, and many of them become his companions throughout the game. Barett, Tifa and Aerith are among them, and fans won’t be disappointed by their portrayals here. Though some of them take time to grow on Cloud himself, they’re all lovable in their own ways. Voice acting for the main cast of characters is pretty great throughout - though hammy line deliveries break the flow a little on Aerith and Barett’s part. You get used to it quickly, at the very least. 

Other characters like Jessie and Biggs also get expanded on in a big way here. Jessie in particular gets a lot more development than she had before, becoming a vastly more memorable character by the game’s end. Fans of the world of Final Fantasy 7 might even recognise other characters appearing in the story from the game’s spin-off media - but I’m not telling who!

You also spend far more time with every single character from the original, allowing them to grow into members of Cloud’s party more authentically. I don’t just mean that you spend more time talking to them as you explore Midgar, either. Entirely new segments of the story are added to flesh out their backstories and personalities, and that pays off well later in the story. 

The people you spend your journey with can make or break an RPG. Final Fantasy 7 Remake does justice to the original’s characters, and then some. They’re a colourful band of characters, and Cloud’s dry wit does wonders to make up for his edgy personality as well. 

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Exploring Midgar and meeting its colourful citizens is a lot of fun, but you’ll spend most of your time fighting them. Square Enix does the impossible with Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s combat, blending the turn-based system of the original with modern fast and fluid gameplay seamlessly. You’ll be doing a lot of button mashing to mix combos together, but you’ll also have to keep an eye on an item selection overlay at the same time. 

I adored the combat in this game. It might even be my favourite part of the whole package. Each character in your party plays differently - which adds some lovely diversity to every combat encounter. Cloud for example, can switch between two styles of attacking - one made up of lighter and faster attacks, and a stronger series of blows that staggers enemies more easily. Barret on the other hand, is better at long range. He can unleash a rain of bullets from the other end of the room, or fire stronger bursts of damage with Overcharge. 

Certain gameplay elements from the original make a return here, of course. You can equip materia to certain weapons to either gain spells or increase stats, and you can actually see those materia on the party’s equipment in cutscenes - which is such a nice touch. You’ll pick up multiple weapons for each character, and each weapon comes with an ability that, when mastered, becomes a permanent part of that player’s repertoire of attacks. 

The last thing I want to touch on are the bossfights. They are incredible, each and every one of them. All of them are spectacles, and a few even give you summon materia for beating them - which allows you to call on them in battle to help you out. Combat design in this game reminds me of Devil May Cry 5 in the best way. Players have lots to juggle in the midst of battle, but the fundamentals are easy to grasp - and insanely fun to execute. 

Verdict

In many ways, Final Fantasy 7 Remake is a masterpiece. The visuals might be the best in any game I’ve ever played (save for its texture problems), and the sheer sense of scale felt in many of the game’s levels sets it apart from its peers. Great bossfights and a buttery smooth combat system allow the game to toss players into countless combat encounters even in its most bloated levels, without them ever getting bored. 

However, I can’t say that any of this was worth basing the entire game in Midgar alone. A big chunk of the game feels overlong and stretched out, padded with sidequests and slow-paced exploration. It’s dedicated to fully fleshing out every single environment players explored in Midgar to a fault. I respect it for trying to do so - but when you spend an hour doing awfully slow crane minigames, you start to realise that there just wasn’t much meat on those bones to begin with. 

As misguided as some of its design choices may be, Final Fantasy 7 Remake still feels like an exceptional game when judged as a whole. It provides more than enough content for players to sink their teeth into for a very long time, despite only telling 1/10th of the story of the game it remakes. Certain cutscenes sent chills down my spine, and longtime fans can rest easy knowing that the game is very much geared towards them. 

The Final Fantasy franchise now has higher standards to live up to. 

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