It’s almost unbelievable that a Final Fantasy VII remake actually exists. The game, which feels practically willed into existence by its most hardcore fans, is finally here, seeing a timed exclusivity on the PlayStation 4. The original, which is often referred to as one of the greatest games of all time, is so beloved that one would wonder if SquareEnix would be up to task to deliver, especially considering the company is a very different entity now than what it was a few decades ago. While the game itself strays from the original in several ways and may continue to so in its additional installments, it often enhances a great deal of the familiar and offers considerable depth to nearly everything it pulls from.
Final Fantasy VII: Remake, as it is called, is only a fraction of the entire story originally told across three discs on the PlayStation One. While splitting up the adventure has been the sticking point for certain fans, the remake ends up spending around 40-45 hours adapting the first 5-8 hours of the original. Instead of creating a 1-to-1 recreation of the game dressed up in modern visuals, we instead take a deep dive into nearly every character and place you come into contact with. We get to know more about the main cast in significant ways and the game even goes to great lengths to let us get more acquainted with characters that had far too little exposure in the original like Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge, your companions in Avalanche. In the original, after blowing up the first reactor, you almost instantly head back to the Seventh Heaven bar in Sector 7, rewarding yourself for a job well done. Here, walking the streets of Midgar, you see the fallout of your mission, how it’s affected the common people and how they look at it like a terrorist attack, one punctuated by Shinra waving a false flag and blaming the attack on the Wutai, a people they have been at war with for years, with each side held in check with a public cease-fire. While many aspects of this remake are incredibly faithful, this is by and large an entire reimagining than a shot for shot remake. I’ve seen tons of people laughing off the fact that it’s impossible to spoil a story told decades ago, but there are some massive reveals here that no one could have seen coming.
One of the most immediate changes revealed here is Avalanche being represented as a much larger force than just Barret and his crew. We learn more about how they are just a single cell of a much larger organization, and there is a very enjoyable and action-packed chapter where we dive more into who Avalanche are and why a character like Jessie, a very underused character in the original, chose to fight for them and what she’s lost in the process. There is so much heart and character given to nearly every aspect of the game that the sheer scale and detail can often be staggering. Even a character like Johnny, who was more or less just a red-haired NPC from the original has a great deal to do here and is involved in one of the game’s more engaging side quests.
Nearly everything done to reimagine Final Fantasy VII for a more modern age has been so to provide a vast richness and depth to its world. By concentrating solely on Midgar, it allows SquareEnix to tell a fully complete story about that moment in the timeline. Yes, the full adventure is split up into seperate games, but given how this adventure’s narrative chooses to wrap up, it makes sense. In the original, Midgar was just a blip in the grand scheme of things and that’s unfortunate given that it planted the seeds for the involvement of nearly every character you bring with you. Midgar was always an iconic setting and it finally gets its due here with a scale and sense of detail like never before. The breathing room given because of this allows for more characterization to occur and the writing is drastically better than the original in every way, letting characters have moments to let us in, to show us why they are as memorable as people remember them to be.
Sephiroth, one of the most popular Final Fantasy characters of all time, had a large presence in the original game, but it was several hours in before the villain even made an appearance. Here, Sephiroth is on-screen during several moments throughout the 40-45 hour length, haunting Cloud’s mind and cementing his placement as the game’s long term antagonist. This change is accompanied by ghostly apparitions, called Whispers, which are mysterious beings that appear at key moments throughout the game’s story. While they do have a somewhat Kingdom Hearts vibe to them, the reason for their inclusion is vastly interesting and will have strong repercussions for the remainder of the next few installments. While many fans thought they knew what to expect from the remake’s story, SquareEnix has implemented a lot of new additions that may or not impress fans of the original, but like them or not, what’s been done here is incredibly bold nonetheless.
While the game is roughly around 40-45 hours long, a good portion of that time is devoted to exploring its world, completing side quests, taking part in mini-games, or racking up some wins in the Colosseum. There are also some biking sections during the story that I wish could have also been played again as bike races or challenges of their own as they were so incredibly fun and the inclusion of the new character Roche, could have made for some vastly entertaining repeatable side activities. In fact, if SquareEnix ever decided to make an FFVII racing game, I’d be there for day one. Apart from those distractions, there are some moments that suffer from some slow pacing between events and while this allows you to explore the fairly large environments, there are so many areas that are devoid of combat or have puzzle sections that drag on for far too long. I didn’t find these moments to be “boring” as there is usually some engaging conversations happening between characters but felt that more combat encounters and puzzles that didn’t drag on so long could have helped these slow-paced moments drastically. One aspect of the side quests that I found extremely welcome was the option to automatically return to the quest giver upon completion, saving you a lot of time from backtracking all the way back.
The bulk of the Final Fantasy VII Remake takes place in Sectors 5, 7, and Wall Market; a shopping complex in Sector 6, with a variety of sewers and numerous Shinra facilities, including a brand new one that fleshes out a lot of what Shinra has been up to. There is a decent variety to the game in terms of areas to explore, which is great due to the entire game taking place in Midgar. Wall Market is probably one of the most entertaining locations, complete with a scene at the Honey Bee Inn that fans have been waiting a long time to see showcased in modern visuals, and it does not disappoint. A lot of environments have you moving around in maze-like formats, flipping switches or unlocking doors that make other paths accessible or open up areas to snag some valuable materia that is just out of reach. Characters will sometimes comment about your off-beaten path, such as Barret alerting to the fact that I was heading to that very materia.
Given the large ensemble of characters from the original game, there are some that don’t appear yet due to their involvement in the story being farther down the road. While I won’t go into specifics about if certain characters show up or have some sort of presence in the game, you do have playable access to Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockhart, Barret Wallace, and Aerith Gainsborough. This means that yes, Red XIII, Cait Sith, Cid Highwind, Yuffie Kisaragi, and Vincent Valentine are not playable. Given how the Wutai war is only on pause, it’ll be interesting to see how Yuffie will fit into this new iteration of the story, given she is the daughter of the Wutai clan’s leader. For much of the game, you’ll be running around as Cloud, but some segments will let you swap to each of the other available characters, with some having fairly lengthy segments of their own. Combat does let you freely jump to any character at will, but defeating the final enemy in any skirmish will automatically revert control back to Cloud.
Combat is the most changed aspect of this remake as it takes away the static turn-based format for a more agile freeform action combat. While there is a classic mode that gives you the sense of some actions being turn-based, the characters are still moving around, attacking, and you’ll interact with battles by performing attacks through the Active Time Battle gauge. Classic mode aside, combat is very different from the original and has you moving around the battlefield dodging or blocking attacks and using simple slashes, magic spells, punches, or bullets to increase your ATB gauge faster than just having it charge up on its own. In the original, the ATB gauge filled up during battle and would allow you to attack or use items, limiting combat until you eventually filled up your Limit Break gauge or if the materia you equipped gave you access to new spells like Ice, Fire, or Wind. Much of those systems remain here, but each weapon you equip to your character contains new moves and can be used with other weapons if you master it, giving each character an entire catalog of ready-to-use skills. There is even materia that allows you to learn moves you steal from other enemies as well.
Now, all this combat is done in real-time, letting you dictate the pace of battle, but there are two ways to use your skills and abilities during combat. You can use a quick-select bar to pick from some preset abilities, letting battles flow in and out quickly or you can slow down the action to a crawl and use that time to search for a more specific ability, scanning the entire catalog of options each fighter has. Combat doesn’t stop entirely, but it merely moves more slowly, keeping the sense of urgency and ferocity that this new combat system offers. It’s also fascinating to see streams of bullets fly by characters in a mid-dodge roll.
Each character’s abilities will use one or both of the two ATB gauges below your character’s health, so using your regular attacks, and thus swapping to other characters during battle, will have them charge faster. One tactic I found was to equip materia to my party that had them start with a single bar already filled and then cast haste on each of my party to increase how fast their ATB would charge. There is a wide range of different tricks and items to increase it even further, giving you the use of a variety of different attacks more often. You can also press L2 and R2 to quick-select to the other party members to have them attack while retaining control on whoever you have on the go. The ATB gauge is also used to select items, so you’ll need to strategize your efforts of using a healing item or an attack, especially if you don’t have a capable healer in the party at the time. Characters will also have access to their MP, limit breaks and summons, with the latter being retooled and only available during boss encounters. Summons will largely do their own thing during combat, but you can direct them with more powerful attacks by using any character’s ATB gauge bars as well as watching each summon perform a devastating finisher when their time runs out. While you’ll gather around 3-4 summons fairly easily during the game, several others take some work and require a few tough fights to acquire.
Despite the change in format, both the original and this remake each have tactical combat, as well as the capability of button mashing through simple fights. Each has their own unique ways of implementing strategies, such as ensuring you have a solid mix of materia, weapons, and the various accessories you can equip to your character. Now, I’ve said materia a few times and for those new to Final Fantasy VII, original or otherwise, materia is concentrated mako energy in orb form, allowing its user to use a variety of different spells, skills, and abilities by equipping it into their respective weapons, complete with a visual change to their character model’s weapon. This allows each character to apply cure to their teammates in a dire moment of survival, lightning to the numerous machinations deployed by Shinra, or even stealing gil from some hooligans hiding out in the subway tunnels. There is a vast array of materia to choose from and the amount that you can equip to each hero is based on the number of slots their gear can contain.
Now, each character can wield a variety of different weapons, from Cloud changing to a number of different large swords, or a new gun to mount to Barret’s gun arm. Each weapon not only comes with a new attack to master but a skill tree of sorts that boosts different stats depending on the weapon. This skill tree, at least to myself, doesn’t quite suit the aesthetic of the game and is one visual component I found lacking and out of place, but from a functional standpoint, each weapon lets you upgrade various stats through skill points. These points let you buy from set-priced tiers by increasing the number of material slots to your weapon, your overall HP or MP, or how much attack or defense that character has. Some weapons have wildly different stats to increase meaning that one weapon may focus more on HP and defense whereas another may only boost your overall magic capabilities. Choosing the weapons that suit what you want from that character at that moment, is just as important as the materia and accessories you have equipped, so choose wisely.
Taking in the materia you equip and the weapons you’ve chosen to wield, implementing those into combat will vary on the types of enemies you encounter and who is in your party at any given moment. Combat is largely about type advantage, and staggering your opponent, ensuring you get that bonus damage in while they recharge. Each character has additional combat moves such as Cloud’s punisher mode, allowing him to deal far more damage, but he moves drastically slower as a result. Each character is built around certain encounters, such as Barret and Aerith being solid choices for attacking out of range robot turrets, or Tifa getting in nice and close to Shinra soldiers, using her melee skills to dish out some serious damage. Knowing who to swap to or prioritize in battle can mean the difference between a team wipe and a close-call victory. There is a very deep combat system here when you take in everything as a whole, so it pays to learn your character’s strengths and weaknesses if you plan on digging deeper into the game’s more challenging difficulties.
Given we are in the final year of each current-gen console, most games this late in the cycle tend to look better than what we’ve had before, at least that is usually the case. And while there are a few moments of textures not loading or some bland textures in areas not often found in front of the camera, Final Fantasy VII Remake is simply stunning. Midgar and its cast of characters have never looked better, with some cutscenes that use higher detailed models that look considerably better than those used in the FFVII: Advent Children movie. The in-game characters are still remarkably detailed, and it’s nice to finally see these characters in a game having believable emotive facial features that highlight the tone of the scene and the emotions they are going through. This is easily one of the most gorgeous games on the PlayStation 4 and it’s very clear that SquareEnix spent a lot of money here to ensure this was a top-notch release, a few textures not loading aside.
The same goes for its voice acting with some fantastic choices that truly bring out the characters in ways I really wanted from them. Aerith, for example, voiced by Briana White, expertly nails the playful and joking nature of the character by giving us a carefree and joyous performance and a true stand out here. Barret is brash and loud and that is exactly what you get here with some very touching moments of him being a passionate father and charismatic leader. The voice cast of the supporting characters in Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge are perfect as well, and frankly, Jessie was another standout for me as she was a character in the original that was largely throw-away. Here, she feels essential and one of my favorite performances in the game. There is one voice by a non-playable party member that I felt was a tad too close to Gideon Emery’s Biggs that I was hoping for a bit more of a deeper voice to seperate them, but I still thought the actor did a great job bringing a voice to that certain character. Cody Christian, as Cloud, is another voice that really suited the character well, as did Supergirl’s Tyler Hoechlin as the menacing Sephiroth.
Given the range of areas available, there are several themes that have yet to see the remake treatment, but the soundtrack available here is truly wonderful, offering us fully orchestrated remasters of some very iconic pieces. There are also multiple versions of some songs that play out differently depending on certain events, such as hearing Aerith’s theme in alternate ways. There is also a selection of remixes that you’ll find in shops that are rather enjoyable, such as a hip hop Chocobo track that is bizarre yet wildly entertaining. Given the majority of the soundtrack here has seen several iterations from the original’s synth format to other soundtracks with full piano, the remasters here in a full orchestra format is mindblowing and there are some moments where you’ll hear a track you remember when you least expect and it just floods back memories of the original, something a remake should always do.
Depending on what you wanted from a Final Fantasy VII remake will drastically change your opinion about the game and the choice for SquareEnix to not just change the story in some pretty huge ways, but the choice to split up the adventure in order to release part of it now and then charge for the additional parts later. Personally, for myself, I am fine with them splitting it up if we get further installments of this quality and depth. The breathing room that was given to the story and the immensely better writing allows this adventure and its characters to operate in a more controlled and slower pace fashion, letting certain story beats have the time they need to really resonate with you. Combine that with an energized combat system that still packs in all the strategy of the original and you have a truly spectacular game that doesn’t just honor the original but allows even the most dire hard fans to fall in love with it all over again. Yes, it’s different and yes it does feel like an entirely new game, but personally, that’s what I wanted from a remake as it makes the original feel just as important in its own way. I was hooked from start to finish and to be honest, It made me jump right back into the original and want to get deep into that story all over again, enjoying both in their own unique way.
Final Fantasy VII: Remake was purchased by the reviewer and played on a PlayStation 4 Pro.
All screenshots were taken on a PlayStation 4 Pro.