Final Fantasy VII Remake

If you ask me the Final Fantasy VII Remake completely blew my expectations out of the water. I remember pre-ordering Final Fantasy VII back in 1997 on the original PlayStation. I was so excited for this game and that was the same when this was released in 2020. This is just such an incredible game and I feel it has to go down as one of the greatest remakes of all time.

Like A Reflection In The Water

What truly blew me away about Final Fantasy VII Remake was the story. I love and I mean love the original story. With this game, rather than just a straight retelling, things are different and I personally feel they are different for the better. They did not just change things for the sake of doing so, they changed them to make a more original story all the while keeping the heart and some of the key moments that we know and love.

Once again, Cloud is our “hero” he has teamed up with a group called Avalanche that is led by the charismatic and badass Barrett. They have hired Cloud to help them blow up a Mako reactor that is operated by the Shinra corporation. Things do not go as planned and before long Cloud and his new friends are in a battle to save the entire planet.

Developing Those Characters

The way the characters are portrayed in Final Fantasy VII Remake is some of the best work that the people at Square-Enix have ever done. They are all much more fleshed out, even characters like Biggs, Jesse, and Wedge who were nothing more than side characters in the original are fully developed here. They also introduce a few new characters as well and these do not feel shoehorned in at all and make the overall story better. Best of all for me was the portrayal of Sephiroth who is just such a fantastic villain.

How Could It Be Like This?

The visuals are some of the best on the PlayStation 4 and I am legit very excited to see the PlayStation 5 version which is going to have even more polish to it. This game is just pure eye candy. The character models, the monsters, the insane amount of detail to the various locations that you will be going to! It all adds up to make it one of the most cinematic action RPGs I have ever played. My only slight criticism is that as this game is just the first portion of the overall story, Midgar is not the most diverse-looking game world.

Talk, Talk, Talk, Closure!

It is not just the graphics that are amazing in Final Fantasy VII Remake. This game has a fantastic soundtrack. It features many of the songs that we know and love from the original, but there is also some new music too. Not just that, the voice acting is great! I was a little worried about the game having voice acting as you get an idea in your head of how these characters will sound. thankfully, there is not a single bad performance in the entire game.

Fighting Until The End

I love the gameplay that this game offers. In many ways, it feels like Kingdom Hearts 3. You are free to run around the battlefield, but there is still an active time battle menu system. It manages to feel modern, but at the same time, it has that feel of the way battles were in the original Final Fantasy VII. This is only the first part of this new series so the game is not super long, I would say you are looking at about 30 hours to get through it, but there is no padding here at all.

Pros:

• The story in this game is incredible
• I liked how they did more with the story
• The characters are very fleshed out
• The combat is fun, satisfying and requires a bit of strategy

Cons:

• The bit in the lab maybe goes on 30 minutes too long
• I want the next installment now damn it!