🎮 Final Fantasy VII:Remake review

I finished playing this game earlier this month and I wanted to write a review of it, so here it is!

Final Fantasy VII is a classic game that I sadly have never played, so this review is from a perspective of someone who has not played the original. I bought the game on Steam during a sale so it cost around 46 euros, the original price is 80 euros so it is quite expensive. So I’d recommend getting it on sale.

As I began playing the game crashed a bunch of times and I got video drive errors. The textures for the hair also looked slightly off and the pre-rendered cutscenes were lagging a little. Not off to a good start. Thankfully my friend was able to help me solve most of the issues and I could finally play the game!

I won’t get into too much detail about the story since I don’t wanna spoil anything! You get thrown into the story pretty much immediately. The game takes places in the fictional city of Midgar and you play as Cloud, an ex-SOLDIER working as a mercenary. SOLDIERs are enhanced elite soldiers of Shinra, a company that uses Mako for technology and to power Midgar. Mako is the energy of the planet. In the first mission Cloud is working for Avalanche, an eco-terrorist group that is against Shinra’s Mako harvesting and they are planning to bomb one of Shinra’s reactors. As you progress the story you get to meet new characters, with some joining your party as members. I’ve been told by my friend that the story differs a bit from the original game, with certain parts not being in the original at all. I’m not sure if I like this approach as I would have liked to play the story as it was in the original but with improved graphics. But I still think the story was very good, but obviously I can’t compare it to the original since I haven’t played it! There will be more games in the future too as this game only covers the Midgar part from the original.

The game has main missions which you need to complete to progress the story, but after the first chapter you gain access to side missions as well. The side missions are only present in certain chapters, but they can give you extra rewards and some of them were pretty fun, but I had to look up a guide for some of them as the game does not tell you where to go for all of them.

Unlike the original game, the combat is not turn based. It is instead more of an action RPG, where you control the characters in third person and can issue action commands for spells, items, etc. It kinda reminded me a bit of the combat in Mass Effect. You can freely switch between the different members in your party, with each member having their own unique attacks and spells. The characters you don’t control at the moment move and attack by themselves but you can still issue action commands for them. Sadly the computer controlled movement was not always the greatest as sometimes they would run straight into danger and die on certain bosses, which was quite frustrating.

The graphics are very gorgeous and the environments and characters are very high detailed. One thing that looked a bit odd though was how the random npc’s had a bit more realistic looking faces, while the main characters got more stylized looking faces. It kinda stood out for me, but this is just me nitpicking lol. There’s a photo mode you can use to take nice screenshots and I used this a lot to get nice screenshots!

Overall, I would give the game a score of 8/10. I really liked the graphics and music. The main characters are all very likable and I liked the voice acting. The story was also very good, but as I said earlier, I would probably have preferred the story as it was in the original instead of a reimagination. The negative parts for me was the technical problems the PC port has and the AI controlled teammates not always being very smart, as well as certain bosses being very frustratingly hard compared to others.

Below is some images I took using the screenshot mode!

Edit 2024-01-21: I played OG FFVII a couple months back and I loved it so much, it's become one of my favorite games. I think alot of stuff was adapted well in Remake and some stuff were changed for the better! But I feel like some parts in Remake were a bit dragged out compared to how short they were in OG. And honestly I prefer the original combat. But one thing I like in Remake is how every character has their own non-limit break abilities they can use instead of only having to rely on materia. I look forward to playing Rebirth in the future if it comes to PC and I might replay Remake again now that I have finished the original.