Final Fantasy 7 is one of the best rpg's of all time for a good reason. It has amazing story along with great backstories, great character development, lore, soundtrack, world and gameplay. It's basically a perfect game. Oh and one of the best if not the best antagonist in gaming history. But that was 1997, if you try to play that game now it isn't THAT good anymore but it's still great and it's not nostalgia speaking. I replayed it few years ago. What feels outdated is obviously graphics but that's no problem. The problem is the annoying combat of the original, it's slow and boring. It just isn't fun today. Turn based combat is cool, it works perfectly in games like divinity Original Sin but it doesn't in jrpg's. Why? Because 99% of the time you fight monsters in random encounters and that's just pressing one button.

So how is the remake? It's definitely one of the best games released this year and the best jrpg. It's the best game i've played this year in general. I did not expect much, especially from an SE game. I thought it will be some half baked FF15 with FF7 characters. But my oh my it almost made me cry few times. The intro cut-scene which is the first minute of the game leads to goosebumps. The game feels like FF13 (which I loves because it had good combat) mixed with a bit of FF15 and of course FF7.

So what about the story? It's basically the first ~8h of the original. Remake ends where the original begins. It took me a bit less than 70h to finish the story including the dlc. So the story is greatly expanded and you get to know characters like Jessie, Biggs and Wedge more. You get to explore the slums, a bit of the city and shinra headquarters. The game doesn't drag, it's all content, quality content. You get some side quests but those are fun and all different, besides there are only few of them.
The story revolves around avalanche – the eco terrorists who want to blow up the Mako reactors which are sucking the life out of the planet. And...well your journey begins.

Gameplay is where the most changes were made and FF7 Remake has the best combat system in the whole series. It's fast, it's fun, it's diverse. Unlike in FF15 where you had no items nor magic, here you have everything. Regular attack, heavy attack, countless number of abilities, spells, items, limit breaks and summons.
Each weapon has its skill. Once you learn that skill you can use it with any weapon, so with time you get a lot of skills to use. Each weapon also has upgrades.
Spells are the usual magic – fire, ice, wind, lightning, poison, etc. Haste, barrier and many more are also there.
Abilities are powerful attacks or buffs you can execute any time you wish. Each character has unique set of abilities, limit breaks and fighting style. Cloud is pretty fast and strong, Barret is slow and uses his arm-cannon. Aerith use ranged magic attacks, Tifa is very fast and uses her fists and Yuffie is the most fun for me. She uses a mix of melee and ranged attacks and also can imbue her weapon with magic element. She is extremely fast and agile.

Combat in general is the best i've seen in any rpg game. It's real time but you have atb bars – when they're filled you can execute your ability, spell, use an item or summon. You can switch characters on the fly or just give them orders. While switching or trying to use the ability/magic/item the time stops and you have time to think. Switching characters is essential. You'll need to get used to combat but when you get a hang of it, it feels so good.
And then we have summons. Those are powerful beings which come to help you. They have their special attacks and abilities and could help you a lot. You can summon when fighting tough enemies.

Gameplay is very linear, just like all the other FF games, but this one relates more to FF13. Is it bad? No. FF always was extremely linear. You basically just proceed through the story while doing some side stuff. And side activities are so much fun and they will make you sweat and laugh.
You also fight a lot. Remember those repetitive fights where you fight same enemies hundreds of times? It's not here. Sure you will fight same enemies but it won't be too often. Most of the time you will fight different enemies where you need to use different tactics. And there's a lot of boss and strong enemy fights where you'll spend significant amount of time beating them. And because combat is so good, even though you'll be fighting an enemy for 20 minutes it'll feel like 5 minutes.
Don't forget materia management, it means a lot and will change the outcome of many battles.

Another great feature is chapter select and hard mode. Chapter select is very well done which means that after you beat the game you can choose a chapter and grind for levels, materia upgrades and weapons skills or collectibles and side quests. All of this is handy in preparation for your hard playthrough. The good thing is that if you for example pick to replay chapter 12, the progress will carry to chapter 16. This is chapter select done the best way possible.
Hard playthrough works as a NG+, you retain your upgrades and everything else but can't use items and you get additional content which isn't available in normal difficulty. So in overall you're looking into 100h+ gameplay value.

Graphics look stunning and bad at the same time. Here's why. Main character models, animations, graphics are perfect. It's a joy to see all the characters in such great detail, something you have dreamed about in 1997 like “oh I hope in the future the whole game will look like these cut-scenes” and here we are – it even looks way better than those awesome cut-scenes. The graphics in general are very crisp and has no aliasing or anything, looks really neat. Speaking of cut-scenes – you get few pre-rendered ones but most of them are real time and they're awesome. You want to watch every cut-scene with passion, you want to cry wathing some, you want to laugh watching others. They're THAT good.
Now environment graphics...well it's meh. Low-res textures all around you. Like really low-res, ugly looking textures. Random npc's also are lower quality but still look pretty good.

Performance is fantastic, one of the smoothest i've seen lately, comparable to God of War. I played with flawless widescreen from the start so maybe it improves some things. I locked fps to 90 and it stayed there. On top of that I was streaming the game. It ran smooth like silk, only sometimes dipping to 80's. Combat was smooth with 0 slowdowns or stutter. Excellent performance.
Played on 5800x, rtx3080, 32GB, @3440x1400.
Downside is that there are only two graphics options so I have a feeling people with mid/low-range systems might have performance problems. SE is known for lazy ports. Also no ultrawide support so you're forced to use flawless widescreen.

Sound is a huge part of Final fantasy games. You will hear the soundtrack you already know and it's great. It will bring tears to your eyes.
Voice acting is highest quality too. Most characters sound exactly how I imagined so when you hear their voices it doesn't sound weird, you feel at home.

Overall an excellent game, one of the best jrpg's. Beautifully recreated world, characters, improved and fast combat makes a wonderful game. It's only ~15% of the original game but it's greatly expanded so you shouldn't be mad about that.

Pros

• Expanded story and characters
  
• Remake done right
  
• Fantastic combat
  
• Excellent performance
  
• Looks stunning most of the time
  
• Outstanding sound design

Cons

• Background textures are low quality
  
• No native ultrawide support
  
• Lack of graphic options

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[h1]This is how we imagined original would be if we had the right tech back then[/h1] Final Fantasy 7 is one of the best rpg's of all time for a good reason. It has amazing story along with great backstories, great character development, lore, soundtrack, world and gameplay. It's basically a perfect game. Oh and one of the best if not the best antagonist in gaming history. But that was 1997, if you try to play that game now it isn't THAT good anymore but it's still great and it's not nostalgia speaking. I replayed it few years ago. What feels outdated is obviously graphics but that's no problem. The problem is the annoying combat of the original, it's slow and boring. It just isn't fun today. Turn based combat is cool, it works perfectly in games like divinity Original Sin but it doesn't in jrpg's. Why? Because 99% of the time you fight monsters in random encounters and that's just pressing one button. So how is the remake? It's definitely one of the best games released this year and the best jrpg. It's the best game i've played this year in general. I did not expect much, especially from an SE game. I thought it will be some half baked FF15 with FF7 characters. But my oh my it almost made me cry few times. The intro cut-scene which is the first minute of the game leads to goosebumps. The game feels like FF13 (which I loves because it had good combat) mixed with a bit of FF15 and of course FF7. So what about the story? It's basically the first ~8h of the original. Remake ends where the original begins. It took me a bit less than 70h to finish the story including the dlc. So the story is greatly expanded and you get to know characters like Jessie, Biggs and Wedge more. You get to explore the slums, a bit of the city and shinra headquarters. The game doesn't drag, it's all content, quality content. You get some side quests but those are fun and all different, besides there are only few of them. The story revolves around avalanche – the eco terrorists who want to blow up the Mako reactors which are sucking the life out of the planet. And...well your journey begins. Gameplay is where the most changes were made and FF7 Remake has the best combat system in the whole series. It's fast, it's fun, it's diverse. Unlike in FF15 where you had no items nor magic, here you have everything. Regular attack, heavy attack, countless number of abilities, spells, items, limit breaks and summons. Each weapon has its skill. Once you learn that skill you can use it with any weapon, so with time you get a lot of skills to use. Each weapon also has upgrades. Spells are the usual magic – fire, ice, wind, lightning, poison, etc. Haste, barrier and many more are also there. Abilities are powerful attacks or buffs you can execute any time you wish. Each character has unique set of abilities, limit breaks and fighting style. Cloud is pretty fast and strong, Barret is slow and uses his arm-cannon. Aerith use ranged magic attacks, Tifa is very fast and uses her fists and Yuffie is the most fun for me. She uses a mix of melee and ranged attacks and also can imbue her weapon with magic element. She is extremely fast and agile. Combat in general is the best i've seen in any rpg game. It's real time but you have atb bars – when they're filled you can execute your ability, spell, use an item or summon. You can switch characters on the fly or just give them orders. While switching or trying to use the ability/magic/item the time stops and you have time to think. Switching characters is essential. You'll need to get used to combat but when you get a hang of it, it feels so good. And then we have summons. Those are powerful beings which come to help you. They have their special attacks and abilities and could help you a lot. You can summon when fighting tough enemies. Gameplay is very linear, just like all the other FF games, but this one relates more to FF13. Is it bad? No. FF always was extremely linear. You basically just proceed through the story while doing some side stuff. And side activities are so much fun and they will make you sweat and laugh. You also fight a lot. Remember those repetitive fights where you fight same enemies hundreds of times? It's not here. Sure you will fight same enemies but it won't be too often. Most of the time you will fight different enemies where you need to use different tactics. And there's a lot of boss and strong enemy fights where you'll spend significant amount of time beating them. And because combat is so good, even though you'll be fighting an enemy for 20 minutes it'll feel like 5 minutes. Don't forget materia management, it means a lot and will change the outcome of many battles. Another great feature is chapter select and hard mode. Chapter select is very well done which means that after you beat the game you can choose a chapter and grind for levels, materia upgrades and weapons skills or collectibles and side quests. All of this is handy in preparation for your hard playthrough. The good thing is that if you for example pick to replay chapter 12, the progress will carry to chapter 16. This is chapter select done the best way possible. Hard playthrough works as a NG+, you retain your upgrades and everything else but can't use items and you get additional content which isn't available in normal difficulty. So in overall you're looking into 100h+ gameplay value. Graphics look stunning and bad at the same time. Here's why. Main character models, animations, graphics are perfect. It's a joy to see all the characters in such great detail, something you have dreamed about in 1997 like “oh I hope in the future the whole game will look like these cut-scenes” and here we are – it even looks way better than those awesome cut-scenes. The graphics in general are very crisp and has no aliasing or anything, looks really neat. Speaking of cut-scenes – you get few pre-rendered ones but most of them are real time and they're awesome. You want to watch every cut-scene with passion, you want to cry wathing some, you want to laugh watching others. They're THAT good. Now environment graphics...well it's meh. Low-res textures all around you. Like really low-res, ugly looking textures. Random npc's also are lower quality but still look pretty good. Performance is fantastic, one of the smoothest i've seen lately, comparable to God of War. I played with flawless widescreen from the start so maybe it improves some things. I locked fps to 90 and it stayed there. On top of that I was streaming the game. It ran smooth like silk, only sometimes dipping to 80's. Combat was smooth with 0 slowdowns or stutter. Excellent performance. Played on 5800x, rtx3080, 32GB, @3440x1400. Downside is that there are only two graphics options so I have a feeling people with mid/low-range systems might have performance problems. SE is known for lazy ports. Also no ultrawide support so you're forced to use flawless widescreen. Sound is a huge part of Final fantasy games. You will hear the soundtrack you already know and it's great. It will bring tears to your eyes. Voice acting is highest quality too. Most characters sound exactly how I imagined so when you hear their voices it doesn't sound weird, you feel at home. Overall an excellent game, one of the best jrpg's. Beautifully recreated world, characters, improved and fast combat makes a wonderful game. It's only ~15% of the original game but it's greatly expanded so you shouldn't be mad about that. [b]Pros[/b] [list] [*]Expanded story and characters [*]Remake done right [*]Fantastic combat [*]Excellent performance [*]Looks stunning most of the time [*]Outstanding sound design [/list] [b]Cons[/b] [list] [*]Background textures are low quality [*]No native ultrawide support [*]Lack of graphic options [/list] [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32930811-Kosmos%27s-Cosmic-reviews/?appid=704030][h1]Follow my curator page for more[/h1][/url] [url=https://www.twitch.tv/crazykosmikbunny] [b]My Twitch[/b] [/url]