Final Fantasy 7 Remake Review - 6 Ups & 5 Downs

1. When It's Allowed To Be Final Fantasy VII, There's Nothing Better

The biggest positive by far is honing in on the start and end of the experience.

My completion time was 30 hours, and that was doing the vast majority of the side missions too. There's a big ol' bloat in the middle where it doesn't feel like anything other than padding is being thrown your way, but the opening and closing arcs are immaculate.

When the combat is popping off, you're switching between everyone as they trade banter and special attacks, the music is soaring and everything looks iconic and gorgeous - THAT is the Final Fantasy VII Remake.

Bafflingly, one of the best examples of this comes towards the VERY end - literally 20+ hours in - and that's an insane marker for "when it gets really good".

FF7R is a triumph in all of the areas I've mentioned, but there are some negatives too.