Final Fantasy 7 Remake Review - 6 Ups & 5 Downs

- Downs -

5. Pacing & Padding

The one thing that will stick out massively to newcomers and returning fans, is an insane amount of padding that bulks out each chapter.

I'm talking old-school, "this door is locked, go find three switches!", "this character fell off a walkway so here's half an hour of corridor-crawling to get back", "Time to slowly walk sideways through various crevices"-levels of padding.

It's very clear Square were in a bit of a tight spot, even in conceptualising how to "do" Final Fantasy 7 for a modern audience, on modern tech.

We're talking about a game that's 40-60 hours long, and Midgar is barely a fifth of that. Chopping everything around so that Midgar is now a 30 hour experience means plot beats get elongated, "game-ified" open spaces are injected everywhere to prolong getting to the next story moment, and it gets in the way at every turn.

Replayability is aided by a merciful chapter select after you've finished, but first time through - especially as the core plot drive is SO good - you'll be begging for all these drawn out sections and animations to stop.