Arbiters of Fate: A Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade Review

Okay, I'll admit it. For the longest time, I didn't get the hype.

Up until recently, I thought that FF7 was just another one of those ubiquitous gaming cash cows that was over-hyped and over-marketed, with corny tee shirts and other cheap nostalgia-pandering novelties available at every dying GameStop across the country. Sure, call me a gaming hipster if you will, I don't really care.

That said, FF7 Rebirth's demo just dropped, and since my primarily FFXIV-flavored feed on Twitter is also home to several FF7 fans— the Venn diagram's practically a circle— I was influenced and decided to download Rebirth's demo to try it out.

I liked it. Really liked it. But I wasn't committed enough spend $70 on Rebirth if I didn't know the story, and it just so happened that Remake Intergrade for the PS5 was on sale for $15. So after getting a blessing from my partner to buy the game, I decided to pick it up. (Quote: "Not to be a bad influence but maybe you should get it for $15 instead of $70.")

You might be asking yourself, "What the hell kind of title is Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade? That's nearly as bad as the USB naming convention." And yeah, I'd agree. There's a whole thesis paper that could be written about the naming scheme for most Final Fantasy spin-offs and sequels and how it turns casuals off from the series, but in our case it boils down to this: FF7 Remake is a PS4 remaster of the original FF7. When the PS5 came out, Square decided to re-release the remaster with upgraded graphics, and called that version Remake Intergrade. Got it? Good.

Now, despite having the word "Fantasy" it its name, Final Fantasy VII Remake (henceforth called FF7R) is anything but high fantasy.

The game takes place in the metropolis of Midgar, the most advanced city in the game's world, created and run by the Shinra Electric Power Company. Midgar is composed of two main layers: dirt slums on the bottom, and a middle-class suburb built on a steel plate about 300 meters above the slums. Standing tall in the middle of it all is the Shinra building, the company's headquarters. The entire city's powered by 8 reactors along the perimeter, which extract Mako— a non-renewable resource— a from the planet and convert it into electricity.

You play as Cloud Strife, a former member of Shinra's military division, now turned mercenary. At the game's start, Cloud has been hired for a job by Avalanche, an ecoterrorism ecological activist group based out of Midgar's slums. Avalanche believes that Shinra has been negligent in its actions and is actively harming the planet with its reactors, so in the name of the planet, they aim to shut Shinra down one reactor at a time. Over the course of the game, you'll experience Cloud's journey reluctantly assisting in this lofty endeavor, in addition to all of the "changes of plans" that ensue as a result of his actions.

FF7R is an extremely allegory-heavy and class-conscious game. The disparities in ways of life between people from "the plate" and the slums are extremely prevalent, and are a major inspiration for many of the quests and story beats in the game. Additionally, I figured that Mako is supposed to represent fossil fuels, which also makes most of the game a commentary on global warming, consumerism, and corporate greed. Beneath the flashy combat and JRPG narrative lies some real good food for thought, which I found interesting.

The game's composed of 18 distinct chapters that take your party across the wide variety of areas in the game's world: from military bases to Midgar's take on Kabukicho, from slums to fields of flowers. Each chapter will introduce new characters and settings to help flesh out the world of Midgar, and help (or hinder) Cloud along his journey.

The game takes itself seriously, but not too seriously at the same time. The major story beats are really intense, but dialogue during slow beats made me really enjoy all of the characters in the game, particularly Barret. The dialogue is well written and makes the story enjoyable. There were comedic breaks, but at no point were there any "marvel quips" that made me cringe or turned me off.

In my opinion, the perfect example of FF7R's form of comedy is the staircase scene from Chapter 16.

– SLIGHT CHAPTER 16 SPOILER BELOW, SKIP AHEAD TO AVOID –

At one point, your party is faced with the decision of whether to take an elevator or the stairs to floor 59 within a large building you're infiltrating. Either way works of course, but most rational people would decide to take the stairs out of a desire to be discreet. But as soon as you step in the stairwell, a little floor indicator pops up next to each of your characters in the party list and you immediately realize that the developers are going to make you experience the full extent of the choice you just made.

Over the next 8 minutes or so, your party starts their journey upwards at a brisk pace with triumphant music in the background and Cloud and Barret exchanging some of the game's greatest banter entire way up. As you get higher, the music starts getting distorted, the characters start sounding more exasperated, and Cloud's ability to sprint slowly gets weaker and weaker until by floor 50 you're practically crawling up the stairs to the end.

The entire scene is so stupid, but so much so that it's come full circle and is genuinely one of my all-time favorite creative decisions in any of the RPGs I've ever played. (Link)

– SPOILERS ARE OVER, YOU'RE SAFE NOW –

I will say though, that I can understand the comments which say that Remake feels like a ~36 hour prologue for Rebirth. Don't get me wrong, the story in Remake is fully enjoyable by itself, but the game's pacing can feel a bit off at times. Case in point: Red XIII's late introduction or Cait Sith's unexplained cameo. Additionally, FF7R's story intentionally leaves lots of narrative threads open for development in later titles, and seeing these unresolved at closing credits can be a bit unfulfilling. Here's hoping most of them get tied up in Rebirth.

When it comes to level design, I feel like FF7R did a really stellar job, certainly than some of it's modern siblings. (I'm primarily making fun of FFXVI's stages here, as they were practically identical to FFXIV's dungeons and ended up feeling kind of monotonous.) Each chapter had plenty of packs of unique ads, and usually had some novel mechanic or minigame attached to it. As a result, no two chapters really felt the same.

Chapter 4 has the motorcycle sequence, where you're forced to race against Public Security guards while beating the shit out of them with Cloud's sword. Chapter 7 allows you to pick and choose the upgrades that the chapter's boss later uses against you. Chapter 9 has several traversal puzzles that require for you to command giant mechanical arms to solve. So on and so forth, without giving away too much.

The bosses in each chapter are also challenging and not as simple as mashing a button until their HP hits zero. Like the turn-based RPGs this game takes inspiration from, enemies in FF7R have elemental and physical defenses/weaknesses, which allow you to formulate plans of attack to exploit these to your advantage. In many fights, bosses are essentially invulnerable until you figure out what their unique mechanic is, turning every fight into a puzzle. Several notable fights that I really enjoyed were Roche, Reno & Rude, Hell House, Rufus and Darkstar, Type-0 Behemoth, and of course: the final boss.

As for the combat used when fighting these bosses, I was hooked almost instantly. Over the course of the game, you get to play as 5 characters, each with their own form of combat. They're all super simple to pick up, only requiring two buttons to use, but they all have high skill ceilings for those who want to show off. Cloud can execute combos with any combination of pressing or holding square, then swaps to a more aggressive stance with counters by pressing triangle. Tifa can use her Unbridled Strength ability to charge up her fists over the course of a fight, then unleash that energy in a high-burst round-house kick or uppercut by pressing triangle. Et cetera.

But the most important part of the combat in this game, unquestionably, is the Command Menu and ATB system. As each of your party members fights enemies, they build up a resource called ATB in the lower-right corner of the screen. Then, pressing X or either of the triggers pulls up a Command menu, where you can tell characters to expend ATB on abilities or spells.

I think that FF7R's ATB system is an ingenious way to merge the soul of traditional turn-based RPGs with a hack-and-slash action game. You get the best of both worlds: real-time high-octane combat combined with traditional planning of ability and spell usage. The system feels really good to use, and I would even go so far as to say that I prefer the ATB system to FFXVI's eikonic combat. It's novel, it's functional, and I cannot sing its praises enough.

FF7R also allows you to augment your experience via the use of materia, small colorful orbs that can be slotted into your gear to grant each character access to new spells or intrinsic perks. There's five main types of materia: magic materia for spells, command materia for abilities, complete materia for intrinsic perks, support materia for enhancing other materia, and finally summoning materia for summoning powerful creatures that aid you during challenging fights.

The existence of materia also introduces the topic of buildcrafting into the game. As you proceed through your playthrough, you'll discover many different types of materia which you can then use in tandem to do some ridiculous stuff. Want to make Aerith a spell-casting fiend? Go for it; give her MP up and all of the elemental materia. Give Barret all of the status effect materia so he can extend the debuff duration and poison everyone in the fight. Give Cloud the Assess and First Strike materia so he can figure out a plan of attack early into the fight.

Another system this game had that has quickly become a favorite of mine: the weapons upgrade system. Instead of letting power creep slowly make older weapons obsolete, your party in FF7R accumulates skill points (SP) over the course of the game, which can then be used at any time to permanently buff any weapon's stats or give it extra materia slots. This means that if you really wanted to use your starter sword for the entire game, you could upgrade it the entire way and do so. And since each weapon in the game has its own perks and signature abilities attached to it, this further increases buildcrafting potential. Really neat!

I also really, really appreciate the fact that FF7R has a chapter select menu once you beat the game. So many games with narratives nowadays just return you to right before the final boss fight once you beat the game, which I've always thought was pretty underwhelming. With chapter select, you can go back and re-experience any earlier chapter of the game with your current gear and stats, making a completionist run all the more attractive now that you: A) are already overlevelled, and B) don't have to replay the entire game just to get to one thing you missed.

FF7R also has a small DLC expansion called FF7R Intermission, which builds upon some of these threads. In it, you play as Yuffie, a foreign agent and ninja from Wutai, Midgar's rival nation. In the story, Yuffie works with a different chapter of Avalanche to infiltrate Shinra HQ in hopes of stealing a powerful materia. The story was short but very powerful, and I also appreciated all of the side-content that came with it. (Fort Condor? More like Lord of Verminion.)

I don't really think I have to mention this, but I will anyways: The game looks gorgeous. I got several comments on the matter from roommates passing in front of the TV while I was playing. Even when the image was compressed and sent for me to play on my Steam Deck via remote play, it still looked great. Honestly, stellar work by everyone in the graphics and art departments over in Creative Business Unit I.

Finally, let's chat about music. Nobuo Uematsu is unquestionably one of the most well known and universally praised video game composers of all time, and many tracks from this album are a testament to his ability. Every battle theme is a banger, no questions asked.

In a testament to how popular this game's OST is: despite me having never played any of the FF7 series before, I realized while playing that I had heard many of these tracks before. Pretty much every game enthusiast recognizes the FF7 battle motif or the horn trills from One Winged Angel. I also got a huge wave of deja vu when listening to Sync or Swim and Collapsed Expressway, frantically trying to rack my memory as to where I had heard it before. Realistically, probably as a background track for a YouTube video. Still, neat!

Although, I do have a hot take for everyone: I actually enjoyed Intermission's OST more than the base game's. I know, I know! Shoot me if you want, I don't care. I still think that Yuffie's first battle theme is a banger, alongside the Runaround family of tracks. Dude, seriously. Inject Final Fantasy: Cowboy Bebop straight into my veins. It's on loop. You're not changing my mind on this. (Also the Happy Turtle Fight Song as a combat theme was a shot out of left field and I loved it, honestly.)

Overall, FF7R is a solid 9.5/10.

Not that this is an action game comparison or anything, but I'm giving FF7R the same score that I gave FFXVI. While I did enjoy the combat and characters in FF7R more, its somewhat inconclusive ending made it lose some points. But on the other hand, FFXVI suffers from lackluster level design which FF7R does really well, so everything balances out and they end up with identical scores. You can and should play both of these games if you get the chance.

Putting other peoples' nit-picky comparisons to the original aside, I think that FF7R is what my ideal linear action game would look like. It doesn't try to reinvent the wheel too much, but the small things that it adds make a real big impact. Namely: the ATB system, chapter select, weapon upgrades, many minigames, etc. I had a really great time playing this game, then again after diving back in to collect more trophies. Creative Business Unit I really knocked it out of the park here. If you're an action RPG fan that hasn't played FF7 yet, this is the perfect chance for you to hop in.

Now, by the time this gets published, Rebirth will be less then a week away.

After playing the Junon demo that launched today, I'm excited... but also concerned. Remake played really well as a linear game, and I can only hope that the transition to this semi-open-world format in Rebirth goes over well. I've already seen the addition of gathering and crafting, and like... Sure? I guess this implies that items in Rebirth are going to be more expendable and a bit of a grind; I just don't want it to detract from the experience. Truthfully, I just want all of the Rebirth's additions to end up being as impactful as Remake's were.

But then again, this new paradigm isn't too different from other RPGs with free roam, is it? I'm thinking primarily about Guerilla's Horizon series here, another one of my favorite RPGs for the modern PlayStation. Maybe I'm overthinking and it'll be just fine. We'll just have to see how it plays out next week.

Regardless, I'm locked in. I've already ordered an SSD for my PS5 in preparation, and I'm back to counting down the days till launch, just like I was after playing the FFXVI demo. Damn you, Square Enix. Your demos work too well, my wallet can't handle it much longer. :(

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade is available for $40 on the PlayStation Store, or $70 on PC via Steam or Epic Games. This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.