A big, messy, delicious, and beautiful buffet table
This game is a robust and filthy Christmas feast.
It is absolutely huge, I played through mostly as I think was “intended” (doing all the quests and map stuff but not mastering all the mini-games) and it took me 95 hours. That time was spent doing the following:
1. Gawking at the artistry with which Final Fantasy VII’s world has been recreated here.
It is truly superb and I stopped playing many times to simply take in the scenery. It’s impressive how some of the recreation exactly captures the structure of the original as well. Somehow they kept Junon city as inscrutable to navigate here as it was in the original. But overall, even the most ridiculous aspects of the original (or at least this section of it) have been recreated with the utmost dedication.
2. Hanging out with the glorious music.
And frankly, #1 and 2 kind of get me up to 4 stars by themselves. It’s really pretty fascinating just to witness this ridiculous project of getting thousands of people to blast out a tentpole videogame into a three-game reimagined epic.
3. Watching cutscenes.
I must say these are pretty darn well done. Some of the scenes in Remake had me pretty bored, here the acting is pretty outstanding all around. These characters are just the most intense versions of themselves that already existed in my 12-year-old mind, which frankly, is somewhat of a miraculous achievement in design. The narrative itself has gone completely off the rails… but I think anyone who finished Remake (and really the original FF7) already knew this. Now this story is certainly not profound enough to justify the 100 hours here, but as the foundation holding this entire experience together, it serves quite well.
4. Exploring stuff.
Which has three different flavors:
a. Towns/Peopled Locales
b. Dungeons
c. World Map
Just like the old days! Towns are easily the best and most fun to explore, as they always have been in JRPGs.
5. Playing Queen’s Blood.
This is the new Final Fantasy GOAT card game, giving Triple Triad the boot. Once I got a good replacement deck, I spanked everyone, but I always enjoyed playing.
6. Engaging in the myriad of other mini-games, of quality varying from amazing to atrocious.
There’s somewhere between 10-30 fully formed mini-games in this thing. Some of which are genuinely impressive.
7. Map Icon crossing off.
I’ve never played an Ubisoft open-world game but apparently this is that. It’s not particularly engaging, you more or less navigate to the icon, do something that may or may not be boring, then get the icon checked off. Sometimes these are cool, sometimes they suck. There’s a lot of repetition here! It was just varied enough that I didn’t completely question my life choices, but I was aware I was engaged in some repetitive time-wasting nonsense. This probably accounts for 1/3 of the player’s time if they engage in it.
8. Fighting.
I liked the combat in this game a lot more than Remake, but maybe I just learned how to interact with it more. Skills feel much more useful here and they don’t do that miserable thing they did in remake where bosses would not keep their stagger when they got to the next phase. Each character plays quite uniquely and they all have their strengths for sure.
9. Messing around in menus.
I hope there are no poor souls who haven’t put the Weapon Skills on “auto”. For the materia, it feels more interesting in this game compared to remake and I had a good time creating builds for my characters.
10. Executing “side quests”.
These are your typical side quests. They’re decent… but sidequests still feel mediocre. There is one in Gongoga involving chickens that genuinely feels like the development team was trolling about how stupid side quests are… and I lapped it up like an idiot.
I think that quantifies most of what I did with this game. There is a lot here! Like I mentioned up top, it is a buffet table. Some of the offerings are delicious, some are nasty. But it feels special, like a Christmas dinner. I ran the whole gamut of emotions with this thing: joy, sorrow, regret, amusement, boredom, anger, etc. 95 hours is probably too much time to spend with this thing relative to the enrichment I’ll glean from it… but I can’t not play it, let’s be real.
This is also 3 years in a row with “must play” 100 hour beefcakes.
2022: Elden Ring
2023: Tears of the Kingdom
2024: FF7 Rebirth
2025: Give me a break please.
Also maybe my favorite thing about this game is how far it pushes the JRPG trope of NPCs. NPCs in this game are literally boring contemporary Americans and your party all look like Demi-Gods, except for Aerith and Tifa who are full on goddesses. It's completely insane.
This game is a robust and filthy Christmas feast.
It is absolutely huge, I played through mostly as I think was “intended” (doing all the quests and map stuff but not mastering all the mini-games) and it took me 95 hours. That time was spent doing the following:
1. Gawking at the artistry with which Final Fantasy VII’s world has been recreated here.
It is truly superb and I stopped playing many times to simply take in the scenery. It’s impressive how some of the recreation exactly captures the structure of the original as well. Somehow they kept Junon city as inscrutable to navigate here as it was in the original. But overall, even the most ridiculous aspects of the original (or at least this section of it) have been recreated with the utmost dedication.
2. Hanging out with the glorious music.
And frankly, #1 and 2 kind of get me up to 4 stars by themselves. It’s really pretty fascinating just to witness this ridiculous project of getting thousands of people to blast out a tentpole videogame into a three-game reimagined epic.
3. Watching cutscenes.
I must say these are pretty darn well done. Some of the scenes in Remake had me pretty bored, here the acting is pretty outstanding all around. These characters are just the most intense versions of themselves that already existed in my 12-year-old mind, which frankly, is somewhat of a miraculous achievement in design. The narrative itself has gone completely off the rails… but I think anyone who finished Remake (and really the original FF7) already knew this. Now this story is certainly not profound enough to justify the 100 hours here, but as the foundation holding this entire experience together, it serves quite well.
4. Exploring stuff.
Which has three different flavors:
a. Towns/Peopled Locales
b. Dungeons
c. World Map
Just like the old days! Towns are easily the best and most fun to explore, as they always have been in JRPGs.
5. Playing Queen’s Blood.
This is the new Final Fantasy GOAT card game, giving Triple Triad the boot. Once I got a good replacement deck, I spanked everyone, but I always enjoyed playing.
6. Engaging in the myriad of other mini-games, of quality varying from amazing to atrocious.
There’s somewhere between 10-30 fully formed mini-games in this thing. Some of which are genuinely impressive.
7. Map Icon crossing off.
I’ve never played an Ubisoft open-world game but apparently this is that. It’s not particularly engaging, you more or less navigate to the icon, do something that may or may not be boring, then get the icon checked off. Sometimes these are cool, sometimes they suck. There’s a lot of repetition here! It was just varied enough that I didn’t completely question my life choices, but I was aware I was engaged in some repetitive time-wasting nonsense. This probably accounts for 1/3 of the player’s time if they engage in it.
8. Fighting.
I liked the combat in this game a lot more than Remake, but maybe I just learned how to interact with it more. Skills feel much more useful here and they don’t do that miserable thing they did in remake where bosses would not keep their stagger when they got to the next phase. Each character plays quite uniquely and they all have their strengths for sure.
9. Messing around in menus.
I hope there are no poor souls who haven’t put the Weapon Skills on “auto”. For the materia, it feels more interesting in this game compared to remake and I had a good time creating builds for my characters.
10. Executing “side quests”.
These are your typical side quests. They’re decent… but sidequests still feel mediocre. There is one in Gongoga involving chickens that genuinely feels like the development team was trolling about how stupid side quests are… and I lapped it up like an idiot.
I think that quantifies most of what I did with this game. There is a lot here! Like I mentioned up top, it is a buffet table. Some of the offerings are delicious, some are nasty. But it feels special, like a Christmas dinner. I ran the whole gamut of emotions with this thing: joy, sorrow, regret, amusement, boredom, anger, etc. 95 hours is probably too much time to spend with this thing relative to the enrichment I’ll glean from it… but I can’t not play it, let’s be real.
This is also 3 years in a row with “must play” 100 hour beefcakes.
2022: Elden Ring
2023: Tears of the Kingdom
2024: FF7 Rebirth
2025: Give me a break please.
Also maybe my favorite thing about this game is how far it pushes the JRPG trope of NPCs. NPCs in this game are literally boring contemporary Americans and your party all look like Demi-Gods, except for Aerith and Tifa who are full on goddesses. It's completely insane.