With Rebirth fastly approaching I decided to replay Final Fantasy VII Remake, and I gladly discovered that I still like it a lot. The gameplay is incredibly fun, I wouldn't say I prefer it to the original's JRPG but it's still really cool to fight aggressively with Cloud or Tifa and keeping distances with Barrett or Aerith. Speaking of them, the characters are the best part of this remake, they're just as charming as in the original but with the added scenes and voice acting they gain so many layers (Aerith is still best girl tho). The story is also pretty interesting, it starts basically
as the og but it slowly departures into something that looks really interesting, and I can't wait to play the other two games to see where it goes. The presentation is immaculate, the character models are some of the best I've ever seen, it has a really nice direction that gives Midgar a ton of life and the music is just perfect. I do have a problem tho and it's a big one: it's bloated as hell. The og's Midgar section is only four hours long and this remake is around thirty if you don't do any side missions, and you can clearly feel it because there are way too many filler chapters. Some like the side mission with Jessie are pretty fun, but most of them are just "we need to go to this actually important place in the story, but first we have to spend two hours going through this boring ass place where only like an important scene that could have been placed anywhere else happens". Either way, I love this game and I really want to play the others, which I'm sure will be even better.