Had to sit with my thoughts for a bit before writing this review. I think the game is nearly perfect. The improvements in combat from remake to this is like night and day, it’s gonna be awful going back to remake after a this, lol. It’s so much fun that it was hard to stop playing. The story is really good, for the most part, there are some things that I miss from the og but it’s not a deal breaker. I liked the Nibelheim conspiracy in the og of, oh wait, did it actually burn down? Do cloud and tifa have false memories, and they get gaslit by shinra who rebuilt it and have just random people who love there being like, wtf you talking about bro? In this that little subplot is gone and it’s just like, yeah, they rebuilt the town and now they’re just doing experiments in the shinra mansion, like it’s fine, nothings wrong with it. Cid is like a completely different character it’s crazy. I like him, he’s fun, but that’s not FF7 Cid. Maybe he’ll change and get bitter in the 3rd game since they also cut rocket town, and so you don’t get his story about his love of space and wanting to finish his rocket, but I’m sure that’ll get added later on so it’s no biggy. The games biggest strength is all the downtime the characters get to grow and interact with each other, I love this little moments, it makes it feel like it’s a real group of friends making there way in an adventure. The open world is gorgeous and really fun to explore and get everything done( for the most part ), there’s ALOT to do in this game it’s fucking insane. There’s like 30+ mini games that you need to do for the 100% and it’s actually crazy. The plot, for the most part, follows the og pretty well, there’s a couple padding sections but not nearly as bad as remake so it’s a huge plus. The story goes fucking off the wall ape shit in the last 2 hours, cuz of course it does. I still don’t even fully comprehend what I witnessed, but, it’s definitely still peak, even tho it’s confusing it’s still go engaging and fun and it such a great time, especially starting the final boss with tears running down my face cuz they killed off one of my fav characters again :). And they somehow made it even more sad this time around with the multiple timelines and you not knowing if OUR Aerith lived or not since it keeps jumping around and showing different scenarios of what could’ve happened. I knew she wasn’t gonna make it tho, and it still hurts. I cannot wait for the conclusion of the trilogy, they’ve been cooking with these last two games and I can’t wait to see it finish, gotta fight god sephiroth at the edge of the universe in remake gameplay.