Breaking this down into three parts; the gameplay, the world, and the story.
First gameplay-wise this takes what both Remake and INTERgrade have done and takes it to a new level. Where it feels like everyone has a use in a battle, and even the most out there situation has ways of dealing with it no matter who you play as. Cloud feels snappier and more responsive in Punisher Mode, while his air combat is harder to pull off, it's far more powerful. Tifa is just cracked. Barret and Aerith are fun to play. Yuffie is the same but she was already perfect. Cait Sith was the only one lacking as he takes a while to setup. While Materia customization is still more limited than the OG, a lot more unique materia was added in to give additional depths to encounters. Weapons were awesome as they took the idea of having all weapons be viable and made sure no matter what you used it would be effective. Synergy abilties and skills are amazing, though the stagger one felt like it could've given additional time for a stagger. Most ecounters felt like they knew what was possible and made sure you being able to do what you want was prioritized. Though there's some stuff at the end that kinda throws that out the window for better and worse.
Second, the world - what they have done translating FF7's world is nothing short of mind boggling.It takes this massive, but empty world and fills it with things for you to do. It does have those open world towers but also you don't need to do them to get the stuff out in the world and there are diagetic methods to get to them. If there is one complaint is that moving around in them feels like a hassle at times, especially in the Gongaga region. It's one of those aspects of Remake I had wished they shed but it's not a deal breaker more so a nitpick. But still, being able to ride the waves around different places just had me in awe of how the team was able to pull this off, especially with how piss slow it felt moving around Midgar in Remake.
Third and final, the story - my feelings on this are complicated as it does a lot and I think for the most part it lands. Where it began was a genuine shock to me as I didn't think it would go into this this soon. After that it cuts back to the same story beats as in the original, but under a wildly new context. As there are revelations and topics that aren't discussed until the last fourth of OG that are being discussed here. This also brings up a new problem as the same events as the OG still happen under a new context and sometimes it works heavily in its favor and a few times against it. For starters, it really benefits certain aspects that felt a bit to pushed under the rug in OG 7 such as Red XIII's character and the Black Materia, where they give so much more to latch onto. Which makes it slightly baffling to how the party just reacts or in some cases the lack of reaction to Cloud clearly needing help. This is where I am not fully equipped to say what is what as whatever the third one will be will change my feelings on this. But for now those last two chapters are a point of conflcit for me as I DO LIKE what happens but it could have been more concise in what it wanted to do, as there's moments in this that needed to breathe. Where a giant climactic fight was not needed, even though I understand why they wanted to do it. Also does not help that the last two chapters try do some unique gameplay sections with the party that, while are neat on paper, left a bit to be desired on execution. Played all this game on normal, not a single section felt unbalanced, but those last two chapters with trying to be different threw a lot of what they had designed before. Lead to some interesting challenges but also huge spike in the difficulty, I liked it but MAN I do not look forward to replaying those sections. I may be sounding negative but there's a section in this that had me screaming my ass off as I was completely overwhelmed by how much this game meant to me.
I want to see how this ends, I know what they're setting up and I hope they can deliver so I can revisit this game and the choices it made and say it was worth it.
First gameplay-wise this takes what both Remake and INTERgrade have done and takes it to a new level. Where it feels like everyone has a use in a battle, and even the most out there situation has ways of dealing with it no matter who you play as. Cloud feels snappier and more responsive in Punisher Mode, while his air combat is harder to pull off, it's far more powerful. Tifa is just cracked. Barret and Aerith are fun to play. Yuffie is the same but she was already perfect. Cait Sith was the only one lacking as he takes a while to setup. While Materia customization is still more limited than the OG, a lot more unique materia was added in to give additional depths to encounters. Weapons were awesome as they took the idea of having all weapons be viable and made sure no matter what you used it would be effective. Synergy abilties and skills are amazing, though the stagger one felt like it could've given additional time for a stagger. Most ecounters felt like they knew what was possible and made sure you being able to do what you want was prioritized. Though there's some stuff at the end that kinda throws that out the window for better and worse.
Second, the world - what they have done translating FF7's world is nothing short of mind boggling.It takes this massive, but empty world and fills it with things for you to do. It does have those open world towers but also you don't need to do them to get the stuff out in the world and there are diagetic methods to get to them. If there is one complaint is that moving around in them feels like a hassle at times, especially in the Gongaga region. It's one of those aspects of Remake I had wished they shed but it's not a deal breaker more so a nitpick. But still, being able to ride the waves around different places just had me in awe of how the team was able to pull this off, especially with how piss slow it felt moving around Midgar in Remake.
Third and final, the story - my feelings on this are complicated as it does a lot and I think for the most part it lands. Where it began was a genuine shock to me as I didn't think it would go into this this soon. After that it cuts back to the same story beats as in the original, but under a wildly new context. As there are revelations and topics that aren't discussed until the last fourth of OG that are being discussed here. This also brings up a new problem as the same events as the OG still happen under a new context and sometimes it works heavily in its favor and a few times against it. For starters, it really benefits certain aspects that felt a bit to pushed under the rug in OG 7 such as Red XIII's character and the Black Materia, where they give so much more to latch onto. Which makes it slightly baffling to how the party just reacts or in some cases the lack of reaction to Cloud clearly needing help. This is where I am not fully equipped to say what is what as whatever the third one will be will change my feelings on this. But for now those last two chapters are a point of conflcit for me as I DO LIKE what happens but it could have been more concise in what it wanted to do, as there's moments in this that needed to breathe. Where a giant climactic fight was not needed, even though I understand why they wanted to do it. Also does not help that the last two chapters try do some unique gameplay sections with the party that, while are neat on paper, left a bit to be desired on execution. Played all this game on normal, not a single section felt unbalanced, but those last two chapters with trying to be different threw a lot of what they had designed before. Lead to some interesting challenges but also huge spike in the difficulty, I liked it but MAN I do not look forward to replaying those sections. I may be sounding negative but there's a section in this that had me screaming my ass off as I was completely overwhelmed by how much this game meant to me.
I want to see how this ends, I know what they're setting up and I hope they can deliver so I can revisit this game and the choices it made and say it was worth it.