General Thoughts (Vague Spoilers):
I had so many feelings playing through this (positive, negative, and uncertain). There were even a few moments that got me legitimately misty-eyed. I really feel like I should give this a higher score for what it means to the medium, but something about the ending especially just makes me feel like I can't properly review this story until I understand what it's actually doing, if that makes sense.

I don't feel like I have been a fan long enough to be any sort of authority on how this fares as a re-imagining, I'm sure many of my gripes with how the story is handled will either be answered in later parts or just don't mean as much as my initial reactions might say. And the ending of Intermission definitely felt more "whole" compared to that of the base game, even with the questions it introduces. I'm still just amazed that a project of this scale exists.

All that being said, I definitely don't think this version of the story would be a good way to introduce a new player to FF7, as elements of it are difficult to parse for even OG players (which is on purpose, but I kept wondering throughout my playthrough if the final hours of the game wouldn't just come off as a bunch of vague nonsense to the uninitiated).

The entire ending is not gonna mean anything to you if you haven't at least played the original and Crisis Core, and ideally you'll have seen Advent Children too given... implications of a certain important character. The game's story uses it's place in the series and the cultural zeitgeist to incredible effect at certain moments, and also ones that I feel more conflicted on because I don't yet know where it's all pointing to.

Even with all of that, this absolutely feels like the definitive rendition of all these characters; nowhere else in the series have they shined better for me. The core story elements that are carried over from the original are recreated in so much loving detail, and most of the new content was a blast to play through, as I greatly appreciated fleshing out the characters who didn't get much love in the first chunk of the original. The clarity that the newer medium offers a lot of important scenes is also greatly appreciated; as much as I find the little Popeye action figure models charming, scenes just hit different when you don't have to use you imagination to make them feel more real. Every major character has a gorgeous model, a well-directed voice, and a script that miraculously barely ever has any translation head-scratchers that I usually dread, and all of this serves to make the Midgar chapters much more impactful for me compared to the original.

Random Stuff I Liked a.k.a. me gushing about a few characters (FULL SPOILERS):
- double whammy of meeting Aerith for the first time followed quickly by Remake's first real rendition of Those Who Fight making me realize this was real.
- Cloud's immediete change in attitude whenever he's with Tifa... I'm sorry but knowing what's coming after this game they are so important to me.
- the game forcing you to give Tifa the flower (they did it for meeee) along with giving me like eight versions of Tifa's theme.
- Tifa acting like a proud kindergarten teacher when she gets Barret and Cloud to pull a lever at the same time.
- the whole sequence of traversing the rooftops with Aerith; so well acted and perfectly captures both of their characters.
- Cloud almost smiling cuz not even he's dickish enough to be unphased by Aerith being Aerith.
- when Aerith find's Cloud outside the sector 5 slums at night after leaving her house. It was the first time the nature of this game's story finally started to become clearer to me. Cloud crying at just seeing her happy and not understanding why (BUT I KNOW WHYY) hit me so hard man... one of my favorite little moments in the whole game.
- the walk to the freeway immediately after that. The music is divine and (tinfoil hat time) coupled with the previous scene, it feels almost like Cloud's heart knows why being here with her means so much, even though he can't know who she is to him.
- that ridiculously polished dance sequence + Aerith just having the time of her life.
- THANK GOD they didn't fuck with the shipping wars AT ALL with this game, at least on the surfacel. They said "nah Tifa and Aerith love each other and we're gonna give them 10 cute scenes together"
- CHAIRITH!
- Kunsel mentioned!
- changing Nanaki's introduction was definitely a good move. Hojo is a sick freak but I did not need to see that situation again in this game.
- that time I tried facetanking a M.O.T.H. unit in Punisher Mode just to see what would happen (I am very smart).
- Cloud and Barret whacking that gigantic steel door... morons (I love them).
- "Local Florist!😡👊"
- Tifa grabbing the stupidest dinkiest car she possibly could for a getaway vehicle.
- Yuffie you were too silly for this world in the original and happily that carried over to here (I love her moogle poncho way more compared to her normal outfit though).
- I spent half the DLC playing FF Clash Royale so they must've been doing something right.
- They said "FUCK YOU DIRGE OF CERBERUS IS SUPER IMPORTANT NOW"

It was cool finally getting to this when Portal 2 was one of the most formative games of my life as a kid. Some genuine head-scratchers near the end in terms of puzzles, great use of unique and interesting challenges using repeated content.

On the story end, it definitely feels like a proof of concept compared to the second one, but what's there is told very well through the changing demeanor of GlaDos and the gradual state of the facility itself.

I'll always love P2 more, but comparing a perfectly solid game to one of the best games of all time isn't really fair, especially when P1 did so much for the medium when it was released.

I've put more hours into this game than it probably deserves, but there's just something about how it actually follows the 'RPG' part of MMORPG that keeps me in there, even though I've already beat all the class campaigns multiple times. The vanilla stories are just fine, and the weird nature of Flashpoints (most important ones are pushed on you but some others are really hard to initiate and can't be done solo even though they're important to the story) make progression not as smooth as I would like.

The DLC's haven't all been masterpieces, but the later ones I think are what made this game finally form an identity of its own, and I like seeing what sprawling wacky adventures they take my character on.

Really short and sweet but a huge amount of work clearly went into it. After the opening I consistently adored how detailed and expressive the characters are and how well the atmosphere works despite its simplicity. Overall much higher quality compared to some other indie VNs I've played recently. Loved how I kept finding new routes and rooms by just trying random stuff, and their endings ended up being so different from each other (also K7 is canon in my heart idc).

This is all just a prologue, so I'm eager to see what the devs have cooked in Paper Lily and continuing the thread of these mysterious Golden Letters.