The battles feel faster, the stakes feel higher, the characters seem more awesome, AND this is all just in the first 3 hours of the game. My many complaints about remake are all pretty much resolved here. I personally thought Remake was fine but lacked a bit of substance in terms of combat/level design but this game fixes a lot of the problems I had with remake and even allows me to enjoy things I never knew I actually would like. The story is definitely still FF7 but with a few twists and turns that I won't talk about here.

I will say that my biggest problem with this game which I will mention because it's the only thing putting me off of a 5/5 is that the menu design is very backwards if that makes sense. For example, changing party members is not in a party member tab instead in a whole different tab entirely. There are other examples of things like this in the game but I don't want to spread complaints that could've only bothered me.

Also some of the minigames are genuinely awful and you HAVE to do most of them for the platinum trophy or even completing the main story so...

Overall this game is a 4.5/5 and a true tribute to the original FF7 in ways that I could only wish future FF titles follow in the steps of.