Playing the game feels magical, even for someone who didn't grow up with the original, revisiting this world feels special. The way the game is presented is so charming, characters are all lovable, gameplay is super fun, the graphics are stunning, the world is so well crafted and the story is very heartfelt and emotional even though there isn't much happening plot-wise.
I say this because the plot of the story is almost non-existent due to being only a chopped off part of the original game's story. But even without a coherent reason for things, every beat in this story feels important and well deserved because of how the characters shine in every single second of the game.
I also have to applaud the minigames, they absolutely didn't need to go all out with them, but they did and they are all amazingly fun and its always a very pleasant surprisie when you stumble into a new minigame in the game (except for the cactuar one, fuck you cactuars).
The music is also beautiful and like the minigames they didn't skim any corners, there's a new song for almost everything you do, so thank you very much Square, I love it.
Unfortunately, I did not enjoy the final part of the game. Reasons being, the final dungeon is absurdly long with very boring gameplay, and the story becomes ridiculously convoluted for no reason, which wouldn't nesesarly be a problem if the emotional throughline was solid, but its sadly not so. And in my opinion, and unlike the rest of the game, it does a disservice to the original story. It also fails to wrap up the storyline of this game, unlike the previous remake which suprisingly did very well. Here you are left with a sorry lads, gonna have to wait for the third game to have a satisfying ending.
So, sad it ended in a fuble for me, but it won't make me forget how amazing the rest of the game is.