I am glad i played this before FF7 Rebirth comes out even if the experience was a mixed bag. For the positives, I really grew to like Zack as a protagonist as the game went along and all the connections to FF7 were really great. Seeing events only mentioned in the original game in action and expanded on was the highlight of the game to me, as well as sections with other characters from that game which really flesh out the history of that world. As anyone who has played the OG can assume, it gets pretty emotional at times and I think they did a great job.

The big negative for me was I just did not care about the original story it was telling concurrently with the fleshing out of FF7, Genesis and Angeal did nothing for me whatsoever and the game unfortunately revolves around them so much in the first half I found my mind wandering during cutscenes. They just wouldn’t go away it was a bit painful.

The combat was also a mixed bag for me, it was pretty fun on a base level but waiting for the random wheel spin was pretty odd to me. It felt like a lot of the time in harder fights I was just stalling hoping for a good power up or move, it’s a neat idea but takes away player agency. Luckily the game wasn’t too grindy, I did a decent chunk of side missions and didn’t struggle too often in the story. I do wish it was a bit more obvious which side missions you should do, because some grant game changing rewards I wish I had realized much earlier.