Genre: Action RPG
Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix

This remake of the original "Final Fantasy VII" brings the characters from that game positively to life: the face geometry is absurd, the skin textures and hair rendering, the eyes, the facial expressions-- this aspect of the title is truly the primary highlight of the entire package. Environments likewise make maximum use of Unreal Engine 4, with ultra high resolution textures, and some extremely tasteful pre-baked lighting. The menu system is clean, and the whole experience looks very polished.

For this reviewer, the original title's soundtrack is the overall best in the history of the medium. Meanwhile, the gold standard for re-arrangements comes from the PC Engine's "Ys Book I & II". The efforts in this game then are only so-so: rather than re-do the songs one-to-one, they are sort of mixed and blended together into this Hollywood-esque cinematic soup. The instrumentation is too realistic, so the songs lose the personality lended by the original DSP samples. The game's music is still very good by modern-day standards, but the bar could have been even higher. At least, the Japanese voice acting is excellent across the board.

Like the original game, this remake uses a quasi real-time battle system, except in this case the player directly controls the characters, running around with them while spamming attack combos. A press of the "X" button slows the combat down to a crawl, so the player can choose "ATB gauge" abilities or spells during the fray. It's an interesting combination of traditional JRPG combat and action RPG standards, and it works rather well. Unfortunately and just like the original release, this title is filled with unnecessary filler mini-games and other annoyances. And since it only deals with the "Midgar" section of the original game, it's almost suffocatingly linear.

This reviewer was dazzled by the original game, beating it something like four days after it came out-- but in truth and retrospect, its design was suspect. This remake is probably the better game, with the highlights being the incredible character art and the best-in-class story telling. The combat engine though is only satisfactory, and the overall game stucture feels too constraining. As of the time of writing, the sequel to this title has recently come out, and undoubtedly benefits from having an overworld map.