Final Fantasy 7-Remake Intergrade Review
So close, but so, so far- Doug’s review
My journey with Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade started in quarantine, 2020. I had never played the original, but as a kid who grew up on trash watch mojo lists, even I knew about that “top 10 saddest moments in gaming” moment. That, and the original game being turn based, was all I knew about FF7. I picked it up for my ps4, played it for a few hours and loved it. I never touched it again. Skip to the year of our lord 2026 and an eager Doug sat in discord giving updates on Summer Games Fest to his friends over voice chat. The end to the show came with a 12 minute presentation on Revelation with even our beloved Matt Mercer making an appearance. I sat in my chair and was stunned. The game looked fantastic. A big open world, a wide cast of characters I was vaguely familiar with from my time with the remake, it was beautiful. I then proceed to pull out my switch 2, went to the e-shop and bought the remake. “Why Switch?” you may ask. You may not. Anyways, I downloaded the game and instantly fell in love. A bombastic intro, a great prologue, so many questions and just the want to play more. I was hooked. Over the course of 3 days I sunk 25 hours into the game and loved my time with it. However, a bloated middle section, terrible camera, constant repetition of the same content, and so much more stops me from out right recommending it. To be frank, I love this game, but just like an ugly child, I just cant get over the blemishes, but damn do I love that MF.
A big Slow Great Story
World wise, the game is peak fiction. A mage-punk, deep, (as intricately described on twitter by https://x.com/Oceaniz96/status/2067245919590822277) “beautiful pre-apocalypse” world. I loved the city of Midgar, it felt alive and believable. The NPC’s would walk around doing their own thing, and Skyrim style say the same thing over and over again as they did it, but it was charming. Post war, the Shinra Electric Power Company has returned their interests into their own passion projects of comically evil stature. Sucking out the planets life stream, referred to as Mako, to power their city, and their experiments “bwahahaha, we are evil bwahahaha, we cheesy but in a cool 90’s way bwahahah”. Then enters our protagonist, ex-SOLDIER Cloud Strife. Hired as a merc for his childhood friend (and, my fiancé and I hope, future lover) Tifa’s eco-terrorist group Avalanche. From there, we get to explore a deep story about found family, memory, and environmentalism. But we all know why we are here, and that’s for the love triangle, jokes, and 5 minute long dance scene. Remake’s story teeters on the line of hard sci fi drama and the goofiest shit you’ve ever seen in such an excellent manner that both sides of the cookie taste just as good. Honestly, I haven’t been hooked by a games story this hard is so long. However, there are so so many bumps along the road. At the end of the day this is an excellent prologue, however, a prologue that is 25-35 hours long and you really feel that run time in the middle. It feels like they wanted to justify the price of the game with that god awful hour to dollar ratio that modern gamers have. Repeated locations and bosses drag. You’re in the middle of the most intense or emotional part of the story, and then get hit with missions that just feel like the worst Naruto filler. For example, there’s a point in the game where you are separated from your main group. You meet an important character, do a cool fight, start to see some of the story threads going, and then boom. A ton of quests that I personally couldn’t care for. I have to pick flowers for the orphanage now? Man fuck them kids I have to blow up reactors and rizz up Aerith come on man. It’s just a constant one massive step forward, and then two steps you’ve already taken before back. The back and forth really makes the game drag so much especially in that middle 10-15 hours. The game then picks way up in the later chapters with a fantastic ending. A cinematic and exhilarating conclusion leaves me super pumped for the next game. The only issue is during a very monumental cut scene, there is a character who’s model is very distracting and takes some of the gas out of that big moment. Side quests felt boring. I understand that side quests are hard to stick the landing, but these felt like pointless MMO type quests. Go here, kill this monster, talk to this guy, oops it was the wrong monster, go back and kill the right monster dummy, talk to the guy again and reward. I’ll be honest, I mostly skipped the side quests. The interesting ones were too far in between quests upon quests of straight butt. I rarely felt underleveled for the main story quest and when I did the enemies would catch me up quick. But again, even with all those bumps and lumps covering the skin of this story, the shining moments are so multiple and perfect I can’t help but love it. When the story is hitting its stride, I am locked in and it’s almost worth the road to getting there. Maybe it is worth it. Worth to some, eh not so worth to others. I’m settling on worth. Good time.
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Gameplay
FF7 Remake Intergrade combines real time and turn based in a clever way. By attacking in real time, you build up an attribute meter. When said meter is full, you can then slow time and do the turn based moves. Slick abilities that do big damage, spells for quick elemental weakness, pop a quick potion and even summoning actual gods. You can guard against attacks, blocking potential damage and limiting the amount of damage you take. You can also dodge, but for me, the dodge would work maybe a third of the time. Enemy attacks had hit boxes the size of trucks and unless I was dodging an attack that felt meant to be dodged, blocking would’ve had a better affect. Blocking damage helps to fill your limit meter for a super nice animated scene that can do big damage or heals for a good amount. When facing an enemy, 9 times out of 10 block is the go. The combat is flashy and feels nice. You hit a groove and start to feel it early on and you’re hooked. Swapping characters when you hit an ability to keep your attribute meters going, flashing across the screen like the flash, just feeling bad-ass. However, it does get to the point where your build feels pretty much complete. You’re hitting the same abilities over and over again, with the only change being elemental spells for each enemies weakness. It was their first attempt at this combat system and I feel the potential, but it does need a bit more time to cook to get some diversity in there. The other party members feel like they do nothing while I am attacking. Just throwing out attacks, yknow, when they feel like it. But they are having a pretty bad day so I guess they can take it easy when me, as Cloud, am fighting for my life. However, all of that is doable, but the games biggest sin was the camera. I lock onto an enemy, switch characters and start to attack but oh no Barret is now shooting the wall the complete opposite side of the enemies. You’re constantly losing track of enemies as the lock on is really just feels like it locks on for a few seconds. The worst is when going against a big enemy or boss with segmented body parts with specific lock ons. Trying to switch lock ons is impossible. You’re either locked into the wrong part or the camera is spinning around the battlefield. Rarely I was locked on to where I wanted it to go. Bottom 3 combat cameras of all time. I loved the combat in this game, but just like the story, repetition at the end and then a god awful camera tampers the experience greatly.
DLC
The DLC here, Intermission, is peak. Straight up, perfect. The pace is great, combat is constantly interesting (even with the terrible camera), and my god Yuffie is the best. A kid in way over their head but still calling the shots. She’s hilarious and just fun to play. They added so much love in her animations and cutscenes, you can really feel them take the criticisms of the main game and give you a nice streamlined, fun experience in the DLC. Her ninja abilities with a close range and short range shuriken is great. Her synergy abilities with her companion are a nice touch as well. Just an all around great addition to the game.
Alright, fine, lets talk about the switch 2 port
Honestly, pretty good. Some frame stuttering in cutscenes, but honestly you get what you paid for. No one running this on Switch is expecting PC level performance. The game looks great docked and handheld and runs just as great. I would keep it docked until it was Love Island time and my fiancé kicked me off the tv. I would then switch to handheld for a seamless transition and play from there. The portability was a great trade off for some slight, barely noticeable performance issues. Honestly, great port. Go Square.
Doug’s Verdict
Yknow what, its pretty good. An amazing story that hooks you immediately. Flashy fun combat. However, both tend to drag later on and a terrible camera leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. But I just loved this game to death. It was all I could think about for days. I want to recommend this, so I will! Just be aware of the issues and if you can handle them, this is definitely a title worth picking up.
