John Reynolds

A full review of Final Fantasy 7 Remake without major spoilers. Rating: 9/10 This game was absolutely amazing from start to finish. graphics were absolutely spot on, game play was fitting for the story, and battles were challenging and required actual strategy. This game is your imagination from the original coming into a reality plus more. I was surprised that they could take pt. 1 of FF7 (Original) and make it into a 40+ hour game, but they did it. If you play the game, please for the love of GOD play it on normal. Classic is a bit too easy and easy is not really challenging. Now that I beat the game, I am excited to try out hard mode. Character Development: One of the things I loved about the game was the connection to each character from Cloud to Red including Biggs, Wedge, and Jesse. Every person had a chance to grow and develop throughout the story and had great dialogue. How? Just go buy the game and find out. I promise you will not be disappointed. It was great seeing their personalities and connection develop. I love Sephiroth as a villain and enjoyed how much he was part of this game from the beginning. Morgan said that he is so beautiful (which I agree), but I respond he is also that evil (truly an oxymoron embodied). He really carried a sinister persona every time he was on screen. Boss Battles (Game play continued): Wow is the word I would use for this. I am so excited to see how they represented other bosses throughout this game. You will have some of the older bosses, but many new ones. At the beginning of the game, it provided you with enough grace to get through each of the bosses without having one (or all) of your party members dying, but as progress you should be strategically thinking about what you are bringing into battle because if you do not, you will find yourself retrying that boss multiple times. The story itself: This story as I mentioned is not your typical FF7 story. I feel that the additions they made will create a different type of game moving forward. Out of the entire game, there was only one chapter that did not fill like it contributed to the overall story and was more of a filler to get some pieces they didn't want to devote time to, but at least it was a good time grinding for experience. Why not a 10/10: Well to start, RED XIII was not playable, but was a guest character. I didn't find this out until I got to this point in the game (guess I could have looked at articles). This was a decision made by the executive team due to him being introduced too far into the game to give his game play a chance. At the beginning he was destroying everyone, as the game progressed, he took more of a backseat in fights (the AI could have been better). Lastly, a lot of the battles were preset, only a couple areas re-spawned monsters, but they were always the same ones. I hope FF7 Pt. 2 will allow for more random encounters as there were none in this game. Lastly, the enemies did not get stronger as you did. The battles with certain monsters felt the same and only changes when their variations came into battle (I guess its consistent with the original, but I would hope that they will make changes to increase variety of fights and monsters moving forward). I've been working on this since this morning, so I may have missed something as I have pick up typing when I had a free chance. Overall, best game of the year, play this game, and I cannot wait for pt. 2.