While you can hack away at enemies all you want with the square button, doing so charges up your ATB bars, which you can then use on unique weapon abilities, equippable spells, and items. And though you only directly control one character at a time, you’ll constantly be giving orders to and swapping between two more mid-fight.

I’ll admit that I was initially sad to hear this remake wouldn’t use the original Final Fantasy 7’s turn-based Active Time Battle (ATB) combat, but the way that iconic system has been transformed into real-time brawling is exceptional. Thankfully, the guiding star through areas new and old is FF7R’s combat, which more than proves itself to be endlessly engaging across dozens of hours and against more than 100 different types of enemies.

This new telling regularly jumps between shot-for-shot recreations of the original, welcome expansions to existing sequences, and brand-new scenes that offer either enticing new perspective or pointlessly dull padding that frequently makes you retread previously explored areas. It’s an odd decision that undoubtedly results in some structural problems, but also gives the city and its heroes more time to become fleshed out as interesting characters – even smaller ones like Avalanche’s Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge have time to become nuanced and compelling co-stars. That means roughly the first five hours of the original have been stretched into a campaign that took me more than 33 hours to complete, and there are still a few optional stones I left unturned. This game only covers the events that take place in the city of Midgar, where Cloud Strife and his freedom-fighting allies battle the evil Shinra corporation that run it. Of course, Final Fantasy 7 Remake is actually only the first in what is planned to be a series of as-yet-unknown length that will, if it’s ever completed, retell the entire story of the 1997 JRPG classic. The long wait for this revival may not be a perfect reunion, but with or without nostalgia in play, it’s still a great JRPG in its own right. It swaps turn-based combat with exciting real-time action and expands the first leg of the original story by dozens of hours – including with a bit too much filler and some convoluted new plot points. While RE3 is a mostly faithful modernization of its original, Final Fantasy 7 is less a remake and more a complete reinvention. The fact that remakes of both Resident Evil 3 and Final Fantasy 7 arrive just a week apart is pretty incredible, especially because they couldn’t be more different in their approaches as far as a “remake” goes.

Ff7 remake for pc