WARNING: I will be including full plot spoilers here so if you have yet to play the game or haven’t finished it yet, consider yourself warned.

The original Final Fantasy VII was a very special game to me. I had been an RPG fan forever, growing up on the likes of Phantasy Star IV and Shining Force II on the Sega Genesis, but it was Final Fantasy VII that hooked me on the genre. The best part; my first playthrough of FF7 was as an observer! I remember fondly late nights at my house in Auburn where my brother and I would wait until our parents were asleep then sneak downstairs where he would play Final Fantasy VII on his brand new Playstation on our state of the art 36″ CRT until 4 in the morning. I would sit there, enthralled with the world, the story, the graphics, quietly watching as he slowly progressed through the world.

I eventually did get to play the game myself when I demanded it for my birthday later that year. It took on even more meaning now that I was behind the controller. I wanted to do everything better than my brother so I grinded levels for hours, scoured every singled corner of every single map, unlocked Yuffie and Vincent as soon as humanly possible, found and maxed every single materia; the list goes on. Don’t even get me started on my hours upon hours of inbreeding Chocobos until I finally got that magical golden Chocobo. It’s possible I permanently destroyed the gene-pool of that species with my overzealous breeding attempts, dooming them to a slow, painful extinction. Simply put, I put hundreds of hours into FF7, playing every single chance that I could.

It was also great to see Final Fantasy become the cool thing to talk about at school. FF7 was a major release and as such every kid with a Playstation was playing it. FF8 was even bigger due to the massive hype built around it and I remember talking Triple Triad and Junctions with the cool kids at school. As someone who absolutely despised my high school for the most part, it was a welcome bit of levity for me to be able to bond with others at my school over Final Fantasy.

I would go on to remain a massive Final Fantasy fan. I have played every Final Fantasy game since FF7 was released. There are few game series that hold as much love in my heart as Final Fantasy. That being said, when they announced FF7: Remake that I wasn’t exactly excited for it.

My reasons for my lack of excitement seemed reasonable to me; after all, how could they improve on the original? And if Square Enix was dedicating a team to FF7: Remake, doesn’t that mean it will be a longer wait for a new title in the series? We had to wait forever for Final Fantasy XV and while I loved the game, it took them five or six major DLC releases before it became the game it should have been released as in the first place. With Nomura and his team focused on the Remake, it was doubtful that we would see another main line sequel in the series any time soon.

Despite my reservations, I continued to follow the progress of the Remake. I remember being excited at the first combat trailer, then disappointed to find out that it would only cover the Midgar portion of the original game, then excited again when they started releasing some of the trailers as the game got closer to release. When the demo hit the PS4 store I picked it up immediately and tore through it and absolutely loved it. My excitement for the game had gone from ‘meh’ to piqued and now I was truly looking forward to the release.

My dad ended up getting the game for my birthday about a week ago and I just finished it last night. Long story short, I loved it. Square Enix had done the impossible; they took the most important game in my library, updated it for 2020, and improved upon it in every way while respecting the source material beautifully.

It would be impossible to look at the quality of Final Fantasy VII: Remake without seeing touches of what came before it. The team that worked on this game learned a TON from the previous Final Fantasy games. The combat feels like the best parts of Final Fantasy XV and Final Fantasy XII rolled together in a FF7 package. The team used the stagger system from XIII to great effect here as well, meaning that you had to approach battles for more tactically than in the original. The game is absolutely beautiful too, which is something we expect from Final Fantasy titles at this point. Much like how Yoshi P rebooted Final Fantasy XIV by looking at Final Fantasy’s past, Nomura took his lessons from previous Final Fantasy games and made something that not only old school FF players like me would appreciate, but also to those who are just joining the series with the newer games in the series. There is no denying that it is a very well made game.

One of my biggest concerns was that the game would only cover the Midgar chapter of the original game. For those that did not play the original FF7, the portion of the game spent in Midgar lasts roughly eight hours or so out of the forty-ish that make up the main story. The expectation for most games is between 20 and 40 hours of gameplay and I was genuinely worried that attempting to make 1/5th of the original game into a full game would lead to a ton of bloat and boring filler. Instead, SE wisely took the extra time to flesh out Midgar and the characters. Yes there are some go here and kill this quests, but they never feel like a grind. Instead we get to see the relationship between Cloud and his crew grow and learn more about side characters like Wedge, Biggs, and Jessie. There is actually an entire chapter dedicated to those three which is one of my favorite parts in the game. They went from being flat characters in the original to a group of well-rounded characters each with their own motivations and dreams. I was in full tears when climbing the pillar and finding Biggs and Jessie at death’s door during Chapter 12.

As for the relationship between Cloud and his party members, SE knocked it out of the park. You could feel the awkward tension between Cloud and Tifa when they are reunited. Watching Barrett go from full on eco-terrorist to a loving dad and eventually a tight comrade to Cloud was awesome, especially since in the original game we didn’t get the same sort of development for him. Where they shined though was with Aerith. It is patently impossible to not fall in love with her during the game. From the first interactions between her and Cloud to the very end, SE put so much time into making sure that she was the heart of the party. It is especially heart breaking knowing that if the story continues the way it did in the original that we are at some point going to have to watch Sephiroth kill her. My heart already aches at the notion.

Now for the story of the game, and this is the big spoiler. This will be the last warning for those who don’t want it ruined.

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FF7 Remake takes place in a different timeline than the original game. One of the biggest changes to the game was the addition of the Whispers, ghost like creatures that would show up from time to time to ensure that things happened in the game just like they did in the original. We find out in the end once rescuing Red XIII that these Whispers are servants of destiny trying to ensure that the future plays out the way it was supposed to. One of the big changes from the original is that Sephiroth fatally stabs Barrett in the Shinra building. only surviving due to the intervention of the Whispers in an attempt to keep the timeline stable. The end of the game see you facing off against the manifestation of destiny itself and essentially pulling the team away from the course of the original timeline. This essentially means that the FF7 team can now go in whatever direction they feel like going for the future remake sequels. In addition, there is potentially a third timeline in which Zack Fair, the Soldier that Cloud based his Soldier persona off of and Aerith’s ex-boyfriend, is still alive after fighting off a wave of Shinra soldiers. Small hints, such as the dog mascot of Shinra, Stamp, is a different breed than he had been in all the pictures earlier in the game. My guess is that when Cloud and co. defeated the Arbiter of Destiny that they merged their timeline with the one where Zack is alive and that will likely be one of the major changes in the series going forward.

I personally love what they did with the game and love the idea that it isn’t just a remake of the original but exists in a multiverse where the events of the original game still happened. Best of all is that Aerith seems to be aware of the events of the original game, which means she also is aware of her own eventual demise at the hands of Sephiroth. It is crazy to think about what may be coming for the team in the future releases and how it will change from the original while still maintaining the nostalgic feel that was so palpable in this one. While it likely means it will be a while before we see another mainline Final Fantasy game, I am excited to see how Nomura and his team finish off their Final Fantasy VII: Remake series.

What did you think of Final Fantasy VII: Remake? Did they do the original justice or should they have left it alone? Sound off in the comments!