'Final Fantasy VII Remake' Preview: This Was Worth The Wait

It's safe to say that the hype around Final Fantasy VII Remake is real - dangerous even. Not only is it a remake of the one of the most cherished and well-respected video games of all time, it's also been in the oven for a truly remarkable amount of time now. First revealed at E3 2015 - almost half a decade ago - fans have had a long time to get themselves worked up over Square Enix's latest effort.

To say Square must be feeling the pressure to deliver with this one is probably something of an understatement, then. As much as I don't want to add to the already desperately hefty levels of hype, I'm afraid I recently spent a few hours with Final Fantasy VII Remake and... it was worth the wait. Oh man, was it worth the wait.

Obviously I'll have to reserve my final (heh) judgement until I've played through the entirety of the game, but based on what I experienced at a recent event hosted by Square Enix, Final Fantasy VII Remake is everything I hoped it would be. During my session, I was able to play through a handful of the game's chapters, experiencing a couple of key events and boss battles.

Before we get stuck in, there are some things that I can't really comment on. We were politely asked to stay out of menus wherever possible to avoid spoilers, so I can't really talk about what's going on there. My play session also involved Square loading me in and out of certain chapters, so I can't talk about the openness or size of Midgar just yet, as I didn't get to experience that for myself.

What I can tell you is that Final Fantasy VII Remake is good. It's really, really good. It's truly worthy of the Final Fantasy VII name, retaining everything that made the original game so special, while also introducing plenty of its own new ideas and story beats - some of them really quite surprising.

The first thing for any potential doubters out there to know is that the game's re-imagined combat system is brilliant. It manages to feel like a true evolution of the original game's ATB system that RPG fans will feel right at home with, while also offering a rewarding experience that more action-oriented fans can get to grips with.

In the hands of any other developer, this could have ended up feeling like a messy compromise, but Square absolutely knocked it out of the park. Dodging, blocking, and attacking while filling up your meter so you can perform more complex spells and attacks helps to make combat feel way more engaging. And if you're still not convinced, you can switch it up and play it as a standard turn-based game if you really want to.

I wouldn't recommend that though, because Final Fantasy VII Remake blends RPG strategy and action gameplay in a manner quite unlike any I've ever seen before. Things start simply enough, but towards the end of my demo as I cycled between Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith in a desperate fight against the sewer-dwelling monster Abzu, it dawned on me just how complex - and challenging - this game is going to be.

Each character (I got to play as Cloud, Barret, Aerith, and Tifa) feels truly unique, and utilizing their strengths in battle made for a consistently rewarding and engaging experience. Keeping Aerith away from danger so she could keep the rest of the party healed while getting stuck in with Cloud's sword and Tifa's fists of fury was the strategy that ultimately saw me to victory with Abzu... but I'm confident that other players could have taken different approaches to succeed.

With so many different characters, spells, items, special abilities, and epic, screen-filling summons to use, I certainly don't see fights getting stale.At least in the two hours or so I had, every single time I ran into a battle and that familiar music started to play, I found myself just as excited to throw down as I was the first time I took out some poor Shinra goons.

It's also important to note that there are difficulty options if things start to get a bit much and you just want to experience the story, so that's nice. For most of my hands-on, I stuck with a normal difficulty setting and things were pleasingly punishing without ever really feeling like too much. Until Abzu, anyway.

As I'm sure everyone is aware at this point, Final Fantasy VII Remake is a re-telling of the first part of the original adventure. Specifically, the part set in the city of Midgar. While I adore the original Final Fantasy VII, and travelling the open world was a huge surprise and massive highlight of that game, I also felt like we were forced to leave Midgar a little sooner than I would have liked.

It was, by some distance, the most interesting area in the original game. The grimy alleys, towering reactors, and grubby playgrounds felt truly oppressive - yet I could have wandered those streets and talked to its residents for hours. The way Final Fantasy VII Remake has breathed new life into this steampunkesque dystopia is perhaps the most remarkable thing about it.

Take, for example, the way the remake handles the first Mako reactor explosion. In the original game, we see that our mysterious hero Cloud has teamed up with a group of eco-terrorists known as Avalanche to take out one of the reactors that's literally sucking the life from the planet. After everything goes boom, there's some brief talk about how the group is doing some pretty bad stuff for the greater good... but the game doesn't really dive into the moral greys of it beyond that.

In the remake, it's a different story. You make your way to the reactor core, same as before. There's some fun banter with the rest of Avalanche, you fight that familiar first boss, and you get the hell out before everything blows up on you. It's at this point that the remake really set out its stall and showed me that it meant business. Without going into spoilers, the reactor explosion is an awful lot more substantial than Avalanche intended, and a nearby neighborhood takes the brunt of the damage.

What follows is an entirely new section in which Cloud, separated from the group, is forced to walk through the streets of Midgar and see first hand the consequences of his actions. Innocent civilians are scrambling around through the rubble and fire. Everyone is confused, and there are children unable to go back to their homes, crying and terrified. It's a truly sobering sequence, and an encouraging sign that this remake has something all of its own to say.

The original Final Fantasy VII was a game that had some pretty weighty themes for a 1998 RPG, and it's great to see that Square Enix hasn't backed down, but rather doubled down on these topics. Environmentalism, corporate greed, classism, even the way in which the media can so easily manipulate the masses - I saw all of this in my time with the game, handled just as deftly as it had been back in the day.

All of this helps to bring new dimensions to a classic story. Amazingly, it also totally feels like it could have been in the original game. Certainly, it felt so organic that I had to go back and double check that it didn't actually happen. The original very briefly tries to touch on something similar, sure, but the remake is able to bring it to life in a way that simply wouldn't have been possible in 1998.

A big part of that obviously comes down to the fact that game looks absolutely unbelievable. You've probably already come to the same conclusion based on the trailers, but believe me when I say that seeing it in action is another matter entirely. Final Fantasy VII Remake might genuinely be the best looking game of this generation.

Midgar looks and feels like a real, genuine city that I can't wait to explore properly, with its damp, dirty streets and grungy neon signs. It's like London crossed with some kind of cyberpunk hellscape, and I love it.

Cloud, Barrett, Tifa and the gang all look fantastic, too. The fun interactions between Avalanche are made all the more believable and endearing thanks to the beautifully animated faces of our heroes. Cloud's stoic, expressionless visage is a stark contrast the constantly shouting Barret, or the subtle glances and wry smiles of Jessie.

This Avalanche is a team I found myself wanting to be part of, and watching them bicker, banter, and even flirt with one another was a joy. I assume most of us knows what happens to a good chunk of Avalanche in the original game... and I can tell already that this added level of character development for even the lesser-known members of the crew is going to make that moment sting so much more when it inevitably hits.

It's this fleshing out of the world, characters, and story that has me most excited for Final Fantasy VII Remake. I don't want to give anything else away in terms of story... but what I will say is that even in my few hours with the game, it promises to go off in some unexpected directions that should surprise even those of us who've played the original Final Fantasy VII to death. And really, how exciting a notion is that?

Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to dive back in and experience that gorgeous combat system when Final Fantasy VII Remake hits PlayStation 4 on April 10th. I also can't wait to simply explore the city of Midgar and bang on to anyone who'll listen about how incredible everything looks. But more than anything else? I'm excited to experience a fresh, surprising take on what is, for my money, one of gaming's best and most bitingly relevant stories.