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Final Fantasy 7 Remake review: a breathtaking but bloated retread of a classic

Final Fantasy 7 remake - Square Enix
Final Fantasy 7 remake - Square Enix

Despite being decorated for single-handedly breaking the Japanese role playing game genre in the West, Final Fantasy 7 was also maligned for many years as the videogame most returned to vendors by disgruntled customers. The story went that American gamers seduced by its stunning CG cutscenes and hysterical notices were subsequently baffled and, worse, bored by its complex mechanics and uniquely oriental approach to storytelling.

This anecdote is almost certainly apocryphal - if records of such refunds exist then they remain resolutely unearthed - and yet the subtext to the slur is still pertinent some 23 years later. With confirmed sales of over 12 million units and an array of awards to its name, FFVII is a commercial and critical success by any measure. Yet still significant swathes of gamers treat its turn-based combat, labyrinthine narrative structure, and nerdish fixation with stats and dice rolls with the utmost suspicion.

In this context a root and branch remake which keeps the core characters, locations and ideals of the original but remoulds them into an action adventure more in tune with the tastes of modern, mainstream gamers makes perfect sense - and not just because it caters both to franchise fans and curious newcomers alike. It’s also an attempt by publishers Square Enix to avoid history repeating itself; a honshu wolf in gaijin’s clothing. And yet by trying so hard not to fall into one particular trap they’ve accidentally blundered into a different one instead.

It should be said, though, that when it’s good, Final Fantasy VII Remake is remarkable. Its five years of development time have resulted in some truly breathtaking visuals and stunning set-pieces which more than rival the impact of its ancestor’s. That game spawned a then state-of-the-art CG feature film spinoff, Advent Children, in 2005; some moments in Remake make even that look as dated as Steamboat Willy. This is console generation-defining stuff that the PS5 will have to hit the ground running to better.

Final Fantasy 7 remake - Square Enix
Final Fantasy 7 remake - Square Enix

The combat pulls no punches either. Returning director Tetsuya Nomura and his team have skilfully transformed those ageing turn-based mechanics into real-time movesets but still managed to retain their RPG tactical edge with abilities and spells, triggered on the fly if a character’s Active Time Battle gauge is full. It’s not perfect, particularly when fighting multiple enemies whose overlapping attack patterns become difficult to defend against, but when everything clicks - especially in the spectacular boss battles - the results border on balletic.

All that scale comes at a cost, though. Fans were worried when Nomura announced his vision for this project was so grand it would have to be developed and delivered in instalments, and that part one would focus solely on Midgar - effectively the original game’s tutorial, a largely linear precursor to the glorious open world odyssey for which it is known.

Nomura’s rationale - that his young team wanted to tell the story their way, filling in the gaps between the original’s beats - is sound, but unfortunately those fan fears have proven founded. Stretching out those original four-to-five hours of content into a game running at seven times that length now feels like a grand folly.

The unfortunate truth is there’s just not enough interesting story or content to go round - and that’s coming from a self-confessed obsessive who spent north of 100 hours playing through the original not just once but twice, eking out every last easter egg, secret and collectible to be found along the way. The hit and miss attempts at fleshing out minor characters’ back stories are one thing; adding cardboard cut-out characters with uninspired side quests is extraneous in the extreme, and smacks of the developers padding out the running time once the decision to release episodically was taken.

Much like a triple album classic rock set from the seventies, Remake is bloated and overblown with excessive amounts of filler to be endured. Frustratingly there are numerous standout cuts here: the high camp song and dance routine at the Honeybee Inn; the wonderfully imaginative interactive history exhibition atop Shinra HQ; pretty much everything involving flamboyant baddie Sephiroth. But there are also too many non-descript moments where someone in the studio should have had their eye on the clock and a stronger nerve in the edit.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake - Square Enix
Final Fantasy 7 Remake - Square Enix

Detractors might claim that actually captures the feel of vintage Final Fantasy VII perfectly but while the original was certainly sprawling the open world format carried it. Remake’s tight third-person camera angle and determination to do away with loading screens makes the going laborious. The compulsion to progress is strong but it’s often exhausting.

I was struck by a surreal yet strangely fitting analogy some 20-odd hours into my playthrough while traipsing around Wall Market and wondering whether one of the weirder enemies from the original, Hell House, would put in an appearance.  A demonic two-up, two-down who swallows characters whole through its front door (yes, really), it's a particular personal favourite which encapsulates the quirkiness that made playing FFVII back in the day such a trip.

Remaking a touchstone of the medium in this fashion is like creating a big-budget, 10-part Netflix drama series out of the title sequence from Grange Hill. Franchise fans will tune in to see an outsized sausage on a fork only to be confounded by the three episodes dedicated to the netball teacher’s character arc. Curious newcomers tempted by the production values and peerless reputation could find the soporific pacing and weirdly dated references to outsized sausages leaves them wondering what all the fuss was about. And everyone else might just shrug and watch The Witcher instead.

  • Final Fantasy 7 Remake is released for PS4 on 10 April