Back at E3 2019 I had the opportunity to get my first crack at Final Fantasy VII Remake. I have to be honest, I was extremely skeptical. I’m not a massive fan of action-RPGs. I enjoyed Final Fantasy XV as a whole, but I felt the combat was the game’s weakest asset, and I was a bit scared that FFVII Remake would play like FFXV with a FFVII skin.
Not only does it not play like Final Fantasy XV – it’s much less clunky – but we also learned later on that there would be a Classic Mode that will allow players to just focus on inputting commands while Cloud, Barrett, Tifa, and company focus on moving around and building up the ATB.
Classic Mode is a big deal to many fans, but let’s first talk about what I did get to play in the three or so hours with Final Fantasy VII Remake last week that isn’t in the demo that was released today.
Do keep in mind that in describing my experience below, I may include a few mild story spoilers, which are required to drive the point home about how the game’s narrative evolution compared to the original.
First of all, my demo began by playing the entirety of the first chapter of the game and a portion of the second chapter. This started of course with the infiltration of the first Mako Reactor and ended with Cloud escaping the area and hopping onto the train.
In case you haven’t or won’t have the chance to try the demo, the opening Mako Reactor section, like everything else in Final Fantasy VII Remake, has been greatly expanded on from both a combat and story perspective.
There is additional dialogue, boss fights that are more intricate, and even “random battles” that require more strategy (they aren’t actually random anymore obviously). For example, only Barret can easily hit wall-mounted enemies that are too high for Cloud to quickly unleash all his combos on.
In Chapter 2, when Avalanche escapes the reactor and scatters throughout Midgar, we got a taste of just how expanded the story would be. All of the story beats from the original game are there, but there are a lot of new details added on top.
What was once a pretty short sequence as Cloud makes his way through the city and hops on the train to escape, now takes at least twice or thrice as long because of all the additional cutscenes and dialogue.
For example, Cloud still flees from Shinra’s goons and runs into Aerith and she gives him a flower, but this time there is an evil entity that only Cloud and Aerith can see that harasses both of them, and it eventually forces Aerith to take her leave.
Cloud also begins to receive haunting visions of Sephiroth as he makes his way through a burning Midgar, establishing the events that will come later earlier on in the story than it originally did.
This may bother some purists that want everything to be left untouched or don’t want to see new things added. Personally, I found them to be tasteful and just added to what we remember without replacing or radically changing anything.
Another example of this happens in the next section of the demo we experienced: the lead up to the Air Buster battle.
Once again, the same story beats were there, with more dialog and details added. Barret, Tifa, and Cloud work their way to the bottom of the reactor and plant the bomb. Cloud receives a disturbing vision featuring Tifa, and then they make their way back up and work the levers to open the doors that allow them to escape.
However, this time, players can also find keycards which allow them to disassemble parts of the Air Buster that will make the fight easier. You can choose whether or not you want to slow the Air Buster’s movement down, eliminate its big bomb ammo capacity, or obtain items that will boost your chance of survival.
The game will give you a couple of freebie keycards, but you can also find a few more and give yourself even more of an advantage if you explore well enough.
After some trash talking from Heidegger and the Shinra President, the Airbuster battle begins as it did in the original on the small bridge platform. Cloud, Barret, and Tifa will be able to navigate around Air Buster and try to avoid/mitigate its powerful attacks.
The battle was extremely fast-paced, dynamic and made interesting use of the tight quarters. For example, Air Buster would drop proximity paralysis bombs that would force you out of whatever comfortable position you were in. I found it was best to switch from characters that were in a bit of trouble and let the AI navigate them while I continued the attack from a character that was in a safer position.