Final Fantasy VII Remake

 PlayStation 4
Metascore
87

Generally favorable reviews - based on 126 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 116 out of 126
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 126
  3. Negative: 0 out of 126
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  1. Edge Magazine
    May 21, 2020
    70
    A breathtaking way to polish off the definitive videogame nostalgia project, certainly - padding aside, the first 30 hours of Remake suggest that this is change for the better. By the conclusion, though, you may feel like things are going off the rails in more ways than one. [Issue#346, p.80]
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  2. GameCritics
    Apr 23, 2020
    70
    The Final Fantasy VII Remake is a stellar production that kept a smile on my face from start to finish, but I have huge concerns about this project conceptually, and nothing about how Square-Enix has operated in the last fifteen years leads me to optimism. If given the choice to have a lower-scale, complete remake with the same gameplay and general improvements, I’d have taken that over this promising-yet-incomplete spectacle — the original was an important title for many reasons, and I’m concerned it won’t get the complete remake it so rightfully deserves.
  3. Cubed3
    Apr 17, 2020
    70
    Mediocre world design, poor pacing, and plotting that fails to fully capture what made the original so special, it's hard not to walk away feeling like this isn't a disappointment across the board. At the same time, the franchise's combat has never been better, and Materia offers an incredibly rewarding amount of party customisation alongside weapon levelling. While the story on a whole might not hit all the right notes, the script is extremely well written and the dialogue has never been better. More importantly, the depth present within the battle system pairs wonderfully with a challenging, but very fair difficulty curve, making for some truly spectacular boss fights. Final Fantasy VII Remake will never be held in the same esteem as Final Fantasy VII - and for good reason - but damn good combat will keep action fans coming back to this RPG for years to come.
  5. Washington Post
    Apr 10, 2020
    70
    It is a beautiful-looking game with a juvenile mind-set that’s fun to pass through but hard to be riveted by.
  6. USgamer
    Apr 6, 2020
    70
    Final Fantasy 7 Remake sets out to fully re-imagine a classic RPG with improved combat and an expanded story. Unfortunately, it's hurt by weak side quests and a surplus of padding, and its biggest change is bound to be controversial. It's one of the most coherent and enjoyable Final Fantasy releases in years, but it's also likely to be one of the most divisive.
  7. Gamer.no
    Apr 6, 2020
    70
    The core story and the combat are fantastic, but it's a shame Square Enix felt the need to bloat the game with a ton of nonsensical new elements. Tone it down, not up.
  8. GAMINGbible
    Apr 6, 2020
    70
    If you've been raised on a diet of the very best role-players of the past ten years or so, Remake may struggle to hold your attention as it streamlines itself into a tunnel-vision state of failing to see the bigger picture of what could have been. Fingers, toes and chocobos crossed, then, that part two sees the promise of this remake project fully blossom.
  9. Digital Trends
    Apr 16, 2020
    60
    After years of waiting, it pains me to say Final Fantasy VII Remake fails to truly impress. The classic storyline — or at least what’s on offer here — benefits greatly from generous and stellar voice acting, but how you extract the tale of a generation is nothing short of a slog. Running up and down corridors and staircases for dozens of hours is a drag, and while the combat system can, at times, offer up brawls that put MMO raids to shame, mountains of fluff and a combat system that can’t settle on a single style make this one feel like a slight step back from the already problematic Final Fantasy XV. There’s very little freedom of movement here. Just a linear campaign with not much else to offer.
  10. Telegraph
    Apr 6, 2020
    60
    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.
  11. EGM
    Apr 6, 2020
    60
    Final Fantasy VII Remake manages to balance the introduction of new concepts with faithfully recreations of the original game’s most memorable aspects, but it also unnecessarily pads out this first installment in a larger story with too much downtime between its most striking moments.
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  1. Ars Technica
    Apr 6, 2020
    What's not to guess is that I'm in. Square-Enix, I don't care what you call the next one: FFVII Remix, FFVII Reunion, FFVII 2.8 Enchanted Forest of Midgar Dreams, whatever. I'm sold. I'm buying in. I'm playing the next one. But since I have your attention following such a nice pledge, here's a request: do me a solid and hire a new translation team next time, won'tcha?
  2. Eurogamer
    Apr 6, 2020
    An expansive remake that treads carefully upon this most cherished of games, though some blunders will linger long in the memory. [Eurogamer Recommended]
  3. Kotaku
    Apr 6, 2020
    Final Fantasy VII Remake is not what I expected. It’s a grand, ambitious, beautiful experiment, a bold new take on a game that millions of people remember fondly. It sometimes feels shackled by the weight of two decades worth of expectations, but it handles those restraints with aplomb. I certainly can’t wait to see what’s next. As a great man named Barret Wallace once said: There ain’t no getting off this train we on.
  5. Mashable
    Apr 6, 2020
    Remake is a great introduction to a genre-defining classic, allowing players with more modern tastes to learn the story and meet famous characters without having to endure archaic ‘90s graphics and gameplay. It will probably prompt a few newcomers to check out the original as well.
  6. Polygon
    Apr 6, 2020
    Remake is also the very best thing a game can be: fascinating. It forces us to confront our subjective tastes, and asks us to consider what we value in the games we play. Your feelings about Remake will be determined by what you, personally, valued in the original release.
  7. The A.V. Club
    Apr 13, 2020
    The Final Fantasy VII Remake’s storytelling blows the original away.
  8. The Jimquisition
    May 15, 2020
    Final Fantasy VII Remake is something new. It's something different. It's bold, and clever, and overwhelmingly arrogant. It's contentious, controversial, conceited, and some people may view it as simply a... con. But if it ain't a subversive masterpiece nonetheless, I don't know what is.
  9. The Verge
    Apr 6, 2020
    There’s a moment that many players experienced early on in the original game, myself included. Up until that point, the entire story had been contained in Midgar; then, all of a sudden, you leave the city and realize just how big the world really is. It’s almost shocking. So far, FFVIIR has successfully captured that initial feeling — now, I want to see the rest of the world.
  10. Vice
    Apr 6, 2020
    In Final Fantasy VII Remake, everything looks like how I imagined it when I was a kid. This is not the Final Fantasy VII I remember, but the dream of a Final Fantasy VII. It’s a surreal, staggering, and loving tribute to a beloved role-playing game. The voice work, the music, the story, and the combat system are rebuilt from the ground up and brimming with detail.

Awards & Rankings

8
#8 Best PS4 Game of 2020
5
#5 Most Discussed PS4 Game of 2020
4
#4 Most Shared PS4 Game of 2020

User Reviews

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User Score
8.1

Generally favorable reviews- based on 8148 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6,327 out of 8148
  2. Mixed: 727 out of 8148
  3. Negative: 1,094 out of 8148
  1. SHAAN07
    Apr 10, 2020
    10
    All the 0 rated reviews so far are people who failed to even understand what this remake project was. The remake is the first portion of theAll the 0 rated reviews so far are people who failed to even understand what this remake project was. The remake is the first portion of the original game due to how big the original game was. The developers really wanted to add to the experience that's why they've added so much more lore and events!

    The Remake has genuinely improved on the original by fleshing out the story and the characters especially! The music is something else too... some of the best arrangement I've heard in a long time!    … Full Review »
  2. DarkChaplain
    Apr 10, 2020
    4
    All Square Enix needed to do was follow the script's core beats, and flesh it out, while fully realizing the setting's world, ambiance andAll Square Enix needed to do was follow the script's core beats, and flesh it out, while fully realizing the setting's world, ambiance and characters. For about half the game, they actually achieve this. It's a joyful, nostalgic trip to Midgar, with Avalanche growing dear to your heart all over again. Tifa and Aerith are stunning in their added depth and interactions with the rest of the cast. Infiltrating Don Corneo's abode had me laughing at just how good it was.

    But the further the story progressed, the harder did Nojima and Toriyama deviate from the original's story and developments. From introducing core villains, whose presence was supposed to be felt as a looming dread, without fully unveiling them yet, far too early over additions of fate ghosts to a completely absurd, rewritten ending that pulls everything into question while making it clear that no, this is not a Remake, but a reimagining, a reboot, with the publisher opening the next part up to being whatever they wish it to be (or is easier to produce than a faithful sequel), the so-called Remake is a massive letdown.

    I was ready to adore this game. Cautiously optimistic ever since they announced it, being of the old guard that had been wishing for a faithful remake for a decade before the announcement dropped, I wanted to love it. For a good amount of hours, I actually did. It is a great shame that they decided to abandon the script in favor of Nojima's prime storytelling device (not to spoil things directly, but if you look at a list of games he's written for on Wikipedia, you'll be able to tell what most of them have in common...).

    The real tragedy of this first part of the "remake" really is that they did nearly everything right for so much of the game. From adding sidequests to flesh out the Sector 7 slums and their inhabitants, adding dialogue, making a real show out of the Honey Bee manor, speeding up some tedious parts while allowing further exploration in others. Graphically, the game looks absolutely stunning and I am ready to consider the main cast here to be the definitive versions, the best overall designed and authentic renditions. The music is for the most part incredibly well arranged from the original Uematsu tracks, although the new tracks fall short on a stylistic level. Added characters and comedic relief work in the game's favor at the point they occur, before everything comes tumbling down to crash and burn.

    It left me asking myself whether these changes were intended from the start, or were taken as a get out of jail free option when Square Enix's executives realized just how expensive the full game would turn out being, if they kept the same level of detail and interaction throughout all we remember from the original. It's almost like they put so much of their budget into the first half, they couldn't possibly maintain this scope for future zones, cities, dungeons and the like. Abandoning the original makes sense on some level, considering that, especially when it comes with a sort of justification to do things differently with part 2. The problem is, that none of these full rewrites are good. They're fanfic-level absurdities that fail to grasp what made the original beloved in the first place. It's as if they didn't truly understand why fans wanted a remake, or what they expected of it. Maybe they figured that sales of Kingdom Hearts 3 indicated that people wanted more of that absurd type of modern Square Enix storytelling? I'm grasping at straws here, trying to somehow understand what made this company throw one of their most highly valued and cherished title into the river to drown any future expectations.

    If I had Nojima's timey wimey powers vested within me, I would like to turn back time to the moment that the relevant staff at Square Enix decided to make these fatal decisions, and force them to defy fate. I wished this game nothing but success, but this company has once again managed to disappoint and, in a sense, infuriate. My biggest fear is that the rewrites will tarnish the original's legacy, especially for the newcomer audience that expected to hop into it with no prior experience. To them, it'll feel very disjointed, but probably cool due to the way it looks and plays. They won't be able to grasp what made the original a classic for the ages, however.
    That's a shame.    … Full Review »
  3. wotakit
    Apr 10, 2020
    3
    This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view. Most people knew that this wasn't going to be a shot-for-shot replica of the original game which is fine, but the ending to FF7R completely derails from the original to the point where semantics of what a 'remake' is becomes irrelevant. It uses the history and characters of the FF7 universe to start a brand new story on an alternate timeline. Characters that should be dead, no longer are so fundamental motivations and character arcs are out of the window. The next parts will be starting fresh and this should be extremely worrying to anyone who knows Squares recent history. Square no longer has the ability to create new stories that are coherent or interesting. This is why people were excited for a remake of a story that everyone already loved. They couldn't possibly screw this one up and yet they still have.

    Aside from the ending, there are plenty of other negatives too. Filler is a major problem. The side quests are almost all basic filler fetch quests. "Go here, kill x enemies, come back, go somewhere else, repeat." I've seen people defending this saying that you can't create a 30+ hour game without some padding. I don't understand this at all. Either make the game shorter or make the "padding" GOOD content. The game is much more linear than I expected. Almost every single walkable area in the game is a narrow corridor.
    The hybrid combat system is actually pretty good but there are big flaws in the AI. The enemies always agro on the character that the player is controlling and your allies do very little to help or defend themselves. This combination seems to be Squares way of ensuring that you switch characters often but it is so poorly executed and feels forced.
    The camera sucks in combat even with the recommended changes to the settings. You can't see what you're looking at half the time, especially if the enemy is above you.
    There is also a serious texture problem. The worst being looking down to the slums from the plate. I believe that this will be fixed in the day 1 patch though. It needs to be.

    It sucks to give this game such a low score. FF7 is my all time favourite and I really wanted this to succeed. The game gets some things right, and when it does, it absolutely nails them. But sadly there is just far too much crap surrounding it, that i'm left disappointed overall.    … Full Review »
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