Review Rewind: Final Fantasy 7 (PS4)

Man… when this game showed up on my PS4 on the PlayStation Store, I didn’t even hesitate to buy this game.  I’m a huge Final Fantasy fan, and this was one of my favorites growing up as a kid.  So I buy it, install it and get ready to play through a game I haven’t touched since the turn of the century.  I couldn’t wait, it had to be as good a I remembered it to be right?

Well, they added three mechanics to the game this time around.  Three cheats to get you through the game faster.  While I was fine with one of them, and used it probably throughout the whole game, the other two were game breakers.  The first, and only one I really used, was a ‘3x Speed’ cheat.  After playing with it on for most of the game, I couldn’t switch it off; I had forgotten how slow this game was.  The second was was a ‘no random encounters’ cheat.  With that on you could make your way down to Sephiroth without having to deal with any of the tough enemies in the Northern Crater.  Lastly… the worst offender of all was a ‘power-up’ cheat.  This cheat kept healing you, meaning you couldn’t die unless you were hit with an instant death attack or their attack did more damage than you had health.  Not only that, but your Limit Break meter would refill every time you used it.  It broke the game and took most of the fun away from it.

So there were two reasons I wanted to replay this game.  The first, and most obvious one, was that I wanted to refresh my memory for when I played the Final Fantasy 7 Remake; the second reason was to actually pay attention to the story.  As a kid, back in 1997, I never fully paid attention to what they were talking about.  I always just mashed away at the buttons to get past the long dialogue parts of the game, and you know what?  I didn’t miss a single thing.  Now I’m not saying the story for Final Fantasy 7 sucks, but it’s not that great either.  The story just felt silly if you sat down and thought about it.

But in the end it all comes down to the remake.  Will it be good?  Will the episodic style hurt the game?  Will they be taking out or putting in content in the remake?  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.  All I can say is ‘Lady Luck don’t fail me now…’.

This game is slower than I had remembered, but with the ‘3x speed’ cheat I cut down a game that once took me over 70 hours to complete down to a 30 hour game.  The story isn’t anything wonderful, but the characters are fun.  Raising Chocobos and trying to breed yourself a Gold Chocobo will probably take up most of your time, as well as racing them.  Trying to master every one of your Materia is hassle but feels rewarding after you do, and of course let us not forget about Ruby and Emerald Weapon.  Final score, I give this game a solid 8 out of 10.  Play it and get ready for that remake…… in about 2 years or so.