As someone who grew up on the orginal ive been waiting pretty much my whole life for this to come out, from the rumors to "leaks" all the way to the 2015 E3 annoucment up to the oringal release on ps4 in 2020, its finaly here and my god, was it worth the wait

everything from its music, graphics, voice acting, gameplay, style and animiations, this game is so so good, Final Fantassy has been in such a bad spot for such a long time im so glad this hit its mark and for me, I got emotional just to finaly have this game and love it so much

its not without its issues tho, for one, my lord this PC release on the epic games store was a disaster, first of why make it a epic exclusive only to release it on steam a year later anyways? second, the epic games verison of this game is horribly unoptimized, like on some systems almost unplayable, but here on steam? ive had no issues at all on 3 differnt rigs i tested on with varriying hardware set ups (from what ive seen it was a intel CPU problem, no clue if that ever got fix BTW to watch out) on the acutal game front i really only had 2 main problems, first i kinda felt off that at certin points you just slowed down in movement to look at a wall, on first playthrough i get it theres a story to tell but after you beat the game you really should be let loose, and second, the wispers and this whole mulit verse thing there setting up is very bold, but my god i hated the wispers, I get its a metaphor for not wanting to do a one for one on the story but they could have, you know, just tell people the story is going to be differnt or go in a differnt direction, the whole Idea that the wispers are trying to uphold the orginal games story one for one and it being the main point of the first part kinda sucked, not a deal breaker cause the rest of the story and writing are really really good, but it was a mood killer every time they showed up

my favriote thing about this game is how it handles itself with its previously under devolpted characters to give more life and scale to midgar, having wedage biggs and jessie have actual character and back story to uphold there motives for what they do and why was, just awsome and it was well writen too, giving more scale and life to midgar is awsome too. It really felt like midgar is more then just a mega city theres so much more to it that I truly loved to see that the orginal never got to cause of how little you where there

gameplay is a little mixed, for one I love how much weight and flair was added to the combat, it makes fights fun with how much is going on, all the smooth animimations with all the effects are so good and gives combat a lot of style with each character having uniqe combat styles that fit them, but thats also a problem in itself, this game was not kind to barret and arith, easly the worst party members in the game, cloud and tifa just are too good at raw damage that the other 2 dont feel like they have a place in the game, barret is a pea shooter that can move and arith is supposed to be like a mage but enemys can and will easily move out of the way whenever you use her uniqe attack its really frustrating, also the fact that there are so many flying enemys with this poor air combat really sucks sometimes, barret is the best for air enemys but if hes not availible in the party then your kinda screwed so hope you enjoy tons of landing lag on cloud and tifa

music, music music music, one of the biggest parts of how iconic the orginal game was, and my god I was not ready for how amazing and impactful this games music is, you can tell how much effort went into not only preserving the soul and Identity of each returning song, but how much passion was put into also giving each song, no matter if it was orginal or returing, its own twist and swing, hearing jenova and its 3 phases almost made me cry for how beautify it was, starting slow and more cinamatic at first as the fight gets more intense and too its apex to phase 3 hitting you with this massive wave of nolstagia all at once to finish her off, this games music didnt get enough reconition for its work and it really sucks too as this was long time series composer Nobuo Uematsu last final fantassy game before moving on to other projects, he did however vet the new guy to make sure the remake games are in good hands and considering how good this games music was with him merly supervising and not being the outright composer? I think its safe to say he found the perfect man for the job, we will miss you sir, thank you for all you given us

my last main point is the lack of a real endgame/super boss, somthing final fantassy is really known for, having some of the hardest and most challenging superbosses in gaming history, well its sad to admit but this game has no true endgame and its "super boss" is kinda a joke, hopfuly the next 2 games fix this part cause bulid crafting and min maxing is not at all required to compete in the endgame which sucks cause thats part of the fun for this series

Overall, remake is truely the worth its long dev cycle and how long we had to wait for it, from its strong and loveable cast of charactes, to its powerful and amazing music, all the way to its chilling clifhanger, the Final Fantassy 7 remake is one of my favriote games ever, even with its few bumps and cracks, its still going down as one of my favriote games ever, and sue me but should have won game of the year in 2020
thank you for coming to my ted talk