Stunning
So Square Enix dropped their Final Fantasy 7 Remake demo on us today, and I immediately had to jump in. The footage above is the full demo in its entirety. What the demo does is give you a good understanding of how the new combat mechanics work, and the look & feel of the game once its released. Let me tell you, I couldn’t be more excited. You see, once I heard a remake was coming, I wasn’t too thrilled. FF7 wasn’t a mindblowing experience to me like it was for many others, but it certainly was a game I enjoyed. Over the years, I grew more and more tired of turn based combat. So once I saw the FF7 Remake gameplay footage at the Game Awards which showed off its real time combat mechanics, I jumped for joy.
Whoever came up with the idea to release this demo, should get a raise. It’s done nothing but make me more excited to play this game. The combat is a mix between real time and turn based. You attack in real time, but at any moment, pause the combat to choose which skill or item or power to use. Once you get down the feel of combat, it becomes this addicting loop of learning new combos and structures to play off of. Swapping between party members on the fly is great, and you can even give them commands, allowing you to quickly perform a much needed heal on yourself, or shoot out a thunderous bolt of lightning. The combat is fun, fluid and fast, and easily is the best part of the short 1 hour demo.
Lastly, I was playing on a base PS4. I wanted to see just how well this game would run on this older hardware. To my surprise, it ran extremely well, keeping a solid 30fps the entire time with no noticeable dips. I do want to see how this plays on a PS4 Pro in 4k, though. That’s something we’ll look at once the game is released. The graphics are truly stunning, and easily one of the best looking FF games to date. In fact, in terms of presentation, it’s all there. I especially found the voice acting great – something so many Japanese games fail to deliver on. Overall, I’m ready to play through this story once again. It’s been a long time since I’ve dug into a Final Fantasy (I think maybe 10 was the last one?). And from this gameplay, I think now is the perfect time to revisit Square Enix’s flagship title.