Welcome to our first impressions of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake demo, yes, we played the demo and we loved it.
Final Fantasy is one of the most known gaming franchises and is often synonymous with high-quality Role-Playing games and any self-respecting RPG lover has at least played or even finished the original on Playstation 1. When Square Enix announced the all-out remake some years ago, I very much looked forward to this game and even just playing the demo made me very nostalgic.
The original game was a turn-based RPG and a true masterpiece in its era and even today, it is often named as one of the greatest games in the genre. It is more often than not named in the same breath as Dragon Quest, Mother, … Needless to say, this game is very well known and appreciated. I remember spending many hours on the game and even my brother beat this one on our PlayStation back in the days.
Now this remake, based upon the demo, is a completely remade game and first of all, it looks damn stunning. I know you can not really compare a twenty-year-old game to something brand new, but it just looks so crisp and stunning right now, I completely forgot time and ended up finishing the entire demo in 1 go. I specifically liked the action as it has more become an action RPG/Musou rather than turn-based.
Basically, this new approach is a weird decision to be made but it just works for me. I love being able to just hack and slash my way through enemies and when selecting special attacks, it stopped time, allowing me to select my options. Despite taking a few times to get used to, once I did, this all just clicked with me. Final Fantasy 7 was back and yet it was completely new.
The demo itself is just about the time needed to enter the enemy stronghold and get out before the bomb sets off the nuclear reactor. Once that was placed, the big fight with the Scorpion Sentinel. A fight that seemingly took forever to get through. Not really, just a little over 15 minutes, but boy, it felt like it took me a full hour to finish this fight. Even three full limit breaks were not enough to take it down while they are the biggest attacks in your arsenal.
Despite the long fight, I do leave my demo gameplay with a positive feeling. I even got a giggle out of Barrett when he sounded like Greta Thunberg when he said the earth bleeds green like humans bleed red. If anything, my interest is peeked to play this game all over again. I may not be the biggest fan of the length of some battles, I did, however, enjoy taking down smaller fry. So I guess the full game will be either a real hit or miss for me, depending on how the longer battles will turn out.
At this time, with just the demo played, I am leaning towards a Hit. The demo was gorgeous and I look forward to playing more!
