So the obvious thing finally happened. One year after the PS4 remake of Final Fantasy 7 was released, we received Intergrade, and the PS5 upgrade also includes a bonus chapter. The PC version announced that within six months after the release of Intergrade, Sony gave up exclusive control over the classic reimagining. In a few days to today, the PC version of FF7 Remake is now available exclusively on the Epic Games Store.I played it early
What is there to say? Well, for beginners, Final Fantasy 7 Remake is one of the best games of 2020. It is admirable for several reasons, mainly how it handles the legacy of one of the most important games of all time and the accompanying fan expectations. What’s more admirable is how it roughly throws them out of the window after spending most of its time carefully carrying these expectations-but also cleverly avoiding throwing the baby out with the bath water. Its leading position in the sequel is likely to end up being a real mess, but I do think that the way FF7 Remake handles itself is master class and more imaginative than many other remakes in the gaming space.
However, this is also a great game. It reimagined the classic “Active Time Battle” RPG mechanism of FF7 as a more action-driven, directly controlled event. This is the best way for Final Fantasy to successfully blend the old and the new together-and the series has been in the past ten years. The subject has been constantly changing most of the time, with mixed results. In short, this is a very worthwhile game-now it is open to a whole new audience on PC.
PC purists certainly want to know how good the PC version of the game is. I am happy to report it…good? I’m not too happy to report that it is also a barebones-so if you are waiting for this version and want real-time ray tracing, assets with higher resolution than PS5, or even something as simple as ultra-wide support, you will lack.
The PC graphics setting menu allows you to set two display modes (full screen without border and window), various standard 16:9 resolutions from 720p to 4K, and two settings (low or high) for texture resolution and shadow resolution Choose between. With HDR support and related settings, finally, you can adjust the number of non-important NPCs on the screen from zero (which may be convenient for speed athletes) to ten at a time. For the frame rate, you can ask the game to target 30, 60, or 120fps. If your machine and monitor can output at this refresh rate, the latter may be the biggest title of the PC.
Of course, this is the Intergrade version of FF7 Remake. This means it is not a PS4 game…or not exactly a PS4 game. The interesting thing about playing the main battle now is that more than a year has passed, and people can really feel its status as a generation doomsday game. In some ways, its vision goes beyond PS4, with incredibly high-end, dazzling cutscenes and better character models than some new generation exclusive games. In other cases, you will immediately understand which generation the game really came from, low polygons in the game’s underground slums, low-resolution texture garbage dumps, and so on. Although the “Intergrade” version of PS5 worked hard to eliminate some of these wrinkles, many of them still exist-and you will often find an unsightly texture in the originally gorgeous cutscenes.
Intergrade exclusive chapter, this is a brand new story starring FF7’s favorite Yuffie, also included here as a standard. This is a nice little s tory, and when scoring it, my rating is roughly the same as the main game. It’s not great-four or five hours of distraction should only be done after the main game is completed. Because it was designed from the ground up for the PS5, it looks slightly better than the main game-but it ends up with many of the same weaknesses, just like it did on the PS5.
It’s easy to be disappointed, and I believe some people will be disappointed because this is the full-priced, 18-month-old PC version of FF7 Remake. That’s why I’m leading it here-I won’t scream how much I like this game, I’m very happy to finally have it on PC, because the important headline PC players need to know is that this port is minimal. The game runs well, at least on the three PC devices I have tried. However, if you want PC-specific bells and whistles, you may wait for the mod makers to step up.
Still, be careful: buddy, I really like this game, and I am so happy that I can finally use it on PC. It’s not perfect, but I think this is an important game, in terms of its role with the word “Remake” and the meaning of the word as the game’s story progresses. I think it should also land on Xbox eventually (and this PC version will immediately recognize the Xbox controller and adjust the HUD accordingly). It deserves the widest possible audience. However, people who are particularly value-conscious may eventually want to wait for sales.
One last point, for those who want to join: If you have played the original Final Fantasy 7, I do think FF7 Remake is a better experience. This can of course be used on a PC and is cheaper. This is an old game, but it is well maintained. On the same platform, the two form a fascinating pairing-and the price of this PC version may drop as long as it may take you to play the original version.
