After a long wait lasting more than a year and a half, being Final Fantasy 7 Remake originally released on PlayStation 4 on 10 April 2021, the work of Square Enix finally arrives today also on PC and does so in its Intergrade version.
To land on our computers is in fact the most updated edition of the remake of Final Fantasy 7, that is the one we got to see just a few months ago on PS5 with including the Episode INTERmission DLC dedicated to Yuffie and a whole series of other digital contents, as well as a general and always appreciated graphic restyling.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade, therefore, marks the debut of the first episode of the new vision of the famous title outside the PlayStation ecosystem, thus opening up to a whole host of new players.
The beginning of a new story
Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade on PC is therefore practically the same title that we have had the opportunity to play in the past few years on PS4 first and then on PS5. Those who expected big updates for this landing, as happened in the transition to the latest Sony home console with the additional episode dedicated to Yuffie, will therefore not see fertile ground for their desires.
All the others will find instead a very valid title both now and then, capable of courageously revisiting, with some inevitable slip attached, one of the greatest classics of the entire videogame history without disfiguring too much. A work, that of Nomura and his companions, which deserves to be experienced both by lovers of the saga and by fans of the medium in a broad sense.
Square Enix has in fact managed with Final Fantasy 7 Remake to modernize the gameplay of the title, without distorting its origins from jRPG. A turn towards action, to make yourself more attractive to the new generations, but without betraying all the tactics and reflections of an old-fashioned role-playing game.
A wise work of balancing and equilibrium, capable of giving an edge to a decidedly captivating game in terms of narrative and characterization of the characters.
One of the main question marks of this ambitious videogame operation lies precisely in the plot underlying the game, which has not remained the same as the original one but has been profoundly changed in some ways.
Taking up what was said in our original review of the game, without obviously falling into spoilers of any kind, it is in fact impossible to hide so much skepticism towards that narrative flaw that is revealed at the end. A clear break with the past, which can only be drawn in the future chapters of this remake broken into several episodes.
Without this necessary digression, Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade remains a game in many ways sumptuous and worthy to be played. In fact, valid gameplay is intertwined with a level narrative, locations worthy of being lived and a sensational soundtrack.
Finally, do not forget the presence of the valid Episode INTERmission DLC, high-quality additional content that places the character of the ninja Yuffie in a new light, giving her a more central role within the game ecosystem and a new dignity. An expansion worthy of the name, with some notable gameplay additions and the return of the Fort Condor minigame.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade on PC: a love story in half
With this new version of Square Enix’s work, the PC becomes the best place to enjoy the adventures of Cloud and his companions. Net of some shortcomings that are certainly not insignificant, see for example the tight technical settings and the total absence of the essential V-sync, Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade is in fact really nice to play on PC.
The support for resolutions up to 4K and 120 frames per second makes the famous epic even more beautiful and fluid, with Midgar and its inhabitants who manage to amaze on various occasions. In the face of an exorbitant demand for disk space, we are talking about practically 100 GB, Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade is however all in all well optimized, since with the configuration at the beginning of the article we have kept in Quad HD with high details of the granite 120 frames per second without too many problems.
If the technical system is then all in all satisfactory and able to give a first-level experience, where one could certainly expect something more, it is certainly in the graphics settings. The customization options put in the player’s hand are in fact, as you can easily see in the image above, to say the least sparse. In addition to resolution, framerate and settings for HDR, a technology that is much less widespread on gaming monitors than on traditional TVs, there are in fact just some choices for the quality of shadows and textures and the number of characters a screen.
To make everything even more emblematic is the fact that both the quality of the textures and the shadows can only be selected between low and high.
A simple and poor binary choice, which even remembers the console counterpart between performance and quality from too far away and which leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth on PC. In short, Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade is certainly nice to see and play, but under this expectation, we could and should have done much more.