What To Know Before Playing Final Fantasy VII Remake

The remake of one of the most beloved JRPGs, Final Fantasy VII is finally out! I’m here to tell you what to know before playing Final Fantasy VII Remake, starting with a little bit of a history lesson on the original game and include some advice that can be of use in the Remake.

A Small History Lesson

The original Final Fantasy VII is a JRPG released for the Sony Playstation on the 31st of January 1997 by Squaresoft(now Square Enix) in Japan and Sony Computer Entertainment in the rest of the world with this game being the first mainline Final Fantasy game to come out in Europe and other PAL Regions.

At the time of release the game had garnered critical acclaim by many gaming news outlets and critics with a lot of 9’s, 10s, 5 out of 5’s and Famitsu rating it a 38 out of 40. On top of that, the original has won a lot of Game of the year awards and is often praised as one of the best games ever according to critics.

The impact and success that Final Fantasy VII paved the way for Console-based JRPGs to get mass-market appeal in the west.

Final Fantasy VII has a whole array of Spin-off games like Dirge of Cerberus, Before Crisis (which was a Japan-exclusive Mobile game), and Crisis Core, which is a prequel to the original game and one of my personal favourite PSP games. Of course, the spin-offs also included a full-on CGI movie named Final Fantasy VII Advent Children and an OVA named Last Order: Final Fantasy VII. These are all part of what is known as the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. However, the entries in this compilation had gotten a bit of a mixed reception with Crisis Core on the PSP is the most positively received out of the entire compilation.

And now about 23 years after the original, spin-offs and enhanced re-releases for the PC and next-gen systems, the Final Fantasy VII Remake is going to be done in an episodic-style, with the first Final Fantasy VII Remake game focusing on the Midgar portion of the game and with the rest of the original coming out later down the line.

Originally, a good part of the development of the Remake was going to be done by CyberConnect2 who are behind the .hack series, of which the games were split into volumes. However, there was a decision to move and restart the development of the Remake over to Square-Enix’s In-house developers with the Development Leader of the FFVII Remake, Naoki Hamaguchi citing that the decision was made to control quality and keep the development on a stable schedule.

The remake will feature a lot of new content that will expand on the story in many ways and allowing folks to explore parts of Midgar they haven’t seen before along with some new characters getting introduced.

The second part is also being worked on now according to Director and Producer Yoshinori Kitase.

With the history lesson out of the way. I’ll give you some advice that you can use while playing through the game to enjoy your adventure to the fullest.

Final Fantasy VII Remake Tips and Tricks

Use the shortcuts

I suggest you use the shortcuts menu that you can access by pressing R1 – it works pretty much like the shortcut menu from Kingdom Hearts.

Explore your surroundings for chests and boxes!

If you need healing items in case you run out or if you want to find more shiny gear and rare stuff. I really recommend exploring the place you are in well. You never know what you might find!

Use your other party members!

While Cloud is pretty good in most combat situations, he cannot reach enemies that are high up like the Sentry Rays. For that you have Barret who is specialised to fight at long range with his gun arm. Also, each character has their own special ability that they can use so switching between your party members for certain situations is definitely recommended.

Use Tactical Mode to command your party members!

When you are playing as Cloud, to fight the Guard Scorpion, for example, you may want to use its weakness against it – but Barret has the Thunder Spell. You can use the L2 button to go into Tactical Mode and use L2 or R2 to flip through the Party members in your current party and select whatever you want them to do.

But most importantly!

Have fun!

This is a huge game with a lot of things to uncover and find and my final advice to you is basically to have fun with the game and immerse yourself in the experience. I do hope some of these tips help you out in your adventure!

Do you have any tips that you can give to new players? Let us know and feel free to join the Official Rice Discord Server to talk about this game, anime and many more topics!

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