Final Fantasy VII Remake was a brilliant reimagining of the groundbreaking PlayStation game’s first major story arc. It had its share of flaws, like the slightly padded mission structure, wonky aerial combat, and odd texture issues. Still, it was a fantastic console release that featured an impressive attention to detail, a lengthy story campaign, and remixed Hard mode mechanics. Now available as a PC game via the Epic Games Store, the $69.99 Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade delivers the expected action-RPG goodness, plus the console’s DLC add-on content. It’s a great package, though a few nagging issues remain.
Remaking a Legend
Love it or hate it, Final Fantasy VII is one of the most iconic and beloved RPGs ever made. For its time, it had bleeding-edge visuals, a brilliant and highly customizable battle system, and surprisingly mature themes. Fans have clamored for a remake ever since Square Enix showcased a Final Fantasy VII tech demo back in 2005, and in 2020 they finally got their wish.
Featuring spectacular visuals, an ingenious combat system, and all the original game’s major story beats, Final Fantasy VII Remake was a dazzlingly polished game. Unfortunately, it was also only a portion of the original game’s story, one that condensed the first CD disc’s plot into a single, expanded arc: the Midgar chapter. Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade (which we’ll refer to as Intergrade going forward) adds fresh story content to enjoy alongside the main campaign, and features a side story starring the ninja-thief Yuffie Kisaragi. This mission doesn’t further the core tale, but it gives you plenty to do once you finish Cloud and company’s scenario.
The original game’s Midgar portion was an 8-hour romp through the city, which established the plot and villains. Intergrade reaches past this segment to grab story elements from slightly later in the original plot to tell a more satisfying story. That’s not exactly faithful, but it makes for a much more well-rounded experience. It also radically expounds upon Midgar’s events, transforming it into a beefy 30-hour adventure. Intergrade’s contribution adds another five or so hours to the game time, so there is plenty to see and do, not counting all the customization, optional content, mini-games, and the challenging Hard mode. The pacing is fine overall, though there are a few chapters that feel far too padded for their own good. For example, both sewer missions suck, and they both take place before major plot points, killing some of the story’s momentum.
Living Legacy
Final Fantasy VII follows Cloud Strife, a sword-swinging soldier-turned-mercenary who involves himself with an eco-terrorist faction called Avalanche. The planet is dying, literally, at the hands of the Shinra megacorporation, which drains the world’s lifeblood for energy and profit. Avalanche has made it their mission to destroy the reactors sucking up the planet’s precious Mako energy, in hopes of deterring Shinra and giving the world a fighting chance. Cloud, Avalanche members Barret and Tifa, and local florist Aerith set out to save the planet and curb Shinra’s greed, by whatever means necessary.
Things go from bad to worse as Avalanche and Shinra butt heads. Events play out more or less as they did in the original story, but they have been dramatically expanded in Remake. Much care went into fleshing out the world and characters without bastardizing or censoring the source material, which is great. The original had its share of profanity, sexual situations, and dark comedy, which are all largely preserved here, and it’s great to see.
RPG Action
Unlike its forebear, Intergrade uses real-time action combat, so blocking, dodging, and aggressive offense are core gameplay tenets. That said, Intergrade isn’t a thoughtless button masher, either. Much like the story beats, plenty of thought and polish went into the combat system’s execution, which shows in virtually every game facet (assuming you play on the Normal difficulty setting and not the baby-mode Easy option). Button mashing quickly gets you killed, because the RPG underpinning radically affects how you fight and approach scenarios. One might draw parallels to Devil May Cry or Kingdom Hearts 3, and there are definitely some similarities. In truth, Intergrade is its own beast.
Intergrade plays like a monster-bashing reimagining of Square Enix’s fighting game Dissidia. For all the flaws the newest Dissidia game suffered, the core combat system was engrossing, and the system translates brilliantly in a lengthy action-RPG like Intergrade. Essentially, each character has bread-and-butter combos or attacks they can perform at any time, which require no special conditions to use. Cloud’s sword swings and Barret’s bullet-spray are examples of this. These attacks do minor damage, but they fill the Active Time Battle (ATB) meter, which is an old Final Fantasy gibberish term for what is essentially a fighting game meter. Once you build enough meter, you can select special attacks and magic that deal moderate damage to targeted foes.
Fighting Wisely
There is more to combat than just building and spending ATB, however. Enemies have specific vulnerabilities that can be exploited to great effect. All enemies have a stagger meter under their health that builds as they take damage, similar to the stagger system in the Final Fantasy XIII games. Staggered enemies are utterly helpless for a few precious moments, giving you a prime opportunity to deal big damage. Some special attacks pressure enemies better than others, making it easier to stagger foes when used correctly. Other special attacks deal bonus damage to staggered targets, so there are many minute strategic facets to the action beyond attacking and blocking.
The only real stumbling point is the aerial combat, which isn’t particularly good. Characters cannot manually jump in combat (only dodge or block), so aerial enemies are tricky to hit. This makes sense, except that melee characters auto-jump at targets out of reach to perform basic aerial combos. These attacks are not particularly accurate, and you have no defensive options available to you if your character decides to rocket into the sky after an errant bird. The generally party-oriented combat makes Intergrade feel deliberately designed to encourage you to switch to ranged characters in those situations, but if that were the case, the combat would have been better served not giving melee units a jump auto combo at all. It feels clunky and half-baked, especially since the Dissidia games had a great aerial combat system that let you dash and fly around like a Dragon Ball FighterZ character.
The aerial system is improved slightly in Yuffie’s side story. She can swap between melee and ranged skills on the fly, and her toss-and-retrieve shuriken ability serves as a reliable way to reach and attack aerial enemies. Unfortunately, Yuffie is only available to play in her Intermission chapter, so you cannot add her utility to the main campaign.
Materia World
On top of all that, the classic Materia system returns in almost all its glory. Materia are crystal orbs you socket to your weapon and armor that grant you bonus abilities and perks. These can be all-new moves or magical attacks, bonuses to health and magic, potent sub-abilities that enhance movement or defense, or boss-crushing summoning spells. Materia often synergizes with one another; a basic combination has you socket blue elemental enhancement Materia with green magic Materia to add that magic’s effect onto a weapon, for example. Combining different Materia to test out the effects in combat was a lot of fun in the original game, and Intergrade’s action-focused combat makes this aspect even more enjoyable. You can radically change how characters play depending on the Materia you add to their kit.
Intergrade freshens up the action with a steady stream of new weapons and Materia to keep you engrossed. Weapons have unique special abilities that you can use with your ATB gauge during combat. The Hardedge, for example, grants Cloud the powerful Infinity’s End skill, which does astounding damage to staggered opponents. When enough experience is gained with the weapon active, your character permanently learns said ability to use it with any other weapon you prefer.
Weapon experience is used to strengthen weapons, and unlock additional perks that increase the weapon’s utility. These include additional Materia slots, attack and magic boosts, or buff duration improvements.
Music and Games
Intergrade’s soundtrack deserves much praise. The music tracks are not 1:1 remakes like those in Trials of Mana, but the new musical compositions retain all of the original’s catchiness with some fresh instrumentation, unique genre flips, and vocal elements that really make them pop. You can even collect iconic track remixes from various in-game vending machines. New musical contributions, such as “Hollow Skies” and the vocal version that’s simply titled “Hollow,” perfectly match their scenarios, and sound every bit as authentic as the original tracks.
Aside from story scenes and fighting, Intergrade is loaded with side challenges to undertake. Early on, you can kill time with a dart board, but later games include a timing-based, gym-themed rhythm game, and trash-smashing in a playground. The coliseum has plenty of challenges to complete, as does the VR simulator battles that feature unique boss monsters and summons. Yuffie gets her own prominent mini-game, Fort Condor, which is a modernized, tabletop tower defense game based on the same game in the original. It’s a good ol’ time, and even has its own side quest associated with it.
Unreal Visuals
Intergrade is a great looking game that pairs richly detailed assets with an anime-infused, pseudo-realism that brilliantly brings Midgar to life. Every corner of the game oozes detail and gives the game a genuine, lived-in feel that is as impressive as it is nostalgic. Intergrade looks like what I imagined Midgar looked like back during its PS1 heyday, and the development team deserve praise for realizing the game world so faithfully, and so well.
Granted, Intergrade is built on the Unreal 4 engine, and suffers a few hiccups here and there. Blurry textures and low-res backdrops were commonplace in the PS4 Remake release, and while these are not nearly as noticeable on PC, there are a handful of low-quality assets that stick out like sore thumbs, especially when playing the game at 1440p resolution or higher. UE’s notorious texture pop-in still shows up here and there, particularly when you run around the environment too quickly. None of these flaws detract much from the game, though they are noticeable.
Intergrade also has some odd loading issues, which I haven’t quite been able to remedy. Loading can be surprisingly lengthy; in fact, I thought the game froze or crashed when my PC first loaded Yuffie’s mission. Event scenes can chug at times, with the visuals not quite catching up to the voiced dialogue. In addition, the game stutters whenever something gets loaded while exploring the map. No amount of setting changes, including dropping the frame rate and resolution, corrected these issues.
Can Your PC Run Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade?
It doesn’t take much computing power to play Intergrade, based on the minimum and recommended specs. To run the game, your PC needs a Windows 10 (64-bit) operating system, an AMD FX-8350 or Intel Core i5-3330 CPU, an AMD Radeon RX 480 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 GPU (with 3GB of VRAM), 8GB of system RAM, and 100GB of available storage space. The recommended specifications ask for an AMD Ryzen 3 3100 or Intel Core i7-3770K CPU, an AMD Radeon RX 5700 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 GPU (with 8GB of VRAM), and 12GB of system RAM.
On a desktop gaming PC with an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU, and 16GB of RAM, Intergrade ran between 60 and 100 frames per second at 1440p resolution. As mentioned earlier, the game’s performance seemed regularly dipped when items loaded while exploring the map.
Fantastic Fantasy
Without getting into spoilers, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is an impressive and fascinating retelling of the original game’s first major story arc. Yes, it is a smidge disappointing that the game ends where it does, but the writers did an excellent job of condensing the critical events into a gameplay-packed title. Featuring terrific action, robust customization options, and a wealth of side content, Intergrade is one of the best action-RPGs that you’ll play this year.
