It just feels like a fan fiction with unneeded padding. I don’t want to sound like a nostalgia hungry millennial and I’m not. I’m 20 and I played the original when I was 19 and I vastly prefer the original. The extremely sluggish side quests and lingering bits in the story completely suck all the enjoyment I have out of this combined with the press square to win combat carried by pretty visuals make this feel like I’m playing a dynasty warriors game except the fun part is gone. My least favorite aspect of all is the changes to the story and the seemingly fourth wall breaking behavior sephiroth and the cloaked ghosts literally beating you over the head with what they’re an allegory for. The Zack revival stuff is hilarious it’s like something out of a shounen anime. One of my few praises for the remake is the soundtrack though but it’s final fantasy so I’m not saying anything new with that

I started with 0 so maybe I was spoiled in that regard but this game was just “Ok” compared to that in my opinion. The story was well executed here but they didn’t let dramatic moments and death scenes linger long enough and show their effect on kiryu until the very end. I feel like more time should’ve been given to show him trying to cope because he literally lost the most important people in his life during the end half of this game. Another thing that feels jank and rough around the edges was the combat. The new feature where bosses can recover in combat doesn’t seem balanced at all and I had a strange issue where enemies I would attack from behind would rotate around mid combo and start blocking in the middle of it and the closest thing the player can do in that regard is countering in brawler style. My last gameplay complaint is that fighting any sort of armed enemy is or enemies in groups is abysmal because no matter how much I equipped dragon shirt and upgraded my defenses any small poke from a knife turns kiryus knees into jelly. Honestly the plot was really solid and well executed aside from the very telegraphed predictable death scenes. When I saw the grenade laying next to shimano I just sighed because I knew what was going to happen. Or when characters magically teleport in front of bullets after the triggers are pulled. I still think the story’s themes of found family are very beautiful and the final shot of Haruka and Uncle Kaz walking off put a tear in my eye. Solid game but it could’ve easily been so much better