Pros: amazing visuals and sound. Fan service (e.g. the cover art scene), but not TOO much. Injected so much more personality into already-awesome characters. For folks like me who played the original FF7, sometimes it feels like you're getting to go behind the curtain and spend more time with characters, details, and plot lines that couldn't all fit into the original. Somehow, we got a full-game deep dive into not even half of the first disc of the original FF7, yet it doesn't feel totally wacky from a pacing perspective.

Cons: while it doesn't feel TOTALLY wacky, pacing can be erratic. Some chapters feel just right, while others feel stretched/overblown (the cynical take here is that it was done for $$$, but I wouldn't go quite that far). I understand that you can't change the industrial setting without changing the story, but I was entirely ready to leave Midgar a little over halfway through the game. The Whispers were way too convenient/meta of a plot device, even for a Final Fantasy (but I will reserve full plot judgment until the trilogy plays out and come back to edit this if necessary). Ending went pretty far off the rails into timeline hell. Way, way too much of the near-death, "grab my hand before you fall" trope (so much so that Barret even acknowledges it at one point, which was admittedly funny). Some really upsetting game crashes when played on PS5 that cost me well over an hour of gametime, including one during the final sequence.

I'm so disappointed that I've been unable to get into this game. Aside from the excellent soundtrack, for me the 3DS games are in another league of quality entirely. The visual charm and polish of those earlier entries is gone: traded for choppy animations, FPS drops, and long load times, with motion blur on everything as a coverup. The voice acting doesn't measure up at all. The pacing and combat is surprisingly frustrating: you can get to a point where you're comfortable with the area's mobs and then still get totally blown out by bosses, with no answers in sight. Even the usual JRPG answer of "just grind" doesn't offer much in the way of satisfaction. I'm sitting here 15 hours in wondering if a power spike or cool new job is ever coming, but I think unfortunately I'm done waiting. Bravely Default and Bravely Second brought a ton to the table 10 years ago that made turn-based JRPG feel new again. This game feels like a step backwards in comparison.