A strange and conflicted work shot through with the ecstasy and excitement of the return to the familiar, but there's also a trepidation felt in terms of what's to come. The game mourns with the player as things slow down, to spend more time with those familiar faces, and to, (sacrilege), potentially rescue them from fate. What starts as a fantasy of reclaiming lost time becomes a radical rejection of narrative telics; we all saw the end of the world last time, and the Remake is playing with exactly the same deck of cards. Like Anno's Evangelion Rebuilds, eternal recurrence leads to eternal difference. What's next is totally unknown.

The battle system is both indebted to the past (active time battle) and explores the less popular algorithmic models of the past 15 years or so. What could feel weightless and automated is fixed to every nail biting decision, and what could then feel too slow instead becomes positively musical: when 'things are working' it's not because you're winning but because you're finally working within its rhythms. It's a state of tension and elation, of arriving and diving off again, and it's so addictive you almost wish there was no story.