Final Fantasy 7 Remake: Intergrade - PC - Review
Final Fantasy VII Remake quickly became one of my favourite PS4 games when it launched back in 2020. It was a game oozing with charm, with fresh takes on a well-beloved classic, with gorgeous visuals and hella-engaging gameplay. But it was not without its issues, too. The story pacing was at times frustrating, certain textures and environments were weirdly low quality (yes, including the door), and ran at 30fps — fine for some games, but not so much for a fast-paced action RPG like this. The eventual PS5 release addressed some of these issues, along with adding a new chapter featuring Yuffie, and the PC version now hopes to continue improving the game… with mixed results.
But let’s quickly go over the premise of FF7R, for those who haven’t played or just might be interested in hearing my thoughts on it. FF7R covers the first quarter-ish to third-ish of the original Final Fantasy 7, expanding out an iconic section of the game with more depth, more character, and much much more enjoyment. Towards the end of the game, the world and its story starts to twist and contort in ways that the original didn’t, clearly signalling to returning players that this isn’t the Final Fantasy you know, and that the story is going to very much go places we’ve never seen before. The gameplay is also familiar, but freshified with action combat elements on top of its ATB-like system. Again, bold new places, and one that plays spectacularly well, even if it’s not quite hitting those original FF7 vibes.
As I said in my intro, it quickly became one of my favourite games on the PS4, in large part because of how readily it balances tradition and bold new directions. Calling the game a remake was a bit of a trickster move from Square, because this is anything but — it’s a reimagining, a bold and risky “what if..?” showing us that nothing is sacred and everything is up for debate. I don’t know how those changes are going to play out in future episodes, I don’t know if the big twists and tear-struck moments of the original game will still happen, or if they’ll play out in entirely different ways, or not at all! And that’s exciting, it gets my blood pumping. FF7R is just as much Final Fantasy 16 as it is Final Fantasy 7, a strange thing to do but an enjoyable one nonetheless.
Unfortunately, the fates have not been kind enough to grant me with a PS5, so I was worried when the upgraded version and its extra side story — subtitled Intergrade and Intermission, respectively — was announced exclusively for that. Especially since Yuffie, certified ninja and all-around dope gal, is one of my favourite characters from both the original and from Kingdom Hearts. Enter Epic Games and its timed exclusivity agreements, which I won’t get into today because it’s a dumb argument to engage with, but the short of it is that FF7R Intergrade is on PC now.
All the things said about the game’s approach to gameplay and storytelling above hold true here. It also looks better, runs better (well… we’ll get to that), and obviously, being on PC, has access to a lot of customisation and community-made mods (which again, we’ll get to that). First, though, let’s talk about Intermission.
Intermission has us take control of the master ninja Yuffie, a bubbly, talented, monster of a character that holds such a large presence on-screen that it’ll be a struggle to contain her in an ensemble cast in later games. Sent to Midgar by the government of the nation of Wutai, Yuffie is on a quest to secure (read: steal) a legendary Materia from Shinra. Being a Wutai citizen — a nation with a history of war and mistreatment by Midgar — she and her eventual assistant Sonon are very much not a fan of Midgar, in addition to their general hatred of Shinra. The two decide to team up in an uneasy alliance with Avalanche, the two groups united by their opposition of Shinra, but opposed by their differing opinions on whether or not the rest of Midgar is redeemable. It’s not incredibly nuanced, but there’s a lot of depth to the internal conflict here, and it plays well as a contrast to Yuffie’s goofy disposition.
And man, what a wonderful character Yuffie is. She’s silly, energetic, intelligent, and thoughtful, and she provides a gigantic breath of fresh air in a game filled with dour, grimdark characters doing their best to frown at everything that moves. Sonon is less interesting, as a much more grounded, serious character, but at the very least provides a worthwhile foil for Yuffie’s antics, keeping the story from getting a little too out of hand with its silliness. Still, there’s a big step up here from the main game in terms of characterisation and storytelling, which wasn’t even particularly bad to begin with, and it bodes well for future episodes of this story. My one complaint about Intermission is that it’s a little on the shorter side, lasting only two chapters, but its pace is quick and energetic, much like the ninja herself, and packs a lot into very little.
So let’s talk about performance, because there’s a lot to break down here. I have a pretty competent PC — certainly not top of the range, but running a Ryzen 7 and an RTX 2070 with 323GB of high-speed RAM, so firmly in the upper end of mid-range. Playing at 1440p, my preferred resolution, the game definitely hit 60fps… but the frame pacing was an utter mess, and there would be occasional plummets to sub-30 rates at quite an alarming rate, and dropping down to 1080p, even at lower quality settings, did not change that. It was not a great experience, and I had to wait til a little while after launch before really getting stuck in, in the hopes that the issue would be fixed. A week after launch, it had not been, so I decided to turn to message boards and modding forums to try and nail down the issue.
See, in the end, the issue was not with my PC at all. It was with the game itself. I did find some resolution in forcing the game to run in DX11 mode over the default DX12, but even that didn’t fix everything. I ultimately ended up installing a mod that helped tremendously with the awkward frame pacing and minimised the frame drops, but frankly, I shouldn’t have had to turn to the modding community to have a smooth gameplay experience. Kingdom Hearts games on PC also launched in a similar condition, and eventually got fixed, and it seems as if Square has been putting in the work to fix FF7R on PC as well — multiple patches seem to have fixed most of the major performance issues I experienced in my playthrough. But I’d much prefer Square put the effort into fixing these issues before the game launched, and not weeks or months after.
It’s a shame, too, because on PC, FF7R looks absolutely gorgeous with all the settings turned all the way up. It shines in a way it never could on PS4, and almost certainly manages to eke out better performance than the PS5 version does too, all while playing beautifully. It’s a testament to fantastic game design that it feels as good as it does to play, and while there are certainly misses with the main game’s pacing from time to time, and its side quests are awkward fetch quests that feel more like busywork than gameplay, the game just clicks in all the right ways, from its visuals and fluid gameplay to its story and characterisation. It’s a very good game, and it deserves a little more love and attention than was put into it.
Final Fantasy VII Remake: Intergrade is modern Final Fantasy at its absolute best on PC, with visuals and gameplay that work together to make an enjoyable, cohesive experience. Its new chapter, Intermission, is some of the best storytelling in the series’ history, and although a little on the short side, manages to pack a real punch in driving the story forward for fans of the series. Unfortunately the experience is let down by some lackluster optimisation efforts, which left the game in a very poor state for far too long on PC. Hopefully, Square reels that trend in for future releases.
The Score
7.0
Review code provided by Square Enix
The Pros
+All the good things about FF7R, just much prettier
+Additional Yuffie episodes are absolutely fantastic
+When it’s running well, it’s absolutely gorgeous to play
The Cons
-Poor optimisation at launch (and quite a while after)
-Main game still has weird story pacing issues
-Yuffie episodes are a little on the shorter side
