Simply put, Cloud hits hard and has a counter move built-in; Barret is a ranged attacker with high defense (though he does pick up close-range weapons later); Tifa moves fast, stacking her skills and buffs to help stagger your enemies and Aerith shoots magical ranged attacks, heals with her limit-break move and has some area-of-effect tricks. She also has a knack for being KO-ed early into the game — an important reminder that you need to play differently with each of them.

The best way to approach the most difficult fights, including practically all boss battles, involves well-timed character swapping, making the most of their strengths and covering for any weaknesses.

Left to their own devices, the rest of your party will mostly act as damage sponges, contributing a few attacks on their own. It’s a shame they aren’t a little smarter. There are flashes of some better automation: There’s an auto-cure materia that’s new in the remake, which ensures an uncontrolled party member heals anyone in dire straits.

They will, however, need to charge up enough of the ATB (active time battle) gauge to do that. The ATB gauge, taken from the original FF7, behaves completely differently here, building up from attacking and defending, and you’ll need it for doing anything that isn’t a simple physical attack. I found it limited in the demo, but as the layers of complexity built up in the full game (and I came to terms with the fact that this is a very different system to the original FF7), I actually started to enjoy the combat. A lot. Building up the stagger gauge on enemies to stun them and increase damage is hugely satisfying (a battle technique seen in both FF13 and 15), while Cloud’s punisher mode, with its counterattack stance, is hugely gratifying when he turns the tables on heavy-hitting enemies.

Yes, it’s a very different system, and the FF7 Remake team has attempted to appease original traditionalists with a ‘classic’ battle mode that sadly neuters the enemies to easy difficultly (you hit harder, they hit lighter) and does half of the fighting for you. You can then just select the abilities as your ATB gauge builds — it’s a pretty soulless way to play a game that has some fantastic battle set pieces, whether giant monsters or FF7 antagonists, like the Turks, which turn up several times in this first installment.

The boss fights are the most exciting part, especially those against other human fighters, where you’d have to figure out the weakness or timing to best them. Spamming attacks isn’t going to work in FF7R. One issue I had with several boss fights were that many took too long to kill, merely to extend the game time. The majority of the monsters and robot boss fights include at least one transition to a more powerful mode — some had four of these transitions. Often, they started to drag. If you go into certain battles without the appropriate elemental attack, for example, it’ll be an uphill battle.

Square Enix

To equip yourself for these frenzied (occasionally lengthy) fights, materia, the orbs that provide spell and skill support, combine with a new weapons system where your equipment can be upgraded as you level up and get stronger.

Upgrades not only increase damage or hit points (health) but also add extra materia slots so you can wield more spells and add more flexibility to your fighting style. This means if you’re a big fan of Cloud’s original, comically huge buster sword, you can pretty much use it for the entire game, upgrading it with ‘skill points’ you pick up along the way. It’s nice to keep using your favorite, as you’ll be able to see most of the party’s weapons as they interact with people and each other outside of the fights.

This first installment covers the opening acts of the original, centered on Midgar. If anything, the neon city (and undercity) shines just as much as the reimagined characters. It’s all moody lighting effects, elaborate slums and highly polished corporate buildings.

Even on my base PS4, the game is nearly always gorgeous. That said — and you might notice on video — there was some corner-cutting when it comes to some textures and items, some that were hard to ignore. Aerith’s flowers, beautifully rendered in the opening beats of the game, drop down to PlayStation 2 levels of detail later in the game — and I’m not sure why. These missteps often scream out because the game is one of the prettiest titles ever for the increasingly mature PlayStation 4.

Square Enix’s clever use of high-resolution backdrops and skylines keep the steampunk city consistently in view. Later in the game, when you roam higher parts of the city, the effect is reversed, and you get a view of all the slums and all the havoc wrought by the Shinra Corporation.

Shinra is the initial antagonist in this game, just like the original, but it’s not long until Sephiroth, iconic big bad with a katana to match, starts messing with Cloud’s mind and picking a fight with your team. It wouldn’t be a FF7 game without Sephiroth, and the team behind Remake seem tacitly aware of it. Brief mentions or appearances of the silver-haired villain in the PlayStation original have been hugely expanded here, especially when FF7R attempts to step out from the shadow of the source material.