1st: I sincerely hope opinions over R don't lead to any unnecessary debate wars. Regardless of any individual player's reaction to the content, fact is that the vast majority of Final Fanstasy, SQEX, VII, or even action-RPG fans in general will inevitably own or play this game and even if there are some minuses, again, the vast majority will have better reactions to this than X-2, XIII, XV and the whole KH franchise combined.

I acknowledge there are features and segments that did not win my approval (such asit's stupid you can only get Aerith's 2ND book on replay, on replaying: all convos should be skippable, cutscenes during battle should be skippable, the dancing should have been skippable as well as the whole colosseum, the Jessie mission does also feel like it should be skippable as it adds nothing to the plot, I hated not being able to explore freely because of Barret and Tifa yelling "Cloud you're going the wrong way", the initial kid rescue could have been skipped and those damned flowers, and you can't bypass the museum either... Other things: why is the Nail Bat the only weapon with unique moves? Also, the Ice and Wind spells have build-ups which can be easily avoided by most enemies. Finally, when replaying Chapter 9, the ladders should already be down, like what the hell?) There should also be an option to turn off the goal markers.

Certain segments would have worked better if they had been moved to different points in the story (i.e. ghost stories, deep ground, etc). You also don't learn there is any difference between SOLDIERs and regular MPs until you start your climb up the plate.

But when it comes to the ending, to me it finally clarified why SQEX didn't drop the Remake from the title. I knew the game would have to have a subtitle to distinguish itself but why just "Remake"..? It was just too on the nose unless it meant something deeper. Throughout the entirety of my first playthrough, I kept thinking "I hope there's a reason for that name." And there is: by the end up the game, you're remaking reality, remaking VII by defying fate. Everything that happened during the lead-up has been subtly different, but now everything we thought we knew is erased.

"7 seconds left" is really nothing more than another 7 shoutout as with Sector 7 and Seventh Heaven (and the all 7s code for the pinball machine).

There are some features like alternate costumes for battle that I was hoping for that didn't make it in (unless they're still planning DLC).

Games I would like to see remade this way: X-2, Parasite Eve, Vagrant Story, Kingdom Hearts, SaGa, Musashi, etc.