On December 16th, Final Fantasy VII Remake came out on the PC, and once again I have been a sucker and repurchased the game. I had some credit and a coupon on the Epic Games Store which knocked down the price tag but be warned this game on this platform is fully embracing Square’s new $70 default price for games. There are lots of comments about this trend, but I don’t so much mind it. The price has been stuck at $60 for a new game for a very long time and has not taken into account a whole slew of issues that have increased the cost of game development. We have been insulated from the actual cost of development for a very long time and I fully expect the price to keep moving up there.
I think we also have this habit of misremembering the price of games from the past. This is a Toys R Us ad from Christmas 1996 and you can see there are three games that are already going for $70 in 1996 money. Adjusted for inflation that $70 item in 96 would be $124 today. I remember that when Final Fantasy 3 (known now as 6) came out it was around $80 and Phantasy Star 4 was roughly $90 making those roughly $140 and $160 in today’s money. I am just uncertain if a $70 new release is a hill worth dying on right now. However based on the various YouTube channels that I watch… it seems to be a bridge too far for some folks. For me I had coupons and some credit which took the price down to something worth it to me in order to play the game with a mouse and keyboard.
The game runs exceptionally well… but it damned well better on a RTX 3080. The only awkwardness is just how generally awful the menu system is in the game. WASD mimics a dpad, and you have to use it to navigate through the menu options… which should instead just be accessible with your mouse. It reminds me a lot of some of the early Xbox 360 ports like Force Unleashed which had a similar “keyboard as controller” sort of control scheme. I have gotten used to it pretty quickly with your mouse wheel being able to zip up and down menu structures but it might be too much for some folks to engage with. There are some really weird choices like the Spacebar for example opens up your combat menu and M brings up the menu options… whereas N is your map. I am hoping it gets either an official update or an unofficial patch that makes all of this work more smoothly. However it is no worse than other Square ports that I have played.. which often screw up the interfaces.
Combat however feels fluid and I can forgive a lot of fiddling with UI elements if the moment to moment gameplay is enjoyable. Mouse look is flawless and you can attack by left clicking in an action role-playing style. That said… for the people who did not play in Action combat mode… I can maybe see being frustrated with the game. All of the things that I generally considered “fine” would rapidly become infuriating if I were actually fiddling with the menus a lot. For me since I embrace the action mode rework of FF7, the end result feels pretty fluid. The only negative are the few segments where your camera is fixed Resident Evil style and you have to navigate with just WASD. Those felt kinda awful on the console as well, so I think that is just poor design on the part of the game and not something specific to the PC port.
Essentially if you don’t have a PlayStation 4 or 5… then this is potentially your only real option for playing through the Final Fantasy VII Remake content. If it had release on PC day one, then I absolutely would have chosen this platform from the start. If you prefer gaming with a mouse and keyboard… then again this might be the better option for you. You can always hook up a controller and everything seems to work just like it did on PlayStation. There is a lot of fiddling with the UI which is not great, but for me it is fine and I am enjoying myself playing through the early bits of VII Remake again. If the price tag is a barrier for you, then I figure in six months time that will be resolved as well.