Final Fantasy VII is a landmark release in the history of video games for a variety of reasons, some of which are about how the game wasn’t on Nintendo systems. That meant it was a big deal when the PlayStation original Final Fantasy VII came to Nintendo Switch in 2019. A year after that, Final Fantasy VII Remake came out on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo players were behind the eight ball (or seven ball?) again. This time around though, Nintendo fans only had to wait nearly six years for Final Fantasy VII to come to a Nintendo console instead of the more than 20 for the original. Final Fantasy VII Remake comes to Switch 2 as a polished product, running incredibly well on Nintendo’s new hardware. This is a great port of a great game that is just as fun and electric now as it was when I first played it in 2020.

But there’s a key aspect of Final Fantasy VII Remake that I would like to use this space to discuss because this is largely how I landed at being a bigger fan of the promised Remake trilogy than I am of the original game. If you are someone who has avoided everything Final Fantasy VII Remake until it came to a Nintendo platform, just go get the game. It’s awesome. The action-oriented combat does a fantastic job of fusing the traditional turn-based battles of the original with some newer character action-esque style. The visuals on Switch 2 are impressive, calling to mind the fact that when Remake hit PS4, we were four years into the reign of the PS4 Pro. If you have doubted that the Switch 2 is a portable PS4 Pro (for the most part), this game should be a good showcase of how it is sort of just that. The characters are incredibly well written, bringing a lot of depth and likability to the entire cast, especially some relatively throwaway characters from the original. Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie from the Avalanche team are damn near endlessly endearing. While you don’t play as any of them directly, they are major parts of Remake’s adventure and all have their own poignant moments as Cloud, Aerith, Tifa, and Barrett hog the lion’s share of the spotlight.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is just the first part of a three-game story, so keep in mind that Remake only covers the opening Midgar portion of Final Fantasy. What was originally a few hours of gameplay in the PlayStation version is now a 30-hour adventure. The Switch 2 version comes complete with the Intermission DLC that bridges a gap between Remake and the 2024 sequel Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and stars Yuffie. The story of the DLC is fine and it’s fun messing around with Yuffie’s unique combat style, but it’s not as tight and fulfilling as the base game. Even still, the game’s overall great writing comes through where, once again, I started to care about characters I never would have cared much about in the original Final Fantasy VII. New alongside the launch of this specific version is the Streamlined Progression options. By and large, that’s just a fancy name for the same kind of thing Square Enix has added to a lot of Final Fantasy ports. You can toggle on some cheats and boosts to make the game easier and move quicker. Some of them, like having every hit deal max damage, are comically powerful. Others, like an experience booster or always have special ability gauges filled in battle, are more easy mode as opposed to the hilarious domination of borderline permanent one-hit kills. Streamlined Progression is great as long as you fiddle with it to make it what’s most enjoyable to you. The Switch 2 release has been my third playthrough of the game and having this quicker way to romp through it has been fun.

So that largely covers this version of the Final Fantasy VII Remake specifically. Like I said: if you have not heard much about the game since its 2020 launch, go away now. I’m going to talk in a way that speaks to broad spoilers.

The thing that hit me while playing Final Fantasy VII Remake during its rollout and launch is that this isn’t a true remake in what we’d expect. No, this is a meta remake. This is a sequel to Final Fantasy VII - and all the various spinoffs over the years - that just happens to be subtitled Remake. This is one of the more self-indulgent big-budget video games I have ever played because it largely seems like Tetsuya Nomura and the team at Square Enix heard the pleas for a remake of Final Fantasy VII and ignored them to go use that as a pretense to make whatever the hell they wanted. This deepens the plot of the original game, but it also follows up Crisis Core (available on Switch) and the movie Advent Children. Remake has a twisty narrative that adds a lot more depth and leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

Remake uses your knowledge of Final Fantasy VII and its story and characters as a cudgel to toy with your expectations and question what is happening in this off-kilter retelling of the first act of the original game. It’s jarring when, within the opening hour or two, Cloud has a whole weird vision of Sephiroth before he’s even really introduced in the game. It’s even weirder when an army of grim reaper-looking Whispers show up around your first run-in with Aerith. And then there’s the drug addict that Cloud imagines is Sephiroth at one point. It’s wild. It’s hard to know if all of these big swings pay off since as of this review, we are still waiting for the third and final game, but sitting here replaying Remake after playing through 2024’s Rebirth, the swings have mostly paid off so far.

This is a game that shouldn’t exist in most reasonable worlds. A few years earlier and the remake might be more benign. A few years later and there’s no way this game gets greenlit. We live in a world with Final Fantasy VII Remake, though. This is a game that bounces from deathly serious climate disasters and tragedy to crossdressing dance sequences and fighting demonic houses. Final Fantasy VII Remake is a deeply weird game, but it’s a deeply weird game with awesome combat, wonderful writing, incredible music, and a joyously baffling story. In the process of this bizarre journey to a remake of a classic, Square Enix also created one of the best Final Fantasy games of the last 30 years.