Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade (PC) Reviewed

Playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth at Tokyo Game Show 2023 ignited a burning question in me. How would Final Fantasy VII Rebirth compare to Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade?

Visually at least.

I’ve reviewed the Playstation 5 version of that game but we all know that consoles aren’t exactly known for top of the line graphics.

So I went back, and asked Square Enix for a copy of the PC version of Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. Square Enix, gracious as always, provided one.

So here’s my impressions of the game running on PC!

What is Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade?

Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is the definitive version of the Final Fantasy VII Remake. It packs in the Yuffie DLC (Episode INTERmission) along with the main game and some extra items. It is available right now on the PC and Playstation consoles.

As mentioned, our PC copy was provided by the great people at Square Enix!

This is the third time I’ll be reviewing the Final Fantasy VII Remake. I never thought I’d be reviewing a game so many times…but here we are. I’m not going into the nitty gritty about the game (for that, read my original review) or what’s different between this and the PS5 version (head here to read that review).

Instead, I’m going to talk about how Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade runs on a gaming pc.

As always, I’ll be using our gaming rig to run the game.

The specs are as listed below:

– MSI B550M Mortar WIFI
– AMD Ryzen 9 5900X with NZXT Kraken X73 RGB Liquid Cooler
– MSI GeForce RTX 3080Ti Suprim X 12GB
– Teamgroup T-Force Dark Z DDR4 RAM (16GB x 4 @ 3600MHz)
– Samsung 980 PRO 2TB SSD
– Corsair RM850x PSU
– Lian Li LANCOOL III RGB case

Settings were all set to the maximum, at 4K resolution.

A side mention; both our motherboard and GPU were awesomely sponsored by the great folks at MSI. I can honestly say the MSI GeForce RTX 3080Ti Suprim X 12GB is a hell of a GPU and more than worth its asking price. Great performance in games, looks damn cool with its RGB stylings too!

Thanks to MSI and their kind generosity, we’ll be reviewing more PC games now since we have the hardware to deliver a quality review experience.

Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is still a looker, now years after release. If this game was available in 1997 instead of the original Final Fantasy VII, I have no qualms that Square Enix would be the richest company in the galaxy by now.

I play games a ton and I’m still impressed by the character models in the game. I’m so impressed that I even bought the Play Arts Kai Fenrir and Hardy Daytona…and I don’t even like Cloud.

I expected to be blown away by the PC version of Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. I expected a wealth of graphical options available to tweak every single aspect of the visuals to produce something mind blowing!

A game that will melt GPUs!

Instead…I got this.

A couple of graphical settings, with High and Low being the only options.

Profound sadness.

I expected a deluge of choices. What I got in truth was barely a trickle.

Disheartened, I set everything to their highest settings and set out to playing the game.

Don’t get me wrong, if this is your first experience to the game, you’ll be blown away.

On our gaming rig, everything was smooooooooooooooooooth as butter…mostly

Yep, I know people have reported stuttering and all but I personally only experienced that during cutscenes and randomly when panning the camera around in very minute (as in split seconds) quantity.

Did it affect the overall experience?

I won’t lie and say no, but it didn’t upset me too much because it cleared up as fast as it happened.

I’m a bit disappointed in the loading times (especially since we’re using one of the top tier SSDs) for reloads but that’s only when you’re loading into a game or retrying a Game Over. It’s not really a major issue considering most of the game is easy, even on Normal difficulty.

I’m personally underwhelmed by the visuals though.

Don’t get me wrong, the character models and most of the environmental art is incredible. Stellar even. Some of the locations in Midgar (particularly the Shinra building and the escape at the end) are damn fine looking. At times, you’d be forgiven if you thought the game was a CG movie.

The visuals can be truly spectacular at times!

Most times though…not all.

The issues I had with the Playstation 5 version and their low resolution textures on 4K are back.

Take a look.

I didn’t realize it until I took a look at my Playstation 5 review, but this gate texture was one of the low resolution ones I had an issue with previously! If you’re hoping that it would’ve been fixed on the PC version, you’re going to be much disappointed.

It’s not the only issue. Throughout the game, you’ll be peppered with low resolution, blurry textures that stand out amongst the visual splendor of the game.

I’m not mad but I do question why the art team for the game simply didn’t do higher resolution versions of all textures while they were working on the assets.

Surely the time it takes to do multiple versions will be worth it for this very reason?

I can understand limiting the texture size and resolution for the Playstation 4 and even the Playstation 5…but for a PC version?

That’s just inexcusable.

The Bottom Line.

At the end of day, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade on the PC is a decent version of the game.

I wouldn’t call it the definitive version, but being on the PC, it does have one advantage over the console versions; mods.

I feel however, that Square Enix missed the boat here. They had a chance to truly make a spectacular game look even more phenomenal and they chose not to take it.

If you have the hardware for it, then Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is an easy recommend on the PC. Just know that you’ll need to do some work on your own and get mods to further enhance its visuals.

Let’s hope Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on the PC comes with better visual options.

TLDR:

Great game but lack of visual options hold it back from being a true visual tour de force.