FF7 Remake Episode 1 Finished:

There's a lot to say about this game so I'll break it into sections:

Graphics:  Best ever.  I don't even know how the PS5 plans on improving it.  There was practically no load time throughout the game.  Aerith and Tifa looked amazing in their dresses.  The limit breaks looked great.  I loved everything.

Voice Acting:  The amazing voice cast that surrounds FF7's media empire finally makes its debut in-game.  All those god like pros, Takahiro Sakurai, Maaya Sakamoto, Keiji Fujiwara, Kappei Yamaguchi -- they're all there to feast on, a huge improvement over the original game.  Everyone feels so alive and real.

Music:  This game has great music, because it's mostly remixes of the old great music.  It's noticeably worse than the original soundtrack, though.  The only good song added to this mix was 'Hollow Skies,' which also happens to be the only new Uematsu composed song in the game.

Translation:  I don't like the translation decisions in these subtitles.  The Japanese are usually saying something very simple and pure -- and the translation is something vague and off-topic, full of curse words that weren't originally there -- and implying all sorts of things the original Japanese words don't imply.  It's taking the interpretation out of the hands of the player and forcing an American interpretation of their thinking into reality.  As a guide for what's going on the subtitles are fine, but it really helps to understand the spoken Japanese directly so as to ditch all the nonsense the translators threw in.

Gameplay:  This has a frenetic, frantic gameplay that encourages fast, simple, short moves and plans repeated endlessly.  If you try anything more complicated your move is interrupted and you just lose your ATB bar, take a bunch of damage, and get nowhere.  The best way to improve your fighting style is to rapidly switch between characters, for instance when your mainstay is casting, may as well switch to someone else and get something done, since the cast will go on once set even without you.  Then when the spell is over you can switch back to your mainstay like your switch never happened.  There's lots of improvements to your fighting style you can make, unfortunately none of them have to do with the carefully selected materia you cultivate and equip because 99% of the time you'll be repeating the same one move.

I died often in this game, mainly because learning the fight is necessary in order to succeed.  But the death penalty is no big deal, you just retry the fight.  That level of difficulty certainly kept me on edge every single encounter, because they were all tough.  Leviathan was probably the toughest boss in the game, so beating it was satisfying.

Plot:  The plot is largely the same as the intro section of Final Fantasy 7.  There's a lot of added dungeons and puzzles that slow the plot's progress down -- I finished the game in 45 hours, and originally it only takes around 4 hours.  But none of the side quests, dungeons or puzzles felt like a drag, they were all fun in their own way, so I don't mind.  What makes the plot stronger this time around was the wonderful snappy dialogue between the characters, really filling them in and giving them life.  The writers. voice actors and the graphics together create unbelievable moments, like Aerith's rescue of Marlene, which brought tears to my eyes.  The Cloud Honeybee dance sequence was amazing.

I am worried though.  With the introduction of these weird ghosts, which apparently are the will of the planet or the agents of fate or something, it feels like the game is going off the rails.  Is 'destiny' referring to the previous game's plotline -- and by defeating it did we just undo the entire rest of FF7's plot -- meaning the entire rest of FF7 Remake won't actually be remaking anything right anymore?

There's a high probability that FF7 Remake episodes 2+ will be terrible, because unlike this part which was largely accurate the creators seem to want to change everything from here on.

Which leads to the larger problem -- there's so little plot progress in this episode.  They bogged us down in so many puzzle dungeons you may not have noticed -- but virtually nothing has happened yet.  Most plot developments haven't been reached.  This is not a complete game.  It has plenty of content (though not nearly as much as Dragon Quest XI), but it's not a complete story.  None of our character's back stories have been fully revealed.  The main villain is a hallucination.  That's bizarre.

Perhaps, if they do things right, FF7 Remake will eventually become the greatest game ever made.  But how many decades from now will the final episode be released?  I hope I at least live to see it.  Until then, this game on its own isn't much use at all.  This is no replacement for the original Final Fantasy 7 experience.  It won't even be a good replacement once all the episodes are released.  You'll still have to play the original to get the real plot.  But as an additional experience it's invaluable.  You get to see Aerith and Tifa and Cloud and all the others in their 'true' forms, the way they were meant to look.  You get to hear their voices, some of the best voices in the world.  You get to see all their positive character interactions which make you fall in love with them all over again, just like the first game but better.  The party is such a smoothly oiled team, they're always working together, saving each other, talking things out, it's really amazing to be a part of this team.  It feels so positive and refreshing.

Both the original FF7 and FF7 Remake are required.  They each have their role to play.  Together they will become the greatest game ever.  Once Remake is done -- decades from now.

I've been playing this game non-stop with very little sleep ever since it arrived in the mail.  It was worth every penny.  It was one of the best experiences imaginable.  But I still think they could have done better -- if they'd stayed truer to the original.  And I most definitely feel any future installments should also stay true to the original, or FF7 Remake will be the biggest missed opportunity in history.

To sum things up -- DQ XI was better by far.  More content, more plot developments, better gameplay, more everything.  I played DQ XI easily twice as long.  And it was turn based.  But this isn't a full game.  It's part of a game.  It's no use comparing the two.  We don't even know how many parts there will ultimately be.  The only real way to judge this part of the game is to play through the whole game and then see how things lay.  And I can't do that until Square Enix gets the job done.  So for now, my rating is deferred.