Final Fantasy 7 Remake plays as elegantly as it looks

Before this year's E3, I doubted Square Enix's ability to actually make good on its promises for Final Fantasy 7 Remake. The trailers seemed too polished, too beautiful to be something a studio could actually deliver; they promised an impossible dream, not a video game.

I was wrong. What I've seen and played of Final Fantasy 7 points to a remarkable design achievement; one that caters to long-term fans while ensuring that faithfulness doesn't get in the way of quality or playability.

As you've likely seen from the highly polished footage released thus far, Final Fantasy 7 Remake has a hybrid combat system - one that swaps frequently and fluidly between typical action game sword attacks, all delivered in real time, with the ATB system that will be familiar to any franchise veteran. While it's hard to make combat encounters flow as smoothly as those shown on the livestream, swapping between combat modes and playable characters is nonetheless both tactically rewarding and surprisingly intuitive.

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