Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade PC Review

PC gamers have been waiting for this for a long time, but it’s finally here, the first part of the popular Final Fantasy VII Remake (Intergrade Edition) now available on the Epic Games Store. With a hefty price tag, so it’s worth checking if the FF7 Remake port also offers something for this demanding audience for that amount.

Does Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade Really Need an Introduction? Despite a beautiful tech demo from 2005 – which was still running on PS3 – it was just that, fans waited years for the final release. In 2015, it was finally time. At E3, Square Enix revealed that they are now actually working on Remake, although it will be released in multiple parts because the original game has many environments and story. In April 2020, it’s finally time. The PS4 version of Final Fantasy VII Remake was released and managed to surprise the fans too!

Still an exceptionally good remake

With Remake, Square Enix has chosen not to completely recreate the original game and instead update a few things, or even completely adapt them. Despite the fact that not everyone is happy with the changes, the end result may be present. A little over a year later, it’s time for a graphic update for PS5, with the addition of the Intergrade title. This version brought higher resolutions, improved textures, steadier frame rates, and came with an additional DLC chapter featuring the character Yuffie. Now, after more than half a year, PC players can also start the long-awaited new version. Basically, we are offering the PS5 version complete with a DLC package. Provided, the game itself is still a scriptural example of how you’d like to see a new version. It’s a beautiful game that will delight fans and newcomers alike, but unfortunately it does come with some caveats on PC.

Square Enix has a good reputation when it comes to computer ports. The PC version of Final Fantasy XV was packed with PC-exclusive features that greatly helped the game. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to work with Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. It is immediately noticeable once the game is started. The menus are spartan to say the least. There are hardly any graphic options, few things you can really set and no support for features like ultra-fast resolution, which PC gamers consider practically standard these days. Not to mention frame issues and some weird bugs in basic things like button prompts.

Weird restrictions and options

For example, the Final Fantasy Remake Intergrade option is not available on PC to play the game in full screen exclusively. Only in a window, or windowless window. Vsync setup option is completely missing. You can do this separately from your video card drivers, and if you play in a full screen window or window, the game grabs your Vsync settings from your desktop. But this is just an ordinary solution. Furthermore, you cannot actually switch to the chosen resolution using the button to toggle the resolution. You only set the resolution in which the game is rendered. This makes 4K in the game, definitely not real 4K resolution, but on my 3440×1440 screen 4k is displayed at 1440p resolution. With huge black bars on the side.

The game also has a built-in frame selector, which you can set to 60 frames per second, for example. What it doesn’t say is that this frame limit also includes an automatic re-scaling tool. So you could set the resolution to 4K, but your game still looks like a blurry mess on your screen hitting 60fps. You can also choose between high and low resolution textures and shadows and still have the option to fiddle with the space in which the characters are displayed. It is certainly not extensive. Then there’s the clearly visible stutter, which seems to come from using Unreal Engine. Even with the frame rate set to 30fps, you will still experience these hiccups and it seems that the only real solution is to play the game in DirectX 11 instead of 12. You can do this by adding the dx11 command in the Epic Store to the game, and it really fixes many stuttering issues . Despite this, there are still some drops in frame rate, especially in the more crowded open areas of the game.

Society will solve it again

That is the point of this review so I just want to say two thanks. First of all, to Alex Battaglia from Digital Foundry, who helped me not only his colleagues but also – during his vacation – with his capture equipment to discover the exact error in this port. And secondly, a big thank you to the community at PCGamingWiki who are already on their way to solving the worst problems themselves. Because, of course, you can count on that on the PC: society will solve the worst problems on its own.

You can now find many fixes for Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade on PCGamingWiki. That’s how you can through this link Turn off the resolution changer, so you at least get the resolution you choose and your game doesn’t become a blurry distortion. Unfortunately HDR no longer works with this, and you also have to run Vsync externally. There is also a somewhat complicated solution at the moment to get a large scale business. This requires some additional knowledge, but the result is great. Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade looks really nice on an ultra-wide screen.

The relationship of Japanese developers to the PC platform is certainly not easy. Unfortunately, it still happens quite often that a mid-level port is released, which is poorly sold due to a lack of features or bugs, after which publishers and developers conclude that there is no interest in Japanese games on PC. Fortunately, there are now countless examples of games that do well on the platform, but it always seems that the wrong conclusions are drawn when demand exists. The price/quality ratio for Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade on PC does not bode well. When you look at the rarity in the settings, it looks like a lot more could have been achieved with this port, especially since Unreal Engine is capable of doing so much more than that.