Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade is a fairly predictable remaster, especially with the original game launching mere months before the PS5 and Xbox Series X crashed onto the scene. However, aside from a few bangers in the form of Returnal and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, next-gen exclusives have been rather thin on the ground. Such a landscape makes the arrival of Intergrade a welcome occasion, with Square Enix enhancing it in a number of ways that ensure it feels at home on Sony’s new console.
It doesn’t reach the majesty of pure exclusives in terms of pure visuals and mechanical complexity, but it doesn’t need to, with the base experience already wonderfully engaging. I’ve spent the last few days with Intergrade, working my way through the early hours of the ambitious JRPG and reliving a number of narrative moments that are still relatively fresh in my memory, but I adore this game so much that the repetition doesn’t really matter. Ample technical improvements also make it a far more engaging affair this time around, with excellent visuals no longer being contrasted with awful pre-rendered backgrounds and occasionally mediocre textures.
The original release wasn’t consistent, evidently held back by the final months of its development and graphical issues that made some parts of the game a little unpleasant to play. Exploring the slums on PS4 and PS4 Pro is particularly egregious, many of the buildings, character models, and environments filled with low resolution textures that don’t mesh well with the gorgeously rendered Cloud and Tifa as they explore the shanty town in search of kittens. One particularly damning example of these technical shortcomings was a selection of doors in one of the first areas you visit. They’re awful, coming across as rectangular blobs smeared with an unrecognisable texture that refused to load in.
When Intergrade was first announced, my first thought was the doors. Could the power of the PlayStation 5 achieve such a gargantuan task and render these babies to their full wooden, varnished glory? The second I was given free rein amidst the slums, I ran toward the apartment complex to find out - and I wasn’t disappointed. These things are gorgeous, the top tier sort of doors you’d find in B&Q or a posh, independent garden centre. Even when stepping inside, the textures maintain their quality and never waver regardless of whether you’re playing in Graphics or Performance mode. Sorry, I’ll shut up about doors now.
My point is, Intergrade makes so many small, iterative improvements like this that help Final Fantasy 7 Remake shine brighter than it ever has before. The game is now positively gorgeous, no longer held back by hardware constraints and an evident inconsistency that made it feel like a blockbuster at points and a bargain bin indie game at others. Such obstacles are no longer present, with the large majority of environments sporting improved textures, detail, and lighting that bring it to life in a way that wasn’t possible before.
While I loved the original game back in 2020, I was often pulled out of the narrative by strange graphical hiccups, cringing at JPEGs being used to depict the towering reactors above us and landscapes stretching beyond the horizon. Thus far, Intergrade doesn’t experience any of these problems, with a higher resolution allowing Square Enix to enhance existing details while introducing new additions that help locations both natural and urban feel truly lived in. This is Midgar as it was always meant to be, and I envy players who waited until Intergrade to finally pull the trigger and jump into this world.
