Final Fantasy 7 Remake PC version is a let-down

Miles

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This summer Square Enix released an updated version of Final Fantasy 7 Remake for the PlayStation 5 that Digital Foundry called a "stunning upgrade"—it upgraded textures across the board, overhauled the lighting, and offered a new 60 fps performance mode in addition to a 4K 30 fps option. Both were rock solid. Six months later, Square Enix has finally brought FF7R to PC, and something has gone very wrong. Not only is the PC port missing virtually all of the graphics options we'd expect from a high-end PC release, but it's showing stuttering issues on some systems, too.

"The PC port is terrible," tweeted Digital Foundry's John Linneman.

Terrible may be an exaggeration—unlike truly awful PC ports, FF7R isn't crashing or exhibiting game-breaking bugs that we've seen. But for $70, stingy graphics options in a game of this size and budget are a real red flag.
There's no variable framerate option, no way to tweak anti-aliasing, toggle VSync, or control effects like motion blur. The port also doesn't let you control resolution scaling, which is now a common option for balancing image quality and performance.

On consoles, FF7 Remake uses dynamic resolution scaling to maintain a smooth framerate, meaning that your resolution might drop from 1440p to something closer to 1080p in the heat of battle to maintain 60 fps. The PC port does this too based on the framerate target you set—and gives you no option to disable it. It's a truly bizarre option to force on players, and seems like it may be the source of some of FF7 Remake's performance issues, too. There's already a mod to disable dynamic resolution.

This would be disappointing for any game, but Square Enix has absolutely no excuse here. It's selling Final Fantasy 7 Remake for a premium $70 on PC, and that price is even steeper in other regions: €80 works out to almost $90 USD, for example. And Square Enix has had since April 2020, when Final Fantasy 7 Remake first launched on PS4, to work on the PC version and implement at least the basic expected graphics options. Six months after Death Stranding hit consoles, it arrived on PC with a fantastic implementation of Nvidia DLSS that helped it run well at 4K. Final Fantasy 7 Remake doesn't even let you change your anti-aliasing settings.

If you're going to sign an exclusivity deal with the Epic Games Store, the least you can do is work with Epic to make sure your Unreal Engine 4 game offers the PC options we've expected for decades.


 

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