Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade: Uninvited, but not unwelcomed. (It's damn good)

Returning to our Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy reviews, we’re going to go through the 2021 expansion of part one: Intergrade. As the name implies, it’s integrating a key element into the story by giving an iconic character a short 2-chapter experience not found in the original game, starring everyone’s favorite ninja from Wutai, Yuffie. 

 

The story tells of a small mission to steal an important materia Shinra’s been cooking in their secret lab. Thanks to Yuffie’s obsession over materia, takes this mission with a new ally named Sonon, whom you can’t personally control during the story. Along the way, you see how Yuffie’s story is integrating itself into the story of Final Fantasy VII as destinies soon collide… while also showcasing the power of the PS5, which came out shortly before this expansion to Remake.

While not on the short story’s stick, you're free to explore the Sector 7 slums and check out a minigame known as Fort Condor (which was present in the original FF7). It’s sort of like chess but blended with Shinra Propaganda with their troops and machines, but it's fun to see the OG FF7 models interact in modern gaming graphics. Between this and going around and collecting turtle posters, there’s not a lot of side content, which is fine because they have a timestamp to stay on time when Yuffie finally joins the party.

This is a pretty good deal for a 20-dollar upgrade to the game. It helped you get used to one of the new characters years before the new game came out. Sure, it was just a PS5 tech demo, but was it worth it to showcase a sneak peek of the most anticipated trilogy in recent console generations? I believe so because the gap between the first game and the second was 4 years and for excellent reasons. Luckily with Intergrde, it made that wait a little more tolerable as it only came out a year after the first game, plenty of time to score the platinum trophy for the first game. 

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9/10