Overall 6/10
I should start off by saying I'm only 35 hours into the game so it's an incomplete review. So in time I'll update this or write another one, but more than halfway through it's hard to see much will change. In short...
Superb graphics and sound engine, and good effort trying to integrate the control of 3 characters in battle during real-time battle. I personally much prefer turn-based, and am disappointed FF has gone down this path, but that's a personal feeling. The story (which for me was one of the hallmarks of FF7) is lacking or very slow, and I wonder if the new generation of players would wonder what the big fuss about the epic FF7 story was about after all these years of people harping on about is as, after playing this for 35 hours, I can tell you there is barely any back stories about the characters or how things fit together in FF7. Also, I feel the game doesn't reward people who explore - side quests, hidden materia etc are tedious, but the game basically has a mechanism in place to make sure you can't miss them, which makes it much less fun as an exploration game. Many places feel repetitive and linear, and the big world of Final Fantasy 7 (ie the world map) does not exist thus far. As with the story, it feels like the designers have dragged this out for commercial reasons. Summing up all the scores I gave to various parts, the score works out to be around 61%, hence I rounded it down to 6/10.
Graphics 10/10
Absolutely stunning cinematics and very beautifully rendered, could not fault it. It lived far beyond my expectations, whether in-game graphics, or short clips
Sound 10/10
They've rendered really well the old sound track and this is probably my second favourite part about the game. Every melody is that much deeper than the old PS1 versions. Helps that the original melody were sweet or apt for the moment for its time
Story 4/10
I'm playing this game knowing what the full story in the old FF7 already is. However I suspect it's hard to see what the story is if you're a new player.
35 hours in the game, without giving away much, I'm probably at the same point as I would be around 4-5 hours into the old game. The main selling point of the old FF7 was its vast array of characters, all the different towns you could visit which added so many more elements to the FF7 world and the back story about each of the characters. In the new FF7 remake, 35 hours in, there is much less going for it.
Obviously half the cast has not even been introduced (as they won't come out until the following installments), so we're broadly stuck with 4 characters (Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Aerith). But even those 4 characters have had limited story or character development, and they seem more to be acting just on impulse to the very initial events of the original game (naturally, since the first 35 hours only broadly covers the first 4 hours of the game (going on missions, rescuing people, running through tunnels to get from one point to the next), and most of the story and character development as old players would remember actually happens after they leave Midgar).
I feel Square is milking this for what it's worth, which is fine commercially, but a little tedious for a player. The only thing keeping me going (and it's a grind I must say) is that I know the story will eventually be spectacular, perhaps by the second or third instalment. There also seems to be a lot more fan service with Sephiroth appearing at various points in Cloud's mind throughout these first 35 hours (a lot more than you would've seen in the first 4 hours of the original), but nothing much is really said about who he is, what his connection is to this and so forth. A lot of bits are unnecesarily dragged out and doesn't add anything to the story line, which is partly why they can extend a 4-5 hour gameplay segment to 30-40 hours.
While I haven't finished it yet, knowing what the original story was, I don't look forward to spending another 15 hours ploughing through more dungeons just to get more cinematics that don't really say much. As such, at this stage, I give this a 4 out of 10.
In-game battle 6/10
One of my favourite element of every FF game (7, 8, 9, 10) were its Japanese style, turn-based system. Ever since FF15, the game has of course taken a very western-centric focus and become much more real time. I personally am not a fan of real-time battle as it's more about finger skills than strategic decisions in-game. As such, I have a natural bias against this game.
That said, I like how the designers have tried to incorporate the element of being able to somewhat control every character, as opposed to just controlling the main character like in FF15. While it is somewhat clumsy and imperfect, I applaud their effort on that.
Another element I don't like about the game is how spells can be interrupted, which really goes against a good old JRPG and the idea of strategy (which I suppose the FF series no longer is). Just as I'm about to cast cure on another character, or ice on a fire bomb, some random creature attacks me from behind and interrupts me. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing Devil May Cry with this game. As such, I only give it a 6/10, noting my bias to western-style real time battle games.
Exploration 5/10
I find the game very repetitive, partly because the setting takes place in one major city (again, this hinges on the point about the game's story not being very colourful as it's stuck in Midgar, but it's a slightly different point as it's less about the story and more about how everywhere looks the same). While the graphics are superb, honestly, Sector 5 looks like Sector 7. All the long trails between the sectors, or in the energy reactors, with various quizzes (moving containers around, operating a crane arm, switching off a fan, moving a shaft lift) are extremely tedious, feel the same and look the same. The game is also very linear as it doesn't let you venture into areas that doesn't broadly follow the limited plotline - it plays like FF10 but with a more difficult to control camera, less colour and everything feels the same. Which by the way makes places like Aerith's home really stand it because at least it slightly feels different. I also don't like how the game would remind you, for example, you haven't picked up all the materia in a particular area, so are you sure you want to move forward. This makes finding such items much less rewarding... it's almost like a dummy's guide to how you get all the materia. So I broadly give this a 5/10
Side-Quests 5/10
I also find these side quests a little tedious - again they're very similar to FF15 in that someone would request you to kill some monster in a factory or find some missing chocobos, but they don't add much to the story line. A few sidequests is probably ok, but there seems to be too much and that's probably why so many hours are filled before the game really progresses. If these side quests occured in a more robust and compact story, then perhaps they'll be more enjoyable. But when you long drawn trails, dungeons and story, and you throw in 7-8 meaningless side quests, it gets very tiring.
The side quests are also less rewarding because they don't really give you any sense of accomplishment, as they're more like semi-compulsory activities. If you try to progress the story without completing them, the game would remind you that you haven't solved them all and asks you are you sure you want to keep moving forward. This takes away, in my opinion, a lot of the spirit of RPG games which is about rewarding players who sniff around. Hence another 5/10
Summons 3/10
I deliberately did a section on summons/eidelons as it's a bit of a hallmark in Final Fantasy series. In the old FF7 (and a lot of other installments), finding summons requires a bit of luck, exploration and doing something unconventional. With the exception of one summon thus far that I've found, in this game, there's a young boy (I'll reserve his name) who stands outside every area you go to, and asks you if you want to fight the summons. If you beat them, you get the summon. This takes a way a huge sense of accomplishment in finding something special, as everyone knows where they are and how to get them. The actual summons also don't come up all that often, and requires a particular gauge to fill, and only against certain enemy types. Sometimes that gauge doesn't even appear in boss fights. Again, this element of Final Fantasy seems to be relegated quite low, and almost feels like an afterthought that the design team put in as they don't know where to slot it.