Only recommended if you've enjoyed the game before and wanted to get a hit of nostalgia. Otherwise, I would say this is not a very good game and is not really worth playing at full price.

Decent remaster, it looks and runs great with plenty of control options and quality of life improvements over the original game, but at the end of the day it's still a lot of the same game designed for a portable device underneath. Runs well on Steam Deck and I think that's the best way to play it for sure!

The enemy and environment variety are both laughable because the original game had to fit on the old UMDs for the PSP, and gameplay is delivered in extremely short bite-sized chunks for on-the-go gaming. It ends up feeling so tired and repetitive to play through.

On top of that, the story is terrible, featuring an overacting villain whose dialogue is 90% reciting melodramatic dialogue from a play that doesn't exist that you never see. The existing characters seem poorly utilized or hamfisted and the new characters are all pretty unlikable caricatures. In my opinion, the game is a failure as a prequel because I don't think it really brings any additional appreciation for the original story or develops anything meaningful on its own ( especially considering you watch the Nibelheim Incident which we have seen before and then all the newly introduced characters die and then the game ends). For a game on the PSP over a decade ago, this may have passed for some, but as a 50 dollar game today, it's really schlocky.

Overall, though I 100%ed the game to be thorough, I can't really say I recommend subjecting yourself to 300 repetitive side missions and a main story that is absolutely brutal to sit through. Super fans need only apply!

Only recommended if you've enjoyed the game before and wanted to get a hit of nostalgia. Otherwise, I would say this is not a very good game and is not really worth playing at full price. Decent remaster, it looks and runs great with plenty of control options and quality of life improvements over the original game, but at the end of the day [b]it's still a lot of the same game designed for a portable device underneath[/b]. Runs well on Steam Deck and I think that's the best way to play it for sure! The enemy and environment variety are both laughable because the original game had to fit on the old UMDs for the PSP, and gameplay is delivered in extremely short bite-sized chunks for on-the-go gaming. It ends up feeling so tired and repetitive to play through. On top of that, the story is [i]terrible[/i], featuring an overacting villain whose dialogue is 90% reciting melodramatic dialogue [i]from a play that doesn't exist that you never see[/i]. The existing characters seem poorly utilized or hamfisted and the new characters are all pretty unlikable caricatures. In my opinion, the game is a failure as a prequel because I don't think it really brings any additional appreciation for the original story or develops anything meaningful on its own ([spoiler] especially considering you watch the Nibelheim Incident which we have seen before and then all the newly introduced characters die and then the game ends[/spoiler]). For a game on the PSP over a decade ago, this may have passed for some, but as a 50 dollar game today, it's really schlocky. Overall, though I 100%ed the game to be thorough, I can't really say I recommend subjecting yourself to 300 repetitive side missions and a main story that is absolutely brutal to sit through. Super fans need only apply!