Google says average review score is 4.6 of 5 or 88% on metacritic, all major outlets giving it 8-10 of 10.
Maximillian Dood did a spoiler talk with easy allies which contextualises a fair bit that upon further play time paying attention makes a whole buttonne of sense.
7r is most definitely its own genre or at least in an incredibly under exposed genre, most action RPGs are cooldown action based, think WoW waiting for skills to be available with rotations being optimal, or they are total free action ala kingdom hearts or ff15, both promote being in the right place at the right time for very different reasons. 7r's combat is action until meaningful actions are available which is a terrible way to explain it, ATB charges faster with action whether it be attack or defense, ATB is a commodity, meaningful actions require ATB, healing, items, actual damage and strategic abilities all are meaningful actions, so you have to be active to do anything meaningful, this means moving,attacking and defending to allow you to do anything of actual value, which leans more towards fighting games then to TPA, only game I've played with a similar system of combat is rogue galaxy but even it was still a cooldown base with a combo flair, point is playthrough on classic or easy sure you and hit square to win even on normal you can get away with it in some cases but your totally ignoring how the game is meant to be played, to make this abundantly clear I'll list the overarching mechanics.
-stagger system
-strength/weakness system
-atb charge system
-character specific abilities
-materia system
-weapon upgrade system
-weapons/armour/accessories system
-physical position systems(don't stand in line of fire for scrub deaths)
-summon system
Seriously the only time combat falls over is aerial combat which thankfully is fairly rare however it is a place where an improvement can be made, additional characters will also add further depth to combat cause every character playes different, and that gets even more complex if they add a Mid battle phs system now we actually have more then 3 characters permanent, basically saying the combat is shallow is downright false no matter how you slice it, it is most certainly not a normal action RPG
Adding in Hardmode is pretty great so far, only a couple of bosses in but crikey there is a significant step up in character management involved in being successful without items.
As for the Nomuraisms scattered throughout with emphasis on the last chapter are like 5% of the game experience and while playing through a second time that last chapter isn't anywhere near as much of a lore dumpster fire, mainly cause you actually notice the hints that we aren't playing 7o, all while allowing for non-main continuity DLC for all future games, which I'm all for more 7r gameplay.
Now I'm not saying the game is perfect by any stretch but the majority of the game is amazing, not liking the art style or this characters voice are entirely subjective, so I'll be as objective as I can be, story is close enough overall that you should like it if you liked the original excluding the last chapter, character development you definitely understand the characters better by the end of 7r then you do at the end of the midgar section of 7o side characters included making platefall and other similar events far more meaningful, combat is more engaging with more potential to expand, visually it looks far better, musically it's mind-blowing, voice sync and acting overall is passable at worst at best it makes you emote, and most importantly it has actual replayability, so objectively it's a better game
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