Final Fantasy games typically spend a lot of time exclusive to PlayStation, especially newer titles, as Square Enix generally accepts at least a six-month or annual exclusivity agreement with Sony's platform. Some examples, like most recently with Forspoken, retain exclusivity on PlayStation for longer than a year. However, similar to many other AAA game releases, the PC platform is generally the sole exception to the rule. Most console-exclusive releases receive a PC port as well, bringing with it a slew of customizable graphics settings and options for the diverse platform. Unfortunately, Final Fantasy 7 Remake's PC port is the exception here as well.
Many fans and reviewers of the PC port have found a slew of issues with the version players have received on the Epic Games Store. Frame drops and stuttering, a lack of substantial graphics options and customization, all tied into the atypical $70 price tag, are all factors that have contributed to the backlash against Final Fantasy 7 Remake on PC. Amidst rumors of a potentially shelved Steam release, as well as theories that the shipped version of the PC port may actually be a reconfigured debug build, fans are rightfully not satisfied with Square Enix's PC port. Final Fantasy 7 Remake on PC is certainly playable on most PC rigs, but this release is still lacking.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake PC: Severe Stuttering and Frame Drops
After a year and a half of PlayStation exclusivity since its PS4 release, the PC version of Final Fantasy 7 Remake is missing fundamental options, in tandem with persistent issues plaguing the port outside of its missing features. The game is not facing any game-breaking bugs/glitches or any consistent crashing issues, but the main problem with this port is frame drops and stuttering during most gameplay segments. It's easy to chalk this up to poor optimization, something Square Enix has struggled with in the past like the Chrono Trigger PC port, but this should be unaccpetable for Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
Stuttering has been occurring relatively consistently in Final Fanasy 7 Remake's PC port, even on rigs with RTX 3090s and i7-10700K processors. Players have been reporting the issue in a variety of areas throughout Final Fantasy 7 Remake, noting huge frame drops and hiccups during gameplay. A majority of these problems don't seem to pertain to cutscenes and scripted scenarios, but things like moving the camera quickly, high action sequences, and witnessing multiple particle effects on screen all contribute to huge frame drops.
Any rigs with a GPU that has VRAM greater than 8GB seems to witness stuttering constantly due to poor VRAM management. So far, with no official fix or workaround from the developers, the only potential fix seems to be forcing the game to run in DirectX 11 mode at launch. Of course, this then breaks HDR support for Final Fantasy 7 Remake on PC. Fans can also utilize a mod available on Nexus that disables Final Fantasy 7 Remake's dynamic resolution scaling system, which is intrinsically tied to the game's frame limiter. This can limit frame drops in some instances, but isn't a permanent fix for the stuttering issues.
Lackluster Graphics Settings in Final Fantasy 7 Remake on PC
Of course, for a AAA game release, this kind of port is unacceptable for Final Fantasy 7 Remake, especially with the PS4/PS5 versions of the game being rock-solid in terms of performance. However, perhaps the most egregious issue with Final Fantasy 7 Remake's PC port outside of performance issues are the lack of graphics options and customization.
This hasn't typically been an issue with Square Enix ports in the past, but with Final Fantasy 7 Remake's PC port, the graphics settings are limited to say the least. All there is for customization is display mode, resolution, texture and shadow quality, framerate limiter, character density, and HDR. There are no anti-aliasing settings, no VSync toggle, no effects management like motion blur, or any options to tweak the game's forced resolution scaling mode (which can only be disabled by a fan mod). By comparison, Final Fantasy 15 has these options in spades (released in 2018), and even Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 and Kingdom Hearts 3 had better graphics options.
A year and a half after the initial release of Final Fantasy 7 Remake on PS4, it would've been reasonable to expect these options would be available in its PC port. That is not the case here, and it's certainly a shame, especially at an unheard of $70 price point on the Windows platform.
Fans Are Right To Be Frustrated with Final Fantasy 7 Remake on PC
That's mainly what every fan complaint and demand for a refund on social media has boiled down to: Square Enix released a barebones Final Fantasy 7 Remake PC port, exclusively on Epic Games Store (which is its own can of worms for certain fans), for a premium of $70. It's especially problematic considering Final Fantasy 7 Remake was built on Unreal Engine 4, Epic's own game development engine. These kind of shortcomings are unacceptable for an Unreal Engine 4 game, especially at a price point that virtually no other AAA PC port has released with (typically in the $50 or $60 range). Fans are right to be upset here, especially after waiting over a year.
Square Enix has not yet commented publicly on the issues of the PC release of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, but even though a patch could certainly remedy these issues, that's still not enough for fans. Especially for day-one purchasers, having to wait until an update to have bare-minimum adjustments to graphics settings is a prerequisite that not a lot of Final Fantasy fans will have the patience for. Considering previous Final Fantasy ports to PC have not had these shortcomings, as well as previous Square Enix-published games on PC, there really isn't much room for an excuse here. $70 for a subpar version of Final Fantasy 7 Remake on PC is not what fans want.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake is available now on PC, PS4, and PS5.
Source: Digital Foundry
