Final Fantasy 7 Launches On iPhone And iPad

Square Enix has released Final Fantasy VII on iOS devices for iPad and iPhone users. The game is just a typical port-over from the PC version that the company released a while ago.

The Verge did a short write-up on the release of the mobile version of the game, which was accompanied by a launch trailer that you can check out below.

It's always easy to forget how ugly the actual gameplay looks in the exploration segments of the game. I remember seeing the pudgy little 3D models for the first time on one of those old PSX demo discs and was so disappointed after constantly seeing the screen captures from the cinematic sequences in the gaming magazines.

Anyway, the arrival of Final Fantasy VII on the iPad and iPhone makes it available for those who have an iPhone 5S or higher, an iPad 3 or higher, or an iPad Mini 2 or higher. The game is available for $19.99 for across Apple's mobile devices.

This comes just ahead of Square Enix's plans to re-release Final Fantasy VII as a complete remake. The upcoming title will be for the PS4 and gamers are hoping that it's going to be reminiscent to some of the visual sensibilities that Square dumped into Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

Right now we honestly have no idea what the Final Fantasy VII: Remake will look like or how it will play. We do know that Square does plan to make some changes to a few things based on what they've said about the remake. The combat is apparently getting fitted for today's generation of gamer. That makes sense given that the old turn-based combat in Final Fantasy VII wasn't really the greatest or the most tactical, especially given that it was limited to only three characters on the screen at one time.

One thing that could help add some flavor to the game is making it where four characters can be in the party at one time. It opens up a lot of new combat possibilities – but then the bad guys would also need to get a major buff in their life and damage output to balance out the addition of an extra character during the turn-based combat sequences.

Beyond that it sounds like Square is only in the very, very early phases of development for the highly-requested remake of Final Fantasy VII. If they really did just start working on the game as recent as this year then don't expect anything substantial to appear for the game until 2017.

In the meantime, if you're a fan of Final Fantasy and you've somehow missed the game when it first released on the PSX and PC, or if you missed the many other times it re-released on PC, or if you missed when it was released on the PSP and PS3, then you can now grab a copy of the game for Apple's iOS devices and finally get caught up on the game that fans fell in love with nearly 20 years ago.