You control Cloud Strife and his allies fighting a powerful corporation and a mysterious enemy across a sprawling world, using turn-based menus to attack, cast spells, and use special materia orbs slotted into your gear. Swapping materia between characters lets you reshape how each person fights. It is a long, dense classic RPG, so expect a real time commitment rather than a quick story.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
The short version
Playing this on the go doesn't diminish its power one bit; it remains a landmark for good reason, even if its age shows in some dated mechanics.
In the hands
The materia system still offers remarkable flexibility for build customization, letting you shape party roles in ways many modern RPGs oversimplify.
Look and sound
Blocky PS1-era models haven't aged gracefully next to modern remasters, but Midgar's oppressive industrial atmosphere and that legendary score still land hard.
The long haul
Essential for any RPG fan who hasn't experienced the original. Newcomers used to modern remakes should adjust expectations for the visuals accordingly.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You control Cloud, a former soldier turned mercenary, as he joins an eco-terrorist group trying to stop a massive energy corporation from draining the life out of the world, and the opening hours have you sneaking into heavily guarded power plants in the sprawling city of Midgar, fighting random encounters that pop up as you walk using a menu-based system where you choose attacks, magic, and items for each party member each turn. A resource called Materia, small orbs you slot into your weapons and armor, grants spells and abilities, and combining different Materia together lets you build combos like linking a spell to an ability that triggers it automatically when you get hit. This Switch version bundles in extras from an earlier expanded release, including toggleable cheats that let you speed up battles, turn off random encounters entirely, or unlock powerful attacks instantly if you would rather focus on the story.
Your goal is following Cloud and his growing group of allies as they chase the story's central threat across the wider world beyond Midgar, visiting very different regions with their own towns, dungeons, and side activities like the soccer-adjacent minigames scattered throughout. A full playthrough runs somewhere around thirty five to forty hours if you play at a normal pace, and the story contains some of the genre's most famous plot turns, which still land with real weight even now. The portable nature of the Switch version suits this game's slower, menu-heavy pace well, letting you manage your Materia builds and grind a bit while lying in bed or riding somewhere.
The backgrounds behind your characters are stretched and blurry compared to the crisp character models, a side effect of upscaling art made for older, lower resolution screens, and random encounters can feel frequent by modern standards if you are not using the speed-up options. This is the original 1997 game, not the newer full remake, so anyone expecting that more recent, dramatically reimagined version should adjust expectations accordingly. For revisiting a genuine landmark or experiencing one for the very first time on the go, it remains a worthwhile trip.