SPOILER WARNING

Retracing our original journey through Midgar. It might be different in Remake, but still, read on at your own peril!

1 Okay, this point has been hammered home often enough by now, but blowing up the first Mako reactor in the game’s intro was just the coolest.

2 Cloud was just in it for the money and is about to split with AVALANCHE. Fortunately his childhood friend Tifa gets him to stay on for one more job.

3 On the way to the next Mako reactor something goes wrong with the group’s security bypass, and the whole team must jump out of the moving train into the tunnels.

4 This time blowing up the reactor goes less wrong, and in a dramatic and very polygonal cutscene Cloud is separated from Tifa and Barret as he falls into flames.

5 But every Cloud and all that as he (literally) falls for Aerith in Sector 5’s abandoned church, helping her escape the Turks, and jokingly becoming her personal bodyguard.

6 As she helps him return to the Sector 7 Slums, they spot a fancily dressed Tifa being carried off in a chocobo carriage to the adult entertainment district of Wall Market.

7 One things leads to another, and Cloud dresses as a woman to woo Don Corneo to get information. Failure is an option, but we all reloaded, right?

8 Unfortunately you end up dumped in the sewers having to fight (no joke) ninja turtles, and this horny beast, Abzu, who makes a return in Remake.

9 To get back to AVALANCHE’s hideout, Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith pick their way through the Train Graveyard. Expect more of this in Remake.

10 But on arrival they find the other members of AVALANCHE engaged with the Turks, fending off an attack on Sector 7. They join the fray, but things don’t go so well.

11 The crew take refuge back in Sector 5 at Aerith’s house as they regroup and come up with a plan to finish the fight… or fight as best as they can.

12 They literally have to climb up wreckage in Wall Market in order to reach Midgar’s higher plates and pick their way over to Shinra’s towering HQ.

13 The monolithic structure has been looming over the whole game, but here the party can choose to stealth their way inside, or go in all guns blazing.

14 Whichever approach you take, you make your way up multiple floors of puzzles, and eventually discover strange experiments going on inside the tower.

15 Again things go awry and the crew must flee Midgar, stealing vehicles and blazing off on the highway. Off to new horizons… Right, Remake Part 2?