During the Final Fantasy VII symphonic reunion Square Enix released to a live audience on June 9th, 2019 just ahead of Square Enix’s E3 press conference, the company revealed that the release date for Final Fantasy VII Remake is set for March 3rd, 2020 next year.

The PS4 action-RPG’s latest trailer doesn’t offer much of anything new, and it still completely keeps Tifa Lockhart well out of view or reference.

Thematically the trailer doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, given that it just cobbles together some battle scenes and cinematics without much context. If you’re one of the handful of people who haven’t played Final Fantasy VII then it’ll likely leave you scratching your head… a lot. However, it’s pretty obvious Square Enix dropped the trailer for the purpose of revealing the release date and not necessarily because they were trying to explain anything new or interesting to gamers.

The trailer does feature more of the hack-and-slash, real-time combat, with Cloud fighting some magitek armor, as well as plenty of cinematics from early on in the game.

There’s supposed to be some kind of moral dilemma in one sequence where Barrett shrugs off somebody’s home getting blown up, and then we see the meeting between Aerith and Cloud… again. It’s really over dramatic and right proper cheesy, even for Final Fantasy standards. And still… no Tifa.

But anyway, after years of waiting and begging Square Enix for a release date we finally find out that the game is due out in 2020, five years after it entered into development.

I couldn’t be less enthused about this game. There’s just no real reason to be excited save for the pretty graphics. The gameplay looks like a copy-pasted carryover from Final Fantasy XV, and they haven’t showcased any kind of gameplay outside of some combat sequences, which doesn’t inspire a lot of hope that this will be anything more than a walking sim with a ton of cinematics and some “Tap ‘X’ to win” battle encounters sprinkled in between.

We’ll find out just how wrong I am about the game when Square presumably debuts additional gameplay and mechanics during their E3 press confernece.

(Thanks for the news tip Omar Garcia)