Regarding FF7 Remake, I’d say it might be fun if you just want to play an action RPG, but once you get to about the midway point of the first game, the story gets impossible to follow if you’re unfamiliar with the plot.

The remake definitely assumes you’ve already played the original, as it’s not a 1:1 replication at all. There’s a ton of foreshadowing and specific story deviations, which won’t make any sense if you don’t know how the story first played out.

Without giving anything away, you can kind of think about it as if you were seeing the same story from another vantage point. Most stuff overlaps, but you also get new information, and some old information is only hinted at or isn’t mentioned at all.

Lots of stuff from the original has been cut for pacing, and new stuff added, so it really does feel like a completely different experience. Of the remakes, I’ve only played the first game, but Im waiting for the whole thing to be done so I can get the collection.