Just completed the game wanted to know what others thought. Yes, I know Im late to the party  
Maybe a thread was already made for this but I could only find the metacritic one 

My take:

An occassionally 10/10 game dragged down by some awefully padded level design & convoluted new additions to the story (but I'm by no means a purist).

The presentation often made my jaw drop but there were also bizzare inconsistencies. I can forgive tech struggles like low quality textures in places and the occassional low poly asset but I really could not understand why as a premeditated decision, they let Masashi Hamauzu go apeshit on half of the soundtrack. I'm all for new music, just make it consistent with the rest of the universe. A good half his additions are heavy techno/ electric guitars and feel at complete odds with the other typically superior tracks remastered from the original. 

Level Design;

Anyone who's played it will know what I mean referring to the padded level design...

You have an hour or so of the most incredibly world/plot building that increases in tension as you enter the Shinra building, only for it all to come to a screeching holt once you get to Hojo's lab and they decide to make it a 2hour poor mans Zelda Dungeon. To add salt to the wound, the characters often comment about how annoyingly long progress is during these parts of the game where mechanical failures turns a 20mins excursion into 2hours. These moments are scattered throughout the whole experience and are so poorly disguised that it really made me want to put the controller down. Artificially inflating the length of the game really wasn't necessary, cut the fat and you would have a 30hour superior experience.

Narrative/Story/Script.

I was really impressed with the way they fleshed out the characters and brought them to life with more nuances that I never picked up in the original, particularly Tifa and her motivations/doubt about the whole terrorist thing. The relationship between characters like Barret & Red were joyful to watch. The politically commentary seemed even more visible and sharp then before, just reinforcing that VII was ahead of its time. It would have been great if the changes stopped there..

Instead the whole phantoms/whispers constantly rearing their head (as well as sephiroth) was actually a terrible inclusion in my opinion, not only does it go on for far too long (and too frequently) without any explanation to their presence, once its revealed that they're ensuring fate follows its path I think it just feels cheap and takes the end scenarios to ridiculous places (like barret being killed but brought back). Whether they have a grander plan for the them remains to be seen, but in this stand alone game, they hurt the story imo. The grounded narrative being told and built were so strong, i don't know why they felt the need to dilute it with this lazy destiny crap and have you fighting a massive city size embodiment of fate as an end boss. It reeks of insecurity & is an unfortunate fall back on JRPGS tropes. The end honestly left me a bit confused and concerned for where they may try and take things next. 

I was mostly impressed with the writing but I just feel like Square could have actually cut down on the cutscenes. Sometimes the scenarios simply weren't adding value to the story. Its like watching a TV season which is 14 episodes long when it should have been 10.

Gameplay

Loved the battle system! Only critique is I would have liked to see more battles enforce specific tactics. I never really had to use slow/stop/Sleep/Silence for example. 

Edit: The camera system has definite room for improvement. Both in and out of battle. I often got headaches when navigating the big towns.
Sidequests, bad and poorly intergrated into story.

Platform/puzzles/world interaction etc. Expectedly mediocre but a step up from previous FF games. There were even a few moments I actually found satisfying, like Barret having to shoot through the rock walls.

Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out, just hope that going forward they trim down the fat on the core story and go for quality over quantity. Have a refined selection of side quests that are actually intriguing and expand the world and pit you against especially hard foes.

What about you?

Gameplay is where it disappoints the most, a lot of materia with no enemies to use it on, once I had the chapters open I tried on level hard yet still you need to travel alot to respawn those enemies, sidequests are from an ancient time, it's a narrow game that takes your hand and guide you, full of staircases that even Barrett complained while he was the leader, doesn't have day and night cycle, different weather, I mean any other RPG even low budgets will give those things now adays
I liked it's dark fantasy style and it's characters ofcourse they will always be special

Are things like a day and night cycle really necessary?

Those things definitely can add a lot to a more open world style RPG, but this just wasn't that kind of game.  I think there's also a place for more linear style RPGs, and this was more or less a good balance.

I pretty much loved most of the moments of it.

Jessie was so thirsty that not even the Niagara falls would be able to quench this girl.

The only thing I felt a bit bothered with other than the low res textures is when Barrett got stabbed by Sephiroth. The plot correcting ghosts came in and revived him. It kinda killed the shock part and while the ending left it out on the open as to whether or not the characters can die or will die. It's like ehhh.

Also god damn Zack is fucking Back! Also loved the gameplay and the characters.

Very much in line with your opinion, to me its a 10/10 game most of the time with some mild hiccups that take it down a notch for a couple of moments. 

I very much enjoyed the expanded story and much like how you put it, I was very impressed about how they fleshed out the characters turned out to be. Much like in FFXV, you feel for them. The fact that the game its story/character driven makes the linearity of the world design make sense and fit well. Not sure if its the direction I would've picked if given a choice, but it works well here since its done by design and its well written. Maybe the ending is the more divisive point of the game, but I personally like it quite a lot, its very meta and very telling of their intent to deviate from the original story in further installments. I hope that is the case, I like it when remakes are also a reimaginings, because certain elements dont translate well after 23 years. Dialogue being one of them, it threw me off a bit in the begining of the game how Barret is presented. Very much in line with how the original character was portrayed, but im not sure if that was the right call for this interpretation of the game. 

As for the more technical aspects, well the game is gorgeous in spite of a few instances of frame drop, but the gameplay- specifically the battle system- to me is the best in the franchise, and I do mean that. I mentioned this since the demo came out, I loved how the mix the active battle system of modern RPGs with the classic ATB system of old, I hope this is a model they reincorporate for future FF games. I absolutely loved it and find it very dynamic.  
Other than that and as weird as it may sound I wouldve liked more "filler" content. I feel this had very few sidequest, few missions, maybe an optional post-game dungeon/area with though enemies, I dont know, the usual side-content RPGs usually get nowadays. The game doesnt really need it (most games dont), but I would've liked it as a plus. It doesnt really do much getting the Bahamut summon when theres so little left to do. 

I think the filler content is fine if they just make it side quests and design the levels better. Overall I think this speaks on the poor  design of the side quests. Normally what you would have is a few unique areas in the game which you hear about, maybe briefley visit but do not properly explore. Exploring them properly requires a few key items and levelling up character to deal with the stronger fiends. This is also where you would find unique items and materia and a chance to pit them against stronger foes.

The abandoned Shinra research facility/

The graveyard 

The sewers

all could have been designed to host what you're talking about and include additional story tibits and world building.

They could have introduced something like corrupted materia, an attempt to recreate summons gone wrong. Essentially the dark aeons from X.

I would have gone further with the world interation and let you cast magic outside of battle on specific targets (like how you could hit/shoot specific targets). It would be a natural way of unveiling hidden areas. Revisiting a location once you have mastered time materia so you can cast stop on a propeller that is preventing entry to a deeper level of the research facility, or using aeroga to displace junk, blizzaga to freeze a body of water preventing passage, Thundaga to power a now defunct piece of machinery 

I think most of these will be resolved with Part 2 since that part of the game opens up. 

10/10 as a fan but I acknowledge the padded areas and quite weak side quests.

I hate that Zack is alive, hello Mr. Nomura there is no reason to do KH story bullshit here some people should just stay dead and Zack is one of them. Zack is popular due to Crisis Core but he needs to die for Cloud to happens. I only see this as Square Enix trying to cash in on popularity for future spin off.

If Zack is still alive he better be in a separate dimension not in the main Remake timeline.

I was genuinely confused and couldn't figure out whether it was in the same world or vision... Either way I'm not a fan of fan serving getting in the way of authenticity.