I enjoyed the interpretations of the old soundtrack in this one. The bombastic music with the set pieces made for an astounding experience. It's different enough to be it's own thing while still feeling like FF7 did.
My memory may not be super accurate here, but I was pleasantly surprised that "One-Winged Angel" was barely, if at all, altered in the final boss fight. It is indeed a great soundtrack, but that song is iconic for a reason.
A few random thoughts, having finally finished the main game:
-it's too long. Multiple chapters were heavily padded, some with decent content and some with utterly boring crap. Cut about 1/3 of the game and its pacing would be much better.
-really excellent voice acting. Barret looks and sort of talks like even more of a stereotype than before, but the actor sells it so incredibly well and still sounds so damn sincere that it works. Aerith's actress is also especially good, and Cloud's hits the necessary tone nicely. The VA did a lot to keep the game immersive.
-some of the enemies felt more like bad design than proper challenge. The flying enemies are just tedious since generally only Barret and Aerith can consistently hit them, the enemies with blades that spin around them are just aggravatingly stupid since the dumb Cloud AI just keeps getting murdered while you chip away with magic or Barret, and some of the others can interrupt your attacks far too easily.
-several of the boss fights are very damn good. Rude and Reno and both of the last two boss fights are excellent, and most of the others are at least decent.
-felt to me like materia weren't as important as they could have been. I generally just tried to have at least one of each spell available and didn't bother with linking and all that, and did fine.
Overall, I don't regret playing it, and I think having played the original when it came out helped me enjoy this one more (seeing the characters reinterpreted well, mostly). But it's a 6.
