"Final Fantasy 7 Remake" was, unsurprisingly, one of our favorite games of 2020. It could have been just a graphical upgrade of the old game, but instead it rebuilt the gameplay from the ground up and built on the original story in a subversive way. Now comes Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade, with enhanced graphics and gameplay on PS5, as well as a new story of fan favorite ninja Yuffie Kisaragi.

It is unfortunate, however, that it takes so long to start "Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade." Before pressing "New Game," I had to spend about three hours making sure my saved data was properly transferred over. The process is not difficult, but it is incredibly complicated and downright wasteful if you have an Internet plan with a data cap.

As PS4 games are remastered or upgraded to PS5, save data transfer will become an integral part of the experience. However, if developers cannot implement a simple solution like FF7R Intergrade, gamers will sacrifice a lot of time and bandwidth.

First things first: the Internet is full of multi-step guides on how to migrate FF7R save data from PS4 to PS5. This (correctly) suggests that this is not an easy or intuitive process. Without going into detail, here's how to do it:

For games like "Assassin's Creed Valhalla," the only way to transfer save data is to "install the PS5 version" and "load the save game," so compare and contrast.

This entire process assumes that you have already transferred all your PS4 saves to the PS5, which is a time-consuming process in itself.

However, for PS5 players playing FF7R for the first time, this will not be a problem. All they have to do is download the game and launch the new file. However, there are many "Final Fantasy" fans who are quite enthusiastic about the game, and many of them bought and played the game as soon as it was released last year.

As a result, many (if not most) FF7R owners played the game on PS4 and had already finished the game when the PS5 debuted late last year. This means that before they can begin the FF7R intergrade, they must re-download the PS4 version and then download the PS5 version. Each game is a little over 80 GB. This process took me about 3 hours. If you have a slow internet connection, you may want to allow a full day.

I am also fortunate to have an internet plan with no data caps. However, in many parts of the US, ISPs start throttling (or charging extra for) service after you download 1TB of data; if you want to get the most out of FF7R Intergrade, you'll be downloading more than 10% of your monthly cap.

The advantage of transferring saved data to Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade is that the process is relatively simple and only needs to be done once. Furthermore, the process requires only about five minutes of user input, with the rest of the time spent passively waiting for the game to download and install. However, this is still a fairly large time investment, considering that all you are ultimately doing is uploading a single save file to Sony's servers.

FF7R is not the first PS5 game to have to go through this process. The same was necessary for Spider-Man: Remastered. However, we have also seen PS5 improvements in games like "God of War" (2018) and "Ghost of Tsushima" that did not require complex save transfers at all. Of course, "God of War" and "Ghost of Tsushima" are still patched PS4 games, not true PS5 games, but the point is the same: there must be a simpler way.

Once the PS5 is widely available and developers stop focusing on cross-genre releases, the "save data transfer" problem may (hopefully) be solved next year or the year after. But on the other hand, using the entire 80 GB game as a good-looking data transfer program is bound to frustrate players.