Square Enix pushes back the release date for what might be its most highly anticipated game ever.

People have been waiting a long time for the Final Fantasy VII remake. Even if you don’t count all the years gamers were clamoring for a remake of the series’ biggest hit with no reaction from publisher Square Enix, it’s been roughly half a decade since the company officially announced Final Fantasy Remake at the E3 trade show in 2015.

▼ Final Fantasy VII Remake”s latest preview video

And now they’re going to have to wait even longer. While Square Enix had initially said the game would go on sale March 3, producer Yoshinori Kitase recently sent out a tweet breaking the news that a decision has been made to push that back by more than a month.

Kitase’s message reads:

This is Yoshinori Kitase, producer for Final Fantasy VII remake.

The entire staff has been putting everything they have into the development of Final Fantasy VII Remake, and in order to deliver a game of the highest quality to your hands, we have made the decision to alter the release date to April 10. On behalf of the team, I would like to offer our sincere apologies to all those who have been eagerly looking forward to playing the game.

Making all of you wait even longer was an extremely difficult decision, but we will be using that time to make the game meet your expectations that much better, so we hope you will all wait a little while longer.

Final Fantasy has long been a franchise that produces passionate emotion in the gamer community, and reactions on Japanese Twitter have been mixed but strong. In one camp are patient fans who’ve said:

“If it means a higher-quality game, I’ve got no problem waiting!”
“We’ve been waiting for five years, so what’s another month or so?”
“I’m sure everyone on the development team is incredibly busy every day, so please take care of your health. I’ll be waiting and looking forward to playing the finished game, just like everyone else in Japan.”
“I’ll be waiting! Nothing to complain about it if you just think of it as more time to be excited for the release.”

But just like the Final Fantasy games are often a struggle between light and dark, angrier, less understanding voices also made themselves heard. Some of the most upset commenters were those who were reminded of Final Fantasy XV, a game that was delayed multiple times and ended up feeling disjointed and confused as to what sort of experience it wanted to be.

“At this point, they may as well just cancel it.”
“They ended up spending way too long on stuff that didn’t matter when making Final Fantasy XIV. Is the same thing going to happen here?”
“They’re delaying it to increase the quality? More like they’re delaying it because right now it doesn’t meet even the bare minimum standard to be called ‘playable.’ They gave the sam sort of excuse with XIV.”
“In the end, they’re just going to dump an unfinished game on us.”
“No prob. I knew it would get delayed, so I’ve asked for time off from work so I can play it when you finally finish it in October.”

There’s an oft-repeated adage about how a delayed game will eventually be good, but a rushed one is bad forever. As the lukewarm response for Final Fantasy XIV proved, though, extra time doesn’t always guarantee satisfaction. There is, however, at least one clear silver lining to the delay. March 3 this year is a Tuesday, but April 10 is a Friday, meaning there won’t be any need to slog through multiple days of work or school before sinking a weekend into Final Fantasy Remake…unless it gets delayed again, but fingers crossed on that.

Source: Twitter/@FFVIIR_CLOUD via Jin
Images: YouTube/PlayStation
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Follow Casey on Twitter, where he’s OK with the delay if it means more/better Chocobo content.