Yup, he sure has. Put in 150 hours into it. His life revolves around FF, Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons. He is a massive FF nerd.
I am going to have to trust him over the links you provided.
Looks like the Kotaku article was basing it on a guess from the trailer, not playing the game.
The beautiful part of this is there's no wrong way of interpreting it
A story that directly follows the story of a previous work is sequel. Even if time travel is a part of the narrative.
Back to the Future Part 2 is still a sequel, despite going back to the exact same locations.
The plot of Remake is that Sephiroth is trying to have a do over. That makes it a sequel in my eyes.