Fantastic sequel to remake, one of my favorite game soundtracks period, fun combat, and great story. My only complaints are that the devs went a bit overboard with the amount of side content and minigames, and going for 100% can be a drag, also the map design in the Gongaga region is genuinely awful. Besides that, it is an excellent game and I am excited for act 3.
Buddy, I've not had a love/hate relationship like this in a minute......
There's so so much I want to write about but I don't want to make myself all mad/sad.
Yeah, I mighta had a better time if I didn't pour 100 hours into it going over all the side content but that shouldn't be on me?
Gears and Gambits? Gears and Get To Fuck.
See you in 4 years or whatever
There's so so much I want to write about but I don't want to make myself all mad/sad.
Yeah, I mighta had a better time if I didn't pour 100 hours into it going over all the side content but that shouldn't be on me?
Gears and Gambits? Gears and Get To Fuck.
See you in 4 years or whatever
This review contains spoilers
Recreating such an iconic game as Final Fantasy VII is a herculean task. Square managed to nail Midgar with Remake, and now they've somehow topped that scope and story with Rebirth. No game is perfect, but this one is damn near perfection in every way.
The world of Final Fantasy VII is one of my favorites besides Alrest in Xenoblade 2. The thing I was most excited to see was how they would change and expand upon things like in Remake. They do it consistently with every area of the game. Whether it's Junon and learning about the history of the republic that was once there and the people who live under the large base, or the vastly expanded Gongaga region and the whole dungeon at its reactor, every area has something going on that's either expanding upon the original game or adding something completely new that compliments it. The world is really brought to life. The only thing I'd like to see added in part 3 is just being able to change the time of day. Seeing places like the grasslands and corel desert at sunset was amazing. I'd like to be able to experience areas at different times whenever.
The gameplay is absolutely a step up from Remake. The combat there was already great, but could've used some more fine-tuning for certain situations where you just had to sit and let your ATB fill up. We saw the addition of two person moves in Intermission and sure enough they made that a focal point in Rebirth now. Since you have a big party you can do all sorts of awesome attacks that utilize 2 specific characters. I adore the synergy moves that don't cost anything to use. This fixed the issue of not knowing what to do to get ATB in some situations, and some of the attacks are powerful enough to fill an entire bar on their own which is great. This has to be one of the best combat systems I've seen and I really don't even know what to expand upon for part 3. Outside of combat there's so much to do I don't even wanna try to list it all. I overall loved the world Intel as it's completely optional and doesn't affect the story, but gives you so much more lore and is worth seeing through. The summon crystals powering up your summons and making them easier to obtain through the simulator, the lifesprings giving more info on the regions, the protorelics being completely unique scenarios that lead to great character moments, etc. There's so much game that you don't have to experience. But just like the original skipping out feels like a mistake. This variety is what 16 could've used to keep things fresh. I love all the different activities this game gives you to do.
Rebirth contains a large chunk of story from 7's narrative. You visit many places and a lot happens. The big thing everyone has been waiting on though is Aerith's death and what Sephiroth intends to do leading up to that. I was surprised by the fact that most of the game plays out exactly as you would expect. The way Remake ended had me thinking we could see a lot more new stuff happening or have locations/events taking place out of order even. Yet the story goes as you think it will, and we don't see anything out of Zack (outside of the opening) until pretty far into the game. If there's one thing I wish they did, it was to start hinting or feeding info to us over time. Because of the way they decide to reveal the many timelines and throw a ton of info at you after Aerith's supposed death… you end up feeling confused and maybe even frustrated because they're actively taking away from a huge moment of emotion. I think about how they could've still left us wondering (since most people didn't even understand what they were seeing at first in the endgame anyway) while giving us these little info bits over the course of the chapters. Stuff like Cloud getting flashes of future events or other timelines, or Sephiroth starting to slowly reveal things even though the player and Cloud wouldn't be able to fully understand yet. I just wish it wasn't all at once. But I still have faith in this deviation in the story. Everything they've been doing has been intentional and meant to subvert expectations. If they're going the route I think they are where Cloud can't accept Aerith's death and still thinks she's alive… I'm super invested to see his descent into madness. We won't know for sure what's happening for a few years. But even if we learn more and things don't look promising I'm just invested to see this through. This project has been insane and if they pull it off all the way through I will be extremely happy.
Plenty of people will be able to say it better than I have in this review… but this game is amazing in every way. Almost every area and activity had some new mini game or mechanic. Many quests have unique field and battle themes which is crazy to me(and man is the OST in general fantastic). The characters are all fun to play as and have great arcs and interactions. Rebirth has brought back the feeling and emotions of original Final Fantasy VII in so many ways it doesn’t feel real. The lines I always think back to as a way to describe this remake project perfectly are from the original reveal.
“The reunion at hand may bring joy… it may bring fear… but let us embrace whatever it brings. For they are coming back. At last the promise has been made.”
And contrasting that with the line at the ending of this game I think paints a clear picture that big changes are coming. And I couldn't be more ready to see it…
“No promises await at journey's end”
The world of Final Fantasy VII is one of my favorites besides Alrest in Xenoblade 2. The thing I was most excited to see was how they would change and expand upon things like in Remake. They do it consistently with every area of the game. Whether it's Junon and learning about the history of the republic that was once there and the people who live under the large base, or the vastly expanded Gongaga region and the whole dungeon at its reactor, every area has something going on that's either expanding upon the original game or adding something completely new that compliments it. The world is really brought to life. The only thing I'd like to see added in part 3 is just being able to change the time of day. Seeing places like the grasslands and corel desert at sunset was amazing. I'd like to be able to experience areas at different times whenever.
The gameplay is absolutely a step up from Remake. The combat there was already great, but could've used some more fine-tuning for certain situations where you just had to sit and let your ATB fill up. We saw the addition of two person moves in Intermission and sure enough they made that a focal point in Rebirth now. Since you have a big party you can do all sorts of awesome attacks that utilize 2 specific characters. I adore the synergy moves that don't cost anything to use. This fixed the issue of not knowing what to do to get ATB in some situations, and some of the attacks are powerful enough to fill an entire bar on their own which is great. This has to be one of the best combat systems I've seen and I really don't even know what to expand upon for part 3. Outside of combat there's so much to do I don't even wanna try to list it all. I overall loved the world Intel as it's completely optional and doesn't affect the story, but gives you so much more lore and is worth seeing through. The summon crystals powering up your summons and making them easier to obtain through the simulator, the lifesprings giving more info on the regions, the protorelics being completely unique scenarios that lead to great character moments, etc. There's so much game that you don't have to experience. But just like the original skipping out feels like a mistake. This variety is what 16 could've used to keep things fresh. I love all the different activities this game gives you to do.
Rebirth contains a large chunk of story from 7's narrative. You visit many places and a lot happens. The big thing everyone has been waiting on though is Aerith's death and what Sephiroth intends to do leading up to that. I was surprised by the fact that most of the game plays out exactly as you would expect. The way Remake ended had me thinking we could see a lot more new stuff happening or have locations/events taking place out of order even. Yet the story goes as you think it will, and we don't see anything out of Zack (outside of the opening) until pretty far into the game. If there's one thing I wish they did, it was to start hinting or feeding info to us over time. Because of the way they decide to reveal the many timelines and throw a ton of info at you after Aerith's supposed death… you end up feeling confused and maybe even frustrated because they're actively taking away from a huge moment of emotion. I think about how they could've still left us wondering (since most people didn't even understand what they were seeing at first in the endgame anyway) while giving us these little info bits over the course of the chapters. Stuff like Cloud getting flashes of future events or other timelines, or Sephiroth starting to slowly reveal things even though the player and Cloud wouldn't be able to fully understand yet. I just wish it wasn't all at once. But I still have faith in this deviation in the story. Everything they've been doing has been intentional and meant to subvert expectations. If they're going the route I think they are where Cloud can't accept Aerith's death and still thinks she's alive… I'm super invested to see his descent into madness. We won't know for sure what's happening for a few years. But even if we learn more and things don't look promising I'm just invested to see this through. This project has been insane and if they pull it off all the way through I will be extremely happy.
Plenty of people will be able to say it better than I have in this review… but this game is amazing in every way. Almost every area and activity had some new mini game or mechanic. Many quests have unique field and battle themes which is crazy to me(and man is the OST in general fantastic). The characters are all fun to play as and have great arcs and interactions. Rebirth has brought back the feeling and emotions of original Final Fantasy VII in so many ways it doesn’t feel real. The lines I always think back to as a way to describe this remake project perfectly are from the original reveal.
“The reunion at hand may bring joy… it may bring fear… but let us embrace whatever it brings. For they are coming back. At last the promise has been made.”
And contrasting that with the line at the ending of this game I think paints a clear picture that big changes are coming. And I couldn't be more ready to see it…
“No promises await at journey's end”
I was ready to really love this game the way I did Remake. I suppose I did overall enjoy it, but there was a lot that frustrated me about this game that led to massive disappointment in the end. I think the most egregious thing for me (and others, as I've seen) is the oversaturation of minigames. My goodness, I thought the original overdid it, and yet they found a way to just make nearly everything into some kind of minigame. Yes, many of them are optional, but I like doing side content in an RPG! I don't like having to learn a new set of rules or a control scheme to do said content. Also, a lot of these are worse versions of already good games (Mario Kart and Rocket League, for example). So there's that. Then there's the exploration aspect. I like that they wanted to make the open world feel wild and expansive, but it just got so tedious to explore certain areas the further along you got. After a while it started to feel like a chore and less like I was playing a fun video game. And my final complaint is something I won't go in-depth on to avoid spoilers... but the ending of this game is an absolute mess. From the final battles to the implications for the story, it's just kind of all over the place and not very cohesive. And yeah, that's saying something compared to the original. Now, despite all of that, there are things I loved. The combat is incredibly satisfying, and revisiting the familiar sights and characters from the original is delightful, and of course the music is absolutely wonderful. A lot of that was enough to keep me invested, but I think there are definitely some missed opportunities, especially as a follow-up to one of the very best games of the decade.
04/22/2024
Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth improves on the previous installment's combat and pacing (for the most part). Through the improved combat and the expansive open-world, I was deeply immersed in this game. Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth is one of those games where I would spend entire gaming sessions on side stuff, not even touching the main story. However, the messy last two chapters and the sometimes forced mini-game integration l hold the game back for me. I don't think I'm ever doing a full-second playthrough. If anything I'm glad I can just replay chapters and skip the parts I hate. 8.5/10
Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth improves on the previous installment's combat and pacing (for the most part). Through the improved combat and the expansive open-world, I was deeply immersed in this game. Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth is one of those games where I would spend entire gaming sessions on side stuff, not even touching the main story. However, the messy last two chapters and the sometimes forced mini-game integration l hold the game back for me. I don't think I'm ever doing a full-second playthrough. If anything I'm glad I can just replay chapters and skip the parts I hate. 8.5/10
I did not know what to expect from this game after playing the already amazing 7 remake. I thought to myself how would they find a way to improve upon something already nearly flawless and wow was I amazed after finishing my 110 hour playthrough. Everything was vastly improved upon whether it was the combat, world, quest's, side quests etc. The exploration was fun and I had a great time defeating various enemies in different areas. The characters and plot had me hooked and dreading having to conclude this one of a kind experience. I have no problem waiting a few years for the conclusion of this story if it means the game would be on par with this entry.
It's like having the world's greatest pizza for dinner and having to drive to a different county for each slice.
A remarkable game for a FF7 fan. Improved on Remake and added so much more - can see myself going back to complete extra tough quests. Part 3 will find it tough to exceed this!
this game is stinky and weeb ass
This game is pretty fun, but the side objectives get kind of repetitive. Still, Yuffie comes up with lyrics for the chocobo music, and Cait Sith is actually a fun character now, so I'm willing to forgive a lot.
Finished main story Apr 22, still not 100%
If you’ve been a FFVII fan, either from the original release or from Remake, you’ll enjoy this game. The nostalgia and bias will have you feeling great all through the adventure, and you won’t think of it lower than a 4/5 game. That being said…
I am a huge FFVII fan. The original is my favorite game of all time and I got the platinum trophy in Remake. I had every intention to see Rebirth through with another platinum, but even with my level of enjoyment and love for the game and its world… it’s just too much. That might not sound like a bad thing, but at 60+ hours in, playing as a completionist through every region up through that point, finishing every quest I could, I felt I had the pulse of the game in check. I was wrong. In the last quarter of the game, you suddenly have a significant influx of content thrown at you. Refreshed mini games and challenges you’ve completed already are made available in upgraded/hard versions. The Gold Saucer updates all its content with new challenges and hard versions. Regional content reveals hard mode versions. The battle simulator ends up being 1 of 3 different battle simulators in the game, all of which have additional battles thrown at you, then having hard mode versions and extra character versions after you finish the game.
Again, after 60-70 hours of playing, the games scope and content pacing is radically altered and I just lost my engagement to see it through. It was too much. Plus, the entire game needed to be completed on Hard Mode, and the optional 70+ proto-relic finale… Too much.
Realistically, this isn’t a major complaint for most players. If you want to jump in just for the story and amazing combat, it’s a wonderful game to dig in to.
There are minor gripes with no real “newly acquired” items section of your inventory, or cleaner/simplified UI choices for equipment and menu navigation. I would also have liked materia “sets” to change up a few different loadouts or combinations for your party without having to manually adjust everything for key challenges and fights.
Play it for the story and gameplay, skip it if you’re a completionist.
I am a huge FFVII fan. The original is my favorite game of all time and I got the platinum trophy in Remake. I had every intention to see Rebirth through with another platinum, but even with my level of enjoyment and love for the game and its world… it’s just too much. That might not sound like a bad thing, but at 60+ hours in, playing as a completionist through every region up through that point, finishing every quest I could, I felt I had the pulse of the game in check. I was wrong. In the last quarter of the game, you suddenly have a significant influx of content thrown at you. Refreshed mini games and challenges you’ve completed already are made available in upgraded/hard versions. The Gold Saucer updates all its content with new challenges and hard versions. Regional content reveals hard mode versions. The battle simulator ends up being 1 of 3 different battle simulators in the game, all of which have additional battles thrown at you, then having hard mode versions and extra character versions after you finish the game.
Again, after 60-70 hours of playing, the games scope and content pacing is radically altered and I just lost my engagement to see it through. It was too much. Plus, the entire game needed to be completed on Hard Mode, and the optional 70+ proto-relic finale… Too much.
Realistically, this isn’t a major complaint for most players. If you want to jump in just for the story and amazing combat, it’s a wonderful game to dig in to.
There are minor gripes with no real “newly acquired” items section of your inventory, or cleaner/simplified UI choices for equipment and menu navigation. I would also have liked materia “sets” to change up a few different loadouts or combinations for your party without having to manually adjust everything for key challenges and fights.
Play it for the story and gameplay, skip it if you’re a completionist.
The most amazing Final Fantasy single player experience of this century, without question. It`s crazy to think how they take like 15-20 hours of the original game and expand in such a way that it becomes a game of it`s own; you have content, between main quests, side content, minigames, up to 80-100 hours of gameplay, depending on how much you wish to invest time on those secondary stuff.
Story-wise, you need to treat this as a whole different thing, even more so than the first part. You get a lot of memorable scenes and dialogues from the original back again, but there`s an "avalanche" (pun intended) of new scenes, new characters, new motivations to keep the story rolling and even apparations of characters that weren`t on the original game. The whole "alternate timelines" thing from the first part still plays a big role on the development of the story on this one, and it brings a lot of new stuff to the game, although it can be way more confusing to understand all the events and how they take place, even with the core events of the original game still intact.
Gameplay wise, it`s just as good to play as the Remake. The combat is still the same, and the new characters have interesting and refreshing gameplay mechanics, especially Yuffie and Cait. I just resent the fact that they removed the way upgrading weapons functioned in the first game; the way it works in this game is just not as interesting. Even so, that`s not really a big of an issue, cause with all the new stuff they added, especially the synergy abilities and the relationship mechanic, the weapon upgrades functions well. This game has a lot of stuff to do, and I do mean a lot: the amount of minigames they added is astounding, even to a point that maybe they tried to do too much, and it`s just becomes tiresome, especially if you`re a completionist kind of gamer that tries to do everything - believe me, you`ll be spending a lot of time doing it all.
The way the world and the game is built reminds me a little of Final Fantasy X; the game at it`s core is still linear - you go from area to area as you move on throughout the story. But the way this game introduces the free roaming and open world spaces from the original is very clever; as you move, you get little "pockets" of open world, areas where you can get sidequests, chocobo hunting, minibosses and much more. And actually that`s very clever, cause if this game used open world just as the original, with all the new things they added, it could had been very overwhelming, so this way works just fine - even though not all the areas where that fun to explore.
Graphic and music, it`s just phenomenal. The characters models are just gorgeous and just a sight to behold and the music is just up to Final Fantasy standards - I just can`t get enough of all these Aerith`s theme renditions, makes me cry everytime. The only thing bad about how the game looks it`s the fact that this one still has those blurry and not rendered well background objects that Remake had, and the textures are not just what we expected at this point, but it`s doesnt come to be such a nuisance.
As i said at the beginning, this is it; this is the Final Fantasy experience we all wanted, this is the franchise at it`s best. When we all dreamed of a remake of Final Fantasy VII, we didn`t expected we would get this; honestly, this is so much better than we could have imagined.
Story-wise, you need to treat this as a whole different thing, even more so than the first part. You get a lot of memorable scenes and dialogues from the original back again, but there`s an "avalanche" (pun intended) of new scenes, new characters, new motivations to keep the story rolling and even apparations of characters that weren`t on the original game. The whole "alternate timelines" thing from the first part still plays a big role on the development of the story on this one, and it brings a lot of new stuff to the game, although it can be way more confusing to understand all the events and how they take place, even with the core events of the original game still intact.
Gameplay wise, it`s just as good to play as the Remake. The combat is still the same, and the new characters have interesting and refreshing gameplay mechanics, especially Yuffie and Cait. I just resent the fact that they removed the way upgrading weapons functioned in the first game; the way it works in this game is just not as interesting. Even so, that`s not really a big of an issue, cause with all the new stuff they added, especially the synergy abilities and the relationship mechanic, the weapon upgrades functions well. This game has a lot of stuff to do, and I do mean a lot: the amount of minigames they added is astounding, even to a point that maybe they tried to do too much, and it`s just becomes tiresome, especially if you`re a completionist kind of gamer that tries to do everything - believe me, you`ll be spending a lot of time doing it all.
The way the world and the game is built reminds me a little of Final Fantasy X; the game at it`s core is still linear - you go from area to area as you move on throughout the story. But the way this game introduces the free roaming and open world spaces from the original is very clever; as you move, you get little "pockets" of open world, areas where you can get sidequests, chocobo hunting, minibosses and much more. And actually that`s very clever, cause if this game used open world just as the original, with all the new things they added, it could had been very overwhelming, so this way works just fine - even though not all the areas where that fun to explore.
Graphic and music, it`s just phenomenal. The characters models are just gorgeous and just a sight to behold and the music is just up to Final Fantasy standards - I just can`t get enough of all these Aerith`s theme renditions, makes me cry everytime. The only thing bad about how the game looks it`s the fact that this one still has those blurry and not rendered well background objects that Remake had, and the textures are not just what we expected at this point, but it`s doesnt come to be such a nuisance.
As i said at the beginning, this is it; this is the Final Fantasy experience we all wanted, this is the franchise at it`s best. When we all dreamed of a remake of Final Fantasy VII, we didn`t expected we would get this; honestly, this is so much better than we could have imagined.
Oh boy, I have mixed feelings about this game... Overall, I'm really mixed. Ok, what did I like: the story, the characters, the charm. What I didn't like: the pacing, the open world and mini games (and the guilt I feel for not engaging in them), the characters some of the time... the story some of the time... the way everything moved so slowly and squishily. I play this game and I just wish it had a been a 20 hour linear game. I don't feel it was served by all the side-questing and open world-ing. Honestly, if it weren't for the Minnmax Deepest Dive, I don't think I would have played this game.
You know, I don't know what I expected from this game. It most certainly wasn't an open world game similar to, but definitely leagues better than, Ubisoft open world games.
I hate Ubisoft open world games.
I found myself bitter and sad that I was essentially a little bored with and tolerating the first 35 hours of this game. Luckily, things get better and better as the game gets on with it's minigames and story. The combat is great too, but the combat's balancing and mechanics are funky even with dialed in party members. Whoever decided to make materia easier to acquire and upgrade, thanks bro.
Rebirth is nothing if not great character moments -- and as slow as it starts, the story does get insane towards the end. I am definitely looking forward to see how it ends. This is the kind of game people are theory crafting in interesting ways and it's fun to speculate where it's all going.
I hate to be a fucking bitch because we're talking about FF7 here, but I just do not, and did not, do all the open world shit. I am tired of this kind of game -- and it's not Rebirth's fault. I played this game already through playing 50 similar games since 2007. Doing this with the FF7 crew definitely makes things better because the character moments are nothing short of stellar, but I'm burnt out on this type of video game permanently. I remember laughing maniacally, Walter White under the rafters style, when Chadley showed me that first radio tower. I almost put the game down for good to watch a 12 hour cutscene compilation on Youtube instead. I'm glad I didn't, but I genuinely almost did.
Please, let Reunion be a different type of game. I would like the finale of FF7 as a series to be a bit more special than it is presented here. Sure, appeal to casual gamers. Sure, lighten things up a bit. Just make the moment-to-moment gameplay more compelling. Square can do it.
Also put that motherfuckin Queensblood out on mobile/Steam. I am ready to fuck people UP in Queensblood.
I hate Ubisoft open world games.
I found myself bitter and sad that I was essentially a little bored with and tolerating the first 35 hours of this game. Luckily, things get better and better as the game gets on with it's minigames and story. The combat is great too, but the combat's balancing and mechanics are funky even with dialed in party members. Whoever decided to make materia easier to acquire and upgrade, thanks bro.
Rebirth is nothing if not great character moments -- and as slow as it starts, the story does get insane towards the end. I am definitely looking forward to see how it ends. This is the kind of game people are theory crafting in interesting ways and it's fun to speculate where it's all going.
I hate to be a fucking bitch because we're talking about FF7 here, but I just do not, and did not, do all the open world shit. I am tired of this kind of game -- and it's not Rebirth's fault. I played this game already through playing 50 similar games since 2007. Doing this with the FF7 crew definitely makes things better because the character moments are nothing short of stellar, but I'm burnt out on this type of video game permanently. I remember laughing maniacally, Walter White under the rafters style, when Chadley showed me that first radio tower. I almost put the game down for good to watch a 12 hour cutscene compilation on Youtube instead. I'm glad I didn't, but I genuinely almost did.
Please, let Reunion be a different type of game. I would like the finale of FF7 as a series to be a bit more special than it is presented here. Sure, appeal to casual gamers. Sure, lighten things up a bit. Just make the moment-to-moment gameplay more compelling. Square can do it.
Also put that motherfuckin Queensblood out on mobile/Steam. I am ready to fuck people UP in Queensblood.
There is so much I want to say and so much I could say about this game, but I’m not sure I have the words to describe properly just what this game meant to me on a grander scale so I’m just going to say this:
This game reminded me why I wanted to make games in the first place. There is no higher praise I can give anything than that.
10/10
This game reminded me why I wanted to make games in the first place. There is no higher praise I can give anything than that.
10/10
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Hours: 123
Spoilers: None but I do talk vaguely about some story beats
I have never played the original Final Fantasy VII. It is one of those games that has eluded me across my gaming journey. However, I have played Remake which my GOTY of the year it came out, I have 100% Crisis Core and I have watched Advent Children.
My experience with FF7 is purely based on osmosis between friends and my girlfriend. What I do know is that Rebirth is the bridge between the start and the end. It is where the world expands into the great unknown and I want to talk about it.
Rebirth starts with one of the boldest openings it could have offered and I knew from the get go, they understood the assignment of what they were going for in Remake. After the beginning, the game has a classic “Now THIS is the open world, go forth” and it lands as perfectly typical as it sounds. From there, you start your adventure into what is an open (enclosed) world RPG.
The big point of this game is the size and sheer scope that it offers to you. Regions that take hours to go through and explore. Map markers galore! For better or for worse, this is an open world game in which the mass regions you explore are segmented. Think of the game like a linear open world. It isn’t truly open world but with how much is jam packed in, you will feel like it is.
This leads me to mention my first love/hate relationship with what this game is. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has towers. It has semi climbable towers that allow you to reveal map markers to go do more exploring to fill your “Intel” metre. I thought we as gamers™ swore of enjoying these type of open world ideas. Though they are nowhere near as annoying as other games offer them, the fact that this is in here is still baffling to me. Especially because you are CONSTANTLY reminded by a certain character about every second intel you discover with a pointless cutscene to insult a character he himself created.
Thankfully, despite this typical usage of open world checklist, the game at least offers a fun and enjoyable world to explore. Each location is unique in it’s layout, they offer different chocobos to make every area feel you are never traversing in the same way. All the areas are thematically in line with the characters they offer stories for and every location feels like it was where they all started. They aren’t there for no reason and I appreciate that a lot about the game. A lot of open world experiences suffer from places not having a purpose and just exist to distract you. Rebirth being linear allows you to truly appreciate every new region you go diving into. Every time I felt like I wanted to get out of an area, the perfect moment happened and off I was newly exploring a new location.
So what do we do while we are exploring? We fight!
I cannot stress this enough when I say, I truly believe Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has one of the best feeling combat in any RPG I’ve played. They took what was great about Remake, tight action turn based combat and added new characters that offer even more variety. Each character feels so perfectly tuned to their core theme and the combat reflects this with every move you can pull off. I never once wanted to skip a fight. I wanted to see what cool combos I could make with Tifa being thrown in the air by Cloud to then dive kick downwards and hit her limit break to summersault them. The combat truly shines on its hardest difficulty as well, especially from Clouds perspective, where you better learn to parry! As beating the final boss and the challenges offered postgame will require parrying like you’ve never seen in a Final Fantasy game.
Following on from this, the challenges are something I need to discuss from not only a gameplay level but also a platinum perspective. To 100% this game entirely, you will be tasked with “legendary solo bouts” where you play as each character and must face against large bosses that require you to know the character in and out. Some were more challenging than others but there is one in particular that required Cloud and a spoiler character to fight 10 legendary bosses. It is one of the hardest experiences I’ve had in gaming since Dark Souls 1 and when I think back on that feeling I had when I finally had beaten it. I realised what I needed, was knowledge of parrying and not just that, knowledge of the enemies I was facing. It reminded me of how I felt playing Dark Souls and realised that it is just learning enemy moves. I always find in games, the hardest difficulty can either bring useless frustration to pad out a game or it can provide a unique and knowledge check of the games systems. I give props to Rebirth for being the latter and it made me appreciate the combat that much more. It makes you realise, that as a team, you are unstoppable in the regular game.
I’ve spoken about the open world of this game and it’s combat, however, I know that we truly all play Role Playing Games for one beautiful reason and that is the story.
For those who have played Remake, you understand that this is not a mere retelling of the original, it is rather quite known by now that this is a sequel series. Remake and Rebirth are all designed to compliment the original with a retelling but it is as much a sequel as it is that initial retelling.
Characters know things they shouldn’t, events happen even though it couldn’t possibly. Rebirth finally goes into more detail about what this all means and how it all occurs within the universe of Final Fantasy VII.
As for the general plot lines, they are fleshed out throughout the game a bit more than the original offered and extends character back stories to incorporate them much more into the overall narrative. This game is BACK STORY TO THIS CHARACTER the video game. I found the overall reasoning behind the characters actions in this to be pretty bland at best. There really is no rhyme or reason for the characters to be taking the journey they take for most of the game. Yes, the characters back stories being explored is genuinely enjoyable and those are some of my favourite moments. However, the reason these characters take their path towards the end of the game feels so just….THERE. Nothing to it except “We should go this way I guess!” and it is so obvious that this is issue due to splitting the game into 3 parts. I fully believe if you were to play all 3 in a row, this issue wouldn’t exist but as of the moment of this writing, the reason this game happens from a narrative perspective is not fantastic.
What they fill in that overall time with is still amazing and I implore the story a lot in between the lines of the overall drive. I am also someone who does love the ending a lot and feel they did a great job at explaining what they are going for here. The third game will make or break this plot line and they have a knife on the tip of their finger that can go one way or another if they don’t land it.
I haven’t mentioned the gorgeous music, the 50 million mini games, the 50 combat challenges. There is so much to this game that no review I write could ever fill out the sheer amount of content in this game. It may have taken me 123 hours but this could easily run someone 200+.
Overall, I did really love Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. The open world nature was fun to explore but felt like a typical open world filler with so much padding out. The combat is some of the best the series has to offer and is so fun. The story is my kinda crazy overall but still lacks direction for most of it.
Remake was a clear GOTY for me and I do fully believe the third game if done right, will make this trilogy one of the greatest in gaming. However as Rebirth stands, I love it. I love it a lot but it does have some very glaring problems that I can’t help but criticise it.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the perfect “I love this game buuuuut….”
Props to letting me have all the characters in their beach outfits for the second playthough <3 Bi sexual panic was real the entire time.
Hours: 123
Spoilers: None but I do talk vaguely about some story beats
I have never played the original Final Fantasy VII. It is one of those games that has eluded me across my gaming journey. However, I have played Remake which my GOTY of the year it came out, I have 100% Crisis Core and I have watched Advent Children.
My experience with FF7 is purely based on osmosis between friends and my girlfriend. What I do know is that Rebirth is the bridge between the start and the end. It is where the world expands into the great unknown and I want to talk about it.
Rebirth starts with one of the boldest openings it could have offered and I knew from the get go, they understood the assignment of what they were going for in Remake. After the beginning, the game has a classic “Now THIS is the open world, go forth” and it lands as perfectly typical as it sounds. From there, you start your adventure into what is an open (enclosed) world RPG.
The big point of this game is the size and sheer scope that it offers to you. Regions that take hours to go through and explore. Map markers galore! For better or for worse, this is an open world game in which the mass regions you explore are segmented. Think of the game like a linear open world. It isn’t truly open world but with how much is jam packed in, you will feel like it is.
This leads me to mention my first love/hate relationship with what this game is. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has towers. It has semi climbable towers that allow you to reveal map markers to go do more exploring to fill your “Intel” metre. I thought we as gamers™ swore of enjoying these type of open world ideas. Though they are nowhere near as annoying as other games offer them, the fact that this is in here is still baffling to me. Especially because you are CONSTANTLY reminded by a certain character about every second intel you discover with a pointless cutscene to insult a character he himself created.
Thankfully, despite this typical usage of open world checklist, the game at least offers a fun and enjoyable world to explore. Each location is unique in it’s layout, they offer different chocobos to make every area feel you are never traversing in the same way. All the areas are thematically in line with the characters they offer stories for and every location feels like it was where they all started. They aren’t there for no reason and I appreciate that a lot about the game. A lot of open world experiences suffer from places not having a purpose and just exist to distract you. Rebirth being linear allows you to truly appreciate every new region you go diving into. Every time I felt like I wanted to get out of an area, the perfect moment happened and off I was newly exploring a new location.
So what do we do while we are exploring? We fight!
I cannot stress this enough when I say, I truly believe Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has one of the best feeling combat in any RPG I’ve played. They took what was great about Remake, tight action turn based combat and added new characters that offer even more variety. Each character feels so perfectly tuned to their core theme and the combat reflects this with every move you can pull off. I never once wanted to skip a fight. I wanted to see what cool combos I could make with Tifa being thrown in the air by Cloud to then dive kick downwards and hit her limit break to summersault them. The combat truly shines on its hardest difficulty as well, especially from Clouds perspective, where you better learn to parry! As beating the final boss and the challenges offered postgame will require parrying like you’ve never seen in a Final Fantasy game.
Following on from this, the challenges are something I need to discuss from not only a gameplay level but also a platinum perspective. To 100% this game entirely, you will be tasked with “legendary solo bouts” where you play as each character and must face against large bosses that require you to know the character in and out. Some were more challenging than others but there is one in particular that required Cloud and a spoiler character to fight 10 legendary bosses. It is one of the hardest experiences I’ve had in gaming since Dark Souls 1 and when I think back on that feeling I had when I finally had beaten it. I realised what I needed, was knowledge of parrying and not just that, knowledge of the enemies I was facing. It reminded me of how I felt playing Dark Souls and realised that it is just learning enemy moves. I always find in games, the hardest difficulty can either bring useless frustration to pad out a game or it can provide a unique and knowledge check of the games systems. I give props to Rebirth for being the latter and it made me appreciate the combat that much more. It makes you realise, that as a team, you are unstoppable in the regular game.
I’ve spoken about the open world of this game and it’s combat, however, I know that we truly all play Role Playing Games for one beautiful reason and that is the story.
For those who have played Remake, you understand that this is not a mere retelling of the original, it is rather quite known by now that this is a sequel series. Remake and Rebirth are all designed to compliment the original with a retelling but it is as much a sequel as it is that initial retelling.
Characters know things they shouldn’t, events happen even though it couldn’t possibly. Rebirth finally goes into more detail about what this all means and how it all occurs within the universe of Final Fantasy VII.
As for the general plot lines, they are fleshed out throughout the game a bit more than the original offered and extends character back stories to incorporate them much more into the overall narrative. This game is BACK STORY TO THIS CHARACTER the video game. I found the overall reasoning behind the characters actions in this to be pretty bland at best. There really is no rhyme or reason for the characters to be taking the journey they take for most of the game. Yes, the characters back stories being explored is genuinely enjoyable and those are some of my favourite moments. However, the reason these characters take their path towards the end of the game feels so just….THERE. Nothing to it except “We should go this way I guess!” and it is so obvious that this is issue due to splitting the game into 3 parts. I fully believe if you were to play all 3 in a row, this issue wouldn’t exist but as of the moment of this writing, the reason this game happens from a narrative perspective is not fantastic.
What they fill in that overall time with is still amazing and I implore the story a lot in between the lines of the overall drive. I am also someone who does love the ending a lot and feel they did a great job at explaining what they are going for here. The third game will make or break this plot line and they have a knife on the tip of their finger that can go one way or another if they don’t land it.
I haven’t mentioned the gorgeous music, the 50 million mini games, the 50 combat challenges. There is so much to this game that no review I write could ever fill out the sheer amount of content in this game. It may have taken me 123 hours but this could easily run someone 200+.
Overall, I did really love Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. The open world nature was fun to explore but felt like a typical open world filler with so much padding out. The combat is some of the best the series has to offer and is so fun. The story is my kinda crazy overall but still lacks direction for most of it.
Remake was a clear GOTY for me and I do fully believe the third game if done right, will make this trilogy one of the greatest in gaming. However as Rebirth stands, I love it. I love it a lot but it does have some very glaring problems that I can’t help but criticise it.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the perfect “I love this game buuuuut….”
Props to letting me have all the characters in their beach outfits for the second playthough <3 Bi sexual panic was real the entire time.
cloud i want to have ur babies
Eu não sabia o que esperar deste jogo depois de jogar o já incrível remake 7. Pensei comigo mesmo como eles encontrariam uma maneira de melhorar algo que já estava quase perfeito e, uau, fiquei surpreso depois de terminar minhas 156 horas de jogo. Tudo foi muito melhorado, seja no combate, no mundo, nas missões, nas missões secundárias, etc. A exploração foi divertida e eu me diverti muito derrotando vários inimigos em diferentes áreas. Os personagens e o enredo me fisgaram e temeram ter que concluir esta experiência única. Não tenho nenhum problema em esperar alguns anos pela conclusão desta história se isso significar que o jogo estaria no mesmo nível desta entrada.
Eu nunca vou esquecer a raiva que eu passei nas simulações de combate desse jogo
Eu nunca vou esquecer a raiva que eu passei nas simulações de combate desse jogo
The game is sprawling in the worst way possible. It's bloated without meaningful reward, and is excessively padded. As a massive fan of Remake, and the Original, I'm disappointed the team chose to fluff the title.
This is my personal perfect game. My love for FF7 and its remake games are unmatched and this game was one of my most precious experiences ever. It would be hard to just put my thoughts into words.
The world is gorgeous and feels alive with beautiful and cozy towns such as Kalm and feels lived in with the remnants of the republic sprinkled throughout. The atmosphere of this world is phenomenal.
Everything character has my heart and their relationships with each other are fully fleshed out and feel real. The new additions to the story are great too, especially Elena who im a big fan of :>
The story had me hooked all the way through and anytime i wasnt playing i was thinking about it. Perhaps my personal bias towards Aerith definitely added to the story as well but every character has their time and fits perfectly. The new parts of the story, while confusing at the moment, are super cool and really add even more to the already perfect story from the original. Finally seeing more of Zack throughout the game was fucking awesome too.
The combat, just like remake, is still outstanding and every fight is enjoyable, with some tough fights inside too. There is never a boring moment throughout the story segments and it kept me engaged throughout the entire experience. The abundance of minigames are all uniquely fun and add to that special fun vibe that ff7 has super well.
The ost is easily one of my favourites ever. Every song blends so perfectly into the atmosphere and really helps to immerse you in the world around you. Obviously expected out of a FF game though.......
However i do think that rebirth suffers from having too much content at times. Spread throughout the world are ubisoft checklist like objectives (except theyre actually in a good game) that i personally found a little overwhelming at times, leaving me to pause for a bit to take a break. Eventually i stopped doing the more basic tasks and did the side missions and protorelic missions instead, which i found kept me more engaged. Even with these issues though i still think they dont take away from the overall perfection of this game and couldnt recommend it more
Easiest 10/10 i could ever give a game and i dont think ill ever forget about it, or stop talking about it for that matter.
The world is gorgeous and feels alive with beautiful and cozy towns such as Kalm and feels lived in with the remnants of the republic sprinkled throughout. The atmosphere of this world is phenomenal.
Everything character has my heart and their relationships with each other are fully fleshed out and feel real. The new additions to the story are great too, especially Elena who im a big fan of :>
The story had me hooked all the way through and anytime i wasnt playing i was thinking about it. Perhaps my personal bias towards Aerith definitely added to the story as well but every character has their time and fits perfectly. The new parts of the story, while confusing at the moment, are super cool and really add even more to the already perfect story from the original. Finally seeing more of Zack throughout the game was fucking awesome too.
The combat, just like remake, is still outstanding and every fight is enjoyable, with some tough fights inside too. There is never a boring moment throughout the story segments and it kept me engaged throughout the entire experience. The abundance of minigames are all uniquely fun and add to that special fun vibe that ff7 has super well.
The ost is easily one of my favourites ever. Every song blends so perfectly into the atmosphere and really helps to immerse you in the world around you. Obviously expected out of a FF game though.......
However i do think that rebirth suffers from having too much content at times. Spread throughout the world are ubisoft checklist like objectives (except theyre actually in a good game) that i personally found a little overwhelming at times, leaving me to pause for a bit to take a break. Eventually i stopped doing the more basic tasks and did the side missions and protorelic missions instead, which i found kept me more engaged. Even with these issues though i still think they dont take away from the overall perfection of this game and couldnt recommend it more
Easiest 10/10 i could ever give a game and i dont think ill ever forget about it, or stop talking about it for that matter.
Pretty much a near perfect game, the amount of content at high quality it can't be beat by most games.
This game gave me TB.
This review contains spoilers
-- In Remake, despite all the flak they (rightfully) earned for narrative bloat, Square was ultimately able to pull a traditional three-act structure out from the original game's opening hours. They are unable to do that here. Rebirth’s plot is as episodic as it gets, with the narrative driven only by chasing after the robed men, because they’re following Sephiroth or something or other. Which would be fine, if the characters and their relationships were used as the emotional through-line, but this is where I felt like Rebirth stumbles. There are, of course, plenty of great little character moments of the kind that made Remake’s story so engaging. Unlike Remake, they don’t add up to anything. The party just doesn't talk to each other enough outside of exposition, even in the wake of major revelations, and the only relationship that gets enough focus to constitute an “arc” is between Cloud and Tifa. And the scenes between them are outstanding, but I don’t understand why nobody else gets the same consistent attention. Especially Aerith, since, well, you know. Her speech at Cosmo Canyon feels like the culmination of a story thread that doesn’t actually exist.
-- I guess this is unavoidable, but the fact remains that any physical space this could drum up was always going to pale in comparison to how interesting and unique Midgar was. Let alone a mostly empty, standard-issue five biome open world. You got the forest, the jungle, the desert, the mountains etc. like it’s a PS2-era platformer. It’s not bad, but none of it can compare to the Sector 7 slums, or the Shinra building, or the Mako Reactors.
-- The story missions don’t lend themselves well to the open world format. It makes perfect sense to complete lots of minor side content when the main story missions are bite-sized and evenly spread out across the map, revisiting old sections, giving you a chance to complete the side content during travel time. In Rebirth, the story missions are all long, relatively self-contained, and usually set in entirely new regions. The format ends up being hours of story missions, followed by hours of filler side content, rinse and repeat. It's not an ideal structure.
-- Compounding that, most of the side content just sucks. So much of each map is littered with Ubisoft-tier time wasting filler. The real side quests are actually better than Remake’s, but unlike there, in Rebirth they mostly just feel like distractions from the main narrative. And of course, the party can’t really fully develop as characters during side quests because they have to be optional and time-insensitive.
-- If you're dumb enough to do all the side content like I was, the game mocks you by making the final side quest, final protorelic, and final Queen’s Blood opponent all nearly impossible. Also it makes the game 100+ hours long which is the wrong length for something that portends to be story-driven but is largely plotless. This is not a game that respects your time.
-- I can’t hear the dialogue over the fucking music. Somehow this made it through testing.
-- I didn't completely despise the ending, which is more than I can say for Remake. Despite all their best efforts to ruin it, the main emotional beats still landed for me. You have to ask, though: putting aside all logic, does all this metaphysical alternate timeline stuff actually add anything to the story? Is Aerith’s death improved in any way by leaving us wondering if she’s even really dead? No.*
-- I'm trying to decipher Nomura/Nojima/whoever’s rationale for the bizarre story additions and coming up short. Is this all an excuse to have more Zack? Do they feel obligated to deliver bombastic endings every time because the story is unfinished? Is it so long-time fans have something new to be surprised by? The changes seem reviled by most and sheepishly accepted by the rest, so who is this all for in the end?
-- More specifically, their stated reasoning for splitting the game in three parts was so that nothing iconic from the OG would have to be cut and disappoint people. And indeed, this has been a very literal adaptation in some ways. So why did they pick the most iconic moment of the entire story, of the entire franchise, to doodle on top of?
* Actually, there is one element of the timeline fuckery that I genuinely think adds to the story, which is that I believe it adds an interesting dimension to Aerith’s character in both Remake and Rebirth that she’s already aware of her impending doom on some level. Her optional scene in the garden with Cloud in Remake, and their final moments together in this game, are both some of the best and most emotionally poignant moments in the saga. Whether this is worth giving up the surprise of her death is another matter entirely.
-- I guess this is unavoidable, but the fact remains that any physical space this could drum up was always going to pale in comparison to how interesting and unique Midgar was. Let alone a mostly empty, standard-issue five biome open world. You got the forest, the jungle, the desert, the mountains etc. like it’s a PS2-era platformer. It’s not bad, but none of it can compare to the Sector 7 slums, or the Shinra building, or the Mako Reactors.
-- The story missions don’t lend themselves well to the open world format. It makes perfect sense to complete lots of minor side content when the main story missions are bite-sized and evenly spread out across the map, revisiting old sections, giving you a chance to complete the side content during travel time. In Rebirth, the story missions are all long, relatively self-contained, and usually set in entirely new regions. The format ends up being hours of story missions, followed by hours of filler side content, rinse and repeat. It's not an ideal structure.
-- Compounding that, most of the side content just sucks. So much of each map is littered with Ubisoft-tier time wasting filler. The real side quests are actually better than Remake’s, but unlike there, in Rebirth they mostly just feel like distractions from the main narrative. And of course, the party can’t really fully develop as characters during side quests because they have to be optional and time-insensitive.
-- If you're dumb enough to do all the side content like I was, the game mocks you by making the final side quest, final protorelic, and final Queen’s Blood opponent all nearly impossible. Also it makes the game 100+ hours long which is the wrong length for something that portends to be story-driven but is largely plotless. This is not a game that respects your time.
-- I can’t hear the dialogue over the fucking music. Somehow this made it through testing.
-- I didn't completely despise the ending, which is more than I can say for Remake. Despite all their best efforts to ruin it, the main emotional beats still landed for me. You have to ask, though: putting aside all logic, does all this metaphysical alternate timeline stuff actually add anything to the story? Is Aerith’s death improved in any way by leaving us wondering if she’s even really dead? No.*
-- I'm trying to decipher Nomura/Nojima/whoever’s rationale for the bizarre story additions and coming up short. Is this all an excuse to have more Zack? Do they feel obligated to deliver bombastic endings every time because the story is unfinished? Is it so long-time fans have something new to be surprised by? The changes seem reviled by most and sheepishly accepted by the rest, so who is this all for in the end?
-- More specifically, their stated reasoning for splitting the game in three parts was so that nothing iconic from the OG would have to be cut and disappoint people. And indeed, this has been a very literal adaptation in some ways. So why did they pick the most iconic moment of the entire story, of the entire franchise, to doodle on top of?
* Actually, there is one element of the timeline fuckery that I genuinely think adds to the story, which is that I believe it adds an interesting dimension to Aerith’s character in both Remake and Rebirth that she’s already aware of her impending doom on some level. Her optional scene in the garden with Cloud in Remake, and their final moments together in this game, are both some of the best and most emotionally poignant moments in the saga. Whether this is worth giving up the surprise of her death is another matter entirely.
This review contains spoilers
This will have spoilers down below.
I spent a lot of time on this game and I have a lot to talk about as an FF7 fan.
Finished Remake and started this on the same day, I was so pumped and excited. I started right around the same time as my friends were finishing, so I felt like I wanted to rush it. But the side content kept me busy, and there was A LOT.
I'm gonna start with the negatives first, because I loved almost everything else.
- Sometimes you get completely flash-banged from the lighting between dark areas to broad daylight and it's pretty bad.
- A lot of the side quest stuff, I liked, but every now and then, you have to herd chickens or you have to learn how to be a complete party animal and it can either be really boring or just completely frustrating.
- There is WAY too much Sephiroth. Do you know why he works so perfectly in the original? It's because you barely ever see him but his presence is so strong that it feels like he is always looming. In the Remake games, they always let you know Sephiroth is here and he shows up physically when there's no need to show him at all times.
- I don't hate the ending persay, but I noticeably like it a lot less than the rest of the game. I'll talk about it later.
- No playable Cid or Vincent is pretty sad :(
- I'm sorry, but I don't like how Cait Sith plays. And also, his solo segment was the worst part of the game for me
What do I love about this game? Oh just...
- The characterization of the main cast is basically perfect. I loved basically everybody. Yuffie is the cute comedic relief, Cait Sith is Scottish and I think that is really cute and he's really charming, they changed Cid in a way I do not mind and perhaps even welcome should more stuff come from him in Rebirth, I love Tifa and Aerith more than ever before. Barret gets amazing characterization. Red XIII/Nanaki is a character I still love, although I wish his sudden change was foreshadowed better before you got to Cosmo Canyon. Cloud is still an amazing protagonist and he gets broken down pretty heavily to the point that I'm pretty concerned about him in the future.
- Throughout the story, there are twists in the story that are so insane that I was still on the edge of my seat. I was so thrown back by Tifa getting eaten by a Weapon that I thought stuff like Cait Sith betraying the party would not happen or Aerith's death. I loved always doubting myself on what was going to happen, it's always exciting.
- The music is exactly as good as it was in the previous game. It's so insane how many tracks there are in this game and there's so many good ones. You even get a different Chocobo theme depending on the region you are in! It's so sick.
- Remake was a pretty boxed in game, so seeing Rebirth broaden to an open-world game with a lot to do was exciting for me. I loved seeing how the regions were changed, upscaled, made better in some ways.
- The combat continues to be addicting. Remake's was already incredible, but it did have some noticeable issues like the air combat being bad and so on. This game fixes that immensely. I always had Tifa/Aerith as my main party, but I also loved playing Barret/Red/Yuffie as well.
- Holy shit there are so many minigames. There's a few that miss like the Costa Del Sol shooting minigame, but for the most part I liked so many! My notable favorites were Rocket League w/ Red XIII, Fort Condor, and the Boxes minigame in the Dustbowl of Gold Saucer.
- I'm not good at card games, never actually tried, but learning to be good at Queen's Blood was so satisfying and I ended up really liking it in the end.
As for the ending... Zack wants to unite with Cloud once again? Aerith does in fact die, but she also speaks to Cloud when no one can see? Sephiroth wants to cast Meteor on basically every timeline, so he just repeats the same plan but on a grander scale? The gang still has the Black Materia in the end? Cloud at the end of this is so fucked up and traumatized by the deaths around him, that he ends up looking crazy and his friends are notably concerned for him? It's pretty confusing in the way it is shown and I don't REALLY know how to feel about it until the third game will eventually come out. Like I said, I did notably like it less than the rest of the game. A lot of it is fan service, I honestly wish we had less Sephiroth to make him more special, there's parts that are hard to understand unless you go in in-depth discussions about it with other people or Reddit, but overall? I'm still left wanting more and excited for what is to come in the future.
I loved this game. By the time the third game comes around, I will play this game on Hard Mode and can be a real try hard.
I spent a lot of time on this game and I have a lot to talk about as an FF7 fan.
Finished Remake and started this on the same day, I was so pumped and excited. I started right around the same time as my friends were finishing, so I felt like I wanted to rush it. But the side content kept me busy, and there was A LOT.
I'm gonna start with the negatives first, because I loved almost everything else.
- Sometimes you get completely flash-banged from the lighting between dark areas to broad daylight and it's pretty bad.
- A lot of the side quest stuff, I liked, but every now and then, you have to herd chickens or you have to learn how to be a complete party animal and it can either be really boring or just completely frustrating.
- There is WAY too much Sephiroth. Do you know why he works so perfectly in the original? It's because you barely ever see him but his presence is so strong that it feels like he is always looming. In the Remake games, they always let you know Sephiroth is here and he shows up physically when there's no need to show him at all times.
- I don't hate the ending persay, but I noticeably like it a lot less than the rest of the game. I'll talk about it later.
- No playable Cid or Vincent is pretty sad :(
- I'm sorry, but I don't like how Cait Sith plays. And also, his solo segment was the worst part of the game for me
What do I love about this game? Oh just...
- The characterization of the main cast is basically perfect. I loved basically everybody. Yuffie is the cute comedic relief, Cait Sith is Scottish and I think that is really cute and he's really charming, they changed Cid in a way I do not mind and perhaps even welcome should more stuff come from him in Rebirth, I love Tifa and Aerith more than ever before. Barret gets amazing characterization. Red XIII/Nanaki is a character I still love, although I wish his sudden change was foreshadowed better before you got to Cosmo Canyon. Cloud is still an amazing protagonist and he gets broken down pretty heavily to the point that I'm pretty concerned about him in the future.
- Throughout the story, there are twists in the story that are so insane that I was still on the edge of my seat. I was so thrown back by Tifa getting eaten by a Weapon that I thought stuff like Cait Sith betraying the party would not happen or Aerith's death. I loved always doubting myself on what was going to happen, it's always exciting.
- The music is exactly as good as it was in the previous game. It's so insane how many tracks there are in this game and there's so many good ones. You even get a different Chocobo theme depending on the region you are in! It's so sick.
- Remake was a pretty boxed in game, so seeing Rebirth broaden to an open-world game with a lot to do was exciting for me. I loved seeing how the regions were changed, upscaled, made better in some ways.
- The combat continues to be addicting. Remake's was already incredible, but it did have some noticeable issues like the air combat being bad and so on. This game fixes that immensely. I always had Tifa/Aerith as my main party, but I also loved playing Barret/Red/Yuffie as well.
- Holy shit there are so many minigames. There's a few that miss like the Costa Del Sol shooting minigame, but for the most part I liked so many! My notable favorites were Rocket League w/ Red XIII, Fort Condor, and the Boxes minigame in the Dustbowl of Gold Saucer.
- I'm not good at card games, never actually tried, but learning to be good at Queen's Blood was so satisfying and I ended up really liking it in the end.
As for the ending... Zack wants to unite with Cloud once again? Aerith does in fact die, but she also speaks to Cloud when no one can see? Sephiroth wants to cast Meteor on basically every timeline, so he just repeats the same plan but on a grander scale? The gang still has the Black Materia in the end? Cloud at the end of this is so fucked up and traumatized by the deaths around him, that he ends up looking crazy and his friends are notably concerned for him? It's pretty confusing in the way it is shown and I don't REALLY know how to feel about it until the third game will eventually come out. Like I said, I did notably like it less than the rest of the game. A lot of it is fan service, I honestly wish we had less Sephiroth to make him more special, there's parts that are hard to understand unless you go in in-depth discussions about it with other people or Reddit, but overall? I'm still left wanting more and excited for what is to come in the future.
I loved this game. By the time the third game comes around, I will play this game on Hard Mode and can be a real try hard.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: Rebirth & Refreshing
Back when Final Fantasy VII Remake was first released in 2020, it changed everything the definition of what a "Remake" could be. Final Fantasy VII Remake heavily reworked the gameplay mechanics from the original game, turning it from the pseudo-turn-based battle system based on Active Time Battle (ATB) to a real-time battle system more in line with Final Fantasy XVI and XV. It was going to be a big feat for Square to remake Final Fantasy VII, specifically by splitting it into three parts of a trilogy, and just like the original Star Wars trilogy, the second one is the best one. Going into Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, all I wanted was a simple improvement from Final Fantasy VII Remake, with it's open world and story, but what I got was a rich open world and mind messing story to be one of my highlights of 2024. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a tremendous feat for Final Fantasy in general, for not only being a fantastic remake of an already fantastic game but also for being the best modern Final Fantasy game in recent memory. Rebirth does everything FFVII Remake did, and blows that out of the water. As much as I liked Final Fantasy VII Remake, compared to FFVII Rebirth, it looks like a tech demo in comparison. With the wider Final Fantasy VII world being remade from what is what back from the original PS1 release, to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on PS5, it truly shows the growth where Final Fantasy VII has come since it's start. In both the gameplay and story, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is an evolution for Final Fantasy VII, and Final Fantasy, period.
As for gameplay, it is very similar at it's core to Final Fantasy VII Remake, but there some new additions to make it a bit more unique after coming off of Final Fantasy VII Remake. For starters, new characters! Red XIII was in Final Fantasy VII Remake, though not as a playable character til now in Rebirth, and Yuffie was previously in the Final Fantasy VII Remake DLC, Episode INTERmission, as a playable character in her own story, but never was even mentioned in the original story of FFVII Remake. Both characters play great, though I was surprised how good Yuffie felt to play as in Rebirth. I never used her much in the original Final Fantasy VII but in Rebirth, she was just an absolute tank in battle. Red XIII was a pretty solid character to play as when I had him in my party. I made sure to swap my party members often so I don't get attracted to a set of party members with Cloud. Though stats-wise good, Red XIII felt like a bland character to play as, he basic combat attacks and his skill's weren't that great in my opinion, compared to other character's skills, but nothing to major for me to dislike.
I almost forgot to mention Cait Sith! Cait Sith was a character in the original game that I hardly used at all. I never liked him much in the original as a character in my party, but in Rebirth, he's... decent, not more. Cait Sith in FFVII Rebirth is a lot better of a character to play than he was in the original Final Fantasy VII. His basic combat attacks are pretty mediocre, but once he is able to get his robot, he becomes much better of character to play as, so he's not bad (until I reached that part in the game I only had Cait Sith your party. That was absolute garbage, I wanted to tear up that furry ball so much...). Vincent and Cid are new characters brought into Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but not playable at all, similar how to Red XIII was in Final Fantasy VII Remake, which was pretty disappointing to find out, I really looked forward to how Vincent and CId would play in the FFVII Remake style of combat. They were some of my favorite characters to have in my party in the original, Vincent because he was a badass, and though not playable, still just as of a badass in Rebirth because he's voiced the GOAT Matt Mercer. Cid was one of the favorites in the original due to how good stats-wise he was around the time he was introduced, and I hope Square is able to do them both justice in Part 3, or in DLC for Rebirth if they decide to do that like how they did for Yuffie.
As for the original characters from Final Fantasy VII Remake that were brought over to Rebirth, such as Cloud, Tifa, Barret and Aerith, they play close to how they were in Final Fantasy VII Remake. Cloud plays pretty close to how he was in FFVII Remake, though a little bit different from how Operator Mode is compared to how it was in FFVII Remake. Operator Mode in FFVII Remake made Cloud's attacks feel more slow, but more heavier in attack power, but In Rebirth, it's still heavy but it locks Cloud to doing sword slashes in a wide arc. Pretty different from Remake's version, but a change I welcome. I felt that Cloud's operator mode in FFVII Remake kinda made combat at times too easy, but with Rebirth's interpretation of Operator Mode have a bit more strategy to it than Remake's, and not make things too easy. Cloud was the only character from Final Fantasy VII Remake that I noticed a change in from how he controlled in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but I never noticed any noticeable changes to Barret, Tifa, or Aerith. They play pretty close to their FFVII Remake versions, so I just assume they have some better quality-of-life changes that I haven't noticed. The Synergy mechanic from Yuffie DLC makes a return here in FFVII Rebirth, and it works pretty well. It adds some character to the combat and the characters you have in your party. There was this one Synergy attack with Barret and Aerith where Aerith is mimicking how Barret is with his glasses with him during their Synergy attack, and he's so wholesome between those two. Synergy is not only a good mechanic for gameplay, but also a good mechanic to add some chemistry between party members that may or may not have interacted as much in the story.
When I was playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth throughout my playthrough, I had performance mode on throughout nearly all of my playthrough. I previously played the demo before Rebirth was released, and performance mode was a must on that version of the game, due to how choppy the 30 FPS looked and felt. Since the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth demo kind of sparked some debate about 30 vs 60 FPS due to how poor it was, my stance of that is, 30 FPS, when done correctly, isn't a big deal. Some games have 30 FPS run smooth enough for it not be noticeable, but in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's case, 30 FPS is a hard no for me. 30 FPS just feels awful when doing anything in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, walking makes me feel like I have a headache, and combat with 30 FPS makes me feel like I have a migraine. I know I sound like one of those 60 FPS elitists who live and breathe 60 FPS as their lifestream, but like I said before, 30 FPS can be pulled off good enough in other games, but 30 FPS in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for whatever reason. Performance mode didn't really affect anything graphically for me, the game still looked graphically amazing still, though sometimes some textures can look a bit low res from a distance, but nothing noticeable to complain about.
Regardless if you're playing on graphics or performance mode, this game is a beauty to play out. When the crew leaves Kalm to explore, there's this beautiful garden area that you see as you explore this new world you're introduced to, early into the game. This is around the beginning of the game, so you can't use Chocobos or the Buggy yet, so you're forced to walk on foot. It feels sorta reminiscent of the original game, when you leave Midgar for the first time and explore the massive open world for the first time. That scene of discovery and openness from the original is here in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Graphically the original Final Fantasy VII couldn't detail the open world outside of Midgar outside of PS1 textures due to it being a PS1 game, but Final Fantasy VII Rebirth showcases new details within the open world of Rebirth's interpretation of Final Fantasy VII. It feels like this is how Square wanted to show off this world to the player, but due to the hardware limitations at the time, they couldn't. Even though they couldn't, there was room for imagination from the players who played and grew up with the original. They never thought a Final Fantasy VII Remake of this scale would ever happen, so they had nothing but blocky PS1 graphics and their imaginations, and Rebirth feels like what those imaginations were. Rebirth excels at adding new life to Final Fantasy VII, the OST remaking the original game's OST sounds phenomenal, and in some areas like in the Mythril Mines, have their versions redid with some instrumentation to make it sound modern, but add similar sounding instruments similar to those iconic PS1 era soundfonts.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth adds a lot of new side content, and most of it is wonderful. There are the standard side quests given out by NPC's throughout the world in a similar fashion to how they were in Final Fantasy VII Remake, but, the side quests in Rebirth have a lot of more soul than the ones from FFVII Remake. Some side quests are pretty standard, but they do good in adding world-building to the areas they take place in. Some are humorous in nature, feeling similar to a filler episode from an anime, but still fun to experience. There's a lot of side content in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and I don't wanna drag this even more, so I'll be brief for the side content. Lifesrpings are expedition intel that help uncover divine shrine intel alongside story information about the region you're in. This is cool for serious lore buffs who live and breathe Final Fantasy VII, but to be honest I didn't collect a lot of these throughout my playthrough, but still a neat addition. Chadley from Final Fantasy VII Remake makes a return here in FFVII Rebirth and there are divine shrines that can help Chadley gather intel data to strengthen summon materia and also make their encounters at the combat simulator easier. I like how easier it was to get summon materia in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, in FFVII Remake, I missed some, and I didn't really do anything Chadley in FFVII Remake, but I did go to some of the shrines, and I liked the little mini-game you play each time. I got most of the first couple of summons, but later on I didn't really care to go after more summons because I was fine with the ones I already had. Fiend challenges are... boring, I never sought them out, and only completed them if I happened to come across it. Despite the Moogle's looking like nightmare fuel, I really liked the Moogle emporiums. They were fun to play, but I never bought anything from the moogle's after I was done with them.
Those were just some of the ones I remembered from the top of my head, but there's just so much to talk about when it comes to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's side content, but my absolute favorite part of FFVII Rebirth's side content has to be Queen's Blood. I. LOVED. Queen's Blood. I haven't played a card game this fun since I was playing Pokemon cards back in elementary school, Queen's Blood is absolute shit, I was addicted to Queen's Blade after my first few games, and I had a lot of my time finding each time I could play Queen's Blood in the region I was in. Forget about Sephiroth, Cloud, you need to the best Queen's Blood master, like no one ever was! Jokes aside, I loved Queen's Blood, the gameplay just had me addictied, and even though I haven't completed every single Queen's Blood match that Rebirth had to offer, I believe I completed the majority.
As for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's story, it continues shortly after Final Fantasy VII Remake, Cloud and the gang are on the hunt for Sephiroth, and it mostly follows the story of the original game for the most part until certain moments take event at some points into the story. The story has already been told in the original Final Fantasy VII, but the way Rebirth retells certain story moments from the original is fantastic. Without giving away too much, all I can say without spoilers is that, the more Final Fantasy VII media you've consumed, the more you're rewarded for it in Rebirth. If you love Crisis Core, Advent Children or any other piece of the expanded Final Fantasy VII ecosystem, you'll nerd out over the references. Cloud feels so much of a more developed character than he ever has been in any other piece of Final Fantasy VII, Cloud feels more human, more of an actual human than another anime twink. Zack is so much of a welcome addition to Rebirth, without giving away spoilers, he is amazing in every moment he is in, especially during the final arc, if you know you know. Barret's character growth from the original game is adapted into Rebirth, and it is adapted in the best way possible. Tifa is much more expanded upon within the story, than just Cloud's childhood friend/potential love interest, she has her own moments that flesh out moments from the original, and new scenes that give her the spotlight. Red XIII's character hasn't changed that much from the original, and he felt just fine. Yuffie's character adds a lot of new personality to the cast, and though, sometimes annoying, she's an absolute key character to the party, and to Wutai, considering what happens to Wutai in the story. Cait Sith feels like Cait Sith, Vincent and Cid, though not playable, are great inclusions to the story. Sephiroth continues to be a menace within the story, and is like a phantom ghost always mentioned.
And as for Aerith... man, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's development to Aerith is tremendous. It's well-known what happens to Aerith in the original game, not going to be mentioned because I don't wanna accidentally spoil it for anybody who hasn't played the original or the end of Rebirth, but if you have, I'm sure you have a good idea of what I'm talking about. It feels that Aerith has a lot more screen time in Rebirth than she ever did in FFVII Remake or the original. It's probably because Square knew during the development, fans knew what to expect, and how much of a reaction it ignited in people, so they couldn't mess up. Even though I already played the original Final Fantasy VII last year, and knew how the Remake trilogy was going to end, I still got attacked to Aerith's character, more than I ever did in the original. She spends so much time with Cloud, and with the knowledge of what comes later, it felt like not being able to stop a canon event.
One of Rebirth's key themes is loss, loss could be losing a game, or loss could be the loss of a loved one. The word "loss" is so dense because we can use it any way we decide to because we as humans are all different, to what we consider loss, and that thinking when it comes to loss is told in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Loss in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth could mean losing a battle or spending credits on the wrong item, but loss is much more in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth than gameplay mechanics. Most of the characters in the party have suffered a loss. Cloud has the loss of memories of his past, and Sephiroth shares the loss of identity with Cloud and Aerith. Other characters such as Barret, Tifa, Yuffie and Vincent can also be tied into this common theme of loss. Over the course of Rebirth's story, there is this notion that loss will come eventually, it's just a matter of how you accept that loss and what you do afterward. This can be tied into Aerith's character, she's somewhat telling the player to prepare for what's to come later to the game, and it hits like a truck when you feel that loss into the game's final act. Final Fantasy VII Remake introduced the whispers into the story, being the cause of why events in FFVII Remake were changing from the original. That way of changing the original story into Rebirth works amazingly well. At its core it tells the main story from the original up to the end of Disk 1, Rebirth adds new story content and fleshes out a lot of areas from the original game. And with all the shenanigans Sephoroth is up to in this game, the more crazy it gets. And that last arc and ending... man*.
Overall, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is one of the best RPG's I've played this year, and my 2024 game of the year so far. It's truly remarkable how Square pulled this Remake trilogy together, and Part 3 has to be insane. If Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was the Avengers Infinity War of JRPGs, Part 3 needs to be the Avengers Endgame of JRPGs. I loved everything about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and I don't really much anything major to complain about. All I want for Part 3 is for Square to go absolute apeshit with the story! Get all writers high and let them come up with the most, Kingdom Hearts level, confusing story for Part 3. Just improve onto the best things about Rebirth, and introduce new features in Part 3, and Square has one of the best trilogies in gaming, and perhaps in media.
Stats:
The 12th game I've completed in 2024
Played on PlayStation 5
Hours into Game: 48 Hours
Score: 10/10 (5/5)
Last Statement: I ain't gay but Sephorith👀
Back when Final Fantasy VII Remake was first released in 2020, it changed everything the definition of what a "Remake" could be. Final Fantasy VII Remake heavily reworked the gameplay mechanics from the original game, turning it from the pseudo-turn-based battle system based on Active Time Battle (ATB) to a real-time battle system more in line with Final Fantasy XVI and XV. It was going to be a big feat for Square to remake Final Fantasy VII, specifically by splitting it into three parts of a trilogy, and just like the original Star Wars trilogy, the second one is the best one. Going into Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, all I wanted was a simple improvement from Final Fantasy VII Remake, with it's open world and story, but what I got was a rich open world and mind messing story to be one of my highlights of 2024. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a tremendous feat for Final Fantasy in general, for not only being a fantastic remake of an already fantastic game but also for being the best modern Final Fantasy game in recent memory. Rebirth does everything FFVII Remake did, and blows that out of the water. As much as I liked Final Fantasy VII Remake, compared to FFVII Rebirth, it looks like a tech demo in comparison. With the wider Final Fantasy VII world being remade from what is what back from the original PS1 release, to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on PS5, it truly shows the growth where Final Fantasy VII has come since it's start. In both the gameplay and story, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is an evolution for Final Fantasy VII, and Final Fantasy, period.
As for gameplay, it is very similar at it's core to Final Fantasy VII Remake, but there some new additions to make it a bit more unique after coming off of Final Fantasy VII Remake. For starters, new characters! Red XIII was in Final Fantasy VII Remake, though not as a playable character til now in Rebirth, and Yuffie was previously in the Final Fantasy VII Remake DLC, Episode INTERmission, as a playable character in her own story, but never was even mentioned in the original story of FFVII Remake. Both characters play great, though I was surprised how good Yuffie felt to play as in Rebirth. I never used her much in the original Final Fantasy VII but in Rebirth, she was just an absolute tank in battle. Red XIII was a pretty solid character to play as when I had him in my party. I made sure to swap my party members often so I don't get attracted to a set of party members with Cloud. Though stats-wise good, Red XIII felt like a bland character to play as, he basic combat attacks and his skill's weren't that great in my opinion, compared to other character's skills, but nothing to major for me to dislike.
I almost forgot to mention Cait Sith! Cait Sith was a character in the original game that I hardly used at all. I never liked him much in the original as a character in my party, but in Rebirth, he's... decent, not more. Cait Sith in FFVII Rebirth is a lot better of a character to play than he was in the original Final Fantasy VII. His basic combat attacks are pretty mediocre, but once he is able to get his robot, he becomes much better of character to play as, so he's not bad (until I reached that part in the game I only had Cait Sith your party. That was absolute garbage, I wanted to tear up that furry ball so much...). Vincent and Cid are new characters brought into Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but not playable at all, similar how to Red XIII was in Final Fantasy VII Remake, which was pretty disappointing to find out, I really looked forward to how Vincent and CId would play in the FFVII Remake style of combat. They were some of my favorite characters to have in my party in the original, Vincent because he was a badass, and though not playable, still just as of a badass in Rebirth because he's voiced the GOAT Matt Mercer. Cid was one of the favorites in the original due to how good stats-wise he was around the time he was introduced, and I hope Square is able to do them both justice in Part 3, or in DLC for Rebirth if they decide to do that like how they did for Yuffie.
As for the original characters from Final Fantasy VII Remake that were brought over to Rebirth, such as Cloud, Tifa, Barret and Aerith, they play close to how they were in Final Fantasy VII Remake. Cloud plays pretty close to how he was in FFVII Remake, though a little bit different from how Operator Mode is compared to how it was in FFVII Remake. Operator Mode in FFVII Remake made Cloud's attacks feel more slow, but more heavier in attack power, but In Rebirth, it's still heavy but it locks Cloud to doing sword slashes in a wide arc. Pretty different from Remake's version, but a change I welcome. I felt that Cloud's operator mode in FFVII Remake kinda made combat at times too easy, but with Rebirth's interpretation of Operator Mode have a bit more strategy to it than Remake's, and not make things too easy. Cloud was the only character from Final Fantasy VII Remake that I noticed a change in from how he controlled in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but I never noticed any noticeable changes to Barret, Tifa, or Aerith. They play pretty close to their FFVII Remake versions, so I just assume they have some better quality-of-life changes that I haven't noticed. The Synergy mechanic from Yuffie DLC makes a return here in FFVII Rebirth, and it works pretty well. It adds some character to the combat and the characters you have in your party. There was this one Synergy attack with Barret and Aerith where Aerith is mimicking how Barret is with his glasses with him during their Synergy attack, and he's so wholesome between those two. Synergy is not only a good mechanic for gameplay, but also a good mechanic to add some chemistry between party members that may or may not have interacted as much in the story.
When I was playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth throughout my playthrough, I had performance mode on throughout nearly all of my playthrough. I previously played the demo before Rebirth was released, and performance mode was a must on that version of the game, due to how choppy the 30 FPS looked and felt. Since the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth demo kind of sparked some debate about 30 vs 60 FPS due to how poor it was, my stance of that is, 30 FPS, when done correctly, isn't a big deal. Some games have 30 FPS run smooth enough for it not be noticeable, but in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's case, 30 FPS is a hard no for me. 30 FPS just feels awful when doing anything in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, walking makes me feel like I have a headache, and combat with 30 FPS makes me feel like I have a migraine. I know I sound like one of those 60 FPS elitists who live and breathe 60 FPS as their lifestream, but like I said before, 30 FPS can be pulled off good enough in other games, but 30 FPS in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for whatever reason. Performance mode didn't really affect anything graphically for me, the game still looked graphically amazing still, though sometimes some textures can look a bit low res from a distance, but nothing noticeable to complain about.
Regardless if you're playing on graphics or performance mode, this game is a beauty to play out. When the crew leaves Kalm to explore, there's this beautiful garden area that you see as you explore this new world you're introduced to, early into the game. This is around the beginning of the game, so you can't use Chocobos or the Buggy yet, so you're forced to walk on foot. It feels sorta reminiscent of the original game, when you leave Midgar for the first time and explore the massive open world for the first time. That scene of discovery and openness from the original is here in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Graphically the original Final Fantasy VII couldn't detail the open world outside of Midgar outside of PS1 textures due to it being a PS1 game, but Final Fantasy VII Rebirth showcases new details within the open world of Rebirth's interpretation of Final Fantasy VII. It feels like this is how Square wanted to show off this world to the player, but due to the hardware limitations at the time, they couldn't. Even though they couldn't, there was room for imagination from the players who played and grew up with the original. They never thought a Final Fantasy VII Remake of this scale would ever happen, so they had nothing but blocky PS1 graphics and their imaginations, and Rebirth feels like what those imaginations were. Rebirth excels at adding new life to Final Fantasy VII, the OST remaking the original game's OST sounds phenomenal, and in some areas like in the Mythril Mines, have their versions redid with some instrumentation to make it sound modern, but add similar sounding instruments similar to those iconic PS1 era soundfonts.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth adds a lot of new side content, and most of it is wonderful. There are the standard side quests given out by NPC's throughout the world in a similar fashion to how they were in Final Fantasy VII Remake, but, the side quests in Rebirth have a lot of more soul than the ones from FFVII Remake. Some side quests are pretty standard, but they do good in adding world-building to the areas they take place in. Some are humorous in nature, feeling similar to a filler episode from an anime, but still fun to experience. There's a lot of side content in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and I don't wanna drag this even more, so I'll be brief for the side content. Lifesrpings are expedition intel that help uncover divine shrine intel alongside story information about the region you're in. This is cool for serious lore buffs who live and breathe Final Fantasy VII, but to be honest I didn't collect a lot of these throughout my playthrough, but still a neat addition. Chadley from Final Fantasy VII Remake makes a return here in FFVII Rebirth and there are divine shrines that can help Chadley gather intel data to strengthen summon materia and also make their encounters at the combat simulator easier. I like how easier it was to get summon materia in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, in FFVII Remake, I missed some, and I didn't really do anything Chadley in FFVII Remake, but I did go to some of the shrines, and I liked the little mini-game you play each time. I got most of the first couple of summons, but later on I didn't really care to go after more summons because I was fine with the ones I already had. Fiend challenges are... boring, I never sought them out, and only completed them if I happened to come across it. Despite the Moogle's looking like nightmare fuel, I really liked the Moogle emporiums. They were fun to play, but I never bought anything from the moogle's after I was done with them.
Those were just some of the ones I remembered from the top of my head, but there's just so much to talk about when it comes to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's side content, but my absolute favorite part of FFVII Rebirth's side content has to be Queen's Blood. I. LOVED. Queen's Blood. I haven't played a card game this fun since I was playing Pokemon cards back in elementary school, Queen's Blood is absolute shit, I was addicted to Queen's Blade after my first few games, and I had a lot of my time finding each time I could play Queen's Blood in the region I was in. Forget about Sephiroth, Cloud, you need to the best Queen's Blood master, like no one ever was! Jokes aside, I loved Queen's Blood, the gameplay just had me addictied, and even though I haven't completed every single Queen's Blood match that Rebirth had to offer, I believe I completed the majority.
As for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's story, it continues shortly after Final Fantasy VII Remake, Cloud and the gang are on the hunt for Sephiroth, and it mostly follows the story of the original game for the most part until certain moments take event at some points into the story. The story has already been told in the original Final Fantasy VII, but the way Rebirth retells certain story moments from the original is fantastic. Without giving away too much, all I can say without spoilers is that, the more Final Fantasy VII media you've consumed, the more you're rewarded for it in Rebirth. If you love Crisis Core, Advent Children or any other piece of the expanded Final Fantasy VII ecosystem, you'll nerd out over the references. Cloud feels so much of a more developed character than he ever has been in any other piece of Final Fantasy VII, Cloud feels more human, more of an actual human than another anime twink. Zack is so much of a welcome addition to Rebirth, without giving away spoilers, he is amazing in every moment he is in, especially during the final arc, if you know you know. Barret's character growth from the original game is adapted into Rebirth, and it is adapted in the best way possible. Tifa is much more expanded upon within the story, than just Cloud's childhood friend/potential love interest, she has her own moments that flesh out moments from the original, and new scenes that give her the spotlight. Red XIII's character hasn't changed that much from the original, and he felt just fine. Yuffie's character adds a lot of new personality to the cast, and though, sometimes annoying, she's an absolute key character to the party, and to Wutai, considering what happens to Wutai in the story. Cait Sith feels like Cait Sith, Vincent and Cid, though not playable, are great inclusions to the story. Sephiroth continues to be a menace within the story, and is like a phantom ghost always mentioned.
And as for Aerith... man, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's development to Aerith is tremendous. It's well-known what happens to Aerith in the original game, not going to be mentioned because I don't wanna accidentally spoil it for anybody who hasn't played the original or the end of Rebirth, but if you have, I'm sure you have a good idea of what I'm talking about. It feels that Aerith has a lot more screen time in Rebirth than she ever did in FFVII Remake or the original. It's probably because Square knew during the development, fans knew what to expect, and how much of a reaction it ignited in people, so they couldn't mess up. Even though I already played the original Final Fantasy VII last year, and knew how the Remake trilogy was going to end, I still got attacked to Aerith's character, more than I ever did in the original. She spends so much time with Cloud, and with the knowledge of what comes later, it felt like not being able to stop a canon event.
One of Rebirth's key themes is loss, loss could be losing a game, or loss could be the loss of a loved one. The word "loss" is so dense because we can use it any way we decide to because we as humans are all different, to what we consider loss, and that thinking when it comes to loss is told in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Loss in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth could mean losing a battle or spending credits on the wrong item, but loss is much more in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth than gameplay mechanics. Most of the characters in the party have suffered a loss. Cloud has the loss of memories of his past, and Sephiroth shares the loss of identity with Cloud and Aerith. Other characters such as Barret, Tifa, Yuffie and Vincent can also be tied into this common theme of loss. Over the course of Rebirth's story, there is this notion that loss will come eventually, it's just a matter of how you accept that loss and what you do afterward. This can be tied into Aerith's character, she's somewhat telling the player to prepare for what's to come later to the game, and it hits like a truck when you feel that loss into the game's final act. Final Fantasy VII Remake introduced the whispers into the story, being the cause of why events in FFVII Remake were changing from the original. That way of changing the original story into Rebirth works amazingly well. At its core it tells the main story from the original up to the end of Disk 1, Rebirth adds new story content and fleshes out a lot of areas from the original game. And with all the shenanigans Sephoroth is up to in this game, the more crazy it gets. And that last arc and ending... man*.
Overall, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is one of the best RPG's I've played this year, and my 2024 game of the year so far. It's truly remarkable how Square pulled this Remake trilogy together, and Part 3 has to be insane. If Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was the Avengers Infinity War of JRPGs, Part 3 needs to be the Avengers Endgame of JRPGs. I loved everything about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and I don't really much anything major to complain about. All I want for Part 3 is for Square to go absolute apeshit with the story! Get all writers high and let them come up with the most, Kingdom Hearts level, confusing story for Part 3. Just improve onto the best things about Rebirth, and introduce new features in Part 3, and Square has one of the best trilogies in gaming, and perhaps in media.
Stats:
The 12th game I've completed in 2024
Played on PlayStation 5
Hours into Game: 48 Hours
Score: 10/10 (5/5)
Last Statement: I ain't gay but Sephorith👀
I don’t know what I was expecting upon completion of this game. I am absolutely amazed at how much I loved this game. The story, the characters and the side quest were all great. The beginning was a tad slow but that can be forgiven. This expands on every single story bit from the first game and improves it drastically. Truly a 10/10 experience. Fully recommend
This review contains spoilers
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is kind of weird. It’s so good and yet so bad. It’s easily better than Remake, it clears that bar handily, but that game was also a mess. Rebirth is still a mess, it might even be messier, and its got some serious issues, but when it shines it really lights up the room.
Let’s begin with the basics, compared with FF7Remake the combat is iterated and improved upon, but it isn’t radically different. It still feels mash-y, there are way too many flying enemies, attacks track way too often, and spells are particularly bad offenders, and the lock on system may as well qualify as an enemy with how often it will decide that you meant to target something other than the enemy you’ve been focussing. God help you if you end up in a battle with numerous fast enemies, it’ll really let you down then. All that whinging, and yet I’d still say that when it clicks the combat system is good. There are nuisances, of course, but there is so much enemy variety that it works better more often than it doesn’t. There are a lot of cool boss battles, like Scarlet, the Demon Wall, Gi Nattak, among others, as well as some bad ones.
When the gimmicks in the combat system get particularly annoying is with everyone’s favourite war criminals, the Turks. Rude, Elena, Tseng, and Reno are no fun to fight in any of their various combinations at any point in the game. Their boss, Rufus, is also deeply irritating. Between shielding and counter mechanics to short stagger windows, they are a gang of anti-fun lows on the adventure I’d rather never experience again. The Red Dragon, while not related to Shinra, is also total trash.
Outside of the combat system the big new addition is the open world which is a bit of a mixed bag. Its visually stunning, every area has a unique feel, and the music is fantastic as it evokes the vibes and atmosphere of each region. New battle themes, new world themes, these go hand in hand with making the open a world a great experience. The drawback is that Square Enix didn’t seem to cook up anything unique to do in such a large and multi-faceted world. I can’t fathom how so much work can go into making something that looks so good only to drop a handful of towers around for the player to climb to reveal activities. There’re a few combat trials, which are fun but not exactly inspired, as well as a watered-down version of FFIXs Chocobo Hot Cold, it’s just a shame that the world is stuffed full of so much busy work. Also, Chadley, there is entirely too much Chadley when you explore.
Another mixed bag is the mini games. There are good ones, there’s bad ones, it’s so broad there’s no way to lose! The Gold Saucer rules, especially G-Bike’s return and Chocobo racing. Other good minigames include: the Junon Parade, Jump Frog, and Run Wild. There are also bad minigames like Queens blood and Fort Condor.
Woah, hold up, did I just say that Queens blood sucks? Yes, I did, and I meant it. Mostly, I’m not a card game guy and I do not care to build decks or anything like that. I cannot be arsed, I played a few times and mostly decided it’s not for me and it’s pretty much the reason I won’t pursue the Plat. I see the hype, but I just don’t care, card games are boring. While we’re on negatives here, I’ve seen people consider the Chocobo stealth sections as minigames and boy do those blow. That’s easily one of lowest lows in the entire game, I can’t believe this mediocre, slow, plodding, waste of time made the final cut. I did enjoy the tournament on the cruise ship, however, as I dreaded to be forced to play only to discover that you can forfeit immediately and have random NPCs around the ship comment on how you’re a quitter. That was legitimately funny.
There are other little snags that Rebirth gets caught on that are detrimental to the experience but aren’t worth being overly focused on. It’s a shame that we live in a world where game developers still rely on slow moving “push a box” activities, or slowly walking behind NPCs for exposition, or slowly walking to buffer a load. There’s a lot of slow movement. Also, quickly, the people who got upset at rock walls having yellow paint on them were mad at the wrong problem, the existence of climbing is so goddamn bad. Cloud loved to get stuck mid climb and just hang there, refusing to move, the game just couldn’t handle climbing. It’s so bad.
Now that the mechanics are out of the way lets dig into the meat and potatoes of the review. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a game that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. After the events of the first game the gang leaves Midgar and starts a new adventure to hunt down Sephiroth. Well and good, pretty much par for the original, nothing exciting there. There’s lots of good, new, character moments and more world building and new conflicts to raise the stakes but the plot pretty much follows the old familiar track of the original. This is fine, it really makes characters like Yuffie and Cait Sith shine since they’re not major party members in the original. It also serves to elevate emotional beats like Barret’s return to Corel and his relationship with Dyne. These are good things. Deeper characterization of the cast is necessary since the original is thin in terms of writing and world building. Rebirth does a lot to help fill in the gaps and really make the Planet feel like something more than a map that little boxy early 3D guys used to run on.
My eyebrows first raised with the introduction of Zack, however, revealing the deaths of the other party members and Cloud and Aerith in catatonic states. Something was fishy here. It would return to the main adventure but every so often you’re treated to Zack and this alternate timeline, where things went down differently. I prepared for this to get messy. My preparations didn’t go unwarranted.
There are little warning signs, the Zack stuff, the way the Midgard Serpent is dealt with was another alarm bell. Sephiroth is entirely too present in this game. The remakes both suffer for Sephiroth abundance. There is a very difficult line for them to tread here, and I understand that it’s tricky. In the original game the Midgard Serpent is menacing, deadly, it’s beatable but only if you know some advanced strats for dealing with it. In Rebirth you simply defeat it the first time you run into it. I was hoping that it’d be something like the original, something to avoid or dodge, maybe to return at the end of the game to face as an extra boss or something. No, instead you have a boss fight, and you watch Sephiroth kill it. This is a bad narrative choice.
In the original you avoid this nasty monster you can’t beat by running away on a Chocobo. You reach the other side of the swamp, and another serpent is there, impaled on a tree, and the menace of Sephiroth is felt as environmental story telling. Changing it so Sephiroth just reveals himself and does it on screen kind of cheapens the narrative impact of the original’s reveal. This is a problem that recurs throughout the story.
At a point in the plot Tifa falls into the Lifestream where she witnesses Sephiroth for some reason. Cloud is constantly seeing him. He’s everywhere. There must have been a great deal at the Sephiroth store cause Square Enix can’t stop revealing him all the damn time.
You see, part of what makes Sephiroth such an excellent villain in FF7 is that he’s not around much. There’re a few times he pops up and drops off a Jenova to fight you but until you get to the big Aerith moment and then the final battle, he’s pretty much just a menacing force in the background. A looming threat whose name being uttered is enough to make you feel his presence. It’s not that he’s invisible for the whole plot but he’s not around NEARLY as much as in Rebirth.
So, look, I must give them some credit. It’s been years since Remake and it’ll be years before the next game hits, so if they’re blowing their Sephiroth load a little too frequently it’s because these games are releasing as 3 separate parts and not as a whole. They have to give the people what they want, and the people demand Sephiroth! So, fair play. There is, however, one thing that I cannot understand and that’s Aerith’s death scene.
After finishing Remake, and the connotations of the party “defying and battling fate itself” to change the story or whatever, I had wondered about this moment. There are few moments in gaming as big as Aerith’s death. It’s an iconic plot element and something that is so critical to the success and staying power of the original game. There’s no way you could tell FF7s story in a meaningful way without that sacrifice, right?
Well, I suppose they decided that’s right. For all the bluster about defying fate and making a new path for the story they stuck to the original thread, Aerith bites it, Masamune does its job. Lovely. There’s just one thing. They fucking botched it. I don’t know who made the decision to take one of the most iconic moments in the entire Final Fantasy series and make that the playground for some interdimensional bullshit, but they really dropped the ball. I sat, baffled, as Cloud successfully saved Aerith only for a different reality to assert itself and have her die anyhow, the scenes became a messy blur, it was a convoluted mess.
The following boss battles rule. I became engrossed in several fights with Jenova, Sephiroth, and a different version of Sephiroth, before fighting Sephiroth. I know I just complained that there’s too much Sephiroth in this game but in terms of final boss battles this is the right time to start throwing him into the mix. Once I started to watch the ending cutscenes and rolled credits however it all started to sink in.
Aerith’s death is a sloppy mess, it’s poorly directed, it loses all its impact, the amount of fighting that follows it cheapens the emotional impact and, more importantly, there is a massively important element missing. I don’t know how other Final fantasy fans feel about it, but for me there are 2 major images that became iconic. Aerith getting stabbed, which Rebirth mucks up with bad editing and its weird and honestly stupid decision to make this key and iconic scene the playground for their alternate reality bullshit, and Cloud walking her body into the water and letting her go. This tender moment does not exist in Rebirth. This is shocking to me. This is the emotional crux of the scene. Sephiroth’s violence takes the spotlight but the tender scene that follows is what gives it its impact. I couldn’t believe they completely fucked this up. It is unforgivable.
I just don’t get it. They made a big show about fighting a metaphysical embodiment of fate, they made a big show of these alternate timelines, they ended up following the formula anyway, but they threw in so much nonsense that instead of creating a worthwhile recreation of an iconic moment they just muddied it up. It’s like those painting restorations you see where some nun tries to fix up a masterpiece painting of Jesus and smudging it up because she doesn’t know what she’s doing.
All that, and Rebirth is still a good game. It has a lot of high highs and low lows, honestly the plot outside of the ending is solid, the fighting is good when it clicks, there’s a lot of fun minigames. It’s a game that’ll give you a headache one moment and then give you a spectacle or an activity you love the next. The worst offense is that some of the narrative pitfalls seem so obvious, how they managed to fumble the finale is beyond comprehension. That and they changed Red’s voice, that was fucking dumb and they should fire the guy to suggested it.
Let’s begin with the basics, compared with FF7Remake the combat is iterated and improved upon, but it isn’t radically different. It still feels mash-y, there are way too many flying enemies, attacks track way too often, and spells are particularly bad offenders, and the lock on system may as well qualify as an enemy with how often it will decide that you meant to target something other than the enemy you’ve been focussing. God help you if you end up in a battle with numerous fast enemies, it’ll really let you down then. All that whinging, and yet I’d still say that when it clicks the combat system is good. There are nuisances, of course, but there is so much enemy variety that it works better more often than it doesn’t. There are a lot of cool boss battles, like Scarlet, the Demon Wall, Gi Nattak, among others, as well as some bad ones.
When the gimmicks in the combat system get particularly annoying is with everyone’s favourite war criminals, the Turks. Rude, Elena, Tseng, and Reno are no fun to fight in any of their various combinations at any point in the game. Their boss, Rufus, is also deeply irritating. Between shielding and counter mechanics to short stagger windows, they are a gang of anti-fun lows on the adventure I’d rather never experience again. The Red Dragon, while not related to Shinra, is also total trash.
Outside of the combat system the big new addition is the open world which is a bit of a mixed bag. Its visually stunning, every area has a unique feel, and the music is fantastic as it evokes the vibes and atmosphere of each region. New battle themes, new world themes, these go hand in hand with making the open a world a great experience. The drawback is that Square Enix didn’t seem to cook up anything unique to do in such a large and multi-faceted world. I can’t fathom how so much work can go into making something that looks so good only to drop a handful of towers around for the player to climb to reveal activities. There’re a few combat trials, which are fun but not exactly inspired, as well as a watered-down version of FFIXs Chocobo Hot Cold, it’s just a shame that the world is stuffed full of so much busy work. Also, Chadley, there is entirely too much Chadley when you explore.
Another mixed bag is the mini games. There are good ones, there’s bad ones, it’s so broad there’s no way to lose! The Gold Saucer rules, especially G-Bike’s return and Chocobo racing. Other good minigames include: the Junon Parade, Jump Frog, and Run Wild. There are also bad minigames like Queens blood and Fort Condor.
Woah, hold up, did I just say that Queens blood sucks? Yes, I did, and I meant it. Mostly, I’m not a card game guy and I do not care to build decks or anything like that. I cannot be arsed, I played a few times and mostly decided it’s not for me and it’s pretty much the reason I won’t pursue the Plat. I see the hype, but I just don’t care, card games are boring. While we’re on negatives here, I’ve seen people consider the Chocobo stealth sections as minigames and boy do those blow. That’s easily one of lowest lows in the entire game, I can’t believe this mediocre, slow, plodding, waste of time made the final cut. I did enjoy the tournament on the cruise ship, however, as I dreaded to be forced to play only to discover that you can forfeit immediately and have random NPCs around the ship comment on how you’re a quitter. That was legitimately funny.
There are other little snags that Rebirth gets caught on that are detrimental to the experience but aren’t worth being overly focused on. It’s a shame that we live in a world where game developers still rely on slow moving “push a box” activities, or slowly walking behind NPCs for exposition, or slowly walking to buffer a load. There’s a lot of slow movement. Also, quickly, the people who got upset at rock walls having yellow paint on them were mad at the wrong problem, the existence of climbing is so goddamn bad. Cloud loved to get stuck mid climb and just hang there, refusing to move, the game just couldn’t handle climbing. It’s so bad.
Now that the mechanics are out of the way lets dig into the meat and potatoes of the review. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a game that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. After the events of the first game the gang leaves Midgar and starts a new adventure to hunt down Sephiroth. Well and good, pretty much par for the original, nothing exciting there. There’s lots of good, new, character moments and more world building and new conflicts to raise the stakes but the plot pretty much follows the old familiar track of the original. This is fine, it really makes characters like Yuffie and Cait Sith shine since they’re not major party members in the original. It also serves to elevate emotional beats like Barret’s return to Corel and his relationship with Dyne. These are good things. Deeper characterization of the cast is necessary since the original is thin in terms of writing and world building. Rebirth does a lot to help fill in the gaps and really make the Planet feel like something more than a map that little boxy early 3D guys used to run on.
My eyebrows first raised with the introduction of Zack, however, revealing the deaths of the other party members and Cloud and Aerith in catatonic states. Something was fishy here. It would return to the main adventure but every so often you’re treated to Zack and this alternate timeline, where things went down differently. I prepared for this to get messy. My preparations didn’t go unwarranted.
There are little warning signs, the Zack stuff, the way the Midgard Serpent is dealt with was another alarm bell. Sephiroth is entirely too present in this game. The remakes both suffer for Sephiroth abundance. There is a very difficult line for them to tread here, and I understand that it’s tricky. In the original game the Midgard Serpent is menacing, deadly, it’s beatable but only if you know some advanced strats for dealing with it. In Rebirth you simply defeat it the first time you run into it. I was hoping that it’d be something like the original, something to avoid or dodge, maybe to return at the end of the game to face as an extra boss or something. No, instead you have a boss fight, and you watch Sephiroth kill it. This is a bad narrative choice.
In the original you avoid this nasty monster you can’t beat by running away on a Chocobo. You reach the other side of the swamp, and another serpent is there, impaled on a tree, and the menace of Sephiroth is felt as environmental story telling. Changing it so Sephiroth just reveals himself and does it on screen kind of cheapens the narrative impact of the original’s reveal. This is a problem that recurs throughout the story.
At a point in the plot Tifa falls into the Lifestream where she witnesses Sephiroth for some reason. Cloud is constantly seeing him. He’s everywhere. There must have been a great deal at the Sephiroth store cause Square Enix can’t stop revealing him all the damn time.
You see, part of what makes Sephiroth such an excellent villain in FF7 is that he’s not around much. There’re a few times he pops up and drops off a Jenova to fight you but until you get to the big Aerith moment and then the final battle, he’s pretty much just a menacing force in the background. A looming threat whose name being uttered is enough to make you feel his presence. It’s not that he’s invisible for the whole plot but he’s not around NEARLY as much as in Rebirth.
So, look, I must give them some credit. It’s been years since Remake and it’ll be years before the next game hits, so if they’re blowing their Sephiroth load a little too frequently it’s because these games are releasing as 3 separate parts and not as a whole. They have to give the people what they want, and the people demand Sephiroth! So, fair play. There is, however, one thing that I cannot understand and that’s Aerith’s death scene.
After finishing Remake, and the connotations of the party “defying and battling fate itself” to change the story or whatever, I had wondered about this moment. There are few moments in gaming as big as Aerith’s death. It’s an iconic plot element and something that is so critical to the success and staying power of the original game. There’s no way you could tell FF7s story in a meaningful way without that sacrifice, right?
Well, I suppose they decided that’s right. For all the bluster about defying fate and making a new path for the story they stuck to the original thread, Aerith bites it, Masamune does its job. Lovely. There’s just one thing. They fucking botched it. I don’t know who made the decision to take one of the most iconic moments in the entire Final Fantasy series and make that the playground for some interdimensional bullshit, but they really dropped the ball. I sat, baffled, as Cloud successfully saved Aerith only for a different reality to assert itself and have her die anyhow, the scenes became a messy blur, it was a convoluted mess.
The following boss battles rule. I became engrossed in several fights with Jenova, Sephiroth, and a different version of Sephiroth, before fighting Sephiroth. I know I just complained that there’s too much Sephiroth in this game but in terms of final boss battles this is the right time to start throwing him into the mix. Once I started to watch the ending cutscenes and rolled credits however it all started to sink in.
Aerith’s death is a sloppy mess, it’s poorly directed, it loses all its impact, the amount of fighting that follows it cheapens the emotional impact and, more importantly, there is a massively important element missing. I don’t know how other Final fantasy fans feel about it, but for me there are 2 major images that became iconic. Aerith getting stabbed, which Rebirth mucks up with bad editing and its weird and honestly stupid decision to make this key and iconic scene the playground for their alternate reality bullshit, and Cloud walking her body into the water and letting her go. This tender moment does not exist in Rebirth. This is shocking to me. This is the emotional crux of the scene. Sephiroth’s violence takes the spotlight but the tender scene that follows is what gives it its impact. I couldn’t believe they completely fucked this up. It is unforgivable.
I just don’t get it. They made a big show about fighting a metaphysical embodiment of fate, they made a big show of these alternate timelines, they ended up following the formula anyway, but they threw in so much nonsense that instead of creating a worthwhile recreation of an iconic moment they just muddied it up. It’s like those painting restorations you see where some nun tries to fix up a masterpiece painting of Jesus and smudging it up because she doesn’t know what she’s doing.
All that, and Rebirth is still a good game. It has a lot of high highs and low lows, honestly the plot outside of the ending is solid, the fighting is good when it clicks, there’s a lot of fun minigames. It’s a game that’ll give you a headache one moment and then give you a spectacle or an activity you love the next. The worst offense is that some of the narrative pitfalls seem so obvious, how they managed to fumble the finale is beyond comprehension. That and they changed Red’s voice, that was fucking dumb and they should fire the guy to suggested it.
Coming from someone who has been interested in the FF series in the past six months, this has really been an amazing journey. The characters, story building, action, setting, all of it have been well crafted and well done. I found the character development of Cloud very interesting and has grown way more than the previous iteration. I am also glad I took my time for the story to sit with me instead of rushing it. I cannot say if this is as good or better than the original though because I have never played it. Definitely will look into playing the original in the future because of how much I love every character in this installment.
Quelle aventure !
Après plus de 110 heures de jeu, un mois et demi passé auprès d'une équipe de personnages incroyable, à nous faire rire, pleurer, sourire et juste profiter du moment, vient le temps de faire une rétrospective ... et franchement j'ai juste envie dire "meilleur RPG auquel j'ai joué jusqu'à maintenant".
Ayant précommandé Rebirth par hasard (parce que Best Buy avait un steelbook ... ne jugez pas svp), sans avoir joué à Remake un mois avant la sortie du jeu (et n'ayant pas franchement apprécié FF VII plus que ça il y a peu, car trop daté à mon goût), j'ai enchaîné les deux - deux mois et demi plus tard, je suis sur le cul.
Passons aux points positifs :
- Bande-son impeccable (c'est pas pour rien que j'ai acheté l'édition spéciale en préco !)
- Character models généralement de haute qualité (pour les personnages principaux et secondaires)
- Mini-jeux à foison, mais optionnels pour la plupart, donc chacun s'y retrouve
- Queen's Blood, 'nuff said? Il faut absolument que Square nous sorte un jeu standalone
- NB: j'ai fait 1/4 en mode graphique, 3/4 en mode performance - de mémoire le mode graphique était 100% stable et le mode perf est globalement stable si vous avez un écran / une TV avec VRR
- Chacune des régions a son charme / sa propre direction artistique, aucune ne laisse indifférent.e
- Les cinématiques sont superbes
- Pour qui veut une expérience plus courte, l'histoire principale peut être bouclée en 40-45 heures
- Au contraire, pour qui souhaite le plat', voire 100%, on a plus de 200 heures facile - c'est costaud value-wise pour 90$ CAN
Pour les points négatifs :
- Le mix audio est atroce, il est souvent difficile d'entendre ce qui est dit quand la musique est super forte au-dessus des voix (et parfois on ne l'entend quasiment pas ...)
- Toujours des problèmes de textures de qualité moindre (comme dans Remake), qui laissent penser à des soucis d'optimisation - ça se voit
- Le mode performance a été amélioré (un poil moins flou), mais toujours pas fou - en "performance sharp" avec 1440p (et upscale fait via ma TV), le résultat est correct mais il y des baisses de framerate en deçà de la fenêtre VRR (<48 fps) lorsque l'action est intense / il y a des effets complexes à l'écran
- La difficulté du jeu peut grimper abruptement (certaines quêtes annexes ou des mini-jeux en particulier surtout), ça n'a pas trop de sens
- Possiblement une plainte perso, mais l'aspect des cinématiques CG est assez ... étrange ? Square aurait mieux fait de tout produire "in-engine" pour garder le même aspect
- Pour un jeu en monde ouvert, l'aspect traversée laisse à désirer en comparaison d'autres jeux récents - en particulier, ne pas pouvoir sauter/grimper en dehors de certaines zones prédéfinies reste contre-intuitif
Rebirth est une perle - la façon dont on en apprend plus sur le monde, l'histoire et les personnages rend l'expérience de FF VII (Remake/Rebirth) beaucoup plus complète (et vivante ?) à mes yeux.
C'est un jeu qui ne laisse pas indemne - je comprends en quoi certain.e.s fans de la première heure seront potentiellement déçu.e.s par trop de changement / de contenu additionnel / de "padding", mais en tant que nouvel arrivant dans l'univers FF VII, Rebirth représente pour moi l'exemple à suivre (et à "battre").
Okay, je file me retourner la cervelle en pensant à un certain nombre de théories pour le troisième jeu ...
Après plus de 110 heures de jeu, un mois et demi passé auprès d'une équipe de personnages incroyable, à nous faire rire, pleurer, sourire et juste profiter du moment, vient le temps de faire une rétrospective ... et franchement j'ai juste envie dire "meilleur RPG auquel j'ai joué jusqu'à maintenant".
Ayant précommandé Rebirth par hasard (parce que Best Buy avait un steelbook ... ne jugez pas svp), sans avoir joué à Remake un mois avant la sortie du jeu (et n'ayant pas franchement apprécié FF VII plus que ça il y a peu, car trop daté à mon goût), j'ai enchaîné les deux - deux mois et demi plus tard, je suis sur le cul.
Passons aux points positifs :
- Bande-son impeccable (c'est pas pour rien que j'ai acheté l'édition spéciale en préco !)
- Character models généralement de haute qualité (pour les personnages principaux et secondaires)
- Mini-jeux à foison, mais optionnels pour la plupart, donc chacun s'y retrouve
- Queen's Blood, 'nuff said? Il faut absolument que Square nous sorte un jeu standalone
- NB: j'ai fait 1/4 en mode graphique, 3/4 en mode performance - de mémoire le mode graphique était 100% stable et le mode perf est globalement stable si vous avez un écran / une TV avec VRR
- Chacune des régions a son charme / sa propre direction artistique, aucune ne laisse indifférent.e
- Les cinématiques sont superbes
- Pour qui veut une expérience plus courte, l'histoire principale peut être bouclée en 40-45 heures
- Au contraire, pour qui souhaite le plat', voire 100%, on a plus de 200 heures facile - c'est costaud value-wise pour 90$ CAN
Pour les points négatifs :
- Le mix audio est atroce, il est souvent difficile d'entendre ce qui est dit quand la musique est super forte au-dessus des voix (et parfois on ne l'entend quasiment pas ...)
- Toujours des problèmes de textures de qualité moindre (comme dans Remake), qui laissent penser à des soucis d'optimisation - ça se voit
- Le mode performance a été amélioré (un poil moins flou), mais toujours pas fou - en "performance sharp" avec 1440p (et upscale fait via ma TV), le résultat est correct mais il y des baisses de framerate en deçà de la fenêtre VRR (<48 fps) lorsque l'action est intense / il y a des effets complexes à l'écran
- La difficulté du jeu peut grimper abruptement (certaines quêtes annexes ou des mini-jeux en particulier surtout), ça n'a pas trop de sens
- Possiblement une plainte perso, mais l'aspect des cinématiques CG est assez ... étrange ? Square aurait mieux fait de tout produire "in-engine" pour garder le même aspect
- Pour un jeu en monde ouvert, l'aspect traversée laisse à désirer en comparaison d'autres jeux récents - en particulier, ne pas pouvoir sauter/grimper en dehors de certaines zones prédéfinies reste contre-intuitif
Rebirth est une perle - la façon dont on en apprend plus sur le monde, l'histoire et les personnages rend l'expérience de FF VII (Remake/Rebirth) beaucoup plus complète (et vivante ?) à mes yeux.
C'est un jeu qui ne laisse pas indemne - je comprends en quoi certain.e.s fans de la première heure seront potentiellement déçu.e.s par trop de changement / de contenu additionnel / de "padding", mais en tant que nouvel arrivant dans l'univers FF VII, Rebirth représente pour moi l'exemple à suivre (et à "battre").
Okay, je file me retourner la cervelle en pensant à un certain nombre de théories pour le troisième jeu ...