Well this was a bit of a disappointment for me. Don't get me wrong it was good. If you have a fondness for the original or Remake it's probably worth continuing the series here and I'll certainly be there for the final chapter when that releases but this entry has problems.
I went back and read my review of Remake Intergrade and I complained that there weren't enough open areas with side quests and it felt like I was burning through the game too fast... Well they "fixed" that. The story beats are stretched incredibly far apart. At times I forgot what I was actually supposed to be doing because nothing of consequence happened for such long stretches. It feels mostly like padding with only a few actual story rich moments in the entire game. Sure you get the open world and side quests galore but they're mostly just MMO-style nonsense... "help me catch my chickens, go find this thing and bring it here".
The combat was still good. Felt balanced. I had fun switching the characters more this time instead of sticking to a core party. The music was an excellent rendition of the original tunes and the art style fit. It isn't a graphical powerhouse but it looks nice and the characters seem to fit well.
I guess this is a case of be careful what you wish for. Its a competent game but they overcorrected from Remake to here. The series still feels worthwhile but maybe not for new fans with limited time on their hands.
I went back and read my review of Remake Intergrade and I complained that there weren't enough open areas with side quests and it felt like I was burning through the game too fast... Well they "fixed" that. The story beats are stretched incredibly far apart. At times I forgot what I was actually supposed to be doing because nothing of consequence happened for such long stretches. It feels mostly like padding with only a few actual story rich moments in the entire game. Sure you get the open world and side quests galore but they're mostly just MMO-style nonsense... "help me catch my chickens, go find this thing and bring it here".
The combat was still good. Felt balanced. I had fun switching the characters more this time instead of sticking to a core party. The music was an excellent rendition of the original tunes and the art style fit. It isn't a graphical powerhouse but it looks nice and the characters seem to fit well.
I guess this is a case of be careful what you wish for. Its a competent game but they overcorrected from Remake to here. The series still feels worthwhile but maybe not for new fans with limited time on their hands.
Thoughts on Completion
Still processing it all, but Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is an absolutely wild ride.
A fantastic follow-up to Remake, a remarkable second part in this remake trilogy of the original FF7, and I genuinely believe it's one of the greatest video games of all time. In just a few months, across the original, Remake, Crisis Core, and now Rebirth, the whole set of games in the FF7 series have become some of my favourites of all time - with the original and Rebirth being particular standouts.
I was constantly in awe playing Rebirth at just how creative and inventive the game is, and it's truly mind-boggling how they pulled off such a well-paced, perfectly-designed game, especially one that lasted me over 100 hours. There are some issues I could note, but we're talking minor critiques that are either just preference, or others that are essentially forgivable considering the scale and quality of everything else. It's difficult not to call the game perfect even if yes, you could argue otherwise.
I also want to call out how much of an actual sequel this feels like too. Not only does it right essentially all of the wrongs of the previous game, it also does a bunch of new stuff, all of which is often high quality and relentlessly good. The game feels like a direct sequel in all the right ways, whilst throwing in a vast number of new ideas and evolutions that make it feel like a very new game at the same time. Its scale and expansiveness is one of the biggest factors in achieving this, and it nails the feeling of going from Remake's mostly corridor-like level design to a varied world that feels lived in, alive, and completely fresh, full of iconic locations and memorable characters.
Furthermore, the pacing and connectivity of the game is much improved this time around - any time there's a moment that begins to outstay its welcome, the game usually course-corrects fairly quickly to do something different. This happens at the right moment several times, and there's only really a couple of areas that feel a bit unnecessary or weirdly designed.
I have some ideas how they might be able to keep this up in part 3 (looking at you, Highwind), but even still, topping this game is going to be one hell of a challenge. Nevertheless, with such a massive jump from Remake, who even knows what they've got cooking over there!
So yeah, FF7 Rebirth is incredible. There's so much to say about the game, but I think it's gonna take some time before I fully formulate all those thoughts honestly. The short of the long is that this likely will be my 2024 game of the year.
It's also PS5's best game, and as far as I'm concerned, one of the best videogames to-date, filled with so much heart, care, and deep love that endlessly permeates throughout every aspect. It's endlessly brilliant, and one of the most enjoyable and exciting video game experiences I've ever had, sitting amongst some of my other favourite titles like Uncharted 4, the original FF7, and last year's Final Fantasy XVI (yeah, apparently I'm a big Final Fantasy fan now).
It's gonna be a long wait for part 3!
Still processing it all, but Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is an absolutely wild ride.
A fantastic follow-up to Remake, a remarkable second part in this remake trilogy of the original FF7, and I genuinely believe it's one of the greatest video games of all time. In just a few months, across the original, Remake, Crisis Core, and now Rebirth, the whole set of games in the FF7 series have become some of my favourites of all time - with the original and Rebirth being particular standouts.
I was constantly in awe playing Rebirth at just how creative and inventive the game is, and it's truly mind-boggling how they pulled off such a well-paced, perfectly-designed game, especially one that lasted me over 100 hours. There are some issues I could note, but we're talking minor critiques that are either just preference, or others that are essentially forgivable considering the scale and quality of everything else. It's difficult not to call the game perfect even if yes, you could argue otherwise.
I also want to call out how much of an actual sequel this feels like too. Not only does it right essentially all of the wrongs of the previous game, it also does a bunch of new stuff, all of which is often high quality and relentlessly good. The game feels like a direct sequel in all the right ways, whilst throwing in a vast number of new ideas and evolutions that make it feel like a very new game at the same time. Its scale and expansiveness is one of the biggest factors in achieving this, and it nails the feeling of going from Remake's mostly corridor-like level design to a varied world that feels lived in, alive, and completely fresh, full of iconic locations and memorable characters.
Furthermore, the pacing and connectivity of the game is much improved this time around - any time there's a moment that begins to outstay its welcome, the game usually course-corrects fairly quickly to do something different. This happens at the right moment several times, and there's only really a couple of areas that feel a bit unnecessary or weirdly designed.
I have some ideas how they might be able to keep this up in part 3 (looking at you, Highwind), but even still, topping this game is going to be one hell of a challenge. Nevertheless, with such a massive jump from Remake, who even knows what they've got cooking over there!
So yeah, FF7 Rebirth is incredible. There's so much to say about the game, but I think it's gonna take some time before I fully formulate all those thoughts honestly. The short of the long is that this likely will be my 2024 game of the year.
It's also PS5's best game, and as far as I'm concerned, one of the best videogames to-date, filled with so much heart, care, and deep love that endlessly permeates throughout every aspect. It's endlessly brilliant, and one of the most enjoyable and exciting video game experiences I've ever had, sitting amongst some of my other favourite titles like Uncharted 4, the original FF7, and last year's Final Fantasy XVI (yeah, apparently I'm a big Final Fantasy fan now).
It's gonna be a long wait for part 3!
FF7 Rebirth is one of the best FF games of all time. It has some really fun minigames that seem to be inspired by the content-packed Yakuza (Like a Dragon) games. The story is fantastic and takes turns I wasn't expecting. It's a must-play if you own a PS5 and a GOTY year contender.
incredible story
I haven't been this conflicted on a game in a while. On one side of the coin, Rebirth continues to do what I loved about Remake. This world gets to be fleshed out and fully realized with this generation's tech and budget, seeing all of these locations and sights on a more personal and intimate scale than anything the original PS1 title could ever hope to accomplish; what was once an abstraction through a big region map you rampaged around by foot or vehicle is now something you feel the journey of by the literal scale of your party's bodies. Every inch of this world, its biomes and its cities, are places you learn to navigate and remember the layouts of. Every story beat that makes you travel to new locations feels earned, and there's so many moments throughout the story that taking a moment to look back on how far you've come feels unbelievably grand. What I cared more about than the world of FF7 was the characters and Rebirth still more than delivers on that front. As controversial as this trilogy has already become in regards to changes and additions it makes (which, we'll get there), the way that the team at Square have re-interpreted this cast and brought them to life works so incredibly well that it's hard not to think that the next time I go back to replay that original PS1 game, I'm going to be hearing the voices of this version's cast, thinking about how they interacted with the world and play off of each other. Essentially everyone has a moment to really grow and expand their personalities and backgrounds with more detail and time than the original ever could have, and in turn it makes this party not just a group of pretty designs and surface level personalities, but a group of well defined believable people. Countless additional moments big and small across the entire game continue to flesh out the world and characters and save for a handful of segments, I thought they were all smartly integrated in adding onto the original story.
Rebirth also takes a bit of time to refine some of Remake's gameplay edges. The menus are initially incredibly overwhelming after not having touched Remake in a few years, but after enough time I appreciate that there's not only more personality in showing the actual character models compared to static portraits over a blue background, but also how much more informative a lot of those initially overwhelming menus actually are compared to Remake. The annoying upgrade system from Remake was slightly revamped with an entire new menu that's more reminescent of the sphere grids from other Final Fantasy games, with my only real complaint being that I wish I could zoom out the view more. Weapon upgrades were simplified to essentially being swappable like materia is including an auto-upgrade option that takes out some of the tinkering if you don't really want to bother with the fine minutiae, especially with how many weapons you end up getting over the course of the game. Combat feels faster paced overall thanks to Synergy Skills, a smart inclusion that at least with the parties I tended to use, resolved a lot of the annoyances Remake had with particular enemy types. While we still don't have a dedicated jump button (the Jump materia doesn't count; thing has a different purpose anyways), a lot of Synergy Skills with most party members tend to either give you a ranged move or send you into the air with proper player agency. There's also a massive quality of life addition in giving every party member unlockable abilities through that sphere grid menu that gives you free elemental abilities without any materia and MP needed, at the expense of less damage. It resolves the issue of being stuck with party members that aren't as well equipped who just need to fulfill the pressure conditions of different enemies across the board and keeps things moving along. There was the occasional frustrating moment or enemy that felt annoying to deal with, but nothing that felt like it was a core flaw with the game design itself. It's more of Remake but more fleshed out; if you liked that game's combat, you will like Rebirth's.
But now I have to talk about the open world, and that's where the overwhelming majority of my issues with Rebirth come into play. Open world games have always been a tough sell for me because I am self-admittedly impatient with very little attention span. Rebirth took me almost 2 months to finish with 76 hours of total playtime. I have definitely played longer games like Persona 5 in less time than that, and to put a long story short I think it's just because Rebirth doesn't respect your time whatsoever. I would go from loving every linear main story segment, stuff that properly moved things along into new territory and things I hadn't seen before, to dreading the moment I would have to step back into open world territory at the end of those segments. There was a period of time during the first third of the game or so that I really had to sit there and debate if I wanted to boot up the PS5 to keep playing because I was so sick of doing Chadley's Chores(tm), running around for Ubisoft towers so I could be given waypoints on the map to fight a group of monsters for Chadley to gain intel on, hold up on the D-Pad for my chocobo to slowly sniff dig sites that Chadley helped locate for you, play Simon Says for lowering the difficulty of summon fights so Chadley can praise you, play more of the godforsaken card game for the hundredth time, finish the tens if not hundreds of VR fights by talking to Chadley who I'm about ready to strangle by that point, and then collecting protorelics on a game-wide hunt for them which Chadley will also talk you to death over finding.
Besides how much I hope Chadley gets fucking popped like a balloon at the start of the third remake game so I never have to see or hear him again, I just... thoroughly do not understand what makes the actual moment to moment gameplay of this open world so awe-inspiring to people. Again, open world games are a tough sell to me; I kind of infamously don't care very much for the open worlds of Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom because I think they get tedious and repetitive, and still kind of filled with a lot of empty nothing. Simultaneously for those games though, I can at least respect them, more in BOTW's case because some of that emptiness was the point in both world building, tone and atmosphere, and pacing. It's also how much player agency and control those two games in particular give you, with rarely a moment that the player doesn't have full control over where they're going, what they're finding, and how they're doing it. Ubisoft towers and checklists aren't anything new, it's that Rebirth makes those tasks so exceedingly mundane and stretched out, pushed to such a degree that it's frankly incredible how dedicated it is to wasting your time. So many animations that are pushed to their limit making you wait around for things to happen that just continually add up, watching Chadley and his own AI creation fucking bicker at each other as your reward for finishing those checklist fights, so many back and forths for things that just don't reward you meaningfully, either in the end result or even the journey that got you there.
I feel awful for anyone who is a completionist because you genuinely, truly have to be a masochist to get everything for that platinum. You aren't just doing everything, you have to attain mastery of everything including the countless number of gimmicks and minigames that Rebirth offers. It might be worse however for people like me, who wanted to at least get a majority of the side content done to see what most of the game had to offer. You aren't just not rewarded for not fully finishing stuff like the protorelic quest, you're given a middle finger by the very last hours of the game when you discover the last side quest is actually one that demands that you perfect every Gold Saucer minigame. Or when you discover that the protorelic quest doesn't just end after completing all regions, you actually get a Brand New Fuck You Zone whose level requirement is the highest level in the game, over twenty levels beyond what you would be at by the endgame. Oh you don't want to do that? Fuck you, you get nothing for all that time you spent doing this game-wide questline. Completing Queen's Blood wasn't much better even if it's actually doable on your first playthrough, you get an alright cutscene or two, a shiny title for yourself and an extra card as your reward which you won't be using because you already finished everything by that point.
There's a cynical part of me that has to wonder if all of this bloat was because this is a triple-A game release in this current generation costing $70 dollars. Was it a value proposition? "Look at this game with over a hundred hours worth of content?" Is this what people actually want? I had said already with Remake that I think it's a great 45 hour game that could have been excellent if it was like 5-10 hours shorter, with tighter pacing and less bloat. I have no idea what spurred on Square Enix to double down on it and create what I think is just a good game that could have been great if it was 30-40 hours shorter. I shouldn't have to shoulder the responsibility that I'm complaining about "optional content" because I'm not a tool. Rebirth is a game that begs and pleads with you to engage with it, and doing so felt like being pricked by needles slowly and agonizingly, because there was the very real chance that it was going to be worth it by the end. The side quests mostly were. The pure junk food with Chadley and the open world were not. I wish I could have those tens of hours back so I could've focused on the main story and helped tighten the pacing of it. I know this is game I am not going to replay for years, and if I ever do, I am actively skipping that content with the post-game knowledge to do so.
The only other thing I have to end my piece on is a light look ahead to the future regarding Rebirth's ending, and without spoiling it. I'll just say that Remake's ending I was sold on, and loved that it very intentionally was going in a new direction akin to something like the Evangelion Rebuilds, even if I felt bad for new players who hadn't played the original that they were going to be thrown for a loop. I am far less sold on Rebirth's ending, and my worries for that final third entry have skyrocketed now because of how messy it was. There's too many unknowns that have raised the stakes for Square to nail the landing, and there's a very real possibility that they're going to miss which would truly be a shame for the insane amount of work and effort on display thus far to be retroactively dismissed if they can't nail the finale. I pray they can to make all of this worth something more.
Rebirth also takes a bit of time to refine some of Remake's gameplay edges. The menus are initially incredibly overwhelming after not having touched Remake in a few years, but after enough time I appreciate that there's not only more personality in showing the actual character models compared to static portraits over a blue background, but also how much more informative a lot of those initially overwhelming menus actually are compared to Remake. The annoying upgrade system from Remake was slightly revamped with an entire new menu that's more reminescent of the sphere grids from other Final Fantasy games, with my only real complaint being that I wish I could zoom out the view more. Weapon upgrades were simplified to essentially being swappable like materia is including an auto-upgrade option that takes out some of the tinkering if you don't really want to bother with the fine minutiae, especially with how many weapons you end up getting over the course of the game. Combat feels faster paced overall thanks to Synergy Skills, a smart inclusion that at least with the parties I tended to use, resolved a lot of the annoyances Remake had with particular enemy types. While we still don't have a dedicated jump button (the Jump materia doesn't count; thing has a different purpose anyways), a lot of Synergy Skills with most party members tend to either give you a ranged move or send you into the air with proper player agency. There's also a massive quality of life addition in giving every party member unlockable abilities through that sphere grid menu that gives you free elemental abilities without any materia and MP needed, at the expense of less damage. It resolves the issue of being stuck with party members that aren't as well equipped who just need to fulfill the pressure conditions of different enemies across the board and keeps things moving along. There was the occasional frustrating moment or enemy that felt annoying to deal with, but nothing that felt like it was a core flaw with the game design itself. It's more of Remake but more fleshed out; if you liked that game's combat, you will like Rebirth's.
But now I have to talk about the open world, and that's where the overwhelming majority of my issues with Rebirth come into play. Open world games have always been a tough sell for me because I am self-admittedly impatient with very little attention span. Rebirth took me almost 2 months to finish with 76 hours of total playtime. I have definitely played longer games like Persona 5 in less time than that, and to put a long story short I think it's just because Rebirth doesn't respect your time whatsoever. I would go from loving every linear main story segment, stuff that properly moved things along into new territory and things I hadn't seen before, to dreading the moment I would have to step back into open world territory at the end of those segments. There was a period of time during the first third of the game or so that I really had to sit there and debate if I wanted to boot up the PS5 to keep playing because I was so sick of doing Chadley's Chores(tm), running around for Ubisoft towers so I could be given waypoints on the map to fight a group of monsters for Chadley to gain intel on, hold up on the D-Pad for my chocobo to slowly sniff dig sites that Chadley helped locate for you, play Simon Says for lowering the difficulty of summon fights so Chadley can praise you, play more of the godforsaken card game for the hundredth time, finish the tens if not hundreds of VR fights by talking to Chadley who I'm about ready to strangle by that point, and then collecting protorelics on a game-wide hunt for them which Chadley will also talk you to death over finding.
Besides how much I hope Chadley gets fucking popped like a balloon at the start of the third remake game so I never have to see or hear him again, I just... thoroughly do not understand what makes the actual moment to moment gameplay of this open world so awe-inspiring to people. Again, open world games are a tough sell to me; I kind of infamously don't care very much for the open worlds of Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom because I think they get tedious and repetitive, and still kind of filled with a lot of empty nothing. Simultaneously for those games though, I can at least respect them, more in BOTW's case because some of that emptiness was the point in both world building, tone and atmosphere, and pacing. It's also how much player agency and control those two games in particular give you, with rarely a moment that the player doesn't have full control over where they're going, what they're finding, and how they're doing it. Ubisoft towers and checklists aren't anything new, it's that Rebirth makes those tasks so exceedingly mundane and stretched out, pushed to such a degree that it's frankly incredible how dedicated it is to wasting your time. So many animations that are pushed to their limit making you wait around for things to happen that just continually add up, watching Chadley and his own AI creation fucking bicker at each other as your reward for finishing those checklist fights, so many back and forths for things that just don't reward you meaningfully, either in the end result or even the journey that got you there.
I feel awful for anyone who is a completionist because you genuinely, truly have to be a masochist to get everything for that platinum. You aren't just doing everything, you have to attain mastery of everything including the countless number of gimmicks and minigames that Rebirth offers. It might be worse however for people like me, who wanted to at least get a majority of the side content done to see what most of the game had to offer. You aren't just not rewarded for not fully finishing stuff like the protorelic quest, you're given a middle finger by the very last hours of the game when you discover the last side quest is actually one that demands that you perfect every Gold Saucer minigame. Or when you discover that the protorelic quest doesn't just end after completing all regions, you actually get a Brand New Fuck You Zone whose level requirement is the highest level in the game, over twenty levels beyond what you would be at by the endgame. Oh you don't want to do that? Fuck you, you get nothing for all that time you spent doing this game-wide questline. Completing Queen's Blood wasn't much better even if it's actually doable on your first playthrough, you get an alright cutscene or two, a shiny title for yourself and an extra card as your reward which you won't be using because you already finished everything by that point.
There's a cynical part of me that has to wonder if all of this bloat was because this is a triple-A game release in this current generation costing $70 dollars. Was it a value proposition? "Look at this game with over a hundred hours worth of content?" Is this what people actually want? I had said already with Remake that I think it's a great 45 hour game that could have been excellent if it was like 5-10 hours shorter, with tighter pacing and less bloat. I have no idea what spurred on Square Enix to double down on it and create what I think is just a good game that could have been great if it was 30-40 hours shorter. I shouldn't have to shoulder the responsibility that I'm complaining about "optional content" because I'm not a tool. Rebirth is a game that begs and pleads with you to engage with it, and doing so felt like being pricked by needles slowly and agonizingly, because there was the very real chance that it was going to be worth it by the end. The side quests mostly were. The pure junk food with Chadley and the open world were not. I wish I could have those tens of hours back so I could've focused on the main story and helped tighten the pacing of it. I know this is game I am not going to replay for years, and if I ever do, I am actively skipping that content with the post-game knowledge to do so.
The only other thing I have to end my piece on is a light look ahead to the future regarding Rebirth's ending, and without spoiling it. I'll just say that Remake's ending I was sold on, and loved that it very intentionally was going in a new direction akin to something like the Evangelion Rebuilds, even if I felt bad for new players who hadn't played the original that they were going to be thrown for a loop. I am far less sold on Rebirth's ending, and my worries for that final third entry have skyrocketed now because of how messy it was. There's too many unknowns that have raised the stakes for Square to nail the landing, and there's a very real possibility that they're going to miss which would truly be a shame for the insane amount of work and effort on display thus far to be retroactively dismissed if they can't nail the finale. I pray they can to make all of this worth something more.
Os dejaré un link por si queréis leer en más profundidad lo que tengo que decir sobre él juego -en menos de 1 minuto creo que lo tenéis-
No se puede hacer un Remake de Final Fantasy VII en la actualidad pero si puedes hacer un videojuego que rinda homenaje a la obra original; a sus fans y a los desarrolladores que están detrás.
Es una obra completísima pese a ser el capítulo "d'enmedio" y seguramente este en la quiniela de los juegos del año en la gran mayoría de las personas. Es una pena que pese a todo, vaya a pasar más desapercibido que nunca.
No se puede hacer un Remake de Final Fantasy VII en la actualidad pero si puedes hacer un videojuego que rinda homenaje a la obra original; a sus fans y a los desarrolladores que están detrás.
Es una obra completísima pese a ser el capítulo "d'enmedio" y seguramente este en la quiniela de los juegos del año en la gran mayoría de las personas. Es una pena que pese a todo, vaya a pasar más desapercibido que nunca.
9/10
Even better than part 1. I know some people complain about too many mini-games but they are literally so fun (and skippable if you don't want to do them). Chemistry between each group member is amazing and so i story.
This review contains spoilers
While I loved the game, the changes made to the plot didn't sit well with me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against changing things up - I just don't like what they changed, nor how they did it.
There’s a line that stands out to me where Barret refers to the ‘Gilded Saucer’, emphasising how the bright lights and supreme extravagance of the Gold Saucer serve as a distraction, a veneer for the true ugliness of the world and the ugliness and exploitation beneath the surface. This ought to be what the game is about, but it feels more like the whole game experience has become its own gold saucer, each region like another ‘square’ full of amusements and distractions.
I must admit I had a hell of a lot of fun with this game. It kept me playing for weeks, about 150 hours, with plenty more postgame challenges and tedium left over. The game is bloated as hell with filler and busywork, but also packed with fun mini games and delightful combat. Aside from some tweaks like more aggressive AI for party members or range and jumping attacks for everyone, I don’t have any issue with the combat and it kept me coming back for more.
The main story doesn’t match up to that though, so the overall package is frankly disappointing and frustrating. Despite much speculation and hints from the creators at something big and meaningful, it doesn’t follow through. All the narrative weight goes into plot and driving to the next big spectacle, rather than saying something or really focusing on the characters. Characters are sometimes reduced to love interests, magical plot devices and comic relief in their vastly expanded, stretched out journey. So many opportunities to dig into their feelings and connections are wasted in favour of brief feel good moments and affection gauges going up. Sephiroth no longer feels at all unnerving or threatening. Big lore dumps are added in attempt to add history to the game’s world but I find they lack flavour.
When they’re not competing for ‘best girl’ the leads do feel engaging. It’s clear they have their own relationships not just the one they each have with Cloud, so it’s a bit sad not to see more of that, which could’ve been a better use of the side quests and even the various times the party splits up in main story chapters.
The game suggests some great positive influences from other titles like Yakuza series and even western RPGs. It’s also got some bad habits from them too like some annoying cinematic button presses which don’t provide the emotional weight intended.
Having said all that I really appreciate the scale of this game and the effort and love poured into it; it certainly shows more than other recent entries to the franchise. I hope the same level of passion and fun can go into an original story for the next mainline FF or even a separate IP. The final chapter seems divisive but I actually found some intrigue in it. In recent years the multiverse concept has quickly moved en vogue to cliche but there’s actually a few crumbs of excitement for me there. Maybe they can pull it off, maybe we’ll never learn.
I must admit I had a hell of a lot of fun with this game. It kept me playing for weeks, about 150 hours, with plenty more postgame challenges and tedium left over. The game is bloated as hell with filler and busywork, but also packed with fun mini games and delightful combat. Aside from some tweaks like more aggressive AI for party members or range and jumping attacks for everyone, I don’t have any issue with the combat and it kept me coming back for more.
The main story doesn’t match up to that though, so the overall package is frankly disappointing and frustrating. Despite much speculation and hints from the creators at something big and meaningful, it doesn’t follow through. All the narrative weight goes into plot and driving to the next big spectacle, rather than saying something or really focusing on the characters. Characters are sometimes reduced to love interests, magical plot devices and comic relief in their vastly expanded, stretched out journey. So many opportunities to dig into their feelings and connections are wasted in favour of brief feel good moments and affection gauges going up. Sephiroth no longer feels at all unnerving or threatening. Big lore dumps are added in attempt to add history to the game’s world but I find they lack flavour.
When they’re not competing for ‘best girl’ the leads do feel engaging. It’s clear they have their own relationships not just the one they each have with Cloud, so it’s a bit sad not to see more of that, which could’ve been a better use of the side quests and even the various times the party splits up in main story chapters.
The game suggests some great positive influences from other titles like Yakuza series and even western RPGs. It’s also got some bad habits from them too like some annoying cinematic button presses which don’t provide the emotional weight intended.
Having said all that I really appreciate the scale of this game and the effort and love poured into it; it certainly shows more than other recent entries to the franchise. I hope the same level of passion and fun can go into an original story for the next mainline FF or even a separate IP. The final chapter seems divisive but I actually found some intrigue in it. In recent years the multiverse concept has quickly moved en vogue to cliche but there’s actually a few crumbs of excitement for me there. Maybe they can pull it off, maybe we’ll never learn.
I had an absolute blast with this one. The amount of content on offer here is absolutely incredible. I can't even begin to imagine how much effort this must have taken to make.
Not everything is good (I really dislike Chadley), but the good outweighs the bad by a long shot.
Music is amazing. Gameplay is great. Graphics are top-notch. The open world is ...ehhh, I could have done with less of that. Some mini-games would be good enough to be their own stand-alone games (chocobo racing and queen's blood card game). You can easily find yourself trying to get the highest score, but you'll probably enjoy the game more if you don't do that.
Every character gets their own spotlight in the main story and all side-quests involve at least one of your party members in some way.
The cinematics are really beautiful and always a treat. Such a beautiful game.
Highly recommend it. I really hope the next game doesn't have Chadley or that at least there's less of him. I hate Chadley.
Not everything is good (I really dislike Chadley), but the good outweighs the bad by a long shot.
Music is amazing. Gameplay is great. Graphics are top-notch. The open world is ...ehhh, I could have done with less of that. Some mini-games would be good enough to be their own stand-alone games (chocobo racing and queen's blood card game). You can easily find yourself trying to get the highest score, but you'll probably enjoy the game more if you don't do that.
Every character gets their own spotlight in the main story and all side-quests involve at least one of your party members in some way.
The cinematics are really beautiful and always a treat. Such a beautiful game.
Highly recommend it. I really hope the next game doesn't have Chadley or that at least there's less of him. I hate Chadley.
So far pretty incredible. Surprisingly, the combat isn't getting old by my 107th hour playing. Story is engaging albeit pretty hoaky. Characters are great. I fucked up the romance sidequest and ended up in no bitches territory. Probably finish it up this weekend but fuck there's a lot of game here.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is truly a marvelous achievement, as is the ambitious project it belongs to. The already great cast feels better than ever before and the enormous world is full of unique and fun activities. The story is excellent with many high points, and while the finale is inconclusive, it gives a lot of food for thought regarding the next game. I believe that despite some minor faults, this is the pinnacle of an open-world, character-driven JRPG, and a truly enjoyable game, with a great OST to boot. Even if someone wasn’t a fan of FFVII Remake, I think this game does a very good job addressing some of its issues. It took me around 130 hours to finish the first playthrough and complete its side content. Highly recommended to fans of an action-packed game or an epic story and to those who love mini-games.
The full review can be read here!
The full review can be read here!
I don't know what to feel about this game. On some aspects it's the game that I've dreamed of when I first played the original FF7 16 years ago, but on the other hand the game has some baffling narrative and design decisions that halted my enjoyment.
I hated the changes made to the story in FF7 Remake, however as time passed, I accepted these changes. I want to be clear that it's not the fact of that they were changing the story that I hated. What I hated was the direction that these changes were taking, that I don't trust Nomura as a coherent storyteller (kingdom hearts is a mess) and the rumors that you'll need to play multiple games to understand the story (like the mobile game and the battle royale).
Nevertheless, I came into this game curious where this could go, specially regarding to the events that occur at the end of Disc 1 of the original. Plus, the themes of accepting loss and the past, not letting this define your future and that you can always change who you are, are themes that can be as strong in your late 20's as they were in your early teens.
Finally regarding, the game itself. I will divide this into two sections, gameplay and story.
GAMEPLAY
Chapter 2 gives you a pretty good idea on how the template for this game is going to be. An open world area with side activities, that can be combat based or minigame based.
The combat is definitely the highlight of the gameplay. The combat is basically the same as in Remake with Synergy abilities. You do normal attacks, to fill in your ATB bar so you can use a special ability or a spell. When you do multiple abilities with two characters those characters can perform a synergy ability for increase damage or stat boost. The enemies are usually weak to a certain element and exploiting those weaknesses fills in the pressure bar staggering them allowing you to do increased damage.
Without going into much detail, I can say that every character feels unique and you have a reason to always switch your party around depending on the encounters.
The combat is accompanied by a great leveling and customizing systems, that don't feel overly complex.
The first system is a skill tree that unlocks as you increase your party level (this increases by doing sidequests, side activities and playing the story). In this skill tree you can spend points earned in combat to unlock new abilities and improve stats.
The second is the materia system, which is, in my opinion, the best customizing system Final Fantasy has. Basically materia, can be linked to your weapons and equipment, and materia can bring new skills and spells, augment certain stats, or linked with another materia to improve one another.
The final system are the weapons. Each weapons has unique stats, different materia slots and a skill. Once you used a weapon and a skill enough you can use that weapon's skill with any weapon. So you are incentivize to always use the new weapon until you mastered that skill, and then switch to one that has either better stats or materia slots to your liking.
Now the second part of the exploration, the mini games. In the first area you are introduced to three minigames, queen's blood, fort condor and the chocobo catching. Throughout the game you are introduced to more minigames to a total of 30. Now, there are some minigames that I heavily dislike, and that really impacted my enjoyment of the game, such as the Piano one, the sit ups, the 3d brawler. However, this is not my main problem with the minigames, that will be how many there are and how they are integrated within the game. To give you an idea there is an entire chapter dedicated to Queen Blood and on the next chapter the majority of it is to play different minigames to unlock a new area, and when you finally unlock that area a new harder version of those minigames unlocks. And these chapters are before the gold saucer, so when you get there you are expecting to spend a bunch of your time trying new minigames, but are already burned out on these, as you spent two chapters just doing minigames. Besides some gear is linked with the minigames so if you want that gear you need to master those minigames.
The amount of minigames, the way they are distributed and the need to master those made me feel like I was playing a Mario Party game and not a RPG. This is my major gripe with the gameplay. I feel like I've spent more time with these minigames then with the combat and leveling up.
STORY
I will be brief because of spoilers.
The retelling of the classic moments is where this game truly shines. It changes some aspects because Yuffie and Vincent are no longer secret characters so they have to be in the story, but these are the kind of changes that I understand and enjoy.
The story is truly timeless and the best moments of the original are heightened by the beautiful graphics and OST. Seeing these scenes makes you understand why so many people wanted a remake of this game. This story deserves to be told in a more cinematic manner. The dungeon design in the story is perfect, and when I was playing these I did not want to put the controller down.
However, the problems that I have with nomura's direction still hold. Everything to do with the Whispers is just confusing and sounds like nonsense. There are changes done to THAT moment, that I'm kind of mixed on it.
However, when I finished this game I felt an emptiness inside, like I was going to miss the time I've spent with these characters, and few games made me feel like this.
Will I want to replay it? The story missions and combat absolutely. The mini games never.
I hated the changes made to the story in FF7 Remake, however as time passed, I accepted these changes. I want to be clear that it's not the fact of that they were changing the story that I hated. What I hated was the direction that these changes were taking, that I don't trust Nomura as a coherent storyteller (kingdom hearts is a mess) and the rumors that you'll need to play multiple games to understand the story (like the mobile game and the battle royale).
Nevertheless, I came into this game curious where this could go, specially regarding to the events that occur at the end of Disc 1 of the original. Plus, the themes of accepting loss and the past, not letting this define your future and that you can always change who you are, are themes that can be as strong in your late 20's as they were in your early teens.
Finally regarding, the game itself. I will divide this into two sections, gameplay and story.
GAMEPLAY
Chapter 2 gives you a pretty good idea on how the template for this game is going to be. An open world area with side activities, that can be combat based or minigame based.
The combat is definitely the highlight of the gameplay. The combat is basically the same as in Remake with Synergy abilities. You do normal attacks, to fill in your ATB bar so you can use a special ability or a spell. When you do multiple abilities with two characters those characters can perform a synergy ability for increase damage or stat boost. The enemies are usually weak to a certain element and exploiting those weaknesses fills in the pressure bar staggering them allowing you to do increased damage.
Without going into much detail, I can say that every character feels unique and you have a reason to always switch your party around depending on the encounters.
The combat is accompanied by a great leveling and customizing systems, that don't feel overly complex.
The first system is a skill tree that unlocks as you increase your party level (this increases by doing sidequests, side activities and playing the story). In this skill tree you can spend points earned in combat to unlock new abilities and improve stats.
The second is the materia system, which is, in my opinion, the best customizing system Final Fantasy has. Basically materia, can be linked to your weapons and equipment, and materia can bring new skills and spells, augment certain stats, or linked with another materia to improve one another.
The final system are the weapons. Each weapons has unique stats, different materia slots and a skill. Once you used a weapon and a skill enough you can use that weapon's skill with any weapon. So you are incentivize to always use the new weapon until you mastered that skill, and then switch to one that has either better stats or materia slots to your liking.
Now the second part of the exploration, the mini games. In the first area you are introduced to three minigames, queen's blood, fort condor and the chocobo catching. Throughout the game you are introduced to more minigames to a total of 30. Now, there are some minigames that I heavily dislike, and that really impacted my enjoyment of the game, such as the Piano one, the sit ups, the 3d brawler. However, this is not my main problem with the minigames, that will be how many there are and how they are integrated within the game. To give you an idea there is an entire chapter dedicated to Queen Blood and on the next chapter the majority of it is to play different minigames to unlock a new area, and when you finally unlock that area a new harder version of those minigames unlocks. And these chapters are before the gold saucer, so when you get there you are expecting to spend a bunch of your time trying new minigames, but are already burned out on these, as you spent two chapters just doing minigames. Besides some gear is linked with the minigames so if you want that gear you need to master those minigames.
The amount of minigames, the way they are distributed and the need to master those made me feel like I was playing a Mario Party game and not a RPG. This is my major gripe with the gameplay. I feel like I've spent more time with these minigames then with the combat and leveling up.
STORY
I will be brief because of spoilers.
The retelling of the classic moments is where this game truly shines. It changes some aspects because Yuffie and Vincent are no longer secret characters so they have to be in the story, but these are the kind of changes that I understand and enjoy.
The story is truly timeless and the best moments of the original are heightened by the beautiful graphics and OST. Seeing these scenes makes you understand why so many people wanted a remake of this game. This story deserves to be told in a more cinematic manner. The dungeon design in the story is perfect, and when I was playing these I did not want to put the controller down.
However, the problems that I have with nomura's direction still hold. Everything to do with the Whispers is just confusing and sounds like nonsense. There are changes done to THAT moment, that I'm kind of mixed on it.
However, when I finished this game I felt an emptiness inside, like I was going to miss the time I've spent with these characters, and few games made me feel like this.
Will I want to replay it? The story missions and combat absolutely. The mini games never.
Flawed, unfocused, thematic whiplash, philosophically opaque ... but also wonderful, beautiful, emotionally honest, grandiose, empathetic and just ... such a great time. I have a lot of thoughts on this, I think it's filled to the brim with ideas and stories and themes that it doesn't manage to meaningfully connect or synthesize to a wholly satisfying gesamtkunstwerk, to the point that it sometimes feels like it actively works against some of the themes of the original. But I really honestly feel like in the end, once everything is done, once you fought your way through the 75 final bosses, you really do feel on a visceral emotional level what it's all about and why it's worth it to care, and what the game is trying to say about our world and our place in it.
It takes very long to get there and there are large stretches where nothing much relevant happens (or, and this is my biggest criticism, where the game is implying all sorts of different threads and ideas that it then doesn't really follow up on), but it does get there. And what I got to play in-between is one of my favorite JRPGs ever, with what might be my favorite combat system of all time, some phenomenal environment and creature design, series-best character and cinematic direction, very clever structure and mission design, a never-ending stream of creative and unique ideas ... and genuinely one of the best soundtracks of all time. Holy shit, the music in this is so good, it's unbelievable how a soundtrack this versatile and this inspired, one that has to do so much heavy-lifting both in terms of background music and emotionally leading a scene, can be so consistently great. Good stuff.
Hot take: Queen's Blood isn't actually all that great. Sorry!
It takes very long to get there and there are large stretches where nothing much relevant happens (or, and this is my biggest criticism, where the game is implying all sorts of different threads and ideas that it then doesn't really follow up on), but it does get there. And what I got to play in-between is one of my favorite JRPGs ever, with what might be my favorite combat system of all time, some phenomenal environment and creature design, series-best character and cinematic direction, very clever structure and mission design, a never-ending stream of creative and unique ideas ... and genuinely one of the best soundtracks of all time. Holy shit, the music in this is so good, it's unbelievable how a soundtrack this versatile and this inspired, one that has to do so much heavy-lifting both in terms of background music and emotionally leading a scene, can be so consistently great. Good stuff.
Hot take: Queen's Blood isn't actually all that great. Sorry!
Game is a bit of a mess, bad textures, miniscule draw distance, Pop in about 5 meters from your face, Story is fantastic, but that doesn't help when it feels like two games mashed together.
Gah gah gah I really wanted this to work but it just didn’t click for me
The first five hours were captivating, I was hooked the first play session and seeing the main story beats in HD was exhilarating
But then the mini games kept piling on, the storylines began feeling cheesier and less authentic, and the structure more fan service-y…
The main story was solid most of the time, but it was hard to keep the momentum when there was all the side stuff that was downright bad at times
Also crazy annoying difficulty spikes, and finicky confusing mechanics. I was at 70+ hours and still had to bump it down to easy at times to progress
I feel like this game could have been way better as a 30-40 hour main story, 50-60 hour completionist vibe. I felt myself just wanting it to be over towards the end and couldn’t enjoy it as much as a non-completionist
I’ll still play the third one but it won’t be my most anticipated game that’s for sure
The first five hours were captivating, I was hooked the first play session and seeing the main story beats in HD was exhilarating
But then the mini games kept piling on, the storylines began feeling cheesier and less authentic, and the structure more fan service-y…
The main story was solid most of the time, but it was hard to keep the momentum when there was all the side stuff that was downright bad at times
Also crazy annoying difficulty spikes, and finicky confusing mechanics. I was at 70+ hours and still had to bump it down to easy at times to progress
I feel like this game could have been way better as a 30-40 hour main story, 50-60 hour completionist vibe. I felt myself just wanting it to be over towards the end and couldn’t enjoy it as much as a non-completionist
I’ll still play the third one but it won’t be my most anticipated game that’s for sure
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth es el sueño de todos los fanáticos del juego original. Poder vivir todas estas experiencias con este nivel de contenido, de cariño, de atención al detalle... Es verdaderamente sobrecogedor. Se nota que Square ha puesto toda la carne en el asador, que Remake fue un simple preludio a lo que se venía.
Yo nunca he visto a FFVII como el mejor ni lo he disfrutado con la misma pasión y amor que los que descubrieron la franquicia o incluso los JRPG con ese juego, pero aun así siempre ha sido un juego que me gusta y que tiene una grandísima banda sonora, buenos personajes y una historia muy bien planteada. Por lo que, que este Rebirth me haya hecho sentir cosas muy profundas, vivir momentos con lágrimas en mis ojos y darme un vuelco el corazón en otros, tiene muchísimo más mérito, porque en mí no influye el factor nostalgia ni ceguera por favoritismo.
El juego hace muchísimas cosas bien, muchísimas, prácticamente todas. Hasta el punto de que le perdono los fallos e incluso, ni se me vienen a la mente la gran mayoría hablando ahora con retrospectiva tras haberlo completado. Y creo yo que... ¿Eso es lo más importante no? ¿Qué más da si el juego está mejor o peor o si esto deberían de haberlo hecho de X manera o de si merece el GOTY o no? Todo eso me da igual, porque simplemente yo he vivido una experiencia maravillosa que en algunos momentos no quería que acabase.
Puedo entender perfectamente a quien no le haya gustado, precisamente por cosas, que a mí no me han parecido molestas, como la ingente cantidad de minijuegos cada dos por tres, que la historia sea tan confusa para tener a los jugadores clásicos expectantes para ver qué cojones va a ocurrir, absolutamente toda la parafernalia del simulador de combate y la recogida de datos, las secundarias con personajes o situaciones cringe...
Pero para mí tiene mucho más mérito que hayan escuchado las quejas de los fans y por fin, arreglaron el sistema de combate, puesto que en Remake no funcionaba. Aquí han metido varias mecánicas que te hacen no depender de la composición de materias que lleves equipada, siempre puedes salir al paso.
Por otro lado, no quiero olvidarme de los personajes, algunos como Barret y Yuffie, quienes me daban absolutamente igual en el original, aquí son mis favoritos del juego. La cantidad de matices y complejidad que muestran de cada uno de los del grupo principal (obviando a Cid, Caith y Vincent por obvias razones) son abrumadores.
Y la banda sonora... Me atrevería a decir que, si no la mejor, es un top 2 de la franquicia. Mejora TODOS los temas del original e incluso crea nuevos y variantes, trabajazo en conjunto de varios compositores se Square entre los que se encuentra Yasunori Nishiki, compositor de Octopath, a quien me hace muy feliz ver triunfando.
Si eres fan de FFVII, este juego te encantará, y si no lo eres, puedes descubrir un juego muy entretenido pero que no te enterarás de ABSOLUTAMENTE NADA a nivel narrativo.
Yo nunca he visto a FFVII como el mejor ni lo he disfrutado con la misma pasión y amor que los que descubrieron la franquicia o incluso los JRPG con ese juego, pero aun así siempre ha sido un juego que me gusta y que tiene una grandísima banda sonora, buenos personajes y una historia muy bien planteada. Por lo que, que este Rebirth me haya hecho sentir cosas muy profundas, vivir momentos con lágrimas en mis ojos y darme un vuelco el corazón en otros, tiene muchísimo más mérito, porque en mí no influye el factor nostalgia ni ceguera por favoritismo.
El juego hace muchísimas cosas bien, muchísimas, prácticamente todas. Hasta el punto de que le perdono los fallos e incluso, ni se me vienen a la mente la gran mayoría hablando ahora con retrospectiva tras haberlo completado. Y creo yo que... ¿Eso es lo más importante no? ¿Qué más da si el juego está mejor o peor o si esto deberían de haberlo hecho de X manera o de si merece el GOTY o no? Todo eso me da igual, porque simplemente yo he vivido una experiencia maravillosa que en algunos momentos no quería que acabase.
Puedo entender perfectamente a quien no le haya gustado, precisamente por cosas, que a mí no me han parecido molestas, como la ingente cantidad de minijuegos cada dos por tres, que la historia sea tan confusa para tener a los jugadores clásicos expectantes para ver qué cojones va a ocurrir, absolutamente toda la parafernalia del simulador de combate y la recogida de datos, las secundarias con personajes o situaciones cringe...
Pero para mí tiene mucho más mérito que hayan escuchado las quejas de los fans y por fin, arreglaron el sistema de combate, puesto que en Remake no funcionaba. Aquí han metido varias mecánicas que te hacen no depender de la composición de materias que lleves equipada, siempre puedes salir al paso.
Por otro lado, no quiero olvidarme de los personajes, algunos como Barret y Yuffie, quienes me daban absolutamente igual en el original, aquí son mis favoritos del juego. La cantidad de matices y complejidad que muestran de cada uno de los del grupo principal (obviando a Cid, Caith y Vincent por obvias razones) son abrumadores.
Y la banda sonora... Me atrevería a decir que, si no la mejor, es un top 2 de la franquicia. Mejora TODOS los temas del original e incluso crea nuevos y variantes, trabajazo en conjunto de varios compositores se Square entre los que se encuentra Yasunori Nishiki, compositor de Octopath, a quien me hace muy feliz ver triunfando.
Si eres fan de FFVII, este juego te encantará, y si no lo eres, puedes descubrir un juego muy entretenido pero que no te enterarás de ABSOLUTAMENTE NADA a nivel narrativo.
This review contains spoilers
This game is the definition of whiplash. It's a fantastic action RPG that gets brought down by a ton of poor design choices. For starters the combat is really engaging. I love the fights and all the abilities and how unique the characters are (even if I used Aerith and Tifa for 95% of the game).
What I dislike though is how much content there is. I can hear the cries of people saying that I just want a linear CoD hallway simulator type game. That's not it. I enjoy good side content but this isn't it. It's the same collectathon type bullshit in every area. I feel like I'm playing Assassin's Creed with how many towers I climbed. The amount of minigames in here is also way too much. Did we really need to recycle the motorcycle section from the last game and have 2 tower defenses? And even the side quests that are ok suffer from horrible difficultly balance. Looking at you ultimate party animal. It was definitely a quantity over quality type deal here. It was obvious they were just padding out the length of the game since it's the "middle part".
That brings me to the story. What a crock of horse doodoo. The character stuff is great. I love the characterization we get for everyone and how they interact, that's perfect. What I can't get behind is this multiple timeline mumbo jumbo. We beat Sephiroth 10 times and he's still around. Ghost Aerith is here because Cloud touched alt universe #6 Aerith. If it sounds stupid that's because it is. I'm not some VII purist that thinks this needed to be a 1:1 remake but man what they did here is not it.
Loved the game, wanted to love it more. I can't give it a higher score because of the many issues with it. Hope they do a better job with the last one.
Also fuck you for not making Vincent playable.
What I dislike though is how much content there is. I can hear the cries of people saying that I just want a linear CoD hallway simulator type game. That's not it. I enjoy good side content but this isn't it. It's the same collectathon type bullshit in every area. I feel like I'm playing Assassin's Creed with how many towers I climbed. The amount of minigames in here is also way too much. Did we really need to recycle the motorcycle section from the last game and have 2 tower defenses? And even the side quests that are ok suffer from horrible difficultly balance. Looking at you ultimate party animal. It was definitely a quantity over quality type deal here. It was obvious they were just padding out the length of the game since it's the "middle part".
That brings me to the story. What a crock of horse doodoo. The character stuff is great. I love the characterization we get for everyone and how they interact, that's perfect. What I can't get behind is this multiple timeline mumbo jumbo. We beat Sephiroth 10 times and he's still around. Ghost Aerith is here because Cloud touched alt universe #6 Aerith. If it sounds stupid that's because it is. I'm not some VII purist that thinks this needed to be a 1:1 remake but man what they did here is not it.
Loved the game, wanted to love it more. I can't give it a higher score because of the many issues with it. Hope they do a better job with the last one.
Also fuck you for not making Vincent playable.
Corrige tout les défauts de remake
This review contains spoilers
Let me get a rating out of the way first.
ahem
There is a good game somewhere here in this giant steaming pile of shit that is this FF7R trilogy, but I just don't care enough anymore to find it/10.
Edit: Okay, that's a bit harsh. While I do agree with the general sentiment of that statement for a rating, I still want to make clear that I had fun with the game for a majority of the time; it was the ending that really took me completely out of the game.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth expands a lot on what I already liked about the first entry, but at the same time doubles down on the things I hated about the first entry while also showing a complete lack of understanding of basic game design at times. I have a lot to say for the 132 HOURS i spent grinding away at this game, mostly negative. But I do want to say that where there are positives those positives shine bright.
Let's start with the positives, then.
1) I think the main focus of this Remake project has been to bring about the characters of the world and turn the dial so hard it breaks. It really goes to show that this game made me do the impossible; actually liking Yuffie and Cait Sith. They all have their own quirks and goofs about them, and they feel very real and often relatable for moving pixels on a screen. The only exception to this is Cid as he feels a bit more civilised for seemingly no reason, but I feel like they're saving him more for the third part so I'm not all that mad about it.
2) I already thought the combat system in Remake was the best combat system Square Enix has ever put out, but they somehow managed to outdo that. The synergy system feels like a very natural addition to the combat system, and it feels perfectly integrated as well. We FINALLY have a form of aerial combat for all characters too. I remember in chapter 3 of Remake, there was a side quest where Cloud and Tifa were fighting Drakes in the abandoned warehouse outside Sector 7, and it was such a slog to kill them with the very limited magic and lack of abilities at that early point in the game, but now everything feels 50 million times smoother in combat.
3) Having a bit of a musical background, I am a SUCKER for music direction. I believe firmly that music in a game brings so much more emotional weight to even the most forgettable scenes. One can and will associate music to core memories. The Remake project took probably my favorite soundtrack in all of gaming and broke the dial again while trying to turn it up. What's even crazier is hearing songs from Remake be remixed in Rebirth and still being amazing, such as being in the desert area outside of Kalm towards Midgar. They brought back the dynamic music changes too from changing from the overworld to combat, and somehow managed to make every track a banger. I can't wait for the music for this game to come to DSPs (or maybe I should start using my SoundCloud account again, I don't know).
4) The side quests in Remake were nothing burgers meant solely to pad out the game, but at least in Rebirth they're nothing burgers with a side of ketchup. I guess that's a positive? I'm partly kidding here. In terms of purely the content of them, the side quests for the most part are still nothing burgers in this game, but the main standout to them now are the fact that now all side quests except for the last one are tied to a specific party member. Not only does each side quest give you a little insight as to how each character has or will have interacted with the world. I guess it's moreso of a strength of the strong character writing of the game rather than the side quests themselves, but I think it speaks volumes that I was actively trying to seek out doing all the side quests in each region.
5) QUEEN'S BLOOD!!!! Sure, by the later stages of the game I wanted to pull my hair out strand by strand due to how difficult it was getting, but that could probably be attributed to me trying to brute force the same deck into everything. Still, I did manage to beat everyone in the in game world at it in due time, and I can honestly say this probably tops Triple Triad from Final Fantasy VIII. Square Enix, it would be a literal money printer if you decided to make this a real card game.
6) I was critical of Remake's absolute obliteration of Sephiroth's characterization. He was littered every 30 minutes of the game past chapter 1. In Rebirth, this is the part of the game where Sephiroth starts to make more of an appearance so I guess I was okay with the fact that he appears a lot in this game. Still, I can appreciate that they managed to dial down all the cryptic messaging for once and actually use Sephiroth in scenarios that actually make sense, even if he never was meant to be in a scene in the first place. For example, I liked when a hallucination of Sephiroth was able to instill the idea that the Tifa we'd been playing as this entire time was a fake in Cloud's mind in the Inn when she asks him to talk with her in private. If he had instead just showed up and blabbered about some Reunion shit I probably would have just refunded the game then and there since it was that early on.
And that concludes all of the nice things I have to say about this game. Not a lot, sure, but when this game has its moments it's usually due to one of these factors.
Now I'm gonna rant like crazy.
1) This is a minor nitpick if anything, but I'm not a huge fan of the Telltale style romance system in this game. It ruins any sense of surprise as to who you end up going on a date with. In Remake and in the original game, this stat was entirely hidden from you and you wouldn't be able to tell who you would go out with. Now with just the click of a button you can see who you're most into it with, which is only very slightly jarring but still something that ticked me off.
2) Another group of minor nitpicks here, It feels kind of weird to me that every major town in this game has major hordes of happy go lucky NPCs running around everywhere. Even Cosmo Canyon, a place that's supposed to be a sacred place for planetologists to come together and study under Bugenhagen, has fallen victim to the tourism industry. I wouldn't have as much of a problem with this if they didn't make it so you can't enter any of the houses in the towns (the exceptions being Gongaga and Nibelheim, which makes me wonder that if they got it right towards the end why they couldn't do it in the beginning). But that's just me nitpicking environments that are ultimately just pixels on a screen.
3) Probably the biggest thing I was excited for about Rebirth was the open world they'd make, especially with how much the devs were hyping it up as something to immerse yourself in. Sure enough, it's a VAST improvement over the likes of something like FFXV or FFXVI. If there was anything from this "hate" list I would move up to the "like" list, it would be this. But alas there are several major problems I have with the open world. Probably my biggest issue with this is that I believe in open world games, exploration exists beyond communication towers, quest markers on a map, and a giant navigation bar on the top of the UI telling you where to go. It sucks that in 2024 we're getting 2014 Ubislop levels of open world design. This isn't exploration; this is crossing off a checklist. What makes this checklist feeling worse is that most of the activities in the world map involve you just going to a place in bumfuck nowhere to hit QTEs for shitcoins so that Chadley can constantly call your phone and say the most annoying things ever. God, I want to rip out all of Chadley's ass hairs individually, if he even has any. Anyway, each activity you do in the world creates a new location for you to fast travel to, as if the 8 Chocobo Stops and the handful of Cache Locations in any given region weren't enough for that. Finally, I know a lot of people online would get up in arms over this, but I'm not a huge fan of slathering yellow paint on climbable objects in games and/or having protruding ledges telling you where to climb, which Rebirth is guilty of both of those.
4) Minigames. Oh, minigames. At first, I thought it was okay that there were over 100 minigames in the game since they're all mostly optional and if you want you can just skip them. I say mostly here. Maybe it's my fault that the completionist in me wanted to do every single one of them, but I think it's a problem that the game relegates certain story sections to specifically minigames. Costa del Sol did NOT need to be filled to the brim with them, even if it is a resort. I'm at Costa del Sol to catch some tans and meet up with Professor Hojo, not shoot targets with a gun. I'm at the beach, not a carnival. It got to the point that when I got to the Gold Saucer, the area that was for the most contained of all the mini games in the original game and is marketed as that in the promotion for this game, I couldn't really care because at some point it felt like the entire world was the Gold Saucer. What's even crazy is that there are entire mini games just relegated to a single side quest, like the mushroom picking one in Gongaga. This game is henceforth called "Final Fantasy VII ReCarnival".
5) Ever since the ending of Remake and the foreshadowing it created that things were going to be different from here on out, you would think that they would go all out with such a theme. And I'm not entirely against the idea of them doing something different on top of something that already existed; I think that shit's cool if anything, even if I preferred if they didn't in this particular case. Rather, I'm more critical of how they go about changing things and how they went about telling the player that they were changing things. I didn't think Remake needed Chapter 18 to be what it was and also think it was horribly executed, but I got what I paid for and went with it. What it did set up, however, was the idea that the sky is the limit with how they go about tweaking things, to the point where possibly the most talked about scene in gaming history is now considered a spoiler.
For the first half of Rebirth, the changes to the game's story are very minimal, some of which I find as good changes others not so much. For example, I think the change of making Yuffie the victim of drowning in Under Junon instead of Priscilla given that Yuffie is now a mandatory character is great. Other changes like making Cloud the captain of the troops in the Inauguration Parade rub me the wrong way but aren't something to lose sleep over. Finally there are other changes like showing Sephiroth appear on the scene and kill the Midgardsormr in front of the party that I just can't really defend and would prefer if they kept it the way it was in the original.
The second half of the game, however, is when the changes they make really start to come in, and this is where a lot of my being okay with changes ends. It almost kind of seemed like "subtlety" is a banned word at Square Enix offices. If the devs knew that they were adapting a scene fans had already liked, it's like they had the notion to just add as much noise as possible to that scene. For example, I am not a fan of the way the Barret and Dyne scene was handled. What sequence of events would you rather have?
A) Get greeted by dead bodies on the floor with bullet wounds in them, get sent to prison, leave the prison, catch up with Barret, find out the truth that Barret didn't do it and it was in fact Dyne, watch Dyne commit suicide, and then do a Chocobo race to win your freedom.
Or, B) Have Barret see a gun-armed man in the distance, have the rest of the party get greeted by dead bodies on the floor with bullet wounds in them, get told you have 24 hours to find the real culprit, get into the prison, do a bunch of minigames to get to the Chocobo race, leave the prison by winning the Chocobo race, find Barret and Dyne, learn that Dyne is a mutant freak who can attach metal to his arm out of thin air, have Shinra troops ambush Dyne and kill him, and finally have a Palmer boss fight that was so out of place given that they had cut Rocket Town I felt like punching a hole through my monitor? (By the way, I'm okay with them cutting Rocket Town in this game so long as they can justify it in Part 3).
Do you see my point? There's just a lot of times in the story, moreso in the second part, where the writers in their hubris just add a whole lot of nothing to an already popular scene that didn't need anything extra at all, especially the ending for this game, which I'll touch on next.
6) Here's the doozy. FUCK. THIS. ENDING! I had so many theories as to what they could do with this game, but this ending was NOT one of them. They singlehandedly ruined the ONE scene that was integral to Final Fantasy VII. If you wanted a world where Aerith dies like I did, you got it. If you're a crazed character shipper who wanted a world where Aerith lives, you got it. Unfortunately, this ending has put me in a position of feeling absolutely nothing; I'm now in a world where I don't care anymore. This ending pisses me off entirely for 3 reasons.
A) I usually hate plots that revolve around multiverses, because it becomes very easy to just replace characters, removing any sort of stakes from the narrative equation. If John Doe from universe A dies, no one's stopping the crew in universe A from bringing back John Doe from universe B who has the exact same personality and characteristics and acting as if nothing happened. So far, with the writing that's already been put in stone, it seems we already have something of the sort. I was already apprehensive of the fact that in Remake they somehow managed to bring Zack back to life knowing that it was in an alternate timeline, but until now it was relegated to just that; an alternate timeline that I couldn't care in the slightest about. Now they've officially opened the door to bringing Zack into the main world, and it's seemingly already happened. What's stopping the writers from just bringing Aerith back from another world, since the Aerith we've seen from another world was just more of the same we've had the entire game? Oh wait, they did bring Aerith back for the final boss fight. And Aerith does show up right there at the final frame before the credits roll (granted, I think this is more of Cloud hallucinating her into the frame, but only time will tell). They can't have their social media star die on us! No, no, no! What makes it even worse is that the black and white materias are officially stated to be from other worlds, meaning the writers can and will add complete random shit from out of their asses and just say "oh it's from another world".
B) Aerith's death is supposed to be the one scene from the game that shows the finality of life. It's fickle. You don't know when and how it's going to end and how it'll affect everyone around you. Even despite how sad it feels, you still have to carry on with the lost's legacy in tow. The original game exemplifies this perfectly; you reach the Forgotten Capital (which, by the way, I'm also SUPER pissed they didn't make it a proper city and instead relegated to making the Temple of the Ancients the city and the actual Capital into just a narrow hallway. I would have really loved to hear a final rendition of You Can Hear The Cries Of The Planet in essence of what we got with the Seven Second Till The End bit at the end of Remake), see Aerith praying there, only for her to get impaled and then immediately fighting Jenova, burying her body in the water, and then moving along towards the Northern Crater. Now, with Rebirth, remember how I said "subtlety" is a banned word at Square Enix offices? In the Forgotten Capital, you get to see Cloud disarm Sephiroth before killing her, only for it to just instantly cut to showing Sephiroth having impaled her because "world jumps" or whatever multiversal bullshit that instantly takes out any emotion from the scene, a 3 phase Jenova fight which is fine I guess but it begs the question of if they're really staying true to the original if it isn't catching the same emotional beats, and then like 50 gajillion phases of a Sephiroth boss fight where you fight alongside Zack and Aerith, who should be LONG DEAD by this point, but some multiversal chicanery dictates them to be in the scene. It's all some real fucking bullshit I could not care for anymore. What makes it even worse is that we don't see the water burial anymore, instead it's just implied that it happened but we can't truly say goodbye to Aerith just yet, no no no! NOT the Square Enix social media star!
C) Whatever they're cooking for the sequence in Mideel where Cloud falls into the Lifestream and regains his memory, they've gotta have to pack at least 3 different Lifestreams to get that man's memory up and running again. This man's brain is COOKED. The worst part is it doesn't need to be this way at all. There was a power in knowing seeing Cloud and Tifa come to terms about what happened in Nibelheim. Now Cloud has to come to terms with the fact that Aerith is dead, some shit revolving around Zack since apparently now he knows who Zack is since that was just randomly revealed in the return to Nibelheim, AND his true identity. The ending creates a GIANT mess inside Cloud's brain, and it all could have been avoided if they didn't add all this noise to a very popular scene. There's a charm in subtlety, and these writers just seemingly forgot that.
Conclusion
Overall, there are higher highs and MUCH lower lows than the first game in this Remake series. This leaves me with a much more sour taste in my mouth than the first game did, however, to the point where I don't see myself actually buying the third part until I read up on all the spoilers and listen to/watch fan reactions. Though, that just might be me writing this still angry that I had to sit through that ending not even a mere few hours ago. This is probably the first time I've genuinely felt hollowness and somewhat of an ambivalence over a game, even if I did find myself enjoying a lot of what it had to offer. I'm sorry, Remake project, but you've officially lost the plot.
ahem
There is a good game somewhere here in this giant steaming pile of shit that is this FF7R trilogy, but I just don't care enough anymore to find it/10.
Edit: Okay, that's a bit harsh. While I do agree with the general sentiment of that statement for a rating, I still want to make clear that I had fun with the game for a majority of the time; it was the ending that really took me completely out of the game.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth expands a lot on what I already liked about the first entry, but at the same time doubles down on the things I hated about the first entry while also showing a complete lack of understanding of basic game design at times. I have a lot to say for the 132 HOURS i spent grinding away at this game, mostly negative. But I do want to say that where there are positives those positives shine bright.
Let's start with the positives, then.
1) I think the main focus of this Remake project has been to bring about the characters of the world and turn the dial so hard it breaks. It really goes to show that this game made me do the impossible; actually liking Yuffie and Cait Sith. They all have their own quirks and goofs about them, and they feel very real and often relatable for moving pixels on a screen. The only exception to this is Cid as he feels a bit more civilised for seemingly no reason, but I feel like they're saving him more for the third part so I'm not all that mad about it.
2) I already thought the combat system in Remake was the best combat system Square Enix has ever put out, but they somehow managed to outdo that. The synergy system feels like a very natural addition to the combat system, and it feels perfectly integrated as well. We FINALLY have a form of aerial combat for all characters too. I remember in chapter 3 of Remake, there was a side quest where Cloud and Tifa were fighting Drakes in the abandoned warehouse outside Sector 7, and it was such a slog to kill them with the very limited magic and lack of abilities at that early point in the game, but now everything feels 50 million times smoother in combat.
3) Having a bit of a musical background, I am a SUCKER for music direction. I believe firmly that music in a game brings so much more emotional weight to even the most forgettable scenes. One can and will associate music to core memories. The Remake project took probably my favorite soundtrack in all of gaming and broke the dial again while trying to turn it up. What's even crazier is hearing songs from Remake be remixed in Rebirth and still being amazing, such as being in the desert area outside of Kalm towards Midgar. They brought back the dynamic music changes too from changing from the overworld to combat, and somehow managed to make every track a banger. I can't wait for the music for this game to come to DSPs (or maybe I should start using my SoundCloud account again, I don't know).
4) The side quests in Remake were nothing burgers meant solely to pad out the game, but at least in Rebirth they're nothing burgers with a side of ketchup. I guess that's a positive? I'm partly kidding here. In terms of purely the content of them, the side quests for the most part are still nothing burgers in this game, but the main standout to them now are the fact that now all side quests except for the last one are tied to a specific party member. Not only does each side quest give you a little insight as to how each character has or will have interacted with the world. I guess it's moreso of a strength of the strong character writing of the game rather than the side quests themselves, but I think it speaks volumes that I was actively trying to seek out doing all the side quests in each region.
5) QUEEN'S BLOOD!!!! Sure, by the later stages of the game I wanted to pull my hair out strand by strand due to how difficult it was getting, but that could probably be attributed to me trying to brute force the same deck into everything. Still, I did manage to beat everyone in the in game world at it in due time, and I can honestly say this probably tops Triple Triad from Final Fantasy VIII. Square Enix, it would be a literal money printer if you decided to make this a real card game.
6) I was critical of Remake's absolute obliteration of Sephiroth's characterization. He was littered every 30 minutes of the game past chapter 1. In Rebirth, this is the part of the game where Sephiroth starts to make more of an appearance so I guess I was okay with the fact that he appears a lot in this game. Still, I can appreciate that they managed to dial down all the cryptic messaging for once and actually use Sephiroth in scenarios that actually make sense, even if he never was meant to be in a scene in the first place. For example, I liked when a hallucination of Sephiroth was able to instill the idea that the Tifa we'd been playing as this entire time was a fake in Cloud's mind in the Inn when she asks him to talk with her in private. If he had instead just showed up and blabbered about some Reunion shit I probably would have just refunded the game then and there since it was that early on.
And that concludes all of the nice things I have to say about this game. Not a lot, sure, but when this game has its moments it's usually due to one of these factors.
Now I'm gonna rant like crazy.
1) This is a minor nitpick if anything, but I'm not a huge fan of the Telltale style romance system in this game. It ruins any sense of surprise as to who you end up going on a date with. In Remake and in the original game, this stat was entirely hidden from you and you wouldn't be able to tell who you would go out with. Now with just the click of a button you can see who you're most into it with, which is only very slightly jarring but still something that ticked me off.
2) Another group of minor nitpicks here, It feels kind of weird to me that every major town in this game has major hordes of happy go lucky NPCs running around everywhere. Even Cosmo Canyon, a place that's supposed to be a sacred place for planetologists to come together and study under Bugenhagen, has fallen victim to the tourism industry. I wouldn't have as much of a problem with this if they didn't make it so you can't enter any of the houses in the towns (the exceptions being Gongaga and Nibelheim, which makes me wonder that if they got it right towards the end why they couldn't do it in the beginning). But that's just me nitpicking environments that are ultimately just pixels on a screen.
3) Probably the biggest thing I was excited for about Rebirth was the open world they'd make, especially with how much the devs were hyping it up as something to immerse yourself in. Sure enough, it's a VAST improvement over the likes of something like FFXV or FFXVI. If there was anything from this "hate" list I would move up to the "like" list, it would be this. But alas there are several major problems I have with the open world. Probably my biggest issue with this is that I believe in open world games, exploration exists beyond communication towers, quest markers on a map, and a giant navigation bar on the top of the UI telling you where to go. It sucks that in 2024 we're getting 2014 Ubislop levels of open world design. This isn't exploration; this is crossing off a checklist. What makes this checklist feeling worse is that most of the activities in the world map involve you just going to a place in bumfuck nowhere to hit QTEs for shitcoins so that Chadley can constantly call your phone and say the most annoying things ever. God, I want to rip out all of Chadley's ass hairs individually, if he even has any. Anyway, each activity you do in the world creates a new location for you to fast travel to, as if the 8 Chocobo Stops and the handful of Cache Locations in any given region weren't enough for that. Finally, I know a lot of people online would get up in arms over this, but I'm not a huge fan of slathering yellow paint on climbable objects in games and/or having protruding ledges telling you where to climb, which Rebirth is guilty of both of those.
4) Minigames. Oh, minigames. At first, I thought it was okay that there were over 100 minigames in the game since they're all mostly optional and if you want you can just skip them. I say mostly here. Maybe it's my fault that the completionist in me wanted to do every single one of them, but I think it's a problem that the game relegates certain story sections to specifically minigames. Costa del Sol did NOT need to be filled to the brim with them, even if it is a resort. I'm at Costa del Sol to catch some tans and meet up with Professor Hojo, not shoot targets with a gun. I'm at the beach, not a carnival. It got to the point that when I got to the Gold Saucer, the area that was for the most contained of all the mini games in the original game and is marketed as that in the promotion for this game, I couldn't really care because at some point it felt like the entire world was the Gold Saucer. What's even crazy is that there are entire mini games just relegated to a single side quest, like the mushroom picking one in Gongaga. This game is henceforth called "Final Fantasy VII ReCarnival".
5) Ever since the ending of Remake and the foreshadowing it created that things were going to be different from here on out, you would think that they would go all out with such a theme. And I'm not entirely against the idea of them doing something different on top of something that already existed; I think that shit's cool if anything, even if I preferred if they didn't in this particular case. Rather, I'm more critical of how they go about changing things and how they went about telling the player that they were changing things. I didn't think Remake needed Chapter 18 to be what it was and also think it was horribly executed, but I got what I paid for and went with it. What it did set up, however, was the idea that the sky is the limit with how they go about tweaking things, to the point where possibly the most talked about scene in gaming history is now considered a spoiler.
For the first half of Rebirth, the changes to the game's story are very minimal, some of which I find as good changes others not so much. For example, I think the change of making Yuffie the victim of drowning in Under Junon instead of Priscilla given that Yuffie is now a mandatory character is great. Other changes like making Cloud the captain of the troops in the Inauguration Parade rub me the wrong way but aren't something to lose sleep over. Finally there are other changes like showing Sephiroth appear on the scene and kill the Midgardsormr in front of the party that I just can't really defend and would prefer if they kept it the way it was in the original.
The second half of the game, however, is when the changes they make really start to come in, and this is where a lot of my being okay with changes ends. It almost kind of seemed like "subtlety" is a banned word at Square Enix offices. If the devs knew that they were adapting a scene fans had already liked, it's like they had the notion to just add as much noise as possible to that scene. For example, I am not a fan of the way the Barret and Dyne scene was handled. What sequence of events would you rather have?
A) Get greeted by dead bodies on the floor with bullet wounds in them, get sent to prison, leave the prison, catch up with Barret, find out the truth that Barret didn't do it and it was in fact Dyne, watch Dyne commit suicide, and then do a Chocobo race to win your freedom.
Or, B) Have Barret see a gun-armed man in the distance, have the rest of the party get greeted by dead bodies on the floor with bullet wounds in them, get told you have 24 hours to find the real culprit, get into the prison, do a bunch of minigames to get to the Chocobo race, leave the prison by winning the Chocobo race, find Barret and Dyne, learn that Dyne is a mutant freak who can attach metal to his arm out of thin air, have Shinra troops ambush Dyne and kill him, and finally have a Palmer boss fight that was so out of place given that they had cut Rocket Town I felt like punching a hole through my monitor? (By the way, I'm okay with them cutting Rocket Town in this game so long as they can justify it in Part 3).
Do you see my point? There's just a lot of times in the story, moreso in the second part, where the writers in their hubris just add a whole lot of nothing to an already popular scene that didn't need anything extra at all, especially the ending for this game, which I'll touch on next.
6) Here's the doozy. FUCK. THIS. ENDING! I had so many theories as to what they could do with this game, but this ending was NOT one of them. They singlehandedly ruined the ONE scene that was integral to Final Fantasy VII. If you wanted a world where Aerith dies like I did, you got it. If you're a crazed character shipper who wanted a world where Aerith lives, you got it. Unfortunately, this ending has put me in a position of feeling absolutely nothing; I'm now in a world where I don't care anymore. This ending pisses me off entirely for 3 reasons.
A) I usually hate plots that revolve around multiverses, because it becomes very easy to just replace characters, removing any sort of stakes from the narrative equation. If John Doe from universe A dies, no one's stopping the crew in universe A from bringing back John Doe from universe B who has the exact same personality and characteristics and acting as if nothing happened. So far, with the writing that's already been put in stone, it seems we already have something of the sort. I was already apprehensive of the fact that in Remake they somehow managed to bring Zack back to life knowing that it was in an alternate timeline, but until now it was relegated to just that; an alternate timeline that I couldn't care in the slightest about. Now they've officially opened the door to bringing Zack into the main world, and it's seemingly already happened. What's stopping the writers from just bringing Aerith back from another world, since the Aerith we've seen from another world was just more of the same we've had the entire game? Oh wait, they did bring Aerith back for the final boss fight. And Aerith does show up right there at the final frame before the credits roll (granted, I think this is more of Cloud hallucinating her into the frame, but only time will tell). They can't have their social media star die on us! No, no, no! What makes it even worse is that the black and white materias are officially stated to be from other worlds, meaning the writers can and will add complete random shit from out of their asses and just say "oh it's from another world".
B) Aerith's death is supposed to be the one scene from the game that shows the finality of life. It's fickle. You don't know when and how it's going to end and how it'll affect everyone around you. Even despite how sad it feels, you still have to carry on with the lost's legacy in tow. The original game exemplifies this perfectly; you reach the Forgotten Capital (which, by the way, I'm also SUPER pissed they didn't make it a proper city and instead relegated to making the Temple of the Ancients the city and the actual Capital into just a narrow hallway. I would have really loved to hear a final rendition of You Can Hear The Cries Of The Planet in essence of what we got with the Seven Second Till The End bit at the end of Remake), see Aerith praying there, only for her to get impaled and then immediately fighting Jenova, burying her body in the water, and then moving along towards the Northern Crater. Now, with Rebirth, remember how I said "subtlety" is a banned word at Square Enix offices? In the Forgotten Capital, you get to see Cloud disarm Sephiroth before killing her, only for it to just instantly cut to showing Sephiroth having impaled her because "world jumps" or whatever multiversal bullshit that instantly takes out any emotion from the scene, a 3 phase Jenova fight which is fine I guess but it begs the question of if they're really staying true to the original if it isn't catching the same emotional beats, and then like 50 gajillion phases of a Sephiroth boss fight where you fight alongside Zack and Aerith, who should be LONG DEAD by this point, but some multiversal chicanery dictates them to be in the scene. It's all some real fucking bullshit I could not care for anymore. What makes it even worse is that we don't see the water burial anymore, instead it's just implied that it happened but we can't truly say goodbye to Aerith just yet, no no no! NOT the Square Enix social media star!
C) Whatever they're cooking for the sequence in Mideel where Cloud falls into the Lifestream and regains his memory, they've gotta have to pack at least 3 different Lifestreams to get that man's memory up and running again. This man's brain is COOKED. The worst part is it doesn't need to be this way at all. There was a power in knowing seeing Cloud and Tifa come to terms about what happened in Nibelheim. Now Cloud has to come to terms with the fact that Aerith is dead, some shit revolving around Zack since apparently now he knows who Zack is since that was just randomly revealed in the return to Nibelheim, AND his true identity. The ending creates a GIANT mess inside Cloud's brain, and it all could have been avoided if they didn't add all this noise to a very popular scene. There's a charm in subtlety, and these writers just seemingly forgot that.
Conclusion
Overall, there are higher highs and MUCH lower lows than the first game in this Remake series. This leaves me with a much more sour taste in my mouth than the first game did, however, to the point where I don't see myself actually buying the third part until I read up on all the spoilers and listen to/watch fan reactions. Though, that just might be me writing this still angry that I had to sit through that ending not even a mere few hours ago. This is probably the first time I've genuinely felt hollowness and somewhat of an ambivalence over a game, even if I did find myself enjoying a lot of what it had to offer. I'm sorry, Remake project, but you've officially lost the plot.
This review contains spoilers
The penultimate entry in the Final Fantasy 7 remake series improves on almost every element of "Remake" and adds considerably much more content for better or worse. Without a doubt Remake might have some of best combat you'll find in any action RPG and Rebirth does everything to bolster it without overburdening the player, unlike other parts of the game. The mini-games seem to be a common source of ire among a vocal group of players and understandingly so. Although I personally didn't mind them, even the worst mini-games are worth dealing with just so I could experience Fort Condor and Queen's Blood which are quite addictive and fun. There's always the option to completely ignore a majority of the side-content and jump right into the story without being held back from obtaining great materia or weapons which are mostly tied to the main story.
The ending of the game which controversially subverted expectations and despite still following thru with the original's iconic moment seemed to confound on what exactly I was supposed to take away from the game's resolution. I don't mind an open ended ending that allows for different interpretations but even so I find an issue that I had with the previous entry (Remake) as well. The weight and severity of the moment seemed to be undercut by the complete tonal shift from Cloud as he seems to brush over his own emotions which could either be a result of sheer cognitive dissonance or manipulation by Sephiroth. I understand the original did the same but it also handled the death scene and climax a lot better as well. I feel like Aerith's death should've been given a bit more finality, given the gravity of the situation.
That being said I won't go so far as to say that the developers bungled the ending and I'll be reserving my judgement until I play the final entry in the series as it might expound on the unanswered questions that the finale left us with.
The ending of the game which controversially subverted expectations and despite still following thru with the original's iconic moment seemed to confound on what exactly I was supposed to take away from the game's resolution. I don't mind an open ended ending that allows for different interpretations but even so I find an issue that I had with the previous entry (Remake) as well. The weight and severity of the moment seemed to be undercut by the complete tonal shift from Cloud as he seems to brush over his own emotions which could either be a result of sheer cognitive dissonance or manipulation by Sephiroth. I understand the original did the same but it also handled the death scene and climax a lot better as well. I feel like Aerith's death should've been given a bit more finality, given the gravity of the situation.
That being said I won't go so far as to say that the developers bungled the ending and I'll be reserving my judgement until I play the final entry in the series as it might expound on the unanswered questions that the finale left us with.
Antes de empezar la crítica quiero comentar que el ultimo jrpg que me pase este año fue persona 5 royal que se ha convertido en uno de mis juegos favoritos de todos los tiempos y que han sabido llevar a cabo muy bien TODO hasta la zona de farmeo, y creo que eso hace que le vea más las costuras a este juego.
Si tuviera que elegir un titular para esta crítica seria: Una gran historia empañada por un mundo abierto mediocre.
Y es que ese creo que es el problema que tiene final fantasy vii rebirth pero la gente no es capaz de criticar porque por fin estas recorriendo aquel fantástico mundo que recorrías de pequeño con gráficos de mierda, pero ahora al fin con unos gráficos brutales, pero eso no justifica ni el estado de su mundo abierto ni de su contenido secundario, pero vamos por partes como dijo Jack.
Apartado técnico y gráfico.
Aquí probablemente es uno de los puntos donde más destaca el juego, gráficamente es precioso y detalla a la perfección todos los detalles de los personajes, recrea a la perfección las localizaciones y hace que te sientas lleno cuando recorres sus lugares icónicos y sientas lo que sienten nuestros héroes al verlos narrar sus historias.
Todo ese aspecto del lip-sync y de darle vida a los personajes del mundo se ha mejorado brutalmente y sientes que las ciudades están llenas de gente y vivas no son solo 4 muñecos corriendo por el mapa.
La cantidad de partículas en los combates y demás también le da una espectacularidad brutal, si tuviera que destacar un punto negativo ha sido el tema del modo rendimiento del juego que literalmente se ve borroso y es una vergüenza, he tenido que jugarlo así porque soy una persona que prefiere los 60 fps a que se vea bonito, pero para ello he tenido que dejarme media vista porque el juego se veía borroso de cojones en modo rendimiento supongo que para poder mantener la tasa en mundos tan bastos.
Combate.
Es probablemente cuando lo entiendes uno de los mejores sistemas de combate de la saga, al final con el toque de las acciones conjuntas y demás, favorecen que tengas que usar al compañero para poder usar acciones más tochas y que te aporten beneficios durante el combate, han sabido suplir muy bien esa sensación que tenías en el anterior de que tus compañeros son inútiles.
Si tengo que destacar algo malo es que el sistema de parry en este juego está mal implementado, los combates son demasiado caóticos como para enterarte de cuando puedes parrear y cuando no, están pasando demasiadas cosas en pantalla como para que sea una mecánica fiable y otro problema que le veo es que el enemigo puede cortarte habilidades que estes tirando, pero tú a él no, lo cual no es para nada justo.
Banda Sonora.
fantástica como todos los final fantasy, sí que hay veces que no consigo ver el tema original en este reversionado moderno, pero cuando se han necesitado los temas icónicos han estado ahí y han sonado mejor que nunca, llegando directamente al corazón con temas como el de aerith o cañón cosmo.
Historia.
Esto ha sido una completa delicia y si fuera solo por la historia le daría un 10 al juego, expande muy bien el universo sin sentirse artificial o forzado como si pasaba en el remake con Jesse por ejemplo que se le daba más protagonismo del necesario para que el jugador viviera una experiencia parecida a la que se vive en este juego,
Gracias a las nuevas tecnologías gráficas y a que los personajes cuentan con voz están más vivos que nunca haciéndote conectar con ellos de manera brutal y que todas tus historias te fascinen, mientras que la historia de Red XIII o Barret siempre me han parecido un coñazo porque no dejaban de ser muñecos y bocadillos escritos, aquí conectas con los personajes de una manera brutal sintiendo de verdad esa pena y esa necesidad de saber más de ellos y de entenderlos.
La historia en general respeta bastante el juego canon haciendo uso como ya sabemos de esos ecos del destino que ya se hablaban del primero, pero creo que es algo que han querido expandir y por limitaciones de la consola en la que salió el producto pues no se había podido hacer y ahora sí.
Si alguien jugase solo la historia el juego sería un 9 como una catedra y todo lo que expande los expande bien y sabiendo que hace, es probablemente la mejor parte del juego sin lugar a duda.
No es un 10 porque hay partes dentro de la historia que se hacen algo pesadas y lentas, pero no es ni de lejos lo que pasaba en ff vii remake que todo se sentía artificialmente alargado, aquí al salir ya al mundo todo está muy bien conectado y de verdad sientes que estas en un viaje.
Mundo abierto.
Aquí esta uno de los grandes problemas de este juego y es que cuando uno piensa en final fantasy vii lo primero que le viene a la cabeza es su historia y sus personajes y luego todo lo demás, el problema de hacer este juego con un mundo abierto es que simple y llanamente diluyes la experiencia de la historia, tienes que estas viviendo 2 historias a la vez de las cuales 1 ves cada X tiempo y entre medias tienes que perder 3 o 4 horas si quieres ser una persona que lo haga todo completando puntos en un mapa creado al más puro estilo Ubisoft pero que como es final fantasy vii parece que no es criticable.
Cada zona del juego cuenta con una serie de torres (si torres en 2024 a lo far cry) que debes visitar para desbloquear puntos de interés en el mapa (de los cuales los más interesantes son las invocaciones) casi todos los puntos del mapa son una suerte de quick time events que tienes que hacer para completarlos, además de esto tienes batidas de caza, una protomateria (bastante meh hice 1 o 2 creo recordar porque no aportaban mucho), las chocoboparadas que son los puntos de viaje rápido que debes desbloquear arreglándolos y poco más, el caso es que hacer todo esto puede llevarte unas 3-4 horas dependiendo de la zona, haciendo que pierdas totalmente la noción del a historia para hacer cosas que aportan más bien poco.
Intenta aportar lore, pero se queda corto y parece más bien una excusa para rellenar horas más que para aportar cosas, es un mundo abierto muy desfasado que la gente parece apreciar simplemente porque te anima a moverte por zonas en las que cuando eras pequeño había 3 texturas y ahora es un mundo que parece estar vivo, pero realmente esta vacío y no aporta nada de nada.
Este para mi es uno de los mayores fallos del juego y yo hubiese usado más algo al estilo de final fantasy X de llevarte más o menos por zonas cerradas en las que voy contándote la historia y profundizando en los personajes para ya en la recta final soltarte en una zona mucho más amplia en la que farmear o hacer secundarias o buscar cosas y que de esta manera la historia no quede diluida o en un segundo plano porque tengo que ir a hacer X chorrada al mapa.
Está claro que no es obligatorio y de echo yo recomendaría a cualquier persona que vaya a jugarlo que primero se haga la historia principal y luego se pierda por el mundo abierto si quiere, pero para mí es un grave error que siendo lo más importante de este juego la historia se pierda de esta manera tan tonto con contenido secundario tan insulso como este que no merece para nada la pena.
Misiones secundarias.
Otro de los puntos más negativos de este juego y del que bastante gente ha dicho que ha mejorado un montón, será una mejora con respecto al remake (que no era difícil) porque en lo que a secundarias se refiere comparándolo con otros juegos son malas, aburridas y no se las recomiendo ni a mi peor enemigo.
No aportan nada por mucho que la gente quiera hacer creer a gente que no lo ha jugado aun que sí, de 15 misiones secundarias que hay (me invento el numero) 12 son malísimas y las otras 3 no es que sean misiones que te lleves en el recuerdo, me hace mucha gracia que digan que se han inspirado en el the witcher 3 para hacer este juego, no creo que tengan en cuenta sus secundarias entonces porque no tiene nada que ver, asumo que lo que han tenido en cuenta son los tablones en la ciudad porque por lo demás…
De nuevo vuelve a fracasar estrepitosamente en este apartado este juego donde parece que los japoneses están atascados en los mundos abiertos y las secundarias de hace 10 años, horrible experiencia en este apartado y no aportan nada salvo experiencia.
El tema Chadley es para darle de comer a parte, es un personaje que esta para dar por saco y aportar más contenido secundario que no va a ninguna parte solo que al menos este te da materias que no puedes conseguir de otra forma, haciendo que merezca la pena hacer lo que te pide, aunque sea contenido vacío y simplemente de farmeo.
Minijuegos
Este es otro de los puntos controversiales del juego y que creo que hace que sea tedioso de narices de jugar y son los dichosos minijuegos, y es que aquí parece que “hay un poco de final fantasy en mi minijuego” todos sabemos que los minijuegos siempre han formado parte de esta saga, pero lo de este juego es exagerado, está constantemente machacándote con minijuegos que además hace obligatorios para continuar en la historia cosa que no entiendo, por mucho que final fantasy vii contara con minijuegos nunca a este nivel, la gracia del juego era llegar a gold saucer y disfrutar de sus atracciones y desconectar de la historia.
En este rebirth antes de llegar a gold saucer ya has hecho la friolera de 11 minijuegos y llegas a gold saucer sobre el ecuador del juego ya con 11 minijuegos en las espaldas 4 de ellos obligatorios, lo del moguri es horrible también la verdad, cuando llegue a gold saucer la verdad es que lo último que me apetecía era jugar en las atracciones porque ya venía harto del tema de los minijuegos.
Además, es que las recompensas por hacerlos bien son prácticamente nulas porque son objetos que puedes conseguir más adelante comprándolos en tiendas o fabricándolos tú mismo con el tema del crafteo que sobra bastante la verdad.
Conclusión.
Para acabar simplemente comentar que es un juego que si fuera solo historia sería un 9 pero por todo el contenido secundario que tiene y mundo abierto se queda para mí en un 6 sobre 10, tiene una historia brutal mejorando la del original y ahondando más en los personajes y sus personalidades lo cual lo dota de una vida brutal y hace que te encariñes con ellos muchísimo prestando atención a todas sus historias y que se ve empañado por un mundo abierto anticuadísimo y vacío que no aporta nada al juego realmente.
Yo hubiese utilizado una formula como la de final fantasy x con un mundo más cerradito y de la mano para poder disfrutar de esta grandísima historia, una pena que la hayan cagado de esta manera con un juego que podría ser perfectamente GOTY si solo fuese por la historia, pero por desgracia, gracias a toda esa morralla que lo rellena está LEJOS de ser un 10 o un 9.
Si tuviera que elegir un titular para esta crítica seria: Una gran historia empañada por un mundo abierto mediocre.
Y es que ese creo que es el problema que tiene final fantasy vii rebirth pero la gente no es capaz de criticar porque por fin estas recorriendo aquel fantástico mundo que recorrías de pequeño con gráficos de mierda, pero ahora al fin con unos gráficos brutales, pero eso no justifica ni el estado de su mundo abierto ni de su contenido secundario, pero vamos por partes como dijo Jack.
Apartado técnico y gráfico.
Aquí probablemente es uno de los puntos donde más destaca el juego, gráficamente es precioso y detalla a la perfección todos los detalles de los personajes, recrea a la perfección las localizaciones y hace que te sientas lleno cuando recorres sus lugares icónicos y sientas lo que sienten nuestros héroes al verlos narrar sus historias.
Todo ese aspecto del lip-sync y de darle vida a los personajes del mundo se ha mejorado brutalmente y sientes que las ciudades están llenas de gente y vivas no son solo 4 muñecos corriendo por el mapa.
La cantidad de partículas en los combates y demás también le da una espectacularidad brutal, si tuviera que destacar un punto negativo ha sido el tema del modo rendimiento del juego que literalmente se ve borroso y es una vergüenza, he tenido que jugarlo así porque soy una persona que prefiere los 60 fps a que se vea bonito, pero para ello he tenido que dejarme media vista porque el juego se veía borroso de cojones en modo rendimiento supongo que para poder mantener la tasa en mundos tan bastos.
Combate.
Es probablemente cuando lo entiendes uno de los mejores sistemas de combate de la saga, al final con el toque de las acciones conjuntas y demás, favorecen que tengas que usar al compañero para poder usar acciones más tochas y que te aporten beneficios durante el combate, han sabido suplir muy bien esa sensación que tenías en el anterior de que tus compañeros son inútiles.
Si tengo que destacar algo malo es que el sistema de parry en este juego está mal implementado, los combates son demasiado caóticos como para enterarte de cuando puedes parrear y cuando no, están pasando demasiadas cosas en pantalla como para que sea una mecánica fiable y otro problema que le veo es que el enemigo puede cortarte habilidades que estes tirando, pero tú a él no, lo cual no es para nada justo.
Banda Sonora.
fantástica como todos los final fantasy, sí que hay veces que no consigo ver el tema original en este reversionado moderno, pero cuando se han necesitado los temas icónicos han estado ahí y han sonado mejor que nunca, llegando directamente al corazón con temas como el de aerith o cañón cosmo.
Historia.
Esto ha sido una completa delicia y si fuera solo por la historia le daría un 10 al juego, expande muy bien el universo sin sentirse artificial o forzado como si pasaba en el remake con Jesse por ejemplo que se le daba más protagonismo del necesario para que el jugador viviera una experiencia parecida a la que se vive en este juego,
Gracias a las nuevas tecnologías gráficas y a que los personajes cuentan con voz están más vivos que nunca haciéndote conectar con ellos de manera brutal y que todas tus historias te fascinen, mientras que la historia de Red XIII o Barret siempre me han parecido un coñazo porque no dejaban de ser muñecos y bocadillos escritos, aquí conectas con los personajes de una manera brutal sintiendo de verdad esa pena y esa necesidad de saber más de ellos y de entenderlos.
La historia en general respeta bastante el juego canon haciendo uso como ya sabemos de esos ecos del destino que ya se hablaban del primero, pero creo que es algo que han querido expandir y por limitaciones de la consola en la que salió el producto pues no se había podido hacer y ahora sí.
Si alguien jugase solo la historia el juego sería un 9 como una catedra y todo lo que expande los expande bien y sabiendo que hace, es probablemente la mejor parte del juego sin lugar a duda.
No es un 10 porque hay partes dentro de la historia que se hacen algo pesadas y lentas, pero no es ni de lejos lo que pasaba en ff vii remake que todo se sentía artificialmente alargado, aquí al salir ya al mundo todo está muy bien conectado y de verdad sientes que estas en un viaje.
Mundo abierto.
Aquí esta uno de los grandes problemas de este juego y es que cuando uno piensa en final fantasy vii lo primero que le viene a la cabeza es su historia y sus personajes y luego todo lo demás, el problema de hacer este juego con un mundo abierto es que simple y llanamente diluyes la experiencia de la historia, tienes que estas viviendo 2 historias a la vez de las cuales 1 ves cada X tiempo y entre medias tienes que perder 3 o 4 horas si quieres ser una persona que lo haga todo completando puntos en un mapa creado al más puro estilo Ubisoft pero que como es final fantasy vii parece que no es criticable.
Cada zona del juego cuenta con una serie de torres (si torres en 2024 a lo far cry) que debes visitar para desbloquear puntos de interés en el mapa (de los cuales los más interesantes son las invocaciones) casi todos los puntos del mapa son una suerte de quick time events que tienes que hacer para completarlos, además de esto tienes batidas de caza, una protomateria (bastante meh hice 1 o 2 creo recordar porque no aportaban mucho), las chocoboparadas que son los puntos de viaje rápido que debes desbloquear arreglándolos y poco más, el caso es que hacer todo esto puede llevarte unas 3-4 horas dependiendo de la zona, haciendo que pierdas totalmente la noción del a historia para hacer cosas que aportan más bien poco.
Intenta aportar lore, pero se queda corto y parece más bien una excusa para rellenar horas más que para aportar cosas, es un mundo abierto muy desfasado que la gente parece apreciar simplemente porque te anima a moverte por zonas en las que cuando eras pequeño había 3 texturas y ahora es un mundo que parece estar vivo, pero realmente esta vacío y no aporta nada de nada.
Este para mi es uno de los mayores fallos del juego y yo hubiese usado más algo al estilo de final fantasy X de llevarte más o menos por zonas cerradas en las que voy contándote la historia y profundizando en los personajes para ya en la recta final soltarte en una zona mucho más amplia en la que farmear o hacer secundarias o buscar cosas y que de esta manera la historia no quede diluida o en un segundo plano porque tengo que ir a hacer X chorrada al mapa.
Está claro que no es obligatorio y de echo yo recomendaría a cualquier persona que vaya a jugarlo que primero se haga la historia principal y luego se pierda por el mundo abierto si quiere, pero para mí es un grave error que siendo lo más importante de este juego la historia se pierda de esta manera tan tonto con contenido secundario tan insulso como este que no merece para nada la pena.
Misiones secundarias.
Otro de los puntos más negativos de este juego y del que bastante gente ha dicho que ha mejorado un montón, será una mejora con respecto al remake (que no era difícil) porque en lo que a secundarias se refiere comparándolo con otros juegos son malas, aburridas y no se las recomiendo ni a mi peor enemigo.
No aportan nada por mucho que la gente quiera hacer creer a gente que no lo ha jugado aun que sí, de 15 misiones secundarias que hay (me invento el numero) 12 son malísimas y las otras 3 no es que sean misiones que te lleves en el recuerdo, me hace mucha gracia que digan que se han inspirado en el the witcher 3 para hacer este juego, no creo que tengan en cuenta sus secundarias entonces porque no tiene nada que ver, asumo que lo que han tenido en cuenta son los tablones en la ciudad porque por lo demás…
De nuevo vuelve a fracasar estrepitosamente en este apartado este juego donde parece que los japoneses están atascados en los mundos abiertos y las secundarias de hace 10 años, horrible experiencia en este apartado y no aportan nada salvo experiencia.
El tema Chadley es para darle de comer a parte, es un personaje que esta para dar por saco y aportar más contenido secundario que no va a ninguna parte solo que al menos este te da materias que no puedes conseguir de otra forma, haciendo que merezca la pena hacer lo que te pide, aunque sea contenido vacío y simplemente de farmeo.
Minijuegos
Este es otro de los puntos controversiales del juego y que creo que hace que sea tedioso de narices de jugar y son los dichosos minijuegos, y es que aquí parece que “hay un poco de final fantasy en mi minijuego” todos sabemos que los minijuegos siempre han formado parte de esta saga, pero lo de este juego es exagerado, está constantemente machacándote con minijuegos que además hace obligatorios para continuar en la historia cosa que no entiendo, por mucho que final fantasy vii contara con minijuegos nunca a este nivel, la gracia del juego era llegar a gold saucer y disfrutar de sus atracciones y desconectar de la historia.
En este rebirth antes de llegar a gold saucer ya has hecho la friolera de 11 minijuegos y llegas a gold saucer sobre el ecuador del juego ya con 11 minijuegos en las espaldas 4 de ellos obligatorios, lo del moguri es horrible también la verdad, cuando llegue a gold saucer la verdad es que lo último que me apetecía era jugar en las atracciones porque ya venía harto del tema de los minijuegos.
Además, es que las recompensas por hacerlos bien son prácticamente nulas porque son objetos que puedes conseguir más adelante comprándolos en tiendas o fabricándolos tú mismo con el tema del crafteo que sobra bastante la verdad.
Conclusión.
Para acabar simplemente comentar que es un juego que si fuera solo historia sería un 9 pero por todo el contenido secundario que tiene y mundo abierto se queda para mí en un 6 sobre 10, tiene una historia brutal mejorando la del original y ahondando más en los personajes y sus personalidades lo cual lo dota de una vida brutal y hace que te encariñes con ellos muchísimo prestando atención a todas sus historias y que se ve empañado por un mundo abierto anticuadísimo y vacío que no aporta nada al juego realmente.
Yo hubiese utilizado una formula como la de final fantasy x con un mundo más cerradito y de la mano para poder disfrutar de esta grandísima historia, una pena que la hayan cagado de esta manera con un juego que podría ser perfectamente GOTY si solo fuese por la historia, pero por desgracia, gracias a toda esa morralla que lo rellena está LEJOS de ser un 10 o un 9.
This game is a masterwork. You can tell that every mind behind it is deeply passionate about the source material. All of new minigames are so fun, I love seeing that funny autistic man be put in situations. Every new place that you go to has this whacky situation going on. I especially loved the card tournament and its final competitor, not to mention the card game itself with its crazy subplot. Every time i think "OMG are they gonna keep this from the original??" the answer is "Yes AND we made it ten times better." The combat has gotten a needed upgrade, I loved how the relationship mechanics tied into battle abilities. Every character is fun to play in their own way. Yuffie is amazing for putting in quick elemental damage, Barret staggers fast, etc. Every part of this story kept me guessing up to the end credits. The open world is actually amazing and full of fun places to explore and good excuses to explore them. Frankly, my only issues with this game, and the things holding it back from five stars, are towards the beginning of the game. the flashback chapter had really weird pacing during the fire and a QTE when there really shouldnt have been one. completely took me out of the experience. and i said i loved the open world, but that wasnt true until i got to the second zone; being dropped into open grasslands that are easy to traverse (every subsequent zone has a different breed of native chocobo and thus a different way to get around) made it feel as sparse as any ubisoft game, and the towers didnt help either. but once we properly got into the swing of things, i didnt have a complaint for the rest of the game.
any chump who tells you this is a mockery of FFVII's legacy or whatever, doesnt like enjoying things. they didnt like the beach section, or the sidequests, or the relationship mechanics, or the combat. they just want pure unaltered Final Fantasy VII (1997). they were never going to like this game no matter what, because the game that they ACTUALLY want to play came out 27 years ago, and theyre playing this instead of that. so ignore them.
This game, like Remake, by no means is supposed to replace the original. it complements it. it pays homage. its a labor of love. go in wanting to have fun and youll have fun. i know i did, and i WILL be 100%ing this game, just give me time.
any chump who tells you this is a mockery of FFVII's legacy or whatever, doesnt like enjoying things. they didnt like the beach section, or the sidequests, or the relationship mechanics, or the combat. they just want pure unaltered Final Fantasy VII (1997). they were never going to like this game no matter what, because the game that they ACTUALLY want to play came out 27 years ago, and theyre playing this instead of that. so ignore them.
This game, like Remake, by no means is supposed to replace the original. it complements it. it pays homage. its a labor of love. go in wanting to have fun and youll have fun. i know i did, and i WILL be 100%ing this game, just give me time.
Easily game of the year 2024
emotional rollercoaster
Words cannot do this game justice... this is everything I ever wanted and more... my favorite game of all time given such treatment is special beyond words. I wish everyone could experience having their favorite piece of fiction shown such adoration and respect.
They nailed every character (major and minor), their interactions and dialogue were perfect, the world and its expanded lore magnificent, all of the mini-games, the unbelievable soundtrack, the perfect marriage of action & turn-based combat, some of the best towns in gaming history, etc. Literally everything about this game felt like such a personal and heartfelt gift to my 8-year-old self.
It made me laugh out loud on multiple occasions, smile, and cry in equal measure. They somehow struck that perfect balance that the original so brilliantly displayed between lighthearted and more serious, dark moments.
Here I sit a couple weeks after completing it, and it still takes up residence in the back of my brain. I just cannot stop thinking about it. Like, I cannot believe this game is actually real after damn near 2 decades of hoping and praying for a remake. They did it... they really did...
What I would have thought impossible to achieve only half a decade ago, they were able to realize in such an incredibly short amount of time (like how did they make this in only 3 years!?).
I love this world and these characters so, so much. FFVII is and always will remain my favorite game of all time, and this Re-trilogy is just solidifying the reason why.
A true masterpiece and easily one of my favorite games of all time. This trilogy has the potential to go down as the LOTR of videogames when the 3rd title releases in 2027. I am eagerly anticipating the conclusion to this amazing story and the catharsis that is going to come from all of the character's conclusions. I have no doubt they will deliver something extraordinary.
For more of my Final Fantasy VII reviews and thoughts, please see below:
PlayStation 1 Review
PC Review
PS4 Review
Remake Review
Crisis Core PSP Review
They nailed every character (major and minor), their interactions and dialogue were perfect, the world and its expanded lore magnificent, all of the mini-games, the unbelievable soundtrack, the perfect marriage of action & turn-based combat, some of the best towns in gaming history, etc. Literally everything about this game felt like such a personal and heartfelt gift to my 8-year-old self.
It made me laugh out loud on multiple occasions, smile, and cry in equal measure. They somehow struck that perfect balance that the original so brilliantly displayed between lighthearted and more serious, dark moments.
Here I sit a couple weeks after completing it, and it still takes up residence in the back of my brain. I just cannot stop thinking about it. Like, I cannot believe this game is actually real after damn near 2 decades of hoping and praying for a remake. They did it... they really did...
What I would have thought impossible to achieve only half a decade ago, they were able to realize in such an incredibly short amount of time (like how did they make this in only 3 years!?).
I love this world and these characters so, so much. FFVII is and always will remain my favorite game of all time, and this Re-trilogy is just solidifying the reason why.
A true masterpiece and easily one of my favorite games of all time. This trilogy has the potential to go down as the LOTR of videogames when the 3rd title releases in 2027. I am eagerly anticipating the conclusion to this amazing story and the catharsis that is going to come from all of the character's conclusions. I have no doubt they will deliver something extraordinary.
For more of my Final Fantasy VII reviews and thoughts, please see below:
PlayStation 1 Review
PC Review
PS4 Review
Remake Review
Crisis Core PSP Review
This is one of the greatest "sequels" I've played.
Just totally improves on the original FF7 Remake in every way. Literally the only downside this game doesn't have is hollow skies (unless I somehow missed it). The side quests are a lot better. The story is intriguing and leaves you wanting more.
I wouldn't say the game is perfect as it has it's flaws. I believe it has too many mini games and some of the mini games aren't that fun and that energy could've been spent more on the story perhaps
If you enjoyed FF7 Remake then you will like Rebirth even better.
Just totally improves on the original FF7 Remake in every way. Literally the only downside this game doesn't have is hollow skies (unless I somehow missed it). The side quests are a lot better. The story is intriguing and leaves you wanting more.
I wouldn't say the game is perfect as it has it's flaws. I believe it has too many mini games and some of the mini games aren't that fun and that energy could've been spent more on the story perhaps
If you enjoyed FF7 Remake then you will like Rebirth even better.
O jogo, tecnicamente, é maravilhoso. Batalhas elaboradas, cenários lindos, comandos responsivos. Porém, fica massante, enjoa, tudo o que você faz na história não serve pra nada no fim. A motivação dos personagens se perde e, nas missões secundárias, o quanto tem de encheção de linguiça...
Me arrependi de pegar por preço cheio e só não dropei por ter feito conteúdo sobre...
Me arrependi de pegar por preço cheio e só não dropei por ter feito conteúdo sobre...
Review in progress