When I played the demo for Rebirth, I became immediately concerned that this game would be a regression from it's predecessor. The demo exalted the worst design philosohpy of it's predecessor, Remake: excessive AAA bloat in the form of unskippable, slow walking cutscenes and artificial game lengtheners that didn't add much to the experience. Slow wall climbing, slow vacuum movement, slow corridor shuffle segements all highlighted the existing problems I had with Remake. Cloud's toolkit seemed like a downgrade, initially; the wildly fun Punisher Mode (still) feels especially bad compared Remake, with Cloud often whiffing hit after hit. These concerns were coupled with the promise of an open world- a genre notorious in my mind for empty spaces and uninspired content. Nonetheless, I took a chance with this game because Remake had a great story with some of the most lovable characters in any game I've ever played.

The dread of exploring an open world vanished quickly as I began to explore the Grasslands. Not only is every corner packed with a variety of content, but it's non-linearity genuinely helped the game to escape from the AAA bloat present in Remake with an overwhelming focus on the strong combat system present in Rebirth. I wouldn't even necessarily call what Rebirth has an open-world; it's more akin to a game like Pokemon Legends: Arceus than it is something like Elden Ring. In Legends: Arceus, there are fairly vast, open areas, but there is still an expected, linear progression pushing you from area to area. There's also far clearer indications of where the player is expected to explore, given how the leveling system works. Everything in the world serves a relative purpose for player progression, and the general ambience of areas never makes the gameplay loop feel too boring. In comparison, "true" open-world games like Elden Ring do not have an explicit progression path, leading to guessing on whether or not the area you are in is either just hard or if you are underleveled. To be fair, Elden Ring does give the player some good indication of area difficulty, employed especially well with the art direction in Caelid for example, but there is still some guesswork involved. Despite this, Elden Ring also had the overwhelming, persistent problem of copy-paste dungeons with copy-paste bosses, rewarding the player with an item that is likely entirely useless for your build.

The non-linear moments in Rebirth provide genuinely useful rewards, great character writing, and, most importantly, far more opportunities to enjoy the core gameplay loop established in Remake. Often when playing Remake, I felt as though the game would pull me away from the actual game for far too long through unskippable cutscenes or easy to execute but long "puzzles." The former problem doesn't really emerge until repeat playthroughs, admittedly, and though Rebirth has not entirely divorced itself from the latter, it is far less frequent on an initial playthrough. Of course, not every nugget of content in the open world is spectacular, like Lifesprings which just force you to time three triangle inputs, but they aren't intrusive or exaggerated enough to make the game any worse. I can't speak to whether or not this side-content is essential to making the game feel balanced as you progress through the main story since I did every piece of side content during my first playthrough, but it still feels more rewarding, meaningful, and fun than any piece of side content in Elden Ring- sans discovering Siofra. Rather than detracting from what made the game fun, the non-linear moments in Rebirth highlight the best aspects of Remake: the characters and combat. Most of the areas are visually gorgeous, with the exception of the desert in Corel for obvious reasons. Cosmo Canyon is probably the worst designed area with the least fun Chocobo gimmick, but every other area does a good job of not wasting your time. I've seen complaints about Gongaga, but I didn't have any problems with it, personally.

I'm still gathering my thoughts on the story, but I genuinely enjoyed pretty much every moment. The ending sets up for (what I'm assuming is gonna be titled) Reunion spectacularly, though I wonder how they're gonna go about promoting it without spoiling the ending of Rebirth and it's most significant departure from the original Final Fantasy VII.

I also want to say that the last part of the final boss battle is everything I've ever wanted in a final boss. It scratches a certain itch I've had forever for an ethearally minamalist final boss. I'm also glad we got so many fantastic moments with Aerith towards the end, because she is by far my favorite character in the game, and one of my favorite characters in any piece of media ever. I know it's "fan service" to let her live, but I really hope she gets the happy ending she deserves in Reunion because she's just such a lovable character.

I might have more to say after some more reflection, but I couldn't help but express how impressed I am that they managed to improve this significantly on what Remake offered in just four years. The game is bursting with actually great content. It's by far the best game released in the 2020's. The last time a game has gripped me so hard was Kingdom Hearts III, and maybe I love this game so much because, yeah, it sorta does have some Kingdom Hearts III moments with the timeline stuff emphasized at the end.