My immediate thoughts after finishing it: this game is insane. And I mean that positively. This game is what I'd point to as an argument that making the FF7 Remake project more than one game is a good choice. The size of the game, the variety, and the huge world map with tons of distinct, extremely detailed towns and locales is not something that could have been accomplished if they adapted all of FF7 in a single title. FF7 Remake adapting only Midgar built an extremely solid foundation for the future Remake titles. Like this game was made in about 4 years. 4 years!
The changes to the combat are great, the soundtrack is killer, sidequests have been massively improved, and a lot of the writing is really good. There are lots of additions and tweaks to the OG's story that just make more sense, are more interesting, and make the world feel more alive. The biggest hits when it comes to writing are all of the character moments and interactions between the main party. Also this game is extremely funny. Like the hit ratio for humor in this game is extremely high with only one or two jokes being grating or not landing.
This game also embraces the spirit of the OG FF7: it feels like every single idea, no matter how insane, made it into the final game. And just like the OG, Rebirth frequently switches tones on a dime.
I still need to think a lot more about the ending. I like a lot of it, but I need to mull over a lot of scenes to come to a better conclusion. I am very interested how they wrap this series up in the final game.
I have no super major complaints, but there are a decent amount of small issues that add up. I'm curious if any of these will ever get patched or smoothed out in an updated version of the game that comes out on PC or PS6 or whatever.
The most glaring issue is traversal. The button you hold down to automatically climb and jump is functional, but it doesn't feel good. The animations are very weak and really stick out like a sore thumb when so much of this game has really great animations.
Other than that, I think there are a handful of scenes with slow walking that go on too long. The distance you need to cover is too much for how slow you walk and it breaks the pacing at some points. Especially near the end of the Nibelheim flashback. There are also some graphical issues. Just like in Remake the devs are using texture atlases here to save on draw calls and increase performance. That means, however, that a lot of random objects with very low resolution textures can be found sitting next to assets that have razor sharp textures. Lighting also took a hit since they don't seem to be using baked lighting due to the world being so much larger. I hope a few of these things can be ironed out a little bit over time.
Anyway, that's FF7 Rebirth. It's pretty incredible how well they pulled off most things in this, and I'm looking forward to my eventual hard mode playthrough.
The changes to the combat are great, the soundtrack is killer, sidequests have been massively improved, and a lot of the writing is really good. There are lots of additions and tweaks to the OG's story that just make more sense, are more interesting, and make the world feel more alive. The biggest hits when it comes to writing are all of the character moments and interactions between the main party. Also this game is extremely funny. Like the hit ratio for humor in this game is extremely high with only one or two jokes being grating or not landing.
This game also embraces the spirit of the OG FF7: it feels like every single idea, no matter how insane, made it into the final game. And just like the OG, Rebirth frequently switches tones on a dime.
I still need to think a lot more about the ending. I like a lot of it, but I need to mull over a lot of scenes to come to a better conclusion. I am very interested how they wrap this series up in the final game.
I have no super major complaints, but there are a decent amount of small issues that add up. I'm curious if any of these will ever get patched or smoothed out in an updated version of the game that comes out on PC or PS6 or whatever.
The most glaring issue is traversal. The button you hold down to automatically climb and jump is functional, but it doesn't feel good. The animations are very weak and really stick out like a sore thumb when so much of this game has really great animations.
Other than that, I think there are a handful of scenes with slow walking that go on too long. The distance you need to cover is too much for how slow you walk and it breaks the pacing at some points. Especially near the end of the Nibelheim flashback. There are also some graphical issues. Just like in Remake the devs are using texture atlases here to save on draw calls and increase performance. That means, however, that a lot of random objects with very low resolution textures can be found sitting next to assets that have razor sharp textures. Lighting also took a hit since they don't seem to be using baked lighting due to the world being so much larger. I hope a few of these things can be ironed out a little bit over time.
Anyway, that's FF7 Rebirth. It's pretty incredible how well they pulled off most things in this, and I'm looking forward to my eventual hard mode playthrough.