Happy to report that 25 years later this game is still good! I've never been the biggest fan of random encounters, and this game was not able to turn me around on that, but mechanically the game still feels pretty good to play. Obviously theres some cruft like the UI in and out of combat can be janky. I could list all of the specific jank, but I won't. None of it was bad enough to ruin my time with this game. It's obvious in a lot of ways where this game could be improved, but what it is still shines very brightly.

People weren't kidding about how little time you spend in Midgar though, it's really only like 4 hours. FF7 develops this complex city and then just goes "okay we're done." It feels almost like a complete waste, and yet it lends this almost ethereal quality to the rest of the game. It's difficult to describe, but it's very enthralling. I played Remake in 2020 before I played this in prepartion for Rebirth and it makes me feel like I've learned some secret from a longtime friend that makes me wonder if I ever actually knew them at all. At this point the Aerith stuff is no secret, but I was suprised by just how much stuff I didn't know about.

Long story short I'm really really glad I took the time to play this and I think it's worth checking out still in 2024.