One thing that irks me about this modern reinterpretation of FFVII is the frequent overuse of virtual reality. Like, what point does building a theatre serve if the audience just jacks into a headset?

The developers clearly opted for this choice as it allows for more creative freedom, however it doesn't bode well for the clarity of the scene. Why do Cloud and the party specifically assume the roles of the characters? The narrator says "you are the hero" but that obviously isn't the case because the rest of the audience is just watching. Then after all that the scene promptly jumps to Aerith singing--a plot point lacking much in the way of build-up--and Cloud watching from the side lines. Shouldn't he be in the sitting area with everyone else? And his still wearing the stage outfit so did he, and by extension the entire party have any awareness of the lines they were saying during that scene? Was it all adlibbed or did they receive a script off screen prior?

This is yet another instance of the developers prioritising spectacle over narrative cohesion, and virtual reality only provides an excuse. I'd have settled for the party simply getting coerced into performing on account of Dio and the play being more authentic to an actual theatre play. Not every little moment has to be over-the-top, besides isn't this supposed to a relaxing date night before all hell breaks loose? Why are you thrusting a poor(er) man's OSU! at me.

The ensuing battle for naming rights wasn't all that difficult. At least until Rufus showed up; definitely the most I've struggled with a storyline boss thus far. Much of that is on me not utilizing either 'Triple Slash' or 'Disorder' during his reloads. I kept trying to land the instant stagger with 'Braver' but just couldn't find the timing. Would've liked a chance to rematch him but I'd already saved post-fight and the checkpoint sets me back to the date night.

Finally reached the dreaded Cait Sith boxing throwing segment, and to be honest it wasn't all that bad. I may have fared better because I was using the 'stick controls' as opposed to the 'touch pad controls', but it could've been worse. The Yin & Yang boss went down fairly easily as well, granted I'm probably overleveled.

However, I'm quite disappointed by the exclusion of the upper section of Shinra Manor. The code puzzle is also pitifully easy and simple compared to the original's.

I'm glad to see more attention being given to the ol' Avalanche gang. Now there's a plausible explanation for why Wedge just happened to be at the Shinra HQ building at the end of Remake (It was really just to kill him). Shame I had to begrudgingly pull myself through yet another mini-game. I manually customised my robots for the 1st and 2nd rounds, but resorted to automated setups for the latter two. Not nearly invested enough to dedicate the time to optimising strategy, and I seem to get by just fine spamming the cheapest units and overwhelming them with sheer numbers anyhow.

Felled Bahamut without much thought to strategy either, just kept whacking him til they died. Every now and then I find myself avoiding doing any combat simulations due to fatigue from the overabundance of enemy encounters and bosses, but then whenever I do get a diversion (i.e 'Gears & Gambits) I suddenly want to go back to fighting enemies. Is this a mark of a poorly designed game? I'll come to decide by the end.

Time to move on the Nibelheim.

This area felt like it housed a longer more complicated puzzle that the developers chose to cut out for time. That, or the best they could come up with was: 'pick up thing and put thing in the thing'.

I liked Red XIII's wall-climbing mechanic, but like all the other unique traversal mechanics, I wish they had more application beyond the area they get introduced. Perhaps in part 3, where Cloud becomes less the central leader we can see areas that incorporate a multitude of different character actions. Barret needs to quit complaining every time I scale a wall though.

Once again I praise the OST for being absolutely fantastic, the didgeridoo player didn't need to go THAT hard. The ambience of the environment was also superb...if not for the conspicuously out-of-place vending machines. Whoever installs those deserves a raise for their commitment.

I'd overheard from people online there was a song that Yuffie sang which started off cute but quickly became grating. Yep, this is definitely the one.

I wonder if by continuing the story I can stop her from singing anymore.

On a positive note, I quite like the verticality of Cosmo Canyon.

I don't understand the logic behind the gliding controls. I can't look around because both the left & right sticks control ascent / descent. They've could've just used the left stick and allowed full camera movement, strangely the screenshots showed the camera facing towards the player and at your party members; likely a developer screenshot.

Fought Kujata, and just about scrapped my way to victory. I clearly wasn't using enough offensive elemental magic, even Yuffie ninjutsu and Cloud equipped with 'Fire & Ice' materia paired with elemental on his weapon wasn't enough to pressure them. Thankfully Red XIII was tanky enough to withstand 'Tri-Disaster', and promptly revived Yuffie who then used pray to restore party HP (overpowered combo). Not very pretty, but a win is a win.

I really ought to be using Tifa more, and abuse 'Stop' on stagger metres for maximum damage.

Completed the remainder of the phenomenon intel in Gongaga. Disappointed that all the exercises are just standard combat trials, I receive than my fill of those from Chadley. It could've been interesting if more unique factors had been added in, like an escort mission where you're accompanied by shinra troops like in Chapter 4, but one of them is attacking your escort. Perhaps have environmental factors like in FFX when you had to power a crane with lightning magic. The ending is also weird, is no one suspicious of Cissnei? did not a single person in that room besides Cait Sith piece together she's a Turk?

Met Cid for the first time; I'll save my consensus on him for later.

The combat simulator trial: 'Head Case' really grinds my gears. I managed to complete it with Cait Sith casting sleep on the enemies once the brains were seperated from the mindflayer and then built synergy between Cloud & Tifa, which let me stagger him and quickly finish them off. The real trouble here is dealing with the AI, you have no control over who they choose to target for auto-attacks when not in direct control of player. I remember in interviews, developers said they wanted to "surpass the gambit system", sorry to lay this on you, but you didn't. While 'Auto Unique / Weapon Ability' materia helps to reduce the amount of micro-management, it doesn't come close to having custom set AI behaviour.

Fuck Jules man, seriously. You have to perfect in order to win that round of sit-ups. Came close a couple of times, but I always ended choking in the last ten seconds. Definitely putting that mini-game off for later.

I love the atmosphere of Gongaga, and Arabian (is that racist to say?) style music for battles fits well.

At this rate I'm either getting Red XIII, Tifa, or Aerith for my date. I wouldn't so averse to this outcome if not for the knowledge that Red XIII undergoes a drastic shift in personality and I'm unsure as to whether or not I'll like it.

Yuffie's little song was cute, though I'd already seen videos of it online. I'm annoyed that they didn't actually have her theme playing alongside because it synced up so well!

One gripe I have with the weapon system is that due to the existence of stat-boosting materia, you're nearly always better off picking the weapon with more slots. The 'Crystal Sword' more have higher stats than 'Umbral Blade', but I can just easily remedy that by putting on strength up materia, and still have more room to put other materia since 'Crystal Sword' only has 2 slots. This seems like an incredibly large oversight on part of the developers.

I spent todays session wrapping the remainder of side content in the Corel region. Alexander took the most of my time, I choose to leave the destruction of the arms to Aerith while Yuffie played support with prayer materia due to her being able to rapidly build 2 ATB bars. Cloud would then dish out the majority of damage with his limit breaks strengthened by bravery and prime mode berserk.

To avoid being one shot by 'Divine Judgement', I had cleansing materia paired with magnify to quick cast esuna on the party. Phoenix came in clutch for using arise and with the extra party wide heal. Ended up winning by the skin of my teeth as Yuffie managed to stagger him with her limit break, allowing me to finish him off.

What compounded my annoyance upon having to reattempt the fight, was that you can't customise characters while in the simulator. That means having to: exit the simulator, go into menu to change party, wait for Chadley to finish prattling on about the same fucking shit, and then finally re-enter the simulator. Did it at no point occur to the developers to include the option in the simulator?

I ended up reloading to prior fighting Dyne, since I'd exhausted more mega-potions than preferred, and I did pretty badly on the buggy chase minigame.

To give more thoughts on the boss fight itself, I thought it was well put together. Giving you 'charging uppercut' beforehand puts you in the wrong frame of mind though, keeping you're distance is a must for this fight since he can very easily interrupt actions which leaves you open for his counterattack. Poison came in real handy for whittling down his HP, and I made sure to keep steelskin proc'd to mitigate damage (I often overlook the ability). What really made this attempt play out better was getting the timing on his 'hidden barb' attack, and then immediately using 'maximum fury'. I know overcharge works too, but I found the lock-on prevented me from actually targeting the scrap.

Glad to finally have the full party (and also magnify materia), Cait Sith seems like a quirky wild card to play.

Enjoyed the newly designed chocobo races, very Mario Kart esque in design; customisable "vehicles", power-ups, even has drifting speed boosts! The trailer showed off plenty more tracks so I'm pretty excited to try them all out when I next get the chance.

The scene where Rude laments Reno not around with him was a nice and subtle way of acknowledging the passing of Keiji Fujiwara.

Whenever or not it was due to wanting to keep the age rating or just because they couldn't be bothered; the lack of dismemberment heavily lessens the impact of the flashback scene in Mt. Corel. Barret reaching out a still perfectly intact arm to Dyne's also untouched arm after having been shot dozens of times just led to the moment being more funny than anything. You could forgive the original for being an early PS1 game, but HD graphics make short-sighted mistakes like these far more noticeable.

I'm also mixed towards how the confrontation with Dyne was handled. In comparison with the original; his descent into madness is portrayed in a more sympathetic manner. You find him tied to a chair, which immediately puts him in a position of weakness, struggling to even walk awhile having delusions of his family being beside him. His only spurred into aggression upon noticing the mako infused in Cloud's eye, causing him to believe that Barret had still remained allegiant towards Shinra.

A far cry from the man intent on killing his own daughter so that she could be "reunited with her mother". While the original highlighted his weakening grip on sanity; he still possessed a degree of lucidity in his actions. Dyne represented a dark mirror into where Barret's extremism would take him, ultimately taking his own life as there is no turning back from what his become and his hands 'are too dirty' to raise Marlene.

In Rebirth he gets gunned by Shinra troopers in a valiant effort to save Barret; which makes him just yet another victim of circumstance severing the thematic connection to Barret.

I'll give the scene props for the outstanding performances, although I was taken out just a tad when Dyne goes for Nier:Automata and Barret affirms "You can still save him!" by...shooting him?

The fight with Palmer, albeit fun, should've been placed directly after the scene of Dyne dying. Fighting a gauntlet of Shinra troopers and then fleeing on the buggy would've sufficed. Surely there was somewhere else they could've placed it.

You know what I hate, forced animations that lock you in place when interacting with something. If I can't interact with something, then just don't let me, or have a notification pop up. Having me wait 5 seconds through an unskippable animation EACH time isn't at all ideal.

Getting back the positive side of things, I like how Mt. Corel came together. Though I'm assuming that the train sequence later on doesn't occur, since both the reactor, and the bridge leading to Barret's town are destroyed. Especially enjoyed the rollercoaster mini-game, and how it not been for the fact it wasn't that long ago that I did a bunch of mini-games, I'd have enjoyed it even more.

I realize the original game had a surplus of mini-games, and I respect that the developers wish to honour that in Rebirth; but holy shit, I'd be happy if there was even just slightly less.

At least half, if not more of the trip sailing to Costa La Sol is dedicated to the Queen's Blood tournament, and don't get me wrong, I enjoy the card game, however it takes the place just after a string of mini-games in Junon. Any chance for the characters to reflect or talk to one another is pushed to the wayside in favour of all the silly moments, which makes the sudden shift in tone for the Jenova sequence jarring. Will say however, that I'm glad human "disguised" Red XIII made into the game.

Weren't feeling the mini-game fatigue set in? Well don't worry! because now you've got to do half a dozen more to buy everyone swimsuits. Again, this section would've felt as draining if it immediately take place after an extensive card game tournament. The downright disrespectful dog soccer mini-game and shooting gallery were the highlights, but finding the "hidden" cactuars and playing the piano (I got a B) had me zoning out. Overall, they needed to find a better distribution of the mini-games to avoid players burning out of them.

I could've sworn I read somewhere that the developers said we'd be seeing the *real Fort Condor. I guess we can see the bird, though I was hoping we'd get a proper recreation of the original mini-game. The board game really isn't my thing, and I find this version more annoying than the one in Intermission.

I wandered around the south-east part of the map, most of it turned out to be side-quest related locations and so I couldn't actually do anything there. The area does look nice though.

I think the proclamation of a "living and breathing world" in the trailers would've been more truthful if it were less static. Enemies have predesignated spawn locations, and never move away from these spots, which manages to feel inauthentic to the original where encounters could occur anywhere. Likewise, chocobo's are no longer natural occurrence; instead serving as a mini-game. I think even something as simple as a patrol pattern for some, if not all the enemies would allow for the world to create unique experiences rather than everything being scripted.

The swamp is the epitome of this new design philosophy and goes against the original. You're not presented with the choice of venturing out into the swamp alone, and have to go through all the story beats required to catch a chocobo. In the original you could very well cross the marshlands without one, but it would likely lead to a encounter with the Midgardsornr. You'd be confronted with just how powerful this foe is, prompting you to learn the dangers purely through gameplay. In Rebirth however, this is told to you rather than shown, and even when you do enter the marshlands, the threat of attack is non-existent, because like everything else, this sequence is entirely scripted.

The ensuing boss fight with the Midgardsornr, while albeit pretty cool and backed by an absolute banger of an OST; only further undermines the peril of this brief moment in the original. Our party is able to quite adequately dispatch this supposedly dangerous creature, and as such the following scene where we witness Sephiroth spit roast one of them carries far less weight (the scene also fails to match the bloody & visceral nature of the original).

I can't help but imagine an alternate scenario where the Midgardsornr was this roaming entity in the marshlands, which silently travelled and could detect you when entering the water. You're best chance at survival would be listening out for them and finding places to hide while they pass, a difficult feat due to both thick water making it harder to swim and the fog limiting visibility. This would incentivise acquiring a chocobo who could not only quickly navigate the marsh, but could also sniff out where the snake is. This is all hypothetical of cause, but I truly believe this moment would've been better had they tried to have it play out naturally through gameplay as opposed to cutscenes.

The Mithril Mines were expanded, though I'm not sure if the splitting this portion into two separate sections was necessary. Make this one continuous level, but perhaps let us switch party members to help each one another progress. Maybe there could've been a mini-game where you need to help the robed men cross kind of like lemmings. This would've also meant not fighting the mithril golem boss which seemed a little too soon after the last one.

Wonder how much I'll be playing as Zack throughout the game, even got his own moveset (albeit limited).

Strange they had me replay the opening portion of Nibelheim before allowing the option to skip forward. Has me worried some of the choices in this section have weight no matter how small. I encountered a bug, unsure to if it's a result of the save data transfer or if I'm just unlucky, but the prompt to play Tifa's theme never came up so I ended being ridiculed by my party members.

This works well as tutorial into game, and it's real power trip being able to finally play as Sephiroth, although it does demystify him to a degree. In the original game you were never granted control over his actions, you simply weren't powerful enough to do that. Here Cloud's (Zack) at the same level which makes him feel like a significantly lesser deal.

My biggest complaint with the flashback sequence is iconic burning of Nibelheim scene. Cloud gets injured and has to slowly limp to his Mother's house, but oh no! fallen debris means I have to go around. When I first went through this scene in demo, I walked around dumbfounded for at least 15 seconds thinking I had to turn the valves to put out the fire. The abruptness of the original is lost, and I generally believe it would've been far better if cloud retained his normal movement speed, don't force the player to loop around, just block that way off from the start. Then once the water tower falls, maybe you could have cloud injure himself. Perhaps this was done so dialogue couldn't be missed, but to me whether or not the player hears the dialogue to irrelevant to highlighting the chaos of the situation.

The following scene with Sephiroth shouldn't have been bound to the player. I decided to not move and scene plays out by itself until only 1 villager and the mayor remain. But why? It really undercuts the tension when you know the events unfolding around you are within some form of control of the player. I also don't like how the villagers just... stand there. Not one of them fires a shot, just unnecessarily dragged out for no reason.

I enjoyed the interaction of the party in the inn. Interesting to see them integrate that proposed scene with Tifa discussing the inconsistencies with Cloud's narrative from early drafts of the original script. The developers said they wanted to give Sephiroth more presence, and I REALLY hope this first instance isn't a sign for what's to come. He appears briefly to sow some doubt into Cloud's mind, but having him ask Tifa (which his does) alone would have sufficed. Subtlety, every heard of it?

Narratively I liked the raid on Kalm, just wish it didn't play out as a tedious scripted "stealth" sequence. Seriously, does Square Enix honestly believe that people enjoy this fake tension?

As for my general first impressions; the open world feels uninspired in many regards. The typical tower format is less useful here than in other games, since most activities already have obvious indicators for finding them in world. They don't even clear out the ugly fog on the region map (and for crying out loud, when will Square learn to stop making these over-detailed maps and then use the blurry, zoomed-in, illegible image of it for the minimap?).

The rest of the activities quickly became monotonous, and I'm not even out the first area yet! Also, I absolutely abhor the fact that Chadley can now bother me where ever and whenever he wants. You know what could be worse than having one chadley? How about two!?. Yeah, just because you make them a cute gender-swapped version doesn't alleviate the annoyance. I just tune out her prattling during monster intel; the worse part about missing out on objectives is that retrying forces you to listen to the same lore dump again, and again, and again...

Though to offer some praise, I do genuinely think the side quests are better now. The protorelic one dragged on a bit, but otherwise each felt more substantial. I enjoy Queen's Blood, and look forward to when it opens up to five rows.

Combat is identical to Remake, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Aerial combat sees changes, instead of melee characters automatically jumping when they attack, you need to use an action that'll send you airborne. Folios take the place of the individual weapon core system, and subsequently the process of upgrading weapons has been streamlined. I think this is a good change and removes a lot of tedious menuing.