Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Hours: 123
Spoilers: None but I do talk vaguely about some story beats
I have never played the original Final Fantasy VII. It is one of those games that has eluded me across my gaming journey. However, I have played Remake which my GOTY of the year it came out, I have 100% Crisis Core and I have watched Advent Children.
My experience with FF7 is purely based on osmosis between friends and my girlfriend. What I do know is that Rebirth is the bridge between the start and the end. It is where the world expands into the great unknown and I want to talk about it.
Rebirth starts with one of the boldest openings it could have offered and I knew from the get go, they understood the assignment of what they were going for in Remake. After the beginning, the game has a classic “Now THIS is the open world, go forth” and it lands as perfectly typical as it sounds. From there, you start your adventure into what is an open (enclosed) world RPG.
The big point of this game is the size and sheer scope that it offers to you. Regions that take hours to go through and explore. Map markers galore! For better or for worse, this is an open world game in which the mass regions you explore are segmented. Think of the game like a linear open world. It isn’t truly open world but with how much is jam packed in, you will feel like it is.
This leads me to mention my first love/hate relationship with what this game is. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has towers. It has semi climbable towers that allow you to reveal map markers to go do more exploring to fill your “Intel” metre. I thought we as gamers™ swore of enjoying these type of open world ideas. Though they are nowhere near as annoying as other games offer them, the fact that this is in here is still baffling to me. Especially because you are CONSTANTLY reminded by a certain character about every second intel you discover with a pointless cutscene to insult a character he himself created.
Thankfully, despite this typical usage of open world checklist, the game at least offers a fun and enjoyable world to explore. Each location is unique in it’s layout, they offer different chocobos to make every area feel you are never traversing in the same way. All the areas are thematically in line with the characters they offer stories for and every location feels like it was where they all started. They aren’t there for no reason and I appreciate that a lot about the game. A lot of open world experiences suffer from places not having a purpose and just exist to distract you. Rebirth being linear allows you to truly appreciate every new region you go diving into. Every time I felt like I wanted to get out of an area, the perfect moment happened and off I was newly exploring a new location.
So what do we do while we are exploring? We fight!
I cannot stress this enough when I say, I truly believe Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has one of the best feeling combat in any RPG I’ve played. They took what was great about Remake, tight action turn based combat and added new characters that offer even more variety. Each character feels so perfectly tuned to their core theme and the combat reflects this with every move you can pull off. I never once wanted to skip a fight. I wanted to see what cool combos I could make with Tifa being thrown in the air by Cloud to then dive kick downwards and hit her limit break to summersault them. The combat truly shines on its hardest difficulty as well, especially from Clouds perspective, where you better learn to parry! As beating the final boss and the challenges offered postgame will require parrying like you’ve never seen in a Final Fantasy game.
Following on from this, the challenges are something I need to discuss from not only a gameplay level but also a platinum perspective. To 100% this game entirely, you will be tasked with “legendary solo bouts” where you play as each character and must face against large bosses that require you to know the character in and out. Some were more challenging than others but there is one in particular that required Cloud and a spoiler character to fight 10 legendary bosses. It is one of the hardest experiences I’ve had in gaming since Dark Souls 1 and when I think back on that feeling I had when I finally had beaten it. I realised what I needed, was knowledge of parrying and not just that, knowledge of the enemies I was facing. It reminded me of how I felt playing Dark Souls and realised that it is just learning enemy moves. I always find in games, the hardest difficulty can either bring useless frustration to pad out a game or it can provide a unique and knowledge check of the games systems. I give props to Rebirth for being the latter and it made me appreciate the combat that much more. It makes you realise, that as a team, you are unstoppable in the regular game.
I’ve spoken about the open world of this game and it’s combat, however, I know that we truly all play Role Playing Games for one beautiful reason and that is the story.
For those who have played Remake, you understand that this is not a mere retelling of the original, it is rather quite known by now that this is a sequel series. Remake and Rebirth are all designed to compliment the original with a retelling but it is as much a sequel as it is that initial retelling.
Characters know things they shouldn’t, events happen even though it couldn’t possibly. Rebirth finally goes into more detail about what this all means and how it all occurs within the universe of Final Fantasy VII.
As for the general plot lines, they are fleshed out throughout the game a bit more than the original offered and extends character back stories to incorporate them much more into the overall narrative. This game is BACK STORY TO THIS CHARACTER the video game. I found the overall reasoning behind the characters actions in this to be pretty bland at best. There really is no rhyme or reason for the characters to be taking the journey they take for most of the game. Yes, the characters back stories being explored is genuinely enjoyable and those are some of my favourite moments. However, the reason these characters take their path towards the end of the game feels so just….THERE. Nothing to it except “We should go this way I guess!” and it is so obvious that this is issue due to splitting the game into 3 parts. I fully believe if you were to play all 3 in a row, this issue wouldn’t exist but as of the moment of this writing, the reason this game happens from a narrative perspective is not fantastic.
What they fill in that overall time with is still amazing and I implore the story a lot in between the lines of the overall drive. I am also someone who does love the ending a lot and feel they did a great job at explaining what they are going for here. The third game will make or break this plot line and they have a knife on the tip of their finger that can go one way or another if they don’t land it.
I haven’t mentioned the gorgeous music, the 50 million mini games, the 50 combat challenges. There is so much to this game that no review I write could ever fill out the sheer amount of content in this game. It may have taken me 123 hours but this could easily run someone 200+.
Overall, I did really love Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. The open world nature was fun to explore but felt like a typical open world filler with so much padding out. The combat is some of the best the series has to offer and is so fun. The story is my kinda crazy overall but still lacks direction for most of it.
Remake was a clear GOTY for me and I do fully believe the third game if done right, will make this trilogy one of the greatest in gaming. However as Rebirth stands, I love it. I love it a lot but it does have some very glaring problems that I can’t help but criticise it.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the perfect “I love this game buuuuut….”
Props to letting me have all the characters in their beach outfits for the second playthough <3 Bi sexual panic was real the entire time.
Hours: 123
Spoilers: None but I do talk vaguely about some story beats
I have never played the original Final Fantasy VII. It is one of those games that has eluded me across my gaming journey. However, I have played Remake which my GOTY of the year it came out, I have 100% Crisis Core and I have watched Advent Children.
My experience with FF7 is purely based on osmosis between friends and my girlfriend. What I do know is that Rebirth is the bridge between the start and the end. It is where the world expands into the great unknown and I want to talk about it.
Rebirth starts with one of the boldest openings it could have offered and I knew from the get go, they understood the assignment of what they were going for in Remake. After the beginning, the game has a classic “Now THIS is the open world, go forth” and it lands as perfectly typical as it sounds. From there, you start your adventure into what is an open (enclosed) world RPG.
The big point of this game is the size and sheer scope that it offers to you. Regions that take hours to go through and explore. Map markers galore! For better or for worse, this is an open world game in which the mass regions you explore are segmented. Think of the game like a linear open world. It isn’t truly open world but with how much is jam packed in, you will feel like it is.
This leads me to mention my first love/hate relationship with what this game is. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has towers. It has semi climbable towers that allow you to reveal map markers to go do more exploring to fill your “Intel” metre. I thought we as gamers™ swore of enjoying these type of open world ideas. Though they are nowhere near as annoying as other games offer them, the fact that this is in here is still baffling to me. Especially because you are CONSTANTLY reminded by a certain character about every second intel you discover with a pointless cutscene to insult a character he himself created.
Thankfully, despite this typical usage of open world checklist, the game at least offers a fun and enjoyable world to explore. Each location is unique in it’s layout, they offer different chocobos to make every area feel you are never traversing in the same way. All the areas are thematically in line with the characters they offer stories for and every location feels like it was where they all started. They aren’t there for no reason and I appreciate that a lot about the game. A lot of open world experiences suffer from places not having a purpose and just exist to distract you. Rebirth being linear allows you to truly appreciate every new region you go diving into. Every time I felt like I wanted to get out of an area, the perfect moment happened and off I was newly exploring a new location.
So what do we do while we are exploring? We fight!
I cannot stress this enough when I say, I truly believe Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has one of the best feeling combat in any RPG I’ve played. They took what was great about Remake, tight action turn based combat and added new characters that offer even more variety. Each character feels so perfectly tuned to their core theme and the combat reflects this with every move you can pull off. I never once wanted to skip a fight. I wanted to see what cool combos I could make with Tifa being thrown in the air by Cloud to then dive kick downwards and hit her limit break to summersault them. The combat truly shines on its hardest difficulty as well, especially from Clouds perspective, where you better learn to parry! As beating the final boss and the challenges offered postgame will require parrying like you’ve never seen in a Final Fantasy game.
Following on from this, the challenges are something I need to discuss from not only a gameplay level but also a platinum perspective. To 100% this game entirely, you will be tasked with “legendary solo bouts” where you play as each character and must face against large bosses that require you to know the character in and out. Some were more challenging than others but there is one in particular that required Cloud and a spoiler character to fight 10 legendary bosses. It is one of the hardest experiences I’ve had in gaming since Dark Souls 1 and when I think back on that feeling I had when I finally had beaten it. I realised what I needed, was knowledge of parrying and not just that, knowledge of the enemies I was facing. It reminded me of how I felt playing Dark Souls and realised that it is just learning enemy moves. I always find in games, the hardest difficulty can either bring useless frustration to pad out a game or it can provide a unique and knowledge check of the games systems. I give props to Rebirth for being the latter and it made me appreciate the combat that much more. It makes you realise, that as a team, you are unstoppable in the regular game.
I’ve spoken about the open world of this game and it’s combat, however, I know that we truly all play Role Playing Games for one beautiful reason and that is the story.
For those who have played Remake, you understand that this is not a mere retelling of the original, it is rather quite known by now that this is a sequel series. Remake and Rebirth are all designed to compliment the original with a retelling but it is as much a sequel as it is that initial retelling.
Characters know things they shouldn’t, events happen even though it couldn’t possibly. Rebirth finally goes into more detail about what this all means and how it all occurs within the universe of Final Fantasy VII.
As for the general plot lines, they are fleshed out throughout the game a bit more than the original offered and extends character back stories to incorporate them much more into the overall narrative. This game is BACK STORY TO THIS CHARACTER the video game. I found the overall reasoning behind the characters actions in this to be pretty bland at best. There really is no rhyme or reason for the characters to be taking the journey they take for most of the game. Yes, the characters back stories being explored is genuinely enjoyable and those are some of my favourite moments. However, the reason these characters take their path towards the end of the game feels so just….THERE. Nothing to it except “We should go this way I guess!” and it is so obvious that this is issue due to splitting the game into 3 parts. I fully believe if you were to play all 3 in a row, this issue wouldn’t exist but as of the moment of this writing, the reason this game happens from a narrative perspective is not fantastic.
What they fill in that overall time with is still amazing and I implore the story a lot in between the lines of the overall drive. I am also someone who does love the ending a lot and feel they did a great job at explaining what they are going for here. The third game will make or break this plot line and they have a knife on the tip of their finger that can go one way or another if they don’t land it.
I haven’t mentioned the gorgeous music, the 50 million mini games, the 50 combat challenges. There is so much to this game that no review I write could ever fill out the sheer amount of content in this game. It may have taken me 123 hours but this could easily run someone 200+.
Overall, I did really love Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. The open world nature was fun to explore but felt like a typical open world filler with so much padding out. The combat is some of the best the series has to offer and is so fun. The story is my kinda crazy overall but still lacks direction for most of it.
Remake was a clear GOTY for me and I do fully believe the third game if done right, will make this trilogy one of the greatest in gaming. However as Rebirth stands, I love it. I love it a lot but it does have some very glaring problems that I can’t help but criticise it.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the perfect “I love this game buuuuut….”
Props to letting me have all the characters in their beach outfits for the second playthough <3 Bi sexual panic was real the entire time.