This review contains spoilers
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth isn’t a bad game per se, but it is a disappointment in the sense that where Remake miraculously managed to justify stretching out a five-hour intro sequence into a full thirty-hour game, Rebirth left me feeling that they should’ve just stuck to making one game after all. The amount of padding in Rebirth is absurd. I did all of the sidequests in Remake and initially had planned to do the same in Rebirth alongside all the Queen’s Blood matches, but a couple chapters in I gave up because I was just not having fun. I don’t normally hold bad optional content against a game precisely because it is optional, but in Rebirth’s case, I think it’s justified because they’re constantly shoving it in your face during the early game. Besides, the annoying padding isn’t always optional. When Rebirth isn’t being bogged down by its bad sidequests, it’s slotting extended minigame sections in the middle of otherwise enthralling story sequences. I respect that Rebirth tries to lean into the occasional absurdity of the original game with all the minigames and whatnot, but when that absurdity actively distracts from the seriousness of the story around it, it starts to become annoying.
None of this is aided by the fact that Rebirth is an act two isolated from its acts one and three. The story does start to pick up in the back half, but between the stakes only vaguely recalled from the first game and all of the aforementioned padding drawing attention away from what plot is actively happening, the first half of the game often feels like the party is just wandering from place to place without much rhyme or reason save for the fact that it’s where all the hooded men are going.
The frustrating thing about all this is that Rebirth has some sequences that are absolutely stellar. Barret in particular absolutely steals the show in this game, which I really was not expecting. Barret was a character I always liked, but Rebirth really elevated him with all his fun comedic moments in the early game and his more serious emotional moments in the back half of the game. Just in general, the story really picks up around the time the party gets to the Golden Saucer. By then, it finally starts to feel like the plot has some more direction and the party starts to feel more active in all the goings-on between Barret’s backstory and Cloud and Tifa’s shared trauma. I thought the way the game portrayed Cloud’s PTSD was really strong (except in chapter 13, but we’ll get to that) and Tifa’s trip through the lifestream was another standout moment. Rebirth’s strengths in adapting and augmenting scenes from the original game makes me think that if they made a single, straightforward remake of the original Final Fantasy VII, it would easily be a perfect ten.
Unfortunately, much as how the game started weak, it also kind of ended weak, in the sense that the last two chapters kind of lost me. I really don’t like how they handled the whole sequence with the black materia. That was such a memorable part of Cloud’s character arc in the original game because it’s a futile moment of him trying and failing to escape from Sephiroth’s influence. Here in Rebirth, Sephiroth seems to completely take him over from the moment the party enters the temple and the whole back-and-forth with the black materia dilutes the strength of Cloud’s apparent betrayal. Then immediately after that at the start of chapter 14, the game really dives into all of the timeline shenanigans hinted at at the end of Remake and it was all very confusing.
First of all, I still don’t know how or why Zach is alive and if he’s alive in the main timeline or some side timeline or what, which is odd, because it felt like the end of Remake was setting things up so that Rebirth would answer that question. Then there’s the whole situation with Aerith’s death. Going in, I thought that how Rebirth chose to handle Aerith’s death would serve as something of a litmus test for how seriously I should take the remake trilogy as an earnest attempt to retell the original going forward. Aerith’s death is such a famous and well-remembered moment in gaming to this day not just because it’s sad, but because it ties so strongly into the original game’s themes of life and death. If the remake trilogy has any interest whatsoever in maintaining the integrity of that messaging, they would kill off Aerith. On the other hand, Remake made it clear that the writers didn’t give a damn what the audience thought and that they were going to do whatever they wanted with this trilogy, so if they wanted to really drive that point home and stick it to the purists, they would let Aerith live. So what did they decide to do? Both, apparently. Even by the time the final cutscene rolls around, it’s still not clear what exactly happened. Overall, I just don’t understand the point of introducing things like parallel worlds and alternate timelines into Rebirth. At least in Remake it made sense since that game was actively trying to be a meta-commentary on the original, but Rebirth doesn’t really take things in that direction, so as it stands, it mostly just feels like they’re convoluting the plot for no reason.
I maintain that Remake is still a great game in spite of Rebirth’s relative failure to follow-up on that game’s formula, so I do have hopes that they can pull things together for the finale, but Rebirth when taken on its own reminds me a lot of Tales of Arise. Its strong middle section is held back by a weak beginning and ending and that, when combined with a number of odd gameplay decisions, makes the game an extremely mixed bag.
Alternate review.
None of this is aided by the fact that Rebirth is an act two isolated from its acts one and three. The story does start to pick up in the back half, but between the stakes only vaguely recalled from the first game and all of the aforementioned padding drawing attention away from what plot is actively happening, the first half of the game often feels like the party is just wandering from place to place without much rhyme or reason save for the fact that it’s where all the hooded men are going.
The frustrating thing about all this is that Rebirth has some sequences that are absolutely stellar. Barret in particular absolutely steals the show in this game, which I really was not expecting. Barret was a character I always liked, but Rebirth really elevated him with all his fun comedic moments in the early game and his more serious emotional moments in the back half of the game. Just in general, the story really picks up around the time the party gets to the Golden Saucer. By then, it finally starts to feel like the plot has some more direction and the party starts to feel more active in all the goings-on between Barret’s backstory and Cloud and Tifa’s shared trauma. I thought the way the game portrayed Cloud’s PTSD was really strong (except in chapter 13, but we’ll get to that) and Tifa’s trip through the lifestream was another standout moment. Rebirth’s strengths in adapting and augmenting scenes from the original game makes me think that if they made a single, straightforward remake of the original Final Fantasy VII, it would easily be a perfect ten.
Unfortunately, much as how the game started weak, it also kind of ended weak, in the sense that the last two chapters kind of lost me. I really don’t like how they handled the whole sequence with the black materia. That was such a memorable part of Cloud’s character arc in the original game because it’s a futile moment of him trying and failing to escape from Sephiroth’s influence. Here in Rebirth, Sephiroth seems to completely take him over from the moment the party enters the temple and the whole back-and-forth with the black materia dilutes the strength of Cloud’s apparent betrayal. Then immediately after that at the start of chapter 14, the game really dives into all of the timeline shenanigans hinted at at the end of Remake and it was all very confusing.
First of all, I still don’t know how or why Zach is alive and if he’s alive in the main timeline or some side timeline or what, which is odd, because it felt like the end of Remake was setting things up so that Rebirth would answer that question. Then there’s the whole situation with Aerith’s death. Going in, I thought that how Rebirth chose to handle Aerith’s death would serve as something of a litmus test for how seriously I should take the remake trilogy as an earnest attempt to retell the original going forward. Aerith’s death is such a famous and well-remembered moment in gaming to this day not just because it’s sad, but because it ties so strongly into the original game’s themes of life and death. If the remake trilogy has any interest whatsoever in maintaining the integrity of that messaging, they would kill off Aerith. On the other hand, Remake made it clear that the writers didn’t give a damn what the audience thought and that they were going to do whatever they wanted with this trilogy, so if they wanted to really drive that point home and stick it to the purists, they would let Aerith live. So what did they decide to do? Both, apparently. Even by the time the final cutscene rolls around, it’s still not clear what exactly happened. Overall, I just don’t understand the point of introducing things like parallel worlds and alternate timelines into Rebirth. At least in Remake it made sense since that game was actively trying to be a meta-commentary on the original, but Rebirth doesn’t really take things in that direction, so as it stands, it mostly just feels like they’re convoluting the plot for no reason.
I maintain that Remake is still a great game in spite of Rebirth’s relative failure to follow-up on that game’s formula, so I do have hopes that they can pull things together for the finale, but Rebirth when taken on its own reminds me a lot of Tales of Arise. Its strong middle section is held back by a weak beginning and ending and that, when combined with a number of odd gameplay decisions, makes the game an extremely mixed bag.
Alternate review.