This game is a roadtrip in the best kind of way.
I gotta be honest, I was immensely sceptical when I saw that FF7 Rebirth was actually to be open world or at least sorta open world. This kind of world structure often leads to bloat and uneven story progression, but I really like how they did it here - even if it is not perfect.

Before playing this I always thought the story progression in the original FF7 was weird. Usually you just go some place and then some other for no apparent reason. Occasionally, you might have a vague hint to what the direction or the logic might be, but it mostly feels pretty random. In FF7 Rebirth you're actually provided context! Like following the Black Robes until the party looses their trace or some incident along the way, that actually leads the party to wanting to learn more about the planet and go to Cosmo Canyon for example. Now this episodic and somewhat random story progression actually makes sense! The party has a goal, but they are caught into weird shenanigans or come across a place of importance for a specific party member. Even though the story is still very much meandering about, now I finally have the context to understand and feel like it makes sense.
This meandering feeling of a roadtrip is also FF7 Rebirth's biggest strength. Characters get time to interact in funny, silly, or surpsingly heartwarming ways and it is believable that the group gets caught up in a lot of side hustles to finance their trip or just because it happens along the way. Especially the sidequests give a lot more character time between all them, making this feel like one of the best parties in RPG history. Even if it is just stupid stuff like Tifa pushing Cloud playfully into the Frog mini-game or Barret being all sentimental about Marlene eventually growing up.
Mostly the open world is really nicely designed too, with a lot of vehicles/ new chocobo breeds that give each area a new gimmick to spice up exploration. The biggest problem I have with this is Chadley though. Way too much is funneled through him. You can't find the Summons or their materia somewhere in the open world, but have to talk to him, to fight them in a simulation, even though they are heavily tied to the places you visit in the first place. Chadley's simulations made sense in FF7 Remake, where it would have been odd for Ifrit to be running around in the sewers of Midgar, but I could totally imagine Kujata running around somewhere in the Gongaga jungle. Chadley also gives you some of the best materia in the game, but you have to buy it from him with "exploration exp" that you gather by finding stuff in the open world, half of which is really basic like mako springs analysis points, "ubisoft towers" (though not as bad) and monster hunts. This can easily make the open world feel like a checklist you just have to work through. Which is a shame, cause I really liked how they stole so many elements from (what I've heard) good open world games like little chocobo chicks leading you to resting points that also act as travel points. Some of the sidequest like protorelic or this one quest in Cosmo Canyon can also be offenders of just eating up your time by maing you run back and forth for four times or so, even though the lore actuall might be interesting.

Talking about interesting lore, this game gives so much more information about the FF7 universe, some of which is new like the Old Republic that was in place before Shinra controlled everything or information that is old like the backstory of the Gold Saucer being founded by a former Shinra employee; Dio. Some of this stuff is really good in further emphasizing how the fantasy world of FF7 has really been shook to its core by the economic and political changes of Mako Energy, but also what Shinra's rise to power in general has brought about. Like Under-Junon being barely able to survive as their living space had been chosen to be the space of operation for Shinra's military endeavours.

This game is also better in foreshadowing Cloud's trauma and episodic flashbacks and how he is influenced by Jenova and Sephiroth making Tifa's distrust and anxiety around him actually a focal point that often gets discussed, while at the same time giving them more space to reconnect, making Tifa actually a way more active character.
I also really like the romantic relationship between Tifa and Aerith, such lovely roommates. (They are soooo gay!)
In general though every character gets some time to shine and they all have lovely relationships. Barret just acts like a father to spunky, teenage Yuffie and Cloud is her grumpy uncle. It's a found family on a road trip.

Another negative aspect is some of the bombast. In general I think the game knows how to present everything and I also like how new characters from FF7 Remake make a reappearance, however sometimes it does way too much. Many people lament that the funny fight against Palmers robot frog was placed poorely in the middle of Barret's backstory and I agree. It wasn't the most optimal placement.
Worse for me however where some of the boss marathons the game throws at you towards the end. One of them concerns the second fight with Rufus, which somehow felt really bad in this one. That fight was already hard in the original, but here it comes right after another fight and as it was changed to accomodate for Cloud being able to attack from afar just made it immensely obnoxious to me. Same goes for the final series of fights that just would not end and throw random party combinations you have to fight at you or even a character you had barely played before. (While the very last fight is actually pretty cool, that boss also has an attack I really hated.) In general, I wonder if this game was properly play-tested or how why the difficulty spikes and plummets all over the place at certain moments; some of Chadley's (rather early) challenge battles (another place where good materia is relegated to the Chadley checklist™), where also absolute bullshit, either because you have to kill an enemy before the others kill themselves or are easily killed by your companions or because some enemies just have the weirdest stunlock attacks or attacks that hit so hard you have to babysit and heal constantly.
Another minor complaint I have is that the timeline shenanginas feels a bit like bloat. It is nice to see Zack in between story chapters, but so far it's not really important to the story. The ending with Cloud and how he not accepts Aerith's death or how he is still able to perceive her through other timelines could just as well have been done via the Lifestream. But I guess this is the problem of the second part to a trilogy, it will up the stakes but not really give any satisfying conclusion.

Anyway, in general I think this is one of the best Final Fantasy games and I hope they improve on it's structural mistakes as I think the formular is pretty good to be worked upon for future FF games. And I'm still excited to see tits conclusion.

This was pretty neat. Yuffie is a energetic, little monkey and her gameplay is really good. I also liked the combo attacks with Sonon a lot. The boss fights here are definitely on the same level as FF7 Remake at least, though the mechanics elevate the fun just this tiny bit.
The mini games are also really fun, Fort Condor is really engaging and the tournament was a cute idea, especially with all the characters showing up.
The climbing sections are kinda cool and make the linear dungeons even more fun to go through.
All in all though it merely builds on the gameplay foundations of FF7 Remake and while it serves as a cool introduction to Yuffie and the story told here isn't even bad, it's ends a bit abruptly and you can tell, that was more of an extended ending. I really like that it highlighted the struggle of the common folk a bit though and even made a point about one of the Avalanche splinter groups trying to advocate for unions and voting rights. Deepground from Dirge of Cerberus making an appearance was also kinda cool, at least as long as they only stay minor antagonists for cool boss fights.
After the last boss though I felt like it just... evaporated. This weird transition from Yuffie being all sad and distraught to her whistling while leaving Midgar was a bit jarring tbh.
Anyway would still probably replay this, even if it were to be only for the fights and the fun sections. All in all still real good DLC that brings Yuffie, the common folk and Wutai better and earlier into the world of FF7.

FFXIII trilogy walked so FFVII Remake could run!
I always found it kind of funny, when people said, FF had become to linear. The world map usually isn't too involved in the beginning anyway and you might find only one maybe two places were anything other than the main narrative was possible at a given time. BUT! That was important cause it made the world more interactive and explorable, even though the games might have been linear in general. The problem here isn't linearitiy but modes of play, ways to interact with the game.
I think it's kind of funny that FFX had this figured out with little nooks and crannies you could explore/ find on the linear maps and the game being regularly broken up by either (the possibility of) mini-games or another mode of play like the cloister of trials. Giving the whole thing a sense of worldness to it.
The FFXIII trilogy took quite a while to rediscover this, after FFXIII was a graphical masterpiece that was so linear and devoid of any other mode of play that it get a bit tedious at times (I still love XIII, but it's undeniably my least favourite of the trilogy to replay). FFVII Remake comes with the lessons learned and implemented in FFXIII-2 and Lightning Returns giving us back areas that are more interestingly designed and broken up often by actual dungeon navigation, either a mini-game to make a way or some mechanics you gotta figure out for additonal materia etc.
On top of that the FFVII Remake can build on the gameplay system the FFXIII Trilogy experimented with: marrying action combat with turn-based party control. I think there can be no arguing, that the system is just so incredible fun, having you build a good party synergy while switiching into one character or another for the action. The shock system not being mandatory to beat the bosses also is a huge bonus as it gives the opportunity for massive damage but doesn't force the players to learn just a sole strategy that has to be used to actually make the fights go over quickly. And then they even added strategy elements like exploiting certain bosses weakness to elements, debuffs or using a certain time frame to attack so the boss will be paralyzed or something. It's just top notch.

Apart from that I also think this game just improved on the original Midgar section. I was never the biggest OG FFVII fan But I always loved Midgar and thought it was just a really imaginative place, with interesting world building and the huge corporation sucking the life out of the planet was just a great antagonistic entity. So when the Remake was supposed to be only Midgar I didn't even mind. On the one hand, even if it was bad I wouldn't loose anything and on the other, I really wanted to see more of the world building in Midgar and I love almost everything about it!

You spent more time in the slums, getting to know it's people the way they live down there, solving little problems here and there, that might feel like stupid side quests for some, but I think they were well implemented either to get to know Sector 7 and 5 or in the case of Wall Market even to send you around the place and give everything a bit of structure. (talking about Wall Market, I'm really happy the queer representation here now isn't just rapey gay man really wanting to molest Cloud, but insead really fabulous and actually colorful)
The addtional character time and additional characters also add a lot to the whole world, making the destruction of Sector 7 feel soo much more meaningful. In the original I knew, that it was bad it happened, but I didn't loose anything really. Biggs, Wedge and Jessie for example barely made an impression on me and I never feeled very connected to the slums themselves. Here that is so different, and they really home in on the destruction and suffering Shinra brings (especially in Chapter 13, it's a really nice gut punch and just hurts to see).
Shinra is also way better characterized with their propaganda and actions being very clear: manipulating news, cutting footage as it pleases them and only investing in anything that will make them money. So when you come across monster invested power plants or places left to rot, you can see just all of the decay. Midgar was literally build on top of existing villages, build on an existing fantasy world, with its environment and eco-system now trying to adapt to the new conditions. Sewers infested with Sahagin and corporate filth, spider monsters building their nests in abandoned railways, and ghosts haunting a train graveyard. It just makes the climate crisis messaging so much stronger. People have always changed nature to their liking, every society in this world has grown out of nature, relies on it and adapts it. (yes, even hunter and gatheres domesticated animals or even burned parts of forests in a controlled measure to make the soil more fertile.) It's just the manner and extend to which this is possible that is changed, humans aren't parasites that destroy nature, but powerful actors that can shape it in a way that they might destroy themselves. Fighting Shinra because they focus more on profit just feels so right here.
This might also be, why I didn't even mind section like the Train Graveyard being not just a screen but a whole-ass section, that builds on the world and even gives us some insights into the characters pasts and relations.

Character relations is also a real strong point of this game. Apart from the lovable interactions and abundance of voiced dialog here, there are also the little statistics running in the background (without the Aerith will remember this prompt Bioware games love so much), making the outcome of scenes feel really organic. You interacted everytime with Tifa or gave answers that relate to her? Yeah, she is the first to help you in the Sephiroth endfight. Here you go. All of this is really bringing back Roleplaying into a FF game, that might have been missing since FFX (apart from FFXIV maybe, you know, were you make your own character).

Shippers don't come at me for writing Tifa there, in my headcanon Cloud, Tifa and Aerith are a throuple anyway. They're all romantically involved, okay?

Now, their are also changes that might be more controversial. the Arbiters. At first when finishing the game I thought they were a horrible addition. I didn't want to fight fate or have some weird KH/Advent Children-like over-the-top-action. And the Meta Commentary about fans expectations? I didn't really care. I embraced the changes to the original anyway. Give me more explicit condonement of Avalanche, give me more time with the characters, give me more clear signs of Sephiroth being important to the story and Clouds past right away (the flashbacks scenes are just so much more clear here, I LOVE it!). Then later I replayed the game on hard mode and then I didn't mind too much. It didn't really take away from the messaging for fighting against capitalism and climate crisis.
Now? Now, after having replayed the OGFFVII I actually hope the comming changes will clear up some problems of the original. Like the messaging of overcoming trauma not being tied to (merely) such an spiritual outlook, but to actually overcoming the problems and trying to prevent climate catastrophe. That doesn't mean I don't want any stakes or any losses. Overcoming trauma is important to be able to save the planet, but comming to terms with your own past should end in us trying to build a better world, were something like this doesn't happen again - and for that blowing up a pipeline Mako reactor and toppling capitalism is essential.