Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, my love, my sunshine, where do I even begin…
Square did something truly incredible with this one. I wondered how they would approach adapting the second part of FF7 after seeing how dense remake was. After all, it is an awful lot to adapt. Maybe this is recency bias, but I think this may just be the greatest Final Fantasy I’ve played, yes even better than the original, though I feel like they make a sort of package since part of my love for it comes from loving the original. I am truly blown away by what square accomplished with FF7 Rebirth, and I’m gonna glaze the fuck out of it.

Flaws out of the way first. The frame rate. 30fps isn’t optimal, since this is simply due to the limits of the ps5 this problem will disappear upon pc port. My second problem is world intel, completely optional but there are only so many radar towers you can climb before it starts to get slightly repetitive. Due to the repetitive nature of it I got burnt out and didn't play for a month and a half, also I was reading wano which out-peaked the peak. However it's also my own fault for halting story progression until I completed a region. As soon as I balanced this out I got right back into it and didn’t face this issue again.

Now onto the glaze. This game is absolutely massive. I had almost 90 hours when I finished chapter 14 and had completed everything except the end game bosses for the final protorelic. There is so much to do, so many minigames that are so much fun and all unique. Also the game is gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. At times the best I’ve ever seen. Especially during the "cinematic" cutscenes, it is insane. The locations oh my the locations. Seeing the old locations revitalised was my favourite part of this game. I spent half an hour just exploring Kalm, not doing anything to progress the story, just admiring the world square crafted. Each location is dense and filled to the brim with detail. My favourites were Cosmo Canyon, the wider Gongaga region and Kalm, however every town looked incredible. The music is outstanding. Genuinely the greatest soundtrack I’ve ever heard in a game. There are so many tracks with iterations of each. EVERY track from the original game is expanded and improved. My personal favourite, on our way, is absolutely gorgeous in Rebirth. When I first entered the open world, leaving Kalm, I genuinely was tearing up hearing the Main Theme and running around the open world. This game is just so special. Combat is expanded and greatly improved from remake. I love the synergy system, it’s fantastic, really makes my party feel like a party working together in synergy. Folio upgrade system, great. Not super deep, but solid enough. Now the characters. What I love most about this game is how it really fleshes out the cast. The big character Arc moments for party members are handled fantastically, especially my favourite, RedXIII. The humour is on point too. I laughed so many times, the chemistry between the cast is fantastic. The gold saucer sequence was fantastic too. I was not ready for loveless to be adapted in such a manner, truly mind boggling. Rebirth also happens to possess the best in-game card game I’ve ever played, diffing Gwent, Caravan and Pazaak by a mile. Queens Blood is a joy to play and I relished any opportunity I had to play. There are too many little things I want to cream about but I think everything I’ve said conveys just how incredible I think Rebirth is.

This game is so special, I constantly found myself smiling, it’s truly a labour of uncapped love. You can feel it in every corner of the game, this is made by people who love Final Fantasy 7 and they had just as much fun making it as you did playing it. Thank you Tetsuya Nomura, my glorious king, I can’t wait to see how you close out this phenomenal saga.

Arc route: 7
Ciel route: 5
Akiha route: 7
Kohaku route: 10
Hisui route: 9

adding on to this as i complete routes (2 to go now)
Arcueid Route
I'd actually read this one already around 3 years ago after playing melty and wanting to know more about the characters. Despite that I still felt hooked to it and didn't take any issue with going through it again, and still got the same emotional response as I had before. love arc love shiki love nrvnqsr love roa all cool dudes
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Ciel Route
Felt like this one dragged early on with the amount of rereading involved but once it split off more I found myself really liking it and the increased horror focus with Roa now feeling like a genuinely scary threat whilst attempting to take control of Shiki as well as the constant false hopes Shiki would receive up until the end. As it is now though between her, Arc, and Akiha's routes I think she has my least favorite of them.
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Akiha Route
This is an odd one since as I read it it felt less like a single complete story and more like 2 short stories stapled together, one with Satsuki in the first half and Akiha in the latter. While this may be due to me using a guide for the choices I didn't actually take much issue with it as I still really enjoyed both of these stories and with Akiha's route having what is currently my favorite climax and finale of the 3 I've read. In particular I really appreciate how both endings feel like proper conclusions to the route, while in the previous routes I only especially loved Arc's true ending and felt that the good endings didn't really act as conclusions to the route's, though of course I imagine they weren't meant to be given the distinction of being Good instead of True.
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Hisui Route
dude holy fukcing shit
post kohaku edit:
Honestly, I'm still not sure how to phrase my feelings toward Hisui route, I enjoyed it of course but that ending wiped damn near any higher thoughts from me. I think Shiki's mental decay was done best here and the endings were good conclusions. I'd seen someone say that Kohaku's good ending feels like a cop-out but I think that the complete loss of someone's memories even if it makes them seem happier as a result is still a tragedy on its own as it's close to erasing the original person, leaving something like a shell, only with the opportunity to fill said empty shell. Either way much better than the other good endings as an actual conclusion.
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Kohaku Route:
This is it. This is the end. At the moment of reading I felt that Akiha's position in the climax was resolved a little too quickly but on further thought its alright. Besides that though, around the time of Ciel Route I'd noted a constantly present theme of things being fake vs real, as well as other ideas stemming from this base theme, like attachment to fakes, and fakes becoming real, appearing as early as Shiki thinking about his time with the Arimas and treasuring it despite them not being his real family, and this route works perfectly as the capstone to this theme with it now being what defines an entire character. Also I imagine everyone loves the coffee talk dream and I am no different, one of my favorite scenes in the entire VN.
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Eclipse:
Now I really can't form any proper thoughts on this. Seeing Aoko again felt very warm. I'd read the VN without using the skip scenes feature so I'd seen Shiki curse his failure to thank her 5 times total by now, and seeing him finally get the chance to felt like a perfect bookend to the whole experience. If I'd read this at a more emotional time I have no doubt I would've cried a bit finally reaching it.
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Full VN thoughts:
It's good. It isn't hard at all to see how this got the reputation it did and now it's got me in it's grip too. I'm not the same man I was one month ago.