SPOILER FREE UNTIL MARKER
The much awaited sequel to Final Fantasy VII Remake is actually real, wow. To kick things off I’ll say I really liked Remake and gave it a 8/10 on initial playthrough for reference.
I expected to dislike this game quite honestly and that was because of the pre release demo which was really disappointing and definitely doesn’t reflect the full game, it’s quite baffling to me it released in that form. My issues with the demo were generally the climb up to Nibel Mountain but also graphical issues which were quite horrible in performance mode which also stood true in the full game so I opted to play on graphics mode.
My favourite part about Rebirth is probably the combat, it’s excellent and feels so much more rewarding than Remake in the sense that the combat has so much more depth now and combat missions actually have you striving to play the best you can. I feel everything found in the combat is a heavy improvement from Remake but it also won’t make Remake hard to go back to, which I really quite like as I do plan to replay that at some point.
The rest of the gameplay can range from okay to great so I’ll break it down starting from ‘okay’. The segments where you are forced to walk at a slow pace are so excruciating I just wish they were all cutscenes, and it’s even worse when the ‘cinematic effects’ don’t even look good, this was also a big issue I had with Remake so I’m just used to it really but it’s no good going from a full sprint to a halt because your party member is saying what they think of the trees or something (i just made up an example but a lot of the time it’s meaningless). The overworld gameplay is fundamentally very good but I do have my issues with it, I loved the traversal it’s really fun and the modes of transport in the game are actually really fun, I was quite worried they would end up like the car in Final Fantasy XV which was basically on a track you couldn’t move. The world is mostly well designed but there are some oddities here and there, but that’s to be expected. Side content found in the overworld I personally found to be overwhelming so I stopped doing a chunk of it after the 3rd region in the game, but the quest trackers and map icons are really easy to understand so that’s not an issue at all, the non linear structure of the game also helps this compared to what you would find in Remake.
Without spoiling (that’s later, again, marked) I thought the story was great and had some deviations from the original story which we already knew going into this, and I’m quite happy about them. Something key I figured out myself to understand the story more is that the game is from Cloud’s point of view which is evident even in Remake due to some words Cloud is in denial about being redacted from the player, it’s interesting and there is more to support my claim here, but taking the game at face value I imagine you would find it to be really confusing.
I loved all the characters they’re all great just I wish Vincent was more present but I suppose that’s for the next game, just a bit annoying he’s with you for 3 chapters and he hardly shows up, which I suppose is the nature of his character but hey a quest would have been nice. Favourite characters were probably Barret and Cid, really liked what they did with them!
Music is excellent I’m quite literally craving for it to officially release it’s just that good. I quite liked the ending theme too but it’s definitely no Hollow.
Graphics were a grey area, sometimes they looked amazing and sometimes they looked like a mid budget PS3 title like Dead Island, personally it could be quite off putting at times especially when a flat texture is used as a background in a major cutscene (Midgar).
After this paragraph begins my spoiler section so I’ll wrap this up and say overall I believe this to be a really strong yet pretty flawed game, I’m on the edge between a 7 and 8 and you can’t give half scores on Backloggd so I’m going to settle at a 7 with Remake also being a certain 7 in retrospect.
SPOILERS BELOW
Again, spoilers!! Going into this everyone was wondering what was going to happen with Aerith pretty much and again spoilers!! I’m really happy with the deviation the story took in this regard with her being a ghost pretty much that only Cloud (and presumably Zack when he crosses worlds) can see, it makes a lot of sense since the ties the characters have together.
Zack’s segments are strange, they are all meaningless to me besides the opening and ending segments, the chunks found throughout the game should have just been one whole hour segment or something as I’m left wondering after every one if I get to fight as him again (which I was very happy about in the final boss!). Also something that has me wondering is Zack’s scene in Intermission, that has no place in the current story at all it leaves me thinking it’s just been retconned, it’s not too big of a deal but it’s certainly strange.
Sephiroth is really well portrayed here (and again it’s from Cloud’s POV, so there’s a lot of denial to be found) and his scenes in the final chapter are excellent it leaves the stakes so high for the third game that I’m quite sure that payoff for the wait is going to be well worth it.
The much awaited sequel to Final Fantasy VII Remake is actually real, wow. To kick things off I’ll say I really liked Remake and gave it a 8/10 on initial playthrough for reference.
I expected to dislike this game quite honestly and that was because of the pre release demo which was really disappointing and definitely doesn’t reflect the full game, it’s quite baffling to me it released in that form. My issues with the demo were generally the climb up to Nibel Mountain but also graphical issues which were quite horrible in performance mode which also stood true in the full game so I opted to play on graphics mode.
My favourite part about Rebirth is probably the combat, it’s excellent and feels so much more rewarding than Remake in the sense that the combat has so much more depth now and combat missions actually have you striving to play the best you can. I feel everything found in the combat is a heavy improvement from Remake but it also won’t make Remake hard to go back to, which I really quite like as I do plan to replay that at some point.
The rest of the gameplay can range from okay to great so I’ll break it down starting from ‘okay’. The segments where you are forced to walk at a slow pace are so excruciating I just wish they were all cutscenes, and it’s even worse when the ‘cinematic effects’ don’t even look good, this was also a big issue I had with Remake so I’m just used to it really but it’s no good going from a full sprint to a halt because your party member is saying what they think of the trees or something (i just made up an example but a lot of the time it’s meaningless). The overworld gameplay is fundamentally very good but I do have my issues with it, I loved the traversal it’s really fun and the modes of transport in the game are actually really fun, I was quite worried they would end up like the car in Final Fantasy XV which was basically on a track you couldn’t move. The world is mostly well designed but there are some oddities here and there, but that’s to be expected. Side content found in the overworld I personally found to be overwhelming so I stopped doing a chunk of it after the 3rd region in the game, but the quest trackers and map icons are really easy to understand so that’s not an issue at all, the non linear structure of the game also helps this compared to what you would find in Remake.
Without spoiling (that’s later, again, marked) I thought the story was great and had some deviations from the original story which we already knew going into this, and I’m quite happy about them. Something key I figured out myself to understand the story more is that the game is from Cloud’s point of view which is evident even in Remake due to some words Cloud is in denial about being redacted from the player, it’s interesting and there is more to support my claim here, but taking the game at face value I imagine you would find it to be really confusing.
I loved all the characters they’re all great just I wish Vincent was more present but I suppose that’s for the next game, just a bit annoying he’s with you for 3 chapters and he hardly shows up, which I suppose is the nature of his character but hey a quest would have been nice. Favourite characters were probably Barret and Cid, really liked what they did with them!
Music is excellent I’m quite literally craving for it to officially release it’s just that good. I quite liked the ending theme too but it’s definitely no Hollow.
Graphics were a grey area, sometimes they looked amazing and sometimes they looked like a mid budget PS3 title like Dead Island, personally it could be quite off putting at times especially when a flat texture is used as a background in a major cutscene (Midgar).
After this paragraph begins my spoiler section so I’ll wrap this up and say overall I believe this to be a really strong yet pretty flawed game, I’m on the edge between a 7 and 8 and you can’t give half scores on Backloggd so I’m going to settle at a 7 with Remake also being a certain 7 in retrospect.
SPOILERS BELOW
Again, spoilers!! Going into this everyone was wondering what was going to happen with Aerith pretty much and again spoilers!! I’m really happy with the deviation the story took in this regard with her being a ghost pretty much that only Cloud (and presumably Zack when he crosses worlds) can see, it makes a lot of sense since the ties the characters have together.
Zack’s segments are strange, they are all meaningless to me besides the opening and ending segments, the chunks found throughout the game should have just been one whole hour segment or something as I’m left wondering after every one if I get to fight as him again (which I was very happy about in the final boss!). Also something that has me wondering is Zack’s scene in Intermission, that has no place in the current story at all it leaves me thinking it’s just been retconned, it’s not too big of a deal but it’s certainly strange.
Sephiroth is really well portrayed here (and again it’s from Cloud’s POV, so there’s a lot of denial to be found) and his scenes in the final chapter are excellent it leaves the stakes so high for the third game that I’m quite sure that payoff for the wait is going to be well worth it.