By no means is this a "perfect" game. It has things that I wasn't a fan of and moments where I was dragging my feet to get to the next story beat. In most cases, I'd give the game an accurate, maybe more cynical score for these shortcomings. But as I neared the end of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, I slowly started to get sadder and sadder as I imagined a world where I wouldn't wake up to chip away at this masterpiece of a game. No more Queen's Blood intermissions, no more running around the different regions with Chadley yapping in my ear, and no more time spent with these characters. That creeping future made me feel an intense sadness and helped me decide that this was, definitively, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a lot of things. It's an action RPG. It's a racing game. It's a surprisingly robust card game. It's an open-world sandbox experience. It's a narratively driven story experience. It's a punch-out clone. It's a rhythm game. It's a mission-based combat challenge simulator. It's all of these things in one package. It's genuinely insane how much is stuffed into this package, and even more insane that, for the most part, it all works so fucking well together. This is in no small part due to the amazing characters you journey with, and the beautiful world these characters inhabit.
One of my biggest gripes with Remake was that Midgar was nowhere near interesting or detailed enough to warrant being stuck in its narrow hallways for 20+ hours. This issue is entirely gone as the world of FF7 both literally and figuratively opens up completely. The humble fantasy village of Kalm, the corporate desert wasteland of Corel, the jungles of Gongaga, all available to the player and all fully explorable. I see a lot of people complain about the "Ubisoft-ification" of the open world activities, but this is a rare case in which I think these open-world tropes are entirely welcome, as it's just an excuse to explore each varied location. Sure, it gets old here and there, but you're able to take it entirely at your own pace, and the game does everything in its power to make sure you aren't bored for long with the extensive amount of side content on display here. I've slowly been learning to abandon the completionist mindset that I usually go into games with, but I did almost everything the game offered because I was just that engrossed. I ended up finishing the game without completing all of Chadley's combat challenges and the second wave of Gold Saucer minigames, but I did literally everything else, which should speak to the quality of the content.
My absolute favourite thing about this game is the cast. I've never played the original FF7, so this remake trilogy is my introduction to the world. I already fell in love with this universe in Remake, but this game goes a step further and makes this ragtag group of terrorists my favourite group in gaming EVER. Barret's arc in Corel, Red XIII's arc in Cosmo Canyon, my fucking GOD. The character growth and interactions make this game SO much more enjoyable than any other similar RPG attempting the same thing.
Combat, which was the shining star of my experience with Remake, is somehow even better here. Everything I wanted to be added (air combat, a more integrated synergy system, more character variety) is here, and everything I wanted to not get lost in translation (forced party compositions, basically everything about Yuffie's kit) made it through. All of this combined makes this the best action RPG gameplay I've ever played. I also really appreciate that each character got all 4 magic elements as unlockable abilities rather than being limited to spells. This let me free up my materia slots for other abilities or stat boosts, and really made me feel free to build the characters as I saw fit. This game might even dethrone Kingdgom Hearts 2 for me, which I never thought was possible. Every character is distinct from one another, and while I obviously prefer some over others, I can't definitively say there was a character I didn't like, and I can't wait to play as the full party in the next game.
There's just magic here, man. Everything fits together so well, and waking up and playing the game made me feel like a kid again, getting engrossed in a completely new world. I feel like I've slowly lost that feeling as I aged, but it came back with a vengeance here. That's why I have trouble viewing and rating this as a game rather than a full experience. Admittedly the ending left me super confused, and I'm not entirely sure how the last game of this trilogy is gonna top the finale of this game, but I absolutely cannot fucking wait.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a lot of things. It's an action RPG. It's a racing game. It's a surprisingly robust card game. It's an open-world sandbox experience. It's a narratively driven story experience. It's a punch-out clone. It's a rhythm game. It's a mission-based combat challenge simulator. It's all of these things in one package. It's genuinely insane how much is stuffed into this package, and even more insane that, for the most part, it all works so fucking well together. This is in no small part due to the amazing characters you journey with, and the beautiful world these characters inhabit.
One of my biggest gripes with Remake was that Midgar was nowhere near interesting or detailed enough to warrant being stuck in its narrow hallways for 20+ hours. This issue is entirely gone as the world of FF7 both literally and figuratively opens up completely. The humble fantasy village of Kalm, the corporate desert wasteland of Corel, the jungles of Gongaga, all available to the player and all fully explorable. I see a lot of people complain about the "Ubisoft-ification" of the open world activities, but this is a rare case in which I think these open-world tropes are entirely welcome, as it's just an excuse to explore each varied location. Sure, it gets old here and there, but you're able to take it entirely at your own pace, and the game does everything in its power to make sure you aren't bored for long with the extensive amount of side content on display here. I've slowly been learning to abandon the completionist mindset that I usually go into games with, but I did almost everything the game offered because I was just that engrossed. I ended up finishing the game without completing all of Chadley's combat challenges and the second wave of Gold Saucer minigames, but I did literally everything else, which should speak to the quality of the content.
My absolute favourite thing about this game is the cast. I've never played the original FF7, so this remake trilogy is my introduction to the world. I already fell in love with this universe in Remake, but this game goes a step further and makes this ragtag group of terrorists my favourite group in gaming EVER. Barret's arc in Corel, Red XIII's arc in Cosmo Canyon, my fucking GOD. The character growth and interactions make this game SO much more enjoyable than any other similar RPG attempting the same thing.
Combat, which was the shining star of my experience with Remake, is somehow even better here. Everything I wanted to be added (air combat, a more integrated synergy system, more character variety) is here, and everything I wanted to not get lost in translation (forced party compositions, basically everything about Yuffie's kit) made it through. All of this combined makes this the best action RPG gameplay I've ever played. I also really appreciate that each character got all 4 magic elements as unlockable abilities rather than being limited to spells. This let me free up my materia slots for other abilities or stat boosts, and really made me feel free to build the characters as I saw fit. This game might even dethrone Kingdgom Hearts 2 for me, which I never thought was possible. Every character is distinct from one another, and while I obviously prefer some over others, I can't definitively say there was a character I didn't like, and I can't wait to play as the full party in the next game.
There's just magic here, man. Everything fits together so well, and waking up and playing the game made me feel like a kid again, getting engrossed in a completely new world. I feel like I've slowly lost that feeling as I aged, but it came back with a vengeance here. That's why I have trouble viewing and rating this as a game rather than a full experience. Admittedly the ending left me super confused, and I'm not entirely sure how the last game of this trilogy is gonna top the finale of this game, but I absolutely cannot fucking wait.