Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

FFVII Remake is one of my favorites in the series right behind X that is the very best in my opinion. Remake though it was mostly corridors and very straight forward, it was tightly paced and very entertaining throughout it's 30h runtime while Rebirth is triple the size and a lot more open, it's ultimately a case of bigger isn't always necessarily better.

I myself had a lot of fun with this game as the characters are so well written and excellent specially Yuffie which was a huge standout for me, she brings much needed energy to the group and is incredibly funny. The voice actors do a great job at once again bringing these iconic characters to life.

Though i enjoyed the game i can't disagree with people saying the game is overwhelming because there are so many open areas throughout the game and each one have you doing mostly the same activity and Chadley calling you over and over, i was like boy if you don't get out of my screen... it's almost as bad as a Ubisoft open world game and that very much hurts the pacing of the game where the Remake had no such issues, also the game is like 150 gigs and the environmental textures a lot of time are worse than a ps3 game, it's really distracting. The same problem i have with Like a Dragon games but even worse here and the bright as hell UE4 lighting doesn't help it either. The game would benefit a lot more if there was a day and night cycle to hide it's graphical flaws, now compare to FFXVI from last year, a gorgeous game with far better graphics that has very little open world fatigue even though it had worse side activity than this game. It's just a shame that they couldn't nail the open areas even though they did so much good.

Another annoyance is the affinity system which effects who you romance later in the game and unlike games like Persona where you can actually choose who to spend time with, here it can happen at random with who ever that has the highest point, like come on bro if you wanna do a romance system, at least do it right or just don't do it at all.

As it stands, Rebirth has alot to like, game is huge, the cast is great, Tifa herself is another plus and the music is fantastic as always. It will become a big contender for game of the year but unfortunately it's not a flawless experience. My advice is that focus on the story and do side quests here and there, maybe do some of the mini games (queen's blood is pretty addictive) but ignore the open world activity as much as possible so you don't have to suffer through Chadley calling and boring you to death. He's the real villain of the story not Sephiroth.

8.6/10. While the bloated section of the game can become tiresome, the devs cooked a lot in less than 4 years which is really impressive and time will tell if they can stick the landing with the 3rd and final game.

Oh boy! What can I say about this game that has not been said already. This game has improved SO much upon the 2020 Remake. And even that game was fantastic. So to go from a game as great as FF7 remake, and to improve on it as much as it did is nothing short of impressive. There is so much to explore and do, and none of it feels like a chore. Also, though there are so many of them, the mini games are very fun. My personal favorite has to be the newly added Queens Blood. It is extremely easy to pick up as the game isn't very complicated. It also has a side story to it as you continue to play queens blood with different players throughout the game. I 1000% recommend playing this game. It WILL be worth it.

Part 2 of the problematic, sorely under thought through cardboard world building, bloated to bursting themeparkification of ff7 and the assassination of its characters, locations, dramatic moments, and legacy with no place or time for subtlety hitting the player on the nose with everything as if the writers were scared absolutely anyone in the audience would miss something. It feels like they were only concerned with dozens and dozens of hours of forced side quests that kill the pacing but need to be completed to advance the story or unlock story important character context moments later on and as before introducing bus loads of instantly grating samey forgettable new characters that do nothing for the story but take screen time away from the main party and other story important characters who are unfortunately travelling through the plot in a loop of; go to new place, hit roadblock, help everyone in area, road block opens for completely unrelated reason, progress. There is an average of two hours of narratively inconsequential fluff for every location in this guided tour through ff7 land, some locations twice or trice. The removal of the tongue-in-cheek saturday morning cartoon elements of story convenience found in the original game's story are replaced here by this cloud coo coo land logic that just makes every character seem stupid for going along with it, as if they are acting against their own goals so the events of the original game can play out somewhat close to how they played out before.

With that said as with most ps5 exclusives it looks pretty, the animation is great, and the actors do the best they can with the material they are given, it is hard to find fault there, though cracks do show in the latter half of the game. But damn, given the calibre of the talent involved if only square enix never made the decision to follow the multi-verse fad nonsense and instead stuck firm to a one-to-one remake of the original story with a few modern gaming conventions thrown in to update the game for modern hardware and gaming trends, this trilogy really could have been indomitable and not the puppeteered corpse that it is.

No point lamenting the road not travelled, fundamentally this game fails and misses out on greatness exactly where the previous entry did only twice as hard because it doubles down on all the failings of its predecessor, and that is because of the godawful writing. It is a testament to the strength of the original story that even this game's loose interpretation still connects with people.

Really hot take here! But the Remake was better than Rebirth. The main thing that brings Rebirth down is how BLOATED it is, especially with the open-world, mini-games, and way too much Chadley constantly calling you and saying obvious crap that we don't need to hear.

The open world was nothing special and got repetitive pretty fast. I eventually gave up on the open-world stuff and just went straight to main story things. The open-world is often compared to a Ubisoft game and I agree with this. It's just not the greatest open world ever. The open world kind of reminded me of Sonic Frontiers, it's almost the same thing: find a beacon that shows more basic objectives, rinse and repeat. It gets repetitive fast. Plus why must Chadley call us CONSTANTLY with basic crap? I eventually started skipping everything Chadley says, same for everyone I know who played this game.

Even when I got to the main story, it wasn't bad, but it's not as strong or engaging as how Remake told its story. Rebirth manages to make some cannon moments feel like filler because the writing, pacing, and characters just aren't as strong. But as for Remake, it generally did the opposite, which was amazing. Remake made the "filler" moments feel super entertaining and feel like cannon, i.e. Hell House fight tournament and Honey Bee Inn dance sequence, etc. BTW, those moments were iconic. 95% of Remake had perfect pacing, with only some rare exceptions like returning to the sewers, which was bad.

The characters and pacing in Remake were insanely good!!! The characters were introduced perfectly and all had so much chemistry and had so many genuinely funny moments. Rebirth is not bad in this aspect, but simply just not nearly as strong as Remake in this aspect. I understand Rebirth is the start of things getting a little more serious, but it still could've been more engaging and better-paced like Remake. But don't get me wrong, Rebirth still has a good story, but just not as many great moments as Remake, and especially with all the extra bloat Rebirth has, but Rebirth story gets stronger and stronger to the end.

Rebirth's combat is almost perfect. It's almost the same exact combat as Remake as it should, but of course, Rebirth adds way more variety in combat with way more materia, weapons, special abilities, etc. With synergy skills being the biggest new thing for Rebirth's combat, which I thought those were really fun too and executed great. However, one small negative about Rebirth's combat is it feels a little floaty compared to Remake's combat. I do prefer the super heavy feeling of Remake's combat, makes every hit feel way more impactful and satisfying. Remake's combat is better to me, but Rebirth has more variety. But both still have amazing combat. I'd give Remake combat a 10/10, and Rebirth's a 9/10.

Overall, Rebirth is just a great game, but not a masterpiece. I'm a little sad because I love Final Fantasy VII OG and I even love The Remake!!! I enjoyed the Remake so much that I marathoned beat it in two long sittings, then instantly beat it on Hard mode, then instantly got the platinum. I did all that super fast because Remake is EXTREMELY hard to put down when you first play it, super exceptional story, character interactions, pacing, and combat. But as for Rebirth, I can only play this game for about 3-4 hours at a time, then need a long break, it's just simply not as engaging, but still not bad. I have no desire to platinum Rebirth and probably never will.

I thought this would be Game of the Year worthy, but sadly it isn't. Of course, I know it will still probably win GOTY because it's so popular and that's okay, but just saying, in my own personal opinion, Rebirth just simply isn't Game of the Year worthy. Here are all my ratings for the games.

FF7 OG: 10/10 FF7 Remake: 9.5/10 FF7 Rebirth: 8/10.

Edit: I raised my score by 1(was previously 7), because the game grew on me a little bit more, and appreciate it's great moments more, despite not having as many great moments as Remake.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a behemoth of an RPG experience. My play through clocked in at over 100 hours, and although I made an effort to complete the vast majority of side content, there was still a surprising amount of material that I have yet to complete. I do, however, feel that I have given it more than enough time to give an informed review.

As my title suggests, this game is astounding on a mechanical level. The sheer amount and quality of varied content available to the player is easily this game's greatest strength. Mini games, world exploration, and combat mechanics are all virtually flawless, and I cannot praise the dev team enough for the evident love and care they used in crafting these aspects. While a depressing majority of modern RPGs fill their runtimes with generic fetch quests as side quests, FF7 Rebirth gives a plethora of great side missions and content that never got bland or repetitive. I would go as far as saying that in this regard, FF7 Rebirth is the standard to which future RPGs should be held. Square Enix outdid themselves in this category a thousand times over, especially in comparison to its predecessor on the PS4.

As far as the story goes, I will avoid spoilers, but suffice it to say that I have some issues. FF7 original already has a hyper-convoluted story in typical JRPG fashion, but Rebirth dials it up to 11. A good chunk of changes made to the new game seem to require a decent amount of knowledge of other games, and I can't help but feel that players unfamiliar with expanded FF7 lore will find themselves confused on multiple occasions. The story still has a lot of strong moments, but longtime fans will likely be scratching their heads at some of the decisions the writing team made. It didn't ruin my experience, but I felt that many story elements were actively competing with each other, as well as with the otherwise very cohesive gameplay mechanics. Ultimately, it's something that everyone will have to decide for themselves.

In conclusion, I would highly recommend this game. It's story isn't a masterpiece, but the gameplay was so consistently and reliably engaging that these issues with the writing were minimal for the most part. Strong world exploration, variety in side missions, and a very polished combat system make this one of the best modern RPGs I've played, and I'll happily sing its praises despite its flaws.