Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

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.

Great game overall. The combat was a step up. Characters and character relationships were fantastic. The world building was great as was the story as a whole. Graphics are incredible. The only thing that bogged this down slightly was the sheer number of side content and mini games. I know there were a lot of mini games in the original game, but this game, part 2 of 3, is already larger than the original game was. 90% of the game was truly amazing, but there were a few points where I just got tired of the mini games. I don't have the time that I used to for gaming, so the volume of side content and checking off open world boxes knocked this from a 10 to a 9 for me. Everything else was near perfect though. Seeing the scenes and world play out in high def graphics and with voice acting was an incredible nostalgia trip.

The remake trilogy pushes onwards, blowing up the middle chunk of the original to bigger and prettier screens.

The main flaw of the first part persists here. The game is bloated; story beats are too dragged out, elongated, never ending, like a sentence that just refuses to let that full stop get in there; onwards and onwards it goes, exhausting the reader, until it's assured that there will indeed be words after it and perhaps it is actually time to quickly wrap up. But, it works. Mostly.

One of the main strengths of the original is how it throws so much at the wall with such confidence. Perhaps this is because in its shift from 2D to 3D the devs were unknowingly setting so many standards, in the same vein as Wells with Citizen Kane. Some of it doesn't work, but that's ok. It's pure unabashed entertainment, with little meddling from above.

Rebirth emulates this, with its plethora of minigames, tone shifts and crazy sequences. Parts of Rebirth are now up there in my favourite gaming moments.

The section this part is adapting is a string of quests exploring individual character's pasts. So the pacing is, like the original, rather stop and go. This is an adventure game, through and through, with extremely well defined characters. Running around the different locations was glorious, simply glorious.

I am a little dubious of the game's final act. After going through the hellscape that is Kingdom Hearts, I'm tentative towards a plot of convolutions. While Rebirth did make Remake somewhat more coherent, I'm still a little weary of complications for the sake of complications. Unless they pull off some interesting narrative tricks in Part 3, I do find this a flaw of the remake trilogy.

Having said that, I like that it's technically a new story. The original is still there. If it was just a straight remake, the trilogy wouldn't nearly have the staying power that I hope it eventually has. I do hope for a remaster of the original though, the gameplay is still pretty fun but a remodel of the Lego people would be nice.

In a shocking change from Remake, the side quests were actually pretty decent. Even the ones that felt initially tedious tended to have something charming or memorable at the end. Some of the songs specifically designed just for sidequests (Bow Wow Wow) were as incredible as the rest of the soundtrack.

By making the world vast and explorable, they've spread out Ubisoft style objectives. Most of these are pretty perfunctory, giving the player an excuse to run around and experiment with the game's excellent combat. I did them all. Every tower, every unique battle, every god damn moogle minigame. And I never, not once, felt bored as I usually do with Ubisoft's approach. This is a testament for either my inhuman patience or how fun the game actually is.

As for the other minigames, I really liked the majority. Some people really seem to not enjoy them, but that's ok, culture isn't for everyone. From Tower Defense, to Virtual Bikes, and a Gwent-tier card game (strong words, I know) there is bound to be at least a few things each player can enjoy. All of them feel pretty fleshed out; the quality found here is just astounding. This is the first modern Final Fantasy to match the grand scope of the originals, both in its gameplay elements and world scale.

Rebirth is a step up in almost every way from Remake. The oppressive and moody atmosphere is gone (I still miss Midgar!), but in its place is a genuine feat that I can't believe actually got made. It's flawed, so very flawed, especially in its final act if Part 3 doesn't pull finger. But I'd rather a game be flawed with style - it's more interesting than a "perfect game" of the times. So many of those are lost to technological improvements. Final Fantasy VII has charm, and the remake trilogy brings it to the future.

Final fantasy 7 rebirth is a masterpiece,

The open world aspect is so great.

I loved final fantasy 7 remake also a lot but on that game my playthrough ended at 140 hours of ingame time...

Final fantasy 7 rebirth ended after 1200 hours of ingame time.

Okay a lot of those hours was because of replaying mini games and all of chadley(with his irritating voice) his legendary bouts but eventually i managed to get the piano trophy and i did manage to win bonds of friendship and the one with sephiroth...

I have never ever cheered loudly for achieving things in a game before this.

And to all the not helpfull thumps down people for my comment...

Its not our fault that you are bad at certain games....

I have never played elden ring for example because i know that game wouldnt be my cup of thea but i dont see me posting negative comment on that game.

So every negative reaction i get, i know you are commenting on a game you only played for 5 minutes. Insane in the head i mean.