Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy has constantly reinvented itself through the years, and Rebirth is no exception. Final Fantasy VII has become its own mega-franchise within gaming and its namesake's universe. And for good reason. This game takes what made Remake great and expands on it with an open-world gameplay design that also blends the seamless level transitions of the Uncharted video games and keeping the otherworldly charm of the Final Fantasy franchise fully intact the whole time.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth may be a bit overwhelming for casuals, but the choice of difficulty definitely eases some newcomers' anxieties of the experience being too overwhelming. Yes there's the trademark difficult boss-fights that require some trial-and-error strategising, but victory is never too far away to achieve for the player. The world on display here is something else, and the open-world design (in select chapters that is) really adds countless hours of replay value and depth to the world's dense story. Cloud and his friends are exploring the massive iceberg that is Rebirth's world-building with absolute swagger that's daring and cinematic all at once.

There's a lot of stuff to unpack here. Maybe almost too much; but hey, JRPGs were always bursting with several hours of stuff to do. Some of the mini-games are unnecessarily hard (the piano is near impossible to perfect with the analog controls), but they're thankfully 110% optional and don't roadblock the story completely. Rebirth gets a lot right, but a game this massive can't be perfect; but it doesn't need to be PERFECT perfect. Rebirth just needed to be a deep exploration of Final Fantasy VII's iconic world, and with that it succeeds many-folds over.

Rebirth has something for hardcore fans, for newcomers, and it delivers on the cut-scenes too. It's already shaping up to be 2024's game of the year. And who knows? Maybe Part Three will be even better?

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the reason gamers play video games so passionately. It has the characters, exploration, and immersion people have come to expect from the best JRPGs on the market. It's a modern classic that's begging for Part Three to round up the trilogy as soon as possible (but seriously, let's hope they don't rush Part Three THAT quickly).

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a 5/5-star masterpiece. 10/10 IMDb points. Give this one a go if you love the Final Fantasy franchise.

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.

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.

Seems they are all bad reviews on here, apart from one who seems to have totally missed the nostalgia of this game, "something in inverted comas" - no, they definitely should have! This is so true to the original narrative. Yes they've thrown in one character to appease the alphabet brigade but other than that, it's a beautiful rendition of the game that meant so much to many of us.

It's a wonderful expansion on a world and characters that meant so much to so many.

Then there's the guys who, I don't know, get paid? The have a pre written awful review that they change some words to the film/game they are trying to destroy.

No character development? Clearly didn't play this game at all. So disregard those reviews straight away.

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.