Boy oh boy, my expectations for this game were exorbitantly high and yet, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth exceeded almost all of them.

It took me a few years to appreciate what Remake is and what it was doing and I still do have a few major problems with it. Some of them lie within the nature of Midgar itself. Rebirth on the other hand is a near perfect game.

I only have a few minor issues with it, such as the resolution in performance mode or the framerate in graphics mode. The game struggled to load some textures during in-game cutscenes, such things. But I’m not petty, that doesn’t drag down the game that much. I’m not a fan of a few mini games, as well. I think this game does have amazing mini games, most of them are very well integrated into the story and the quality is top notch, but I wish the piano mini game had some accessibility options. It’s literally impossible for my brain to focus on two sticks for the piano. It just says no, even if it’s the easiest song with the slowest rhythm. So I wish there was a way for people like me to clear the songs some other way. The other mini game that infuriated me was the chocobo gliding. Not that it’s hard or impossible for me to clear, but I don’t know why they thought it’d be a great idea to not be able to move the camera in order to spot the rings? I heard they fixed it in the latest patch already, but I didn’t try it and I already had to suffer anyway.

I also didn’t enjoy the Cait Sith part in Shinra’s Villa, but that’s about it.

There’s nothing else I could complain about. As I mentioned, a nearly perfect game.

This game took everything that was great in Remake and refined it on so, so, so many levels. Be it the materia system, the easy to learn but hard to master combat system, the mechanics, the exploration in the open world or during linear sections or the RPG elements. You need to know, I’m a bit conservative when it comes to the definition of “RPG” or “JRPG”, so I rarely (not never) consider action RPGs “JRPGs”, sometimes not even truly “RPG”, but the RPG elements in Rebirth are so well thought-out and deep that I’m calling this one a full-fledged JRPG. I consider the Tales series JRPG, as well, just as another example, but I do not consider NieR: Automata a JRPG, even though it’s one of my absolute favorite games of all time. And I do not consider Final Fantasy XVI a JRPG or RPG in any way.

Rebirth really puts XVI into perspective, huh? Better story, dynamic party members that interact with you and with each other, each character is beautifully written, meaningful or silly side quests, Cloud can actually run fast, there’s much more to explore, the soundtrack is a lot better, you can catch chocobos, high quality mini games, great mechanics, actual RPG elements, accessories and equipments do more than giving you 0.1 second less of a cooldown for just one skill. Final Fantasy XVII really needs to be more like Rebirth, because Rebirth is unironically as good as the golden era Final Fantasy games that are VI to X. It’s full of heart and soul. It’s a love letter not only to Final Fantasy VII, but to the best era this series ever had. Final Fantasy VII is my favorite game of all time and Rebirth made me love it even more, while knowing the original (and Crisis Core) makes me love Rebirth even more, as well.

As to the story, I don’t want to leave spoilers in here, but I loved every second of it. Even the “ending” that is controversial to some of players.

And I got Tifa as my date. You KNOW why this scene is GREAT.

My first playthrough of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (there will be more) took over one hundred and thirty hours. I spent most of that time screaming.

I have complaints, make no mistake. The demo for Rebirth cooled me off so significantly that I almost started squirming about the fact that I had taken time off work for the full release. There were a few choice moments where unnecessary deviations from the original's storytelling, such as in one of the first battles of the entire game, left me sour and skeptical. I have read every Final Fantasy VII book, or at least some shitty fan translation thereof. I know just how bad ALL of the compilation stuff is, and even after what I felt was an adequate performance in Remake, I still had my doubts about how well the writing staff truly grasped their own story. Some of those minor changes made me question this, and at other times an overwrought orchestra drowned what should definitely be an emotional scene wrapped in golden silence, but I could not have possibly imagined the absolute mastery Rebirth has over the characters and tone of its source material.

The moment-to-moment character and scene writing in Rebirth is the best that Square has ever produced. I refuse to dilute that statement with qualifiers. It is as hilarious as it is impactful. It is a script that could only ever be written by someone who is in deep, sincere love with every one of its characters, as well as the quaint yet outlandish stupidity of 90's video games and everyone who loved them. It is a blatant refusal to tone down its freakish, lovable soul.

Rebirth is the best time I've had with a video game in almost a decade. It represents everything that anyone has ever liked about Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts II, Final Fantasy XV, or even Chrono Trigger. It is a non-stop landslide of delightful surprises, and it had me yelling aloud at what must have been close to once per hour. Its characterization is flawless, its music is divine, its visuals remain on the cutting edge, and for most of my seventeen-day playthrough I could not stop smiling.

I would be willing to name Rebirth my Game of the Year here and now, in March, by virtue of the writing's perfect audacity and unmatched playfulness alone. Fortunately for me, I don't have to pretend that gameplay doesn't matter. Remake's battle system was already the best Final Fantasy had ever seen, and one of the best in Action RPG history. In Rebirth it has been further improved by valuable tweaks to the various characters, new mechanics, and better encounter design. Considering that players spend probably a third or more of their time in Rebirth fighting, that's an obvious blessing.

In discussing the rest of Rebirth's gameplay activities, I'm going to play coy, as the surprises should remain surprises, but I will at least address the somewhat depressing presence of towers and map icons. To put it briefly and simply, they're fine. The concept itself may be played out, and some players may sigh in exhaustion at the very thought of them, but Rebirth's map icons are, for the most part, well-varied, entertaining, and unlikely to incite much tedium. They are distributed reasonably well and contain enough diverse flavors of interest to be worthy supplemental story material. Frankly, after finishing a marathon of tightly scripted narrative setpieces, it's nice to have some more "filler" activities to hang out with at one's leisure.

The greatest strength of the SNES and Playstation Final Fantasies was that they never lingered on any one thing long enough for the player to get bored of it. They were iconic, memorable setpiece parades, full of goofy, stupid minigames, bizarre sidequests, lovable characters, and eventually wild, confusing twists that online gorillas will fixate on in a way that is devastatingly literal and utterly oblivious to thematic intent. Many, including me, thought the exact cocktail represented here to be fully extinct. Having it served to me now, by largely the same people who wrote the recipe, roughly twenty years after I began to fear it lost, is rapturous. Rebirth has given me some of the most glorious highs of my entire gaming career.

For the first time since Final Fantasy X, I feel entirely satisfied with a full Final Fantasy release in the way I did when I was a child. It fills me with hope for the near future, and an absolute, unconditional confidence in the inevitable Final Fantasy X-3.

After seeing a fair bit of the promo materials for Infinite Wealth, and especially after playing 'The Man Who Erased His Name', I had a single great fear going into this one. Yakuza: Like a Dragon had claimed the title of my favourite RGG studios game due in no small part to the new protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga. It is no exaggeration for me to say he is my favourite all-time RPG protagonist, and with how things were shaping up my fear was that he would have to relinquish that spotlight back to the long-time series favourite, Kazuma Kiryu. I am more than happy to report that these fears were unfounded and Infinite Wealth simply allows both these protagonists to breathe by simply jamming two massive games together in one.

To elaborate further, the scope of this game is insane. I have that same feeling I did when I first played Yakuza 5. A whole new map to explore in Hawaii on top of Yokohama and Kamurocho, and there are a massive amount of minigames (and even a proper ass game in Dondoko Island) to go with it. Want to play a Pokemon Snap-like where you take pictures of perverts wreaking havock across Hawaii? There's Sicko Snap at three of the bus stops around town. How about a dating app where you build Kasuga's profile and do rhythm game-like inputs to score a funny date? There's Miss Match. How about straight-up Crazy Taxi x Uber Eats where you race around picking up food, doing tricks, and stopping by citizens? There's Crazy Eats. All of these are pretty fun and have a respectable amount of content and incentive to replay them, and there are plenty of other reasons to manually explore around town like Aloha Links, the Photo Rally, and the Sujimon League rather than just fast travelling from destination to destination. Having a dedicated button to wave to the people you meet, a playlist full of collectible SEGA songs, and a segway really make it comfy to explore.

Diving further in, Dondoko Island is the new 'main' minigame in Infinite Wealth as the counterpart to the Company Management in Like a Dragon. Essentially Animal Crossing, you clear out trash on your island to make room for all sorts of buildings and decorations of your own creation as you invite various people to come stay for a few days and enjoy what you've built. Once you have the requisite resources and recipes (which you gain both actively and passively), you can build it right there on the spot and place it and move it around as you see fit. Create your own paths around each area to fit the style you want, and even redecorating isn't much of a hassle. A day on Dondoko Island takes about thirty minutes or so, and each day has daily tasks to help you rake in the Dokobucks which can be used to purchase upgrades, buy special decorations, or even just convert into straight cash. It was very addicting to push my island rank all the way up to 5 stars and I ended up putting the plot on hold for a long time just for how fun it was.

Now back to talking about the real game itself, there are a handful of improvements to the combat system. The big one here is the expanded movement during battle. You have a circle which you can freely move around in, and many of the moves and attacks for each job allow you to knock enemies into each other for extra damage. It becomes a fun little game on each turn of battle how to take best advantage of the positioning of your team. There are also new tag team attacks with each party member as you level up your bonds. There are still follow-up attacks and the ability to tag-out when you have more than 4 party members, as well as new Poundmates to summon in battle. Of course, there are also a whole host of creative new jobs in addition to many of the previous ones, which you can use to customize your playstyle and team composition. It's not a dramatic change over the previous game, but it is just enough to make the combat even more enjoyable. If the level difference is high enough, you can also just start a fight with a beatdown to skip the battle for slightly less exp gains. Doing absolutely everything I could, I felt like I outpaced the plot's enemies around the halfway mark, but managed to be on par for the finale which is the important thing. Unfortunately (and maybe this is my fault for hitting too many bad guys), there weren't really any battles that felt like a stiff challenge. The previous game had (IMO) two notorious fights that hit like a truck and one of which was especially awesome for it - but there has been no such equivalent in this game. Still, the combat and job customization has been fun enough for me to really care too much about that.

As I mentioned, the story is really doing both Ichiban and Kiryu justice. They both have a personal stake in the plot, and my attachment to both characters could not be greater. I won't sugar coat it, there are a LOT of cutscenes. This is not the game for you if you thought MGS4 was excessive, because you will often (especially in the first few chapters) just be sitting your ass down to watch a movie; but god damn if it isn't an engrossing one most of the time. In fact, one other thing I noticed is that the first and last scenes of all substories are also fully voiced. There are also a ton of conversations out while wandering the world that are also fully voiced. In general, there is a lot of audio dialogue in this game! Maybe more than I have ever heard in an RPG before! Unfortunately, the overarching plot and central conflict is also the weakest aspect of the game. It feels a little bit unfocused and even occasionally just sloppy with all the key players and motivations and many feeling under-utilized, and if I were to make a comparison it actually reminds me a lot of FFXIV: Stormblood in this regard. It isn't like it's terrible, there are genuinely wonderful character moments and the themes of reflecting on your past, regrets, atonement, and forgiveness are well established and executed. I also like that they are continuing to blend fantasy elements (such as boss fights) into the """""realism""""" of the RGG series. Just overall I would not rate it amongst the highs of the series like 0 and 7.

Qualms about the central conflict aside, it's a tremendously impactful and relatable journey. Even a certain collectible that unlocks about halfway through the game moved me with each one I picked up. There are certainly a number of over-the-top ridiculous moments in the plot, but such is par for the course with RGG. At its core, you can tell a lot of love and care was put into this game, the quality and amount of content is staggering. Only time will tell if this is the recency bias talking, but I strongly feel this is one of the best turn-based RPGs ever made, and I could not be happier with how they have pulled it off. My completion time was just shy of 100 hours, and I certainly want to go back and polish off the few things I did not get to. As always, RGG fans will not want to miss this entry and it still stands among the best. I really look forward to how they will continue this series (and go back to Waikiki, because it'd be a waste to use that city after only one game!).