Gameplay wise, Rebirth is approximately better than Remake. The pacing issues are less bad than Remake had, though not really totally solved.

I liked Queen's Blood. I was surprised to like a card game in an RPG, but I gave it a fair shake, and it's really neat. It's not making me want to run out and play every card player out there, but it's definitely good enough to keep me from resenting when card matches are part of the main story quest line.

The bosses are still so tanky that it's exhausting. I think that the latter chapters feel like they're dragging on and on. This is probably because, as the story builds up, you want to keep advancing the story to see where it leads. That's exactly when you're confronted with immense sequences of "stuff" that ultimately doesn't matter much half the time and gets in the way of the story flow.

Speaking of story: I finished the game, and I still don't know what's going on. This is some real kingdom hearts shit for sure.

However, I also don't care anymore? I can say one thing I do know: that Unknown Journey stuff was all a lie. This has gotta be the biggest waste of video game story potential since Mass Effect 3. The ending made me think, "that's it?". It retroactively reaches back across the whole game and sours a 4/5 experience into just a 2/5 at best.

I can barely form a coherent thought about what I just finished but I feel weirdly seen by Final Fantasy VIII and its protagonist in particular as this understanding of specific feelings of capitalist alienation that I've been unable to articulate for the longest time. I don't have any official diagnosis and especially do not want people I barely know armchair diagnosing me online but Squall's struggles to process the most basic social interactions in terms of anything other than capitalist obligations like school or work, "shut up and get the job done" mentality, and specific jaded outlook are core parts of myself I never expected to see reflected in this fashion. While I narrowly prefer the basic bitch choices of VI and VII in terms of Final Fantasy games, this surreal response to the cultural zeitgeist of the latter game and weird as fuck (complimentary) use of Marxist theory (specifically the "annihilation of space by time" described in Grundrisse and expanded upon over a century later by David Harvey) in the same way that most RPGs use religious/mythological concepts solely because it sounds cool is a game that will no doubt have a special place in my heart from now on.