Side quests became quite repetitive after a while and while there was padding there was no where near as much in Rebirth. Some of the voice acting wasn't all that convincing but some for me have become the definitive version of these characters.

The best improvement in Rebirth is the tone, the dissonance in Remake was neck shattering with trying to have a gloomy atmosphere and stupid nonsense. The midgar section was handled far better in the original version of ff7 but Rebirth really understood the lighthearted tone of the original that made those hard hitting scenes all the more impactful.

The combat is the best a final fantasy game has to offer by quite a margin, the music is stellar and the capturing of the most iconic game of my childhood in this new beautiful setting sometimes left me speechless.

I'm glad Nomura didn't go absolutely off the walls and kept this story compact, faithful and to the point with plenty to new content that he hit the mark on much better. However the strange uneeded padding which in this game seems even more unnecessary due to the already heavy length. I also experienced some terrain clipping during combat meaning characters were placed underneath the map and rendered unusable as well as Aerith getting stuck on nothing during the Vincent fight and unable to move. A few crashes as well but none of it took away from how much I adored the game.

8/10