If Final Fantasy VII (1997) is a game in need of no introductions, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2024) is on the other end of the spectrum- being a game desperately in need of as many as possible. This is a strange title, being the middle-child entry of a trilogy with intent of fully reimagining a classic JRPG that I adore. It brings about the question of how do you even view this game? As a sequel? As a Remake? As a preservation of my own experiences and memories? As an entirely standalone, in a vacuum experience? Every avenue is a pros and cons list longer than it has any right to be, but I believe all have equal merit in discussion of the product. Rebirth is a weird game, but I am happy to say before anything else that it is an incredibly fun and enjoyable one regardless.
To catch anyone up on my previous opinions, I have a conflicting relationship with Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020). When the game works, it is absolutely magical. Seeing all these characters, locations, music, etc. reimagined was and is among my favorite memories with a video game. Conversely, the game was so padded that it could be used as a bulletproof vest- and beyond just the added filler of stretching a 6 hour experience into a 40 hour JRPG, it came at the expense of the storytelling quality and impact. It was certainly fun, but certainly frustrating.
As a sequel, Rebirth fixes nearly every issue I had with Remake. The main story of this game is about the same length as Remake, but the expansiveness and variety of the world doesn’t really allow for any time to be wasted. Everything feels meaningful, adds true scope and scale, and is generally a hell of a lot more interesting and fun. Where the original game was quite restrictive, this gives you a hearty amount of agency at nearly every turn. You have more control of where you go and what you do given the open area design, you are given more opportunity to choose your battle party and customize their gear, there is a massive amount of optional content to chip away at, the list goes on. The more organic approach to the world and gameplay also allows for the story to maintain its focus and intent more prominently than Remake as well. Nearly every chapter in this game has something interesting and important to carrying along the plot and growing the characters. Every aspect that could’ve been improved in the game experience was very thoughtfully tweaked here, and it lends itself to a game I find to be a lot more enjoyable all the way through.
As a Remake, there are still quite a few missteps to be found here, but I find it a lot less intrusive when the whole package is so much more briskly paced, expansive, varied, and wastes less time. As much as I don’t really care for the direction they have taken the story in this series- I am fine with change as long as it serves this story and is interesting. There are moments where the changes presented were just that, but there are also many where it is not. Out of risk of sounding like a snob for the original, I will say that there is more than a handful of scenes and moments recreated here that just fall flat and miss the point, and the new content is a very negatively-skewed mixed bag, but as much as the oomph is lost I can really appreciate where the game gets it right. My biggest example is the goofiness of FFVII, something that really makes the original so memorable for me and something I was worried would be stripped down in this remake. It was not, and in many cases was even toned upwards which was a ton of fun and makes the more somber parts of the experience more effective, too. As a preservation of my memories it is very much not that, but for what this game is trying to be I can get behind it when its highs work so well for me, even if the lows are plenty prominent.
As a standalone vacuum experience, I don’t really think it is very fair to view it in this regard despite it being a fully priced, advertised, and treated game. You will be absolutely lost if you don’t have the context of Remake, which I believe you will also be absolutely lost in if you don’t have the context of the original. In order to appreciate the story being told here, you need to have done your homework- to say the least. It’s also a middle child of a trilogy as previously stated, so along with not having context of the beginning of this story, you also don’t get an ending here quite yet either. What I am trying to say here ultimately is that if you are seeing this game advertised and thinking “hey, maybe I’ll try this game as my first FF game or exposure to FFVII after all the cultural impact,” leave it alone and come back later. I doubt that’ll be the case for many, but it leaves the point for all that this game is a cog in a machine, and needs to be treated as such if you want to enjoy it fully. On the other hand, I will commend the actual gameplay mechanics, because even in a vacuum I still find it incredibly fun. I tend to lean more turn based with my JRPGs, but I do like an action RPG every once in a while. Remake has what I cite as my favorite interpretation of an action RPG I’ve played yet. Rebirth, like with everything else, takes what worked about the gameplay there and meaningfully expands and tweaks it here to make it even better. There is an unprecedented amount of customization to be found here, and some of my favorite moments of the game were talking to my friend who was playing and seeing how our character builds and combat approaches were complete opposites and yet still viable. It is certainly flashy, but it is equally as tactically engaging and I find that pretty neat.
Don’t have a segway for this but the game also is beautiful and the music is incredible. Good stuff.
I’ve kept this pretty vague, but I hope you can see that this game was far from perfect, but still incredibly fun, polished, and worth my time. I highly recommend it for anyone who was in my shoes as there is an experience worthy of being played here. Even though I have a soft spot for XV, I think this is easily the best modern Final Fantasy game and I hope the series learns from both its strengths and weaknesses as it continues. Good time, fun time.
spoilers ahead
In a less vague sense, I have some more specific thoughts I will bullet point to those who have played. If you don’t want spoilers then feel free to scroll away. I’ll start with mean things and progress to nice things.
- The Temple of the Ancients was probably the most disappointing part of this game for me. Such a visually and mechanically striking dungeon in the original and seeing it stripped of virtually everything unique here was so sad. Not a fan of that.
- The whole storyline with Zack was dumb. Considering there is an option to skip it entirely when you replay the game it really makes me wonder if it was even necessary at all.
- I get they’re saving things for Part 3, but they really underused Cid to a pretty sad degree here. Wish he had more characterization, but considering Rocket Town is not yet here it is TBD. I never cared about Vincent but he was pretty equally boring here so I have nothing really to say.
- Chadley is annoying. So, so annoying.
- The part where Tifa enters the lifestream is kinda stupid but I think it had a pretty cool mini story arc for her. The fact that she and everyone else barely acknowledge Cloud just attempted to kill her though is baffling.
- The Dyne storyline was almost perfect but that boss fight against him killed the mood so dramatically, and him being killed by Shinra guards and then having to fight Palmer in a big mech was jaw droppingly tone deaf.
- Some areas are annoying to explore. (Gongaga)
- While some minigames were pretty terrible and there were so many of them, some of them rocked. Chocobo racing was a ton of fun and Queen’s Blood is up there as one of the best in the entire series. All the variants of it too were incredibly enjoyable.
- The Gold Saucer is my favorite location in the original game and how they recreated it here was magical. Loved every second.
- I want to go to Costa Del Sol in real life.
- The new lyrical theme of the game is beautiful.
- Yuffie goes from probably my least favorite character in FF to someone I loved to play with and be around in this game. She is less than paper-thin and annoying in the original game, and here she is just fun to hang out with. Very impressed how much they recontextualized her in this game to make her more interesting and memorable.
- Cait Sith on the other hand is one of my favorite characters in the entire series, and this game seems to be made by people who love him as much as I do? They really did him justice and I loved every second he was in the game.
- The Gilgamesh fight is so much fun and I love this interpretation of him.
- Game was just fun. What else can I even say.
My final note is do not try and get the platinum trophy like I did. Goodness gracious it is misery. Spare yourselves. Other than that, if you play or plan to play this game I hope you enjoy !
To catch anyone up on my previous opinions, I have a conflicting relationship with Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020). When the game works, it is absolutely magical. Seeing all these characters, locations, music, etc. reimagined was and is among my favorite memories with a video game. Conversely, the game was so padded that it could be used as a bulletproof vest- and beyond just the added filler of stretching a 6 hour experience into a 40 hour JRPG, it came at the expense of the storytelling quality and impact. It was certainly fun, but certainly frustrating.
As a sequel, Rebirth fixes nearly every issue I had with Remake. The main story of this game is about the same length as Remake, but the expansiveness and variety of the world doesn’t really allow for any time to be wasted. Everything feels meaningful, adds true scope and scale, and is generally a hell of a lot more interesting and fun. Where the original game was quite restrictive, this gives you a hearty amount of agency at nearly every turn. You have more control of where you go and what you do given the open area design, you are given more opportunity to choose your battle party and customize their gear, there is a massive amount of optional content to chip away at, the list goes on. The more organic approach to the world and gameplay also allows for the story to maintain its focus and intent more prominently than Remake as well. Nearly every chapter in this game has something interesting and important to carrying along the plot and growing the characters. Every aspect that could’ve been improved in the game experience was very thoughtfully tweaked here, and it lends itself to a game I find to be a lot more enjoyable all the way through.
As a Remake, there are still quite a few missteps to be found here, but I find it a lot less intrusive when the whole package is so much more briskly paced, expansive, varied, and wastes less time. As much as I don’t really care for the direction they have taken the story in this series- I am fine with change as long as it serves this story and is interesting. There are moments where the changes presented were just that, but there are also many where it is not. Out of risk of sounding like a snob for the original, I will say that there is more than a handful of scenes and moments recreated here that just fall flat and miss the point, and the new content is a very negatively-skewed mixed bag, but as much as the oomph is lost I can really appreciate where the game gets it right. My biggest example is the goofiness of FFVII, something that really makes the original so memorable for me and something I was worried would be stripped down in this remake. It was not, and in many cases was even toned upwards which was a ton of fun and makes the more somber parts of the experience more effective, too. As a preservation of my memories it is very much not that, but for what this game is trying to be I can get behind it when its highs work so well for me, even if the lows are plenty prominent.
As a standalone vacuum experience, I don’t really think it is very fair to view it in this regard despite it being a fully priced, advertised, and treated game. You will be absolutely lost if you don’t have the context of Remake, which I believe you will also be absolutely lost in if you don’t have the context of the original. In order to appreciate the story being told here, you need to have done your homework- to say the least. It’s also a middle child of a trilogy as previously stated, so along with not having context of the beginning of this story, you also don’t get an ending here quite yet either. What I am trying to say here ultimately is that if you are seeing this game advertised and thinking “hey, maybe I’ll try this game as my first FF game or exposure to FFVII after all the cultural impact,” leave it alone and come back later. I doubt that’ll be the case for many, but it leaves the point for all that this game is a cog in a machine, and needs to be treated as such if you want to enjoy it fully. On the other hand, I will commend the actual gameplay mechanics, because even in a vacuum I still find it incredibly fun. I tend to lean more turn based with my JRPGs, but I do like an action RPG every once in a while. Remake has what I cite as my favorite interpretation of an action RPG I’ve played yet. Rebirth, like with everything else, takes what worked about the gameplay there and meaningfully expands and tweaks it here to make it even better. There is an unprecedented amount of customization to be found here, and some of my favorite moments of the game were talking to my friend who was playing and seeing how our character builds and combat approaches were complete opposites and yet still viable. It is certainly flashy, but it is equally as tactically engaging and I find that pretty neat.
Don’t have a segway for this but the game also is beautiful and the music is incredible. Good stuff.
I’ve kept this pretty vague, but I hope you can see that this game was far from perfect, but still incredibly fun, polished, and worth my time. I highly recommend it for anyone who was in my shoes as there is an experience worthy of being played here. Even though I have a soft spot for XV, I think this is easily the best modern Final Fantasy game and I hope the series learns from both its strengths and weaknesses as it continues. Good time, fun time.
spoilers ahead
In a less vague sense, I have some more specific thoughts I will bullet point to those who have played. If you don’t want spoilers then feel free to scroll away. I’ll start with mean things and progress to nice things.
- The Temple of the Ancients was probably the most disappointing part of this game for me. Such a visually and mechanically striking dungeon in the original and seeing it stripped of virtually everything unique here was so sad. Not a fan of that.
- The whole storyline with Zack was dumb. Considering there is an option to skip it entirely when you replay the game it really makes me wonder if it was even necessary at all.
- I get they’re saving things for Part 3, but they really underused Cid to a pretty sad degree here. Wish he had more characterization, but considering Rocket Town is not yet here it is TBD. I never cared about Vincent but he was pretty equally boring here so I have nothing really to say.
- Chadley is annoying. So, so annoying.
- The part where Tifa enters the lifestream is kinda stupid but I think it had a pretty cool mini story arc for her. The fact that she and everyone else barely acknowledge Cloud just attempted to kill her though is baffling.
- The Dyne storyline was almost perfect but that boss fight against him killed the mood so dramatically, and him being killed by Shinra guards and then having to fight Palmer in a big mech was jaw droppingly tone deaf.
- Some areas are annoying to explore. (Gongaga)
- While some minigames were pretty terrible and there were so many of them, some of them rocked. Chocobo racing was a ton of fun and Queen’s Blood is up there as one of the best in the entire series. All the variants of it too were incredibly enjoyable.
- The Gold Saucer is my favorite location in the original game and how they recreated it here was magical. Loved every second.
- I want to go to Costa Del Sol in real life.
- The new lyrical theme of the game is beautiful.
- Yuffie goes from probably my least favorite character in FF to someone I loved to play with and be around in this game. She is less than paper-thin and annoying in the original game, and here she is just fun to hang out with. Very impressed how much they recontextualized her in this game to make her more interesting and memorable.
- Cait Sith on the other hand is one of my favorite characters in the entire series, and this game seems to be made by people who love him as much as I do? They really did him justice and I loved every second he was in the game.
- The Gilgamesh fight is so much fun and I love this interpretation of him.
- Game was just fun. What else can I even say.
My final note is do not try and get the platinum trophy like I did. Goodness gracious it is misery. Spare yourselves. Other than that, if you play or plan to play this game I hope you enjoy !