This game leaves me feeling very strange. It nails so much of what makes a Final Fantasy game or even a good RPG special: a colorful and fleshed out cast of characters, engaging and customizable combat mechanics that make use of a whole party, and a lot of fun side content including probably the best card game in the series. This comes with a big drawback, which is that it’s still an incomplete remake of an existing game.
Rebirth is a much bigger game than the original FFVII, and with the amount of time you’ll spend playing it you’ll experience many more moments of characterization with the game’s cast. This is where it improves greatly on the original game’s biggest weakness, and I’d also argue an improvement from Remake when it comes to integrating these into the plot—which is admittedly more loose than it was in Midgar.
While the size of the game does indeed add a lot to the player’s experience in that regard, it’s also the reason why I’m unlikely to replay it. The story beats are still very similar to that of the original game’s, and many of them are tonally undercut by either the game’s more over the top presentation or newer elements added in. In all honesty I was kind of expecting more to have changed this time around, but like Remake it followed much of the same plot as the original but with a few adaptational differences. The distinctly new material makes up a very small amount of this game’s story, and still leaves the player with a lot of questions—putting the pressure on part 3 to deliver.
All in all, this is a very good game, and a worthwhile experience for anyone who wants more of Final Fantasy VII’s world and cast. I do also think it’s interesting to see how sensibilities have changed since the original game was made, and the decisions that Square makes when telling a story from 1997 to today’s audience with far more resources available to them. But there’s this nagging in my head that tells me they could have also made something more worthwhile if they’d taken everything that made this game great and channeled it into an entirely new Final Fantasy game instead.