they really should just commit to making a musical at this point

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Following up on remake's worst tendencies, the rest of disc 1 of final fantasy 7 is turned into a low stakes road trip game. Seeing the 7 party banter and have fun is enjoyable, it was my favorite part of this game, but it comes at the cost of making this game's pacing bizarre. Every town the party exclaims "let's hang out for a bit and have some fun!" even though all they've been doing is hanging out and having fun the entire game. Another downside to the hanging out is the character writing is way less consistent in this game than in Remake. Remake’s characterization of everyone was rock solid and well done, whereas stuff like Tifa and Aerith forming the weird Anime Girl Hivemind in most scenes they share here was really awkward. The additions of Elena, Yuffie, and Cait Sith were all really well done though, those three really shine in this game.

Every open world section between towns is completely cut off and unrelated to the rest of the game, and unlike FF’s last open world game, party interaction or dialogue is completely absent unless you’re on a sidequest. The maps are filled with Tasks to do, and none of it matters or even gives you much besides some light combat challenges or minigames (though the game is not in short supply of these, wow). Chadley and Mai are the only two characters in 90% of the open world, and while they’re fun, the world feels so strange and empty the entire game.

Despite my slight disappointment with the open world though, nearly all of my negative feelings on this game are centered on its story. Despite all of the fuss of the last game, this game rarely deviates from final fantasy 7’s plot, and even when it does it quickly snaps back into line, seemingly afraid you’ll actually have anything interesting to ponder during the 100+ hours it’ll ask of you.

Every emotional scene of the original is recreated here, but always with a terrible twist. Barret and Dyne are having a deeply emotional confrontation, the fight is compelling, the voice acting is well done, the scene is working BUT WAIT the camera pans from Barret clutching Dyne’s body to Palmer the goofy Shinra man in a dumb mech for a comedy boss fight in the middle of the cutscene for absolutely no reason. The return to Dyne after the fight as if the moment could still possibly work was so insane I set the controller down to just sit, stunned, for a minute. After a massively protracted dungeon, Red XIII is finally learning the truth about his father, the statue sheds a tear, the music is swelling, and the camera swings to the side to reveal an unhinged tribal caricature ghost man who opens the wall to lead you to a new dungeon about how the Cetra are now racist and so we can give the black materia Lore instead of it being part of the very obvious metaphor of the original.

These twists are all leading to The Moment though, the one everyone’s been debating about since Remake came out, Are They Going To Kill Aerith Again? And to answer that question, awful MCU brainrot has been introduced, with a new AU timeline where Zack is around (though it amounts to basically nothing) and Sephiroth 2 from the last game trying to combine the multiverses to ensure the plot of final fantasy 7 happens as it did originally (for some reason???) and fighting Cloud at a different edge of creation from the last game, and blowing a Sephiroth boss form from the end of 7 for good measure. All of this culminates in Cloud saving Aerith, but the game saying “just kidding” and killing her anyway. Even the scenes after her death are ruined by cutting the burial altogether, a completely baffling move.

In the end, I’m walking away from Rebirth with a bad taste in my mouth, but I still had fun throughout. Despite the open world feeling strange and the game feeling much too long, the gameplay part was pretty fun! Several of the minigames were engaging, the open world was good looking, and Triple Triad 2 Queen’s Blood was genuinely really fun. I really enjoyed the battle system this time too, it clicked way better for me this time than it did in Remake. It’s no FF13 ATB but it’s pretty good. It’s just a shame about the rest of it.

(Also, this is mostly a consequence of the game not being static detailed backgrounds anymore but FF7 has some truly incredible backgrounds, and shinra manor and the forgotten capital were some of the strongest in the original game. Rebirth shinra manor being one floor and a characterless basement and the forgotten capital being two screens long and filled with dementors from the last game was deeply disappointing compared to the remarkable atmosphere the original backgrounds had.)

((also holy shit 3D brawler is the hardest thing in the game by a huge margin, i think that minigame is evil))