A huge amount of passion and love poured into it, but took zero risks and aimed to please everybody, which only left me feeling underwhelmed.
It's been a long time since I've played the OG FF7. I completed it 7 years ago (holy crap time flies) on my last night of freedom... the night before I began my university studies. It's a game I have huge respect and admiration for and I can absolutely understand it being most peoples favourite in the entire series. Personally, I also enjoyed it very much so, yet I didn't have that religous experience so many others got. I just feel as if the overall vibe of the game, as well as the story, didn't click with me as much as some of my favourites like 10, 9 & 15. That being said, I was super hype to see it was getting a remake. The game absolutely deserved one and I was excited as anybody else to see it modernized. They decided to cut the original into 3 seperate games so that they could expand upon all of its splendor. With this game, Rebirth, being the 2nd part of the remake trilogy. The first part which released sometime in 2020 during covid, was an absolute blast. If I was to review it today, I would probably give it a score of somewhere in the 90-100 range. I remember enjoying how streamlined it was. The pacing felt really nice. They absolutely nailed midgar and the characters. Every character got their moment to shine. I also remember actually quite enjoying the combat. The biggest testament I can give to the game, is that I even played it twice! Once when it came out, then again on its PS5 Enhanced version, with a new game plus playthrough on hard mode. I don't usually ever play games twice so that just goes to show you how much I loved part 1 of the remake. I was very hype for part 2. I was imagining all the possibilities of the open world and remember thinking it could be one of the most amazing and biggest games ever released. They had to use this opportunity to reinvent the wheel, create something so mesmerising that honours the originals legacy.
Instead, we got a safe, zero-risk, bloated experience that felt like so many other games mixed into one. A game that never had me glued to the screen in awe. The only real excitement I got out of the game was seeing all of the characters and locations glown up with todays graphics. I kept waiting for the moment I'd be sucked in. But it never came. Don't get me wrong. There was no chance with the original material at their hands, that the game would be bad. No, overall I had a fun time and I can feel the passion instilled into it. But, to me it just felt underwhelming. That's the best word I can use to describe it.
This will probably be my most controversial take so I'll get it out of the way first. It's very odd to me, how I really enjoyed the combat in part 1 yet felt frustratingly held back with Rebirth's combat. As I said, I beat part 1 in hard mode and found it impressive how they made it the best of both worlds between turn-based & modern action combat. But here, it didn't work for me. Why is that odd? Because the combat is exactly the same, only with added abilities and tools at your disposal. I can try put it down to any number of reasons. Maybe I've just gotten worse at games, or the game was so big that I tended to rush through the combat... but most likely, I probably just had a change of heart towards it. Firstly, the camera can't fit in all of the action, often you are fighting multiple enemies at once, you're locked onto one and you can't keep all enemies in your view. All of a sudden, one of the other enemies comes swooping in and knocks you down, and before you can recover & block, the other comes jumping at you from nowhere. Another big part I didn't like, was its over-reliance on blocking. I understand an enemy isn't supposed to be some punching bag who doesn't fight back. In fact I love games with a strong focus on defence and parrying. But here the enemies attacks are so unpredictable & often, that I never knew when I could actually attack. When I say unpredictable, I don't mean you can't figure out their moveset, moreso the actual timing of their moves were so random that I found I was holding myself back from attacking. As you can't cancel an attack with a block (which I think would resolve so much of the frustration I had), I would attack once or twice to build up some ATB before preparing myself to block at the right time. This time around, the ATB system just felt slow. Swapping characters, opening the menu to slow time and pick an ability or spell to use, just didn't click with me as well as the first game. I believe I was just trying to play too fast but the combat just didn't allow for that. The attempt to mix both turn-based & action felt very jarring to me. It's crazy to me how my view on this has changed so drastically after a few years, but that's just my honest take.
All that being said, when the combat worked, it really worked. There were some moments were the combat looked spectacular. The abilties and weapon skills are all so damn cool and finishing an enemy off with one of them looked stunning and movie-like. These moments just came too far and in between from the messy & slow encounters. I also loved the addition of synergy attacks. You could map little unique encounters with your party members during combat to your controls. Such as Cloud throwing Tifa up into the air to deal with a flying enemy, or having Barrett summon the party to him and cast Iron Defence which surrounds them in a shield to block enemy attacks. Using these synergy skills then built up your bar to use Synergy Abilities, which were very flashy looking cutscenes between 2 of your party members to deal big damage to an enemy. For example, having Aerith chuck on some shades alongside Barrett as they blast away at enemies together. Credit where credit is due, these were a very cool touch, bringing more unique character interactions & personality into the combat. A unique combat mechanic that seperates itself from other games and takes advantage of its incredible cast of characters and the relationships between them.
The materia loadout system makes its return. You can equip a certain amount of materia to your weapon and armour, which provide your traditional Final Fantasy skills and abilities such as magic, buffs such as haste and bravery as well as wards from negative effects such as poison or slow. It's a really solid system that lets you create different character builds for each party member. The longer you have that specific materia equipped, the more XP it gains, with each materia typically having around 3 levels to grind through. So your fire spell eventually turns into figara at level 3 for example. I must admit I found it quite tiring constantly going into the menu to update and share around each of the 7 party members materia. You need to be constantly swapping materia in and out to help deal with different enemy types. This meant I typially kept the same 3 party members (Cloud, Tifa & Yuffie) as I wasn't bothered constantly swapping in members only to have to update all of their outdated materia. As opposed to your typical progression system where abilities are typically linked to your class. Just a small nit-pick that one.
Then there's the weapon ability progression system. Each weapon has a special ability linked to it & after using that ability a certain amount of times, it will eventually become apart of your permanent arsenal, even without the weapon equipped anymore. It's another really solid system that rewards you for using every weapon and its abilities. By the end of the game it gives you a heap of tools at your disposal. You can then link 4 of these abilities or spells from your materia to shortcuts on your controller so that you're not having to open the menu to use them. Which I really like as going into the menu so often can really slow down the combat. If I'm being honest, during combat, I felt as if I had almost too many tools at my disposal. I became a little bit overwhelmed with the amount of choices I had. I would build up some ATB, open up the menu and have too many options that I would just tend to press the first ability I see. A huge list of options works in a traditional turn-based game, but again it didn't suit the pace I was trying to play at. So in that regard, the shortcut abilities really saved the combat for me, as it allows you to play a lot faster and more like a traditional action game.
Finally, in terms of character progression, there's the Folio Skill Tree, which is your typical ability tree that allows you to spend XP on your preferred abilities or buffs. Here you can unlock more synergy abilities, HP or MP buffs, more limit breaks & other unique weapon abilities. I thought this system was very half-baked. There was very little thought that went into it. It hardly effects your character build as it's mostly just synergy attacks & stat buffs which should just apply to levelling up your character anyway. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just... there.
I should also mention the item transmuter system as well. It's an item craft mechanic that rewards you for picking up items found while exploring. I really liked the idea and I do enjoy me some crafting in games. Again though, there's hardly any interesting complexity to it. Essentially, the more you craft new items, the more you level up & thus can craft even more items. It's a bit of a double-edged sword, because any armour or items that you can buy in stores found at towns that builds a sense of immersion & world building, can be completely skipped by just crafting the items. I ended up having a crazy amount of gil by the end of the game as I never felt the need to buy anything. I also found the variety of items was lacking. Most items found in the overworld, I would have the maximum amount of (99). So a lot of the time, picking up an item would say "Item not obtained, you have too many". They could of done a lot more with this system. I reached level 16 & was hardly rewarded with anything that interesting, just moderately strong enhanced versions of armour.
Unlike Remake part 1, which is very linear and streamlined, due to it taking place entirely in the one location, the slums of Midgar. Rebirth goes "open world" and picks up as the crew leave Midgar and their journey through the planet begins. It was really great seeing all of these iconic locations brough to life with modern graphics. The sight of avalanche in full flight, running side by side, swimming through lakes & riding on chocobos was so damn cool. The game isn't truly as open world as I would of liked though, with it segmenting each of its locations such as Greenlands, Costa del Sol, Junon & more into open zones if you'd like. That is until you unlock the airship later on in the game. Now during the first one or two zones, which were the Greenlands & Junon, I was really enjoying exploration. I was having fun slowly working my way through each zone and completing all of its objectives. These objectives include finding and climbing towers that scan the surrounding area which then put the location of other nearby objectives onto your map. Or finding ancient caves that makes unlocking summons easier, recovering chocobo stops to unlock more places to fast travel to, combat assignments that require you to complete specific tasks like staggering & pressuring all enemies, as well as following birds to lifesprings to collect more world intel. It was working well enough for me, it incentivized me to fully explore each region.
However, already after the second region, I was bored of it. It doesn't evolve at all, you are doing the same things just in new locations. After 100% completing the first 2 regions, I thought I may as well do the same for all the rest, which I came to regret. I became burnt out by the formula and eventually realised there would be very few surprises. I was hoping for something more inventive with the open world, but it felt so generic. I didn't get this sense of adventure, I was just going from one objective to the next on auto-pilot. I also found the map design in later zones to lack cohesion. Often I would be cut off from areas of the map by huge walls or cliffs, requiring me to run entirely around and into a very specific entrance to access it.
The towns were a big highlight for me. They were full of life and super cozy, as if they were out of a Disney or Ghibli movie. They did a really good job fleshing these out from the original. NPC's filling the streets, shops for you to enter and buy things like materia, armour & items. Also, each town has a hotel for you to rest up in and heal your party up. There was a lot of detail added to these towns and just walking around in them was an utter pleasure. I do think Final Fantasy has had a bit of a weak spot in recent entries with it's NPC's however. I would love to see a Final Fantasy with NPC's that feel more believable. It would be cool to see them have an actual schedule they follow, instead of just standing in one place repeating the same lines. It would really make the world feel more alive and immersive. Costa del Sol was the absolute highlight for me throughout the entire game. They absolutely smashed it. Riding around on a segway was so genius. The game really peaked here! Final Fantasy 7 is so heavily loved mostly due to its amazing cast of characters and here we get to see them all shine in a laid back beach setting!
Once you get towards the last few chapters of the game, you get to drive Cid's Tiny Bronco around the seas between each region. Interconnecting all the regions and giving you freedom to go wherever you'd like without just fast travelling. This was scratching the exploration itch I was looking for. You could just pull up into any of the regions ports seamlessly which I really liked. It made the world feel more whole and as if I finally had some agency about where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. During this time there is also my favourite side-quest in the game, that has you given a map to find secret little ports scattered around the seas, where you will find a big boss protecting some treasure. Unfortunately, by the time this was unlocked, I was so burnt out from the 5 or 6 previous regions I had completed that after completing that treasure side quest and re-visiting each region once, I was done with the Tiny Bronco exploration and moved on with the story. I wish they found a way to implement this sense of adventure and freedom into its other regions in a more creative way.
Going into Rebirth, I knew there were mini-games. I knew it was gonna be big. But man oh man, it was just too much. I finished the game in 140 hours and I was not even close to 100%. Just like the exploration, I was okay with it at first. Just some extra content outside of the main story. But it overstayed its welcome and became way too distracting. Whenever I was getting absorbed into the story, a new mini-game would come and take me out of it. Constantly reading pop-up tutorials for each mini-game was genuinely annoying. Any chance they could they would find a way to tie a mini-game into it. It's like they took the approach of more content = better game with all of these mini-games. But personally, as someone who likes to try everything a game has to offer and not ignore side content, it made the game lose all of its pacing. Yes, it's mostly optional, but some of the best gear and items are locked behind them as rewards & a fair few are actually required to complete the story. The absolute worst example of this was the Cait Sith box-throwing section. It added absolutely nothing to the game besides frustrating filler. I must say though, I did enjoy the new card game Queen's Blood, which offered a good challenge and some decent fun. Don't get me started on the moogle mini-games. These were not fun and felt like a chore, with no efforts to evolve from town to town, just the same thing every time.
Then there's Chadley. An AI created by Hojo that joins forces with Avalanche and has them complete a lot of optional content, mainly that of the world intel I mentioned earlier in the open-world. My goodness gracious me. He surely must have the most dialogue in the entire game. Completed one tiny section of a quest? Ring Ring... it's Chadley, who always manages to talk for way too long updating you on the tiniest progress of your quest. You'd think this would be a small thing but it adds up over time and becomes extremely annoying. To make things worse! He decides to create a replica girl version of him... so now there's 2 of them constantly ringing in. The girl version had this unbelievably hilarious knack of giving you enemy lore during difficult fights... so as you're fighting these optional bosses, you just hear her blabbering away about its origin and history... like why not have this as something I can read in the menu. Easily, the worst character/s in the entire series for me. It would of been so much better to have the party talk amongst themselves as opposed to having this annoying irrelavant new character barge in to explain any neccessary quest updates. That being said, Chadley offers some optional difficult fights in his virtual combat simulator similiar to part 1. These were a decent challenge & rewarded you for fighting most of a regions enemies.
Your more typical side-quests, found through noticeboards in each regions town, were a mixed bag. Some side quests were very generic while others did a good job at going deeper into characters back stories. To be honest though, as I'm writing this, I can't think of any side quests that really stood out. One side quest involves you luring missing chickens back into the owners farm... riveting stuff. Each side quest is tied alongside another party member. So, when you are doing that side quest, you and that member do all the talking, while the others stay back and out of it all. So by completing these side quests you grow your relationship points with that character (which influences who you date in the Golden Saucer). I wasn't a big fan of this. I wanna see more of the dynamics between each party member and as a group. Instead, outside of the main story and cutscenes, we only see their individual relationship with Cloud grow.
This one was nearly impossible to screw up. The FF7 characters are all so damn iconic. In Rebirth they are all done justice. We get to see a new side to all of them. There is a lot of character growth here. Cutscenes are all such a blast to watch because of the characters. I feel like the game missed a massive opportunity for more party interactions during exploration though. There were some moments were the characters would chat and joke with each other, but these were pretty rare. I would of loved to of seen the members interact with each other more. Whether that's talking about landmarks they come across as they explore, or physical interactions such as high fives after combat as a quick example/idea. I also believe some characters got more air time than others. It was really the Yuffie show for most of the game. I mean it makes sense that her bubbly and energetic personality sees her with more lines. I love Yuffie, she was one of my favourite characters and I always used her in combat but I feel like this meant some other characters like Aerith take a bit of a back seat until the end of the game. We get to see more new characters like Cait Sith, Vincent & Cid, although the last 2 are unplayable for now, just tagging along for the story. I was a big fan of all 3 of their modern re-imaginings, they all add to the dynamic of the party nicely. Cloud was done really well in this game. I love the constant battle between the two sides of him. Those being his reserved and serious side as well as his silly and caring side. Overall, I think all characters were handled very well.
I'm not one of the crazy enthusiastic purists when it comes to the story. So, I was initially okay with them maybe taking some liberties and introducing some kind of fight with destiny. Which is introduced in Part 1, depicted in the game through 'whispers', ghost-like figures who's purpose is to maintain the destiny of the planet and the original events that take place in the original. Throughout Rebirth, we see them return in an even more vital role to the story, with many attempts from the party to break the course of destiny only to be denied by the Whispers. A cool idea, but not executed well at all. It completely detracts from many of the games biggest story moments. The story often has cutscenes depecting different universes or instances of the planet where scenarios play out differently to the original, which ended up a confusing mess. There are some huge story moments were these universes are shown side-by-side, constantly swapping from each. I ended up wondering what was real and what wasn't? I had no idea when I was supposed to be emotional. In the end, most of the events result in the same fashion as the original, so what was the point of playing with our emotions like that? From memory, the original also entertains this multi-verse idea, but in a much more subtle way? I have to agree with many others who say the story has been given the Kingdom Hearts treatment, which makes sense as it's the same director, Testsuya Nomura.
Speaking of Nomura, we get a very Nomura-like final stage, the Temple of the Ancients. It reminded me of the end of Kingdom Hearts 3, with the shifting building as Sora collects all the versions of himself. We see a similiar concept with the temple, acting as a rotating stage that shifts gravity with it. It was a really cool moment in the game that does what a Remake should, expand on an existing location/concept in a more detailed and interesting fashion. I really enjoyed exploring this section, it's such a cool stage that every epic JRPG needs to finish off a story ~ an exit from normality into the deeper secrets of the world. It also meant no more unlocking world data intel such as towers and lifesprings, just a good old linear experience as you work your way through this evolving puzzle.
When the story stays in line with the original though, the game does it justice. Cutscenes are beautiful re-imaginings of the world. The Golden Saucer still gives of that feeling of excitement, all of the characters have their own really deep back-stories and traumas they slowly come to terms with. It's a rollercoaster of an adventure with so many captivating moments that suck you in. My only problem with how the original story is pieced together though is how isolated each element of the story is. Each character has their own lore and backstory, but it hardly interconnects or comes full circle. It's just feels like a bunch of random concepts and themes stuck together with duct tape, without any kind of attempt to piece it all together to the larger story.
The music, a very important element of a Final Fantasy game IMO, is terrific. A ridiculous amount of tracks & variety in its sound. They take the classic themes of the original and put a modern spin on it, with them somehow sounding even more epic and grandiose. While also having new tracks that perfectly fit into the world of FF7. Some that stood out was the stamp theme.. that goes "bow wow wow, bow wow wow" as well as the dolphin riding song. These tracks as well as many others feel so full of life & match the quirky & fun vibe that FF7 has going for it a lot of the time. There's also some real bone-chilling tracks during some of the games more serious moments. One that is also heard in the original, 'Listen to the Cries of the Planet', is a perfect example of that. The classic town themes are also all given modern remakes which are all super well done. I was so excited to hear the Cosmo Canyon theme again in the Remake & had goosebumps when I made it there & finally got to hear it. Overall, a very good soundtrack with plenty of variety & love poured into it.
I know I spent most of my review criticizing nearly every part of Rebirth, but that's just because I had such high expecations going into it. In my head, it was one of the biggest JRPG releases following the success of Remake. I was expecting more risks, new ideas & a pushing of the JRPG boundaries. Now the game has so much life, flavour, love & passion poured into it & I still believe its worth playing if you are a fan of the title or series in general. Cutscenes, voice-acting, music, characters & just the general adventure of it all, captures that same magic that the original did. But, unlike the original, it felt way too safe. It was like a bunch of games I'd already played before smashed into one huge bloated experience that had me extremely burnt out by the end. They tried so hard to find the right balance between old vs new instead of focusing on one or the other. The game gets a pass mark for sure, but I never had any jaw-dropping moments that I was expecting and so looking forward to which ultimately left me feeling a little disappointed and underwhelmed.