4/5 ★ – PhatBaby's review of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

In a lot of ways, Final Fantasy 7 is gaming's Star Wars. It has a long and seemingly simple story that becomes needlessly convoluted the more you look into it, a ton of goofy side characters that you either love with all your heart or absolutely despise, and, to truly become a fan of it, you have to accept that some parts of it are a bit shit. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is pretty much the sum total of all of that. It's this unbelievably fun and charming road trip movie turned into a 60-hour RPG, and despite being filled with creative decisions that I absolutely hate, I also love it. I'd venture to say it's the most I've been actively annoyed with a game that I'll also wholeheartedly say I adored. Cause, on the one hand, Square were cracking out some wild decisions while making this. The open world you simply trekked across in the original game? That's a Ubisoft-ass checklist zone now full of watch towers. The small little mini-games you played one time in the original? Every single section of the original game that wasn't combat has now been adapted into a multi-layered mini-game, and they can seemingly only be the most fire mini-game you've ever played (I see you Queen's Blood, you sexy mistress) or the most frustrating time-waster possible (I see you chicken luring mini-game, you little prick). Oh, you enjoy the story? Rebirth decides its best to put its foot on the brakes and kill the pacing in the middle of every mission so you can go and kill some random enemies for an hour or move a fat-ass vacuum across a room. And don't get me started on how it makes every single animation as SLOW as possible. I wept a tear every time I realised I'd have to get out and then back into my buggy, knowing each animation is like 15 seconds long. But it's all eclipsed by just how great it is to exist in this world and, more importantly, how much fun it is to hang out with such an elite cast of characters. I love all these goofy lil' dudes. They're maybe my favourite RPG party of all time, and the way the game expands and builds their adventure, their interactions and their world makes all the filler and the crap kind of fade away. I'm here to ride a goddamn dolphin up to the city of Junon and make Cloud stop grafting on Aerith so he can see Tifa is an absolute goddess; I don't really care that getting there is a bit of a tedious slog at points. And that kind of extends to every element in the game. The story is constantly padding out time because it realises it's adapting a 50-hour game into three separate, meaty-ass RPGs, so it just revolves around the same few points for hours on end. There are only so many times Cloud can have a stroke and be like "iS tHat SepHiRoTH???" before I'm like, BRO, I GET IT. Sephiroth is LITERALLY living in your brain rent free, you don't have to keep telling me. Or how they'll reach a new location and be like, time to amble off and complete some random side adventure with no real story implications because we need to kill some time. But, on the other hand, they also streamline and delve into so much stuff that needed expanding upon. Cait Sith actually has an introduction and doesn't just randomly appear and be like "I'm a talking cat. We're homies now," and Yuffie isn't just chilling in some forest somewhere and then joins the party and says absolutely nothing until you reach Wutai. For every random NPC from the original game that will now spew their life story and deepest darkest regret to you, they've also added context to characters I want to know more about. As someone who used to load Materia into Yuffie's back in the original and sit her in the corner of fights like an automated talking spell turret, I was like, oh, damn, I actually rate that little freak now. Every location that just kinda felt like a big vending machine to buy weapons and items in the original game is now a fully fleshed-out location, with its own characters, personality and things to do. And at the end of the day, that's why I ended up loving this. It's truly an adventure; this grand journey that's simultaneously a fun trip down memory lane while also expanding and building on what came before. Much like Star Wars, you accept the bad, because when it's good, this feels like sitting in the front row seat of a cinema and just being immersed in a fully unique world with some of the most likeable characters in any game ever. Well, except Chadley. That little bastard just spends 90% of the game ringing you about absolutely nothing. I detest him and his stupid glasses.