4.5/5 ★ – Sylvo's review of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Ok, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve beaten the game and I finally want to give my thoughts. Rebirth lived up to my expectations and more in many ways. The character interactions and fun mini games made every time I booted up the game feel like I didn’t know what to expect in the best way possible. With faithful recreations (for the most part) if a lot of iconic scenes I felt like as a fan of the original I was in good hands. The combat feels even more fluid and the team attacks felt rewarding and pushed me to switch to other characters constantly rather than just playing as cloud. The changes (for the most part) like party member additions coming in different ways from the original and how the golden saucer dates went were really cool to see as a fan of the original. The open world was great but on repeat playthroughs I could see it getting stale. Now for the bad, first of all, while the story had a lot of highs it had 2 specific things that had me questioning some things. 1. Dine and Barrett’s fight doesn’t reach the emotional highs that the original had in terms of their arc. Originally this fight takes place in the ruins of their old town that The Golden Saucer was built on top of, graves in the back for Marlene and Dine’s wife as he assumed they died. His insanity felt earned from a writing standpoint and we didn’t see him going around the Golden Saucer. Here the entire scene gets cut off by Palmer smacking his ass. 2. The ending. I have this weird middle ground where part of me wants changes and part of me wants a remake. Unfortunately this trilogy seems to be in the same predicament. The ending left me going “this wasn’t an exact recreation but it wasn’t an exact departure from the original either… so what’s the point” I just wish that they would decide on one or the other instead of having a foot on both sides of the arguments. Regardless of these two story issues, Rebirth was one of my favorite gaming experiences I’ve had in a while and this first playthrough will be a very very fond memory for a long time. Keep up the good work SquareEnix and please release a Queens Blood solo game I need it now.