3.5/5 ★ – UpwardBoss's review of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

SPOILER WARNING: this review contains full spoilers for Final Fantasy VII Remake, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and the original Final Fantasy VII up until the point where Rebirth ends. You have been warned. Final Fantasy VII Remake was one of my favourite games of 2020, a game that I may never have played if not for its release timing, releasing just one month into COVID lockdown, but a game that provided a much-needed escape from what was a frankly hellish real world at the time. The steampunk setting, the rich narrative, the likable and well-written characters, and the excellent combat were just what I needed at the time. It wasn't perfect mind, the game could be incredibly linear at times and the side missions were mostly awful, but despite that it was a genuine Game of the Year contender for me that year. As we knew in advance, FF7 Remake would not remake the entirety of the original Final Fantasy VII, but would be the first entry in a series of games (later revealed to be a trilogy) allowing Square Enix to expand on the narrative and world of the original game in a way that the original PS1 hardware simply couldn't support (with Remake focusing on the Midgar section of the original game). So when the second game, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, was revealed, I was very excited. The ending of Remake was... controversial, to say the least, revealing that the trilogy would be taking a very, very different path to the narrative of the original game, but while I wasn't fully on board, I was more than willing to see where it goes. So how did it all pan out? Final Fantasy VII Rebirth left me conflicted. The combat is somehow even better than it was in Remake, the boss fights are (mostly) absolutely incredible, the *character-focused* storytelling is very well done, the soundtrack is one of the best in gaming history and some of the minigames are fantastic (Queens Blood especially became an obsession), but the overall package is a mixed bag, for many reasons. Not the least of which is the open world, which is a massive overcorrection from Remake's linearity with a bloated Ubisoft-style design that not only causes massive pacing issues, but, naturally, it fills the map with mundane side quests and activities that are only there to pad runtime, some *very* outdated visuals in performance mode, a *laughable* relationship system, and, perhaps most critically, the continuation of the "new" version of the overarching Final Fantasy VII storyline unfortunately devolves into a complete mess by the end of this game's 89 hour long runtime. Let's start with the combat. Remake's combat was easily one of the game's biggest strengths, with a hybrid system that combines the turn-based combat of the original game, with the real-time combat of more recent Final Fantasy games. It created some truly exhilarating fights, and the boss battles especially were a huge highlight. Rebirth doesn't do much to change the formula. They knew that what they had worked, and they didn't make any changes that could ruin what was already a fantastic combat system. There are some improvements though. The main major addition is that two new characters are playable this time, Red XIII and Cait Sith. Red XIII's combat mechanics are excellent, and I always had him in my "A" squad alongside Cloud and Tifa. Cait Sith fares... less well. He's very weak, and his moveset isn't particularly intuitive or interesting. Remake's party members all return, and 4 out of the 5 characters still play very well. Again, not many changes are made to their movesets, but Cloud, Tifa, Barret, and Yuffie still control as well as they did in Remake (or in Yuffie's case, the INTERmission DLC). Aerith, on the other hand, is still as irritating to control as she was in Remake. She's far too weak and her mobility is horrendous. Having her in your party can be helpful as she can heal party members better than anyone else can, but actually playing as her is a nightmare, and something that Rebirth really should have improved on. Beyond the additions of Red XIII and Cait Sith, the only other major additions to Rebirth's combat are skill trees for each party member, and some synergy attacks featuring two party members at once. Both of those additions are neat, but ultimately inessential. Rebirth's combat *mechanics* are very similar to Remake's, but what really makes the combat system shine even more this time around are the improved enemy encounters, particularly the boss fights. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's boss fights are almost entirely absolutely spectacular. Boss fights were a huge strength of Remake but they're even better here, with some incredibly creative encounters that require you to use everything at your disposal to win, with awe-inspiring scale and fantastic visual flair throughout. They're not all winners, Odin especially is a huge miss, with a few other underwhelming fights throughout the game. But those are just a handful of the many, many boss fights in this game, and the vast majority are *excellent*. A huge highlight are the summon bosses (again, Odin aside) that you fight during the protorelic side storyline, leading up to a fantastic showdown against Gilgamesh from Final Fantasy V. Arguably the biggest weakness of Rebirth, however, is its world design. FF7 Remake was largely linear in design, often laughably so, becoming a glorified corridor simulator at times. It was one of Remake's biggest weaknesses and it was a very common criticism throughout discourse surrounding the game. Rebirth, on the other hand, shifts to a large open world with 6 different explorable zones (plus an ocean connecting them) and what we get is a massive overcorrection that does fix the corridor simulator design of Remake, but introduces a bloated, poorly designed world filled with copy and pasted activities and mundane side quests instead. Let me be frank. I played FF7 Rebirth for 89 hours. I completed every piece of "World Intel" (generic open world activities) and every side quest (except for one that was bugged at the time, I've heard it's been patched in the time since finishing the game but I have no interest in going back) in the game. I will say right now that at least 95% of this content is boring filler that is not worth your time, even if you are a completionist. It's simply... very bad content. World Intel, as stated before, are generic open world activities you'd see in any typical Ubisoft game. Activate towers, dig up treasures, fight enemies (or occasionally a boss) in a designated place, activate shrines by pressing buttons at the right time, activate lifesprings by pressing triangle three times, it's all so damn boring. And there's so much of it. Does having 32 different Far Cry towers littered around the map make Final Fantasy VII a better experience? Does having 32 different "lifesprings" where you literally just press triangle three times make Final Fantasy VII a better experience? Of course not. It's low effort filler designed to increase playtime, rather than carefully crafted open world content. All of this is made at least five times more unbearable by the presence of Chadley, an AI who constantly calls you EVERY 5 MINUTES while you are doing this boring "content". This dude calls you *all the damn time*. It's insufferable. The only World Intel activities that have any effort put into them are Moogle chases (which are terrible and insufferable but they at least tried) and the aforementioned protorelic quest chain. The protorelic quest chain is essentially two parts. The first part is a 4-stage quest in each region. What that quest will be varies (it could be chasing down a gang of robed men, playing a RTS-style minigame (both of those RTS-style minigames are absolutely terrible by the way, but more on minigames later) or combat challenges). Once you complete the 4-stage quest, you get the protorelic for that region. Once you get all six protorelics, Gilgamesh's island in the Meridian Ocean opens up, and that's when this quest chain becomes something really special, and the only "World Intel" content really worth your while. That's when you fight the divine summon bosses you've previously visited the shrines for. Both solo in the combat simulator and with one other deity on the island itself. When you beat them the first time you unlock their summon materia, which can be very helpful with some of the game's more difficult fights. With the exception of Odin as mentioned before, these fights are *phenomenal*, culminating in a fight against Gilgamesh that is one of the best boss fights in the game. The side content in this game is mostly terrible, but I wanted to take some time to talk about this quest chain because it is legitimately excellent. Of course, World Intel's not the only open world content in this game. There's also side quests, and these are almost entirely awful. This is an extreme example and they're not all *this* bad but I'm going to use it as an example. One has you slowly, *painfully* slowly, guide a chicken back to a farmer with a clanger and if you get too close or too far the chicken will run back ALL THE WAY TO THE START, meaning you have to do the entire painfully slow process all over again. You have to do this four times. This is by far the worst side quest in the game but none of them are particularly good. At best they're serviceable and at worst they're atrocious. And far more often than not they're the latter. And often they're just lazy. Multiple side quests revolve around you simply chasing a dog around killing enemies. One has you going around picking flowers. Yeah... that's the sort of quest design we're dealing with here. The main hook of the side quests are the fact that you do each of them with a specific character, and that will advance your relationship with that specific character (more on that when I talk about the romance system later). While there are *some* neat character moments in the side quests, the best character moments are in the main story and the protorelic quest chain. The actual stories of the quests themselves are very forgettable. The only memorable moments are the character moments. I would recommend simply doing the side quests that are tied to the specific character you want to romance, and leaving the rest. Also, can we talk about how terribly some of these zones are designed? Particularly Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon, these places are an absolute nightmare to traverse. What the HELL were the developers thinking when they designed these places? Anyway, moving on... The last major aspect of the open world content is the minigames. And these fare substantially better than the World Intel and the side quests. In fact, the majority are fantastic. Not all are bangers (3D Brawler was an absolute nightmare), but Chocobo Racing, G-Bike, Piano, and Run Wild were just some highlights of an overall minigame package that was just full of creative surprises. The minigames were by far some of the highlights of the game, and I enjoyed this game the most when the game slowed down and just let you play minigames at Costa del Sol and the Gold Saucer. They were (mostly) a delight. By far the best one though, was Queen's Blood, a card minigame that I was dreading but became an absolute obsession very quickly. It's very simple on the surface, win the row to have your score count, total score wins, but it has a tremendous amount of depth. Different cards are worth different values, and have different requirements that can only be placed if the board spot is activated at the right time, and those requirements can be activated by different cards (I may have explained this terribly, like I said, it's complicated). Some cards also destroy other cards, making matches later in the game even more complicated. You need to change your card deck many times throughout the game to be able to beat the game's more difficult opponents, and some of the them are truly ridiculous (frankly, a bit too ridiculous). Despite that though, Queen's Blood is a blast, and if this game wasn't published by Square Enix, I'd be begging for a standalone release with online multiplayer. If they did do that though, I'm sure it'd be filled with pay-to-win microtransactions, so they should probably leave it be. Before I talk about the narrative I want to quickly mention the technical state of the game. It's... a bit of a mixed bag? FF7 Rebirth shipped with two frame rate options, graphics mode and performance mode. Graphics mode targets 30 FPS so that's an immediate no from me. I've heard it runs fairly consistently but... come on it's 30 FPS. On PS5. No. So performance mode it is. And the good news is that the frame rate is very solid, with a near-flawless 60 FPS performance. The bad news... is that the visuals are extremely inconsistent. When FF7 Remake launched on PS4 (and PS4 Pro) in 2020, there was a severe issue with texture detail that wasn't fixed until the PS5 release in 2021. That issue is seemingly back in Rebirth, but only in the performance mode. Some of these textures look absolutely *horrendous*, and the resolution can go very low as well (not far above 1080p). Lighting issues are also frequent, and the game overall just looks... quite bad in performance mode. They did introduce a patch late in my playthrough (the same one that bugged the last side quest) that introduced a "Performance - Sharp" mode, renaming the original mode to "Performance - Smooth" but the new mode doesn't improve much and the frame rate can struggle a lot in that mode, so I don't recommend using it. The one exception to the visual inconsistencies are the pre-rendered CG cutscenes. As you'd expect, the visuals are damn near flawless here. Everything is rendered as well as a modern Pixar movie. These are an absolute treat. The one technical aspect of Rebirth that is consistently excellent is the music. FF7 Remake's soundtrack was already great, but this might genuinely be one of the best soundtracks in gaming history. There were over 400 (!!!) different pieces of music composed for this game, and they're universally excellent. It's downright remarkable how good the soundtrack is and I need a Spotify release ASAP. Okay I've beat around the bush enough now it's time to talk about the story and characters. Why we're *really* here. Final Fantasy VII's characters are some of the most iconic in gaming history, and playing Remake it was easy to see why. An incredibly charming and likable cast of characters that elevate the game so, so much. Rebirth continues this brilliantly, and the excellent characterization work from Remake continues here. Cloud's story doesn't really ramp up until the third game, and Tifa's story is very intrinsically tied to Cloud, so they have comparatively less character development here, but that's not to say that they don't have any. They definitely do (although Cloud's story arc is kind of made redundant by a change to the ending, more on that later). Their arc is mostly about Cloud's mental state, which doesn't really get resolved here. We're gonna have to wait for that one. Barret, however, has a great arc. I wasn't really a big fan of Barret in Remake, I found him a bit too over-the-top and overzealous. In Rebirth, however, we get some backstory to his character, and it completely changed how I view him and made me care much, much more about him. Red XIII's arc, on the other hand, had the complete opposite effect. Nanaki pretending to be older than he is doesn't really matter in a game with no voice acting, but in a 2024 game with modern production values, it's really jarring, and the switch from the older Red XIII voice to the younger one makes him sound... really annoying. There's also some weird inconsistencies where Red XIII randomly switches between voices even after Cosmo Canyon, and it's not a narrative choice, it's in combat. This pales in comparison, however, to Yuffie's arc, or lack thereof. Her ENTIRE character, and I do not exaggerate here, her ENTIRE CHARACTER is "I want materia, give me materia". She NEVER shuts up about it, even in incredibly serious situations. I believe it's intended to be comedic relief, but it just ends up being annoying. She was much better written in the INTERmission DLC, and this is a huge step back. Beyond that... Cait Sith's arc is... fine, I guess? Didn't really care about him to be honest. He's just kind of there. Same with Vincent and Cid. These three characters are absolutely "supporting cast" level though, and naturally won't have the same level of depth as the main cast do. You may have realized that I missed one character. Aerith is the main character of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Not Cloud. Not anyone else. This is very much her story and despite Aerith not being the primary playable character, the narrative of this game very much centers around her. Aerith gets by far the most character development in this game, and it's all done very, very well. A lot of the character development surrounding Aerith leads up to the ending of the game (which I have far different thoughts on that I'll get to later), but even throughout the game, Aerith is the emotional core of this story. At many of the quieter points throughout the game, Aerith will talk to Cloud about how while Cloud, Tifa, and Barret got the normality of their lives ripped from them, Aerith never had normality in the first place. Cloud being able to reminisce with Tifa is something that she longs for, and she knows she'll never have. It's heartbreaking stuff, and it's an arc that could very easily have been executed poorly, but it's not, it's the strongest narrative aspect of the game. Beyond the arcs each character go through... this is just a really likable cast to hang out with (which is important considering the game is 89 hours long for a completionist playthrough or even longer if you're going for the platinum trophy). Aerith and Barret get the most character development, but it's the way the whole main cast play off one another that really make this core group of characters iconic, and ultimately, these characters are what make Final Fantasy VII really special. Just like in the original FF7, Rebirth has a relationship system. You can go on a date at the Gold Saucer with the companion you have the highest relationship level with (some of these dates are romantic, some of these are not for... obvious reasons). The problem is, this relationship level is determined mostly by completing side quests, NOT dialogue choices for some bizarre reason. That means if you're doing a completionist run, you will have a high relationship level with all of your party members, and it's basically a toss up as to who you'll get (this isn't helped by the order in which you receive side quests, as there's some Tifa side quests near the end of the game which require a very high crafting level and you may not be able to do by that point). If you are trying to romance a specific character, you essentially need to avoid side quests for every other character, as even being openly hostile to everyone else in dialogue choices doesn't really matter if you still do their side quests. I think you know where this is going. I opened the door, and Red XIII showed up. Yeah... the dog (like I said, some of these dates are not romantic for obvious reasons). It's nothing personal, Nanaki, but come on, you're kind of getting in the way here! I was eventually able to get the Tifa date by reloading the save and completing her side quests (I needed to buy a lot of crafting materials first, but I digress) but the system still feels outdated and it should focus more on your dialogue choices than how many side quests you do. The original FF7's relationship system was infamous for how ridiculous it was, and it's a system they really should have modernized. They didn't, and that's a real shame. Absolute trainwreck of a relationship system aside, FF7 Rebirth's character moments are by far the highlight of the game, which is good because not much actually happens for the vast majority of the main story. The section of FF7 that Rebirth is adapting is the section of the game where the least amount of plot happens, where the world opens up and Square throws a bunch of minigames at you, and Rebirth very much adapts that faithfully. The problem, however, is that is about 10 hours of the original FF7. It's 80 hours of Rebirth. The main plot doesn't advance much at all until the last two chapters, and the entire narrative relies *hard* on its characters for that time. It doesn't help that a lot of the main story sections have some serious pacing issues. Chapters 3, 10, 11, and 13 in particular took *forever* to finish, with ridiculous minigames like pulling carts or throwing boxes to clear the way. It's an issue that Remake suffered from as well, but Remake's chapters (not to mention the game overall) were much shorter so the issue feels exacerbated here. Frankly, not enough happens in the main plot for 90% of the game, and despite Rebirth being much longer than Remake, less narrative ground is covered. Considering Remake's ending *literally* had the group defying fate, I expected some big changes from the original FF7's structure, but Rebirth's events play out almost identically yet again until the final chapter. I was previously on board for a multi-part remake of FF7, but the pacing here simply doesn't work, it results in a bloated narrative that is full of padding in order to try and be as long as possible. The game either needed to be way shorter, or more radical changes needed to happen to the game's narrative. Speaking of radical changes to the game's narrative, we *finally* get to the ending. Oh boy, what a mess. As I previously mentioned, Remake ended with the group defying fate, and when that game ended, there really was a sense that more radical changes would happen. Fast forward four years and Square Enix have completely pulled the rug out from under us, retconned the ending of Remake, and have made Final Fantasy VII a multiverse story for some reason (sigh). This drastic thematic shift is not only bizarre, but to me it shows that Square Enix regret their decision to change the ending of Remake, a suspicion all but confirmed by a conversation between Red XIII and Cloud towards the end of the game. Regardless of whether it was the right decision to change the ending, you've done it now, so you need to commit to it. Trying a compromise solution to a bad narrative shift is how Disney ended up with the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker... and well... Rebirth's ending is just as much of a mess. When you get to the Forgotten Capital (after a long explanation by Sephiroth about what his goals are and how the multiverse in this game works), Sephiroth tries to kill Aerith (okay, sounds about right so far), and Cloud successfully blocks his sword. Success, right? Aerith saved! NOPE, the timeline reverts to a reality where Sephiroth successfully kills Aerith. Beyond how monumentally silly this entire multiverse thing is, Aerith's death is such an important emotional moment, not just for Final Fantasy VII, but for video games as a whole, and Rebirth completely botches it. Rebirth is so obsessed with making you doubt whether they will kill her or not, that when the time comes, they ruin the moment by continuing to not make their minds up (an issue that becomes even worse after the final boss). It's simple shock value for a first playthrough, and it's poor writing that doesn't hold up upon closer examination. This is made even more ridiculous by the fact that... an Aerith from an alternate timeline shows up to team up with Cloud to fight Sephiroth at the end of the game, finally answering the 27 year old question "what would happen if Cloud used a phoenix down (revive potion) on Aerith after she dies". This has all become remarkably silly, and it's going to get even worse, but before that, there's something else I want to mention. The Zack Fair storyline is completely pointless fan service. At the end of Remake, we see that "defying fate" meant that Zack survives now. However, in Rebirth, it's revealed that the timeline where Zack survives is an alternate reality, NOT the main timeline the others are in. Every 10 hours or so, there's a brief interlude where you play as Zack for about 5 minutes (and basically nothing happens during these sequences), revealing that Zack's timeline is dying, eventually culminating in Zack... being thrown into Cloud's timeline for a cheap fan service teamup fight against Sephiroth before being thrown back to his timeline 5 seconds later. WHY DOES THIS EXIST? It's so pointless, it's cheap fan service, and it actively ruins Cloud's character development in the third game. Dumb. Going back to Aerith's death, after an hour of boss fights, it's revealed that Cloud can see... some form of Aerith? It's not made clear. I've heard three different theories on this. One is that it's Aerith's spirit, another is that it's the alternate Aerith that teamed up with Cloud to fight Sephiroth, the third is that it's a different Aerith altogether. All of these are absolutely ridiculous and keeping Aerith... somewhat around as an alternate version or as a spirit that Cloud can see (like the Joker visions in Arkham Knight) is not only astronomically dumb, it utterly ruins one of the most meaningful narrative moments in video game history. It yet again shows a lack of ability from Square Enix to commit one way or the other. What a mess. So that's Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Like I said at the beginning, a mixed bag. Absolutely best-in-class in many aspects, and an absolute trainwreck in many others. But FF7 Remake had its fair share of flaws too, and ultimately, I ended up remembering that game highly positively. I asked myself when writing this, in the years to come, will I remember the phenomenal combat, the likable characters, the superb music, and the fantastic minigames? Or will I remember the bloated open world, the visual inconsistencies, and the trainwreck of a main story? I strongly suspect it will be the former. For that reason, despite many, many issues, I ultimately recommend Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, even if it is a weaker game than Remake was. 7/10.