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

If you had given me FF7 Rebirth before it released and asked me to only cut content, I think I could have created a version of the game that I would have given a perfect score. This isn't quite it, but it's really close. Rebirth improves on almost everything that Remake had to offer and hides some of its shortcomings by giving them time to breathe in a content-loaded open world. Although I'm not usually one to dock points on side content, Rebirth's abundant side content as well as its continued insistence on wasting time with silly filler or animations is also what holds it back from being a perfect experience. The dialogue is seriously impressive. It hardly ever gets hounded by silly anime tropes and it feels organic and realistic. Every moment had between characters feels earned, if not excellent. There are moments I didn't like, for example, while I think it was possible to have Nanaki's arc work, the voice change... does not. But the issues are few and often forgotten due to how good the moments between are. In the same vein, because the rapport between characters is so high, the tear-jerker moments are excellent. There isn't much else to say here. They're excellent. The soundtrack is often mindblowing, weaving multiple tracks in and out of various different styles, highs, and lows. While occasionally it does get a bit overly ambitious and end up a bit cluttered, it happens infrequently enough to not take away from the incredible production. And finally... the side content. It's fun, it's engaging, and unfortunately, there's infinite of it. We need to save the world NOW but there's plenty of time to go on a 300 hour sidequest, race 400 chocobos, play 5000 rounds of queen's blood, and just for fun, some 10 games of Fort Condor. So, in the spirit of my FF7 Remake review, here's a list of things I'm oh so glad made it into the game. - Walking indoors - Mako gas purification - Holding Y to interact - Holding LT and RT to interact - Chocobo dashes getting interrupted by tiny pebbles - Climbing - Flying enemies (much improved though!) - Cloud's inability to turn in place - Capturing chocobos - Entering the car - Exiting the car - Long load times on difficult minigames - Cait Sith's entire POV section - Hojo's monologues - The sphere grid and materia equipment menu (how are they still so bad?) - The final Queen's Blood challenge (the 5 round one) - The phase 2 Chadley location fights - Biological Intel: Head Case (iykyk) - The brutal 10 round Chadley fights - The illusion that a minigame has been completed (It's never over, there's always another level) Playtime: 113.4 hours