It has been a month since release yet I am struggling to finish this article. Not because I have nothing but praise, but because it is hard to put into words the feeling I had after playing the game. How it reawakened old emotions, memories, and the joy I felt when I played the original game, more than two decades ago. But instead of a proper review, I’ll just go forward and say my piece, especially as most people have now played the game.
SPOILER WARNING!
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the highly anticipated second installment of the Final Fantasy VII Remake project. It picks up where Remake ended, and then takes the player on a whirlwind journey spanning two continents and about six regions with tons of content sprinkled throughout. It promises a whopping thirty to forty hours on the main and important side quests alone, and the length (and breadth) of the game is part of the reason why it took us about a month to make this article.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth covers the events from the gang’s brief stay in the town of Kalm, just outside of Midgar all the way to the Forgotten Capital in the original game. In doing so, Square Enix managed to build a huge, expansive world with its own characteristics and oddities to explore. This journey is supported by an evolved version of Final Fantasy VII Remake’s combat, new traversal mechanics and transportation options, and mini-games to really sink your teeth into. You can get lost for hours doing just one region, and there were moments where I just plain did not want to progress through the game because I, as a huge fan of the original game, have waited years to finally immerse myself in this beautiful world. This is a great example of an old-school Japanese Role Playing game (JRPG) given the “modern” treatment done right. The mini-games, the side quests, and the enormity of the game is what I really miss in a lot of today’s games.
Gorgeous Graphics with a Catch
Visually, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is at the top of the barrel. When you see the rock formations of Nibelheim, the trash filled lands of Lower Junon, the grasslands of the… er… Grasslands, the dessert waste of Corel, the sunny beach of Costa del Sol, and the glittering world of Gold Saucer, you will know that a lot of care was put into the visuals of the game. The only hiccup I can find is the somewhat downgraded character models especially in Performance Mode. Quality Mode tries to make up for the deficit, at the cost of lowering the FPS to 30, which could be very jarring if you’ve played the game mostly on 60fps. Also, the lighting is weird in certain spots, which makes Cloud’s face reflect “sunlight” in a weird manner. Again, not a game-breaker for me, but something that people will most definitely notice.
That said, the end result is still a visual feast, especially with the attention to detail and the beautiful cut-scenes. Just look at that Dune Buggy you are riding, that weapon on Cloud’s back, those visual cues heralding one of Cloud’s mental episodes. Those are still above and beyond what is normal even in today’s console generation. I really like how, just like Remake, the gang’s current weapons can be seen even in cut-scenes. Same goes with the materia that they have slotted in them. A lot of NPCs gave good models too. I was able to spot a female Black Robe (those poor unfortunates that had Jenova cells injected in them, and are suffering cellular degradation as a result) in Nibelheim, and when I zoomed in using Photo Mode, it actually was a female model, and not just a voice over.
Getting this game to run is extremely taxing, no matter the system it is on. This is where the PlayStation 5’s SSD comes into play, with almost no load times, a fast travel system that is actually fast, and these beautiful environments loading very quickly. I do see some people stating that they have experienced pop-ups every now and then, even though I personally haven’t, but that’s nit-picking already. The ability to go from one region to the next seamlessly despite having different ecosystems is an important feat that is taken for granted these days, especially once you are able to access the Tiny Bronco and see first-hand how you change regions from the air.
Final Fantasy VII Remake tried to summon every last bit of the PlayStation 4’s power to bring about a fleshed out Midgar. Now, thanks to the power of the PlayStation 5, Rebirth was able to do so much more on a much bigger scale, and I don’t even feel that it was pushing the hardware beyond its limits. Video game developers should look at this game and then think about ways it could do more, and we might have a revitalization of the JRPG genre, or at the very least, bring back the feeling of the good old days of the late 90s and early 2000’s when Final Fantasy games were the pinnacle of JRPGs.
An Already Epic Quest made even Bigger
Picking up from Remake, Rebirth greatly expands the story of Final Fantasy VII from Cloud’s recollection of events in Kalm, to that fateful moment in the Forgotten Capital. It introduced changes to some events and then restructures them around activities within the region. What this does is that you can learn about regional lore, obtain and level-up region-specific summon materia, and meet new (and old) faces as you complete each side-quest. On top of this, there are optional “community board” side quests that you can choose to take, because “Cloud is a merc” and mercs take jobs, or something like that.
While this process begins to feel formulaic by the third region (Corel), it keeps things structured, where the only real challenge is how you will get there (looking at YOU Cosmo and Gongaga regions). Speed-runners and completionists will feel burnt-out by the many side quests and mini-games, but those who took their time to explore the world and not rush through it or try to do everything will feel extremely satisfied by this huge world that Square Enix created. When Remake first came out, people accused Square Enix of unnecessarily padding out the story to increase the game’s length. Back then, I disagreed that it was unnecessary, because I felt that if we had an opportunity to explore characters and give them more development, it should be worth it. Rebirth only reinforced that belief. This huge and beautiful world is filled with characters that you either like or get on your nerves, just like in real life.
The NPCs in this game really made it feel alive for me. In Remake, you will meet Shinra employees just doing their jobs and are happily paid for it, or others below the “pizza” just trying to survive. In Rebirth, you will meet a host of characters whose lives may or may not have been affected by Shinra’s rise to ultimate power, yet they still feel connected. Chocobo Billy has a back story that connects him to a character in Remake, and despite that character being a former underling of a Shinra underling, he wasnt really that directly affected by the company’s greed. Bugenhagen and Cosmo Canyon itself felt far removed from Shinra, but conversations with the people in that region makes it clear that the company did try.
And then there is Broden, who you’ll meet early on in Kalm, and who you will see again much later with a twist. The colorful characters in Costa Del Sol (besides Johnny, of course), all go about their business seemingly oblivious to the plight of the planet, but are there to enjoy themselves, just like any other human being. But the game doesn’t shrink from pointing out the horrible ways Shinra’s corporate greed has affected various people. The destroyed reactor of Gongaga is a stain on the otherwise lush greenery of the region. There’s the long-suffering parents of Zack Fair, wondering what happened to their son. But nothing can top the old mining town of Corel where Shinra’s actions still affect Barret’s old hometown many years after.
That doesn’t mean you’ll like all the NPCs. Some, like a certain young lady from Remake, really got to my nerves. But they play a part in making sure that the world of Final Fantasy VII feels real, or at the very least, relatable. Even those who are an important part of the wider lore but are reduced to side characters in this game felt OK. Like Cissnei, the unnamed protagonist of Before Crisis (a mobile game), and Crisis Core where she is a friend of Zack Fair. While she did not play a big role in Rebirth beyond the Gongaga region, her presence made perfect sense if you have finished playing Crisis Core.
There are others like Cid and Vincent who are both supposed to be major characters but for this installment, are not controllable. It’s much like Red XIII in Remake where you meet him and he joins your crew, but is not playable. Square Enix did change a lot of Cid’s back story, so that you meet him as a transport pilot of sorts instead of Rocket Town, where he was staying as a sulking, bitter former head of Shinra’s space program. Still, I welcome this addition, which allowed you to fly for some time, possibly teasing how Square Enix will work the Highwind in the next game. With Vincent, you get a boss battle against him, as well as some clues to his past with Shinra and the project that gave birth to Sephiroth.
Mini Games Galore
We all knew that Rebirth will cover a huge amount of content both because of the story and the world map, but what I wasn’t prepared for (despite seeing PR materials months prior) were the sheer number of mini games. It’s different when you read them on paper or watch a trailer, to when you are actually playing the game. From the start, you are introduced to the Queen’s Blood card game (think Final Fantasy VIII’s Triple Triad, but easier and more fun) and catching a Chocobo. Eventually, you’ll get to the dolphin mini-game in Junon. But it’s Costa Del Sol where the game starts to open up, culminating in a wonderful time in the Gold Saucer.
But the mini games don’t stop there. There are those that are tied to sub quests which unlock after your finish the entire quest thread like Fort Condor and Gears and Gambit. While some, like Moogle Mischief, are tied into unlocking Moogle Emporiums. Some mini games are challenging but pleasant like Piano Performances, while others like Glide de Chocobo I’d rather not come back to because I suck at it. Some of these mini games were in the original game, like Chocobo Racing, G-Bike, Battle Square, and 3D Brawler, and seeing them here in all its beauty kicks off the nostalgia overdrive.
Most of these mini games are optional, and you really don’t need to do them all unless you are going for a platinum (I even totally missed Jumpfrog). But it will add to your already significant play time.
Combat Gameplay
Editor Mac stepping in this segment to give my thoughts on the combat mechanics of this game. I’ve invested hundreds of hours into mastering the combat mechanics of the new breed of Final Fantasy games starting with Final Fantasy XV and with Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy XVI. While FF16’s Eikon system made for stylish combos constrained by meter and cooldown, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth continues the ATB system mechanic but is now showered with the Synergy system. The Synergy system in-turn is heavily influenced by how well you care for the casts’ relationships with Cloud and crew, enabling varied skills accessed via the Folio system.
The Folio system takes over the skill grid, maintaining a similar vibe to classic FFX’s sphere grid where skills and upgrades are accessed via a branching grid. Aside from individual stats and skills, characters can learn partner attacks via this system. This compliments the Materia skills and gear loadout of each character which dictates their playstyle. Like FF7 Remake, weapons can influence your playstyle heavily if you understand each weapon’s traits. This removes the typical ladder progression found in the classic games which basically abandons older weapons as you find more. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth expands on the first game with more weapon options and a new trait system that allows slotting bonus stats on your weapon alongside the materia slots.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth gives further depth in making certain characters more varied on their playstyle particularly Cloud who can be the classic knight, flexible mage+knight or pure tank. Certain characters will still favor certain playstyles especially Tifa but characters like Barrett and his low mana pool can still be made into an efffect support healer + tank/damage sponge to allow your main to wail non-stop on the enemies and finish combat quick.
Focusing on the enemies themselves, with the large map setting one would expect frequent combat but as random encounters are now a thing of the past, spawn areas are now preset and beating enemies will clear them off the map for a certain time. This does mean that levelling this way is more tedious than just farming random combat. Enemy variety while vast can feel really redundant over time and more brazenly so with the enemy variant quests.
The game introduces boss-type encounters which should prove a challenge for most players but for those who are deep into the game’s combat mechanics, not even full powered summons pose a challenge and its only until one gets to the boss rush challenge Rulers of the Outer Worlds where combat and planning will be challenged.
Overall, combat can be redundant if you just want to rush through the game yet also feels unrewarding in most cases if you’re particularly good at the game’s combat. The addition of preset party switching is nice but having to define a leader as your main should have quick access to make combat faster in most situations. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s combat system is still one of the freshest and satisfying of any Final Fantasy title and its the fastest it has been.
Reunion Calling
One of Final Fantasy VII’s biggest selling points is its story. A small gang of various origins coming together on a journey to save the planet from impending doom. A journey that will take them from one end of the planet to another, facing more enemies, and realizing that saving the planet may be much more complicated than they thought, because the characters were much deeper than they seemed, and that means their respective emotional baggage come into play. It is a story that helped make Square Enix the video game juggernaut it eventually became, and ushered a new era of Japanese RPGs. But trying to compare the original’s story to its greatly expanded remake is, like its own characters, much more complicated than it seemed.
Rebirth’s story (in fact the whole Remake project’s) has the benefit of two decades of back stories, sequels, prequels, spin-offs, novels, and a feature movie (and it’s “Complete” version). Instead of just focusing on just the original story, the dev team led by Naoki Hamaguchi, decided to take that gigantic lore, and shape Remake and Rebirth’s stories with it. This means that the already meaty story of the original game, has been significantly increased, not to mention the characters and NPCs referencing people and events that were in expanded material (called the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII) and not in the original. People whe were not invested in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII (or people who just simply did not like it) may find the additions unnecessary.
But as a fan of almost everything Final Fantasy VII, the story is epic, if a bit hard to keep up for people who are experiencing it for the first time. It keeps Remake’s additions to the lore (like the Whispers, possible diverging timelines), while staying mostly true to the original story, even with that totally crazy end boss sequence (it’s a multiple boss fight strung together back to back). Understandably, this wealth of story content will turn off a lot of people who will dismiss it as unnecessary fluff. But for me, these additions add new context and understanding to a world I loved going back to again and again. When it comes to story RPGs, I’d prefer to have too much, rather than too little. Did I expect Chocobo Billy to have a back story involving Chocobo Sam from Remake? Nope, but it was a nice bit of world building. Did I expect to see Cloud in his Shinra infantry uniform and then seeing him lead men to a parade victory? Nope, but it was nice to see Cloud as Cloud.
Speaking of, I liked how they characterized Cloud’s worsening mental psyche, attributed to the cellular degradation being suffered by SOLDIER members, but more accurately Sephiroth messing up with his mental state via the Jenova cells in his body. You see Cloud involuntarily step towards the Black Robes more than a few times throughout the game. You see Cloud straight up look possessed by Sephiroth as well. It’s not like Cloud was completely unaware either, because he did mention to Tifa in Gongaga that he sometimes feels like there are “three persons inside of him”. The closer you get to the final chapters, the more it progresses, culminating in that scene in the Forgotten Capital as well as its aftermath.
Cloud’s mental breakdown is a major, major plot point in the original story and I liked how Rebirth set it up by adding more questions than answers, as well as giving us a glimpse of how his recovery might happen. I really love how they expanded upon the Black Robes and hinted at how the gang has already figured out (or is in the process of figuring out) that Cloud is suffering from something and can potentially become one. We even get at least three Black Robes with names: two you will meet, and one you will play against in Queen’s Blood. Adding a name and a story to these Black Robes gives you a sense that they weren’t all just walking zombies talking about Reunion and Sephiroth like in the original, but real characters that once had stories.
This is for me, one of the things that made Final Fantasy VII dear to me. It’s not that other Final Fantasy games did not have memorable characters (they do), but this group really tugged at my heartstrings and I was really able to relate to them. Cloud is not the infallible hero he wanted to project, but someone who had real securities and issues who only ever wanted to be noticed. Tifa may be a strong fighter, but she is also vulnerable and has a shared trauma with Cloud. Each and every member of the group has some pain they had to face in the Temple of the Ancients that deepened both them as characters and the story, because we know Cloud will eventually face his.
Final Thoughts
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is not a perfect game, but it is damn near close. It takes you on a literal journey, with multiple regions, two continents, and tons of content in between. It manages to expand upon iconic events in the original game with plenty of room for the next, penultimate installment. Like the original and Remake, it is one of those games that people will talk about in the future, both because of the scope and the care and attention the developers gave it. Even if you are not a fan of changes or in Final Fantasy VII in general, if you are a JRPG fan, you owe it to yourself to play this game at least once. Hopefully, the Part 3 of this project is just around the corner.