FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH

Too much of a "Ubisoft" experience.

Over the summer, I've made my way through FF7 Remake, Crisis Core Reunion (the prequel game), and now Rebirth. It has been a really fun journey through a videogame franchise I missed out on as a kid. These two FF7 games have received praise and criticism of all kinds, and having now completed them, I have several thoughts to share. Overall though, I would strongly recommend the whole series. The combat, characters, cool-factor, and narrative (when it is happening) are all absolutely awesome. Positives: The thing that stands out most to me with these remakes is the combat. Simply put, I think this hybrid action combat system they have is one of the best I've ever played. It is incredibly fun, deep, and highly rewarding. In Rebirth, the combat system is expanded just enough to feel both familiar and different. The addition of synergy skills and synergy abilities further incentivizes hopping between characters in combat. When you perform a synergy ability, it is always some super cool anime-style move that does a truckload of damage and provides some sort of buff to the characters for a short time. It goes a long way to making the game feel cool and polished, and of course there are multiple new abilities and spells added in to the mix. Additionally, the game is just rad as hell at times, often when there is a huge boss encounter, the music swells, and the camera goes cinematic. It's these moments where I really feel that Final Fantasy magic I've heard so much about. The So-So Final Fantasy games are often praised for its story, particularly the original FF7. As a consequence of splitting that game across three games, the narrative suffers tremendously. This was especially the case in Remake where it really only felt like things happened at the very beginning and end of the game. They try to elongate the story by adding in a lot of character beats and worldbuilding moments, but they didn't really land all that well in Remake. Rebirth, while not completing fixing this problem, does vastly improve upon its predecessor. Nearly every character gets an entire chapter or two dedicated to them, their backstory, and their relationships with the rest of the party. Most of these work really well and provided some much needed context to the characters. The overall narrative does still suffer from how drawn out everything is, but there is also at least this sense of adventure you get from the open world. Said open world is one of the major new additions to this game, and like so many open worlds, it starts off great before getting quite tiring. Every region has the exact same open-world objectives (towers, specific enemy encounters, collectibles). The developers did a great job of making each region feel distinct and did an admirable job of trying to make the experience of playing through them all different from one another, but there just really isn't that much you can do with them in the end when all the objectives are the same. The Negative There's nothing I outright hated in the game except for its breadth. There is SO much to do, and if you have any amount of completionist DNA in you, you will feel compelled to do all the world objectives, side quests, and minigames. While Remake does have problems, I really do appreciate its 40-50 hour playtime. By contrast, it took me 82 hours on Steam to get through this entire game, completing all world objectives and the majority of side content not locked behind Hard mode. If you are someone that really enjoys meaty open world games, you will definitely get your money's worth here. On Mini-Games Probably the biggest criticism thrown at this game is the number of minigames. Remake had a few, but they were not onerous or abundant. Rebirth, however, has so many minigames I cannot even keep track of them. There's: Queen's Blood (Gwent), Chocobo Racing, Fort Condor, battle bots, Chocobo gliding, dolphin riding, frog battles, 3 different combat arenas, G-bike, and several others. Needless to say, it is A LOT, and several of them are required to be done at least once. In general, I don't mind the presence of minigames, and I think that they can be fun. Dolphin Riding, for example, is actually pretty solid as a minigame. To get 100%, you only have to do it twice, the race is less than 2 minutes, and it provides a medium level of challenge, meaning you only need a few attempts to beat the hardest version of it. Other games, like Fort Condor or Battle Bots (I forget the name), are so complex that I found myself just researching the optimal strategies to beat them. I think the core issue with them that I have is that in order to get 100% completion in the game, you need to be an absolute master at all of these, and some of them are ultimately ridiculously difficult and not fun. If the mini-games were focused more on pure fun and slight challenge over mastery, I would like them much more. Some of them also have far too many versions/levels, such as the innumerable Chocobo Races. I easily won all of these first-try, yet each race takes nearly 5 minutes. After you do a couple of races, there's really not much else to see, but there's a whole lot to get mad about (Cactuar Gates).