Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
WHERE TO PLAY
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth masterfully continues the story of Remake. Acting as both a remake and sequel to the original game, Rebirth carves its own identity by deepening and expanding one of the most beloved stories in gaming. Its move toward the open-world format is expertly done and creates a near-perfect experience for fans both old and new.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirthtakes a classic jrpg and turns it into a modern masterpiece. The visuals are positively stunning, the performance is rock solid, and the music is blissfully enjoyable, especially if you’re playing with headphones on. While some remakes are stunning recreations of what has come before, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth risks being a love letter to the old, with eyes toward the new. It’s as much a sequel to the original game as it is a remake. It’s as much an expansion as it is an adaptation. For me, it’s the best of every element.
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Characters are as soulfully written as they are performed. Locations are teeming with life. Run-down villages are brought to life with the same painstaking attention to detail as major cities. And while locations often lend themselves to being large, they never feel as if they overstay their welcome. Both the players and characters are on a journey, and the pacing always keeps you on the move. To say I enjoyed my time with Rebirth would be an understatement. I loved every hour I spent with it and plan on going back to spend many more hours combing every inch of its beautiful open world.
Revisiting A Fantastical World
It’s easy to go astray when creating an open world, but Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth makes it look easy. In addition to being absolutely gorgeous (it’s definitely one of the best-looking games on the PlayStation 5), the open world is often enticing.
You’re constantly invited to go off the beaten path. A bird may fly past you and lead you to an unknown secret. A baby Chocobo will get you to the next fast travel point. A wisp will help you uncover unseen treasures. All of these things are meant to tickle your curiosity without directly telling you to go somewhere on a quest. It’s a beautiful way of integrating open-world activities without loading you down with side quests. Rebirth encourages exploration without saddling the player with too many objectives. Oh, and you can pet every baby Chocobo you meet. Yeah. Please do that.
The relationships between characters feel nuanced and believable without ever feeling forced.
The combination of exploration and side quests will come with many rewards that you and your party can use. However, Rebirth wonderfully avoids giving players access to rewards that are considered optional but feel mandatory. Everything manages to feel valuable without ever feeling essential, which means you’re free to prioritize your time and effort however you like. If you are the kind of player who easily gets swept up in side content, you’ll find much of it here. However, if you want to continue advancing Rebirth’s gripping story, you can do that without fear of penalty.
If you’re like me, and you want to advance the story but come back for all of those delicious extras, you never have to worry about missing out. You can always return to areas later to explore, quest, or collect to your heart’s content. You never have to concern yorself with front loading a zone’s side content for fear of missing out on it forever. So, go ahead and take things at your own pace.
Traversing the open world was also particularly delightful. While you’re always free to roam around on foot, you’ll also gain access to a variety of Chocobos. You’ll even gain access to the occasional vehicle to keep things lively as well. While Chocobos are all ground mounts, each region has a different breed of Chocobo that takes advantage of the area’s unique terrain. Some Chocobos excel at gliding, bouncing on mushrooms, grinding on branches like railways, or climbing steep walls. No matter where you are, it always feels rewarding to mount up on a Chocobo to get the most out of your exploration.
Let The Games Within Games Begin!
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is absolutely stuffed with mini-games. If you’re looking to sink hours upon hours into side content, the mini-games alone will keep you occupied for quite some time. My personal obsession is Queen’s Blood, a card game that felt like an entire game unto itself. The joy of playing against others, collecting new cards, and building multiple decks ate up a significant amount of my time. I often had to remind myself that I needed to actually progress the story at some point for the sake of this review. The Siren song of side content is fierce within Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and you’ll never run out of things to do.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is everything you loved about Final Fantasy 7 Remake with more polish, refinement, and depth.
When you’re looking for mini-games galore, you definitely want to look toward The Golden Saucer. Once unlocked, you can visit as much as you like for as many mini-games as you can handle. The Golden Saucer’s bright lights and neon colors make it feel like something between a casino and an amusement park. Given that people gamble, play games, and go on rides there, I would say the atmosphere is generally pitch-perfect for what it is. Visiting this location was genuinely exciting in a way that made me feel as if I was on some kind of vacation. While there’s always an ever-looming threat to keep you moving the story forward, party members will definitely encourage you to take a sanity break when you hit locations that lend themselves to a little fun.
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Harnessing The Fighting Spirit
The flow of combat in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is even better than in Remake. Simply put, the synergy abilities improve combat tenfold. The ability to perform unique specials with teammates makes your party composition feel dynamic, rewarding, and important. On top of all that, the moves tend to be even flashier than anything an individual can pull off on their own. Synergy abilities make it less like you’re playing a character within a party and more like you’re playing the entire party itself.
In Remake, it was easy for longer fights to feel somewhat repetitive. While it’s hard to do away with that completely (such is the nature of long fights in nearly any game) synergy abilities give you even more to do in combat while still feeling natural instead of cumbersome. On top of that, spells, items, weapons, and summons all play a major part in making each encounter feel unique.
Enemy variety, which also shined in Remake, is a highlight of Rebirth. Whether you’re talking about standard enemies or multi-phase boss fights, the pressure/stagger system keeps things feeling interesting as you discover every enemy’s strength and weakness. While the open-world areas have enemies and threats scattered throughout, they never feel so densely populated that things become tedious. However, I did find that certain open-world enemies respawned a little too quickly for my liking.
Characters And Relationships
While Cloud and Sephiroth certainly get their fair share of the screen, everyone gets their own arc and time to shine. Much like Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Rebirth relishes in the small moments and expands upon the original game in meaningful ways. Mysteries are allowed to simmer without ever overstaying their welcome. Characters are allowed to breathe and develop relationships with one another. In fact, the entire game feels expertly paced.
While there are moments where the game asks you to slow down and cool off, these moments don’t feel like padding. Instead, the characters themselves seem more human for wanting a break and a bit of fun. Ultimately, the world will always come crashing down on our heroes and keep them on the move before they get too comfortable in any one place. The writing always manages to keep the main objective fresh in the players’ mind while still allowing them to take a moment and breathe. For a story this long, the pacing is truly remarkable.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth risks being a love letter to the old with eyes toward the new.
The relationships between characters feel nuanced and believable without ever feeling forced. The ability to have Cloud check in with his teammates regularly (or ignore them) is a nice way to have players deepen relationships with their favorite characters. It’s rewarding to have these little side moments with your companion. However, that’s all these moments really amount to. They are nice moments but ultimately optional, so players should never feel weighed down or forced to engage with them.
Sounding Off
My biggest gripe with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was the idle chatter of the world. As you walk around, tertiary characters will have little conversations or commentary as you pass by. In theory, this is a wonderful thing that makes characters and locations come alive.
Unfortunately, this idle chatter would often drown out a conversation your party members are trying to have with one another. I often missed out on party members interacting because a couple of people on the street were talking about their day. The same would happen if party members were talking and combat initiated. Other games sometimes handle this by having party members pause or revisit conversations after, but Rebirth seems content with these conversations being drowned out. It’s a shame, because many of these interactions do often add something valuable to lore or character development. It may seem like a minor thing, and in some ways it is, but it also happened so consistently that it left a mark on my playthrough of the game.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is everything I loved about Final Fantasy 7 Remake with more polish, refinement, and depth. It’s a stunning achievement. While I won’t ruin any of the major story beats here, this game is going to have fans talking for a long time. The story is full of twists and turns for longtime fans and newcomers alike. If you haven’t played Remake, I would strongly suggest playing that game first, as it really props up the story of Rebirth. If you have played Remake, then buckle up for what is sure to be one of the best games you’ll play in 2024.
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