"Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth" Review

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Square Enix

Available for: Playstation 5

Reviewed for: Playstation 5

When I first played and reviewed Final FantasyVII: Remake back in 2020, I hadn't played any of the 1997 original that truly made Final Fantasy into the household name it is today. After that, however, I did give the original game a shot...but I didn't finish. In fact, I only got up to the Costa del Sol portion. So here we are four years after this new vision for a multi-game remake of Final Fantasy VII first debuted with Remake, this time with Rebirth. I can't exactly remember how long it took me to get from the beginning of the original game to the Costa del Sol portion...but I can say this for sure: However long that took, it was a fraction of the time I spent in just the first section of Rebirth. And if we disregard all the content from the original that was covered in Remake, then everything past that point that I did in the original is an even smaller fraction of the time I spent in Rebirth's first segment. So, in terms of comparing the original to this next chapter in the modern reimagining, I have absolutely no insight from here on out. But let me say this: I spent damn close to 100 hours in Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, which is longer than the time I spent in the original and Remake combined. And you know what? I came fairly close to 100%-ing it...but in a game like this, doing the remaining stuff to reach that 100% completion would likely take another 30-50 hours depending on your criteria. And unlike Persona 3: Reload, that kind of time wouldn't have necessarily been a prerequisite in this game. That doesn't mean this game is superior or anything like that, I simply use this comparison as a way of showing that I loved this game enough to play it for around as long as your typical Persona game. So, let's get down to business!

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth starts off exactly where Remake ended: with protagonist Cloud Strife and his  lovable environmental activism terrorists having just fled from the city of Midgar, which serves as the Shinra Power Company's center of operations. With the knowledge that Shinra's reckless harvesting of the planet's life energy (Mako) will soon lead to the planet's destruction, the team strike out into the world in search of anything that might help them in their fight against this most powerful and most evil of powerful evil corporations. And there's only one lead: the long-presumed dead war hero turned villain: Sephiroth. The team know that Sephiroth somehow ties into Shinra's plans, and given Cloud's history with the man, they have no choice but to trust his intuition and follow the strange hooded figures thought to be connected to Sephiroth in some way. And thus, our globetrotting adventure begins! 

A common complaint I saw with Remake was that there was a lot of excess padding and new backstories where it wasn't necessary. I didn't think it made much of a negative difference, but I could see what these critics meant for sure. And while my knowledge of most of this second chapter's story in comparison to the original is pretty limited, I found that there was very little I could point to as obvious padding this time around. What's more, most (but not all) of those padding instances, like in Remake, didn't feel like a negative thing. For instance, early on in the game there was a lot of extra story centered around the Chocobo ranch that the party visits in order to cross the swamplands. This was a piece of the original game that I did get through, so I knew for a fact that this was padding. However, this content was sparingly spread across the entire story, not just frontloaded into this chapter like I was expecting. This meant that the next time the main new character from this story beat re-appeared several chapters later, I actually ended up having a positive response. It's as if Square Enix took the criticisms of the first chapter to heart and paced its newer content more effectively. 

Now, as I said, this applies to most, but not all of the filler. For instance, there's a segment after arriving at the Gold Saucer where the team find themselves in dire straights. In order to get out of this, Cloud has to compete in a Chocobo race. That alone wouldn't have felt like filler...but it just so happens that he has to travel across a little sub-map collecting pieces of food for the Chocobo he'll be racing by doing odd jobs. That right there made this segment weaker, when a simple "win this race and we'll be square" scenario would've made for yet another high point in this story. So, it's kind of a give and take in this second chapter. If you're 100% against any of the extra story content, you'll definitely be irritated by Rebirth, but if you have an open mind about it, then I think you'll enjoy yourself.

I'll say this: I wasn't expecting this story to be as emotionally affecting as it was. There were several times where I found myself getting choked up (even before...that...scene). There's one sequence in particular towards the end of the game where several characters have to come face-to-face with their greatest traumas. The first to do this is Red XIII (who is basically a talking dog with a fire tail), and I found myself truly struggling to keep it together during that segment. As the trauma-facing moved from character to character, it just got worse and I found myself with a bad case of the sniffles before it was all said and done. 

So, the story is excellent, and you know what else? I'm happy to admit that the characters are just as great...with one exception...and even then, the exception is just irritating, not poorly-developed. Every member of the core cast, whether returning from Remake or new in Rebirth, is given something new to offer this time around. For Aerith, there's newfound identity struggles because of her lineage that wasn't explored in Remake. For Tifa, we get her entire backstory. For Barrett, we also get his entire backstory, which comes with some truly shocking revelations that paint Remake in a new light. And by the time the credits roll, every new main cast member feels like they've been with the player since Remake. But the one exception (which, again, isn't an exception for lack of development) is Yuffie. Listening to her talk was like listening to nails on a chalkboard, and the limit of her unmitigated cringe seemed to breach the very sky of the planet our characters are trying to save. But in spite of the fact that I went out of my way to exclude her every chance I got, she does end up becoming a decently-developed character. And you know what else? I ended up being able to recognize the skills she brings to combat in specific super-hard optional combat challenges. That right there is a testament to not just the character development in this game, but the excellently thought-out combat as well.

That would've been a great segue into talking about combat, but we do have one more character-adjacent thing to discuss: the relationship mechanic. 

With just about each character on the team, you have a relationship "meter" of sorts that is denoted by a little smiley face icon that appears above their head in certain story contexts and when you press the LB button. As your relationship with a character increases, the smiley face gradually changes in color from gray to shades of green to shades of blue. Aside from set-in-stone story moments, there are two main ways that you increase your relationship with a character: using synergy abilities for the first time and doing certain side quests. We'll get to synergy abilities when we talk about gameplay, so lets instead talk about those side quests. With the exception of an incredibly small handful of quests, each quest features one of the characters in the events of that quest. For instance, Barrett might be the character involved in a certain side quest because it comes from a mother wanting to send something to her adult son who lives alone, and it reminds him of his daughter he left in Midgar and makes him think about how he'll one day have to let her make her own decisions. Until you start these side quests, you won't know which character the quest involves. So, it's a fairly straightforward process. However...there's one BIG problem with this system. See, this game features a romantic subplot that ultimately ends in a truly sweet, wholesome moment between Cloud and his love interest....so long as the character he goes through this process with is a love interest. See, Square Enix mistakenly tries to reinvent the romance system wheel here in a way that truly doesn't work. They try to make the romantic subplot a dynamic thing, which, while well-meaning, is misguided. This is because, until you beat the game and unlock the chapter selection feature, you don't get to choose who you go on the two romantic ventures with. Your companion is determined based on who you have the strongest relationship with, and if there's more than one character at the top spot, it seems like it's a dice roll. If you're single-minded in what quests you do and what characters you use in combat, you'll probably not have any issue because your love interest will have the highest relationship status with you by default...but if you're trying to do as much as possible to approach the next story beat at the highest level possible, unless you already know that the romantic subplot depends on the relationship level, you might end up expecting to go an a date and give Aerith a smooch only to hear a knock on the door and open it to find big old muscle-y Barrett waiting for you. And then, instead of giving Aerith a smooch, you get some bro time with the big guy. Now, there's nothing wrong with bro time with the big guy...but if that's what you want, you should be able to choose it. As I said, there are two romantic ventures, and this problem is twice as bad in the second. In the second venture, you get the sense that you're near the point of no return, so if you're anything like me, you'll be trying to do as much as possible. So, if you haven't already played Rebirth, just keep this fact in the back of your mind and maybe prioritize your love interest or bro of choice. Luckily for me, I had the foresight to look this up before I got too far and act accordingly, but I would've been less than thrilled to open that door and find Red XII or Yuffie standing there. 

So now it's time for gameplay! Gameplay is where Rebirth truly astounds with its excellent quality. I was a little worried going in that the gameplay was going to lean more into the train wreck that was Final Fantasy XVI's gameplay...but thankfully, it sticks to the formula it started back in Remake. You'll obviously be playing as Cloud for the majority of the playtime, but you'll often switch between characters. Each character plays in a 100% distinct way, and the fact that Square Enix was able to create so many different playstyles and stuff them into one game is truly remarkable. 

But before we get into specifics, let's talk about the basics of combat. Every character has a basic attack that happens when you press the square button, but despite what you might be anticipating, there isn't a heavy attack to follow up with the basic one. Rather, there's a character-specific alternative skill. For instance, Barrett has an ability called "overcharge" that runs on a meter built up by shooting his gun arm for enough time. Aerith leaves wards on the ground that she can warp between. Yuffie throws a shuriken that can be imbued with certain elemental damages. Beyond this, each character can parry, dodge, use ATB abilities, and cast spells. Half of those are self-explanatory, so let's talk about the not quite as obvious things. Each character has an ATB gauge broken into two parts. This meter gets filled by attacking, parrying, and otherwise engaging in combat. Everything outside of basic combat capabilities depends on this gauge. Once the first bar of the gauge gets filled, you can expend that bar of the gauge to use an item, cast a spell, or use one of your character's special abilities. 

These abilities are made up of two groups: abilities specific to the character and abilities specific to the character's equipped weapon. As this implies, each character comes with a preset list of abilities. For instance, Tifa comes pre-equipped with a damage-increasing ability and a divekick for some easy damage, among others. For another example, Red VIII comes with a pretty overpowered front flip attack. In addition to these, each weapon for each character in the game comes with its own unique ability. At first, these abilities can only be used with the weapon equipped, but once the ability has been used enough times, it becomes permanently ingrained into the character's available skills. So in spite of the various stat distributions among weapons, it's worthwhile to swap between weapons in order to gain as many of their abilities as possible. 

Beyond this, there are also spells. Like abilities, each character comes pre-equipped with a handful of spells. Aerith can use wind and healing spells. Barrett can use thunder spells. Tifa can use ice spells. Basic things like that. But beyond these pre-set spells, there's a massive amount of customization potential. A character's weapon and armor pieces come with a certain amount of "materia" slots. Materia refers to orbs that have certain properties. One piece of materia might contain ice magic, another might contain the ability to analyze an enemy for intel on pressuring conditions and elemental weaknesses, another might increase certain stats, there are SO many possibilities. But no matter how many capabilities are stuffed into a piece of materia, it only takes up one materia slot. So, using weapons and armor pieces with the most materia slots possible opens up an equal amount of extra combat possibilities. Sometimes extra materia slots come at the expense of stat bonuses, so it's going to be up to your judgment to determine what your loadout is. 

Now that we've broken down the basics of any character's combat style, let's talk a bit more about the differences in each character's unique play style. To keep things as spoiler-free as possible, I'll only be going over the characters you could play as in Remake. Cloud is kind of a standard hack-and-slash style where you'll focus on physical attacks, parrying, and dodging. So if you're cruising through the game on the easiest difficulty, you're likely going to feel most at home playing as Cloud. Tifa doesn't do too much damage, but her attacks build up her ATB meter faster than most characters get that filled. So if you happen to stock Tifa with the most possible abilities, making frequent use of her will let you truly capitalize on that decision. Aerith is kind of the stereotypical healer, throwing out fairly ineffectual magic missiles but being uniquely equipped to turn the tide of battle when things get tough. Barrett is a distance fighter who uses his gun arm to fire a constant stream of bullets at enemies. Because there's no jump button, this makes him a go-to choice if you're going up against any enemies that can fly. These are just the individual play styles that were established in Remake, and the play styles of the new characters here in Rebirth are somehow even more creative. This can sometimes mean you'll want to stick with the original characters as much as possible since "more unique" in many cases means "more convoluted," but I still have to applaud the sheer scope of the creativity on display.

You know what? For as long as that previous segment was, it was just about the characters and how they play/how you can make them play. I billed that segment as a gameplay segment, but it didn't cover the extent of what happens in combat. So, here's where we'll discuss the rest of the combat moment-to-moment. At any given point, you'll have a party of three. For most of the game, it'll be a choice of two characters to accompany Cloud. In certain story moments, it'll be a pre-selected party. Finally, in optional combat challenges you'll have free reign on which three characters to use. But for our purposes, we'll just be discussing the main scenario. When you enter into a combat situation, you'll switch between your three party members at will to build up their ATB meters faster and issue orders about what ability or spell to use from a pop up menu you trigger by pressing the x button. 

Obviously your goal is to defeat all the enemies, but you'll aim to do that by building up their stagger meter. You'll do ok damage up until the point where you fill up the meter, but you'll do around 160% more damage while the enemy is staggered and waiting for their stagger meter to go back down to zero. You'll build up the stagger meter just by landing damage on the enemy, but for each enemy type, there's at least one way to "pressure" them. When an enemy is pressured, the stagger meter builds significantly faster. In a lot of cases, pressuring an enemy is a matter of exploiting their elemental weakness. But in exactly as many cases, it's some truly unique condition that can only be discerned by using an "assess" materia. Here are some examples. 

Some enemies become pressured immediately after they use certain attacks. Some enemies become pressured if you dodge or parry one or two specific attacks of theirs. Some enemies become pressured if you land x number of abilities (not spells) as they charge up an attack or have an ability activated. Some enemies become pressured if you apply enough damage to a body part that becomes exposed as they charge up an attack. Some enemies become pressured under any of these conditions but also become twice as aggressive/start charging up an uber-powerful attack, etc. And these are just some of the unique conditions that show up here. 

Beyond the obvious benefits that making use of the ATB gauge has, any time a character uses an ATB ability, they gain a tally mark that I don't remember the name of, so I'm just going to call it a "synergy gauge." Starting from two tally marks in that gauge, if another character also has two tally marks in the gauge, these two characters can perform a "synergy ability." These abilities deal some extra damage and add to the relationship between the characters (if one of them is Cloud), but each synergy ability also has a side effect of some kind. Some of them temporarily supply both characters with infinite MP to cast spells. Some of them break both characters' ATB gauges into three instead of two, giving them the ability to use abilities far more frequently. I only really used the synergy abilities for my main party (Cloud, Aerith, and Tifa), so that's about all I remember about the side effects of synergy abilities. But I also played this game on easy difficulty because of how horrible an experience Final Fantasy XVI was, so I didn't really need them except for relationship-deepening and enemy-pressuring purposes.

You know what else? For as long as the discussion of gameplay has been, I'm still not done. We've covered combat, but there's so much more to gameplay on display here than just combat. I can find no words better than Jim Stephanie Sterling's words in their written review to begin what I'm about to discuss: "An absolute car crash of minigames, mechanics, systems, and nonsensical narrative diversions, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth comes off like it was supposed to be the last videogame ever made and they had to stuff everything in while they could. Every little plot point, every new location, every step forward is taken as an excuse to cram in a distraction or simply do things in the most extra way possible." And just like in that review, this is not a criticism. Rather, it's a "look, I know this sounds like a criticism, but...". 

First things first, let's talk about the most vanilla extra content possible. This game takes place over a handful of regions, and each region comes with side quests (which we've already discussed), a host of Ubisoft-style open world things, and at least one minigame you didn't find in previous regions. So the most vanilla extra content I was referring to is that Ubisoft-style open world stuff.

While there's a tendency to refer to any repeated open world content as Ubisoft-style, Rebirth makes a case for its open world stuff being Ubisoft-style by sheer virtue of the fact that other open world things are discovered on the map by climbing radio towers. So, that's that. But while it's Ubisoft-style, it's not Ubisoft-scope. There aren't hundreds of open world activities or anything like that. Each region has something like 20 of them and there tends to be more than enough story between region transitions to provide a break if you're trying to do everything possible before moving on. As for the other open-world activities, I'll only touch on a few to give you an idea.

Firstly, there's combat challenges. These will pit you up against unique variants of enemies you'll find in the world with three objectives to try and achieve. Most of the time the objectives are: 1) beat the enemy within the time limit, 2) pressure an enemy, and 3) stagger an enemy. There are times where one or two of those objectives will be unique, but that's what it is for the most part. And I'm thankful to say that you don't have to complete all these objectives if you're going for 100% completion. I believe you only have to complete one objective, but the lowest I ever got was one...so I never went into a challenge without completing at least one, and I can't report on what happens if you fail all three. 

Then, there are lifesprings. These come with a hefty helping of crafting materials, provide some lore about the current region, and occasionally reveal a new activity impossible to find otherwise. Sometimes these new activities are a super-strong enemy to face off against, sometimes they're excavation sites that provide you with new additions to your crafting abilities, and sometimes they're important McGuffins for certain side quests.

Then, there are summon crystals. With every new region you enter, you unlock the ability to challenge a classic Final Fantasy summon entity, and if you win, you get the required materia to use them in battle. There are three summon crystals for each of these entities. With every crystal you find and analyze, you not only increase the power of the entity when summoned, you also lower the entity's power in the battle to claim their materia.

Finally, there are the protorelics. Each protorelic is obtained by doing something four times subsequently, with the thing getting slightly harder each time. In most cases, this thing is a region-specific minigame...and these minigames are a MAJOR low point. They're optional, but a low point is a low point. So, if you're not going for 100%, this won't affect you, but it affected me, so points are going to be taken off for it. The biggest offenders are the two protorelic minigames that fall into the general lane/tower defense gameplay structure. I tolerated these enough to power through and get the protorelics across four matches each, but I hated them enough that I don't want to talk about them. So, I'll drop the names here so you can google and learn the particulars: "Fort Condor" and "Gears and Gambits".

You know what else else? I think the pizza is cold...I mean, there's still another aspect of gameplay I want to talk about, and despite how that last section ended, it's a positive. Like The Witcher 3 before it, FF7 Rebirth features a completely original card game that I spent as much time playing as I possibly could. The card game, "Queen's Blood," isn't as good as Gwent, but it's as close as I could've possibly imagined before starting this game. There's a game board with three lanes, and at the start of a round, there's three nodes in both players' sides, one node for each lane. Each player draws a handful of cards from a deck they construct before the round and the game begins. Each card has its own real estate effects, power levels, point levels, and in some cases, special effects. 

The real estate effects are probably the most important effects. For instance, one card might show that it affects one lane above, one lane below, and one space to the right from where it's played. As I mentioned, at the start of a round, there are only three nodes on each side of the board. The rest of the spaces are empty. But if you play the aforementioned card, if the space to the right is empty, it becomes a level 1 node for the player. For any unoccupied spaces within the card's effective range that aren't empty, the level of the node goes up, with a maximum level of three. If any of those unoccupied spaces happen to belong to the opponent, that space's node is claimed for the player. What I found is that I didn't need to adjust my deck very often, as playing just aggressively enough with real estate usually set me up for victory. There are some real estate combinations that won't make any sense to you until you reach some freak use case, so I'd be hard pressed to say that any card is useless. 

Next thing to discuss is power levels. Each card has a power level of 1-3. If you noticed that's the sane range as the node levels, good eye! A card can only be played on a node of the same power level or higher. So part of the strategy involves playing smaller cards to set up a node with the correct power level to play your ace in the hole. For instance, one of my staple cards was the sweeper card, whose real estate covers above, below, and to the right of those spaces. So, including the space you play it on, it affects a kind of sideways "U" shape on the board. The obvious impact of this card is that it establishes some great node real estate everywhere except its own lane. This allowed me to be aggressive on the top and bottom lanes, and if anything went wrong, I could start claiming spaces in the middle lane from either the top or bottom. This strategy set me up with a bunch of options, and it served me well, considering I won every single Queen's Blood match in the game (including the nigh-impossible final challenge in the gold saucer). However, this card has a power level of two, meaning I had to play at least one card to make a space eligible. What's more, this card only had a point level of 2, so the real estate benefit comes at the cost of possible point values in the lane you play it. All of this is for a single card, and one of the least complicated cards at that. So imagine the theory crafting involved with more complex, higher power level cards!

Then, there's the point levels. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, my favorite card to use had a point level of 2. This is the most easily explainable aspect of the game, as I'm sure you can imagine. For each of the three lanes, the cards held therein will determine a point total for the lane for both the player and the opponent. So it's a balancing act of real estate aggression and strategic placement of cards based on their point levels. You'll obviously want to get as many points as possible, but there's a catch. See, you don't win by getting the most overall points. Rather, judging goes lane-by-lane, and whoever has the most points in a given lane gets all of the points they put out for the lane, while whoever scored lower in the lane gets no points at all. So, say the point total for you is 30 points in lane 1, 30 points in lane 2, and 30 points in lane 3. Then, say your opponent has 31 points in lane 1, 29 points in lane 2, and 31 points in lane 3. You would've earned 30 points, while your opponent would've earned 62, and you would've obviously lost. So, sometimes the strategy involves figuring out what lanes can be sacrificed to gain a magnitude of points in the other lanes. And sometimes that sacrifice involves using low-point cards in one lane to use their special abilities to boost the points of certain cards in another lane. That's where I'll leave the subject of special abilities, and I think I've given enough context for you to understand the point system.  

And if none of this interests you, you might find yourself interested to know that this little board game has an absolutely bonkers apocalyptic Yu-Gi-Oh subplot!

You know what else else else? There's one last thing on the gameplay front, and then we'll move on, I promise! And unfortunately, this last thing is probably the biggest complaint I have. This isn't a horrifically bloated, needlessly large open world like every other open world game out there that isn't Elden Ring. And for more than just the obvious reasons, that's a good thing. The reason being that this open world is an absolute pain in the ass to get around in, with the exception of the very last region. There's no jump button, so if you try to cut a corner in the road to get to a different point in the road, if the elevation is slightly too high, you'll have to walk all the way around. Not only that, but after a certain point of elevation you're unable to jump down to a lower rock or stretch of ground, not even at the expense of fall damage. What's more, most of the time it's borderline impossible to tell where you should actually go to reach a map marker or activity. This is always a problem to some degree in any open world game, that's why it's such a meme that in Skyrim people commit to climbing up steep mountains to reach an objective on the other side because they didn't know the mountain was going to be there and by the time they realized it, the sunk cost fallacy had kicked in. But in most open worlds there aren't significant increases in elevation like there are in Rebirth...and you know what? Despite the lack of significant sudden elevation, these other games feature a jump button.

What I've said so far applies mainly to walking, but that's not the only traversal option. Most regions have a chocobo (giant ridable bird) species specific to the region. In the first region, it's just a basic chocobo, so it doesn't exactly help. In the next region, the local chocobo can climb sheer surfaces so long as they're coated in specific paint patterns. Later on, there's a chocobo that can glide long distances....so long as they launch off of very specific ramp. Are you noticing a pattern? All chocobos are too fast and overly animated, so if you want to do anything other than travel, you'll be turning the bird several times trying to find the exact point where the button prompt to do the thing appears. So the only way they help with traversal is with their speed, but they have negatives of their own. Furthermore, they actually make traversal even more difficult in that you can't reach certain areas in certain regions without their help...but it's so, so specific that you'll probably spend twice as much time trying to reach certain markers as you normally might. You'll spend a lot of time on foot trying to finagle your way to a map marker, only to realize that maybe you need to use a chocobo ability....and then you'll spend exactly as much time trying to find the exact usage point in the region....and that's before we get to the inconsistencies in how these chocobo abilities sometimes perform. For example, there's a regional chocobo whose ability is to use certain mushrooms to leap long distances. However, no two mushrooms launch the chocobo the same distance, and there's no visual/audible/whatever clue as to what mushrooms provide what jump distance. The one exception to this rule is the chocobo variant in the last region, which can shoot water out of its feet if it's over water. This always results in the exact same height, and it's legitimately a joy to use. One good traversal aspect in a 100+ hour game is hardly a selling point, but it's a thing to note.

Finally, there's one region where you don't get a chocobo, but you get a car. The car, besides traveling faster, has no benefit other than crossing certain bits of water. The water isn't any deeper than the water you can swim in, they're just "not crossable" because there are sticks in the way. It's a problem in exactly ONE region, but this game just can't seem to bring itself not to waste your time with its traversal. Make no mistake, I loved the content enough to brave this negative, but in any scoring system where I didn't take off more than one point per negative, it might have several points taken off for this transgression alone.

That just leaves the discussion of this game's technical quality. The most obvious thing to note is that this is a game with the full brunt of a Square Enix budget behind it. So it goes without saying that this is the best-looking game released in 2024 so far, and I think we'll be hard-pressed to get one that looks better. And depending on your choices, it might look even better! Like most modern games, this one comes with a choice between a 30fps "quality" mode and a 60fps "performance" mode. I used to make fun of people who said that 30fps made them feel sick...but as I waited for PS5s to become available, I primarily used my PC for gaming, and since then, I've become that which I always used to make fun of. I can stomach 30fps, but it's a difficult thing to do. So naturally I chose performance mode, which reduces graphical fidelity in favor of frames per second. This means that I didn't see this game at its highest quality. The fact that this is the best looking game of 2024 so far coupled with the fact that I can say that at a lower-than-max graphical experience should say everything you need to know. Like the graphics, the soundtrack is as excellent as one would expect a Final Fantasy soundtrack to be. In particular, there's a remix of a soundtrack piece that plays during a boss battle following....*that* scene. And that track alongside its context actually had me wiping my eyes. I've heard reports that the technical side of things is where this game falters the most, but I didn't have that experience. Really, the only negative I can recall is that Cloud is overanimated in the same way that a lot of player characters are overanimated these days. You'll be trying to turn to press a prompt button, turn slightly too far through no fault of your own, then have to re-adjust yourself several times. It doesn't help that the interactability window is dreadfully narrow. So it'll sometimes take more than one try to orient Cloud how he needs to be oriented to make things work. It's not a gigantic problem normally....but there's a LOT of interactive prompts in this game, so it's slightly more noticeable. So, not a perfect report card, but far from the most damning rap sheet. 

Folks, I'm not really convinced that you're coming to this review trying to decide if you're going to buy Rebirth. No, I think you're probably here either because you want your biases validated or you're like me and you just enjoy reading reviews. So I won't waste your time waxing lyrical about the reasons you might want to pick it up. So I'll just go with a straightforward wrap-up. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth was pretty much a disaster waiting to happen. Trading in the claustrophobic sci-fi atmosphere of the first chapter for a Ubisoft-style open world with a million and one different minigames with significantly grander scope than ever explored in any Final Fantasy game EVER? That, dear reader, is a gamble. But it's a gamble that mostly paid off. The open world isn't bloated, but it's a hassle to get around in. The minigame roster consists of an excellent card game as well as a couple of truly terrible lane/tower defense games that are as terrible as the card game is good. Most aspects of this game tend to be a "six points on one hand, half a dozen on the other" situation, but that doesn't make this a bad game. The positives are SO solid and are so much more prominent given the game's runtime. That's a hard thing to communicate in a review, but that's just how it is.

Let us review:

Slight filler/Yuffie/Relationship mechanic - 0.5

Some terrible-but-optional minigames - 0.5

Traversal woes - 1.0

Minor technical woes - 0.3

The final score for Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth is...

7.7/10 - Pretty Good

Great job, Square Enix, great job!