0
0
After having reviewed pretty much all the different versions of Final Fantasy VII Remake (both the PS5 and PC versions, including expansions for both), and played the original multiple times, it’s safe to say that I’m familiar with the games…which is why I’ve been waiting for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth to hit.
The short glimpse I got from the demo (and the demo at Tokyo Game Show 2023) was nowhere near enough. Imagine playing a small slice of the game in September 2023, knowing you have more than 6 months to go before you’d get a chance to play the final (pun intended) version.
Yeah, it was hell.
Thankfully, that’s over now…
…or is it?
Is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth worth the wait?
What is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth?
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the continuation of Final Fantasy VII Remake. It’s not a sequel per se (as the original game will be split into multiple parts, of which Rebirth is the second) so playing through Final Fantasy VII Remake (and its DLC expansion, Episode Intermission) is pretty much a necessity.
The game is an third person action RPG (or turn based RPG depending on your battle setting) and is developed and published by Square Enix.
Set immediately after the events of Final Fantasy VII Remake (see? I told you playing that was a necessity), Final Fantasy VII Rebirth continues the adventures of Cloud and his gang on their quest to stop Sephiroth and save the planet. It mainly retreads the major story beats of the original Final Fantasy VII (on the PS1) but also adds in a ton of new stuff and events not in the original.
That’s because this version of Final Fantasy VII is not a remake of the original, but rather, an alternate timeline, with slight divergences of events. Zack Fair surviving the aftermath of Final Fantasy Crisis Core is one of them and is perhaps one of the biggest mysteries surrounding this new alternate timeline.
I know it was a big deal for me personally.
It’s honestly what drove me to blaze through Final Fantasy VII Rebirth faster than usual. I needed to know how and why Zack isn’t dead. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t really spill the beans on this. It does in some aspects, but it doesn’t in a lot of them. I can’t really say more without spoiling things.
That’s not really surprising…after all, there is at least one more game in the Remake series coming after this. It still doesn’t excuse the unsatisfying feeling you get after you finish though, which leaves you with a ton of unanswered questions.
I’m deadly serious.
I had no idea what the hell was happening when the credits rolled at the end other than the gang’s taking off in the Tiny Bronco to go chase Sephiroth ‘somewhere up north’. I can handle a cliffhanger ending, but Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and its ending is just plain confusing for the sake of being obtuse.
Perhaps the writers should take a look at The Empire Strikes Back or Back to the Future on how to craft a satisfying end while still teasing what’s to come.
Totally unsatisfying ending aside, it’s great that apart from the inclusion of Zack, there are other story surprises that weren’t in the original.
Some bits are really good (the exploration of the Gi history is very well done) but there are some parts that could’ve been better paced (the whole schbang in Costa Del Sol for example) or stripped off altogether.
It’s like the team behind the game decided that every town needed its own plotline shoved in for no reason other than to pad out the game’s length.
Yeah, I enjoyed seeing Tifa in a swimsuit (Barret might have a gun on his arm, but Tifa has two huge cannons on her chest) but that still didn’t make up for the slow paced Costa Del Sol interlude in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
Oh yeah, did I mention the game’s now a semi-open world that’s divided into regions? Yeah, you know what that means right?
Yup, copy pasted objectives up the wazoo.
You’ll be finding radio towers, lifestream fonts, summon pedestals and more! Repeatedly! For every single region! Square Enix didn’t bother to make each region unique, so instead they recycled most of the objectives for the whole game.
Don’t you just feel the excitement?
I also don’t get why Cid and Vincent aren’t playable characters.
They literally go EVERYWHERE with your party in the last quarter of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth so what’s the harm in making them playable? I understand Square Enix need to keep something for the final part, but then they should’ve written out the Cid and Vincent parts for this game. It’s not like the game’s a 1:1 adaptation of the original, so what’s the issue there?
I mean, there’s already a huge cast of characters to play with already! You got the original cast from Rebirth, plus Yuffie, Red XIII and Cait Sith. That’s a TON of playable characters to be honest. Writing out Cid and Vincent and using new people to fill in their parts (at least for this game) should be no problem at all!
One thing I really like is how the game forces you to switch characters I gives a chance for every character to shine. I usually stick to Cloud, Tifa and Barret so I pretty much ignore the rest. The game makes you play as everybody in specific sections, even going so far as giving them unique special abilities.
I really, really love the on-rails shooter parts with Barret and his machine gun.
Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if Square Enix made a Final Fantasy on-rails shooter at all now! The framerate is HORRIBLE (more on that later) but the shooting is really fun.
Unfortunately, apart from Barret’s gun and Yuffie’s grappling hook getting numerous spotlights, Red XIII’s wall-climbing or Cait Sith’s rolling into vents abilities are ignored in every part of the game.
Seriously, they never make an appearance again once you’re past their specific sections.
Why not make use of them more? For secrets or whatnot in earlier locations? That’d give you incentive to revisit the places you’ve been too! There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to what’s implemented and what’s not.
It’s also plain to see that some negative aspects from Remake weren’t even fixed.
Chief among them; some environmental textures are still horrible.
They’re blurry as hell and have no place being in a AAA game, much less one that can output at 4K. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing on Performance or Visual mode, the environmental textures look like they belong on the PS2.
Who was it at Square Enix who took a look at them and said, ‘Yeah bro, good job.’?
Seriously. I want to know just so I can ask them what’s up. There MUST be a reason right?
Muddy, low resolution textures were already a main complaint I had for the original version AND the PC version. Yet, the issue pops up AGAIN.
It is inexcusable. Just take a look at some of the examples above.
The development team had YEARS to tweak the engine, to update the visuals…yet we’re still plagued by this? It’s not a streaming issue, it’s an issue with low resolution, blurry textures that should never have been given the green light.
On top of that, even Performance mode doesn’t deliver a smooth framerate as you’d expect in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
Sure, it’s above 30fps, but it stutters and you can tell when the framerate takes a hit for a few seconds before recovering. It’s especially bad in some cutscenes.
That’s not all the visual issues in the game.
Oh no…
Let’s talk about the draw distance.
Since the game’s open world now, you can look out far into the environment in most areas. It’s cool since you can even make out details of far away objects without them magically popping into view like in some games.
What’s decidedly not cool is how the draw distance for nearby objects is.
Foliage, debris and other incidental environmental objects can magically appear just a few meters from you. Items you can collect can sometimes do that too! Imagine running over a patch of ground you thought was free of consumables and having multiple pop up at the last minute.
You’re screwed if you’re on a chocobo, because chances are you’d have run over them before you noticed. Now you have to turn around and pick them back up.
Or alternatively, hammer the triangle button everywhere you go so you don’t miss pickups.
Thankfully, the buggy and the Tiny Bronco automatically pick up stuff that you run over, so my question is this; why the hell isn’t that the same for chocobos and when you’re on foot?! Why do you have to manually hit triangle for every damn thing?
Hitting every damn thing also seems to be a damn mantra for the game. You hit and break so many boxes in the game that Shinra’s boxing factories will never go out of business.
Not to mention the enemies…
Holy hell the enemies.
Why are they HP sponges?
It takes AGES to whittle down even the weakest of mobs! It got so bad that I turned down the difficulty to Easy and STILL spent more time in battle than I’d like! Are the enemies all using HP Up materia or something?
Worse still, hits don’t seem to register at all to most enemies. Getting smacked in the face with a giant sword? Shot from range with a gatling gun? Punched in the balls with fists? No feeling whatsoever. No reaction, no hit stun, no nothing.
Again, this was an issue I had with the original and it’s still an issue here, years later.
Why bother with an action based system if you’re not going to put weight to the actions being taken? What’s the point, right? Final Fantasy VII Rebirth should’ve been a solely turn-based battle system game if that’s the case!
Due to that, fights feel stupendously out of sync and disjointed.
No matter what move Cloud (or anybody really) hits an enemy with, they ignore it and counter almost immediately.
On the other hand, player characters get stunned and recoil from hits when they take damage.
Rolling is almost always a bad idea unless the incoming move is tremendously linear (which most moves aren’t). Even if you think you’ve rolled perfectly, most moves will track you and still hit you in the ass. On the flipside, enemies (bosses especially) have no issue moving out of range when you do a move. Even Limit Breaks can be avoided if they move out of the way.
Otherwise, the battle system is pretty much the same as the original with the exception of Synergy Skills. These are combo moves that two characters can pull off mid-fight without using an ATB bar.
I love these. Very powerful, very showy and provide a variety of unique effects.
It’s just sad that the unlocking them is tied to an asininely stupid system called the Folio system.
Think Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid, but stupendously basic, with very little flexibility or options. You can only unlock Synergy attacks, level 3 limit breaks and a handful of (mostly useless) perks. If you’ve played FFX, be prepared to be supremely disappointed by this.
Oh don’t even get me started on the Odin summon fight.
If you get hit a certain number of times, he does a One Hit KO move (Zantetsuken) that wipes your party out unless you have auto-raise (via the Phoenix summon) or some other kind of self resurrection method.
Yeah, I’m deadly serious. Were the developers high when they coded this? Did they think they were working on a Dark Souls game?
Who thought this was a good idea? It’s not a ‘Git Gud’ fight, it’s a lame test of luck. Why?
To rub salt into the wound, once you do get the Odin materia and equip it, you’ll realize that it won’t work on enemies that can’t be OHKOed. Yup, that automatically rules most bosses out.
Congratulations, you just spent hours trying suffering and end up with a mostly useless materia.
The problems even extend to the cutscenes.
The sound design team apparently has decided that the music should overwhelm everything else.
The music is so loud by default that you can barely make out what the characters are saying. You can lower the volume in the options, but that just leaves the music soft as hell during gameplay bits! You lose either way!
It’s a shame because the music in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is honestly incredible.
Sure, there are 13013142342 different variations of Aerith’s Theme in the game (give or take), but the new remixed music (like the Cosmo Canyon or Village of the Gi theme) are legit fire. Most of them at least…
I was hoping for an epic reprise of the metal version of One Winged Angel (the Advent Children version redux in other words) to pop in…but instead we get this lame theme called No Promises to Keep.
All I can say to that is thank god it only plays in one part of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth…even then it’s one too many. Not only is it out of place thematically, it also doesn’t even sound nice. I was honestly shocked when I found out that Nobuo Uematsu composed it because it sure as hell doesn’t feel like any of his previous work.
I can’t believe No Promises to Keep gets to take its place among legendary FF love songs like Eyes on Me, Suteki da ne and Melodies of Life.
On top of that incredible ‘feature’, the voice acting for the game is truly and superbly… mostly crap.
When the two leads deliver lines that are stiffer than a day old prata, it’s an issue.
A BIG issue.
I can’t stand Aerith’s deadpan and emotionless delivery. It’s not full of innocence or naivete or whatever. It just sucks. Her monologue about the lifestream at the Temple of the Ancients should’ve been touching, heartwarming and stirring. It made me cringe instead.
That’s pretty much what I feel when I hear Cloud squawk too. Never have I wished for Cloud to be a silent protagonist until I played Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Hell, I couldn’t mind it one bit if they replaced Cloud with Cloud Jr! That would’ve been an awesome change!
God, I can feel my eyeballs shriveling and rolling up into my skull whenever I hear either of them speak. It’s bad! It’s almost Wakka (FFX) quality bad!
Come on…are we reverting back to the late 90s/ early 2000s now? Are lame voice overs coming back? Somebody should tell Capcom!
Thankfully, the rest of the cast is much better.
I honestly love Barret and his lines. He’s hilarious. Whether its his worry about how Marlene will treat him when she’s older, to him reacting to Red XIII in Shinra getup, every time Barret is onscreen, he delivers.
Tifa is great too. I honestly think Tifa should be the star of the show instead of Aerith. Yuffie is kind of hit or miss, sometimes she’s awesome but sometimes it feels forced. Vincent is superb though! Hopefully he gets more lines in the next one. Cid is ok I guess, same with Cait Sith.
I don’t know about you, but I can forgive this level of sloppy in Final Fantasy VII Remake. A second go round with the same issues as the first game with nothing noticeably improved? That pisses me off.
It honestly feels like nobody did a post-mortem on the Final Fantasy VII Remake with the developers to make sure they know what to tighten up and improve for the next games.
The Bottom Line.
If you’re invested in the game (whether its through playing Remake or through the OG version), then you really have no choice but to play the game despite how crappy it is. Sad to say, but you’re screwed. Unless you’re content with not finding out what happens to Cloud and gang (or can make do with watching the cutscenes on Youtube), you have to muck around with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
I’m not mincing words when I say that it’s really a slog. Despite not liking the OG Final Fantasy VII, I did get drawn in with the remake and was really rallying for the continuation. I really hoped that Square Enix took the time and fixed the issues present with that and added in more stuff next!
…well, they did the second part and plain forgot about the first.
The game is simply too bloated with repetitive (though thankfully optional) objectives in the open world, the fighting is horrendously nonsensical for an action battle system and the story meanders whenever it starts to get interesting. Pacing is obviously something that the developers need to learn.
Even the voice acting is of varying quality this time around.
There is honestly much more about the game that is bad than there is that’s good.
Newcomers who have no idea what Final Fantasy VII is about should just go play the original game and skip the Remake line altogether. Hopefully the third entry is better than this stinking pile of chocobo dropping.
TLDR:
Don’t even bother if you’re not a fan or a newcomer. This is not the RPG you’re looking for. Play Final Fantasy X or Final Fantasy XVI instead. If you’re that desperate, go to Youtube and just watch the story cutscenes.
The Good:
- Cutscene cinematics are great.
- New minigames (such as the on-rails shooting sections with Barret or the Rocket League-ish Run Wild) are super cool.
- Some unexpected twists.
- The new remixed music (Cosmo Canyon’s especially) is really good.
The Bad:
- Having to constantly pick up items manually.
- Insanely low resolution environmental textures.
- Inconsistent frame rate.
- Repetitive open world missions.
- Spongey enemies with ridiculous amounts of HP.
- Lack of enemy reaction to normal attacks.
- The Folio upgrading system.
- Cid and Vincent not being playable despite following you around in-game.
- Aerith and Cloud voice acting.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
You must be logged in to post a comment.