GAME CLEAR No. 179 -- Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2024, PS5)

Developer: Square Enix Creative Business Unit I
Publisher: Square Enix
Clear Date: 7/12/24

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Why should I care?
Square Enix is almost too ambitious for its own good here, but FFVII Rebirth’s solid foundation and moments of brilliance will delight fans of its predecessors.

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All Creation

From the moment Square Enix announced that the “remake” of Final Fantasy VII would be split into three full-length RPGs, I suppose it should have been obvious that they were going to make something preposterously maximal. With Final Fantasy VII Remake, though, the decision to keep the entire game set in the opening city of Midgar lent it all some amount of restraint, even if each original story beat was fleshed out into a multi-hour affair. Rebirth has no such reins. With the introduction of its vast, sweeping open world, Square Enix has truly gone sicko mode — for better and worse.

The game picks up where Remake left off. The party is in the town of Kalm after having left Midgar and is planning how to pursue Sephiroth. Just like the middle part of the original game, the duration of Rebirth follows them as they chase him (or leads on where he might be) around the Planet. Unlike Remake, however, the story events that transpire often diverge from those of the 1997 game (for reasons congruent with expectations set by events of Remake), but they stay in the same general neighborhood. (Light spoiler) It was obvious by the ending of Remake that the remake series would introduce some multiverse elements, and the events of this game really hammer that home. That particular plot gimmick gotten a bit passé in the wake of a truly staggering amount of media that has used it in the past decade or so, but given that this series started well before it really hit market saturation, I’m willing to forgive it. Besides, brilliant writing was never what made Final Fantasy VII great anyway.

What did make it great is its compelling world, charming characters, and fun combat. I’m glad to say those all remain. Like Remake, nearly every location they visit and dungeon they traverse is drastically expanded. The cities in particular have never felt more alive. While certainly nothing Pulitzer-worthy, the motivations and characterizations of the party members all get considerably more depth, which is welcome. The battle system is nearly identical to Remake, which rules. It’s an absolutely outstanding action-RPG system that blends the active-time battle commands of the original game with real-time combat, all while incorporating Materia (the equippable objects that grant your characters spells and abilities) shockingly seamlessly. For any complaints that may be rightly levvied against this series, I shall hear none concerning its combat systems. It is a triumph.

Also like Remake, Rebirth is gorgeously rendered and animated. It’s got a mostly realistic aesthetic, but there’s a nice touch of color to the world that befits its somewhat cartoonish cast. Each location is graced with a lovely new arrangement of one of Nobuo Uematsu’s compositions from the original game. Hell, playing through this is worth it just to hear those.

All these positives, though, are nearly sabotaged by how god damn big this game is. It’s separated into a bunch of different Open Zones, each of which are anchored by one or more of the cities or towns from the original game. These places are fucking massive. I know I don’t play a lot of modern open-world stuff, so I don’t have a great frame of reference, but after the first area, I really couldn’t believe how big each zone was. And that could be unequivocally positive if the whole game were filled with compelling stuff, but of course that is simply not possible at scale. Of course most of the open world is filled with little icons you go to and press triangle. The Ubisoftification of AAA games continues apace.

And, okay, it’s not all bad either. Each area also contains a “Protorelic” quest that actually contains some sort of plot and moments of intrigue. Some of the optional enemy and boss encounters are pretty fun too. A couple of the regions are also genuinely beautiful and fun just to traverse. Nevertheless, it still seems like they could’ve trimmed, say, 30% of the area of the world map and lost nothing of particular value.

The game also seems to introduce a new minigame at a truly staggering pace. These, too, are hit-or-miss. Some, like the bespoke card game Queen’s Blood, are actually pretty neat and fun. Others, like the Chocobo Racing I desperately wanted to love, seem a bit half-baked.

It would be easy enough to ignore all this stuff and just focus on the main story, but that never really seemed possible. At lots of critical junctures throughout the game, it will directly tell you the level it thinks you should be before proceeding to the next main event. I seldom exceeded this by more than maybe one level, and that was while doing what I thought was a rather healthy amount of side quests and map icon checking, leading me to believe that amount was more or less necessary to maintain a solid level.

On the other hand, HowLongToBeat has this game at 46ish hours to finish if you just focus on story. It took me 81, and I went into the final gauntlet at precisely the recommended level. I genuinely do not know how it’s possible to beat it much earlier without, I guess, being massively underleveled (or playing on easy or something). Or maybe I just misunderstood the recommended level thing and it scales to whatever you’ve been doing. I don’t know! But even cutting out some of the true excess like Chocobo Races or piano playing or whatever, I don’t see how I could’ve significantly reduced my playtime without sacrificing a lot of EXP. Well, whatever, I guess I’ll just leave the disclaimer here that maybe I’m just a huge idiot.

Anyway, suffice it to say Square has made a truly enormous world for this game, with all the negatives that almost necessarily accompany that decision. I get it, we’ve escaped Midgar, and now it’s time to explore this gigantic Planet we’re trying to save. But I think that impression of scale could’ve been preserved while trimming some of the fat. That’s all.

But I’m starting to repeat myself (perhaps fittingly). I’m sure this is a dream come true for some Final Fantasy VII diehards. The kind of insane expansion of the world of the 1997 game that no one could’ve even imagined would be possible at the time. Having only first played Final Fantasy VII a couple years ago, I do not come to this bearing that nostalgia and adoration for every nook and cranny of the original, so the self-reverence simply does not resonate as much. I hope it delights those who have been waiting for something like this.

There’s loads more I could delve into in this huge game, but in the interest of not spending 81 hours writing this post, I want to wrap it up. And because I do like it (honest!) I want to do so on a positive note. I loved revisiting the world of Final Fantasy VII and its goofy characters and brilliant combat and cheesy story. That story is also maximally expanded here, and the plot divergences get fucking wild in this one, folks. As ever, I’m along for the ride. For all my gripes, I’m still all in. Just as my lack of decades-long emotional attachment for the original game makes some things in the remake series tug less at my heartstrings, so too does it make me completely immune to caring about what decisions they make for where this story goes. To avoid spoiling anything, I’ll just say that there are a million threads up in the air at the end of this one, and I can’t wait to see how they resolve (or attempt to resolve) them in the finale.

I’ll see y’all there.