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Inhale that copium
It is a bit complicated.
First, the statement only 20% actually finish the game being around 40-50 hours isn't really accurate, because of those who attempts to do the side content which puts it well over 100 hours.
The fact that the game released only 4 months ago, and is such a massive game, could be part of the reason. The fact that the pacing is a bit off and can burn some out so they take various breaks at times could also influence the stat.
There is also the group who bought the game and can't play it because they didn't take the system requirements seriously and lack mesh shader hardware support on their GPU.
If we make a comparison, only all this time later has approximately 42% of Elden Ring's entire playerbase on Steam made it to the final dungeon, while actual completion is impossible to know since the next achievement splits heavily. This is more than FFVII Rebirth, but not that much more despite its number of sales and how long it has been out.
You mention 40% make it to chapter 7, but even some of Elden Rings earliest and easiest bosses such as Ancestor Spirit has 42% while Red Wolf has 60%. Really no need to even dive into the optional content with very low completion rates.
This is a good example of a very popular game (over 20m sales) displaying a somewhat similar situation, despite the fact it is also popular for its NG+ and abnormally highly reviewed actually to the extent it was literally washed of its flaws causing controversy.
In reality, a lot of games see this situation where people don't actually complete them, and side content and NG+ have particularly low completion rates.
Even an ultra short game like Resident Evil 2 Remake, despite its popularity and positive reception, has a mere 50.0% (exactly) completion rate of one of his routes, with Claire at a whooping low 37.1%... Really no need to consider routes B or the woeful 10% hardcore completion rate.
Back to FF7 Rebirth, it has been out 4 months and is larger than both of those games (about 5x the size of RE2R, and a bit bigger than base game Elden Ring).
As for the 60% stat you gave? Elden Ring's visiting Roundtable Hold is a mere 76.5% and defeating Margit, the first real boss, is 72.1%. They're both at the very start of the game and essentially mandatory.
The last two points worth exploring is that this game already existed on PS5. Some of the buyers may have already bought it there and only wanted to enjoy the visual upgrade a bit on PC (or maybe fully) and haven't found the time to finish it again, yet.
Further, they might be delayed by all the other games that have released around the same time eating into their time like Final Fantasy XVI, Black Myth Wukong, The Last of Us 2, and several others I can't bother to go grab the names of. It has been a busy year compared to the more traditional drought of game we've been dealing with, so this could be why. I, myself, have a backlog due to this very issue that I'm struggling to find the time to work through and yet, here we are with Stellar Blade coming out soon (geez), too.
The JRPG genre is also in a major recessions, overall, with hardly any good new content so this could be a major point of influence in the reception, as well.
Now what have I seen and, personally think, about the content of the game?
- Main story is quite good.
- Characters are great.
- Combat is good.
- Open world exploration is pointless / kind of bad.
- Some side quests are good, others are bad.
- Mini games are overwhelming bloat, even if they are often good (depending on tastes).
- Pacing is, frankly, terrible due to open world content and mini game bloat. One can skip past that but it seems startlingly impossible for a lot of players to accept this fact...
Ironically, I'd say the second half of the story is the better half, which is also when there are almost no mandatory mini games... but it also has the worst pacing due to the sheer amount of exploration and extra optional mini games / quests that pop up, if one is doing that stuff.
Worth mention that the mini games have almost no tangible boost to your party's combat power, so they're mostly for fun. There is an exception, involving Genji equipment but that is literally locked behind NG+ to access, and isn't even needed at all for the hardest fights in the game (though it can make them easier, of course). There are only three real rewards (weapons) locked behind mini-games and they take, a combined less than 10 minutes of your entire playthrough to unlock. As for Chadley's intel stuff, you can usually just do 5-7 short intel and grab the one good materia each region and move on, as he has a ton of extra excessive (often bad) materia that needs the majority of the intel stuff done to get which you don't even need.
So if your issue is you keep trying to do optional content out of concern you are missing out on making your party stronger, skip it because you are not. Just focus on the main story if that is what you like. Realistically, this kind of point could be made about countless other games like Witcher 3, Elden Ring, Xenoblade Chronicles, etc.
Thx for the effort. I see your points. Although I'm not convinced that the world of FF7 Rebirth is bigger than Elden Ring.
At the moment I'm trying to enjoy the story as much as possible without doing any sidequests. I finished the grassland region and quickly understood that I wouldn't bother finishing any other regions because of the bloat you mentioned.
However, even the story is soooo tedious. Like I'm watching 30min of boring and poorly written character interactions, run around for 5min, being thrown into a 10min boss fight, have to watch another set of poorly written character dialogue before I'm just "stuffed".
If that's the pacing you mentioned I have to strongly agree. It has no real balance of gameplay + interesing plot. It's either watching a cinematic until I'm bored or force myself through bloat until I'm rewarded with plot that is... bloated as well...
I like all the characters so far. I honestly don't even mind Chadley so much. But I never feel the dark vibes the game should have with the story.
For example I was so disappointed by the "Midgardsormr" not just being stuck on a pole by Sephiroth like in the original. This lurking shadow and hint of the villains power. They completely ruined that scene. Like many others.
But well... I feel what you've been saying about being "burned out" by the pacing and having to take breaks from it. That's what I experience all the time.
Almost can't convince myself to keep playing at this rate.
This game didn't come out of the oven perfect, but it really hits the spot like a good pizza pie with just a few burnt toppings.
that is probably less than 20% of the people that owns the game.
Still, in terms of content/playtime on average Elden Ring is approx 134 hours while FF7 Rebirth is approx 166. Of course, this is just base Elden Ring. If we include the newer DLC it supposedly adds approx 51 hours for completionist. Pulled from howlongtobeat.com and seems somewhat reasonable in my experience, though I think better players could rip through the base game quite a bit faster for completionist (but the DLC due to the way it is designed is pretty much a forced timeframe).
Hmm, I feel like the initial dialog in the grasslands was a bit weird and cheesy, with odd tensions like with Tifa. I think it gets better later, but idk if you will feel the same so hard for me to offer more insight on if its worth it to you. I think it particularly picks up in Gongaga, chapter 7 iirc. onwards.
The darker vibes don't particularly really start to kick in until Gongaga, and than ramps up further in Nibelheim and kind of becomes a trend for the rest of the story. Honestly, you could consider the first half of the game kind of like a more lighthearted excursion before the grimmer reality starts to set in and can no longer be ignored.
It will have small positive moments like the dates, but later on is mostly a grim kind of situation. I wont spoil the details though. It isn't like super dark, though (yet), but describing it as grim would be fairly reasonable.
Sephiroth definitely got a lot of rework in Rebirth compared to the original, that is for sure. Idk if you played the original, but he is essentially at a much more powerful stage this time around than in the OG, but without enough understanding of the original (or never played it) that might not be obvious since he doesn't really show off until the end. Even then it only drops hints, but you can puzzle that he is much more dangerous at this point than the OG but it isn't so in your face bearing down with overwhelming might shown off. Maybe they will do that in episode 3.
While the Midgardsormr situation is handled differently, you might like some of the stuff they do with the Weapons and the more serious reworking of lore and Cloud's (and other characters I will not spoil) regarding the cellular degradation and black robes/reunion stuff. Starts to pick up a bit further on those topics, particularly after Costa del Sol.
Hopefully it clicks for you, but if not maybe you can put it on the backburner until you don't have something else to play or just play it to mix things up for 1-2 hours or something every 1-2 weeks and maybe it eventually does click.
First off on a meta level, while it is 'marketed' as a standalone, we need to be aware that it is the middlepart of a triology. So we need to have a lot of character development and some boring transitions.
Now for the pacing:
You could part the game roughly in two parts pre-gold saucer and post-gold saucer.
The first part is a journey and you should play it like this: Grassland and Junon are good areas to explore, same for costa del sol part of corel. The party has no real agency at this part, besides a vague follow the robes story.
All Characters are out of their used enviroment (midgar) and have to act to the new surroundings, Red XiV needs to be introduced to the party and most of the time they game and the dialogue does a good part with it.
Exception is a bit the Tifa and Cloud arrgument, but there my issue is the on/off consistency than the actual storyline, but they act weirdly from estranged to best friends again then back to estranged.
For a slow journey the open world is nice and the side quest are cool, here we have a slow but good pacing imho.
The second part is the one with the pacing issues, here the party has a lot more agency, even if it is a scavenger hunt, there seems to be a lot more at stake and the events get darker. Here the open world hinders the pace.
As for writing and immersion:
First off this is Final Fantasy, if you are not up for cutscene, cinematic Bossfight, and some small walks, this is not the game for you. But all in all this is more or less the core final fantasy formula.
Also try to hold back the comparison with the OG, while the story is roughly the same, this game takes more time to fluff the characters out, give them more nuance. And has more technical possibilities than the OG.
I love the OG, but i also love rebirth and remake for their take on the story they want to tell.
Nono, you definitely are inhaling it.
What happened to organic world exploration done by the player? Its all just go here click that, do this boring mini game, go here click that, do another boring mini game. hours and hours of this ♥♥♥♥ between story bits.
The story is barely good enough to carry players through the slush of content they call gameplay.
As someone who makes it a point to review my purchases. When the question being posed is whether it is good or bad. Then the standard isn't great, awesome, or game of the year. It is whether the reader is liable to get their moneys worth. Even if they never finish the game.
Personally I haven't finished this game yet, because the next games on my to play list. Came out so I started to play through them. I've now played through Assassins Creed Shadows plus Spiderman 2, and I've even sunk twenty hours into Oblivion.
Now I'm back to the game I already sunk a hundred plus hours into, and now I intend to play it to completion, and get it across the finish line. Now I'm kind of grinding to make that much easier I hope.
I suspect that a lot of folks haven't finished it yet, because other games on their lists finally arrived. That doesn't mean they wont come back to finish this game. Just that they like me don't like to review games they haven't finished.
That being said having gotten over a hundred hours out of the game. I'll probably give it my recommendation, but it isn't even it my top ten for the genre. I even gave Spiderman 2 my recommendation even though it's a cash grab, because it is better then most of the garbage.
The measure of a game isn't whether you finish the game, but whether you can get your moneys worth in enjoyment out of it. A lot of people play the parts of games they enjoy, and never touch the rest of the game that doesn't interest them.
well, now over a year later, and then you start seeing the reviews from gamers, and not the journalists, saying exactly the opposite. Remake was better for being streamlined, and the real world exploration was boring and had nothing that made exploring the world actually enjoyable in the older JRPGs.
Ran around in the open world and was like "nope". The card game is also leagues worse than the one in FF 8 and 9.
I enjoyed Remake (the DLC was neat as well) quite a bit because it had great pacing, but that seems to be missing here.