Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth Review

[dh-hovey]

I'm posting this review here because i refuse to buy the game a second time just to post a review of it.

Combat: Combat is good, but the characters your not actively controlling barely build up any ATB gauge in battle. Personally I don't like there decision to add the ATB gauge, It just seems to make combat jankier.

Open World: Once more we have the appearance of the yellow paint telling us where we can climb. And, if you loved the yellow paint, they doubled down and gave us that for chocobos as well. Instead of giving us chocobo breeding they have boil down the chocobo abilities down to a regional gimmick. If they had gone with breeding, they could had hidden/blocked areas that would have us coming back to previous areas with the right or golden chocobos.
They don't tell you there is a mini-map option nor how to switch to it. Also, someone needs to tell the developers that not every point of interest on the map needs to be a mini-game. I mean seriously we have Lifesprings(Quick-time), Sanctuaries(Memory/Quick-time), Moogles(don't know what genre this is), Excavation(Teasure hunting), Fiend Intel(Combat Challenge), Classified Intel(Mini-boss/elite), Chocobo hunting(Stealth), and finally Protorelics(Various).

Controls: There is no good reason to not let players change their key-binds. They should of just added a jump button, it would help with hitting flying enemies with melee characters and the Terrain action button is already just a purposely limited jump.
Summons: Still not that good. The summon gauge has to be triggered to appear, limiting it usefulness in battle. This is a gripe I also had with Remake, but it seems like they tried to strike some weird balance with how summons work in 7 and failed. Instead they should of had summons work either as like in the original FF7, coming in launching one giant attack and costing MP, or something like 10 where the party disappears and you play as the summon.

Moogles: They honestly look creepy.

The Weapons: Emerald weapons design is just a massive, horrible, disappointing, downgrade; whoever decide to take Emerald weapon and reduce its design down into a simple oversized fish with a giant green materia in its underside needs to fired.

Story: Overall unimpressed with their version of this story, their changes are either hit or miss, unfortunately mostly miss. They do a great job expanding certain areas, but other areas feel exhustingly and sometimes painfully bloated. In the beginning, I had hope that could deliver a good story, that would bring back the feeling of playing the original game, But as I delve into the game and more importantly its story this hope began dying out. Instead of feeling impressed or engaged, most of the changes to the story left me feeling angry, bewilder, or just disappointed. The farther I progressed the story, the more I felt like I was needing force myself to finish this game. Until Ch 9 where this feeling reached such a level that I decided I needed to begin skipping as many of the remaining mini-games and side-quests as possible, in order to reach the end and be done with this game as soon as possible. Below are some of the issues I have with specific parts of Rebirth, mild spoilers.

Ch.1: Drags on in places, and the interactive scenes where you need to be holding one or both triggers multiple times are just plain annoying and take away from the scenes they're present in. I hate when they forcibly slow the characters movement to a crawl. They ruin/expose the major twist immediately after the flashback. I know the original been out for over 20 years, but that's still no reason to ruin it, also for some this will be their first time playing FF7.

Ch.6: Midgardsomar being changed from a terrain threat into a one-time unavoidable boss, was disappointing. My hopes were that you would need to use the chocobos to island hoop as a means of avoiding the snake, but no it doesn't even appear until very end of the swamp.

Ch.8: This whole chapter is just full of unnecessary rewrites, some of which caused certain moments to be less impactful. Cloud and team can take on monsters, shinra, and war machines, but somehow get defeated by a group of low-rent thugs; same with Dyne, sneaks into gold saucer takes out everyone in the battle arena area unharmed and unseen by cameras and escapes, but somehow get captured and tied up by the low-rent thugs. We don't even get to fight the thugs we just lose in a cut-scene. They should of stuck with Dyne original death, having him simply being gunned down by surprise shinra forces made his death far less impactful. Not only that but, we don't get any time to let his death sink in, as we are immediately thrust into a another unrelated boss fight against Palmer of all people, the joke of a villain, which immediately kills the mood.

Ch.9: What is wrong you developers, serious question. You rewrote the Tifa and Cloud falling into the lifestream storyline, not only adding even more annoying interactive cutscene elements, but you change its place in the story, both location and timeline, and made it into a solo Tifa scene. Without Cloud there this storyline loses its meaning and importance to the overall story.

Ch.10: Why did have to do Cid so dirty? You turned the gruth, blunt rocket-man into a younger, cheeky airline pilot. Not only that, you removed Rocket Town and Shera. The Cosmo Canyon is beautiful, impressive, and with what I would consider only minor changes to the story, at least until you meet with the Gi. Honestly I only have a few gripes with this section. I don't like the change to Red's voice, it sounds to human and childish; I can't take him seriously anymore with that voice. They made climbable walls for Red's trial give off a jarring and out of place yellow glow. The additions to the Cetra's and Gi's lore are strange, to say the least. Also side-note, I don't think the game developers know what a seminar actually is.

Ch.12: The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Rufus fight.

Ch.13: This chapter just dragged on and on. The aerith portions of the temple need more lifestream energy added in, more than once I found myself basically soft locked because couldn't find enough energy to open up the next path. Side-note, so the developers do know how to do good climbable walls that fit the area, they just chose not to until now.

Ch.14: Although visually amazing and with interesting boss fights, the story is just bad. What is western developers obsession with making everything into a multiverse. Also, why are you bringing the Act 3 Finale bosses into Act 2. And, Oddly enough this chapter feels rushed.

Final Review: Although I love most of the visuals and combat, and maybe half of the mini-games, unfortunately the game's main campaign and story drag it down being its weakest point. I can't say i like this game, but I also can't say that I hate it either. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has ultimately left me with a sense of apathy. I do not look forward to any further installations or even other FF remakes after this. The only people I would recommend this game to, are people whom have neither played nor intend to ever play the original FF7.