It pains me to say but this game feels like a big downgrade from Final Fantasy 7: Remake for me. There are just too many cons compared to pros.
The combat itself is amazing, just like the first game but they made it even better. The visuals are stunning, especially the cutscenes. Those were perfect in this game, but that's just as far as I can say for major pros for the game.
The pacing between Remake and Rebirth are night and day difference. Remake kept a great pace throughout the entire game, but Rebirth pacing was all over the place.
The open world in the first 3 areas were great, but after when you reach the 4th area in chapter 9, everything went downhill from there. It was like a totally different team designing the area compared to the previous areas. Fun got thrown out the window and it was more of a desperate attempt of trying to be different from other games, but failed miserably. Side quests became a boring and useless chore, the game also became like a maze just to find side quests and towers. The challenge in side quest/missions shouldn't be finding the mission itself. I used YouTube so much just to find how to get to the mission which in itself shows how badly the level design is. Reading the comments on those videos, clearly shows I'm not the only one who experienced this. It got to the point I almost decided to just drop the game, which is insane because I was excited for Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth after how incredible Final Fantasy 7 Remake was. It got to the point where I was literally crawling to the end.
I can see what the developers were trying to do. They were trying to have more variety in their game, which I understand, but they forgot to ask themselves if some of these are really 'fun' for the game. For me, the game fell off after chapter 9. The final boss fight was pretty epic but this is expected in a Final Fantasy game.
There are some great mini-games such as Queen's Blood, but majority of the mini-games are just there seemingly to annoy you. Like I said, some of them I can't imagine Square Enix thinking to themselves "these are fun", but more of "lets just throw some annoying challenges out there".
For someone that doesn't care about the side content and just want to focus on the main story, they won't really encounter a lot of these problems, but me as a Final Fantasy player that is an illegal move to do.
I wanted to 100% this game, but after finishing it I won't be in any rush to complete hard mode.

Not a very good game. While "Remake" was a well designed, familiar-yet-fresh and most importantly very fun game, "Rebirth" has none of those qualities.

Let's talk about the story first. Honestly I could go step by step through every dialogue and cutscene in the game and point out exactly what is wrong with it, I'll try keeping it short. The gloomy, cynical, dark humor-y mood of the original is completely gone. Nearly every single scene be it a main story cutscene or a side quest needs to have some goofy silliness inserted, it's like the writers felt they had to lighten the mood all the time but in reality it just takes all sense of urgency and depth out of the story.
Then there are all these additional characters that nobody really cares about shoehorned in, some of which are from obscure spin-offs and some original.
I am not against the idea of connecting the FFVII storyline with its spin-offs, but when it's done this way it alienates people who have only played the original and had no interest in side stories, which I dare say is the majority.
And don't even get me started on Chadley and his female clone.

The gameplay. It's "open world" for the sake of being "open world". The "open" areas are first of all not very "open", they are more like outdoor mazes filled with insurmountable ridges, valleys, hills and rivers that you have to find your way through or across. It is all very rigid and makes exploring a chore.

Then there's the side activites, expect a repeat of these four about 3-5 times per zone:

• Go to point marked on map, complete ridiculously simple rhythm puzzle
  
• Go to point marked on map, kill enemies
  
• Go to point marked on map, dig around with your chocobo
  
• Go to point marked on map, complete minigame

While we are on the subject of minigames. I thought people were exaggerating when talking about them, after all I am well aware that Square(Enix) has a hard-on for annoying minigames but they are usually optional with mandatory ones being few in number. This game however, takes it to a whole new level. I do not kid you, you will have to play a minigame every single step of the way. Granted, completing them even with a perfect score is not as annoying as I had expected, but the sheer number of them and the fact that they pop up everywhere makes it feel like I'm playing Mario Party.
There are some fun ones, but therein lies another problem, the game feels the need to come up with some silly reason to make playing minigames mandatory, instead of making them optional and giving them as a reward for exploring. Basically the devs were like: "we made this cool Rocket League clone that absolutely every player must see, so let's come up with some convoluted crap in the story so we can justify forcing people to play it".

Good points:

• Combat. Slick and fast-paced, with some very welcome improvements.
  
• Graphics
  
• Music

In conclusion:
Padded out, unfocused, annoying, boring and inconvenient mess that is an insult to the original. Even if you are a hardcore FFVII fan, I sadly can't recommend it.

I spent a long time trying to figure out where to tackle this review. When it comes to Final Fantasy 7 in particular I am very much nostalgic over it, and it is incredibly difficult for me to be objective with it. I grew up with these characters years ago when the OG released in 1997. I cried at *that moment* that most of us know about. Square has given us a chance to reconnect with these characters, with modern graphics, and focused a lot more on developing the characters we all know and love.

So instead of trying to be objective with it, I will review this from the lens that I love this game. I love the characters. I love the setting. I was obsessed with them as a child, and I am obsessed with them as an almost 40 year old adult today. So I am just going to put down what I liked about the game and didn't, because the series and these characters really makes it hard to look at them any other way.



FF ReBirth overall manages to follow along with the events of the OG surprisingly well, considering what ReMake was like. On top of that, they focus on developing many of the characters personalities. We see more interaction with all of them really; Barret and Cloud, Cloud and Tifa too. Even Cloud and Aerith have a lot of development. Nanaki/Red XIII has a lot more interaction with the party too. And Yuffie doesn't feel like a haphazardly thrown in character. She actually has a place in the main story. However, none of that character development impresses me more than the relationship between Tifa and Aerith. The game highlights how close they are--they really feel like more than just best friends, but sisters and I am all for this. It makes something else much later hit so much harder too. I cried back in 1997 and I cried again in 2025. Damn you Square!

The gameplay is...overall great. The combat system is much improved over Remake, imo. I love the synergy attacks they added, and there is a lot of hidden depth in the combat system. If you try to button mash, you're gonna have a bad time. I was VERY skeptical of the combat system in the remake series, as I enjoyed the more turn based oriented combat, but I feel Square found probably their best combat system to date here.

The world itself feels great. Revisiting old places like Kalm, Junon, the Gongoga. Everything feels right, everything looks right. I especially loved Cosmo Canyon; and there are so many moments when I just had to stop and stare at my screen, enjoying these places just as my 12 year old brain imagined them back in 1997 when I first experienced Final Fantasy 7. I absolutely love their world building here.

The narrative...I appreciate what they are trying to do. Overall, as I said above, it sticks with the flow of the OG, and allows for a lot more character development. It hits the main beats of the OG, with some extra stuff thrown in.



There is something I can't say without spoilers, so I will spoiler tag it and if you have not gone through the game, DO NOT READ THE SPOILERED TEXT. Nanaki's voice. Unfortunately this DOES make canonical sense, but OMG do I hate what they did with it. That took me out so much. I eventually got used to it, but it's a huge negative for me.

They skipped over a couple things that I rather they didn't. Without too many spoilers here, they didn't include Bone Village. You just kinda go to the location after. That was quite disappointing, as I really was hoping we would see that.

Too many mini-games. I know, this criticism has been done to death; but it is a very valid criticism. Some of the stuff I liked, but things like scanning a rock? After the 5th one, it gets very old very fast. It adds nothing to the gameplay, and just made me roll my eyes every time.

Photo mode; WHY give us a photo mode, then lock our camera movement. If I want to get a good shot of one of the OTHER party members besides Cloud, I should NOT have to fight with it, and have to position Cloud nearby. If they were just trying to stop creepshots of Tifa and Aerith, too bad. It's a video game character for one, and for two, that's no reason to butcher a photo mode. You shouldn't need a mod to get the photos you want to get.

One other thing to note is there are reports of performance issues. I don't have a lot of issues, but there are moments I experience frame drops here and there. So I do think the game could be better optimized, though I didn't really notice too many; it was sporadic here and there in my case.


Overall I do NOT regret getting this game. I loved every second of it, and this is the first game in a very long time that I sank over 40 hours in the first 3 days I owned it. I'm now sitting at 91 hours at the time of this review, have beaten the game, and I jumped right back in. This game feels like revisiting old friends; a childhood comfort that I get to relive.

Square also gave us some fantastic moments that Crisis Core fans will pick up on; you can feel the love and care that went into this game and the respect they have given the characters. It may not be the 1:1 remake I originally wanted, but Square did something. They made me WANT us to be able to alter how the events of the OG play out, because I care that much about the characters now.

Excellent game. Objectively NOT a 10/10; it has issues, depending on what might matter to you as an OG player or even a newcomer to the FF7 games. However, with my background and love for the series, and how nostalgic I am for the game, the characters, etc. it is my personal ten.

Cetra. 10/10

One of the worst PC games that I ever played, worse than MH Wilds's frame pacing and LoD/culling

EDIT : Still ♥♥♥♥ after 12 hours of benchmarking on a ton of different settings/mods/hardware features.

Re...union..

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth – A Bloated, Directionless Mess That Butchers a Classic

As someone who grew up with the original Final Fantasy VII and bought it day one, Rebirth is nothing short of a betrayal. What was once a tightly woven, emotionally driven story has been stretched and warped beyond recognition — not in the name of innovation, but in the name of padding and profiting off of our nostalgia and love for the original.

Let’s talk story. The original’s key beats — those unforgettable, emotional moments that defined the journey — are either butchered or buried under hours of meaningless fluff. The narrative pacing is absolutely shot. Where once every location and event carried weight and purpose, Rebirth chooses to meander, drowning its legacy under layers of side quests, forced detours, and filler that reek of “we need to hit a longer playtime quota.” It feels like the developers were terrified of being concise.

Then come the mini-games. Dear god, the mini-games. Tedious, bloated, unskippable time-wasters that add nothing but frustration. What could’ve been fun distractions turn into mandatory chores. If you thought you'd be jumping into an epic fantasy saga, prepare to spend your time playing poorly designed minigames and on-rails nonsense that overstay their welcome by hours. And no, you can’t skip most of them — because apparently wasting your time is a feature now.

What makes it worse is the total lack of direction. The game throws you into wide, open areas and expects aimless wandering to be a substitute for compelling gameplay. Or being unable to get to a location on the map because of poor navigation or forgetting to activate a chocobo stop. Instead of focused storytelling, we get a sandbox of mediocrity. There’s no urgency, no drive — just a scattered mess of icons, distractions, and shallow activities.

And in the end, it leaves a sour taste. This doesn’t feel like a love letter to a classic. It feels like a cynical, bloated cash grab — a diabolical attempt to milk nostalgia while disrespecting the very thing that made Final Fantasy VII special. The magic, the soul, the weight of the original? All lost in a mess of overindulgence and poor design choices.

If you're a fan of the original, you deserve better than this. We all do

Bloated game with a script written by a child.

good game

Unplayable with current nvidia drivers...