Time to take a look at one of my most anticipated games of recent memory with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. The second part of the Final Fantasy VII “Remake Trilogy” arrived back at the very end of February and I’ve been playing it like a man possessed! Taking characters and a world I already love and not only expanding the already great combat system from the last game but also adding in fun open world exploration with great graphics and no pop ins and errors like the PS4 Remake was a recipe for greatness in my eyes, and I’m thrilled to report it lived up to those heights. So let’s take a rather unavoidably long look at the game!
Background:
Cloud riding a Segway around Costa Del Sol, complete with a distance travelled meter, because everything has to count towards something in Rebirth!
Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth released worldwide on February 29th 2024, picking up after the events of Remake funnily enough, and is the second in a planned trilogy. Not actually much else to put in this spot, but ah well… got another screenshot in at least!
Gameplay:
Ever see a robotic cat riding a large stuffed bear-thing? Well, you have now!
There is a LOT of cover here, but let’s start with the combat. Like in Remake it takes a lot of the original’s combat, complete with a menu where you can pick attacks, spells, items and the like, and an ATB system of having to wait to use most attacks until it fills up, but recontextualises them as an action game instead (though there is a mode you can activate that allows you to just govern actions in menus if you wish) so you can do basic combo strings with square and each party member gets a unique gimmick associated with the triangle button, with you able to switch between three party members at any one time. As you attack, defend or perfect guard (where you take no damage if you put your guard up at just the right time) your ATB fills up, allowing you to then use the previously mentioned magic, items and special moves, some of which you unlock and master as you find new weapons and others you get by levelling up and putting points into a skill tree (or “Character Folio”). There are Summons of course, which you can, um, summon when the Summon Guage appears and fills up, though in these games they hang around and do moves of their own for a set time before leaving by using their attack from the original games, and Limit Breaks are also a thing, as your LB meter goes up the more damage you take, allowing to unleash one of three levels of attack, though levels 2 and 3 are only available after you use Synergy Attacks.
What are Synergy Attacks are here you ask? Well, much like the DLC interMISSION they’re reasonably powerful attacks that two party members can do together after they’ve built up their own “Synergy Charges” by using attack moves during battle. It’s impressive how every combo of two you can make in the game has their own cinematic double team move, it’s very fun. You also have Synergy Abilities, which you can activate while holding the block button and they have another character take a hit for you, counterattack when you time your block or distract an enemy while you charge up a powerful strike. I’ll admit it took a while to remember about these abilities but eventually they were extremely handy, if nothing else they filled up the ATB bar a lot and some characters really needed the blocking/counter assistance (a.k.a. the slow moving Aerith…) Another thing returning from Remake is the pressuring and staggering enemy system, which has each enemy have a method of “pressuring” them, which fills a gauge under their health bar, and if you pressure them enough they “stagger” and are not only immobile for a time but take far, far more damage. A lot of bosses are less about charging in and attacking and more working out what pressures them and saving your big Limit Break blows for when they’re staggered. It makes the “Assess” Materia a must-have as it tells you what staggers them and what Materia element they’re weak to.
Barrett goes one-on-one with his fellow gun-armed buddy Dyne.
What about when you’re not in combat? Well, this is going to take a while as Rebirth goes all-in on the more modern “Open World” approach to gaming, complete with main quests, side quests, collectables, powerful monster battles, towers to climb to reveal map markers (but not pull back the “map fog” unlike most tower climbing things…) and much, much more. A lot of these open world elements are kept track of by the always obnoxious boy android Chadley, who describes it as “World Intel”, giving you a check list as you enter each region. You examine Mako sites to get world lore, visit summon shrines to make the battles against the beasts to unlock them easier (and the resultant Materia stronger), fight against “rare creatures” to unlock more VR battles in Chadley’s simulation, collect “Protorelics” that often involves playing a mini-game a few times over and leads to a fun string of cutscenes and a final battle that was Rebirth’s equivalent of a Super Boss, and far too hard for me to be arsed to do, sadly (after all that work!) and yet more believe it or not, like having to catch unsettlingly redesigned Moogles to unlock their shop in each region or stealthily approaching a Chocobo in order to tame it. The Chocobos are ridable in the overworld and each region has a different colour that can do different things, like hover in the air, run up walls, that sort of thing. You can also collect lots of different materials all over the place and use an “Item Transmuter” to turn them into, well, items, the chips for which you get by either levelling up the Transmuter by creating things or doing World Intel missions where your Chocobo sniffs them out, to go full circle in this paragraph.
God I loved this game, really wish there was some sort of stand-alone arena where you could face random opponents or something…
Now, the biggest criticism I’ve seen about the game is that there are “too many mini-games”, which yes, there are all the returning ones plus a fair few more, so there are a lot. I guess it comes down to whether you’re a completionist or not as there were some I didn’t like so didn’t bother doing, like the piano playing one (I guess I don’t have good coordination between my two hands, which is also why I can’t play the piano in real life too!), where as I loved the fictional card game called “Queen’s Blood” and followed that side quest all the way through to its conclusion and loved every match. There are some moments, especially if you’re doing the side quests, that mean you often end up having to do them, especially in Costa Del Sol and the Gold Saucer (in fact the one and only Side Quest I have left undone is one in the latter where you have to beat someone’s high score in all the games and I couldn’t be bothered as some of them really aren’t that fun…) There’s the return of the annoying Fort Condor from interMISSION (and the original, though it’s different in that one), you ride a dolphin and take part in a parade (not at the same time!) also just like the original but then you also get stuff like Red XIII essentially playing a game of Rocket League, a mode where you have to take out a certain amount of Cactaurs in a time limit, a dreadfully dull game where you program a bunch of robots to move forward and attack a central enemy in three lanes, play a space shooter and take part in many different fighting arenas, plus a lot more! So yes, there are too many mini-games really, but thankfully most can be avoided if you don’t like them (unless you’re really interested in the Protorelic storyline, sadly…)
Chocobo Racing also makes a return and it’s now a fully fledged Mario Kart rip-off, complete with three types of equipment you can pick from to change your stats, an early start boost as the numbers count down, several levels of boost as you drift around corners by holding down the right shoulder button, weapons to use, items to pick up that increase your speed if you hold up to ten but you lose them when you get hit, and even areas where you glide in the air and collect floating items as you go. It was quite the odd experience in the middle of a Final Fantasy game, and alongside Queen’s Blood it was the only mini game activity I completely finished (and there was a surprising amount of tracks, though only three aesthetics, so it got rather samey by the end…) There is also a relationship mechanic that as you do side quests with a character or perform Synergy Attacks with them you gain more “affinity” with them, though at the end of the day if you do all the side quests they’ll all be max by the end anyway, and it only really effects who you take out on a date at the Gold Saucer. I think that’s it though, but I’m also sure there’s something I’ve forgotten!
These Cactuar gates were the bane of my life for several of the tracks…
As for difficulty? It’s just right, really. I died on a few bosses / Summons as I learned their attacks and how to Stagger them effectively but thanks to plenty of “Chocobo stops” that not only act as Fast Travel points but also as areas to refill HP and MP I never felt in danger on the overworld, and all the dungeons have benches (or a humorous equivalent) spread about so you’re never too far from a refill, plus you can use magic and items outside of battle to heal your party members anyway and money and vending machines are always easy to come by. The final boss was again done in six or seven phases and I got all the way to the final phase before dying, but thankfully you can restart from the last phase rather than do the whole thing again (which is good because the boss was just a few hits away from being defeated when I died the first time, then in classic fashion I died much earlier on several times in a row before getting back to that point and… lost again, THEN I beat it the next time…) Honestly it’s just a great time, with a top-classic combat system, great story and lots to do or massive amounts of stuff to do depending on how much you want to put into it.
Graphics and Sound:
Honestly the opening area was among the most striking, look at the detail on the grass as much as the stunning vista!
Obviously graphically there isn’t really anything to complain about here. I hear that on performance mode there were texture issues but I’ll admit I kept the graphics on their default “look lovely in spite of framerate dips” mode and loved every second of it. Some of the classic Final Fantasy VII areas made for stunning modern visuals, and the character and creature designs and models were also top notch. No complaints there!
Sound-wise, oh man, the soundtrack! So many remixes and some great new tracks, plus they nearly all had battle variations so when you get into a battle whatever theme is playing in the background immediately and seamlessly morphs into a more intense action version. I already rate the original FF7 OST as among the best of all time, this might top it. Hell, they even had some great remixes of Crisis Core and Remake exclusive tracks to top things off! Voice work was great too, and obviously sound-effects were top notch. In terms of presentation there isn’t any way I can knock the game.
Story:
Cloud blocks a strike mid-battle and manages to look completely uninterested…
This is the other part of the game, along with the mini-games, that has caused some uproar (though only in a “people being negative tend to be louder on social media” way) as after teasing alternate timelines/worlds at the end of Remake they double-down on that idea and go full-on multiverse, including several cut-aways to an alternate timeline where Zack is alive on a version of the planet with a mysterious glowing tear in the sky. It all comes together in the end, but I’ll obviously save that for the spoiler section…
As for the actual adaptation of the original game part? It’s pretty good, sticks to most things I remember but updates them, flips them around a bit and adds to them. After escaping Midgar at the end of Remake Cloud reveals what he thinks happened in Nibelheim several years ago that led to Sephiroth going crazy (complete with being able to control Sephiroth!) after Cloud, Tifa, Barrett, Aerith and Red XIII end up in the peaceful town of Kalm, only for them to have quickly leave when Shinra arrive looking for revenge. They know that Sephiroth is back and is looking to potentially end the world as they know it but their only lead is a large group of mysterious hooded figures slowly walking in one direction. This leads them through a mine to the large base of Junon, where they meet and eventually join up with ninja Yuffie, then cross the sea on a cruise ship and arrive at the Costa Del Sol resort, and then pop across the jungle of Gongaga, where Tifa is hurt by Cloud while he’s momentarily possessed by Sephiroth, falls into the “life stream” of the planet (where living things become one with it) and sees not only one of the fabled “Weapons” that protect the planet but also that the Whispers that appeared in the last game, which signify destiny being changed, were doing battle with black Whispers under the control of Sephiroth. We also meet Cissnei from Crisis Core, now retired in the Gongaga region, hoping in the back of her head she might run into Zack again. From there they head to the deserty lands and arrive at Barrett’s old home town, where he meets his thought-dead friend Dyne and has to fight him and later watch as he dies, but at least he gets to tell him his daughter is safe with him (or maybe that was before Gongaga… can’t remember…), then they arrive at the Gold Saucer and meet Cait Sith, a robot cat riding a large mechanical Moogle and he also joins the party.
Everyone’s favourite emo: Vincent! Dirge of Cerberus remake when?! What that? Never? Oh yeah, right…
They then head to Cosmo Canyon via local pilot Cid, where Red XIII reveals his gruff older voice was just put on to impress people and he’s actually just an eager teenager (for his species) with a higher-pitched voice (something apparently implied in the Japanese script in the original game but lost in the English translation) and finds out not just about his brave father but the seemingly alien enemies they had to fight who in turn created the fabled “Black Materia” in hopes they would finally be killed for good as they are unable to enter the Life Stream (not being from the planet and all) and so are stuck as ghost-like beings. Cloud and co. then head to Nibelheim where they explore the Shinra mansion and meet the vampire-like Vincent, who soon joins them on their journey alongside Cid (but neither acting as a playable character just yet!) After a few more trips up and down the group heads North, where they believe Sephiroth is, and where a mysterious ancient temple is soon brought back to life by Shinra Turk agents when Cait Sith seemingly betrays them by giving the Turks the key to opening it rather than them. There are also a few changes, like Aerith reveals the white ball of Materia that should contain Holy going by the old game has somehow become empty, while Cloud is being told to collect the Black Materia for Sephiroth. Obviously there lots and lots of side content, character moments and funny asides that happen, but that’s the basic gist leading to the final two chapters…
*SPOILER WARNING FROM NOW UNTIL THE NEXT BOLDED SENTENCE!*
The group arrives at the ancient temple and explore it (for a good long time…) before Cloud eventually finds the Black Materia and retrieves it, setting the temple to collapse. The group escapes in the nick of time but in a mental struggle with Sephiroth Cloud falls into a hole with Aerith and its here where things get… weird. Cloud wakes up in the other world where Zack had been hanging out and is shown around by Aerith, who eventually gives him her white Holy Materia and pushes him into a tear in the floor as Sephiroth appears behind her. As he falls in this strange multi-coloured dimension Sephiroth appears and begins to tell him (or in other words, the audience) that this dimension is a Planetary Life Stream, and that when planets are about to die this stream appears in the sky signalling its end and soon that planet’s Life Stream is absorbed into the Planetary one, and that there are countless worlds created by different decisions and the like.
That’s what the mysterious tear in Zack’s world meant, and soon we see several different Zacks in several different worlds (all signified by different “Stamp the Dog” cartoon designs, believe it or not. No “Universe 1, 2, 3” numbering here!) all either dying by gunfire like the Zack we know or existing in timelines with the void in the sky signalling their destruction, the guy just can’t catch a break. Eventually Cloud wakes up in his original timeline again and he and his allies are walking in a lost forest towards a hidden city belonging to Aerith’s mother’s people the Cetra. On the way there Aerith swaps her empty Holy Materia for Clouds complete one from her other self, showing that this was somehow planned between the different Aeriths. We then of course get plenty of Whispers signifying this being a key moment that shouldn’t be messed with as Cloud soon catches back up with Aerith as she prays at an alter and just as Sephiroth is about to do his classic stabbing our protagonist stops him… only for the timeline to either repair itself, or that was an alternate world and “our” one is then cut to, or somehow Sephiroth shunts everyone to a different world… either way, in “our” timeline Aerith is dying in Clouds arms regardless as the fully formed Holy Materia falls into the waters below, just like the original game.
“Hello Cloud, you seem to be falling through the Planetary Life Stream and are caught in between multiple realities. Want a lecture on Multiverses?”
Things then get weirder once more as after the usual Jenova battle Sephiroth appears within the space-like dimension he was in previously and is about to duel Cloud when one of the Zacks appears and helps him out, only to be shunted off into another doomed timeline, then Sephiroth transforms into a massive omni-versal God-being and fights Cloud, then get knocked into “our” timeline and is beaten by all of Cloud’s allies, then appears in Zack’s doomed world so Zack can take him down a bit, then reappears in the main timeline for a second party beatdown before finally arriving back in his space dimension and in his regular human form where Cloud is joined by Aerith, seemingly from the Planetary Life Stream itself, and the two take Sephiroth down enough that he compliments them on being stronger than he thought before flying off. Cloud returns to the others as everyone grieves Aerith’s death, while Zack falls into another dimensional hole just as his world is about to be destroyed and wakes up in the classic Midgar church wondering if the worlds will align again and allow him to see Cloud and Aerith once more. We then get a final goodbye as everyone boards Cid’s ship to head off, with Cloud finding the Black Materia on his person and putting it in his sword before talking to Aerith’s spirit, who is in the planet’s Life Stream and says she’ll work out a way to stop the Black Materia, while Cloud promises to stop Sephiroth. Cloud also sees the foreboding Planetary Life Stream in the sky but nobody else does…
So despite all it changed at the end of the day the core plot of FFVII is still the same: Sephiroth is in a Life Stream causing havoc and wishing to bring about the end of life on the planet and Aerith, now dead, has charged up Holy before he death and will work from within the Life Stream to stop him with the help of Cloud and his party, the only difference is it seems to be the Planetary Life Stream Sephiroth is in causing havoc with and Aerith is working with her other alternate selves to stop him. I guess we’ll see how it all ends in a few years’ time!
Oh and I’ll also mention the twist with the Protorelics I mentioned earlier: they belong to the timeline crossing Final Fantasy V character Gilgamesh, who tends to appear in most games one way or another, though normally not so frequently!
*SPOILER WARNING OVER!*
Overall I was happy with the story, it had its serious drama and action but they also kept the comedic moments and added loads of banter to really make you love the characters all over again and really buy into their friendship. Really happy with the modern takes on Cait Sith, Cid and Vincent as well.
Downloadable Content:
I’ve spent my whole life calling them “Cac-tars” and apparently they’re called “Cac-twars”. Who knew?
At the moment there aren’t any DLC as such, beyond some pre-order items and access to three exclusive summons if you have FF7 Remake save data, Remake interMISSION save data, and Rebirth demo data on your system, respectively.
Thoughts Now:
Just imagine this, but in the Highwind! Looking forward to Part 3 (for that and many, many other things!)
*Phew!* That was a long one, but there was a lot to talk about gameplay-wise and a lot to talk about story-wise, so… what can I do? I said at the start of the year that if Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth isn’t my game of the year then some amazing game is being worked on that I have no idea about because this looked so good, and to my surprise it not only met my hype but exceeded it. I put 91 hours into this game over about a month and a half and you know what? I don’t regret a thing. Great gameplay, great looks, great soundtrack and lots of stuff to do… what is there to complain about?