** MILD SPOILER WARNING **
While this review avoids story spoilers, it discusses elements of the game that are revealed to the player after completing certain sections.
Final Fantasy VII is my favourite game of all time and after loving the Remake I was absolutely beside myself with anticipation waiting for Rebirth’s release. Square Enix hyped up the full release by providing a demo of the first chapter of the game to everyone. You were then able to transfer over your progress to the main game with a little added bonus. However, the demo only allowed players to skip half of the first chapter in the main game, meaning that they needed to replay a portion of Chapter 1. After I got my hands on the game on release day it was time to dive in head first…
Seasoned gamers will make a beeline for the settings menu before they kick off their adventure to ensure the game is tuned to their play style. The amount of customisation and accessibility features offered in ‘Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth’ is fantastic, you are able to toggle many features on and off to suit your play style. The performance setting does take a big hit on the graphics but myself and many others are willing to sacrifice a lot for an improved frame rate and the game still looks amazing regardless. One setting I wish I was able to change was the battle volume settings. When joining a battle it felt as though it was 50% louder forcing me to jump to the remote to adjust the volume on my TV.
The graphics and style of Rebirth are very similar to Remake with a few improvements. A lot of the cutscenes in the game are done with in-game graphics which helps consistency as each character is seen with their current equipped weapon. Some of the cutscenes towards the end of the game however have such incredible graphics it may blow some people’s minds.
Compared to Remake, the dynamic between different team members and character dialogue is significantly improved. You really feel the relationships between each character, everyone has their own unique ways of interacting with each other. Yuffie, as far as I’m concerned though, can fuck off as I found her far too irritating.The game itself I found to be a bit more extravagant and campy compared to the original, and that’s including the Honey Bee Inn dance sequence from Remake.
Rebirth fixes a lot of complaints people had about the mechanics in Remake. This time around all of your characters level equally, you even see your backrow characters in the background of fights throwing a few punches. There are materia combinations as well such as Fire/Ice which only take up one materia slot. One welcome change was also the ability to backtrack to a previous area and purchase weapons from a vendor you may have missed in an earlier area. This means you can comfortably say “I’ll come back to that later” and progress the story a bit more to come back to a frustrating mini-game or collectible. As well as fixing some issues with Remake, Rebirth creates its own with confusing menu systems. Party management is split over two menu options and it is hard to remember which one you need to go into to swap party members.
The game also introduces more features and mechanics into the series such as: weapon upgrading, synergy abilities and the folio system. The folio system is Rebirth’s version of the Sphere Grid which I found to be pointless and one system too many. I would have preferred if the game just provided those stat improvements and moves automatically with levelling. Synergy abilities are the ability to execute special abilities shared between two active team members and are awesome to watch. There are also special moves available to you by inactive team members if you find yourself with one surviving character and low health. These abilities can help save your skin in a difficult battle.
The world map makes its debut in Rebirth, a semi-open world exploration with each area segmented off from one another. You have the ability to fast travel across areas providing you have caught the destination area’s Chocobo. With the open world comes the collectathon scattering of icons across the map offering you side-quests or items.
While each area of the map can be cleared in just 2-3 hours, in the latter game this starts to become a bit tedious. Yes, you don’t have to do them, they are optional but that’s not how video game psychology works. Players are made to feel incomplete for not doing side quests. In saying that though, a lot of the mini-games in Rebirth are compulsory. The game requires the player to play each mini-game at least once to progress the story. The good thing about the story missions, mini-games and collectables are that they are for the most part, dissimilar to one another. Each chapter of the game feels different to the rest, always new things to keep gameplay interesting and non repetitive.
The biggest mini-game in Rebirth is its own card game, “Queen’s Blood”. It takes a few games to get a hang of the rules and just when you get the hang of it, it then introduces more abilities to increase the game’s required strategy and difficulty. I have heard other players have an absolute ball with this game and see it to completion. The other mini-games featured in the Gold Saucer include the fun Chocobo Races and the downright unfair 3D Brawler.
In the 3D brawler you have to punch or block depending on the opponent’s positioning. Unfortunately most of the opponents positions look the exact same and they move faster than the player can act. Users online suggested the pause trick where you pause as soon as your opponent moves, check their positioning with an image guide and hold the analog stick in the right direction to dodge while unpausing the game. One thing I will credit the 3D brawler and another mini-game, Fort Condor for is using PlayStation 1 style character models for the nostalgic fans of the original. The piano mini-game shouldn’t go unmentioned either. While I found some enjoyment in it, I could only concentrate on the right-stick movement at one time. To me, only super humans could concentrate on and operate both sticks at the same time.
Typically in RPG games you would look forward to reaching a new location or town to visit the shops to see what goodies they have that you can buy to upgrade your weapons or armour. In Rebirth the main use of the stores or vending machines is to purchase weapons you may have run past in areas prior. A feature which is very welcome compared to ‘Final Fantasy VII: Remake’ where if you missed a weapon then tough luck, you missed out.
There is the element of change with the original game’s story in Remake/Rebirth. Square Enix has fleshed out a lot of story elements from the original as well as added some additional ones. Saying they have “changed” story elements could be debatable. Square Enix’s changes to cutscenes significantly enhance the emotional impact of certain scenes, which were previously hindered by the limitations of the PS1. The game introduces extends Aerith’s backstory adding more emotion to an already highly emotional story.
Compared to Remake, you visit a lot more diverse areas in Rebirth featured in the original game. Comparing the original designs from Kalm, Cosmo Canyon and Gold Saucer you can really tell the developers grew up and understood the original game adapting each area for a modern audience and a modern gaming experience. It’s also worth noting that while the Ghost Hotel in the Gold Saucer looks fantastic, they have a flight of stairs going up to an elevator which is not very disability friendly.
Like Remake, the revised soundtrack is utterly fantastic. All the classic songs from the original Final Fantasy VII are featured in the game, alongside rearranged versions that match the mood of the current scene.
It’s very uncommon nowadays for a game to feel solid and not needing updates on day one but I managed the whole game without seeing any issues. Load times are snappy and I never witnessed any clipping of environments or odd behaviour from the game.
After 100+ hours playing the game and all the side content which I felt was within arm’s reach I was keen to head towards the end, since there can be too much of a good thing. On completion, the game allows you to replay the game again carrying over most of your unlocked items. I look forward to revisiting the game one day as the pacing of the story would be better when there are no side-quests to be distracted by.