Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Developed by: Square Enix
Published by: Square Enix
Release Date: 29 February 2024

Final Fantasy VII Remake tempted and twisted fate just over four years ago. Since then, its been a long and gruelling wait to find out just what Square Enix had in mind for the next entry in this trilogy of remakes. We last saw Cloud, Aerith, Barret, Tifa and Red XIII leaving Midgar, their fate unbound and no idea where the story could go. And even with the freedom, could Square Enix deliver on a much larger scale?

Narrative

Rebirth tells a compelling, emotional and sometimes goofy narrative (in all the right ways) of all of the characters we know and love. Square Enix have me hook, line and sinker with the way they handle the characters within the deep narrative. One one hand, you have a depressing background for virtually the entire cast. The mission to track down Sephiroth, while evading Shinra and trying to take them down all at the same time has some pretty serious and dark undertones. But on the other hand, Cloud and co are slowly becoming friends. They laugh, joke and have gripping moments of character development that wonderfully get shared around the entire team.

I don’t know how Square Enix do it, but they have the perfect combination of leaving my heart literally in my mouth while watching the most chaotic and exuberant action-packed cutscene, followed by a heart-wrenching moment…. and ten minutes later I’m laughing my arse off. It’s hard to gush too much over the narrative without stepping into spoiler territory, but fans of the original will know the path this entry is heading. Without saying much more, it delivers on every single moment. You will laugh. You will cry. You will love it.

The characters themselves and the people they meet on the journey are all written wonderfully. Their interactions are unique, they feel like real people with real problems who have been thrown into the middle of this conspiracy and mission that’s probably too big for them to handle. Sure, it has a lot of “tropes” that you have probably seen in most JRPGs you’ve played, but this is why we love them, right?

Gameplay

The core mechanics of battle are mostly similar to its predecessor. A fine combination of action related inputs, followed by an “ATB” gauge that fills as you hit or guard against the enemy. Once the gauge is complete, you may select a more powerful move, a spell or an item to be used and deplete the gauge. It’s an incredibly intuitive system that felt good in Remake, but feels even better in Rebirth. It’s met with some improvements and additions such as “synergy” moves you can use with companions, which are unlocked through levelling up your weapons with skill points. At the start of the game, the battles are easy and it can be difficult to see this system in its full potential, but as you approach bosses and later-game enemies, it goes from strength to strength.

One major complaint that many had about Remake was the linearity of the title, with most of the narrative and gameplay pushing the player from point A through to point B, and so on, with small adventure corridors acting as the main space for exploration. Rebirth has you explore the world in carefully measured and crafted open zones for each of the locations, separated only by story elements, cutscenes and caves. It’s all so cleverly done to feel like a vast open world, but split into areas for the convenience of the player and the developers.

In the open areas, Chadley will offer the player a series of challenges and tasks to complete. In doing so, you earn the right to challenge more monsters in his simulator and unlock more Materia to equip to your party members, as well as obtaining new and strengthening the Summon Materia. It’s an inviting and rewarding way to promote exploration throughout the open zones. The gameplay loop is to find the towers dotted around, activate them which will uncover more activities, and so on. The activities consist of traversing through hidden locations, the odd quick-time-event and some harsh battles against monsters, with set challenges to perfect them. It’s hard to explain just how fun and addictive it is to try and do absolutely everything in all of the areas. However, I did find myself feeling a touch burned out once I was nearing the end game, with around two areas left to fully explore. I decided it was time to drop the charade, no longer pretend I’m the perfect gamer and power though the remainder of the narrative. It’s okay, though. You’re not missing anything. Once you beat the game, you are kindly offered the opportunity to return to any chapter and any area to go for the 100%! Thanks, Square Enix. You saved me the heart-ache and embarrassment of not finishing it all off.

Something that initially concerned me was the thought of trying to complete all of Chadleys tasks, which involves a lot of battles and other such tasks which reward the player with experience. Am I going to get over-levelled, I pondered. Well, you might. But there’s a clever “Dynamic Difficulty” that Square Enix introduced. It scales the game alongside your progression if you have this selected, so that you never feel too powerful despite going full ham on everything the game has to offer. This is a feature I genuinely wish every title had. Far too often I get too afraid to do too many side quests or exploration in a JRPG at the risk of becoming over powered, this quelled all of those fears and delivered on the perfect experience for me.

While I thoroughly enjoyed virtually every gameplay element that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth had to offer, I did have brief moments of frustrations. Rebirth offers a grand selection of mini games. There’s too many to remember or even bother to list. A card game known as “Queens Blood” takes the main stage. It’s a strategy card game that focuses on scoring more points than your opponent while occupying as much of the board as you can. It’s hard to explain in great detail in the form of a review for the main title… but I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a better mini game in the history of mini games. It’s addictive, it has incredible depth. It should just be its own game at this point. I had a great time with this, but I kept getting the nagging feeling that I didn’t want it to take me away from the main story. I loved the deck building and tracking down players to up my rank, but it was sometimes too distracting, when I just wanted to play Rebirth.

That aside, there were other minigames throughout which provided a lot of fun, and it’s incredible to think of the effort the team at Square Enix put into all of these games, I just question how necessary they are in this masterpiece of a title. At times they were a bit shoehorned into the main quest lines, with Queens Blood having not one, but two compulsory tournaments with matches you had to win. A few minor gripes, but they were fun gripes, so I can’t be too mad.

Visuals and Audio

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a visually stunning masterpiece. Between the decorated open zones giving the eerie vibe of a world torn away from its once beautiful fauna and the incredible choreographed cutscenes, there’s many arguments for this being one of the best looking games around at the moment. There are, however, some lighting issues at times where the character model’s faces specifically look a bit off during open gameplay. It’s not totally off-putting or even noticeable at all times, but can be somewhat off-putting in such an otherwise beautiful setting.

The score in the game hits hard even for someone like me who never played the original title. Most gamers will be aware of some of the famous jingles and tunes from the original Final Fantasy VII, and Rebirth rings them back once again. The score perfectly fits the theme of the Remake series. Vaguely familiar with a sense of “something different” treading along in the background.

Controls

For anyone coming off the back of an action-RPG or any other action-focused title, this one might take a minute to adjust. Having recently come off the back of Final Fantasy XVI, it took me a couple of hours to get used to returning to the unique combat mechanics of this remake trilogy. It’s hard to put into words, but attacks are performed not by mashing different buttons. Each character handles differently, but there’s a variation of mashing “X” or holding “X”, as well as guarding at the right times. Once your ATB gauge is full, it’s time to slow down the game and return to a near-turn-based mechanic in the middle of the fight.

Once your mind and muscle memory adjusts, it quickly becomes one of the best feeling and most intuitive battle systems in modern role playing games. The perfect simplicity of the control scheme combined with the fast-paced action and complex enemy movements is sublime. There’s almost no room for confusion and no ridiculous combination of buttons to learn to become efficient and good at combat in this title.

Does it respect your time?

I had to ponder on this for quite a while. On one hand, the title ticks a lot of the boxes I look for when it comes to a “Certified for Everyone” rating. You can pause at literally any moment, even during cutscenes. There’s almost always a perfect time to be disturbed while playing this title. As mentioned, the battle systems aren’t too complex that require many forms of muscle memory. My only hesitation is when it comes to the actual narrative of the title.

It’s not complex at all, and it does manage to stick to a selection of characters you remain familiar with and their individual stories and background are easy to follow. It’s the fact that there’s so much to do in-between narrative plot points that caused me a few issues. I was enjoying finding my way through all of the additional tasks laid out in front of me. With only a couple of hours a night to play, it could soon become a week or so in-between major story events. By that point, I found myself wondering why the party were heading the way they were going? What was the motivation again? If you go into the main menu, you can find a small summary of the current quest that serves as a bit of a reminder, but it wasn’t always as helpful as I’d hoped.

By all means, it’s yet just another minor gripe, because once I caught up to the next cutscene I once again found my feet and knew where the story was heading. It was just the overall narrative pacing in-between all of the extra quests the game provided that felt a bit off and sometimes tempted me to ditch all the side content and go full-force on the exemplary story-telling.

Summary

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a must have title. There’s no doubt about that. Whether you’re a hardcore Final Fantasy fan who adored the original, or you’re new to the series. It doesn’t even have to be a second entry. You can jump right in thanks to the “story so far” segment on the main menu, though I highly recommend playing Final Fantasy VII Remake, because you’re simply missing out on yet another incredible title if you don’t. I can almost guarantee any JRPG fan will fall in love with the gameplay, narrative and characters. Do yourself a favour and pick this up now.

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