I’m writing this on a train ride to see a friend. Out of the window to my left I catch glimpses of the city - the Eye and the River Thames - as my journey is taking me through London. I’m thinking about my time with Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth (FF7:Rebirth), and the city around me is reminding me of its predecessor: Final Fantasy 7: Remake (FF7:Remake). I remember being enthralled by how the city of Midgar felt, by the slums below the plates and by the stories of the characters living in them. It truly felt like I was on a grand adventure, with a narrative that swept me along, like the Thames and its boats. FF7:Rebirth didn’t make me feel this way. It slowly became like swimming upstream. While this probably makes it sound like I didn’t enjoy myself, I didn’t start out feeling this way. There were parts of this game I absolutely adored, but unfortunately, the repetitive experiences of the open world connected with the narrative structure in a way I found pretty unfulfilling in the game’s later sections. Where Remake felt like a relic from a previous era of gaming made shiny and new again, Rebirth felt quite modern in some ways I didn’t like and by the time I was done with it, I wasn’t as sad to see it go as I’d hoped I'd be.
We return to the world of Final Fantasy 7 pretty much immediately after Remake ends. Cloud and his friends are taking their first steps into the world outside Midgar in the search of Sephiroth. Unfortunately, all they have to go on are the vague inklings of a headache-addled Cloud, who’s convinced following some robed, stumbling men will lead them to their quarry. This takes them on a journey across the world’s many varied regions, from lush Gongaga to the arid and rocky Cosmo Canyon. They’ll even find time to take a cruise and spend time at a theme park - which was my favourite region of the game. Compared to the cityscape of Midgar, Rebirth’s world seems absolutely massive, at least at first. In fact, pretty much everything is bigger this time around, from the scale of the locations to the combat experience.
The fantastic hybrid real time/active time battle combat system from Remake makes a return, with a couple new additions. The biggest of which are the new team-up moves. Combat is performed in teams of 3, and each of those 3 can take part in a synergy move with another team member - usually causing elemental or big stagger damage depending on the duo. These are big and flashy and also feed nicely into the game’s relationship mechanics, which I’ll talk more about in a little bit. This addition is really great, and builds out an already great combat system. Each facet of the combat feeds directly into another and the loop is incredibly satisfying: realtime attacks boost ATB gauge - ATB moves boost your synergy metre - synergy moves cause massive stagger - staggered enemies encourage you to go back to real time attacks and lay on the damage. This core loop doesn’t even factor in the little offshoots of elemental enemy weaknesses that dramatically increase stagger when capitalised upon. The combat in Rebirth rocks, and has a pretty high skill ceiling for people who can really make use of it. Players with far more skill than I have really pushed the combo possibilities of this system to its limits. I really have no complaints about the combat, except that maybe later on in the adventure the enemies became a little spongy. But by then I had bigger issues souring my experience, so I don’t know if this was really the case or just a symptom of my other frustrations.
These issues took the form of Rebirth’s open world design. Each open area of Rebirth’s world, barring the first that is used for some simple tutorials, plays out in pretty much the same way. There are a handful of tasks that are given to you by Chadley, the materia gifting cyborg working to undermine the Shinra Corporation, who enlists Cloud to collect intel from each of the world’s major areas. One example of these tasks are the summon crystals which, once you’ve collected all 3, allow you to fight a simulated version of a powerful materia summon within Chadley’s combat sim. Upon its defeat, you will gain the materia required to summon that boss to aid you in battle. Unfortunately, the way you engage with and complete this intel quest changes little from area to area, a pattern that is present in all the world intel quests from combat to map towers to exploration. There are only 2 real ways that each region changes the way you interact with the open world. First, each region comes with a new chocobo that can perform a different traversal ability like flight, climbing or jumping which unfortunately only really changed the way you reached these world intel tasks. The other is the quest for protorelics, small fragments of a great enemy that are scattered across the world, with one piece for each region. These were fun, and introduced much needed variety. One had Cloud, Tifa and Barret transform into toy pieces to take part in a board game and another had you completing timed missions against some sentient cacti. This is all to say, it’s a pretty mixed bag as far as the open world aspects of Rebirth go, which is a shame, because it really soured my experience and made some of the later regions feel quite disappointing.
However, there is one region of this world that I absolutely loved: The Golden Saucer. This is FF7’s version of Disneyland - a sprawling theme park with minigames, prizes, a spooky hotel and even travelators that look like starscapes. As you visit each zone of the park you unlock Moogle fast travel between them but I never used it because those travelators are just so. Dang. Cool. The available minigames were also amazing. There’s a VR version of Cloud’s motorcycle chase scene from Remake, a 3D fighter where you play as a toy version of cloud and even chocobo racing! You can earn points in each game that you can spend on prizes, which for me usually meant saving up for rare Queen’s blood cards for Rebirth’s in-world card game that really sunk its claws into me. Once you’re done with everything The Golden Saucer has to offer you’ll get to take a character on a date to the Skywheel - a ferris wheel that overlooks the whole park.
Who you get to take on this date is decided by Rebirth’s relationship system, another returning feature from Remake. By performing team up moves, engaging in conversation (and saying the right thing) and doing their specific side quests, Cloud can build up his friendship with each companion, ultimately leading to a date with the one he’s closest to. I really enjoyed this, especially because it's way easier to track here than it was in Remake with little smiley faces above each character denoting their closeness to Cloud. It was great to feel like I was genuinely getting closer to these characters and It really helped keep me engaged when the story wasn’t really moving anywhere…
…And I do mean anywhere. The open world design really doesn’t do it any favours. There's a region you head to later in the game that is framed as being really important to the story, and I really felt like we were ramping up. But then you get a call from Chadley asking you to complete the same set of challenges you’ve been performing in the previous regions. I found the story itself, the hunt for Sephiroth, really interesting but the open world failed to compliment it in a way that left the 2 parts feeling quite disconnected. Rebirth suffers from being the middle of this 3 part story, I think, as it has a really difficult task of setting up a final game as well as functioning as a complete story itself. Remake did this really well, even with its divisive final boss. Unfortunately Rebirth never quite manages to do both, instead feeling like a back-loaded story that ends up being a lot of confusing, fast-paced set up for the final instalment. It’s a real shame because I really am enjoying the meta narrative Square Enix is exploring here. When it works it's really great, but for me Rebirth works less often than it doesn't.
This review probably comes across quite mixed, but that’s only because I had really high hopes for this game. I only started to dislike aspects of it towards the end, and those were mostly tied to its open world. The way it handles characters, the combat and some of its regions was fantastic. In the end, I just don’t think it quite comes together in the way it could’ve, leading to an adventure that felt unfulfilling compared to its predecessor. If you played Remake and are excited to see where the story of Cloud, Sephiroth and Avalanche goes then this is an essential purchase. However, not all of its parts are as essential as others. Experience the story, the fantastic combat and great character writing but maybe just dip your toes into the open world when you need a break. When it works it really works, and when it doesn’t, visit The Golden Saucer or Costa Del Sol and take a break, maybe play a little Queen’s Blood. Or in my case, play a lot of Queen’s Blood.
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