Rebirth Review from a New Player - SPOILERS

Hey everyone,

I just finished Rebirth for the first time (Xbox player, so I had to wait for it to go multiplat boo) and I really wanted to post my thoughts about this wonderful game.

I wanted to start off by saying, I loved the game, even if I do have some criticisms that I would like to see addressed in Revelation. I played Remake before Rebirth, and also thoroughly enjoyed that, but I wanted to post my thoughts on Rebirth particularly as it is fresh in my mind and in my opinion, is the much more complete experience. One other disclaimer before moving on, I have played the original ff7 many times to completion, it's one of my absolute favs.

Pros:

Characters - this is probably the thing Rebirth does best. These characters have so much depth it's insane, I was deeply invested in their lives and back stories. It was so nice to see more details on the events in nibelheim, Aerith, her mother and the cetra, Barret and the people of Corel, Red 13 and his backstory with shinra (though I do think they bungled the emotional impact of his father's reveal a bit compared to the original), even Cait Sith, who I was never a big fan of in the original was done remarkably well. The only character I did not really enjoy was Yuffie, although I cant say she wasn't faithful to her original incarnation.

World Building - the open world setting really lends itself to making the FF7 universe feel more complete than the original. You really get the sense that you are fighting for something great by working to protect the planet, which is of course a major theme in the game. There is of course some repetitive side content in the world exploration, but for the most part it was enjoyable to me.

Graphics - Incredible. One of the best looking games I have ever seen. The animations, the character detail, the world detail, it honestly is hard to beat. It also still manages to remain very faithful to the look and feel of the original as well which is substantial.

Music: I mean it's nobuo in his prime, what more can you ask for?

Story - I mean it's ff7 story. It's incredible. I cant think of too many games that get me more emotionally invested in the events that are happening. I do have some qualms with the ending and multiverse stuff that I detail down below, but I overall loved the main storyline.

Mixed:

Side content - while much of the side content is excellent (queens blood, chocobo racing, side quests, photo hunting, fort condor, piano playing, certain other mini games) there is a lot that is very repetitive and uninspired and just feels like filler: in particular the combat trials in chadleys simulator, certain other chadley requests from around the world, some gold saucer mini games like 3d brawler, some of the protorelic content (I'm looking at you nibel protorelic quests), etc., some of it just straight up not very good. I'm hoping that revelation takes a more quality over quantity approach here.

Combat - don't flame me please, but I don't love it. I don't hate it either though..it has some good qualities but I just think it doesn't work as well as it should. This isn't some "boo hoo it's not turn based" critique either, I just think that the stagger system doesn't make for a satisfying combat system. It feels like you are spending all your time spamming attacks to get the monster pressured, then staggered in EVERY fight. I don't know how to describe it, but the stagger system makes it feel like the team is never really getting stronger as the game goes on. All the while, your uncontrolled party in combat is basically never able to get enough ATB to make use of the wonderful materia system they developed. The game also wants you to spend more time defending and dodging because EVERY enemy attack basically sends you flying, Interupts or stuns you which is counterintuitive to the ATB system. It seems like the system is just a bit half baked. It could be fixed with better party AI (this can be done with materia) and some changes in the way ATB builds up. I played ff12 the zodiac age not long before this, and it's glaring just how much better that combat system plays from these standpoints. Not saying it needs to be just like the gambit system, but it couldn't hurt to have a way to make better use of all these spells and abilities in the game.

Multiple timelines/Ending - I am really trying to remind myself that the story is incomplete here, but I just am not a big fan of this story convolution. It feels unnecessary and adds more confusion to the story than is necessary. It made the ending feel like a complete mess and completely robs the emotional impact of Aerith dying. All of this convolution between Zack, and Aerith and biggs and all of that feels like it robs their characters of the unspoken aspects that we had before. Even if I am 99% sure that it's all in clouds mind, it still makes the ending feel weak. For perspective, my wife, who has never played any ff7 content was watching me play both remakes and she was completely invested, even she said the ending was atrocious and completely lost her interest. She couldn't even tell that something had happened to Aerith truthfully as it's so disguised. All of this also commits on other sin, it somehow makes sephiroth seem like a big weenie. Dude has fought us several times now and keeps high tailing it away. Instead of doing things, he keeps tryiny to make cloud do them. Somehow we managed to turn the most badass villain into this loser who is a shadow of the OG. But again, I am putting this mixed becaude I know the ending is not complete yet. It can still be salvaged, but man they have some work to do to recover that.

In conclusion, I know I had some criticisms, but I really did love this game. It was a joy to play, even if the ending kind of buggered up some pretty iconic moments. I don't believe it soured the rest of the experience too much.

Final verdict: 8.75/10. Now let's bring it home for revelation!