This here is the second part of the Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy. I had to wait a year for the PC version, so from the outside looking in basically started with me being very excited at people comparing it to the goofiness of Yakuza, and then ended with ashen man-like things groaning at me "dooooon't do allllll the side quests". Jokes on them, I did all the side quests (aside from those two really god damn hard ones).
Because the first part was strictly in a linear section of the game, it felt relatively close to the original. The second part introduces the overworld, so you could probably draw some really interesting comparisons between modern and past game design since it's a rather more drastic departure, turning it into a pretty typical big budget run around and touch activity markers on the map to fill up some bars affair. For my part I don't remember squat about this part of the original, so I won't. I actually have very little to say about it, despite it sucking around 120 hours of my lifestream. So let's boil it down to a few main points.
1. Somehow the combat is terrible even though it's nearly the same as Remake (which I probably described as "the best attempt at mixing action and rpg of all time", I dunno I ain't reading all those words I wrote).
Now it's easy to chalk this up to the fact that Remake was a linear game while Rebirth contains open world zones. And you'd be half-right. But really, it's still a pretty linear structure. And it has a dynamic difficulty that theoretically scales enemies up to your level regardless of how much side content you've done (not that such systems ever work that well). I don't think the zones themselves are the problem so much as they chose to make these encounters trivial because they were open and didn't want to break up the wandering around formula. The result is just... I played this game for so long, I beat an entire game based on it prior to it, and yet I feel like I don't understand a thing about its combat.
There are dungeons and bosses that are legitimately challenging but I never actually felt like I was doing it right- the fact that these things are always sandwiched between hours of messing around in the dead easy open areas basically means you forget everything the next time you reach a dungeon. Occasionally it expects you to actually guard and it was confusing every time ("oh right that's a thing you can do")? It's made worse by being a remake of part of another game, so it feels like getting dumped into the middle of another game when you start with 5 party members. You get a ton of magic and abilities to use but I never wanted to engage with it beyond making sure everything was leveled up because just doing basic actions and spells works most of the time.
It is, quite frankly, the strangest and worst learning "curve" (looks more like a roller coaster) I have ever experienced in a game. I do prefer it over games that are just dead easy the entire time, but it feels like I never actually got to play the game (and since it's long as heck, I have no desire to go back and try out hard mode and the super bosses to find out what the real game even is).
2. Yes, they understood the assignment and completely nail the goofiness of Final Fantasy VII with glorious buckets of money thrown at it and even reveling in the fact that HD graphics makes it way funnier.
There's not actually a whole lot to talk about here, but it really does just like... highlight the fact that modern high budget games are kind of semi-miserable affairs that are afraid to get in touch with gaming's history of being goofy as heck (outside of some marvel quipping and Yakuza/Like A Dragon). So when a game DOES get goofy fun, it really stands out. Then again I only play like a fraction of high budget games that even get released these days because they're all the same game so what am I even complaining about?
There is a somewhat deeper thought to have here, though. Chunks of the original game (as in event scripting and writing for a town/story sequence, not literally everything) were basically just made by one or two guys. Hence the goofy jokes and flavor scattered about. That's... a kind of goofing around situation that's a bit harder to recreate when a chunk of a game now costs several million dollars and takes hundreds of people? And in a certain sense is weird seeing it enshrined in a remake like this- but it does still delight.
Oh, and I guess a couple times the goofiness does contradict the seriousness of the plot a hand full of times (please stop flexing while talking about a mass shooting) in a way that didn't register in the original so much. Not as often as you would expect, which is some kind of feat.
3. (REMAKE SPOILERS AHEAD) Yeah all the remake changes still make everything related to Sephiroth kind of suck, and the ending is another bloated mess that sort of ruins a defining moment of the original.
We've had years to sit on the fact that the Remake trilogy isn't actually a remake. My opinion hasn't changed much: I think it's a bit dumb, hurts an otherwise near flawless remake, is kind of misguided, and yet I do respect the fact that they didn't want to spend a decade of their lives remaking something they already made and are willing to do it with their bajillion dollar remake trilogy. Rebirth is technically a bit more involved in this regard since it no longer has to save the reveal for the end, it adds a sort of side story interspersed through the story. It's. I don't know, man. We're going to have to see the third part, I guess.
Actual Rebirth Spoilers: It's kind of dumb that the lifestream contains the multiverse in it? The thing is just life goop inside a planet, a physical object that can be in danger from alien things, not a gosh darn spacetime container. I dunno, whatever. I appreciate that we're now as confused as Cloud is. Spoilers Over.
Since there's an overworld now, the bulk of extended stuff is basically just side quests and longer versions of the existing dungeons (don't mind these- it fits in well with the longer pacing of the new overworld, though sometimes the writers fail to come up with any interesting dialogue when characters get separated from the main party which is kind of a wasted opportunity to not explore new character dynamics). And the side quests are, well, middling to play but fantastic to watch. They really stepped up their game from Remake here. They aren't quite the legitimate short stories of The Witcher 3, but they are phenomenal lighthearted moments with the characters. The end result is that while the game is stupid long, it doesn't necessarily feel as stretched out as Remake since it has way more to work with.
4. SHOULD you not play the side quests?
I've seen the popular consensus turn into "don't do all the side quests!!". Which... I think is maybe missing the problem. The first half of the game is actually pretty perfectly paced: the story sequences are quite long so the braindead sidequests are actually a perfect complimentary down period. But what happens is that the areas get bigger and as such the side quests eventually vastly outgrow the length of story segments, plus one of their general designs just kind of sucks. So the entire pacing of the game slows to a crawl towards the end and it's kind of miserable yet also just good enough from all the previous goodwill that you do end up getting through it. Would skipping the quests in the second chunk of the game actually help? Ehhh. I dunno. Maybe.
5. Queen's Blood is
There's a card game in it. It's really good by far the first time they've come close to recapturing Triple Triad, but I ended up making a completely broken deck that let me mop up half the game with it, only losing once or twice. Kind of a shame.
6. It took nearly a year to beat
The result is frankly I already forgot half of the thing. There are dumb gimmicks with pushing things in some of the dungeons! They kind of stink. Not offensively so. Most of the minigames are pretty good or ok, but others feel like they put an intern's Unreal Engine learning project into the game. Well, I suppose that fits the spirit of the original.
7. If you think about it, by being a remake of the middle chunk of the original, all that really happens in this 120hr game is the party chasing some black robed guys around.
Conclusion
So should you play Final Fantasy VII Rebirth? I feel like you already made that decision years ago. Yeah, it's good if you want more fun times with the cast. Yeah, the pacing ends up bloated and miserable for the last 40 hours. The combat plummets off the rails like a minecart with a monkey in it, but it's such a goofy fun time in other ways that it doesn't necessarily ruin it. Maybe wait for the remake of the remake, they'll nail it then. But if you're going to die before then and you're a Final Fantasy sucker, well, obviously you're going to play it.
