Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

• Genre: Action RPG
• Time Played: 125 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It definitely feels longer than it should be if you really wanna do everything. That said, it does seem like you can wrap the game up in about 40 hours, but the vast difference between a more completionist playthrough and mostly main story its far greater than I feel it should be.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Infinitely pleased. I have my criticisms, as I do with all games, but I haven't played a game that had me grinning ear to ear as much as this... probably since Remake came out.
• Why I played: Final Fantasy VII is my favorite game, along with Remake.
• Recommend to others: I definitely would recommend it to any Final Fantasy VII fan. Maybe don't try to squeeze every bit out of it, unless you're into that.

--Disc 1-- Remember

While playing this, there were various times I reminisced on the old days. 25+ years ago, when Final Fantasy VII and Ocarina of Time were the undisputed best games of all time. Well, to say it was "undisputed" wouldn't be fair. People disputed alright. But in a time when a much smaller percentage of people used the internet and video games as a hobby were a bit more niche, any time there was a poll of something along the lines of best game of all time, it ultimately ended up with FF7 or Ocarina of Time. Best character? Link or Cloud.

I remember gamefaqs specifically would do both those polls annually as a ladder style tournament over the course of weeks, and after and back and forth between the two each year for several years in a row, they would eventually remove them from the options. I think maybe they specifically made it so prior winners were exempt, moving forward, something like that? 

Okay so that's one website, big deal, you may say. Well it is. Back in the day, EVERYONE(don't be pedantic about this) used gamefaqs. There was no searching google for "How to get x in y game" and sudden results. You had to look up guides by going to the website, selecting the platform, selecting the letter the game starts with, selecting the game, then sifting through the various guides that fans made, for free to find the one with the best info. There is something pure about that, and those days of the internet I miss. Now you search x for y - while you're more likely to find it - you have to sift through terrible copy/paste websites of stolen content filled with dozens of ads. You know what has zero ads? The plain text documents that people wrote their guides on, on gamefaqs. Not an image abound. Sometimes if a visual reference was needed, people would implement ascii art. That's dedication for nothing other than maybe a few internet kudos. Actual passion instead of keyword stuffing stolen content for 1 cent of ad revenue multiplied by thousands.

Anyway, regardless of how people feel about FFVII now. There was a time where it was one of the most popular RPGs. There was a time when, even, a lot of people who claim to not like it now, claimed to love it. I've got the receipts; I know who you are. It's the curse of something that gets so popular, famous, infamous, holds such a legacy, and continues to grow as a franchise itself. Final Fantasy VII, one game in the greater Final Fantasy franchise, is larger than many other games' entire series. I'm not saying you have to like it, but it's something that I think has to be understood to understand why Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth exists.

Not everyone thinks Final Fantasy VII is the best game of all time, best rpg of all time, or even best Final Fantasy of all time. But Final Fantasy Remake/Rebirth only exist because - put quite simply, it IS the best game of all time. Or at least, at some point, was considered as such by more people than any other game. If you put up the original FFVII side-by-side next to a modern game, it would be hard to say why it's the best. The combat and supplementary systems are basic by today's standards. The minigames are clunky. The graphics, are a product of their time for sure. The story, writing, characters, which for an rpg are probably still pretty good, but presented in a primitive fashion with clear limitations. It requires some effort from the players side to fully indulge in it, compared to a modern game. Music is still on point though.

Gaming is a lot different now. Video games are mainstream media and more people play at least some kind of video game than not. They were not always, and far from it. I can't count the times I was told I'd grow out of it, or told I was a nerd for liking video games. I remember very few adults ever playing video games, and they were almost exclusively advertised to kids, even when Mature games started gaining more prominence. I was "bullied" by my peers for liking video games into my twenties. Even in the past 15 years, the atmosphere surrounding video games has changed drastically. 

Now, there are just so many games being made, there is something for everyone. There are games you can pretty much just play exclusively and never run out of content. There are games that fit every little niche of interests. The big AAA market is no longer games that cost a few million dollars to make, but rather, hundreds of millions of dollars. There are little projects being made on tight budgets by a couple of people that rival any game made 20+ years ago.

That's what makes me absolutely lose my mind to see how many people wanted Remake and Rebirth to be an exact, 1:1 remake. Modern graphics, remastered music, maybe fleshing out the cutscenes and more dynamic direction. The was games are being made now, that just wouldn't cut it outside a small fan project or a cheap download-only title and that's only going to satisfy a niche group. It just doesn't cut it for a game that has held the title of best game of all time. Sure maybe I wanted that, at some point. Some point nearly 20 years ago. That's how long it has been since the FF7 PS3 tech demo that made us all lose our shit.

Maybe it's a missed opportunity, but that was the only time a 1:1 remake would have been appropriate. Early PS3 games weren't so much more than PS2 games - or even original PSX games - outside a level of refinement and improved visuals, but games were still being designed taking the same approach. In 2005, the original FF7 was still a top contender for best game of all time. Maybe it didn't hold that title as uncontested as it once did approaching a decade after release, but Advent Children came out that year, and Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core, a sequel and prequel to FF7 were yet to arrive, and all that could have only been in production if Final Fantasy VII was still highly revered as the best game of all time by so many people. Though, this is when I did see the amount of detractors begin to rise, maybe not liking what they saw in these new products, maybe out of simple obstinance or contrarianism. Gaming rose and the percentage of people who cares about FF7 declined.

Then came a long period of quiet time, but FF7 never really lost it's cultural relevance. Final Fantasy games that celebrated the entire series saw rather regular releases. Mobile games with cross overs. Cloud, and even some other characters from FF7 have seen dozens of appearances in other non-specific FF7 media. Both Cloud and Sephiroth are in Smash Bros, one of the other best games of all time. Cloud and FF7 have quite a legacy, and are iconic.

All that is to say, Remake/Rebirth and whatever potential sequels we get, have to be big. They have to be larger than life. They have to make the most of modern gaming to every degree they can. A simple 1:1 remake would not captivate the modern gaming industry, community, fanbase, etc. It would be a simple "Oh neat" that dedicated fans played, gain maybe a few new fans, until dissipating into the ether of an oversaturated market.

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth is just that. It is, perhaps, one of the most game games I've ever played. Rebirth is more than any game I dreamed of making myself, one day, if I could ever make games. I'm not just saying that because there is a lot in it. I've played games that are longer, more stuffed with content. Shoot, if you just want more content than you can handle, just play basically any MMO. But there is difference. There is an intent for a singular experience behind this content. A lack of procedural generation. I don't mean that just in technical sense, like how Roguelikes have procedurally generated content. I mean that as in, the procedure of creating the content. You can play any given number of dungeons in an MMO, and they're largely the same. Different enemies, layouts, and set pieces, sure. But there is a certain procedure to making them. It's tangibly different in an intangible way. A giant open world with tons of side quests, missions and collectibles could offer more to do, in the time it takes you to do it. But do you get as much out of it, in the same time?

--Disc 2-- Reminisce

I'm mesmerized by my experience with Rebirth. Rebirth took me all of March to play and I feel like my brain can barely keep it all in. There is so much of just, everything. There is so much story. There is so much dialog. There is so much music. There are so many mini games. There are so many mechanics. So many cutscenes. So many jokes. So many emotions. So many times I laughed. So many times I cried. So many times I grinned ear to ear til it hurt. So many screenshots I took(540+!). So many cool sequences. So many fun times. So many great fights. So many beautiful locales. So many challenges. So many tournament fights. So many side-quests. So many Queens Blood cards.

It is a game of abundance, and it could perhaps be, too much. Part of it's on me. I could have just skipped some content here or there, gotten through the bulk of it and called it a day. But FFVII is important to me. The very last time I dressed up to go Trick-or-Treating on Halloween, I think I was 12. I dressed up as Cloud. Plywood buster sword and all. I own the real-life motorcycle that the Hardy Daytona was based off. My earliest examples of spam/alt accounts I used for online games that only let you make 1 profile were xX_Cloud_Strife_Xx and xX_Tifa_Lockheart_Xx. People like to attribute this importance of FF7 to being the first RPG I ever played. It's not, but it's a popular assumption. When talking about FF7 the past month alone, it's been assumed at least three times.

FF7 is probably the 4th or 5th rpg I played(not counting some action/adventure games people like to call rpgs), and 2nd Final Fantasy game, after Tactics. I think people like to make that assumption just because FF7 was in fact so many peoples first rpg, and they just can't conceive of it being someone's favorite other than maybe because it was their first. I do think it's fair to say that we can hold a certain bias toward the things we experience first, as it sets certain standards, but I just get annoyed at the lengths people go through to downplay any favorable perception of FF7.

Final Fantasy VII may not be the first rpg I played, it is however, the first game that had a deep emotional impact on me, and every piece of FFVII media I've consumed since continues to have a deep emotional impact on me. Rebirth is no exception.

I enjoy almost everything this game has to offer. I don't just enjoy it, but I relish it.

--Disc 3-- Review

I love the combat system and I love how each character has their own playstyle. I love how fun the synergy attacks are, I love the loop of the action in the combat and the various ways you're challenged. I think managing the commands with the ATB system and cycling through your characters is an excellent middle ground/adaption/evolution into the action from the original plain turn based system. There were a couple really annoying fights in the game that I just think are only annoying and maybe some of the balance leans on the more difficult than it needs to be side, but I could have always went to the easier mode, but I wasn't even playing on the hardest mode. Maybe a little more could have been done in the way of balance. Also making more of the abilities meaningful for more of the fights. I had Gravity and Quake on Cloud for a good portion of the game and they were pretty much useless in any fight I opted to try to use them. I should have taken them off when I noticed the trend, but I'm stubborn. 

I love the mini games. And good thing because the game is filled to the brim with them. No, it's overflowing. As a whole, I love the mini games. There are a couple I didn't really like, but there are so damn many. I won't be surprised if we see a stand alone Queens Blood thing, or at least see it in something else. My main issue with the mini games is many of them just have way too many challenges overall, but I appreciate them existing to mix up the pace. Only a handful of instances of some of them are even mandatory. You could potentially miss out on a lot of them, and I think that's a missed opportunity to streamline the experience while leaving retries and challenges accessible in their respective locations.

I love the environments. FF7, outside it's world map, originally is probably pretty linear by todays standards. I think Rebirth does a good job of having mostly straightforward story areas that don't feel like hallways, while having mostly freely traversal open worlds outside of that. Shoot there are 5 of them too. When I first saw the first map, I was like "wow, it's so big and beautiful, this game is gorgeous, they adapted the world so well, how am I going to see it all?"... and then there were 4 more of these huge overworld maps to traverse. Once again, so much. While none of it was bad, it did feel like they were trying to stuff just every bit of "modern open-world gaming" into these environments. Not bad, but, maybe at worst, unnecessary. That said, the good experiences outweigh the bad by far. It's just the most glaring aspect of how this game can be "too much". But traversing these locales is fun, and you gain something for everything you do. Character progression in this isn't just a simple experience and level up system, rather, there are several experience and level up systems, and some are tied specifically to how much of the game you explore and do. This is a good way of subverting traditional grinding, but it can be too much. I think it would be more appealing to more people if you got a little more out of it for a little less effort.

I love the music. There is nothing bad to say about the music. It is amazing. Just like Remake, just like the original, flawless soundtracks. Impactful, thematic when the mood calls for it, but sometimes you just need something to pump you up. I only wish it had an area where you could play any music you wanted, like Remake did. Missed opportunity to not be able to cycle the OST on the Buggy.

I love the characters. Probably my absolute favorite aspect of this game is the characters. To be honest it's always been one of my favorites, and the gold standard I hold so many other rpgs to. Most turn-based rpgs feature a playable cast of around 6-9 party members. Some are much larger, and some smaller, sure. But the vast majority have a party member I just don't like, or is annoying, or I just don't particularly care for, one way or another. FF7's cast is just delightful and they've been realized to their fullest potential here. If I were to make the slightest complaint, it would just be I wish Tifa was a bit more headstrong and not as passive.

I love the way they interact with each other. I love the way they're consistency portrayed that makes each feel like their own individual. Aerith's quirk of imitating people in the background of scenes but then also doing it in her Synergy with Barret. Yuffie and Barret's playful bickering. The way Aerith and Tifa interact with each other in almost every scene that if they weren't both into Cloud you could definitely say they're just gals being pals, but I guess they're just BFF's, but it seems to earnest either way. The ways the character interact that seem negligible, but show these are people that care about each other, like helping each other up from a seat, or down from a high position. Cloud catching Yuffie in their synergy attack. 

Besides being people in a dangerous world, hunting a man who wants to destroy it, ecoterrorist, people with great powers, people who aren't necessarily human and some who are, have a gun for an arm, these also feel like real people, who have faced a plethora of trials and tribulations, people who are friends, and care about the ones they are with. They have fun just being with each other, and I have fun being with them.

I love this game.