FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH

Too much annoying mini games/10

Overall, it's a disappointing game when compared to the thrill I got from playing the original FF7. I hate the action combat. Many of the mini games were tedious. Several boss fights had insane difficulty compared to the rest of the game. That final boss fight with 25 phases, no moment for a break, unskippable cutscenes, no chance to save materia changes, etc. made it a super frustrating way to finish the game and definitely pushed me towards the negative review. The game has some decent moments, but it's ruined by all the headaches. How many slow-walking scenes does a game need? Even in the final moments, I was being forced to slowly walk around.

垃圾游戏，一坨狗屎，不会做游戏就别做，塞了一堆小游戏在主线里面干嘛？特别是那个死马3D斗士，知道你制作人年龄大，熟悉这些老游戏，非教玩家玩这些司马游戏干嘛，你放其他地方，放支线里不好吗。10个小时的主线有5个小时的时间是在玩那个小游戏还有和主线毫不相干的事，比如潜伏到人家上任典礼上要先花时间找小兵，找到后又玩3遍司马互动小游戏，然后宣布克劳德带的礼仪队获得了最佳，又搁那开始欢呼庆祝。。。。知道你一部拆三部卖要大注水，但是你注水能不能长点心？捞钱不是这样捞的呀，就这一坨还能进年度最佳游戏提名呢，tga的要求真低。

This game, in terms of its technical content, is a buggy, poorly optimized mess. I've encountered a number of areas wherein I seem to experience rubber-banding, like my ping is high in a multiplayer lobby. In a single player game. In terms of game design, it's open world Ubislop. We've added Towers to the world of Gaia, and Activating the Towers Marks Your Map with Points of Interest. There are also a myriad of 'immersive' activities wherein instead of pressing a button to accomplish a goal, you have to press and hold the button, which is of course much more immersive, surely. It is, in fact, more annoying than it is immersive. The Fort Condor battles make a return, and somehow seem to have degraded in terms of the playability and strategy compared to the original game. We're down to two explicit lanes and having some rear towers on either side. Also, instead of having your entire budget set up at the beginning, we instead have a time-gated resource. And, in terms of the writing, spoilers ahead- Every moment we diverge from the original game's content, it is for the worse, as we are subjected to new and 'original' characters who have zero subtlety and less depth. Sephiroth is put in the hands of the player during the Nibelheim flashback. THE Buster Sword, an original and unique weapon, is referred to on the in-game news as 'A buster sword'. The nuance of Shin-Ra is gone, and every minor character completely hates and condemns them. The knowledge of the crisis of the Planet is commonplace. Every Queen's Blood player is a cringe event horizon. Yuffie appears to have, somehow, become even worse, based on the entire 3 scenes I have seen of her so far. This review will likely be amended. I will continue down this dark road, not because I hope things will improve, but because I feel I must see this train wreck through to the end.

Had great potential and i don't mind the minigames and side quests. My main grip is the lack of player agency in a game that feels like you actually do (You make choices, you build bonds with the characters, there are alternate timelines and you are forced into an unsatisfying ending no matter what.) I liked remake #1 more. I hope the next game provides a better narrative experience.

The longer I play this game, the more disappointed I am with it. If you liked Remake Intergrade, you likely won't like this. I will edit this in the future if my opinion changes as I progress in it. I will note, I got Remake and Rebirth at heavy discounts, if I paid full price for Rebirth I would have been very upset. To start, this game is bloated with random objectives that don't feel like they have much substance, namely the Chadley questlines, of which Chadley constantly interrupts your gameplay to talk to you while progressing in said questlines, which you are unable to do anything except skip the dialogue. Ultimately they are there to help you gain materia, but it feels like the sheer quantity of objectives feels unnecessary. There's a ton of materia for you to get, but some of it is not really needed, but I want to complete every side quest along the way and appreciate the artwork and efforts from the devs. Comparing to Remake of which the side questing was more about helping people and getting stronger along the way as well as making money as a merc, it tied together well. I feel it didn't at any point distract too heavily from the main questline. The pacing was well done. Not for Rebirth, there's lots of low value objectives to complete, and many of them go on too long and feel like they are there only to slow progress, adding zero substance to the story. There is also a TON of handholding in this game. I don't mind quest markers and objective lists, but telling me how to fight something while I'm fighting it with character callouts defeats the purpose of the Assess materia, which gives you tips on how to fight said creature, alongside vulnerabilities, immunities, etc.. Don't have the character tell the player how to play the game. Let the player figure it out on their own. Puzzling out a battle is part of the fun. Tutorial prompts are fine, but the way the characters will say in combat what to do is far too much with how the game is structured. Stick with the Assess materia giving you the necessary information, that format worked perfectly with Remake without distraction, and it works here too. (Also why is it assess instead of libra?) Mai is entirely unnecessary. She will talk to you while you're in combat to assist you while facing specific combat encounters through Chadley's questlines. Though she is extremely distracting throughout each combat encounter. I hate to say it, but you could remove her from the game and it would only be a positive. She can exist narratively and for an initial tutorial, but there is not a reason for her to tell me what to do in combat. Let me figure out encounters on my own. Some notes on the combat, it feels the effectiveness of dodging and blocking were reduced to put in perfect guard, while I don't mind a perfect guard mechanic, it feels it wasn't needed. I understand that I can upgrade the perfect guard materia to be able to block grapple attacks, but that doesn't mean you should make enemies grapple you more easily when you dodge. It feels when enemies make these attacks they can turn more quickly and on a tighter radius than before, making your dodge window even smaller than Remake, which wouldn't be a huge issue if these were different games, but it's a single game remade and split into 3 standalone games. No sequels or prequels, the same game made into 3. I don't need to go into details of the crafting and material gathering, it's there to slow your progress, nothing more. A gimmick added because it was popular at the time this was developed. Should have stuck with equipment being a reward for discovery. I'm sure investors and/or the publishing department was a heavy influence on this. So far Rebirth is feeling cheap and unpolished compared to Remake, with none of the love. A lot ideas but nothing to tie them together. Minimal substance and a disappointment overall. I don't blame the devs, I blame the publishers. I'm worried the publishing department at Square and pressure from investors is overtaking the development team by adding what works in other games for a 'formula' to try and make money instead of what fits and makes the game good, and it's making me not want the third installment. If I paid full price I would want a refund. 190 Gigabytes of disappointment is what I'm looking at. It feels to me that Square Enix saw FF7 save them in the 90's and they're hoping to bank on the fanbase and modern game formulas to make them more money than ever, and it's unfortunately working.

TLDR; I've played all FF games post VI, bar some of the spin-offs and... what a waste of budget with this one. Story consistency and respecting my playtime plays a huge part for me and that's where I'm focusing in this review. WHY? Similar to FF15, you need to consume other media to even begin to understand what on earth MIGHT be going on in this game and it's still not enough. You only move because the game tells you to move with no real motive or explanation. Every major scene is "meta" - you need to do assumptions on what happened, how we got here and what each thing that you see means (again similar to FFX15) again... WHY? I hate to be spoon-fed like most JRPGs do with repetitveness and over-exposition... but not explaining anything or expecting me to have played 2 games and have seen a movie and have them memorized and fresh in order to better guess what might be happening on a brand new title is.... WHY?! After spending about 100h in this game (I always try to go for all sidequests in RPGs), I feel that someone tricked me to play this game. Story - If you are looking for a complete story that makes a tiny bit of sense, you won't find it in this trilogy, ESPECIALLY in this game. - The game implies a multiverse but doesn't clearly say it. Scenes are made to be interperted, not to move the story. - There are no real stakes and there is not a real explanation about anything that's going on unless you've played both the original FFVII & Advent Children spinoff - even if you do, the multiverse concept makes the stakes go away even on the supposed iconic high-stake scenes. - Game expects you to care and feel about characters you got no idea about (like Luna in FF15) Visuals/Presentation - World and characters are beautifully crafted and some sceneries and set plays are visually incredible. - Lacking some PC optimization. Even with an upscaler, you need to play around with settings to avoid hard frame drops and stutters. - Cutscenes are finally way more organic than previous titles. - Anime tropes and body movements on a game that has ralatively realistic graphics are a huge turn-off. Gameplay&World exploration - Solid fighting mechanics, fun combo/sunergy systems - Summons are visually stunning but are a bit off in terms of when you can-vs-need to activate. - OpenWorld mechanics are solid, not amazing but not bad either - Chadley - the worst and most annoying "exposition NPC" that overstays it's welcome in video game history (and that's an understatement) Side Quests - HOLY BLOAT! - Apart from a couple that have some actual depth (usually 1-2 per region), the other 8-10 are fetch quests designed only to slow you down. - Minigames: Majority are fun but overstay their welcome. I'd prefer to have half of them if that meant I had a story that hooked me in. Conclusion: I tried to love this game but the incomplete story telling and the writting turned me SO OFF at times. I could turn a blind eye on pretty much everything if I had a full story.