Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Review

Cloud Strife’s adventures in Final Fantasy VII have been one of the most iconic Japanese RPGs to grace Western shores. Once the pinnacle of the genre, the title surprised any entirely new generation with the bombing mission in Midgar on PlayStation 4 and beyond. With a new console generation and powerhouse to showcase Tetsuya Nomura’s character designs, the second entry in the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy is finally upon us as a timed PlayStation 5 exclusive. Will the wide-open landscapes of Gaia manage to succeed to a higher pinnacle now that Cloud and crew are no longer under the rotting pizza?

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth begins in medias res with a tale of Cloud Strife regaling one of his more infamous missions as a Soldier First Class alongside Sephiroth to visit his old hometown of Nibelheim. Within a matter of hours, players are reintroduced to the fall of Sephiroth in some of the most memorable moments of storytelling in Final Fantasy VII as the motivations of Sephiroth’s descent to the main antagonist are quickly revealed. It can be awkward to feel hyped for a murder spree but Square Enix has done the iconic heel turn justice and that craftsmanship carries through into the main adventure.

For all of the complaints that Final Fantasy VII Remake was left on autopilot and a linear adventure, Rebirth turns those concepts on its head with wide open environments to explore. From Kalm to Junon to Cosmo Canyon and the Gold Saucer, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth expands upon the first disc into a hundred-hour epic. Brief moments of the original adventure that were mere footnotes in the Planet’s history are fleshed out and expanded on in creative ways. The original trek to the ranch to teach Cloud the basics of Chocobo wrangling is instead the start of a game-long storyline that culminates in Cloud encountering Chocobo of every flavor and breed before eventually becoming a master jockey at the Gold Saucer’s legal bird racing scene. Characters that were minor cameos in the original game are much more fleshed out and players will build a more intimate connection as Barret and Red XIII face their pasts.

While it’s true that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth largely follows the formula of its original predecessor with the individual story beats, the story has its moments to go completely off the rails midway through the adventure. Without delving into spoiler territory, story elements from Final Fantasy VII Remake begin to see their payoff throughout the adventure, some subtle changes to how the mythos of Final Fantasy VII is told to completely new scenes intended to subvert the player’s expectations and make them reconsider if their memories of the original are to be relied upon.

Final Fantasy VII Remake took a bold move to introduce an entirely new real-time combat system to Cloud’s Soldier skills and Rebirth improves the combat in nearly every way. The Active Time Battle system of building ATB charges through regular attacks and using them to unleash menu commands from spells to skills. There’s a renewed focus on building team synergy to unleash stronger attacks that can offer temporary perks along the lines of unlimited MP usage for a short time or unlocking higher tiers of limit breaks. As players consume ATB bars, many skills can provide synergy points that last throughout the fight and can be unleashed if their partner also has enough points built up.

To unlock these synergy skills and more, each character owns a skill folio with skill points earned by collecting one-of-a-kind skill books or a few points at every level up. Every character’s palette offers unique active and passive boosts while most share many similarities. Some of the earliest skills that can be unlocked are MP-free elemental attacks that let players exploit the elemental weakness of an enemy without having to consume any MP while also having the added benefit of improving the effectiveness when a character casts that specific element. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is quite stingy with the skill points for most of the adventure, so it may take a couple of levels before players can unlock a single new skill per character.

Each character retains their unique fighting style from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and with the roster of anti-Shinra heroes growing, there are a few new characters to get the hang of. Cait Sith offers a completely new fighting style by running around as the megaphone-wielding cat for fast attacks or climbing aboard his chonky Moogle doll companion for heavier attacks and unique Moogle skills that make the most of his fortune-telling and gambling prowess. And yes, both Zack Fair and Sephiroth are playable (as is obvious with the Nibelheim flashback segment that opens Final Fantasy VII Rebirth) but in brief segments that slow down the narrative to give a short reprieve from the whiplash of major revelations.

Minigames have traditionally been a personal highlight of modern Final Fantasy titles and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth contains a new card game that might be one of my favorite additions. The Queen’s Blood card game that Cloud is introduced to at the journey’s onset gives players a brief taste of the tactical action. With the unholy matrimony of Triple Triad and Gwent, Queen’s Blood pits players against one another in three rows of winner-takes-all board control with each card bringing a unique ability. If there’s one complaint I have about Queen’s Blood, it’s that there simply isn’t enough of it. Before players reach the Gold Saucer, there’s only a handful of opponents and cards to collect, but as with most of the minigames in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, those matches quickly ramp up to dozens as Cloud works his way up to be a Blood Sovereign and engage in one of the more sadistic questlines in the game.

Most of the minigames that Cloud can distract himself from saving Gaia if but for a brief moment at the Gold Saucer have been fleshed out to become better than the original. However, I cannot say the same for them all. Fort Condor is thankfully a matter of four missions (repeated at a higher difficulty with different handicaps) but the tactical rock-paper-scissors gameplay just wasn’t for me. A new addition called Gears and Gambits in another region of Gaia combines that tactical action with the Gambits of Final Fantasy XII where individual units are programmed with conditional commands. Strategy buffs can find some enjoyment in this short minigame as well, so I can’t be too harsh on it other than saying that I found it to be the most stressful of the bunch. All of these minigames, of which there’s usually one per region, feed into a meta layer of collectibles that culminates in a fight with one of the Final Fantasy series’ more iconic returning characters.

Graphically speaking, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is quite the looker in both Graphics and Performance mode on PlayStation 5. A last-minute patch dropped this morning which offered several improvements to both the demo and full game. I played through nearly the entirety of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth in its Performance mode, as the action itself felt more responsive to timing perfect blocks versus the other prettier mode. There’s still a motion blur per object that persists over from Final Fantasy VII Remake for some character models and objects that can be distracting when rapidly spinning the camera but overall does little to hinder the actual gameplay mid-combat.

If there’s one word to describe Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it would be ambitious. Tetsuya Nomura, Kazushige Nojima, and the rest of Creative Business Unit I at Square-Enix have turned what is merely the remainder of Final Fantasy VII’s Disc One upon leaving Midgar into a 100-hour-long epic. Moments of distracted exploration throughout the massive wide-open environments are often bookended with more linear story segments that balance comedy and somber moments. Players will feel more intimately engrossed with the story of those chosen by the planet and routinely have their fond memories of playing the original tickled with delight. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is an absolute must-play for fans of the series.

Review code provided by the publisher.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth takes the second chapter of Cloud Strife’s struggle to save the planet he calls home and surpasses the highs of Final Fantasy VII Remake in every way.

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