EMOTIONAL ENVIRONMENTALISM
In a game stretched to absurd length, of course I had to die over and over during the final phase of the last boss. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth simply refuses to let go. For weeks it had a grip on me like an addiction. I finished the game one evening and woke up the next morning ready to dive back in—only to realize I didn’t need to anymore. The boss was dead. The credits had rolled.
What a wild ride it was. At no point during my marathon playthrough did I feel indifferent. My mood constantly oscillated, slowly drifting in one direction before some twist—good or bad—violently reversed the momentum. This is one of the hardest games I’ve ever had to rate. Joy and sadness, triumph and frustration, boredom and excitement, adoration and disgust all shared brainspace throughout this scattershot experience. To quote Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
At the end of Final Fantasy VII: Remake, Cloud and his companions escaped the steel labyrinth of Midgar. With the world now open before them, they set out to silence the planet’s cries of pain—cries caused by the megacorporation Shinra, which drains the planet’s lifeblood to power its cities and fuel secret biological experiments. Looming over everything is Sephiroth, the ultimate antagonist, who seeks to annihilate all life and ascend to godhood. The opening chapter recounts his fall from grace, as he uncovers the truth about his origins.
During the climax of the first game, the party also shattered destiny itself, unleashing a multiverse upon the world. From this point on, anything can happen. Events from the original Final Fantasy VII (1997) are no longer guaranteed to unfold the same way. Fate has lost its grip on reality. Veterans and newcomers alike are left in a state of uncertainty. It’s a bold and intriguing narrative decision—but unfortunately, one that doesn’t quite pay off in the end (I won’t spoil how or why).
This narrative freedom also means you’re free to explore the world beyond Midgar at your own pace—and Rebirth is enormous. It rivals famously bloated JRPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. My playthrough clocked in at 95 hours. Thankfully, the presentation is consistently excellent. The game is visually stunning, rendered in glorious third-person, and imbued with a strong sense of history. In both characters and locations, the designers nail how we imagined these places would look when we first saw them as blocky polygons decades ago.
Old battlefields are littered with rusting tanks and collapsed structures. Abandoned machinery decays in the wilderness. Deserted laboratories hint at grotesque experiments that mock nature itself. Life in major settlements appears strangely unaffected—people dress in modern suits, frequent beach resorts, and flock to amusement parks—while life around coal mines and desert canyons is harsh and dangerous, with monsters roaming freely. A phenomenal soundtrack, mixing new compositions with reimagined classics, gives each region a distinct identity.
This presentation does a lot of heavy lifting, because you spend a lot of time in each area. The haunting choirs of the Gongaga jungle were the only thing that got me through one of the most restrictive and frustrating traversal mechanics I’ve encountered: endless mushroom-bouncing madness. Everything is bloated. Everything takes forever—from main quest progression to the smallest animation. The world is on the brink of annihilation, and your party is uniquely qualified to stop it—yet the game constantly encourages you to slow down, wander off, and engage in distractions.
The first 20 hours are the weakest by far, feeling aimless and unengaging. The main quest revolves around following a procession of zombified, gray-robed figures chanting about “Re…birth…” while supposedly leading you toward Sephiroth. Meanwhile, your companions behave like tourists on a sightseeing trip, cracking jokes and goofing around. It drove me mad. Thankfully, this tonal mismatch improves as the story progresses.
Every settlement is surrounded by vast stretches of uninspired open-world bloat. Side activities and mini-games are scattered everywhere, revealed by activating Ubisoft-style towers. These exemplify the sheer amount of unnecessary busywork the game throws at you. Each region also requires you to tame a Chocobo for traversal—a process involving one of the worst stealth mechanics I’ve seen since the PS2 era.
Scanning minerals, fighting minibosses, digging for treasure, herding plush-like Moogles—it all starts to blur together. Still, out of fear of missing out, I pushed through most of it, and I think that decision paid off. Some late-game bosses would’ve been nearly impossible without the summons unlocked by scanning ancient crystals hidden in obscure caves.
Combat, thankfully, is where Rebirth shines. Monsters roam the land in great variety and imagination. At first, the system is overwhelming, but once I grasped the pressure and stagger mechanics—and the importance of the Assess ability—I began to love its tactical depth. Weapons grant unique skills that become permanently learned through use. Materia customization offers astonishing flexibility, allowing for deep builds and synergy.
Switching characters mid-combat is seamless and satisfying. Cloud and Red XIII are versatile damage dealers. Tifa excels at punishing staggered enemies with blistering martial arts. Yuffie offers nimble, ranged ninjutsu combat. Barret is a walking tank, clunky but invaluable for building stagger. Aerith is a devastating spellcaster and essential healer. Party members act competently on their own, but to truly unleash their potential, you need direct control.
Boss fights are long, tense affairs. Some demand defensive precision, others immediate all-out aggression. Most are excellent—but a handful late in the game are downright torturous. Aerith’s solo fight against two animated bombs is miserable. Cloud’s repeated duels with Roche wear out their welcome. And the final boss rush is a catastrophe: a bloated gauntlet capped by an invisible countdown to annihilation that killed me over and over again. Still, 99 times out of 100, combat is thrilling—a smooth, empowering spectacle with near-endless possibilities.
Outside of combat, however, the game often feels archaic. Endless ladder climbing, squeezing through narrow gaps, shuffling across ledges—it’s tedious, unchallenging, and omnipresent. It reeks of PS2-era design. This extends to every repeated animation, including the frequent interruptions from Chadley, an insufferable walking exposition dump who halts your momentum to spew dull lore in the tone of an information kiosk.
Not all side content is bad. I loved Chocobo racing, the space shooter arcade, and the Queensblood card game. But these activities often derail the main narrative for hours at a time. I eventually abandoned a lengthy protorelic questline that demanded mastery of multiple mini-games—it simply took too damn long.
As the game progresses, the main story and cast undergo a noticeable metamorphosis. Barret and Red XIII receive powerful character moments in their respective homelands. Tifa, Aerith, and Yuffie mature significantly over time (well… maybe not Yuffie). With a few late additions, the ensemble becomes one of the strongest casts I’ve seen in a JRPG.
Cloud, unfortunately, remains the weak link. Despite seemingly learning to open up in Remake, he regresses into a brooding, emotionally inaccessible loner. His repeated loss of control—and the party’s eagerness to forgive him—does little to endear him. By the time real growth begins to surface, it’s too late. His dour attitude made me actively dislike him, and he feels wholly undeserving of the affection of Tifa and Aerith—two of the finest waifus in video game history.
Romance systems allow you to bond with companions through combat synergy and sidequests, but these quests are wildly inconsistent in quality. Some are charming; others are tonally absurd or mechanically awful. Helping Cloud chase chickens or follow dogs across entire regions does nothing to make him more relatable. Any attempt at humor usually falls flat—though I’ll admit, watching him get stuck in a Cactuar pose is genuinely funny.
Despite all this, I was deeply moved by large portions of the story. It grows stronger over time, fueled by characters driven to confront the injustices of their past. Shinra created its own worst enemies, and the emotional payoff is often substantial. Even if Cloud is practically a silent protagonist in spirit, characters like Tifa, Barret, Aerith, and Red XIII carried the narrative for me.
Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth does not respect the player’s time—and that’s a cardinal sin. Yet its combat, presentation, and eventual narrative strength make the investment feel worthwhile. The voice acting is excellent, the music unforgettable, and the world visually arresting, even when buried under layers of busywork.
And in a game featuring—once again—two of the greatest waifus in gaming history, who do you think knocked on my door during that legendary Gold Saucer date night after 80 hours of gameplay?
Barret.
A giant man with a machine-gun arm.
A part of me died that night.
I like Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth. But I will never replay it—not even to go on a date with Tifa. It’s simply too long, too bloated, and not quite brilliant enough.
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