EMOTIONAL ENVIRONMENTALISM
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In a game stretched out to absurd length,
of course I had to die over and over on the last phase of the final boss. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth simply refuses
to let go. It's been like an addiction of late. I finished the game one
evening and woke up the next morning ready to dive into another session. Oh
right, I didn't need to anymore. The boss had been defeated and the end
credits had rolled.
What a wild ride it was. At no point during my extended playthrough did
I feel indifferent. My mood oscillated, going slowly but steadily in a
certain direction before something happened, good or bad, that turned the
momentum on its head. This has got to be one of the hardest experiences 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 the predecessor, Final Fantasy VII: Remake, Cloud
and his companions escaped the city of Midgar. With the open world before
them, they're now striving to silence the planet's cries of pain. It is caused
by the megacorporation Shinra that drains its lifeblood to generate
electricity and conduct biological experiments in secret. Another player in this power struggle is Sephiroth, the
ultimate antagonist, who wants to eradicate all life on the planet by
elevating himself to Godhood. The opening chapter details his fall from
grace, as he learns of his true heritage.
During the first game's climax, the party also upset destiny itself by
unleashing the multiverse upon the world. This means that from here on out,
anything goes. Whatever happened in the original Final Fantasy VII (1997) won't necessarily happen here - fate no longer sticks it dirty
fingers into the cookie jar of reality. Old-timers can follow the story with
all but the same uncertainty as newcomers. It's a brave and intriguing
decision by developers Square Enix, but it's unfortunately one that
doesn't pay off in the end (I won't spoil how and why).
It also means you're free to explore the lands outside of Midgar at your own
leisure. And boy is this game big. It rivals those long-ass JRPG:s like
Xenoblade Chronicles and Star Ocean: Till the End of Time for
length. My playthrough clocked out at 95 hours. Luckily, the game is
flawlessly presented, with eye-popping visuals, presented in glorious
third-person, giving the land a rich history. In both world and character,
the designers nail how we imagined they would look in the low-polygonal
original game.
Old battlefields have left husks of tanks and collapsed buildings. Machinery are left forsaken in the open wild. Abandoned labs tell of weird
experiments that mock nature's creations. Life in the bigger settlements
seems unfazed by the times, as people dress up in modern suits and dresses,
while entertaining themselves in amusement parks and beach resorts.
Meanwhile, life around the coal mines and desert canyons is harsh and
dangerous, as monsters roam the landscape. An amazing soundtrack, with both
new melodies and rearrangements of old ones, establishes a unique sense of
place wherever you go.
The presentation is a saving grace, considering how much time you spend in
each area. The Gongaga jungle choirs made me persevere through one of the
most limiting and frustrating, mushroom-bouncing, traversal
mechanics I've seen. Everything is bloated, everything takes forever, from
main quest progression to the slightest animation. The whole world is in
peril, and your fellowship consists of the only people capable of stopping
the threat. But instead of rushing to save the world, you're encouraged to
take your time and explore.
The first 20 hours of the game are the weakest, feeling utterly
directionless and unengaging. The main quest tasks you with following a
bunch of zombified, grey-robed people chanting something about "Re...birth..." and
other nonsensical stuff. They're supposed to lead you to the ultimate
villain, Sephiroth, guiding you from settlement to settlement via the
occasional dungeon or some other linear trail. All the while, your
companions goof around like they're sightseeing, and it drives me nuts.
Luckily, their behavior improves over time.
Every single one of the settlements is surrounded by a vast landscape of
uninspiring bloat. Haphazardly hidden are several side activities and
mini-games, all revealed by activating so-called Ubisoft-towers.
These are prime exemples of the ungodly amount of unnecessary busywork
you're encouraged to do throughout the game. To hasten exploration, you need
to find and tame a Chocobo to ride in each area. This involves one of the worst stealth
mechanics I've seen since the PS2-days.
Other activities, like scanning minerals, fighting monstrous minibosses,
digging for treasure and herding plushy-like Moogles is all done with
dwindling interest. But for fear of missing out, I pursued most of it, and I
think the decision was sound. I don't know how I could've won some of the
boss fights without the summons you get from scanning ancient crystals
hidden away in caves.
Monsters roam the land in great variety and imagination, and fighting them
is somewhat bewildering at first. But once I got down to brass tacks with the pressure and stagger mechanics - and the importance of the "assess"
ability - I learned to love the puzzle of it all. Different weapons offer
different skills that you can permanently learn by utilizing them a number
of times in combat. Additional weapon abilities allow you to further
emphasize each character's role in the party.
By slotting different pieces of materia into your weapons and armor, you can
strengthen your attributes or unlock certain abilities and spells that'll
help build up the enemy's stagger meter. When they finally crack, you can
dish out enormous amounts of damage. Most materia improves organically over
time as long as you keep them equipped. By combining different kinds you can
enhance their effects. FFVII: Rebirth offers astounding tweaking
opportunities and many upgrade paths. As an RPG, it is stronger than the original game.
I love how you can alter playstyle mid-combat by switching between party
members. Cloud and Red XIII are versatile damage dealers. Tifa has a martial
arts style excellent for dishing out damage to staggered enemies. Yuffie has
a cool ninjitsu-style similar to Tifa's, but is better suited for ranged
combat. Barret is a veritable tank with a machine gun arm, clunky as all
hell, but resilient and great for building up stagger. Aerith is a
supportive caster of powerful magics and a healer. The characters you don't
control contribute in small ways and defend themeselves fairly well, but to
reap their true potential you need to take direct control.
Every boss battle is long and can get terrifying when everyone's health is
closing in on zero. Some require defensive measures or a swift all-out
offensive response as they prepare a devastating attack. Most of the fights
are fun and well-balanced, but a few late-game examples are just tortuous.
Aerith's solo fight against two animated bombs is one, Cloud's umpteenth
fight against Roche in Nibelheim is another. The final boss rush is a
disaster; a long, frustrating spectacle against unfair attacks. It ends in
an invisible countdown to doom that I flunked time and time again. But 99
times out of 100, combat is a smooth, engaging power trip that offers
endless possibilites.
Sadly, this smoothness doesn't extend to the gameplay outside of combat.
Climbing ladders, scaling mountainsides, squeezing through narrow gaps or
strafing across narrow ledges is tedious. You cannot fail, it's no
challenge, and yet it keeps happening. It reminds me of PS2-era jank. That
extends to every little repeated movement, including whipping out your
communication device to speak to the insufferable Chadley. He's a young man
who keeps interrupting your gameplay flow to reveal some boring lore tidbit about the
open world. His voice actor makes him sound like an information booth
narrator, emphasizing all the wrong words.
Not all side activities are bad - heck, I loved the Chocobo racing, the
space shooter arcade and the Queensblood collectible card/board-game hybrid
- but they all lead to long stretches of gameplay without any main story
progression at all. In the end I never mastered any mini-game content, and
never got to reap their highest rewards. A lengthy side story required me to
invest time in a series of different mini-games to gather parts of a
protorelic, but I gave up about halfway through - it just took to damn long.
Juxtaposed to all that are the main story and characters, that all start out
unengaging but undergo a metamophosis somewhere along the way. The hulking
Barret and the canine Red XIII both have really strong character moments in
their native places. Tifa, Aerith and Yuffie all start out like giggling
schoolgirls but mature a lot (well, maybe not Yuffie) over the course of the
game. With a few fine later additions, the cast of characters becomes one of
the strongest I've seen in a JRPG.
Sadly, the main protagonist Cloud is an exception. As far as I remember, he
spent the entire first game learning how to open up to people, but in
Rebirth he's back to his old brooding self. He's all aboard the dourness
train, a complete killjoy, a socially awkward loner depicted in the most
unrelatable way within the framework of this story.
At times, when the story so requires, he loses control of himself and
becomes a danger to everyone around. Luckily for him, they are all too quick
to forgive and forget. I know there's a reason for this behavior but it
doesn't help his character in FFVII Rebirth at all. At the tail end of this
game I could sense a change brewing, but it was too late. His emo hostility
made me dislike him, and he is undeserving of the love of both Tifa and
Aerith, two of the best waifus in video game history.
But, deservedly or not, romance them you can. By synergizing with them in
combat, you can strengthen your bond. A notice board in every town offers
sidequests that, if completed, improves Cloud's relationship with a certain
companion. But these sidequests are, like the entire game, scattershot in
quality. Many are decent, but some are just whimsical and completely out of
tone.
I can sense the attempt to make the robotic Cloud more relatable by having
him help out locals. But all it amounts to is just another timesink as you
go looking for lost hens or follow a dog across the entire region. It does
nothing for his image. Completely bereft of charisma, nothing comedic the
writers throw at him sticks (although I must admit it's very funny when he
gets stuck in a Cactuar pose). And some of the sidequests absolutely stink
in the gameplay department - the hen-luring mechanics are rock bottom.
In spite of this, I was deeply moved by many parts of the story, and it grew
stronger the longer it progressed. The characters are driven by firm
convictions, their life paths converging to rectify great injustices from
their past. The evil power company Shinra created their own worst enemies in
these people. Many profound bonding moments take place over the story. Even
if Cloud's just about as bad as a silent protagonist, characters like Tifa,
Barret, Aerith and Red XIII made me care deeply for the story.
The game doesn't respect the player's time, and that's a cardinal sin. It's the combat, the presentation and the narrative components - once they
get going - that elevates this experience to a good time. They make the
timesink worth your while. The main cast of voice actors do a fine job in
bringing the characters to life. An inviting world design and inspiring
music sparks life into the environments, even as the busywork removes some
of that goodwill.
And in a game with - and I repeat -
two of the best waifus in video game history, guess who knocked on
the door on that fabled Gold Saucer date night after 80 hours of gameplay...
I'll tell you: a giant of a man with a machine-gun arm. A part of me died
that night. Damn you, Barret. I guess I was too commodating to everyone
and got the short end of the stick. I like Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, but I
won't ever replay it, not even to go on a date with Tifa. It's just too damn
long, and not brilliant enough.
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