The Final Fantasy VII Remake series left us at Destiny Crossroads back in 2020. Given a path forward into the recollection of ideas and memories of its compilation. At first, many were worried about how rocky this road would become, but after playing this game, I can confidently say. Square Enix designed the path from start to finish, which is made of gold tiles and adorned with gems full of character. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is Square Enix firing at all cylinders. The game’s massive scale and fully realized characters can overwhelm you with the amount of content packed within, making you feel nauseous if you don’t pace yourself. This fifty to one hundred and fifty-hour experience all blends within itself. This game has everything you could want from an experience. A story that still pulls on the heart-strings all these years later. Epic battles with mechanics that have deepened, reflecting the deepening of your relationship with your party members. Music that hijacks your brain with melodies and catchy lyrics that you will murmur to yourself outside of the game. Every item, monster, musical piece and dialogue choices carry emotional weight to the experience and forces you to think about the world you're navigating in. The execution of this product is mind-boggling. This game is a must purchase. If you're lucky enough to purchase for less than its standard MSRP, it feels like stealing from the company.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth : Destiny’s Door
Lightning Review
Written by Sage Sythe
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A World of Life forms around the screen every time to you boot the game up. Its world exploration and level design are distinct from location to location. The towns, the people, the atmosphere are simply incredible. No two towns are similar. Each one has purpose and people who matter in that specific ecosystem. They can bring you joy or bring sadness in their stories. You will get lost in a town’s shenanigans if you don’t rush towards every main story plot point. For significant parts of the experience, the towns can feel bigger than the story or provide a crucial detail to the story that is missable.
Each region sets different traversal problems that fit the theme and lore that get explained through side content activities. How do you navigate a dense forest jungle with overgrown mushrooms and fauna? How do you navigate a canyon layered with caves, cliffs, and craters? Square Enix properly develops the answer to the question with a simple answer that then develops into perspective changing puzzles. This would apply to navigation within the massive open zones, but also the main story dungeons players will come across during the play through.
By using communication towers from our dear friend Chadley, we can identify the life of this world quicker. These highlight the activities that are littered about. Giving us rewards for venturing off the golden path. The system in which we do this is called “World Intel”, which opens up many options that will feel like a chore if you're not interested but will reward you for the time spent. It’s never forced upon you, which is why it makes the world even more interesting. If you forgo the tower highlighting capabilities, you can easily get lost in the world.
Break
Your Limit
Rebirth has dethroned the battle system of remake. It has eclipsed what I originally believed to be a masterful system. Its blend of RPG elements and high paced action has reached new heights. In Rebirth they fixed everything in previous game and added additional layers to pre-existing ideas. I originally thought I had an expert level of knowledge for the battle system until this moment. I spent an additional twenty hours mixing and matching the new possibilities and only stopped because I had other games to play.
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Let’s start with what they fixed. Which was the aerial combat. In the remake game, there were several aerial enemies that were obnoxious to deal with. If you did not have Aerith or Barret to deal with these enemies, you were stuck with Cloud and Tifa to deal with it. Cloud and Tifa had clunky aerial combat strings that you could easily get knocked out. As they were primarily heavy hitting grounded type characters. You couldn’t trigger your ATB moves in the air, which limited your maximum potential damage output. In Rebirth, they equipped party members such as Cloud, Tifa, and Yuffie with aerial combat strings and powerful aerial dodge techniques. They also allowed ATB moves to be triggered both in the air and on the ground. This allows you to mix up enemies when you swap and increase the speed at which these combat encounters happen. This change in aerial combat does not mean the fights are easier by any means. In fact, some of the strongest enemies are aerial creatures and robots. The change gives us tools to combat these fierce enemies in a more kinetic and engaging way.
Find
Your Depth
The depth of the combat system changed when they implemented synergy skills and abilities for the party members. The skills allow your teammates to use offensive or defensive combat tricks to deal with new combat encounter situations. These moves are not only situationally powerful, but provide an aura of accomplishment when executed. These skills provide more ATB value than regular combo strings for a party member because both members who participated in the combat trick have their ATB gauge filled at a frightening rate. This one part of the system exists to execute the next layer of team attacks called “Synergy Abilities”.
These check to see if we are using our ATB charges on all our party members efficiently and often. If we accomplish this, the game rewards us with a powerful team technique that will provide game breaking power to the party in the heat of battle. An example of this would be a synergy ability reducing all of your magic costs to 0 for a moderate combat window. Which can then allow you to use powerful magic such as Firaga or Thundaga, which can cost upwards of twenty-one mp. In a game where the average mp stat is around 60, the value of this is undeniable. The developers could of stop the expansion of combat tricks there, but they also made it so the synergy abilities allow for you to increase your limit break power. It feeds into the narrative of the bonds of your teammates and can help you ascend your physical limits. These options also only grow as you spend more time with the characters through side quest which raise the party level. Which forces you to spend more time and deepen the relationship with each other. The activation of the ability means more because your party means more.
There are even more combat differences within the system. Here’s six more differences.
Every character has a perfect parry option.
Every character has enhanced dodge roll.
New elemental types
New Materia Skills
More Materia slots.
Weapon Ability Slots
The music and the soundscape of this game are unparalleled to games of this genre and of this medium of today. Each soundtrack had a mental chokehold on my brain. I hummed tracks while doing daily activities. There are ear worm songs created as a gag that you can’t help but sing along, those being “Scamps Song” and “Happy Turtle”. Which serve as a reminder of how a track filling up the background space of a small quest sequence can change a whole vibe of a simple activity.
Melancholy
Melodies
Each region’s open zone music is memorable and no two sound the same. The genuine power of the region themes lies in the medley formed when they fuse with the original battle theme. This change is reflects the feeling you get when you mix party members and accomplish the synergy abilities mentioned earlier. Another key feature of this over-world theme to battle theme is the transition. The music ramps up through a tempo transition from the unique medley track of a region.
I wish all games could have this feature; it helps immerse a player. By slowly pumping up the player rather than a hard shift that can be jarring. This is also very noticeable within the boss fight transition sequences as well.
No one area sounds the same either. The music has this ability to time stamp where you were when you first heard the track. This could hit OG players of the series when they start chapter one and enter a flashback sequence in Nibelheim. You can hear the whisper of darkness, possibly being chanted by Jenova. For newer players, they could experience this when reaching the outskirts of the main scenario city of Midgar. The outro track of that game plays as you approach its rock and desolate land. It reminds you of the looming sadness and the potential threat to the planet if you fail outside of their walls.
The musical producers use many genres to reproduce a theme and each time it hits as well as the last time, showing how eternal this soundtrack is. Potency is a key word I think about when I hear the music. You just need one sound track and everything else, no matter the form, will follow. It is honestly hard to say which sounds are my favorite because each time I entered a new major region, there was a track that tops what I had listed as my favorite. Below are several tracks that I find to be masterpieces.
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Hazed Eyes
Reject Truth
Find your truth through those hazed eyes. That’s the sentiment I came with after experiencing part two of this three-part story. The story of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is very layered to those who have a grasp on the compilation of the series. Rebirth brings another layer to the already complex story of Final Fantasy VII. On the surface, we have the OG story with expanded parts and scenarios moved around to accommodate expanded areas. Underneath the surface, it is a story of trying to deny fate until you realize you cannot deny destiny's lofty ambition.
The pacing of the main scenario feels bite sized compared to everything else happening around it. There are two significant plot points that are crucial to character development and their moments are snapped into an expanded universe plot point too fast. This took me out of the emotional weight that the scenes were supposed to have. Except for these two plot points, the rest of the in-game world stories are well paced and shamelessly indulge in their own greatness. Which can feel as a victory lap of what the OG FF7 accomplished over twenty-five years ago.
For the ending of Rebirth, players who have played Remake will experience a greater degree of tonality whiplash. As the retelling of this story takes its stab at justifying its own existence. Its existence now will leave all those who complete the main scenario theory crafting for what I predict to be four years until the final release.
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