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From the moment Final Fantasy VII Remake ended I was anticipating this release with the excitement of a day trip to the Gold Saucer and well, the good people over at Square Enix have absolutely nailed this. The game picks up right after the events of the first installment, more specifically after Yuffie’s stand alone DLC for FFVII remake where she watches the party make their way to Kalm. The first chapter throws us in at the very core of the whole story, a location in which the rest of the game hangs upon, Nibelheim. Exploring this section as both cloud and Sephiroth is a nostalgic masterpiece aimed at retelling a familiar story and engaging those new to it all in wonderful equilibrium so nobody feels left out or confused. Anyone who played the original knows how important this scene is and it is referenced many times throughout the thirteen chapters that follow. Thirteen chapters that manage to make you feel like this story means something to you,connects with you and takes you on a journey around an environment that once felt familiar is anything but.
From the first chapter you can tell the developers have put every ounce of themselves into making this game a stunning, inviting nostalgia trip that continues to surprise at every step. To take a game with a familiar story and subtly change small details are a joy to behold. It makes you feel like you’re reminiscing with an old friend from high school about what you thought was good but never quite like this. Obviously the advancement in technology has enabled Square Enix to bring this story into the modern times from 3D characters over 2D pre-rendered backgrounds to a fully rendered game,locations and all.
They set the bar high with FFVII remake and even though that game was set solely within Midgar, rebirth has opened the game up to multiple locations and they’re all connected by an open world map. It’s big, it’s bigger than big, it’s gigantic. Even the smaller towns, such as your first town Kalm, is quite large with enough area to run around and people to interact with, the hustle and bustle of a small town is evident. People going about their daily lives, kids playing in the street, they really did attempt to make every place like it was alive, whatever troubles they had, so did you feel about them. They manage to keep this up through the entirety of the game, the locations are extremely impressive ranging from small countryside towns to full throttle Gold saucer nightlife. Every single area is meticulously crafted, you could walk around them for hours just watching the population go by and not actually progress the game at all. When you decide to though, the game guides you through a story that’s got some surprises even for lovers of the original. Reintroducing characters that you know and love, or hate while also introducing some brand new characters that still add to the overall feel and dynamic of the story. The premise is to prevent a catastrophic event brought upon Gaia (the planet) spear headed by Sephiroth who still serves as the main antagonist. Taking you through a vast amount of locations such as the Gold Saucer, Nibelheim, Gongaga, Corel, Forgotten city and Junon.
Throughout this journey the game introduces you to all manner of characters, some who join your cause such as Cait Sith, Yuffie, Barrett, Tifa, Aerith and Red XIII while also introducing two more characters that are not yet playable in Cid and Vincent. They’ve taken this cast of characters and fleshed them out so well, you get to journey through their past peaks and troughs of joy and despair that leaves you with the person you see now and honestly, you can connect with it and its exactly what they intended to do. See, in Rebirth there is a relationship system that, depending on your dialogue choices and actions can make party members act in certain ways towards you or you may even see different cut scenes depending on how you’ve interacted with them (here’s looking at you skywheel ride). This in turn lends itself to how they can interact in battle. The battle system is largely the same in Rebirth compared to remake but they have added a lot more variety and sense of camaraderie to them. For instance you can perform synergy abilities that enable two team members to effectively tag team and perform a special ability. One ability has Aerith cast a dome over an enemy while Tifa bounces from one side to the other ripping through the enemy each time. Another has Cloud and Tifa perform a perfect synergy attack where every move is mimicked by the other. These can be unlocked in the folio section, essentially Rebirth’s version of a skill tree. This can be further expanded when your party level increases by undertaking various tasks and generally bonding with your teammates. This makes battles incredibly fun and it invites the player to experiment with what they find best suits their play styles and battle strategies.
The battle system is just one of the many things the developers have really expanded on from the previous game and it works really well, you can make any character the leader of the party so you can control them and it was a fun way to just play around with each characters skill sets and listen to them engage with the other party members. This engagement carries over into the open world map, characters constantly interacting about the world around them as you explore. And can you explore! Each area has lots of content all packaged up by the slightly annoying Chadley. Chadley keeps track of all your intel in each area and rewards you as you complete a section of intel with region points. You can spend these with Chadley to access some really useful materia. Completing intel can also unlock VR battles with Chadley that challenge you to different battles for varying rewards. Some of the content you can complete in the open world can range from protorelic missions to enemy intel missions. Protorelic missions vary from area to area but they are generally a mini game with some really awesome story content behind them. The protorelic missions vary from mini games such as cactuar crush which involves defeating cactuar enemies to build up enough points to win a reward, all the way to a cool 3D style mini game called fort condor in which the player uses MP to ‘summon’ troops into battle to take out the enemy leader. Add to this the added bonus that you can transmute items that you find in the overworld, dungeons and some towns into items such as potions, bangles, elixirs and some quest related items too. Finding Transmuter blueprints requires you to be on choco back and each area has their own chocobo with its own ability that’s very specific to the region ranging from Flight, the ability to climb mountains and also the ability to traverse over expanses of water.
More open world content includes region intel that gives a brief description of the general life and fauna around that particular map, these are linked to summon materia and the more region intel you find the easier the summon will be to fight. To do this you need to defeat them within Chadleys VR battle room. It really does have everything in this game, you can pace it however you like and if you want to go through and do everything there’s nothing stopping you. There’s that much to do. You could do a single play through in 120 hours or 40 hours and it depends solely on what you choose to do. This doesn’t even include the extra mini games at the Gold saucer. There are some mini games that are story related though, for me this was a tad annoying because it felt forced. There’s plenty of mini games to do if i wanted to, when i’m attempting to continue the story though i didn’t really fancy yet another one. Also, there are some very gimmicky sections in the game that require certain characters to perform certain actions. For instance there’s one in the Nibelheim mansion that gets mentioned a lot in chats surrounding Rebirth and it involves Cait Sith. This section requires you to throw boxes at switches to open doors to other areas or, move boxes off of elevators to change the weight differential to enable it to go up or down. This type of thing seemed out of place to me for two reasons, one, do we need this to progress a story? Debatable. And two, once this section was finished it would’ve been cool if it had a use in the over world map, an area you couldn’t reach before for instance? It’s hardly something you could write a game off for but it certainly deserves a mention as it is one of a few that can feel like it gets in the way of a stellar game, not to mention a superb story that, by the time this game finishes will leave you with more questions than answers regarding THAT Aerith scene.
To summarise, there’s a reason this game has been nominated for Game Of The Year 2024. The developers have really pushed the boat out and made what was a well loved game into something of a masterpiece to entice new fans without upsetting the old. It’s well packed full of content and has some of the most innovative mini games in any game. It doesn’t really miss on any of it and is very clever at leaving just enough reason to continue discussing what the next game will bring.