Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Review: The Most Ambitious of All Fantasies (PS5)

Now that I’ve been able to finish most of everything you can do on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it’s time to discuss whether or not it’s better than its predecessor, or if it lives up to the legacy the original game forged back in 1997. Is it the greatest, most ambitious modern Final Fantasy game ever made? Well, that is a question that you’ll need to answer by yourself after you play the game. But if you need some kind of guidance on what to expect from this sequel, you can rest assured as I’ll be covering every aspect of the experience in this review. But I’ll start by saying one undeniable thing that most of us who played it can agree with: it’s awesome. This game holds my vote for GOTY contender so let’s dive into it so I can explain myself a little better and start rambling over it.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is now available exclusively on PS5 for $69.99.

Story – A Fantastic, Fun, and Exciting Adventure

After Final Fantasy VII Remake, the intrigue and expectations of what Square Enix was going to do with this sequel were all over the place. Some people, myself included, were skeptical about Rebirth for a while. In my honest opinion, Remake wasn’t all that great because of a good number of flaws that are well covered in our review here at KeenGamer. And I can confidently say that, for the most part, the story is the first of the many things that the ambitious Final Fantasy VII Rebirth managed to outshine its predecessor.

The story has a really good pace, and it’s hard to describe in a few words. It is thoroughly crafted and covers subjects like life, death, friendship, love, and hate, all in a way that makes you feel magically engaged with it and the characters as well. There is a lot more backstory for every single character in the game and it even adds a lot of value to the story told in Remake, which on its own wasn’t very engaging due to the lack of well-polished narrative elements. Actually, I think Rebirth has the most solid narrative among every single modern Final Fantasy game.

The adventures of Cloud, Aerith, Tifa, Barret, and Red XIII continue after our beloved characters escape Midgar to explore new horizons, and most importantly, find Sephiroth. It ultimately feels like the expectations of the awaited adventure behind this premise are very well met with every step we take after we put a foot outside Kalm. There are moments of peace and some intense moments. But I never felt I had time to get bored during the 90 hours of playtime it took me to finish almost everything there was available to do before finishing the story. There is also a dialogue decision-based relationship system between Cloud and the rest of the characters which can lead to him becoming closer to one of them in a later chapter, which isn’t anything new to the video games storyline structure, but it’s simple and nicely done so it’s appreciated.

The gang is back to explore new horizons in this exciting, expanded adventure!

I believe the story doesn’t have many flaws regarding its rhythm, structure, or narrative. The bad side is that, almost like honoring its predecessor instead of trying to completely outshine it, the ending is once again very ambiguous and confusing. The only thing that makes me hope and ignore the lack of closure is that there is still one game left for us to get that sense of closure both Remake and Rebirth have failed to give the player. Hey, maybe it’s for the best. The expectations for the third game are where they are because of this, probably.

I also think the story relies a little bit too much on “finding Sephiroth”, which at most times feels like a shot in the dark. There aren’t many reasons why the characters are so desperate to continue their journey other than that, which sometimes made the adventure feel a little bit pointless and the story struggled to take itself seriously when Sephiroth wasn’t there to represent an immediate threat. At least for me, this is the only bit that Remake’s story managed to pull off better than Rebirth: The sense of purpose was greater. And I hope as we get closer to Sephiroth in the third and final game we also get back a little more of that sense that was more present in Remake.

However, as I said before, the amount of backstory and lore added in this entry is pure gold. For better or worse, you will see every single character with different eyes at the end of the journey. And that’s the strongest point of the story of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth in my eyes. Hell, even the secondary missions give a fantastic amount of backstory to a lot of the characters, which makes them feel significant. They feel like highly important tasks that add value to the overall story rather than the usual fetch quests that became the norm since Final Fantasy XV, which is another huge step in the right direction for the franchise that sets the bar higher than it ever was. All I can say without spoiling any important aspect of the story is that I’m eager to find out what’s gonna be of our characters in both the main and secondary missions of the final game of this fantastic trilogy.

New playable characters also join the gang!

Gameplay – Massive and Varied in All Ways

The most essential part of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the obsessively ambitious gameplay, which is easily the better-crafted aspect of it. There is a huge, ridiculous amount of content. Did I already say I played for 90 hours before reaching the end credits? And there’s still a lot of endgame content that I need to cover. My current time counter has already reached the 100-hour mark and I still have the toughest challenges of the game ahead of me. As I keep playing, the only thing that comes to my head is: how the hell did Square Enix manage to develop this much content in only four years?

Combat has been redefined with the possibility of changing your 3 party members, which allows you to approach each battle with the best possible setting that suits you better at any given time. New materia orbs, abilities, and combinations have also been added, giving the battles a nice twist that makes them very interesting when you consider the huge amount of enemy types there are in the game.

The game went full open-world, which at first time didn’t sound like a great idea to many of us, but we were proven wrong. The world is huge but dense, with many, many different activities to tackle before continuing with the story, making it an exciting task to explore the regions instead of being the drag we were afraid it could end up being. It can become repetitive, yes, but you can continue with the story whenever you want and come back later to get anything you’re missing in a region. This is the recommended approach if you don’t want to get burnt out from the open world.

Exciting new battles await you in this magical journey.

And of course, there are the mini-games. The undoubted protagonist gameplay element of this Final Fantasy entry. Look, there are too many mini-games, so many of them, that you’ll end up wishing you could play them all with your friends online (make it happen, Square, take our money!). I would say I probably loved or simply enjoyed roughly 90% of the mini-games, 5% were just okay, and the remaining 5% were insufferably boring or frustrating. As you can see, not all of them are going to be as brilliant as the previous one, but the vast majority of mini-games are creative, fun, challenging but not tedious, and you’ll probably end up enjoying them. There are very few of them that are going to represent a drag. Spend time with the mini-games, believe me. Especially with the main one, Queen’s Blood, which is probably the best card game I’ve ever played.

The game has everything an open-world game can offer. Main missions, secondary missions, world intel, mini-games, collectibles, exploration-based mechanics with hidden treasures… There’s only one aspect that I’m not enjoying at all which is the combat arenas and simulations. I really enjoyed the combat arenas and simulations of Final Fantasy VII Remake, because they were challenging and varied enough to make it a fun task.

The problem with the combat arenas and simulations of Rebirth is that there are too many of them, but aren’t as varied and fun as the mini-games. They are repetitive and tedious, the last bunch of simulation combats feel very unfair and the rewards are meaningless in 95% of them (yes, even the unfair ones don’t give you anything interesting other than the satisfaction of 100% completion). I still need to complete all of them if I want to get the platinum trophy, so the combat simulations are starting to feel like a drag rather than a satisfying challenge.

The mini-games are by far the most brilliant aspect of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

In any case, the gameplay elements of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth make it the most ambitious FF game to date. In my heart, I still hold a special place for Final Fantasy XVI because of its real-time combat simplicity and story-driven progression so it’s still my favorite modern entry in the series. But I can confidently say, objectively speaking, that FFVII Rebirth can easily be the best modern Final Fantasy game out there if FFVII Remake‘s combat system is your cup of tea, and I celebrate it.

Graphics & Audio – Beautifully Crafted… For the Most Part!

The first time I got to explore the outside, I fell in love with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth right away. The sensation of being free and no longer enclosed inside Midgar was stunning. I truly believe we’ve reached the top potential of the PS5 with this sequel. The graphic design is beautiful, and I’m glad we had to wait this long to experience this game since the PS4 wouldn’t have been able to stand the wide, truly open areas without stuttering like crazy. The designs of each region are completely fascinating and the exploration becomes a top aspect of the game when every single area is thoroughly designed to make you feel engaged with your surroundings. For the most part, I was very happy with everything my eyes saw during the adventure.

However, there’s a little pattern that has become quite annoying in the latest Final Fantasy games, which is this term that devs hate so much: optimization. You see, back when Final Fantasy XVI came out, I mentioned in my review how much I disliked the fact that the game had such an awful optimization on performance mode (reaching as low as 35 fps and 720p at times). And Rebirth managed to pull a very stable framerate on performance mode with a mostly, highly decent 60 fps mark. However, there’s a little detail I can’t avoid to mention. Sometimes, the game looks too blurry when you’re in a wide open or crowded area and you can still see the NPCs materialize out of nowhere right in front of you.

And I understand we’ve reached the top of what the PS5 can do (graphically speaking, at least). But I beg you Square, give Final Fantasy XVI and Rebirth decent performance modes. I don’t care if I need to wait for the rumored PS5 Pro or the PC versions of these games. Just make Final Fantasy the visual spectacle it used to be, because the franchise (again, graphically speaking), is starting to fall behind compared to other games. I hope this phenomenon gets resolved soon because it’s currently mostly affecting the RPG genre (take Dragon’s Dogma 2 as another great example). I wish I could’ve spent more time praising the beautifully crafted visuals of this game, but we need to stop normalizing AAA games to release poorly optimized for the only platform they were developed for. 

Even with its unpolished performance mode, the game is beautiful and the graphics are decent enough.

Thankfully, I can finish my review by saying the audio was clean and nicely done as expected. The soundtrack is fun, it fits very well with the game, and while many of the tracks are being recycled from the previous entry, there are some new ones that don’t go unnoticed. I wouldn’t say the audio impressed me as much as Final Fantasy XVI did, but it is indeed still one of the strongest points of the franchise that never disappoints me and I’m very happy about that.