Games You Should Play Before Starting Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is just around the corner, and as the follow-up to the critically acclaimed Final Fantasy 7 Remake, there’s a lot to look forward to. The Final Fantasy 7 saga is surprisingly vast, spanning multiple games, movies, and more, and in typical Square Enix fashion, some of these are quite important to the story.
In the leadup to the launch of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, we thought we’d put together this helpful guide to tell you which games – and a movie – you’ll need to play to get the most out of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
Final Fantasy VII
The original looks a little rough, but it holds up.
Sony / Square Enix
It probably goes without saying that you should probably play the original Final Fantasy 7 if you want to get the most out of the story here. As Remake showed us, there’s a bit of divergence between the original and the Remake timeline, and that divergence is actually very important to the plot. You can probably get by with the signs in the game when these pop up – as a hint, that’s usually when the ghosts turn up – but the smaller moments of change are much easier to pick up on if you’ve played the original.
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Wild to think the entirety of Rebirth looks better than this pre-rendered film.
Sony Pictures
Advent Children is a canon movie set about two years after the events of Final Fantasy 7, and while we don’t know for sure that it’ll play a part in Rebirth, we have an inkling that the events in the movie might help inform some of the stranger aspects of the greater Sephiroth mythos. We don’t want to spoil anything, but trust us when we say that old Seph is certainly a lot more interesting than he seems — both before and after the events of Final Fantasy 7.
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Crisis Core remains one of the best Final Fantasy games to this day, and the Reunion remaster is even better.
Square Enix
If there’s one game that you play on this list, make it Crisis Core. As we saw at the end of Remake, and in trailers for Rebirth, there’s a very important character set to return called Zack Fair. Crisis Core is all about Zack, his rise through the ranks of SOLDIER, his interactions with the hero Sephiroth, and how Cloud came to be embroiled in this whole mess. Mark my word, Crisis Core will be crucial to understanding the story in Rebirth.
Final Fantasy VII Remake
Final Fantasy 7 Remake is just gorgeous.
Square Enix
Rebirth is a sequel to Remake, so it makes sense that you should probably play Remake before diving into Rebirth. Square Enix says you can play Rebirth by itself but… honestly, that just feels like a ploy to get more people buying it. You should definitely play Remake if you haven’t already anyway, it’s a wonderful game for both fans of FF7 and newcomers to the saga.
Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
You probably can't play this, and you're probably not missing much.
YouTube / World of Longplays
Dirge of Cerberus is the last of the games, chronologically, in the Final Fantasy 7 saga, and it’s a little bit different from the rest of the saga. It’s a third-person shooter that focuses heavily on Vincent Valentine, one of the optional party members in the original Final Fantasy 7 and non-optional party members in Rebirth. Dirge of Cerberus covers the events after Advent Children but also gives a little bit of backstory for Vincent, which seems like it could be relevant. We are tentatively calling this one optional, though, because there’s unfortunately no easy way to play it in 2024.
