I distinctly remember lots of people in the run-up to this one being like “I wonder if they’ll make the gold saucer as tacky and full of horseshit minigames as in the original” and by all accounts they did just that and a lot of people are annoyed by it
it helps that I already liked FFXV combat (FFXV is imo by far the most underrated thing they’ve done in the last 20 years, even if it’s not exactly great) but I am still just really positive on these remakes
Good lord this game. I’m at the last boss. In fact I just died to the last gasp supermove before you win.
The last 20 something hours of this have been a love letter to the original, the series and the genre - in ways in whichI wouldn’t have thought Square would try to attempt.
As an example, as mentioned previously the game stops before going to the Temple of the Ancients and not only says it’s your last chance to do stuff but immediately opens up more quests, more mini games, higher difficulty levels for existing minigames and whatever else. In the end I did everything quest wise excluding the last chocobo race quest where you help the poor orphan chocobo farmhand avenge his dad or whatever. This was probably 10 hours of stuff. This is all fine and a nice homage to disc 3 of the original and the great tradition of complete pacing evaporation in the genre.
The Temple itself is about 10 hours long which is a lot. Multiple party switches, split parties, time rewinds, not just boss fights but repeated grudge fights against the same bosses as well. I died once on a boss. Selecting go to last checkpoint at this point takes you right back to outside the frontdoor next to your boat which you can’t get back into.
The last boss has a lot of phases, mandatory parties of all the characters you don’t use, mandatory elemental shields to hit with party members that don’t have any elemental materia. Again a nice tribute to some the series greatest hits of final boss bullshit Retry fight takes you back to the first phase. Checkpoint takes you back to the Temple -with probably close to 2 hours of cut scenes, dream sequences, flashbacks, mandatory slow walking party chats and another multiphase, equipped the wrong materia on cait sith (in fact by default cait sith has no materia, armour or accessory equipped at all, I only noticed by chance scrolling through a menu) penultimate boss.
This may be the purest nostalgia I’ve ever seen in a videogame.
i’m trying to not read toooo much of this thread because i really want to go through as spoiler/impression free as possible, but i have to post a little.
i’m now in Cosmo Canyon and about 60ish hours into the game. i think my conclusion is that this is honestly a little too much videogame. at this point, between Remake and Rebirth, i have played 2 FF7s worth of game. on the other hand, i’m having a nice time, and i’ll be a little sad when it’s over - the game has a comfort food feel to it, and i already have a sense of like…“it would be fun to try _______ on my next playthrough”
but i don’t think there will be a next playthrough! it’s too damned long! but there are some really good moments, so maybe…maybe i will. who can say?
one thing i can say is i do really enjoy using all the characters, but maybe Aeirth the least of all. they did a good job of not really making anyone feel superfluous, and this has been a blessing. i just find her style of play the least interesting out of everyone. i enjoy how it’s possible to buff Cait Sith with 100s of extra luck, so every hit he does while riding the Moogle is a critical. i think it’s funny that Yuffie is probably the best character in the game, while also being the most annoying, and yet she’s still kind of endearing.
i can’t help but wonder how the game would feel, though, if they had reduced it by just a little. does every single location need to be an explorable open world? couldn’t some places have just been…places you visit? i guess that isn’t what they wanted to do, and i respect it, but it feels like they went over the entire game and tried to find ways to stretch out the edges on absolutely everything they could.
simultaneously, i find myself being unable to stop speculating about what their endgame is. my hope is that it will be something completely inexplicable, but i can’t help but think of the absolutely dumbest resolutions to this series that would make me mad. i’m sure it won’t be any of these, because my feeling is the game teases ideas only to fool us at the end, but:
Cloud is dying of mako poisoning and reliving his life
The game has mentioned other dimensions via Queens Blood and so it’s possible this is some alternate timeline FF7 and Cloud has Space Dandy syndrome where he can see and remember things across time and space and dimensions
Shinra has started a fully-immersive VR videogame development division, and Chadley is the lead dev on a game that centers around Cloud and his friends’ adventure to fight Sephiroth and save the world. Cloud is the lead playtester, but can’t remember this while he is in the game. The minigames and subgames are all leftover code that rogue coders have left in the game.
There’s 35 minigames and I only know this because you have to play all of them if you want to fight the secret boss.
I think I spent 50-60 hours on FF7 Remake. I’ve now spent 35 on Rebirth and I’m just now leaving Corel Prison to find Dyne.
Last time I played FF7, my clear time was around 30-35 hours. I have already played about 3 FF7s worth of game, and I expect by the time I’m done with Rebirth, I’ll have played 5 FF7s worth of game. There is, indeed, a little too much game here lol.
Interestingly, this is the exact place I’m at in the story of the original FF7, and I think I’m at 10 or 11 hours in that game, lol.
The biggest problem is how the game has been “gameplayed loop” polished to hell. So there’s a new big boss fight connected to every new area or story beat. The dungeons all have little mechanical gimmicks, mostly just non-puzzle puzzles, that feel like obstacles more than anything else, and the dungeons are all, at best, 2x or 3x too long. FF7 allowed you to have “dungeons” that were effectively two quick screens with no bosses. FF7Rebirth cannot allow that. Which leads to things like the Midgar Zolom turning into a really cool narrative moment into a goes-to-11 bombastic boss fight with a bit of unearned and unconvincing dramatic peril at the end that, when compared to the original, leaves no fucking impact at all.
The open world stuff too. Fuck Chadley. Why does the game think I care about fucking Chadley. Why do I have to ‘discover’ stuff so Chadley can ‘refine materia’ for me. Why can’t I just discover stuff and get my reward that way? Why does every area need to have precise variations on the same 99 “activities,” none of which you’re supposed to discover through curiosity and searching, but rather from the pleading imperatives of the UI and the map icons? ?And Jesus Christ, fuck Chadley.
That said, the character writing is so good for the most part.
And Yuffie gets, like, the most-improved award. I never thought about her all that much in FF7 originally, but she’s so well-written here. She serves as a great foil for all the other characters to react to, too, such as vis-a-vis Barret in Corel.
She’s also surprisingly fun to play! I’m mostly playing as Tifa, but Yuffie’s a very fun support/supplementary attack character.
It’s also extremely good that Red XIII and Yuffie feel more integrated into the story. That everyone’s with you all the time means it feels like this crew really holds together, not just Cloud&Tifa&Barret&Aerith, plus guests, which is sometimes how FF7 feels.
They really fucked up the Nibelheim flashback both in terms of pacing and impact, though, and all this Zack shit sucks. I’m bracing myself for some serious bullshit at the end, but this long middle is real fun and good, all complaints above aside. I’m having a very good time with this. The Gold Saucer was great. I really enjoy Queen’s Blade, and I’ve never gotten into a Final Fantasy side-game.
FF7 is not a game about multiverses, destiny, and fate. FF7 remake trilogy seems desperate to make it only about those things, and that really does like really suck.
But yeah, I’m having a very good time with this, overall.
.
EDIT: Once more, fuck Chadley. What the fuck.
I like Chadley. You think he’d run out of stuff to talk about as the game reaches triple digits and he never does, a real fountain of knowledge. Excited for his Dirge Of Cerberus coming 2028.
Die Chocobo Racing die protip:
Race Fango with the debonair gear. This gives you the special abilities of going at faster speeds the better your position in the race and being able to just jump over obstacles. You can also just restart individual races in cups.
I hate chocobo racing
Also auto pick up of crafting materials is a post game unlock lmao
My eyes rolled out of their sockets, this has to be a joke.
I have no idea how much left I have of this game but I will slay the beast this weekend no matter what. Cloud Tifa Yuffie is the best party for any situation. My enemy skill Tifa is a beastly dynamo
i realized i was missing out on some enemy skills because i didn’t assess every single thing in the game because i’m a power player and can figure things out MegaTen style and now it’s bitten me in the ass!!! ugh! i don’t wanna have to go back to these places and figure out who the hell i didn’t assess 
I think you can assess everything you need in the simulator.
wait did i miss the enemy skills materia
I missed choco/mog in the first remake which was kind of annoying that they let you miss your first summon like that, their instincts for this stuff are not actually that great considering all the busywork they put in there
It’s one of the combat simulator rewards, i think one of the ones unlocked by assessing enemies in the first area i think
oh.
right.
Chadley OS.
lol
too late for me I guess
lol
genuinely hate that the best materia and summons are locked behind the most egregious “2024 Video Game Systems” bullshit in the game
Synergy plus comet is all you need
in fairness it’s not like making gau learn stray cat and nightshade was any less stupid
idk, everything with Chadley is inherently, taxonomically the most stupid
FF7 Rebirth is a game of Character.
FF6 is a game of Characters.