Cloud! I see that you’ve managed to post about me in the thread. I can’t help but wonder where else we might end up bumping into each other.
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I’m doing my best to no-life the remainder but the game keeps on coming. The amount of sidegame content being unlocked so late is giving me FF16 flashbacks but at least this generally has more charm.
Heading into Chapter 13.
Chapter 12 tho Loveless got me. The date scene after with your special someone also got me.
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Finally finished Rebirth and the time has come to effort post. This game just kept on going at the end and there were about 12 hours more than I thought there would be. I have complaints, but the project is still really good overall. Music and character-focused scenes alone carry it a long way.
Loveless feels like a demo for how an older FF might look if remade. It was giving me FF4 specifically. It’s a good example of the absurd spectacle of Final Fantasy making its strongest moments. I dread to think how much money they spent on that section alone, but it was perhaps worth it for Final Fantasy to have a holodeck episode.
Character-specific thoughts
Tifa is greatly improved after not having as much going on in Remake. Her near-death experience experience, friendship with Aerith, and grief over Nibelheim has her feeling like the one struggling the most with what is happening. Better stuff going on with Cloud as well. I buddied with Tifa and the romance felt more palpable and as though this is the canon direction. The scene with Cloud and Tifa felt like a believably awkward date. They’re both kinda emotionally drained/unavailable and it really isn’t the time to start a romance, but it happens.
Barrett is probably the best/most improved in terms of range. He isn’t as blowhard about everything and calls people out on their shit a lot. He gets probably the biggest emotional moments through watching others die of maybe any other character. Best English VA easily.
Aerith felt the most underwritten until the end when we get into her whole fated role. She ultimately feels like she just had a miserable life and was lucky to have an adventure that is ultimately doomed for her.
Yuffie was deliberately annoying but charmingly weird kid. Found her one of the more compelling compared to how I regarded the character in the original. They rely a lot on her motion sickness joke though.
Some of the things Cait Sith claims or wants to do (like accessing a Shinra terminal) make no sense given what he is. Aside from him basically being a remote terminal for his operator, does he autotranslate everything into a dialect his operator doesn’t speak? I like him a lot as a character basically being a weird Looney Tunes foil but also being the most ‘normal person’ of the group. A fun way to rewrite him.
Pre-Cosmo Canyon I like Red’s characterisation but, post-Cosmo canyon becomes written a bit too spunky for my tastes. I think it evens out by the end of the game but still feels like a weird bait and switch. Having him moonwalk into a TCG tournament is about as good as you can do to address his disguise in the original. However, this kinda humour works better with his initial personality rather than his ‘teen’ self.
Cloud had maybe a few too many mind glitch scenes. I imagine someone who never played the original might be feeling a bit strung along with what’s really going on with him by this point.
Cid is highly charismatic but should probably be swearing a lot more. Vincent as a security guard was a good bit but both he and Cid feel a little squished in when they seem to just spectate the endgame.
The Tiny Bronco crash sequence has a short montage afterwards where character comes through in general behaviour. Everyone is waiting for the plane to be converted into a boat and everyone is just kinda bored or helping in their own way. The party are great as an ensemble and I hope they take a swing at this kinda writing in XVII.
Plot chapters and roam-em-up hubs are the alternating waves of this game with combat and minigames sewing the two halves together.
Apart from wards, Aerith is a more traditionally designated caster and has the least flexible gameplan of any character being the slowest (or it feels that way). Cait Sith is a bit too unconventional, and ATB-starved to me. He needs an ATB bar to begin cooking and really struggles to build bar without the moogle due to attack range and mobility. Barret and Red are both fairly reliable in most situations, but I ended up with Cloud, Tifa, Yuffie as I’m not sure it’s possible to eclipse their damage and utility. Cloud as a group healer/damage boy; Tifa as an enemy skill megabuff DPS; and Yuffie as a well-rounded Jack of all trades, master of all. Locking level 3 limit breaks behind multiple synergy attacks feels kinda restrictive. I’m not sure if I want them to return. I like their spectacle but maybe just make them a thing you can do when two characters have limit.
The sidequest expansion before the final section feels like too much game but it’s a lot better than what follows in Ch13:
This chapter sucks. The temple dungeon is a PS3 3D Zelda dungeon. Far too long, 4 times too long, the game’s weakness really is dungeons like this with big crates you have to move. winkerwatson mentioned it up thread but it really is an experience reminiscent of a more painful time in JRPGs. Five hundred and twenty-two ancient dragons later, it feels like this kinda design was taken to make hard mode even harder. The party splits inside the temple and the game does a comical rewind animation to go back a few hours to what the other half of the party got up to in their part of the dungeon. They do this twice(!) and I just wanted to get to the end when the clock gears showed up.
The trial flashbacks were good and a welcome break from the tedious navigation of floating islands. Each party member must relive their worst memory before getting access to the centre of the temple. We really hit home that everyone is the product of horrible life traumas (except Cid and Cait Sith); Cloud’s being delayed until the next game I guess.
If the game has a true throughline, it seems to be much more about coming to terms with death, which I guess culminate with the big meta-fakeout around Aerith’s death. Whether through the small deaths of one’s own trauma, the people we’ve lost, or the bigger question of things ending or going other than how we had hoped. Nobody ever feels able to talk about it in detail except for Aerith whenever she talks at length about the lifestream or hatred. In retrospect, a lot of the main plot dialogue talks about treasuring life given to us by the sacrifice of others. I liked it.
The black materia scenes in the original are very uncanny, and toxic, serial killer Cloud kinda gets there but is not quite as disturbing and coulda been wrapped up quicker (we foreshadow it for about 10 hours). Does achieve a measure of MGS when you try to resist Sephiroth. I’m not sure why they needed to deviate from the temple itself being the black materia and introducing a weird fake but whatever, there’s more egregious stuff.
The ending is really mixed.
Zack stuff sux.
Then we zoom through sleeping forest of all things. And the Forgotten Capital which I was looking forward to exploring in the quiet, empty way you do in the original. Couldn’t Gongaga have been a bit shorter? How about we zoom through the fucking 7-hour temple? We’re apparently very happy to cut out certain segments as long as enough people forgot about them. We kinda get a bit of atmosphere walking up to Aerith praying in the Forgotten Capital but not without a hundred whispers everywhere ruining the scene.
I’d say the actual scene of Aerith’s death is good, but the set-up slaps the player across the face way too much with it. It’s like Get Ready Everyone, THAT SCENE IS COMING UP! The burden of ending the game at the bottom of Act 2.
Like, part of remaking stuff is just let’s see what that idea looks like re-expressed through a modern approach, not radically overshadowed by a new plot element that is weaker. The best parts of Rebirth are seeing straight reinterpretations of a touchstone PS1 RPG using modern tech, action-hybrid design, and generally sensible worldbuilding adjustments. The spirit of the original sometimes comes through in those moments. It’s not like new stuff is bad, there’s great new things. The worst parts are either lengthy dungeons or those elements that try to tease fan theories and vestigial fate lore through the plotghosts. In the final cutscenes I found myself trying to remember which colour ghosts want to keep fate the same and which wanna change it and for whom, as well as what happened in the original as opposed to what is happening in real time during the roughly analogous scene. This isn’t fun to do. It’s sicko homework.
A good tone is struck at the very end, but I think any scene with whispers in it would be ten times better without whispers in it. Can we not ask for better w/r/t whispers? I really wonder what writer’s room meetings look like for this. Here you have a creative force that comes up with fun musical scenes, good character dialogue, and so on but can’t help itself when it comes to the most self-indulgent multiverse nonsense. Zack feels like a minor Kingdom Hearts character, and he just seems to exist to explain the idea there is a multiverse. AND NOTHING ELSE? He is written like a straw man used to explain that JRPGs suck.
Seeing the cast have a proper date night at the theatre, Jenova’s creepy human eyes, Cloud having only one stat higher than Sephiroth in the first chapter (luck), Dio flexing over a murder scene, Gus kicking down the door to his own song, Queen’s Blood NPCs. When it’s a celebration of the strange journey it hits but they really should shed the extended transmedia stuff. Or perhaps that too is the DNA and the legacy.
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God, the music is too fucking good. Here are some highlights.
Summer Wave racing
Some battle themes feel like they belong in Tekken. Yo, there let’s get some peas!
More Tekken
The best battle theme comes out of nowhere when you touch down in Cosmo Canyon
Best original boss theme
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i think i have given up on the final few quests in the game for now, like Ultimate Party Animal, and Gilgamesh Island. Also, that one enemy intel battle where you have to kill the Mindflayer first. these all kind of suck, and clearly i need to be at a higher level to make them less of a pain in the ass. the problem with all of them is that i can get pretty far into them, but then i have to restart from the beginning and uh, i’m tired of it. would be neat to have that final summon, though. maybe in the New Game+ or whatever, if they let you select chapters like in Remake after you beat the game.
just going to start the chapter 13 main quest, now.
just crossed 100 hours - was really not expecting this game to be this long lol
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Yeah the final set of sidestuff screamed NG+ to me.
Might eventually come back to it when I have less to play.
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ok, i finally beat this but i guess the spoiler thread winker made has been eaten by the axe.
i went as fast as i could! sigh.
well
i guess Aerith is alive, but also, she isn’t? seems like kind of the easiest way to deal with “what do we do for the rest of this game” - like at the point i believed Aerith would be sticking with the party, i kept thinking “well how the hell are they gonna do the next part - just make something totally original?” now, i guess not - although i sort of wonder how it’s going to resolve Cloud being aware of multi-dimensionality while everyone else is bummed out that Aerith is dead. i guess since Cloud is normally so weird with his emotions, no one will probably bat an eye.
i’m curious to see where this all goes - while Remake felt like…a remake, Rebirth really feels like a fleshing out of a concept to its absolute maximalist end point. on the one hand, i think this is kind of a cop out, and maybe undermines whatever messaging the original had, but at the same time, why would we replay the same thing over again? you can only be 12 and see Sephiroth kill Aerith once.
i’ll come back to write more once i’ve processed more - i was home sick from work today and spent a good 10-15 hours just cranking out the end of this game.
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i just finished chapter 10. i haaaaaaaaate glide de chocobo.
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Just finished this game last night, 100 hours or so of leisurely playtime.
I had a pretty good time with it, even though like almost everyone by chapter 12 I was really pushing through trying to get to the ending. Up until then though I was really enjoying hanging out for 1-2 hours in a night with my Avalanche homies.
Having a game in which you have 6-7 distinct people hanging around for most of it and commenting on everything was really nice. Gave the game great chill hangout vibes. I was trying to think of another game in which this happens, and I couldn’t think of a single one. The closest I could come up with was unlocking the party limit in BG3? Anyways every game with a party should do this from now, I don’t ever want to pick a party of 3 and have the rest of my people stay in camp ever again.
Even though I was very positive on the game overall I will say that I hate multiverse stuff in general and REALLY hated it in this game. Could have just been cut out completely and the game would have been improved. I guess I kind of did like the Biggs stuff even if it was ultimately pointless (he laments being a side character/NPC, decides to take life into his own hands/become a main character, and then gets killed like a side character/NPC)
My thoughts on the ending: Was surprised that people are reading it that Aerith is still alive… I saw it as her being just straight up dead, Cloud’s having a mental breakdown, or maybe he was able to communicate with her spirit in that one area, but she won’t be in the next game… but then again you add all this mutliverse bullshit and it kind of pulls the stakes out of the entire game so who knows
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Wrote my thoughts on this game like four times and gave up. I love this game. the Big Setpiece in Chapter 12 is the most I’ve ever liked this franchise (even if its ripping off the previous game). Some of the late game stuff is pretty silly but in funny ways (having The Worst Mini Game be the only one that’s skippable is a good joke) but the last scene before the credits was very sweet. I hope the final game is on Three Discs.
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I’ve definitely noticed more and more AAA action RPGs trying to get close to this in recent years — for example, the most recent God of Wars definitely get as close as possible to giving you a full adventuring party while fundamentally being character action games
it’s an AAA trend I generally like and seems to be consistent with what people are asking for (cf how everyone loved bg3 and before that loved mass effect games because it got progressively harder and harder to actually ship ensemble RPGs with console production values) but it’s clearly very, very expensive to do nowadays so you only see it in these huge landmark single player games
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I see what you are saying but even in GoW Ragnarok / BG3 / Mass Effect etc, you’ve still got a “home base” where everyone is hanging out while you tend to pick out or be given 1 or 2 or 3 guys to go on a specific mission with while the rest hang out in camp and don’t participate in the story.
I’m more talking like just give me the full cast all the time for everything, which is what FF7RE does and which felt completely revelatory.
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FFXVI learned all the wrong lessons from FFXV and FFVIIR learned all the right ones.
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More random musings about my playthrough:
I was 100% convinced the twist was going to be that Tifa was going to be killed at the end. Aerith is such a non-entity for the first 3/4ths of the game, and the Tifa/Cloud relationship is hit so hard I was sure that she was being set up to get fridged. Would have been a cool twist on the story/part 3 motivation for Cloud but overall I was glad I was wrong.
In my playthrough I got the Tifa GC date (even though I was shooting for a bros night with Barret) and it was weird that Cloud has a real romantic night with Tifa at the GC (including a hot smooch in the gondola, cloud you dirty dog) after having basically nothing even resembling chemistry with Aerith the whole game, only for the entire last bit to hinge on mutual romantic feelings between Aerith and Cloud. Wtf dude, you literally just made a pass at Tifa like 1 chapter ago, get it together.
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being unable to decide between a gentile and a non-gentile woman is the most relatable thing a videogame protagonist has ever done
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Spoilers naturally
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had some time to pick this up again after a month or so, and of course something went wrong with the PS5 and i had to re-install the game.
At least the savestates were safe ( 
), though of course i lost to some White 
and i have to re-do some exploring. idk why, but i love this game and all the little antics between the cast:
i.e. Barrett having a bright-idea moment and the party being all “… yeaaahh sure we keep this in mind”, and Tsundere-Barrett is just being a bit bitchy about how nobody is all in on his masterplan™.
Chadley feels a bit more comedy side-kick than last time i played, maybe i am a bit more in the mood for comedy atm?
8/10 
game atm though, let’s see how it keeps up.
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