“Iconic heroes Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Aerith and Red XIII have escaped from the dystopian city Midgar and are now in pursuit of Sephiroth, the vengeful swordsman from Cloud’s past who was thought to be dead“

I’m someone who usually likes games to be no longer than 20-25 hours, excluding extra content or 100% everything. I mentioned in my Resident Evil 4 review how it was the first game in a long time I immediately wanted to replay. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth takes around 40 hours minimum to beat. I didn’t bother with the 100+ hours of side quests to do, but, at the end, I was conflicted with a sense of both satisfaction and yearning for more. Although I enjoyed Final Fantasy XVI, it unfortunately overstayed its welcome in the third act. Rebirth was basically perfect.

Remake was my introduction to Final Fantasy, and that game hooked me. Rebirth is less action action action and more focused on the characters, their backstories, connections with each other, and worldbuilding. Through the first half of the story, I wasn’t super thrilled about seeing a change as to how things were progressing but I take that back completely. Without spoilers, the story is just incredible, and I was invested in all the optional character interactions you can do with your party.

While I didn’t do a ton, the mini-games and side quests are fun to do. Chadley is still annoying, but doing some things for him will net you solid materia or equipment. It helps to get Chocobos for each open area. And it never hurts to get yourself a better deck for Queen’s Blood.

The music in Rebirth is GOD TIER. I found myself countless times sitting in my chair with the controller down listening to new themes that came on while exploring, or being locked in during epic boss battles. It’s seriously so well done and is my Game of the Year in the category. Queen’s Blood has a banger song too. Why? Because it can.

You’ll probably see tons of videos on the performance mode in Rebirth being noticeably blurry, to which I call BS. The game runs and looks fantastic. But if you really need those pixels to look sharper 2 inches away from your TV, you can sleep at night knowing the $700 PS5 Pro will solve all your issues.

I have a handful of gripes to air out. The prologue is a slog when having to push carts around. Why this series continues to try and invent the wheel for such trivial things I will not understand (throwing boxes for example). Cait Sith and Red XIII suck to play as, and the chapters where you mainly control them are rough. Not being able to skip cinematics during boss battles is also strange – I really don’t need to hear the same dialogue again and again if I’m clearly losing against a boss. And can we please properly explain what the restart options for a boss fight? I know which one to choose but many others do not.

If Square Enix fixes these things for “Reunion” or whatever the third game will be named, they will have a flawless game on their hands. I’m very excited for it and highly recommend this series to newcomers.