Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth - Review "Buy, Wait for Sale, Never Touch?"

rebirth has been in my hands for almost two  weeks and I can assure you it is real is it real good we'll get to that squares asked that  nothing outside of chapter 2 or the grasslands can be shown so I'll do my best to cover what I  can they also allowed trailer footage but squares trailers might as well be called spoilercast so  I'll use those as sparingly as I can make sure to subscribe and if you aren't getting notifications  make sure to hit the notification Bell rebirth opens up close to wh

ere the first ended and you're  joined back up with Cloud Tia Barrett and others the game takes very little time to get going with  a flashback and then a Leap Forward into the wider larger world that fans have been wanting to  revisit in a 3D fashion for years what makes a Final Fantasy game to me if you ask 10 fans you  might as well get 10 answers but for me personally it's a sense of wonder exploration tons of mini  games and camaraderie at least the ones I've loved and that's your gig in Fi

nal Fantasy 7 rebirth  from the start in many ways it is a tale of two experiences though one a love letter written by  your childhood self to the Future in the hopes of a remake that would be so profound it feels like  stepping from the space shuttle to the Enterprise and the other is a letter back an apology  that games and Final Fantasy 7 rebirth haven't quite got there yet walking around the city is  phenomenal in that final fantasy kind of way not an interaction Fest like many other titles

but  instead a town of living breathing people going about their lives while they may repeat themselves  it still has this feeling of liveliness to it finally seeing the world reaching out in front  of you for the first time in 3D is a profound experience and something that is noticeable also  exploring the initi places there's these moments of Brilliance where the magnetic feeling of the  world is also braced against a cold reminder that cloud and his groups are out there in a desire to  stop M

ana from being Capri suned out of the planet so there's this very cool light and dark dichotomy  in the atmosphere that you can feel directly from the start graphically yes rebirth is a bit of a  mixed bag it's at one time Grand and massive with huge Vistas stretching out in front of you and  incredible amounts of verticality and variation in forms and in Fauna but what's more noticeable is  that you're going to fight flying insects X magic Beast huge Warriors yet the game's biggest enemy  and o

ne you really can't defeat is poppin The Wider world is fantastic looking it's just that  you notice details like this coming back again and again and again small spikes and otherwise  smooth line of presentation that the game wants to give you it's not surprising especially when  you take into account the massive change in the environments that this sequel throws at you and  they make everything in remake feel like a small plated tester platter for a Los Vegas buffet  where the image is the mos

t stable and just the presentation itself is right in the middle of  the battles the locations and incredible spell effects the game throws at you Final Fantasy may  not have the largest spell repository their spell books probably look like a Condominiums visiting  pamphlet but you can never claim they don't go full Ham on the effects some of rebirth smallest  spells still fill an entire area with crystalline energy or swirling arcs of crazy glass looking  magical powers it's overpowered overpro

duced and the best part of the game and that high production  value in those moments is again displayed in the soundtrack now rebirth more than remake had a  number of tracks with with surprisingly divergent themes and moods to them more quizzical in nature  comical in tone at times I didn't actually expect it as well as a couple very odd diddies that  played when meeting characters I dig that a series this long in the tooth where we're seeing  them remake an ancient game into three more might s

it back and say Orchestra play everything but it  doesn't well not all the time there are still full throated pieces for major battles and you won't  meet anything above 9 ft that doesn't have its own theme song but still it's not bad and that  same familiar ity was in the voices characters new and old don't disappoint or they do if  you didn't like them in remake while you meet characters also familiar not so much here in part  two they're all fine they will never be anything more than placehol

ders for the mental patterns  that Gamers have had in their own brains from repeat playing of the original game or for other  people who are hearing them for the first time or second time cheesy they work what also works  is the sound mostly the game has a tremendous number of excellent effects and environmentals  especially when traveling or during major cut scenes and and spells each with a nice front face  to them so you can tell which spells being cast even if you aren't the one doing it exc

ellent  throughout all those moments however while the sounds are diverse and consistently interactive  with the materials and locations you're in many are still a bit offputting in their sample style  Barrett's gun sounds like a kid going while aiming finger guns and the mantle and climbing sounds  that often occur with Cloud have a very mushy especially noticeable oddly with rocks and stone  sounds when shooting or busting them or walking through them when a 10-ton boulder should sound  like s

omething massive instead it sounds like a marble getting tossed into a sand pit it's the  oddest soundwork and it leaves a lot to be desired especially because the game number one is so  grandos and number two has a lot of those effects and it is something that plays again and again and  once you hear it the first time you're going to hear it every time after that probably because the  game is larger and more open world more pronounced here what is larger more pronounced though is the  gameplay

in rebirth because a lot has been added to a title that already had a great deal going  for it and it's a more open world title a larger one joining cloud and others as they continue to  try to take down Sethro speaking of the party it's consistently divided with three main characters  and two that have the backside they're switchable at any time one excellent bit of planning in this  game is that you can make three teams mixing and matching members and switch them out outside  a battle so if yo

u see a location and you know inside be monsters you want to grab your Frontline  offensive heavy hit you can do that having those teams that you can switch out is something that  I'll talk about again in a moment that really does help the game combat is a flow of real time  and breaks from it whenever you want while you can also hold a button to automatically do some  moves of course there's not enough buttons on a controller to take care of all of them but it  works quite well combat is a flow

there when you build enough gauge you can perform special moves  both individually as well as with others in the party you have your own personal skills built  up on your different meters that can be pulled off as well as switching out and teaming up with  others in new Synergy moves and then summon moves as well the best part about this is that it can  make experimenting a bit more useful switching up the team makeup more rewarding another thing  I like about this is when you go in and buy any

of skills you got those moves with your partners  as well as adding more oneoff spells without using magic points and while there are the occasional  plus to health or plus two magic it's actually split up enough that it doesn't feel like any of  those are meded out in a lean way you actually feel like when you get something in this game  it pays off dramatically and in a powerful way when it comes to the equipment you have weapons  armor Rings pendants and more with you able to fit them with m

aterial that goes up in level as you do  battles from being able to see enemies information to Fireballs ice storms lightning healing  and setting characters who don't actively get controlled to use their special moves right away  the Materia system is in and of itself a highly detailed miname consistently seeing how leveling  up a different weapon and what you're going to be able to do and put into it is always useful it's  always fun and I actually did like to jump into this system and switch

those out and see how it  worked with different characters when exploring you ride chocobos across a landscape you sniff out  treasure and you jet ski across lakes with them it all works quite well and it's matched up with a  game world that's devoid of a ton of open world events or activities they happen and they're there  but they're less scatterbrained and ad-ridden than we see in other titles movement is also altered  here with a button press it lets you not only roll around the landscape or

in battle but also  so you can mantle up and down obstacles in the game World getting to Airborne enemies is tiny  bit easier in this game depending on what skills you are using but it still doesn't necessarily  have the jump button in the way you would expect however this is very open to interpretation when  it comes to activating it around the game World while cloud and Pals can climb a bit easier and  move around with that action button many times it's not lined up the locations of the lands

cape  meaning you can think it should activate but it won't if you rolling around like a dumbass until  you get right to the edge of something well other times it lets you activate it before Cloud even  gets near it while the game is very open with that interpretation there are other times where  it jumps many times higher than cloud ever could and then other times the dude doesn't appear  to be able to bend at the knees and that can make movement across uneven ground around the  game World less

fun than it should be and this is something you see replicated most noticeably  with the chocobos if you are running around the game world and you get near water or go into it  the game has an almost weird reset animation so instead of smoothly entering the water and just  moving on for some reason it has you almost stop and then start again like the movement system is  two discrete levels or two discrete situations and that's really something that you notice a couple  times in rebirth some add

itional problems but one of those is not the side card game so this is  called Queens blood the additional card game in rebirth and it's pretty damned enjoyable it is you  having cards on three horizontal rows each time you put down a card that card adds point to any  connecting spots around it and its move pattern allows that so for for example one character or  one card may add a point to the slots above and to the sides of it effectively now making those  slots level two meaning you can now p

ut a level two card on those slots this is a game that  has some complexity but they didn't make it so much so that no one would enjoy it unless you  dived into it deeply this is a moment in the game where there's actually a bit of judicious cutting  where it feels like they probably could have made it completely insanely complex but instead made  it nice and smooth nice and easy for people to get into there's still some complexity there  if you play against the characters who have better cards

or who are better at it and there's  another part of this that I think is excellent and something that they did that I wasn't expecting  it's not necessarily as busy as you might expect originally and this is a game world that not being  filled with enemies also isn't necessarily filled with a ton of side missions or stuff to do there's  they're there but it's just not one of those games that's absolutely filled with them personally I  actually find it exactly as balanced as I would want I bounc

ed from activity to activity side  mission to main mission to battle in this way that just really felt nice even though I could  see some people playing this and wishing there were more bad guys everywhere but they come out  in the later busier sections and there's a VR battle system that you can gain different items  by doing so I was interested in all of this and the game continued to grow on me more and more  that brings us to fun Factor first I have to say I think the game is actually awesom

e yes it's  sometimes frustrating and there are things about it that I don't love but it's well worth the  asking price it's just rebirth is a bit like watching an amazing fighter who's come back  and has a bit of ring rust it's a damn joy to play and watch but just like that fighter in the  example I sometimes see it do something and go o o damn in gameplay yes it holds up I loved some  of the side moments the activities the specific characters that were hanging out alongside one  another doing

different synergies that's a nice ad but then as I was running through some deadly  countryland Road just after slaughtering an entire shoe filled Factory worth of reptile things I  couldn't get Cloud to climb up a hill the size of a fraking kindergartner nappy time pillow and  then when I ran around to the other side of the rock I was faced with more rocks that looked  like they'd been textured by someone working with a memory limitation of a [ __ ] speaking  spell it's a grandiose insanely am

bitious title that adds in places yes it may not need to and in  other spots could have done with a bit of Shoring up but it is more than the sum of its parts  and I actually find myself enjoying this more than I did the first title that being said it is  fun as hell and that's really what matters in a game like this it continues the story and it's a  story that a lot of folks are probably going to love diving into and I hope you like diving into  reviews with me on these kind of things Dragon's

Dogma and a couple others are going to be coming  up next I hope you guys enjoy it jump into the game have a good time if you do so and check  out the podcast if you get a chance peace out