I gobbled down Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth like a Thanksgiving dinner. I ate the leftovers with relish. I avoided the ample potatoes because the turkey was overstuffed already.
Food metaphors tumble from my lips whenever I talk about Rebirth because it’s so goshdarned sumptuous. It’s got more than 30 minigames. A different unlockable chocobo for each of its massive regions. A collectible card game with its own winding questline, and hours of cutscenes far fancier than anything in Advent Children(sorry, Tetsuya Nomura!).
For the past two weeks, I’ve secretly traded observations ranging from thrilled to perplexed with Andy Bickerton, whose review I edited for NPR. Square Enix blessed us both with early codes, but Andy couldn’t stop himself from running down every sidequest and open world checklist, while I charged through the main plot and never (well, almost never) looked back.
The contrasting playstyles proved to be a fruitful experiment. I mostly had a blast; Andy got exhausted. We agreed that Rebirth’s already meandering momentum slowed, sluglike, outside of its critical path. The game’s open world is often beautiful and often boring — branching off the Ubisoft evolutionary line, only distantly related to breathtaking innovators like Tears of the Kingdom and Elden Ring.
Here’s how Andy summarized his experience:
I'm a numbers guy, so let me break it down for you. I did my due diligence for this review by putting in 75 hours to fully complete many regions and questlines. It'd likely take an additional 20 hours to 100% the game. If I cut out most side activities, I'd have finished the story in 45 hours — I know this because that's how long it took my editor [that’s me!]. To illustrate, here's a handy visual aid:
Other critics concur that Rebirth’s got too much going on, and have questioned Square Enix’s choice to elongate the original story into a remake trilogy. Much as I adored the game’s characters, its plot sometimes left me cold; it signed plenty of emotional checks it has yet to cash. Still, I resonate entirely with the hopeful chord Andy struck at the end of his review:
I just want to say: keep on keeping on, Square Enix. I see how impossible it's been to please everyone. Final Fantasy 13 was too linear, so you opened Final Fantasy 15 up to mixed results. Then you tried to steer the series further towards action with Final Fantasy 16 and it didn't go over well with many fans.
I'm not sure what you're cooking up for the last installment in the remake trilogy, but I'm betting you'll make me weep for joy in between groans of frustration at tedious gameplay. Whatever it looks like, and whatever it's called (I'd suggest "Final Fantasy 7 Refinance"), I'll be playing it.
The week was lousy with other news. Elden Ring’s DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, got a release date (June 21st). My beloved Pentiment just dropped on the Nintendo Switch, after Microsoft finally confirmed rumors that it and three other Xbox titles were coming to the console. And I still haven’t been able to log in, much less play, the server-crashing sensation Helldivers 2!
