EFFORTPOST Final fantasy 7 rebirth review

I technically have only 1 trophy left to get the plat, just to finish the game on hard but after beating all the challenges it's an easy part.

So the game continues the divisive game ff7 remake or part 1. A vocal minority didn't liked that part 1 wasn't a faithful remake

https://old.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasyVII/comments/i967ja/how_faithful_is_the_ff7_remake_to_the_original/

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/168653-final-fantasy-vii-remake/80041128

My fully objective opinion is that if you want to play original story then play the original game. I played first time the game in 2017 and it held very well, the graphic is part of experience it also a lot better in many ways than the remakes.

So devs had hard choices to make second part more faithful or do some creative freedom.

They started with big middle finger to canon lovers by putting Zack in front of their promotional art. And teased that you can actually save Aerith. And the whole game will end up being a very big tease.

The game start with you playing Zack and them showing parallel universe where Zack survives but cloud doesn't wakes up. Zack enters Midgar and sees helicopter crushes with Avalanche including Aerith. This shit absolutely doesn't make sense timeline wise but goal was to show Zack surviving is bad. So cloud than wakes up, yeah every Zack moment in the game is dream sequence.

Devs made every Zack sequence as dream so they could always back steep if majority of gaymers don't like the new direction and say "ha it was just a dream"

So the next 7-8 chapters of the game have basically no story. Just gameplay and the gameplay is alright, it has some strong far cry motif but what is really impressive is the balance. The game is so balanced

FF7 is a legendary game because there was so many way to break the game so many players were experimenting with the builds and stuff. RPG are generally about min/max and breaking the game. So ff7 remake parts showing such a middle finger to rpg elements. Some rpg elements will only show up at end game but you'll still will never be op. They also future proof the balance. Like you can't use equipment to get a status boost +100% attack or magic. You get only 1 item in the game that can give you +25% attack so it's impossible even to reach 100% attack boost and they already creeped you

You end up being in that game weaker than in part 1. In part 1 every character can reach 9999hp because the hp materia gives you 50% hp boost and you can use multiple of those. In part 2 30% hp boost max

You could assume it an action game but nope as action game the gameplay is absolutely not balanced but luckily you only encounter it doing hard mode or challenges.

So on chapter 8 comes the first legit big change. Tiffa falls into mako, in og game that happens after aerith dies.

On chapter 13 happens some wild religious symbolism shit in those dream sequences starts happening. Here my fav:

They start giving player a choice hinting that you can save Aerith but same time foreshadowing that non of those choices are real, neighbor can't escape fate and some symbolism like all those choices had this dog

Hinting that you won't save Aerith. That dream sequence also killed Zack multiple times showing you can't change the fate, Zack must die from bullets from those soldiers. So the moment Aerith is about to get killed, cloud saves her in his head and starts fighting Sephiroth and then thinking that he saved Aerith when she got killed

The game ends with illusion of Aerith telling she will stop Sephiroth and all this is still cannon since in og ff7 Aerith did showed up in the end in life stream defeating Sephiroth.

The real changes are basically just Tifa mako event and Yiffie being the main female protagonist, she has even more screen time than Aerith if you ignore the dream sequence. It's understandable, modern Japan is quite libertarian so no wonder she is everywhere and the strongest character in the game. Despite being total optional in og game. She got her own dlc in part 1 and in part3 she will get a huge chapter for her self.

Graphic of ff7 part 2 is actually worse than in part 1 but part 1 is not open world so understandable.

Part 1 is generally a better game than part 2. Part 2 just has so many mini games like 1/4 of chapters are just mini games. Part 2 is too much of an fanfic game.

The story also needed more changes because like I mentioned before that og ff7 did a lot of things better than the remakes and one is that in part 2 it doesn't make sense how the party was following clearly mentally unstable cloud without questioning his actions, many characters interactions just looked better og game than with modern graphics. In rebirth so many interactions and characters motives look so robotic than even most giga neurodivergent would write a better interaction of characters, just show how robotic japs are.

So objectively the game is a 7/10 but if you like Japanese nonsense the game becomes 8/10 and if you like serious shit that makes sense the game is 5/10.

If you go after platinum it will be an harder platinum than any souls game

It has challenges where you have to fight 10+ bosses and if you lose one fight you have to start from beginning, you cannot use any items. All bosses are faster than you and have moves that will wipe you out in one hit so you need to know their patterns

I didn't had any trouble with the game and beating the mini games but the feeling that after fighting a challenge for 30 min the prospect of losing last battle and then start from zero didn't felt nice. I have no idea why they made a jrpg this hard. I am pretty sure the 1% that finished all those challenges didn't liked it and devs will make them even harder in part3.