The seventh Final Fantasy has long gone beyond just the popular JRPG — it is a cultural phenomenon that influenced the development of the genre, narrative games and the perception of video games as an art form. That’s why Square Enix has been unable to finally let go of this project for many years, returning to it over and over again. The Final Fantasy VII Remake proved that reinterpreting classics can work: it was emotional, whole, and fresh. But with Rebirth, the situation turned out to be much more complicated. It is impossible to talk about such a game in a hurry — it requires a thoughtful conversation. Therefore, make yourself comfortable: ahead is a detailed analysis of exactly where the sequel turned and why the impressions from it are so contradictory.

The idea of splitting the original Final Fantasy VII into several independent parts initially looked controversial. Fans were afraid of stretching the plot, losing the tempo and artificially increasing the timekeeping. However, Remake has managed to dispel most of these fears. He not only updated the graphics and combat system, but also deepened the plot, carefully expanded the ent, added new scenes and characters, and deftly played with the meta-narrative and expectations of the players. At the same time, the game remained compact, balanced in rhythm and rich in content. The finale logically led to a great journey, and that’s why the interest in the sequel was enormous: everyone wanted to see how the developers implemented a global map, a variety of locations and a sense of the big world.

After years of waiting, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth came on the scene — and instead of a thoughtful development of remake ideas, players got a rather formulaic openworld. Yes, the combat system is still impressive: dynamic battles, tactical depth and spectacular abilities of the characters still keep the bar high. But a world has been built around this solid foundation, overloaded with the same type of activities, side quests of dubious quality and stretched gameplay. There is a feeling that the focus has shifted from the direction and atmosphere to the amount of content and the hours of passage. Here again, the painful question arises: why are modern games so eager to be “bigger”, sacrificing density, diversity and attention to detail, which once made Final Fantasy VII truly great?

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Once the heroes get out of the cramped, oppressive corridors of the metropolis, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth dramatically changes its appearance. The game, which until recently felt like a calibrated JRPG plot, suddenly turns into a bizarre hybrid of Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima and the conditional Assassin’s Creed. Towers appear on the map, collecting resources for crafting, dozens of points of interest and the usual scattering of markers. The problem is that the external variety hides an extremely limited set of mechanics that quickly lose all novelty. Already in the first region, it becomes clear that there is no exploration of the world ahead, but a marathon of similar actions. In total, about 170 almost identical tasks will have to be completed to completely “clean up” all locations.

In fact, the open world of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is based on the repetition of the same activities, which are served under different visual shells, but played the same way:

• fight monsters under pre-set conditions for the sake of formal progress;
• activating towers to open the card and then scan the crystals;
• search for points of interest that are not related to the plot and do not provide tangible rewards;
• excavations on Chocobo, rarely leading to truly significant finds;
• collecting resources for crafting, tied into long chains “recipe → material → mini-boss”.

It is this structure that turns exploring locations from an adventure into a mechanical routine, where gameplay does not work on atmosphere and narrative, but on filling the map with icons.

Open World for the Sake of It: How Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Loses Focus

All these fashionable elements have replaced the classic world map. But in Japanese role-playing games, she played a completely different role: she showed the scale of the story at minimal cost, provided convenient movement between key plot points, and sometimes hid a couple of secrets for fans of optional bosses. The map was a tool, not an end in itself. Rebirth seems to perceive it as a mandatory checklist of modern trends.

Before the release of Rebirth, no Final Fantasy series allowed itself such a volume of frankly useless content. Moreover, it suddenly turns out that even Final Fantasy XV, with its controversial open world, looked more lively and inventive. And Final Fantasy XVI, which abandoned the giant seamless map in favor of compact zones and unique story levels, turned out to be much more integral. At the same time, the feeling of epicness and scope has not gone away — on the contrary, the pace and concentration of the narrative have won.

In fact, the only point of the spacious, certainly beautiful regions of FF VII Rebirth is to stretch the passage time. The main plot involves well if 10% of each location. The rest of the space is either empty, offering no motivation for exploration, or given over to collecting. Moreover, it is impossible to completely ignore it: some of the side tasks marked with green markers require specific subjects.

The chain of their receipt looks like a concentrate of the worst openworld design practices. First you need to find a recipe. To open the recipe, you need to find a point for excavation. It will appear only after scanning the crystals, the location of which will be shown by the towers. Formally, owls can lead to them — the local equivalent of foxes from Ghost of Tsushima — but in reality no one will engage in this “organic” search. Even after getting the recipe, it’s too early to relax: you’ll need a unique trophy from the regional mini-boss to craft it. And his search again comes up against the same towers and markers. If someone likes this structure, they will probably find a common language with Rebirth. If you were expecting a concentrated adventure in the spirit of classic Final Fantasy, disappointment is inevitable.

Hence the logical question: why is all this here at all? Formally, we can say that it is not necessary to clear the entire map. Technically— yes. But in practice, it is side activities that remain the easiest, and sometimes the only way to obtain rare magic, important recipes, resources, and experience. Moreover, they are the only ones who unlock the most powerful versions of the summoned creatures, some challenges, and valuable rewards. So you will still have to interact with this content.

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My personal timing confirms this: it took about 80 hours to complete Rebirth with most of the third-party tasks (with the exception of countless mini-games and a couple of optional bosses). Of these, the plot took about 30-35 hours, and the rest of the time was lost in running from icon to icon. And the problem is not even that these are faceless “questions” — it is clear that the developers tried to integrate collecting into the progression system. But that’s exactly why it’s impossible to pretend that this giant layer of the game doesn’t exist. If he’s not needed, why is he here? And if necessary, why is it implemented at the level of Ubisoft’s worst moments?

In the same 80 hours, the original Final Fantasy VII can be completed two and a half times, getting a complete adventure with perfect pace and constant tension. Rebirth, unlike the more assembled Remake, looks bloated with pseudo-content. Gathering, gigantic regions and dozens of mini-games have almost nothing to do with the plot or the spirit of the classic “seven”. They exist because modern audiences are increasingly directly correlating the price of a game with the number of hours of play, and then resent if “an hour is too expensive.”

Historically, numbered Final Fantasy has always been primarily about the plot — it doesn’t matter if it’s successful or controversial — and only secondarily about optional activities. Side quests served as a supplement for those who wanted to level up deeper and challenge the most dangerous opponents. Rebirth breaks this philosophy without understanding why it needs an open world at all and how to use it.

And successful examples are very close. In Final Fantasy XVI, which was ironically criticized for the lack of a large seamless world, there were side storylines for secondary characters that developed logically throughout the campaign. Due to this, the tasks felt meaningful and were almost as good as the main narrative in terms of their level of elaboration.

In Rebirth, however, quests, with rare exceptions, are given out by random NPCs that the player sees once and immediately forgets. And this is especially strange against the background of the high graphic and technical level of the project — it is fair to expect that the scenario part will meet the budget. However, there is not a single task in the entire game that even remotely reaches the story of the angel from the slums from the Remake, not to mention the multi-stage assignments from Final Fantasy XII or XVI.

The only really interesting thing is the mystical side story related to the card game Queen’s Blood. Individual scenes that open after receiving some proto-relics can also pleasantly surprise and add atmosphere. However, there were some controversial decisions here: the final card opponent ignores the rules, and unique regional events range from really successful to frankly tedious. Even in its best moments, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth still can’t decide what it wants to be — an epic story adventure or another open-world attraction.

A Plot Between Canon and Fanservice: Why Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Is Losing Its Coherence

Even if you consciously ignore side activities and move strictly along the main plot, this saves only hours of passage, but does not eliminate other, much deeper problems. The developers claimed that it was not necessary to know the events of previous games in order to understand Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but in practice this turned out to be a common marketing formulation. To really navigate what is happening, the player needs to be familiar not only with the original Final Fantasy VII and the first part of the remake, but also with the prequel Crisis Core. The sequel explains the key plot twists extremely sparingly, especially those related to the return of Zack, who looks more like an element of a fan service than an organic part of the narrative. In some places, the game begins to completely rewrite ENT, as happened with the “Guns”, which lost their status as a global threat and turned into a one-time plot tool.

As a result, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth forces itself into a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, she is expected to follow the canon of the original “seven”. On the other hand, the Remake finale made it clear that the characters had changed their fate and were no longer obligated to follow their intended path. The sequel is torn between these extremes, not daring to choose any of them definitively. As a result, the game mostly smooths out and cosmetically updates familiar events, sometimes making them more logical, but at the same time it hardly deepens or develops them the way the first part of the remake did — even despite the increased volume of dialogues and scenes.

It is especially noticeable here how advantageous the Midgar starting point was. In the original Final Fantasy VII, this is one of the most elaborate and memorable locations, and the Remake only enhanced the effect by playing on the contrast between life in the slums and privileged areas. She gave full-fledged storylines to Wedge, Biggs and Jesse, saturated the world with secondary characters and ensured a high density of events. But as soon as the story went beyond the limits of the metropolis, the narrative in the original began to rush forward rapidly, jumping from city to city and not lingering in any of them.

This is where Rebirth faces the problem of not having a foothold. After Midgar, there were almost no pronounced secondary characters in the “seven”, and the locations served as decorations for another plot fragment. The sequel tries to compensate for this by inflating settlements to huge sizes — it’s easy to get lost in Kalma or Cosmo Canyon – but forgets to fill them with life. While Remake regularly showed the everyday life of ordinary people and created the feeling of a living city, Rebirth is more often limited to scale for the sake of scale.

As a result, interaction with the post-Midgar world is reduced to a limited and loosely connected set of elements:

• large but empty settlements without memorable characters and internal conflicts;
• side quests from random NPCs that the player sees once and immediately forgets;
• locations that serve as a backdrop for the plot, but do not develop it;
• minimal impact of what is happening in cities on the overall narrative and the development of the characters.

After that, the game seems to say: “Here’s a space for you — then have fun on your own,” replacing the study of the world with its dimensions.

At the same time, it cannot be said that Rebirth does not know how to surprise. When the game focuses on key scenes, it really works at the highest level. Barrett’s encounter with Dean is a powerful and emotionally accurate episode. The Golden Saucer, the main hub of the mini-games, has benefited from the increased scale. The military parade is staged on a grand scale, the virtual performance looks impressive, and the scene with little Iris touches to the depths of the soul. The characters’ emotional conversations in the hotels help to reveal their characters, Tifa behaves more mundane and adequate, reacting to Cloud’s confused memories. Yuffie fits seamlessly into the main plot, and Kate Sith finally ceases to be a purely secondary figure. At times like this, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth really feels like a big, expensive, and ambitious JRPG.

Unfortunately, there are hours of much less expressive content between these bright segments. This seriously affects the pace of the narrative and the overall impression. Over time, episodes become noticeable where the game either stands still or breaks off storylines without a clear conclusion — like the story of the Gi clan. Sephiroth deserves special mention: his presence here is so intrusive that he appears even in side quests. In the original, the rare appearances of the antagonist only increased the intrigue, whereas in Rebirth he loses his mystery and turns into an almost permanent background.

They didn’t treat Sid any better. From a brusque, rude pilot with a dream of space, he turned into a faceless carrier, devoid of a past and motivation. His backstory, the rocket city, and personal conflict are simply cut out, despite the fact that the game covers the events of the first disc of the original. Paradoxically, Vincent has more plot details here than one of the key characters in the series. Perhaps all this was postponed until the triquel, but the main narrative has already gone too far to return to it organically.

Yes, they will probably try to close some gaps in the third part. But the Rebirth finale will remain the way it turned out. And here it’s hard not to say it bluntly: if possible, it’s better to replay the original Final Fantasy VII. Rebirth manages to break one of the most powerful and iconic events not only of the game itself, but also, perhaps, of the entire JRPG genre. Iris’s death has long ceased to be a surprise, but if you have such a powerful dramatic moment in your hands, it is either left untouched, or at least no attempt is made to rewrite it for dubious effect.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: The Pros and Cons: Ambition vs. Execution

In the second part of the remake, Square Enix finally decided to jump on the multiverse train, radically rethinking the very essence of Reunion. If earlier it was the reunion of the Jenova cells and one of the key elements of the lore of the original Final Fantasy VII, now we are talking about the unification of parallel worlds that arose after the final Remake. Such a move does not just change the interpretation of events — it undermines the foundation of the entire history of the Seven, finally turning the remake trilogy into a set of sidequels that exist next to the original source, but do not truly continue it. Yes, Remake also allowed itself a plot trick in its finale, but then it did not touch on truly sacred elements. Rebirth, in an effort to surprise and go “not as expected,” eventually overplays itself and deprives the story of internal logic.

In general, the sequel leaves a strong feeling of two different games accidentally glued into one project. On the one hand, there is a huge, visually impressive, but absolutely sterile open world that exists as if in a vacuum. On the other hand, there is a story campaign with really strong moments, character scenes and spectacular staging, but with a disastrous ending. These two parts hardly interact with each other: dozens of square kilometers of space are simply not needed for the main narrative. Yes, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth plays quite confidently at the level of mechanics, but conceptually it repeats the same mistakes that Final Fantasy XV made at the time — scale for scale’s sake, not for the sake of meaning.

At the same time, the artists managed the impossible: each location was worked out with amazing care. In terms of the level of detail of the environment, lighting and visual style, Rebirth can without exaggeration be called one of the most beautiful JRPGs of recent years. The problem is something else — game designers and screenwriters have not been able to breathe life into these spaces. There are almost no interesting side quests in the game, with the exception of rare successful episodes; there are no small but memorable events that made the world come alive, such as meetings with Johnny in different parts of the map in the Remake. The cities and fields look great, but in terms of gameplay and atmosphere, they remain empty decorations. The principle of “less is better, yes it is better” would be saving here, but Rebirth stubbornly prefers quantitative inflation to it.

To summarize, the strengths and weaknesses of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth are the easiest to sort out.

Pros:

• the combat system has received new mechanics, including joint attacks, and is still one of the best in the series;
• outstanding graphics, attention to detail and an abundance of visual references for attentive players;
• the card game is back in a decent and exciting way;
• individual plot episodes and character scenes really work on emotions and are remembered for a long time.

Cons:

• a giant open world that the game doesn’t understand what to do with, turning exploration into gathering for the sake of gathering;
• the excessive number of mini-games, the necessity and relevance of most of which raises questions;
• side quests that tell almost nothing about the world and are rarely inventive;
• uneven pace of narration and controversial changes in key plot points compared to the original;
• a finale that desperately strives to surprise, but eventually loses its dramatic power;
• the emphasis was on expanding in breadth instead of developing in depth, which negatively affected both the plot and the quality of the side content.

As a result, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth gives the impression of a project with enormous potential and outstanding production, but without a clear understanding of why it needs its own scale and how to manage it. It’s a beautiful, sometimes exciting, but conceptually disjointed game that too often confuses quantity with content — and pays for it with the integrity of the story and impressions.

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There is a moment when the game is needed not “for the evening”, but as a real adventure — with roads that you want to walk slowly, with characters to whom you suddenly become attached, and with a story that remains in your head even after the screen is turned off. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is one of those. The world outside of Midgar feels alive and unpredictable: one day you’re admiring the scenery and talking with your teammates around a campfire, and tomorrow you’re going into battle, where not just victory is at stake, but the fate of the entire planet.

We have done everything to ensure that the path to the game does not turn into a separate quest. No confusing instructions or unnecessary steps, just clear actions. You create an account, log in, and find the GET AN ACCOUNT button at the top of the page. After that, all that remains is to follow the prompts and prepare to dive into Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, without being distracted by technical details.

And if you want to communicate or just feel that you are not alone on this journey, we have a Telegram channel. There we share the news, talk about updates, discuss the plot and mechanics, sometimes we argue and laugh with the community. If you have any questions or difficulties, you can always look at the detailed guide or write to the chat. We will try to help you in a human way and without formalities, so that nothing prevents you from enjoying the game.