The first part of the “Final Fantasy VII” remake did a great job of fleshing out the game’s opening chapters and adding new story elements to intrigue veterans. Still, many wondered if Square Enix could deliver in the same way when the game has to open up. The answer is yes, though for every handful of great ideas, there are some strange choices that make for an inconsistent experience.
“Final Fantasy VII Rebirth” starts with the group staying in the town of Kalm after leaving Midgar. After some introductory segments, the player is thrown into the open world which is broken up into a few huge chunks of the world map. While the entire world map isn’t available at the start, the pace at which new zones are unlocked is perfect.
The success of this game hinged on how well they were able to adapt the open world of the original, and Square did a a fantastic job. Activities in the open world have a lot of variety — from combat and exploration to puzzles and even a new card game. The world also looks beautiful, so fans of the original will be able to see iconic locations in greater detail than ever before.
One thing that detracts from the open world is the character Chadley, who was introduced in the previous part of the remake. This little twerp chimes in whenever Cloud and his party do anything in the open world, and it gets annoying fast. It also takes away from the mystique of the world and the joy of finding new things through exploration.
Combat is largely the same as it was in the previous installment. The game uses real-time action combat in battles with the option to pause to use special abilities or items. Each character plays differently, and it’s fun to experiment with different parties to see who works best together. Yuffie and Caith Sith join the cast, and their playstyles are different and powerful enough so that they feel like meaningful additions instead of tacked-on baggage. Most characters also get a great deal of development, which is great to see for such a beloved cast.
The materia system didn’t have as much of an update as I was hoping, but now there are ways to make leveling them feel a little faster. The biggest issue is that you can’t save loadouts on all your characters, so managing them is a pain as you swap weapons and party members. It never feels like you have enough materia so that everyone has a useful loadout, so have to either stick to three or four characters or go through the tedium of constantly swapping stuff.
Most of these issues are minor compared to the grand scale of the world and the spectacle of the story, but the biggest issue in “Rebirth” by far is its reliance on gimmicks. Almost every chapter has a story segment that breaks up your group and makes you play around with some new gimmick. What starts as an interesting idea becomes a series of bullets that this game uses to shoot itself in the foot. There isn’t really a reason for it because the core gameplay elements are enough to make the game great, yet the developers insisted on slowing things down to make you do something like throw crates at levers or run around a theme park.
While “Final Fantasy VII Rebirth” does a lot of things to make its story diverge from the original, it also feels like those changes don’t result in anything meaningful yet. This second chapter covers most of the original’s story, and I hope the conclusion pays off all of the wacky things “Rebirth” sets up. This game’s combat, open world and sheer spectacle are good enough for five stars, but the constant speedbumps in its pacing knock it down to four-and-a-half stars out of five.