The biggest burnout I've ever had with a game: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

More content is not always a good thing

A little forewarning, this will be a very critical article and I will mostly talk about the aspects I thought were negative in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Spoilers will be present for most versions of Final Fantasy VII, though I’ll try to keep it low.

I was a little hesitant about posting this article but reading this insightful piece byHarrison Polites encouraged me to finish writing it. Go check it out, it’s a really well written article with great points!

---

To say that I was looking forward to playing this game would be an understatement. After finishing FFVII Remake in 2021 and having a great time with it, I was incredibly excited to play Rebirth. The whole reason I wanted to get a PS5 was because I wanted to play Final Fantasy XVI and this game when it came out. The glowing reviews it was receiving was the cherry on top, I was so looking forward to it.

Even writing the title made me upset because I want to love this game. I’m still not done with it. I’m at Chapter 9 and there is still 5 more chapters to go.

But at this point, I’m really debating over whether I should just look the rest up on Youtube.

(Edit: Between the time I first wrote this and went back to edit this article, I have already deleted the game from my PS5. I guess Youtube is waiting for me)

When I booted up the game for the first time, I was like a kid in a playground. I usually never go out of my way to complete all content, but I was determined to complete the side quests for this game. I wanted to learn more about the world, see my favorite characters and how they interact. I loved the previous game’s side quests, even then they dragged on a little too much. I loved spending time with these characters. They are all precious to me.

I want to pinch his cheeks

Three open world areas, numerous side quests with unrelated NPCs and tons and tons of minigames later and I’m exhausted. The kid in me is gone, replaced by a tired adult who just wants to get it over with.

I enter an area, boom, a tutorial for a minigame that I have to learn from scratch. I talk with a seemingly normal NPC, whomp, there goes an hour of my time on some unrelated side quest to collect whatever.

I can’t even rent a Chocobo in peace, I have to seek one out first before being able to ride one.

After repeating this process so many times, only one word remained in my mind when it comes to FFVII Rebirth: tedious.

Image credit: link

Let me be clear, I don’t mind the changes to the story, the whole ‘Whisper’ stuff. I loved the original game the way it came out in 1997, I loved FFVII Remake and the added stuff. My biggest issue is with the flow of the game and how ‘un-fun’ Rebirth feels.

If you find the minigames to be fun, hell yeah, that’s amazing. However, I never really liked them and wanted to skip them even in the 1997 version. I wanted to give them a try in Rebirth but when the minigames turned out to be glorified versions of mobile games, I decided to skip them altogether.

Problem solved, right? Just skip the minigames. Except, not really. You still need to do some of the minigames and even ignoring that, the flow still feels very chopped and incoherent. One outrageous example was in Chapter 8.

Spoilers for anyone who’s not familiar with the 1997 version or Rebirth:

We learn that a man with a gun for an arm has shot down several people in Gold Saucer, and things are looking pretty grim for Barret.

Except, not really. Because despite the 1997 version having an intrigue about this, Rebirth immediately shows us that the culprit is not Barret, thus killing all the suspense. After all, we can’t have one of our main characters to potentially have an evil side, can we?

We then go to Corel Prison, and spend our time playing more minigames to get some cabbages for our (admittedly incredibly cute) Chocobo, all the while the characters think Barret might have gone crazy and murdered a bunch of people.

We participate in a goofy Chocobo race, and all our friends cheer from the prison that they could EASILY escape from. I mean, we faced Sephiroth in the last game, and broke down a highway or two, so why were these metal bars able to stop them?

Yuffie even comments on how she can use Ninjustu to escape. Don’t ask me why she doesn’t.

As soon as we reunite with our friends, the mood turns more somber, with the party members questioning if Barret was the culprit. But since the player already knows that it’s not, the conversations become frustrating.

The worst offender is the actual confrontation with the true culprit, Dyne. I loved the battle with Dyne in the 1997 version: it was powerful and sorrowful. A battle against Barret’s foil. A complicated guy with a complicated past. A normal man who was screwed over by the mega corporation, a man from the people.

In this version… Dyne gets a tentacle-like arm? And then dies to some soldiers while having a mental breakdown. Barret for some reason doesn’t tell him about Marlene until it’s too late.

But disregarding the tentacle arm, it was a good scene! You could feel Barret’s conflicting emotions and Dyne’s desperation, the voice acting was phenomenal!

But then Shinra comes in, and the party sans Barret is thrown into a battle with Palmer and it is SUCH a mood killer.

Just five minutes ago, you were feeling sad for the impossible situation the characters were in, and then Palmer is taunting you by slapping his butt and NEENER NEENER’ing you.

Right after that, you are thrown into another minigame where you drive around in circles while trying to shoot some Shinra vehicles (Thank god you can skip this one, I know I immediately pushed the button as soon as I saw it).

Honestly, I know I’m being too negative but I completed this battle recently and it’s fresh on my mind.

It’s not even the silly moments I dislike, there are plenty of them in almost all Final Fantasy games! What makes me upset is that the serious moments aren’t allowed to brew.

In Remake, I was full-on bawling during some of the scenes, purely because we were allowed to feel sad for the characters that we bonded with. And the side quests actually helped branch out these characters in ways that the 1997 version didn’t, so their arcs in Remake had more impact on me.

Whereas in Rebirth, I can count on one hand the amount of side quests that actually made us get to know the characters better. So far, it has been mostly about NPCs that honestly don’t care too much about. Why am I being sent to collect Johnny’s clones (or whatever he asked me for lol I don’t even remember).

I’ve been checking out the reviews online and along with some glowing reviews, some people also had the same issues as me. To that, a lot of people seem to just respond: ‘Just skip those!’. Yeah, sure, I’d love to! Except the fact that the game just throws them at me, and I have no choice but to play them.

On top of these, the game feels slow. The only thing that feels fast paced is the combat - which I liked but it’s more complicated than Remake for sure. Other than that, the animations feel slow, the story feels slow, when Chadley speaks, I have to stop and listen to what he’s saying (which is mostly predictable stuff).

I could only take so much of this before I realized I was skipping through dialogue wanted to get on with it.

Which is a shame because I was looking forward to spending time with one of my favorite casts in all of gaming (forgive me Tifa!). But I had to remind myself that my time is valuable; in fact, one of the most valuable resources that I have. So there is really not much point in playing a game that I do not seem to enjoy.

---

So that’s my journey with FFVII Rebirth! If you enjoyed the game, I’m super happy for you, I’m saying this sincerely. This game got glowing reviews for a reason: it is a well-made game. I’m not saying it isn’t. It just doesn’t tackle the some of the stuff in a way that I would enjoy, and that’s okay too.

I will use some caution going into Part 3, but I do think I’ll play it when it comes out. Some of the most interesting stuff happens in Part 3, and I want to see how they handle it.

Thank you for reading!