The wait is finally over! Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the second chapter of the three part epic, has released and fans have been singing its praises ever since. The game is an absolute must-play, with MP1st giving the game a perfect 10/10 score. For a game as wonderfully ambitious as FF7R, it somehow manages to keep a consistent bar of quality over an astonishingly wide range of different gameplay elements.
Even with all this though, it isn’t without its occasional hiccups. Some of the game has been criticized for it’s over-abundance of mini-games, changes to the original, and how it has handled the switch to open world. While not everyone shares these same sentiments, it is never a bad idea to take them into consideration in the spirit of creating a better product for the future. Here are five things that FF7R could have done better!
Warning: This Article Contains Major Story/Gameplay Spoilers for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
#5 – Chadley Needs to Chill
I think we can all agree that it was a nice surprise to have a returning character like Chadley make an appearance near the beginning of Rebirth. What was much less appreciated, was him going from a forgettable side character, to a never ending spout of dialogue whenever you complete an open world objective. Seriously, it seems every time your party moves an inch, Chadley calls you and decides to have a 30 second conversation with himself which more often than not doesn’t add anything to what we are doing.
Of course these dialogues can be skipped by holding triangle, but it is still such a jarring decision to have him appear as often as he does. I would be more than willing to wager that Chadley, a character who isn’t even in the original game, has more voice lines than any other character in the game as it currently stands. It throws a serious wrench in the flow of exploration of the open world when you have to completely stop moving to listen to him (and sometimes MAI) bicker back and forth constantly. Cloud rarely has anything to say back too. He will just hang up after Chadley is done talking and go on about his day. It’s not that I think Chadley should be gone for the next game, just that I want less Chadley.
#4 – More Diverse Open World Activities
When this game came out, I think it surprised us all with just how big it really was. Not only in the size and scope of the world but the countless number of different things to do. I was able to get past the Ubisoft-esque tower unlock system, but the copy paste nature of the exact same things to do in each region began to get stale after awhile. Upon entering a new region you are greeted with the same activities you had done in the previous one, just with a different backdrop. That magical feeling of coming across a big chunk of materia as the music softly changes loses its charm when you have done it a dozen times already.
Obviously, the Protorelic challenges were different and did a lot to break up the mindless monotony, but it still left something to be desired. They should have done more to change what was available for you to do in each region. A few different icons that is unique to each region would have done a lot to make it feel less like a checklist you were mindlessly crossing off. It was still enjoyable of course to have a reason to go through and explore these worlds, but adding in some greater variation in what you were doing would have helped the gameplay immensely.
#3 – A Larger Focus Should Have Been Placed on Aerith’s Death
With Tetsuya Nomura, you know things are going to be weird and crazy. Regardless of how you feel about the multiversal aspect of Rebirth, it is hard to pass judgement before seeing its conclusion. Perhaps the grand plans behind all of it will tie everything together in a manner that makes it all work. One thing that is hard to ignore though, is Aerith’s death. It seems that her death was overshadowed and undercut in favor of the grand multiversal story at hand. Aerith’s death has been and remains one of the most impactful moments, not only for this series, but in all of gaming.
The flashes and quick editing cuts that happened around her death didn’t allow the emotional toll of what had happened to fully sink in. Not only for the player, but for Cloud as well. With the way it is edited, what is happening becomes ambiguous and makes it difficult to process and feel any emotion because you are presented with so much at once. It is hard to distinguish what is actually happening due to the multiversal happenings and that takes away from the actual impact of her death. With this being such a pivotal scene in the original I was hoping to have more time to see it beautifully realized the same way so many other iconic scenes were.
#2 – Better Menu / UI
This may seem like a small complaint, and well, it absolutely is. However, for how much time someone spends in menu’s during a 100 hour JRPG the menu’s should be easy to navigate and understand. It just seems like there is some bizarre design decisions, especially when comparing it to the previous Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s menu’s. Item Transmuter is at the top of the menu which assuredly could be switched with something that is far more useful. You, for some reason, cannot change your party in the party tab, but instead must go to combat settings. Finally, the upgrade weapons tab is useless as the weapons can be upgraded from the equipment tab as well.
It isn’t like these decision are going to actively hurt it’s Metacritic score but it does seem baffling as a basic design decision to make. these odd choices also extend to some of their phrasing decisions after a game over screen. Upon death in the final sections of the game, you are presented with three options. Restart from before current battle , restart from this battle, and restart from before battle. Like many others had the misfortune of finding out, selecting restart from this battle sent them back 45 min to the beginning of the series of battles and killed a lot of the pacing in the final moments of the game. Simple phrasing issues like this shouldn’t be so confusing and some tinkering with the menu’s and wording could have gone a long way.
#1 – Speed up Slow Gameplay Sequences
This game truly is incredible in almost every way. From the music, to the battle systems, to its wonderful cast of characters. Yet I still can’t help shake the feeling that it wants to deliberately waste my time. It seems so many animations and gameplay sections are intentionally drawn out to make them as long as possible. Climbing, getting out of your Dune Buggy, pushing large boxes, freezing in place for a call with Chadley, and that god damn chicken box luring side quest. It makes no sense, because there seems to be no gameplay reason these animations take so long, so why are they like this!?
Normally you could chalk this up to intentional padding, but with the game being as long as it is it certainly doesn’t need it. It is truly baffling. We all like our time to be respected when we are playing games and having cloud count to five before he makes the next leap when climbing every time becomes painful to watch when you are constantly doing it. What hurts the most though, is there is a small 15 second section of climbing at the very end of the game where Cloud is climbing fast as hell. Just enough to tease you, so you know they had it in the game, but you had to suffer the last 80 hours anyways.
It may seem like I am being overly critical of this game. That is probably true, because to be honest, there isn’t that much wrong with it considering its size and scope. To say something bad about it you have to get nitpicky. It accomplishes so much of what it set out to do and provides countless hours of surprisingly unique gameplay experiences and genuine moments of wonder and joy. For every small gripe, there are countless highlights that make up for it in every way. While it certainly isn’t free from criticism, it simultaneously does deserve every bit of the phenomenally high praise it has received thus far.
