Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth review — the last great PS2 JRPG

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In this Final Fantasy VII Rebirth review, Lee discusses how the PS5 exclusive won him over by doing justice to its iconic PS1 characters.

I've spent over 110 hours collecting Final Fantasy VII Rebirth trophies, and it's only here where I'm comfortable enough to say that I've played enough of the game to write my Final Fantasy VII Rebirth review. Honestly, for me, it's a game that transcends the best PS5 games list and goes straight onto my personal all-time favorite games list. That said, it does that by appealing directly to me with things I love personally about video games. Will it pull the same trick on you? Read to find out.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth review — grandma's warmest PS2 game

I loved playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. I mean, technically I'm still playing it, so I guess I love playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. I've left myself a few micro missions to enjoy at my own pace for the rest of the year. If I could give one piece of advice to players right off the bat, it's this: whatever you do, do not try to finish this game in a rush. Relax with it — it's not going anywhere.

I might not be a long-time Final Fantasy fan like many others out there on the internet, but it was playing and beating Final Fantasy VII back in 2021 at the supposedly nostalgia-immune age of 29 that convinced me that I really could love this series.

I felt myself actively developing a nostalgia for Final Fantasy VII as I was playing it — that's how enraptured I was in its beautiful music, its weird story, and most importantly, its brilliant characters. I always struggle to maintain interest with playing classic turn-based JRPGs, but those characters really pulled me along and kept me invested.

Since then, I've played a lot more Final Fantasy, and I've grown a deep attachment to the series and its constant desire to try new things. Sometimes it works for me pretty well (see my Final Fantasy XVI review) and sometimes it makes me feel like I'm enabling someone somewhere to ruin their own life (see my Final Fantasy XV review). Yet, at the heart of it, I'll admit I'm more of a fan of Final Fantasy VII than I am a fan of Final Fantasy itself.

I would love to be the cool guy who started with FFVII and then found out he preferred one of the cooler games in the series to love, like FFVI (I really like it), or FFV (I've never played it), or FFVIII (did they just hate how well paced FFVII was or something?). I came close with Final Fantasy X, to be fair — PS2 RPGs sure knew how to dream expensively big and play buttery smooth.

However, sadly, it's yet to happen. I've yet to play a Final Fantasy game with characters that feel as big and as well-realized as Final Fantasy VII's cast. It's thanks to Final Fantasy VII that I now know how much of a sucker I am for any piece of media with strong, easily-identifiable characters. Sorry, other Final Fantasy games — they just don't get more identifiable than Cloud and chums.

I'm laying all of this out here because I want you to understand that this is exactly how Final Fantasy VII Rebirth got me. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is an expansive, detailed, generous and loving adaptation of the middle stretch of Final Fantasy VII, and it's the one where the devs have gone all in on the characters.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth puts its characters first

Sure, Final Fantasy VII's plot continues to see a rich attention to detail in FFVII Rebirth, which is surprising because FFVII's plot is often white-hot nonsense. While FFVII's character arcs and relationships are brilliantly realized, they're surrounded by an overwrought tale about space genetics, magic calamities, and screwball politics, all of which exist largely to excite the Wiki writers of the world more than the audience. I still love it all, it adds great texture to Final Fantasy VII's setting, but I'm not going to argue that the plot is the real draw here.

Sure, FFVII Rebirth also offers a thoughtful expansion of Final Fantasy VII Remake's wonderful action-packed gameplay. Not only is the combat a pitch-perfect adaptation (and correction) of the immensely annoying Active-Time Battle system from the original FFVII, it managed to impress me all over again with its versatility. The new additions of Synergy Abilities genuinely improves and incentivizes switching between characters mid-battle, and I could find no cheap tricks that would let me mindlessly ignore it.

I'm sure I could wheel out a million things here to help point at the game and say "no one is doing it better" (seriously, that music), but I think it all kind of misses the point for me. What makes Final Fantasy VII Rebirth one of my favorite games in a long time, and easily my favorite Final Fantasy game (that I've played so far), is that it's the Final Fantasy that invests the most in its characters.

Knowing the true strength of Final Fantasy VII is its cast, the developers at Square Enix have made it so that every meaningful thing you do in the game is an opportunity to grow closer to them. That's true for both the player because they get to hang out with the characters more, and for Cloud, who gets a whole relationship system to quantify his closeness with his friends.

Every side quest you undertake pairs Cloud with one of the main party members, giving the two of them some time to bond. Most of the time, these are cute — Tifa and Cloud banding together to rescue cats from their old neighborhood is super cute. Sometimes, they're surprisingly real, like the one where Cloud and Aerith go on a series of terrible dates and we learn, wow, maybe they're actually not as compatible as they're famously thought to be.

Throughout the game's winding tale, we also see the entire cast face one major aspect of their backstory apiece. We see them grow together as a unit, we see divisions form between them, we see the awkwardness that comes with introducing new members to the team and how small dynamics develop between them. Meanwhile, behind it all, the relationship counter ticks up and up towards your reward — a date at the Gold Saucer before the climax of the game.

Where games five times shorter than FFVII Rebirth have lost my interest, this game kept me invested well past the 100-hour mark, loving nearly every minute, simply with the promise of getting to spend a little more time with these characters. That's how Final Fantasy VII Rebirth got me and kept me there.

Trophy Tactics: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

I've already posted my top ten Final Fantasy VII Rebirth trophy tips, so definitely give that a read if you're starting your journey with this game and want to put yourself in the right frame of mind.

That said, let me give you my one hot take on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's trophy list: I wish it had a trophy related to the dates. I don't know about other players, but I definitely put in ten times as much effort maxing out all of Cloud's relationships with his friends, so it was a surprise to find out that this isn't a dedicated trophy for doing that, and it's also not even mandatory for the insanely demanding "7-Star Hotel" trophy.

On the one hand, those dates are an absolute gift onto themselves if you're a fan of any of these characters. Also, maybe letting the relationship mechanics function more like a cute little personality test for the player rather than an actual commitment test was probably more in the spirit of the original. That said, I've played way too much Persona for this kind of thing to not unlock a trophy, Square Enix.

A million little things to love about FFVII Rebirth

That said, in fairness, there's a whole heap of other stuff I love about the game too. I love the massive scale of its world and its cities. After years of games from the PS4 era like Metal Gear Solid V and Final Fantasy XV promising large, expansive, varied worlds and failing to deliver, it's wild to think this game could suddenly take us back to the PS2 era — a time when JRPGs could deliver to us just that.

In many ways, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth can't help but remind me of the best PS2 games around. I mean, the fact it has minigames at all is, on the face of it, deeply PS2 coded. The fact it just plays cutscenes with quick-time events; the sheer abundance of glossy menus to leaf through; the way it has three whole battle arenas with different challenges to master. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth basically is a PS2 JRPG made extra glossy and printed extra-large, and I love it.

I love that this game also has so many weird jokes, like that time when we stumble into Rude's weird bald guy bar, or when we help Johnny and his shadow clones build a hotel. What about those alpha dudes who start wrestling in the streets of Kalm? Or Test Zero's weird voice that somehow reminds me of Ratchet and Clank? I even love it when the game's not really trying to be funny, the canned delivery of background characters saying stuff like "Move it, chuckleheads!" or "Now to deal with all the laundry that's piled up!" making me laugh even in the quiet moments.

I love how the new synergy abilities incentivize the player to really get into micro-managing their party member's abilities by giving us an extra-strong move to use. I also love playing as the two new characters. Until the game forced me to sit down and really learn Cait Sith, I figured I'd just wind up ignoring him. Turns out, he's actually a lot of fun to play as! You just need your arm twisted into it.

Oh man, and now I'm just remembering that Vincent Valentine gets so many more moments to shine in this game than I thought he'd get. These writers and directors really know how to tease their sulkiest, silliest characters while still making them unquestionably cool. I also enjoyed playing "Where's Vincent?" whenever I brought the gang to a new city — he's always hiding somewhere!

The oversized sweater that is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

I could go on all day about things I love about this game, but it does dawn on me that there are also a lot of individual pieces that players might genuinely dislike about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

If you don't love the characters, then I can see how tedious some of these side missions might be. If you want to burn through the story, then this is going to be a tough recommendation, because this section of Final Fantasy VII is full of plot-halting diversions. Plus, if you don't love the original game's occasional dips into dream-like storytelling, then you're going to absolutely hate the final act of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

For me, however, it all worked. A super team of the world's biggest Final Fantasy VII nerds banded together to deliver their vision for a full-scale remake of the original, and in the process, these devs have ended up spoiling us all like a grandmother spoils a child with a hand-knitted sweater.

Sure, we can all sit around and pick at that sweater's fabric until we make a hole big enough to fit our fist through, but all that would demonstrate is that we can't really appreciate gifts made entirely out of love.

To be clear, we're not likely to get another game as generous as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for a long, long time. This is just a guess, but I feel certain that the final chapter of this trilogy will be a more scaled back affair, reserving its budget for flashier cinematics with less interactivity than Rebirth offered.

In which case, this might be the last PS5 RPG we get that feels as big and as polished and as weird and as expensive as a classic PS2 RPG for a generation.

Summary

For all these reasons and more, I say cherish Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. It's a truly indulgent work — an extra-large, PS2-era, richly fabricked sweater made just for you. Wear it often; wear it until it's worn. We only get so many of these in a lifetime.

10 / 10

* Lee played Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on PS5 for roughly 110 hours and picked up 69% of the trophies. A digital copy of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was provided to TrueTrophies courtesy of Square Enix.

Written by Lee Brady

Staff Writer Lee keeps one eye on the future (Shadow x Sonic Generations), one eye on the past (PS Plus Premium games), and his secret third eye on junk he really likes (Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts games). Then he uses his big mouth to blurt out long-winded opinions about video games.

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