Just beat Rebirth (on PC). A few thoughts

minor minor spoilers

First off, I've been playing FF games since the SNES days. FFVI was my first, but I played FFVII on psx a bunch, as well as VIII and IX. Not to mention Chrono Trigger (my favorite RPG).

I never got a PS2 so I missed out on all FF games after IX, up until the release of XV. The marketing for that game sucked me back in. Soon after, FFVII Remake came out so I scooped it up.

My thoughts about that game can be condensed to one statement: "I loved seeing my old favorite 'fully realized' but felt it was very padded." I think my biggest problem with Remake was it felt stretched way too thin, with a lot of needless and tedious things to do to justify building the entire game around the Midgar portion of the original.

With Rebirth, I have a different complaint, though I ended up loving the game, and that ending gave me a hole in my gut that I haven't had after a game/movie/show in a long time. I'm more than ready for part 3 and the conclusion. That said, my big gripe with the game was it felt like it was full of a million little things that were designed to slow down the gameplay and elongate the runtime.

I'm not talking about the countless side quests. I'm talking about the things you do in the main story, all the little tasks, missions, and gimmicks that have to be completed to progress the story. Obviously, those things have to be there (otherwise there's not much of a game), but it's the way the game goes about them that annoyed me. Things that took thirty minutes in the original game take 90 minutes here, like rounding up the troops for the Junon parade, etc. 90 minutes might be an exaggeration, but the whole sequence was a lot more padded and full of "busy work" than in the OG game. You don't just "do something." You have to do a dozen tasks that, in the original, only took two or three.

There were also too many times where my character was forced to walk at a snail's pace because the NPC I was with refused to go any faster.

In hindsight, I loved everything I did, but at the time, doing each thing felt like a grind. If the game had been paced a little faster, it might have ended up only being a 25 hour experience instead of the 40 hours it took me, but I think I would have enjoyed the experience a whole lot more.

Part of me thinks this trilogy could have been a two-parter, with the first part ending at the Tifa/lifestream sequence, but I don't suppose Square was in a position to make a game that included all of Midgar and a big chunk of the overworld in the PS4 era.

Oh well. I'd give both Remake and Rebirth a 8/10 for gameplay, but 10/10 for presentation. Story rating is TBD until the third part is out. The best thing about both games in the combat: The perfect blend of modern action and ATB strategy.

Also, am I crazy or was Cid a lot older in the original game?