Review
Played on: Xbox Series X
Released: 2026
Original release: 2024 (PS5)
Finally, Rebirth is released from its Sony prison to all platforms. This is the second chapter of the ambitious remake trilogy of FFVII, now available on Xbox Series X/S and Switch 2. Next year sees the final and third part, titled Reunion, scheduled for a March release. You can read my impression of the first part, Remake Intergrade, here.
This second part features the adventure into the world outside of Midgar, beginning with Clouds recollection of that fatal mission to his birth town as a soldier; Nibelheim. The place where Sephiroth infamously discovers his genetic mother Genova and goes on completely mad, burning down the whole town.
There's a ton of ground Rebirth has to cover; important story segments, numerous characters and locations. Understandably, the size of the game is something far more ambitious and larger than the first part.
Luckily, Square Enix have excelled at playing those heart strings when it comes to nostalgia, while at the same time modernising the original experience into something far more expansive. There's been many moments where a memorable scene from the original just perfectly aligns with the remastered music score and the general atmosphere to strongly bring forward that warm, fuzzy nostalgia. I'm sure newcomers will also find these scenes well done on their own as they retell the original story with a fresh coat of paint.
Yet it sails some troubled waters with questionable choices, pacing and lack of optimisation. Does it manage to deliver this ambitious level of detail in such a expanded experience?
Let's pick up our buster sword and take a closer look!
Where to begin? From the opening hours of Clouds retelling of his journey to Nibelheim where Sephiroth goes mad? Or how you arrive in the beautiful medieval inspired town of Kalm, only to step out in the massive flower fields outside and explore an open world? Or perhaps the massive military parade beneath the naval gun in the streets of Junon?
Or how about the peaceful farm town of rural Gongaga? Or putting on your bathing gear for a stop at the beach resort in Costa del Sol? How about going to the ominous ruins of the blown reactor in Corel and the underlying mines beneath? Maybe a trip to the insanely brightly lit, futuristic theme park of the Gold Saucer? Or how about the climb to the top of Cosmo Canyon to the planet observatory?
You get my drift.
This second part of the trilogy is massive, and it covers a huge segment of the original. The ambition is impressive to say the least, and the way they've made each town and landmark location much larger and more detailed is nothing short of impressive.
Furthermore, it collects a ton of characters and refreshes them to modern standards; Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, Barrett and XIII return from Remake Intergrade, but also Yuffie from the rather bland Intergrade part of Remake, while in addition we meet Cid, Vincent and Cait Sith along the way. All beautifully modelled and impressively varied in their playstyle.
Consistently, I was overloaded with nostalgia and awe revisiting these places from my teens in a glorious new coat of paint. Although some scenes are cringey and lean into a juvenile style at times, it's mostly consistently well done and adds weight to serious scenes. The magic balance of happiness and sadness which Square Enix know so well.
Gameplay is largely the same as the previous entry, with an action-oriented approach to the timed turn based combat the original had. Various attacks have cooldowns before performing each one while ATB attacks, like magic and weapon abilities, require you to either engage in combat and deal out damage to fill their meter.
New to this part two are the synergy abilities, first introduced in the Integrade part of the first part, which allow certain characters to perform either attack or buffs together when ATB have been used the synergy meters have been filled. Furthermore, the experience point leveling system is based around massive grids, reminding me a lot of FFX, where you can add points to just your own characters abilities or synergy ones with certain main characters.
Personally, I kind of liked the simpler leveling system from the Remake Intergrade part, but I can imagine more hardcore players wanted something more advanced for the longer playthrough time this Rebirth part has.
That said, it stumbles in its path to explain everything in greater detail compared to the original. The first half succeeds in going into deeper detail about the events, allowing us to see much more than previously. Much thanks to the full impact of a detailed 3D world versus the set camera on the pre-rendered backgrounds of the original. The Shinra parade at Junon, for instance, makes a far larger and better impact here than the original.
However, as we reach the later parts of the story, it seems hellbent on making a multiverse. Explaining why Sephiroth constantly turns up, which in turn undermines his ominous presensence. It also tries to elaborate the Zack & Cloud dilemma with confusing flashbacks, leaving Zacks status ambiguous while he definitely was dead in the original.
This remake begins explaining events deeper than the original, but ends up confusing more than helping in its execution further into the story.
It gets increasingly bad as you arrive at the ancient temple, the story stumbles into a chaos, making it almost impossible to grasp. The multiverse trips into its own web of timelines with just too many weird flashbacks and occurrences of Sephiroth turning up at every turn.
However, the biggest crime is the iconic and heartbreaking scene of Aerith death. Somehow, Rebirth manages to completely ruin it. In a desperate attempt at trying to keep her alive, another ambiguous status like Zack, wondering if she is alive or not. The original dared to brutally end her; remember this is the scene that made grown men cry back in the day.
Here, they seem like they don't want to make fragile fanboys upset and continue to keep the fanservice alive by not properly killing her off. Is she still around, is she now in spirit form yet appears like a real person in cutscenes? I don't know, maybe the third part of the trilogy explains it all?
What I do know, is that her death scene was shockingly upsetting in the original. Here, it's just a confusing mess which ruins the impact.
The open world segments are interesting, truly giving that size needed to show how big the FFVII world is, but I'm a little divided in my opinion about them.
Its impressive looking out over the open areas, seeing classic FFVII landmarks in the distance, building the world you imagined on the small sphere of the original into a proper environment. While Remake Intergrade was a linear and controlled affair, Rebirth is ambitious with an open-ended structure and vast areas to roam.
On the flipside, they push the ageing Unreal Engine 4 to points where it clearly isn't suited. There's an obvious emptiness to the open world, with a few enemies thrown in here and there. It lacks a dynamic day cycle and visually the performance mode takes a massive hit. Resulting in a blurry and unappealing appearance. Setting it to graphics mode is your best option to compensate the severe resolution drop.
Depth of field usage, or lack of thereof, is strangely enough only present in cutscenes. Resulting in woodlands and mountains having no sense of being in the distance. It results in a harsh transition between fore- and background detail, a cluttered imagery. It would've helped to use something like Skyrim's depth of field.
Don't get me wrong, the open world parts offer a fair bit of variation visually, but they lack life. They're empty sandboxes with a list of repeated side-quests of mini-bosses, towers to climb and stuff to scan. There's a balance needed for making an open world engaging and Rebirth misses that target. They work the first couple of hours but quickly become repetitive.
Momentum is also an issue, like the first part one of the trilogy; it builds towards exciting highlights of the FFVII story, only to throw you into slow and grinding side-quests. It happens a little too often, resulting in an aftertaste of obvious padding. Just as progress picks up pace there's an extra side-quest and sequence which pulls you away for another hour or two.
Side-quests are mostly trivial, adding little other than time fill. There's also a ton of mini-games, one of which is the Queen's Blood card game which is prevalent throughout the story, for good or worse. In addition, each open area has tasks but never unmanageable in numbers, keeping them at a level where most players will try to complete them. Yet, once they're done, you're left thinking what they really added and once they're gone you're left with an even emptier open world.
Rebirth is just as visually pleasing as Remake Intergrade; sporting that nod to how modern CGI characters look as well as throwbacks to the pre-rendered backgrounds of the original. Once again, Unreal Engine 4 shows it's strengths and weaknesses. Character models, interior detail of houses and shops, effects like lighting and various materials on surfaces, look great.
While it shines on close detail and the main cast, the vast and large open areas and NPCs look a bit generic and lacking. The discrepancy is less obvious than Remake Intergrade, which clearly had PS4 assets to deal with, but it's still there.
Sadly, the open areas bring performance to a taxing level; although framerates are consistent in both graphics and performance modes, the latter takes a major hit in appearance. Performance mode works fine in indoor locations where distances are not an issue, but out in the open it looks rough. Resolution drops all the way down to a blurry and, to be frank, unappealing level.
Despite favouring 60fps, I'd recommend setting it to the 30fps graphics mode. Kind of a letdown as Remake Intergrade worked so well in performance mode, then again, it had a linear design focusing on indoor and small locations.
Overall, I'm impressed by the scope and scale of this release. I'd imagined a far more linear approach as the original was a tiny globe with random enemy encounters to traverse. Considering the large size of the cities and in general areas to walk about now, it's impressive they made Rebirth this large. It feels like an entire game of its own outside the trilogy.
While it never reaches the depths and detail of open world design found in Skyrim and Witcher 3, they've done a solid job to at least merge FFVII with a part of this modern open world design.
There's no denying that story is fascinating and captivating journey which holds up and is just as important to this today considering massive corporations ruthlessly taking resources and polluting the world.
At the same time, there's stuff which pulls it down. The multiverse, confusing plot of Sephiroth, the awful depiction of Aerith death, the obnoxious way they play on the Cloud, Tifa and Aerith love triangle and just the amount of extra padding. It has momentum issues between the highs of the story with repetitive task. The open world look visually rough in performance too.
I suspect as a trilogy this package this will be a top score, but for now it keeps the score of Remake Intergrade for me, and to be honest that's an impressive feat.
