Score: 8.5/10 Platform: PlayStation 5 Developer: Square Enix Publisher: Square Enix Release Date: Feb. 29, 2024 ESRB: E
“I think I’d like to set up a trip with our friends,” I said to my wife.
She looked up from her phone, brow furrowed.
“A rustic inn in a quaint little town. Someplace with warm wooden walls. We can go for walks, do some shopping, and play board games with everyone in the common area.”
She put her phone down. “OK, where did this come from?”
“Playing Final Fantasy.”
Video games have a reputation for making players want to do bad stuff, like shoot guns and drive too fast. But playing the second entry in Square Enix’s three-part retelling of its beloved role-playing game Final Fantasy VII left me pining to go on an intimate little social trip and do some bonding with our friends.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth screenshot.
After restricting players to the bustling urban playground of Midgar in the first part of the trilogy, the sequel opens things up, providing a whole world for us to run around and explore. There are open, grassy plains, deserts and ruins, and labyrinthine valleys snaking through the crags of low mountains. It’s pretty enough to take a picture — and, of course, the game makes a little quest out of doing just that.
But what’s sticking with me the most are the small villages and port towns that Cloud, Tifa, Barrett, and the rest of the game’s small group of anti-capitalist eco warriors visit along their journey. Quaint and beautiful and full of life, they reminded me of visiting picturesque villages like Banff, Lunenberg, N.S., and Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
And each one has a beautiful little inn that rents out a set of cosy, nicely-appointed rooms to the group. Between sleeps in comfy beds the party members chat about their lives and relationships. They go shopping for books and collectibles. Cloud takes up an interest in Queen’s Blood, a card-based board game with players in every port.
Maybe it’s just because I’m getting old, but I found these towns and their inns to be my favourite parts of the game. I was sad whenever I needed to leave them.
Of course, my age also enhances the nostalgia evoked by the rest of the experience.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth screenshot.
Now over a quarter century old, the original Final Fantasy VII delivered a bounty of classic game music, iconic imagery and unforgettable scenes. Aided by modern audio/visual whizbangery, Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth reproduces enough of this trove to induce a heady bit of sentimentality in the game’s aging fan base.
For my money, there’s no better music in the world of games than Final Fantasy VII‘s gentle, harp-led theme and uptempo battle melodies, and the reworkings we’re given here are, well, fantastic. I also love what the visual artists have done with the group’s distinctive costumes, from cloud’s bolt-bedecked pauldron to Yuffie’s woolly green turtleneck crop top.
But while many of the sights, sounds, places and names should be familiar, many parts of the story are not.
Square Enix has not been coy in letting players know it’s making narrative changes to this ecological parable about a world being drained of its magical lifeblood by an evil corporation. The first instalment even ended with the suggestion that a key character presumed dead in the original might actually be alive, making it clear we can’t take for granted anything we thought we knew about what’s to come.
And the second entry diverges from the original even more. You’ll get no spoilers from this reviewer, but suffice to say familiar faces return in unexpected ways, not all characters are precisely who we once assumed they were, and there are plenty of completely original plot twists that look to have far reaching consequences as the story marches towards its third and final act.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth screenshot.
What turns out to be a little more predictable — perhaps unfortunately — is the open world adventuring.
The planet is broken into a handful of regions, each with a set of predictable and repetitive tasks. Cloud and his companions activate towers to reveal points of interest, seek out caches of lifesource energy, stalk and defeat rare monsters, and collect resources to “transmute” (craft) a variety of useful potions and gear.
These activities are fun and exciting in the first couple of regions, but grow a little long in the tooth as we encounter them again and again as the game progresses.
More entertaining are the handful of unique side quests in each region. These missions often reintroduce us to colourful characters from the first game, such the well-meaning wannabe mercenary Kyrie Canaan, and Beck’s Badasses, a band of bungling thieves who have a business-minded turn of heart.
I also enjoyed the side games, many of which are deep and formidable. In addition to the card game mentioned earlier, there are music sheets to collect and play on pianos by pressing each of the thumbsticks in eight different directions corresponding to specific notes. And a series of tower defence-style games called Fort Condor, in which Cloud and company are transformed into blocky, spiky-haired versions of themselves (a lovely nod to the stylized 3D graphics of the original game) require sound tactics and good timing.
If you don’t like mini-games, no problem. They’re all quite skippable. The one thing you can’t skip, though, is combat. It’s the same sort of real-time battling found in the first game. See some monsters in the wild? Just run up to them and the fight will begin. Three party members take on primary combat duties while the rest circle around the edge of the battlefield.
As in the last game, players can take an active role, switching between characters at will and controlling every sword swipe, each spell cast, and whether to block or dodge incoming attacks. But you can also set combat to classic mode and simply oversee the action. Everyone fights on their own, letting you spend time picking which abilities to use when the power gauge is full and when to use synergistic co-operative moves and god-summoning incantations. This was my preferred mode, since it gave me time to focus on strategy — specifically, how to exploit enemy weaknesses and shield party members from powerful attacks. This isn’t a game that rewards button mashing.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth screenshot.
As you fight your way through battle after battle your team will earn points used to unlock nodes in a skill mosaic that represent new abilities, moves and attribute upgrades for each character. Gear and accessories, meanwhile, can be modified with “materia” gems that confer specific abilities and spells. Weapons also grow in experience levels, as does the party as a whole.
This web of interconnected systems is, in truth, a tad bewildering. But everything just seemed to keep developing and refining itself regardless of whether I knew how or why, so I never felt overwhelmed. I was just sort of along for the ride sometimes, and I didn’t really mind.
Because, in the end, I just wanted to spend time with some familiar faces, listen to a new generation of artists cover some of my favourite game music, and see how a world I haven’t visited in decades had changed while I was away.
I’m happy to say I had a great time catching up.
And I got to stay at some lovely little B&Bs along the way.
