Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the second entry in a trilogy retelling the classic 1997 JRPG. Cloud's party leaves Midgar and sets out across the continent in pursuit of Sephiroth, as the game opens up onto sprawling regions with their own wildlife, camps, and quests. Familiar stops like Kalm, Junon, Cosmo Canyon, and the Gold Saucer amusement park are fleshed out here into a far larger form than in the original, complemented by new scenes and much more room for the supporting cast.

The battle system builds on the previous entry: real-time action blends with a tactical pause during which you spend ATB points on spells, abilities, and items. New additions include synergy attacks between pairs of characters, which reward rotating your whole party, and progression through so-called Folios instead of a classic skill tree. On top of that comes a huge amount of side content, from the Queen's Blood card game through chocobo races to music minigames, many of which players ended up loving more than the main story itself. Each region has its own vantage points, exploration tasks, and machine and monster hunts, so simply wandering the world can easily take longer than the main plot.

On PlayStation 5, the game offers a mode favoring resolution and a smoother-performance option, though image quality in the performance mode was a target of criticism at launch and the developers later improved it. The presentation is otherwise showcase quality: grand cinematic sequences, orchestral arrangements of Nobuo Uematsu's original compositions, and a soundtrack that stretches across dozens of hours of gameplay. Critics praised the scope, the combat, and the boldness of changing a well-known story, while discussion centered on the sheer amount of side content and on an ending that leaves many questions open. Today, Rebirth is one of the biggest and most generous JRPGs of its generation. For players who know the original, the biggest draw is how the game plays with decades of expectations built up around its key scenes.