fandom 10 in 30

I guess I'm starting all my posts with a self-own this week XD

Or I could finally beat FFVII: Remake but I got stuck at the final fucking motorcycle fight and even Liz hasn't been able to beat it so like. FUCK ME I GUESS!!!! I'm just bad at anything involving vehicles in games...

TAKE THAT YOU HORRIBLE PIECE OF SHIT YOU TOOK ME TWO FUCKING YEARS TO FINALLY CONQUER BUT I DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway.

It was honestly right after I posted yesterday's entry that I was like "no, I can't let the stupid mechanics of this fucking fight win me, I can do it!!!" The Price of Freedom from the Crisis Core soundtrack is largely to blame/thank, since it's tragic and uplifting and, most importantly, full of determination, and that's how I beat the stupidest boss in all of Final Fantasy.

And I was right, it was the penultimate fucking fight in the game. Sephiroth was easy in comparison; I basically chewed through him and all the weird Whisper monsters before him. In general though, he was loads easier than his end of Rebirth fight, so maybe that was part of it? He was REALLY FUCKING HARD in Rebirth, so I went in expecting that and kicked his ass sooooo quickly, lmao.

But let's talk Remake vs Rebirth. I got Remake on release day back in 2020 and was so disappointed by the gameplay that I put it down within 24 hours and went back to Animal Crossing...which is particularly bad for Remake considering I'd never played an Animal Crossing game before and I'd been waiting for an HD remake of FFVII for nearly 15 years at that point. Basically since Advent Children came out, I'd been like OKAY BUT WHEN DO WE GET A FULL REMAKE OF THE OG GAME????? This was a frequent discussion during my years working at GameStop, both with coworkers and customers.

All that excitement, and it just fell so flat for me ;w; I know there are plenty of people who liked it, but it just didn't hit for me. I think the final insult was finding out that you don't get to leave Midgar in Remake, and like...come on. Getting through Midgar is the biggest slog of disc 1 imho, so the idea of an entire fucking game being set in it without the catharsis of leaving? Count me out.

I finally came back to it in 2023, in hopes that I'd enjoy it more now that I had basically no expectations, and I did! It didn't necessarily grip me the way the original had or how I'd initially hoped a remake would, but I got pretty invested. Looking back at my trophies on PSN, I got through the whole game in a little over two weeks...up until I got stuck on the fucking motorcycle fight.

However, I took about the same amount of time to beat Rebirth and enjoyed it much more thoroughly. Though maybe saying it was the same amount of time is misleading- I spent just over two weeks playing both Remake and Rebirth, but let's take a look at my playtime...


final saves of Remake (top) vs Rebirth (bottom)
I put 60 more hours into Rebirth and real talk, it didn't even feel like it. I just had so much fun running around and doing quests and exploring that I couldn't put the controller down. Every day was "wake up, turn on the ps5, play Rebirth, sleep" with the occasional snack break XD Save for the Corel region, which, between Costa del Sol and the Golden Saucer, was pretty much entirely minigames...so I got a little burnt out on them. Liz and I took turns on minigame hell to get through them all. I just feel like it could have been balanced better, since Golden Saucer has always been a lot of minigames, so adding a bunch of Costa del Sol is kinda poor planning. Especially after the Queen's Blood tournament on the cruise ship...

But this both is and isn't about the little things. I just had almost no interest in digging into all the side quests and optional fights and everything that wasn't the main thread of plot, because Remake wasn't fun for me. I didn't want to run around in the beautiful world they created - and not just because it was all fucking Midgar - and thus, I didn't do most extra things. Going through my inventory on the way into the final fight I was like "I'm gonna fucking die" because nothing had been worked on. My materia is basically leveled up from the amount I used it in battle to get to the end, but nothing was actually focused on. None of my weapons had their weapon proficiency skills mastered, and while I'll admit I didn't do all of them in Rebirth, I didn't just blaze through without trying.

And that's the thing!!! Final Fantasy games are meant to be long, both in the amount of time the story takes and in how much fighting gameplay there is. But while it was a bit more of a traditional turn-based JRPG grind in the OG (which I love, don't get me wrong), Rebirth manages to make "level grinding" a natural and fun part of gameplay. Remake doesn't quite get there, and the actual fighting feels more clunky (despite the two being VERY similar, I had more trouble controlling my characters when I jumped back into Remake right after beating Rebirth) to the point where it's not an "easy" grind the way I find the OG is. Because you can't zone out at all but also it's not fun. Why level grind more than the bare minimum?

This is coming from someone who one-shot the final bosses in Final Fantasy X and .hack//G.U. because the gameplay was legitimately so fucking fun I lost track of time doing it to the point that I was massively overleveled. I didn't quite hit that point in Rebirth (but I feel like I could on subsequent replays tbh), but I was still engaged in the battle system in a way that I never was in Remake. I'm gonna have to do some more digging - maybe when I'm not being thrown directly into the final fight lmao - to figure out exactly why the two feel so different to me, despite being largely the same controls.

I really do think they took feedback they got from Remake and integrated those changes into Rebirth. They're clearly both made with love, but Rebirth just takes it to another level. It's the beautiful, streamlined version that Remake wanted to be but couldn't quite reach. Rebirth honestly feels like the HD remake of my teenage dreams, except it's even more than I could have imagined. And that's because of something that Rebirth does that other games have failed at:

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth feels like a PS5 game. I've never played a game that so fully uses the capabilities of the system, even if that came at the cost of having to install an entire fucking disc worth of data to the PS5 before I could pop in the main one and play the fucking game. But, and I can't believe I'm saying this, it was worth it. Rebirth basically doesn't have pre-rendered cutscenes. Once you get out of the opening, you are the cutscene. Whatever equipment your party has is visible within it- no more defaulting back to the initial weapons for "fancier" cutscenes, even the ending ones. When a cutscene ends, the camera pans behind Cloud (or whoever you're controlling at that point), the onscreen menus come back, and you can walk forward. All without no drop in quality!!!!

THIS IS FUCKING VIDEO GAME WIZARDRY!!!! I don't think that "better graphics = better game" but Rebirth uses its graphical capabilities to further immerse the player in the world. It doesn't feel like they've made things look more real just to look nice; it's all done with such purpose that I can't help but see it as a huge plus. It's not that I couldn't dream big as a teenager- this was just unheard of. Rebirth is like walking through a beautiful cutscene, but it's the whole game!!!!

Remake does look beautiful as well, don't get me wrong, but it's like...it looks like Good Video Game Graphics. Rebirth crossed the uncanny valley and now everything is so effortlessly well-rendered, it's no longer distracting. There were parts of Rebirth that Liz, Pat, or I would point out as being particularly gorgeous, but that's more like... "oh this looks really good, holy shit!!!" not......something that looks really good but still a little bit noticeably uncanny.

It's so cool. It's truly immersive and fun and god, I could pick it up right now even though I'm hungry and really need to eat something. Rebirth makes me be like "okay, no this was worth using a system as powerful as the ps5, and it's using it well" which makes my grouchy ass upset but ALSO: worth it.

....okay but no everyone got home from work and I have to take my ps2 to the retro game store for repairs, so I'll end this here. I cannot wait for the next (final?) part, and I have high hopes that they'll actually do it the justice it deserves.

Also like. FFVII is overhyped but also worth it. If you've somehow made it to 2025 without at least playing a little, plz pick it up!!! The OG is on basically every digital platform (I know it's on Switch and PSN for sure) + Remake is on the PS4/PS5/probably some others? and Rebirth is on PS5/PC. It's relatively accessible nowadays!!!!!! PLEASE I LOVE THE IT ♥