2024-02-29 17:42:30
“Final Fantasy VII Rebirth” is the long-awaited remake of one of the most successful classic games in history. Our test reveals whether the game is convincing.
Only a few video game series can look back on such a long-lasting success story as “Final Fantasy”. Since their debut in 1987, the Japanese role-playing games from developer Square Enix have delighted generations of gamers.
Thanks to more than 185 million copies sold, the studio is among the absolute crème de la crème. With the latest offshoot “Final Fantasy VII Rebirth”, the makers now want to build on this successful past. We’ll tell you whether it works.
what you need to know
The next step into the future of “Final Fantasy” is actually another step into the past. Because “Final Fantasy VII Rebirth” is not a completely new game, it is a remake of the classic from 1997. The developers describe the new edition as a new interpretation in which the original has been revised from the ground up and expanded to include new content.
The adaptation to modern technologies – after all, a leap of 27 years – means that “Final Fantasy VII” will not be re-released in one game, but in three episodes.
“Rebirth” is the second of three parts of the new edition, episode one (“Final Fantasy VII Remake”) was released in 2020 and sold more than seven million copies. The pure numbers seem to speak for this course of the developers. But is it worth playing this absolute role-playing classic in a modern twist?
That’s how it plays
“Final Fantasy VII Rebirth” is a so-called JRPG, i.e. a Japanese-style role-playing game. The narrative and characters have a lot of weight here, which is why the flow of the game is often interrupted by long video sequences. By the way, you can watch such a multi-minute passage before the game starts to find out “what happened so far” – i.e. in the first part of the remake.
The developers use this simple trick to appeal to beginners and beginners, as well as many other features that make access much easier for newcomers to the genre. In addition to these video sequences, “Rebirth” is based on a defining gameplay pillar: battles against monsters or human opponents, which are predominantly carried out with melee weapons such as huge swords, magical attacks or even firearms.
Typical of the Final Fantasy series, which is in the tradition of Asian manga comics and anime, are completely exaggerated battle animations that are difficult to follow. But don’t worry – as mentioned above, the game is designed to be fun for beginners and not just professionals.
In this way, many of the hero group’s actions can be automated around a certain Cloud Strife: This ranges from the equipment upgrade system to the use of the various hero skills to the companions who can automatically support Cloud in battles if desired.
Absolutely beginner-friendly
This is supported by the fact that “Final Fantasy VII Rebirth” has a very linear structure in the first few hours and for a long time feels like a tutorial that takes the player by the hand and explains every step in detail. Only after two to three hours does the game world open up and can be freely explored. From this point on, not only does the playing field expand, the interactive adventure is supplemented by many other aspects such as research tasks.
These also include features that are completely new to the series, such as synthesis, which allows players to create their own items. Synchronous attacks are also completely new, where two heroes launch powerful attacks at the same time and in this way not only work together in battle, but also strengthen their relationship with each other.
With innovations of this kind, Square Enix is also attracting long-serving fans of the series, who are not only presented with much nicer graphics and excellent animations compared to the original thanks to modern technology. What “Rebirth” benefits from enormously is the new movement system – finally Cloud no longer fails at small obstacles, but swings smoothly over or even climbs along rocky ledges.