#all (well. most) ff7 characters are so pretty in remake/rebirth it's amazing

[xiiiwayfinders]

Wedge is genuinely so pretty like we need to talk about this man more istg

[greagors-breath]

Non-spoilery FF7 Rebirth thoughts

So, I finished watching Rebirth and after having a few days to marinate on it, here are my thoughts. (I'm not gonna talk about the ending here for the sake of the folks who have not gotten to it yet.)

Regarding the parts that adapt the original story, I think they were pretty well-handled. Most of the changes they made made sense and added more to the characters and their relationships. Everyone in the main party felt important in their own right and I really got the sense that these people like and care about each other.

I like what they did with Rufus and the Turks too - on one hand, they felt much more like proper antagonists and an actual threat now, whereas in OG they felt more like an obstacle in the post-Midgar story. On the other, they also felt more like a proper, coordinated team now. I'm so glad they actually let Rufus be a villain while also giving him some humanizing aspects - I'm curiously awaiting his development in the next part.

Of course, as a Tseng fan I was very anxious about how he will be handled but I am pleased with what we got for him. I definitely got the sense that he has more thoughts about everything that's going on than what he lets on, which makes sense for his character and I love how they portrayed that with his subtle body language. My only wish is that we got more of him but that is my very personal bias.

Speaking of little screen time, Vincent was amazing in the short time he got to be there. I love that his past as a Turk was made more relevant, as that was never really brought up outside of his backstory before. Cid, on the other hand, was kind of just there? I guess they're saving most his character development for the next game but he really didn't get to much to do in this one.

Zack's storyline interfered a lot less with the main plot than I expected and I think the way it was eventually tied in fit with the themes and rules they have established in the story.

As a Before Crisis fan, I was geeking out over the new added lore for Kalm.

I've only two big gripes with the game; one is that my fear of it being too over-packed with minigames and side-quests was not unfounded. Only watching through them got tedious sometimes, I can only imagine what it's like to actually having to play through them. And when I think about how all that time and memory space could have been used for more story-relevant things... yeah. (I only recommend the protorelic quest in Gongaga if you're a Turks fan.)

Another was this insistence of the story bringing up the Tifa-Cloud-Aerith-Zack love rectangle. Like, they will be just interacting and all getting along, then someone would ask "does x like y?" and I was groaning and rolling my eyes. I am not strongly invested in any of these ships and this constant focus on the romance started to make it feel like their bonds don't matter if they're platonic. Not to mention how this will further fuel the seemingly endless ship wars.

Overall, I think if you're someone who liked Remake, you'll probably like Rebirth too. If you didn't, you might not like this either. When I first got into Remake, I didn't know anything about FF7 other the names of the 4 main characters and a couple of plot points. Having now played the OG and consumed the rest of the compilation, I have a better understanding of the frustrations ppl had with changes Remake and Rebirth made. Even some of the things I liked got changed. But in the end, I did enjoy Rebirth, I got what I wanted out of it and its good parts outweigh the bad for me. I'd give it an 8/10.