Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsWelcome to death by mini-game.
Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2024
Original review edited to condense comments and RELUCTANTLY added a star for 3 stars.
FF7 is in the top 3 favorite games of all time for me. At the time when it came out it was ground-breaking. I'd never played anything like it. The story was great, battles were fun and at the time the graphics were very good. I've always used that game as where the bar is set for really good RPG's.
I liked FF7 Remake even more than the original game. Same great story, better graphics, expanded story details compared to the original game and the battles were even MORE fun! I just didn't think the summons were as good as the old game. But I enjoyed this so much I spent hundreds of hours playing it through 3 times and completing everything on hard mode.
Enter FF7 Rebirth. I think the graphics of the game were even better than Remake. The story again was great because it even expanded further on the original story. The battles were super fun again. And, in Rebirth it seemed to have a much larger world to explore which I loved. However, not once have I ever experienced such a love/hate relationship in a game before. What caused this? The title sums it up very simply. The developers went entirely off the deep end with how many mini games were included. Sure, the original game had them too. The difference is if you are trying to complete all - or as much of the game as possible you will spend at least 50% of this game playing mini games. That's something I could live with too - if the majority of the mini games were fun or seemed to have something relating to the game to some extent. But most of the mini games were no fun at all but more like "throw the controller across the room" types of frustrating games. My PS5 would get shut down and the game would sit for several days many times over this. I debated just quitting the game and not playing it anymore because I hated the mini games so much. Then, the other part of me wouldn't let me do that because FF7 is my favorite game and I wanted to see how the new story unfolded. What a horrible back and forth - being as happy as can be when just doing battles or progressing through the game then doing a complete 180 and being miserable and hating the game because it was "mini game time" in between the amazing story and fighting.
Another non-mini game complaint is the materia. It was sure hard to come by certain materia in the game that would have made some battles a bit easier. Without giving spoilers I'll say some very important materia in the game - you are limited to 3 materia total and acquiring the third materia wasn't super easy to get. I ended up just getting 2 materia after researching how to get more and finding out you could only get 3.
Finished the game finally, thankfully the few ending chapters of the story were thin on mini games and focused on battles and the story. So I bumped up one star for the rating. I had NO ISSUE at all uninstalling the game when I finished it unlike Remake. Didn't go back and look at other date scene possibilities, didn't go do any fun games I did like such as chocobo racing - not playing through again and trying to do the game on hard and skip as much game junk. I'm just done with this game and hope they don't ruin the final 3rd release by making it a mini game compilation instead of focusing on what made FF7 one of the greatest games of all times already.