Summary

• FF7 Rebirth improves on FF7 Remake in many regards, but there are also some areas where the game is a downgrade.
• A lack of consistent quality can make some parts of FF7 Rebirth feel like major filler.
• FF7 Rebirth overuses some key elements, ultimately wearing out their welcome.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth improves on FF7 Remake in a lot of ways, but not every change made between the titles is a good one. As updates to one of the most iconic RPGs of all time, the FF7 remake games have a lot to live up to, and translating the strengths of the original games to a modern format comes with plenty of challenges. While FF7 Rebirth takes up this task to frequent success, it also has its fair share of pitfalls that are often different from the ones found in FF7 Remake.

FF7 Rebirth and Remake share a lot of core elements of design, sticking to the same fundamental combat system and progressing down a tweaked version of the original narrative. By nature, however, leaving the city of Midgar behind for the larger expanse of Gaia shifts the flavor of the story and the style of the exploration. This can be a bittersweet transition in some ways, especially when FF7 Rebirth misses the mark on some elements that helped make FF7 Remake special.

10 FF7 Rebirth Has Way Too Much Chadley

Chadley Overload

Video game history is chock-full of annoying companions, and Chadley has stepped up to the mantle of the most infamous figures with his FF7 Rebirth appearance. Since his introduction in FF7 Remake, Chadley has always been approached in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner, with a blithely enthusiastic demeanor that Cloud consistently meets with significantly less excitement. While the franchise's awareness of Chadley's potential to be tiring can provide some layer of relief, FF7 Rebirth employs the character to a degree that completely wears out any reasonable level of tolerance.

In a manner familiar to historic nightmares like The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword's Fi, Chadley simply won't stop inserting himself into Cloud's activities.

In a manner familiar to historic nightmares like The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword's Fi, Chadley simply won't stop inserting himself into Cloud's activities. Over and over, activities taken on in the game's open areas will be assisted by Chadley popping up to offer advice or congratulations. After enough time, the sound of his communication device beeping to life can become something of a Pavlovian trigger, and even his biggest fans are likely to walk away from FF7 Rebirth having had more than their fill of Chadley.

9 FF7 Rebirth's Lighting Is Less Consistent

Lighting Strikes Twice?

FF7 Rebirth can have beautiful lighting sometimes, especially in major story cutscenes, but these highlights definitely aren't consistent throughout the entire experience. In many cases, bright lights cast a very weird effect on character's faces, leaving them looking dead-eyed and lifeless. Interior shadows can also look washed-out at times, although the effect there is never as severe as the low-contrast color grade employed in Final Fantasy 16.

Although the game definitely makes certain graphical advancements upon FF7 Remake, the lighting is just not one of them. Remake had significantly fewer incidences of unflattering character lighting, which could frequently make the experience more convincing. An update after the demo was supposed to fix some key visual issues, but it ultimately didn't address core problems thoroughly.

8 Performance Mode Is Blurrier In FF7 Rebirth

Jokes on Repeat

The other big problem with FF7 Rebirth's graphics is the hit that Performance mode takes compared to the PS5 upgrade for FF7 Remake. While the first game in the trilogy looked crystal clear on both Performance and Graphics mode, the rendering solution for Performance mode in Rebirth has notably blurry results. The output resolution is well above 1080p, but the actual effect more closely resembles a lower resolution with an inadequate scaling solution.

A patch for Performance Mode directly targeted these issues, but it still doesn't get things to where they were in FF7 Remake. The game plays smoothly on Performance mode, and Quality mode is still an option for those who find the resolution too problematic, but the trade-off isn't ideal either way.

7 FF7 Rebirth Wears Out FF7 Remake Gags

Minigame Mania

Running gags and recurring characters play a big role in FF7 Remake and FF7 Rebirth, but Rebirth might take some of these elements a bit too far. An early example lies in the silly gang of criminals known as Beck's Badasses that first appeared in FF7 Remake, and reappear in the Protorelic quest found in the Grasslands region. While their comic ineptitude can have its charms, by the end of the quest, it's more than exhausted the limited supply of entertainment that can be milked from a pretty simple premise.

This isn't a problem that ends in the Grasslands, as Beck's Badasses keep appearing throughout various parts of the FF7 Rebirth story. They aren't the only characters that keep pace with the party's exploration throughout Gaia either, with a lot of familiar faces making repeat showings. Although some don't tend to wear out their welcome, it has the curious effect of making the world and journey feel more limited, and there's no denying that a certain number of running jokes start to get old before long.

6 FF7 Rebirth's Minigames Are A Blessing & A Curse

Crickets in the Avalanche

Minigames are one of the major highlights of FF7 Rebirth, recreating the sense of playfulness that made the original game stand out. Where the title fails to achieve the same effect, however, is in the structure and pacing of inserting them into the game.

While unusual challenges like performing R once broke up narrative segments or stretches of combat in a well-modulated way, FF7 Rebirth sometimes drops minigame after minigame in areas where they can start to derail the story. At the Gold Saucer, this is obviously great, but there's definitely an argument to be made that FF7 Remake's comparative lack of focus on minigames might be a better translation of the classic approach.

5 FF7 Rebirth Lacks Remake's Consistent Chatter

Feeling The Absence

One big point of charm in FF7 Remake was the amount of party chatter throughout the experience, as dead space tended to be uncommon when progressing through any area for the first time. Hearing commentary, banter, and discussion from the party helps provide a constant sense of entertainment and make the party feel alive. Although party chatter still plays a reasonably substantial role in FF7 Rebirth, it's significantly less frequent overall than in Remake, and certain stretches can end up feeling awkwardly dead thanks to the game.

It makes sense that the consistency of party chatter is lower in FF7 Rebirth, considering how long the overall experience is, but it exacerbates the sense that a lot of the open-world content is filler. There is one upside – companions have lessened their tendency to tell Cloud how to progress through an area, resulting in a less annoying amount of hand-holding than what was present in FF7 Remake.

4 Avalanche's FF7 Remake Presence Is Sorely Missed

A Stumbling Start

Although FF7 Remake's extended runtime compared to the original Midgar section has its ups and downs, getting to spend more time with the of the Avalanche splinter cell is one area where the expansion offers an incredibly strong benefit. Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge don't get a lot of time to shine in the classic PlayStation game, and it's hard for their fate to generate any huge emotional response. FF7 Remake offers a lot more reason to care about what happens to Avalanche, and they all become characters with memorable strengths and struggles.

FF7 Rebirth, obviously, doesn't get to put a spotlight on these same characters, and it's one element of FF7 Remake that's easy to mourn. By no means is this an actual problem with FF7 Rebirth – it's just a natural part of the story – but it's still a notable feature of the prior game that gives it a unique strength. Rebirth does still get to touch on the characters in more minor ways, which still provide some strong if comparatively slight additions.

3 FF7 Rebirth Is Weaker At The Start

A Stumbling Start

Similarly, the Midgar section of the game also translates to a stronger opening segment for FF7 Remake than the early hours of FF7 Rebirth. Both experiences start with a bang and build to engaging climaxes for early narrative elements, but the momentum that FF7 Remake sustains throughout its introductory missions is something that its successor can't quite manage.

Once again, this is a little bit inherent to the nature of the games, as FF7 Remake is working with the original FF7 opening, which has always leaped off the screen with cinematic dynamism. All the same, it's harder to be immediately captivated by FF7 Rebirth. The climactic end to the Nibelheim flashback in Chapter 1 is certainly worth getting to, but the game can't completely hide the fact that it's picking up in the middle of the story.

2 FF7 Rebirth's Story Flow Could Use Work

Flowing From Chaos

This struggle leads into one of the larger problems with FF7 Rebirth, which is that the story flow just isn't as even as FF7 Remake.

This struggle leads into one of the larger problems with FF7 Rebirth, which is that the story flow just isn't as even as FF7 Remake. Although Remake can burn away some of its momentum in side narratives like the ghost subplot or puzzle-less dungeons that wear on too long, it rarely loses its driving elements and focus for any particularly extended periods of time. Despite some silly moments, the weight of the narrative is also conveyed with reasonable consistency.

FF7 Rebirth, on the other hand, tends to lurch into and out of segments where the plot is progressing in a focused way. Any joke about heroes spending too much time on silly side activities in the middle of a time-sensitive threat to the world definitely applies here, and experiencing all the game has to offer essentially requires this disconnect to be forced to the back of the mind. Every location is essentially expanded into a new extravaganza, and although this can be fun, it can make the point of the whole thing an unstable presence.

1 FF7 Rebirth Is Overburdened With Bloat

Burdened By Content

FF7 Rebirth is sort of on the border of being an open-world game, with large explorable zones that still appear in a segmented form. What it's not shy about committing to is the open-world tendency to fill out these big areas with a checklist of tasks to complete. Although there's some fun to be had in running around these areas, there's no way around the unfortunate truth that much of the content to be found outside discrete quests just isn't all that interesting.

The best time that can be had in FF7 Rebirth can probably be found by skipping many points of interest that litter the world, focusing on content that doesn't repeat from zone to zone instead. In a game that already has so much to do, it's a bit silly to toss this extra layer on things, and investing too much time in it mostly makes the experience worse. Most ways in which Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth compares unfavorably to FF7 Remake are minor, but the bloat that makes up a lot of the game's completion might be its greatest sin.