Let’s Talk Spoilers: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Alright, it’s been long enough. If you haven’t played the game yet and you’re reading an article with ‘spoilers’ in the title, that’s your own problem.

I’ve had plenty of time to reflect after the release of Rebirth. While I still love the game, my opinions on a lot of things have changed quite a bit. I like some things more, some less.

So now I’m gonna rant about it. A lot. Consider this my ‘Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth Review 2: Electric Boogaloo.’

Let’s take this one character at a time. Starting with our leading man: Cloud Strife. In short: 10/10, no notes. Seeing him open up to the rest of the party bit by bit puts the biggest, dumbest grin on my face! He becomes genuine bros with Barret and Red, Aerith finally starts to crack his shell, and his burgeoning romance with Tifa is sweet enough to give me a heart attack! I especially love how his absolute apathy and annoyance in the face of Yuffie’s antics; they feel like siblings who clearly care for each other, even if they drive each other up the wall. It’s all wonderful stuff.

Which makes it all the more horrifying when Sephiroth starts brain-washing him.

The Black Materia scene is my favorite example. Having to chase Aerith down as mind-controlled zombie Cloud feels genuinely unsettling. Especially because Sephiroth utterly humiliates Cloud in the process, reducing our hero to a boot-licking sycophant. Cody Christian (yes, I play these games in English, sue me) sells the transformation perfectly, making the scene even creepier than it already was. It puts Cloud in a pitiable position and makes Sephiroth all the more loathsome and terrifying an antagonist.

Even if he’s still overused. Seriously, Sephiroth shows up, like, every five minutes.

Next up, Barret. I think they knocked his story out of the park! His battle with Dyne outside Corel Prison is one of my favorite moments in the entire game! They even added onto it later on, showing us the death of his wife, an event that was never covered in previous FFVII media; just in case you weren’t sad enough with his backstory already. John Eric Bentley hit a home run with his performance in every single scene! You can tell he was having a ton of fun with the character!

They also gave him his sailor suit. 20/10, perfect game.

Tifa’s role in this stretch of the plot is much more emphasized than it was in the original game. They added a whole new section in which she falls into the Lifestream, seeing visions of her past. It’s a neat way to make her more aware of Sephiroth’s influence over Cloud, giving her a more active role in that conflict, while foreshadowing her later return to the stream to put Cloud back together.

They also nailed the growing distrust between the two. Tifa knows Cloud’s memories of Nibelheim are wrong, and Cloud knows that Tifa is hiding something important from him. It puts a natural strain on their relationship, one that Sephiroth abuses to spectacular effect. Their dynamic is easily one of Rebirth’s greatest strengths.

One thing I cannot stand, however, is the constant re-use of Tifa’s dad’s death. Rebirth hammers that scene home again and again and again. It was nice the first time; Cloud and Tifa return to the Nibelheim Reactor, and Cloud has to comfort her when she naturally gets PTSD flashbacks. During the Temple of the Ancients, however, we see his death play out again with the exact same dialogue. Why? We’ve already seen this, we already know this information, can we please just move on?

But to end on a positive note: Britt Baron is absolutely stunning as Tifa. 10/10 performance.

I really like a lot of Red XIII’s stuff. Max Mittelman did an incredible job, capturing both the character’s wise and gruff act and his true childish nature perfectly; I legitimately thought there were two different voice actors, his range is crazy! They also tied his backstory into the main plot very well, adding an extra bit of lore explaining the origin of the Black Materia.

We also get to see what happened when Hojo captured him. And it was pretty god damn unsettling. Having to struggle in vain against the chains perfectly captured the fear and helplessness Nanaki must have been feeling at the time. It’s another fantastic addition that makes you hate Hojo even more than you likely already do.

However, I am disappointed with the Seto reveal. It was one of my favorite scenes in the original, but it didn’t really work in Rebirth. There was too much dialogue where that should have been silence, and said dialogue was some of the worst in the game. It’s one of the few scenes in the game that I feel were worse than the PS1 version.

Yuffie, on the other hand, is a significant upgrade over the original game. She was pretty good in the Integrade DLC, but she is far better with the party proper. Barret basically makes her his obnoxious teenage daughter and Tifa becomes her big sister and I love it. While she doesn’t get much – they’re clearly saving her arc for the third game – what she does get is really good. Plus, Suzie Yeung is a perfect fit for the character.

Cait Sith is by far the largest improvement over the original game. He’s far more charming and fun to play than his PS1 counterpart. Especially thanks to the delightfully charming performance of Paul Tinto.

Which is astonishing, because they really didn’t do anything different. He’s the exact same character as the original game, beat for beat. They just gave him more screen time and involvement in the main plot. Though they did give him his own puzzle section, which was surprisingly fun. Well done.

I’m a bit disappointed with Cid. His personality is there, and it’s great, and J. Michael Tatum gave a great performance, but all the depth that makes him interesting isn’t here. No Rocket Town, no desire to go into space, nothing. He’s relegated to a fast travel service. They also added a connection between him and Aerith’s mom into his backstory that felt a bit unnecessary to me. Maybe they’ll build on it in part three, but I don’t see how or why they would.

Swinging to the other end of the spectrum: I have no complaints about Vincent. Matt Mercer was perfect as this character; all of his passion shines like the sun, which is ironic for a vampire. Dark, brooding, and edgy as a razor, he’ll have middle-schoolers everywhere losing their collective minds.

You don’t get to play as him yet. But Square more than made up for it. Because you do get to fight him! And it’s one of the toughest, coolest boss battles in the game! He even uses his limit break against you! That’s so fucking cool!

Alright, we have to talk about Zack. In terms of personality and performance, he’s absolutely perfect. Caleb Pierce did a phenomenal job; every time this dude shows up, I find myself grinning from ear to ear. When he pops up at the end to team up with Cloud against Sephiroth, I lost my god damn mind, dude!

That said, his actual role still seems a bit strange. He’s living in an alternate timeline that’s dying, which occasionally overlaps with the main timeline. As it stands, it doesn’t make much sense. But they’re clearly going somewhere with this; we’ll just have to wait and see how it wraps up in part three. What we have in Rebirth is essentially a bunch of weird and depressing stuff that kinda goes nowhere; a bit disappointing, but still intriguing.

Okay. Time to address the elephant in the room. The most important element, and indeed the most important character, of this game.

We need to talk about Aerith.

Aerith’s arc throughout this game is genuinely spectacular. Firstly because seeing her experience the world is downright adorable. But also because we see her grappling with accepting her role as the last Cetra. We see exactly what that entails, for better and for worse, and watching her learn to live up to that legacy is fantastic. Her scene by the bonfire in Cosmo Canyon had me in tears, dude, it was so beautiful!

All of this is supported by Briana White‘s performance. Of all the spectacular actors in this game, hers is far and away the best. One moment, she’s adorable, hilarious, sassy as hell, or all three at once. The next, she delivers an incredibly powerful moment of emotional vulnerability. Vulnerability which eventually becomes strength.

At it’s core, Final Fantasy VII is a story about loss. Small wonder than that in the original game, Aerith’s death was the single most important scene in the entire story. Naturally, expectations for the remake version were high.

When I first played it, I didn’t like her death scene at all. Mostly because it confused me. “Oh, she’s dead. Wait, nevermind. No, wait, she’s actually dead. No, wait again, she’s fighting Sephiroth with Cloud. Okay, now she’s dead. Wait, no, Cloud is talking with her ghost in the final cutscene.” It felt overly convoluted and bloated.

Now that I’ve had some time to sit on it, I have warmed up to the ending quite a bit. It still plays into the central themes of loss, only in a different way. In the original, Aerith is gone in an instant, ripped away just as you start to process what was happening. It’s a stunning slap in the face.

Rebirth puts Cloud – and therefor the audience – in a situation of utter disbelief. The death is every bit as sudden as the original, but Cloud doesn’t immediately face it. He denies it. The reality of the event doesn’t set in yet. During the final cutscene, while everyone else is quiet and crying and mourning, Cloud is carrying on as if nothing is wrong. Just as he sees Sephiroth when no one else can, he alone can see Aerith. His broken brain utterly refuses to accept that she’s gone.

At least that’s how I’ve come to interpret it. How you view the ending is entirely up to you (unless part three does some crazy shit and changes everything for all of us). If you still don’t like it, that’s perfectly understandable. I have no doubt this will go down as a very controversial ending.

But everything is controversial these days, so… Never mind, I guess.

While I do have my gripes with Rebirth, I do think it was overall a very good game with a great story. Not a perfect story, but there’s no such thing as perfection. What we got still left me as a fan more than satisfied.

I only wish I had taken it a bit slower. Granted, I got hella sick the week this dropped. What else was I going to do?

Hopefully I’ll be a bit healthier for part three. It’ll be much easier to appreciate if I’m not hacking up my lungs every five minutes of gameplay.