Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: Why it deserves the Game of the Year (& Why it Doesn't)

Dated open world design

FFVII Rebirth's world is incredible, visually pleasing, with fascinating map and level design... but it leaves a lot to be desired in presenting an exciting open world by centralizing its exploration in a system that is over a decade old.

The formula used is the same one that became known in Ubisoft games. The most famous example is the Eagle Vision from the Assassin’s Creed franchise: the character moves to a high point where they have a panoramic view of the region, opening an enlarged view of the map with markers that indicate points of interest, such as treasures to collect and side quests.

On the one hand, this formula “guides” the player through the side quests, which helps not to get lost and/or end up losing items and other secrets because they didn’t find the indicated place. On the other hand, this removes any sense of discovery for the player: instead of exploring the world, they will look at the map searching for the next tower that will show the next objectives, technically making them go from “Point A” to “Point B” instead of investing time in exploring the region and learning its secrets.

This issue is also reflected in some secondary activities: by focusing too much on Chadley as your guide in the open world, Rebirth does not provide that sense of discovery when finding a Summon shrine, for example. Instead, it makes you repeat the same activities in each map to obtain the same results, being exciting the first time, but tedious in the third.

Pacing Issues

The story, as pointed out above, is one of the most exciting plots in current games and maintained all the narrative impact of the original game's plot in 1997, but it also runs into an almost chronic problem of JRPGs as a whole: pacing.

Whether it's because there's a sequence of events that seem designed to prolong the game and/or that feel like a huge filler, Final Fantasy is a franchise whose part of the story is capable of alienating players and making them run to the next chapter. It happens with FFVI, with FFVIII, and even recently with FFXVI. Rebirth would be no exception - but it has a bit too many of these moments.

Most of the time when FFVII Rebirth stops the player's progress with something that completely breaks the plot's rhythm, it does so with minigames. Not unlike the original, this title is not afraid to seem silly at times: need to climb a huge pillar? How about doing it while being thrown by a dolphin?

But it's not just these minigames that the game goes on too long: even in famous moments from the original's story, it sometimes expands the story more than it should to the point of creating a bad narrative. The entire Corel Prison sequence suffers from this excess, including removing almost all the narrative importance of that moment for Barret by including an unwanted boss right after his fateful reunion with Dyne.

The result is a mix between moments of excitement at playing one of the best games of all time and others where the interlocutor just wants that sequence to end and move on to the next one. Add some frustrating activities to complete for some to the equation, and you create a watershed between FFVII Rebirth being a good game and it being the Game of the Year.

It wasn't the Best RPG of 2024

If you asked me what was the best game of 2024, my answer would be Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. But if you asked me what was the best RPG, it would be Metaphor: ReFantazio.

Rebirth is a much more complete and aesthetically pleasing game, with a more exciting combat system and a story capable of making you laugh, cry, and make you feel many other feelings in a way that Atlus' title can't, but Metaphor is, in many ways, a better RPG - and there's nothing wrong with that: it's not that FFVII is a bad game, it's that Atlus is very good at producing RPGs.

For example, despite the wide variety of games available on the PlayStation 4, with titles such as The Witcher 3, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Cyberpunk 2077, Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Final Fantasy VII Remake, it is likely that the RPG community and especially the JRPG community would name Persona 5 / Persona 5 Royal as the best title of its kind on the platform. The product delivered by Atlus is very solid, exciting, with characters that left their mark and that players identify with, and with the right balance between challenge and enjoyment.

Metaphor follows a similar pattern, but with more rigid fantasy themes in a fictional world while taking a lot of inspiration from classic games of the genre: the archetype system is very reminiscent of Final Fantasy's Jobs, its rock-paper-scissors system is a classic of Atlus' works and its narrative, which discusses whether democracy is a utopian desire, sounds like a literary classic, making it a more solid RPG experience than Rebirth, even with all its qualities and being a better gaming experience.

The question is whether, with both competing for the title, the fact that Metaphor is a more solid product in its genre gives it more points as a potential game of the year than FFVII Rebirth, which embraces a wider demographic of players and with perhaps the most ambitious vision the franchise has ever had.

The answer depends on a dozen factors. There hasn't been another game in 2024 that's as ambitious as FFVII Rebirth, but that's also why it could lose that title to another game: out of all the contenders at this year's Game Awards, it's the only one that didn't positively surprise its audience - either it did as expected, or it disappointed in some way.

Another challenge for Rebirth is that three of the other contenders for the award are the best-reviewed games of the year: Astro Bot, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and the Elden Ring expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree (a controversial but applicable choice). At the beginning of 2024, it was considered the clear Game of the Year, but as other titles were released, it lost that hegemony, and it wasn't even because of some of the games that were expected to compete with it, but because the quality delivered by others was as good as it or even better.

However, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has all the qualities of a Game of the Year. No title that won the award pleased the entire audience, and even The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild had its setbacks that were pointed out by fans of the series. So, despite the lower score in the metrics, we cannot ignore the complete and comprehensive experience that the game brings to the player and that, like its predecessor, made it one of the nominees for the most important video game award of the year.

Personally, it will be the game of the year for me. It doesn't matter if Metaphor: ReFantazio was a better RPG, if Astro Bot is a more fun and relaxing pastime, if Shadow of the Erdtree has as much of a cultural impact, and I don't even need to mention, as a card game enthusiast, how exciting it is to see Balatro as one of the candidates - Final Fantasy VII Rebirth had an emotional dedication that is hard to find in other games, and none of the other titles I played in 2024 came close to making me laugh, get emotional and enjoy the characters and story as I did with this title.

Thanks for reading!