Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Review — PS5’s Most Ambitious RPG Chapter Yet

Leaving Midgar Behind

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth picks up exactly where Remake left off, but the moment the party crosses the Grasslands beyond Midgar’s ruined outskirts, it becomes clear Square Enix isn’t interested in repeating itself. Where the first installment was a tightly wound, corridor-driven reimagining of the original game’s opening hours, Rebirth throws the doors open into a genuinely expansive open world spanning multiple distinct regions, each with its own biome, side content, and Chocobo variant to unlock. Having played through the entire main story plus a substantial chunk of side content on PS5, we can say this is the most confident and mechanically rich entry the franchise has produced in years.

The core narrative beats will be familiar to anyone who played the 1997 original — Cloud, Tifa, Barret, and Aerith pursuing Sephiroth across the world in search of answers about Jenova, Shinra, and the planet’s dwindling lifestream — but Rebirth is unafraid to expand, reinterpret, and occasionally subvert expectations for longtime fans. Without spoiling specifics, certain narrative threads introduced in Remake’s ambiguous ending pay off here in ways that recontextualize scenes players have known for over two decades.

An Open World That Actually Rewards Exploration

Open-world fatigue is a real phenomenon, and we approached Rebirth’s regional maps with some skepticism given how many modern RPGs pad their runtime with repetitive tower-unlock structures. Square Enix mostly sidesteps this trap. Each region — the Grasslands, Junon’s coastline, the Corel desert, the Gongaga jungle, and more — has a distinct visual identity and a set of activities that feel tailored to that specific location rather than copy-pasted busywork. Chocobo racing, the Queen’s Blood card minigame, combat simulator challenges, and the returning Fort Condor tower-defense sequences each received enough design attention that they could function as standalone modes.

Queen’s Blood in particular deserves its own spotlight. It’s a deceptively deep card game built around board-control mechanics rather than pure stat comparisons, and we found ourselves diverting from the main story for hours just to track down rare card rewards from NPC opponents scattered across the world. It says something about the quality of a side activity when it becomes genuinely difficult to put the controller down and return to saving the planet.

Combat: Real-Time Action Meets Tactical Depth

The hybrid action-RPG combat system introduced in Remake returns here refined and expanded. Each of the seven playable party members — yes, seven, with new additions joining as the story progresses — has a distinct combat identity built around their weapon type, ATB gauge management, and unique Synergy Abilities that let two characters combo together for devastating team attacks. Switching between party members mid-fight remains as satisfying as ever, and the game does an excellent job of making every character feel viable in high-level content rather than funneling players toward one or two “meta” picks.

Boss encounters throughout Rebirth are genuinely spectacular, often multi-phase set pieces that blend classic Final Fantasy fan service with modern action-RPG pacing. A late-game confrontation against a summoned Ifrit-adjacent creature stands out as one of the best boss fights we’ve played on PS5 this generation, both mechanically and in terms of pure visual spectacle.

Technical Performance on PS5

Rebirth offers the now-standard trio of console graphics modes: a Graphics mode targeting higher fidelity at 30fps, a Performance mode prioritizing 60fps, and a Graphics+ mode utilizing dynamic resolution scaling with ray tracing enabled at a locked 30fps. We spent the majority of our playtime in Performance mode, and frame pacing remained largely stable even during the game’s busiest set-piece battles, with only occasional dips during particularly effects-heavy summon sequences. Load times are near-instantaneous thanks to the PS5’s SSD, which matters enormously in an RPG this dense with fast travel and world-map transitions.

Visually, this is one of the best-looking games on the platform. Character models for the main cast reach a level of facial animation fidelity that makes emotionally heavy story beats land with real weight, and the environmental art direction — particularly the bioluminescent Gongaga jungle and the industrial sprawl of Junon — showcases just how far Square Enix’s Unreal Engine pipeline has come since Remake.

Chadley, Intel Reports, and World Traversal

Rounding out the open-world structure is Chadley, a returning support character who assigns Battle Intel Reports and Protorelic side-quest chains tied to region-specific towers, echoing the Ubisoft-style map-clearing formula while dressing it in enough Final Fantasy-specific flavor to avoid feeling like a direct copy. Traversal is aided by an expanding roster of Chocobo variants, each granting new movement abilities like gliding or swimming across specific terrain types unique to their region, a system that gives world exploration a rewarding sense of progression tied directly to genuine gameplay utility rather than pure cosmetic variety.

Where the Ambition Shows Its Seams

No game this scope-heavy is without flaws. Rebirth’s middle act occasionally sags under the weight of its own side content; the open-world checklist activities, while individually well-crafted, can start to feel like an obligation rather than a discovery around the game’s third region. Some side quests also lean on fetch-quest structures that feel dated compared to the ambition on display elsewhere. And while the combat is excellent, the sheer number of systems — materia, folios, synergy abilities, weapon upgrades — can feel overwhelming for players who haven’t kept up with every mechanical addition since Remake.

The Party Dynamic and Character Writing

One of Rebirth’s quiet strengths is how it handles downtime between major story beats. Campfire scenes, triggered periodically as you travel the world map, let players choose dialogue prompts that deepen relationships between Cloud and individual party members, subtly influencing a late-game narrative beat tied to the story’s central romantic subplot. These scenes are optional but consistently well-written, giving characters like Barret and Red XIII — historically underserved in the original 1997 release — genuine emotional arcs that stand on their own rather than existing purely in Cloud and Aerith’s shadow.

Yuffie and Cait Sith, both new mandatory party members in this installment, are integrated far more gracefully than we expected. Yuffie in particular brings a distinct ninjutsu-style combat kit built around elemental weapon coating and ranged shuriken attacks that meaningfully diversifies the game’s combat options, and her irreverent personality provides a welcome tonal counterbalance during the story’s heavier stretches.

Minigames as a Genre Unto Themselves

It would be an oversight not to dedicate real attention to Rebirth’s staggering minigame count. Beyond Queen’s Blood, the game features a full 3D brawler-style minigame at the Gold Saucer, a rhythm-based piano performance sequence, a Chocobo racing mode with its own upgrade and customization system, and dozens of smaller diversions scattered throughout each region. Square Enix has clearly poured disproportionate development resources into these systems relative to their optional status, and the quality ceiling on display — several of these minigames could plausibly be sold as standalone mobile titles — speaks to just how much care went into making Rebirth feel like a complete, generous package rather than a padded checklist.

Value Proposition and Replayability

A full completionist playthrough, chasing every side quest, Chadley battle intel report, and Queen’s Blood card, will comfortably exceed one hundred hours, while a story-focused playthrough sits closer to forty to fifty hours. Hard Mode, unlocked after completing the story once, removes item usage during combat and rebalances certain encounters, giving veteran players a genuine reason to revisit favorite boss fights with a fresh tactical lens. Combined with New Game Plus features that carry over materia and equipment, Rebirth offers substantial value for players willing to invest the time.

Music, Voice Acting, and Localization

The soundtrack deserves its own dedicated praise. Composer Masashi Hamauzu and a large supporting team have reimagined dozens of the original 1997 soundtrack’s most iconic themes with new arrangements that shift dynamically based on combat intensity and story context, while also contributing an enormous amount of entirely new original material for the game’s new regions and characters. A specific late-game musical sequence, which we won’t spoil, ranks among the most memorable audio-visual moments in the franchise’s history, blending diegetic and non-diegetic score in a way that few RPGs attempt.

English voice acting across the full cast remains excellent, carrying over the strong performances established in Remake while giving newer characters like Yuffie a distinct comedic energy that meshes well against the story’s heavier dramatic beats. Localization quality throughout the extensive dialogue and item text is consistently strong, avoiding the awkward, overly literal translation choices that occasionally marred the original PS1 release.

Pros and Cons

• Pro: A genuinely massive, beautifully varied open world with meaningful side content.
• Pro: Combat system refines Remake’s hybrid action-RPG formula into something deeper and more satisfying.
• Pro: Outstanding technical performance and visual fidelity on PS5.
• Con: Side content density can slow the pacing of the main story significantly.
• Con: Some side quests rely on generic fetch-quest design despite the game’s overall ambition.
• Con: The sheer volume of overlapping combat and progression systems may overwhelm newcomers.

Final Verdict

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is an enormous, ambitious, occasionally unwieldy middle chapter that mostly succeeds at everything it attempts. It expands the world of Final Fantasy VII in ways that feel respectful to the original while confidently forging its own identity, backed by some of the best combat and technical presentation on PS5 today. Longtime fans and newcomers alike will find plenty to love here, even if the open-world padding occasionally tests patience.

Score: 9.1/10 — A sprawling, gorgeous, and mechanically rich RPG that cements this remake trilogy as one of the generation’s most important projects.