I passed the 50% mark in the game. They were going to drop the plate! They did it! I’m on the next chapter.
In fact, I like that at least now there were some stakes in the plot.
I’m starting to think… should I continue playing? Play 14 more hours? I don’t think my opinion is going to improve at this point. Maybe I try to rush it in 12 hours, which isn’t that much. But then again, that’s 12 hours I could play… some other game or series.
In general I think the story, the characters and the dialog are mediocre, if not poor.
The whole ‘remake is secretly a sequel/a new timeline with a real connection to the previous timeline by some plot device’ makes me roll my eyes.
And the humor is bad. And the side quests.
And the small puzzles like using the robot claws with the containers.
And the mini games aren’t interesting either (never mind they signal a bit of flawed game design, they give me the feeling they knew the gameplay was repetitive with the samey combat, but they weren’t able to do any other interesting pillar to their core gameplay, so they added a few minigames).
And the corridor-like level design and boring dungeons and visually unappealing design (sewers, industrial rooms, train tunnels, a scrapyard, a ruined highway or tunnel, a warehouse, etc).
Even the music sometimes doesn’t fit at all with the scenes?
And the player itemization/build options isn’t that good (the materia system is good, but the rest is very streamlined).
And let’s not talk of the pace.
I still haven’t talked of the combat. The combat is flashy, and have an interesting mix of real time direct combat + orders. However, I think they didn’t go far enough into making it a proper good action combat system, for my taste. It’s 85% up there but it’s a bit compromised because they wanted it to still be reminiscent of the original game. I’m of talking of the core game loop of attack/avoid/block, it feels a bit off:
The overall combat flow is kinda spammy.
The camera doesn’t prioritize the player position vs the enemies around.
Between the flashiness, the camera, your two companions and all the enemies, sometimes the screen is a clusterfuck of action where you can’t see with clarity the enemy tells attacks.
Being briefly stunned or thrown to the ground by almost any attack just don’t feel right, it makes playing it somewhat clunky, instead of smooth.
The dodge action is unforgiving for the type of game it is, sometimes I think I avoided an attack but I still eat the damage in reality.
The counter with the block action in heavy stance doesn’t work with some enemies and there is no indication of which ones will be.
So I’m starting to think I’m playing just for pure inertia, and let’s confess it, for the high production values.
But in general, I think the game having a 87-89 score in MC is hilarious. I think it just had a series of reasons that all together raised the score, from the hype the remake had at first (over the years I’ve noticed game reviewers are NOT immune to this), the nostalgia factor, the extra points given by the production values, and let’s confess it, the name famous name attached. The same game with the same qualities by another dev with another name would have got less high scores.
From what I’ve read, Rebirth had a tepid reception, sales wise, despite having better scores as it seems it is a better game that fixes some of the issues of the first part, that makes me think lots of people felt burned with this first part so they didn’t buy the sequel.
You only sell as good as your previous game is. A bit like CP2077 selling a ton on the back of being the next game after TW3.
edit: I continued playing for now, but this game is worse than I expected in some areas, for a AAA linear jrpg. Why is reusing a second time so many areas? Again going through the ruined highway, another visit to the same slums, another visit to the walled city, another second run of the sewers below Corneo, really?
