https://www.polygon.com/reviews/24078968/final-fantasy-7-rebirth-review
"Worth your time, but maybe not as much as it asks you for".
The highs are high and the lows are very low. Remake and Rebirth are super interesting as both a remake of the original FF7 as well as a sequel. The story stuff and combat are awesome. The way that the main cast is so much more fleshed out feels pretty well-done aside from a few things I wasn't that into. But there's so much busywork along the way that I feel really mixed on the game as a whole.
I get that they wanted to match the feeling of entering the world map and having things "open up" after leaving Midgar like in the original FF7, but I think the kinda generic open world game checklist stuff (find and kill this pack of monsters, find these summon crystal shrines, climb to the top of these open world video game towers) doesn't add very much to the game. It all felt really padded.
The proper sidequests were great and I loved that each one focused on a different party member alongside Cloud. There should have been more of those instead of running around and clicking on crystals or the 80 combat simulator battles (I like battles in that game, but most of the challenging fights being inside of Chadley's Computer Realm felt kinda sad).
Combat is super fun as it was in Remake, and the new synergy moves are a lot of fun. They add a lot to the feeling of the party being friends while also being really strategic and powerful. A lot of the new abilities that each character got mesh well with their old ones and feel interesting enough to want to mix in. The characters that weren't playable in Remake also feel very unique and fun. It's impressive with the cast size being what it is, that every character feels like they have their own thing going on.
Pretty much all of the minigames from the equivalent parts of the original game are back in Rebirth, plus like 20 more. My partner was able to laugh along with each new minigame that appeared but I'm not built like that, I just wanted to see more of the story and do more fights. Again, this feels like something where they were trying to capture the feeling of the original game having a ton of weird lil minigames in it, but it really breaks up the pacing sometimes.
I also think a lot of them are... not very good. and too long and difficult for what they are. You can usually see the rewards for a minigame before you start it, with most of them having 3 ranks of rewards depending on your time/score. The rewards can be anything from materia, a weapon for one of your characters, rare crafting materials (there's crafting in this game btw), potent healing items, or powerful accessories. Minigames generally have at least one thing that (to me) seemed too good to just leave behind.
I think that part of my displeasure with the game is just me being old and not really enjoying most open world games. I generally prefer more tight, focused experiences like (most of) Remake was. But I still love my blorbos and had a decent time. It could have just been like half as long of a time.
