The original Final Fantasy VII might be the patient zero for the modern AAA game model. Apart from being an overall incredible and deep game, it was a very cinematic JRPG that aspired to achieve Hollywood production values wherever it could to tell its grand, sweeping story. Ever since, not every AAA project has learned the right lessons from what made Final Fantasy VII so great. On a long enough timeline, everyone’s favourite games get remade. For better or for worse. Sometimes there are great remakes. Sometimes they are disappointing. Other times, developers overthink how to remake their classics, and players end up with a story expanded to elephantine proportions and find themselves waiting years for the conclusions.
The Final Fantasy VII Remake project couldn’t just be a single AAA JRPG. It had to be three. While the third part has yet to be released, the second part is no longer a PlayStation 5 console exclusive and has found its way onto Nintendo and Microsoft consoles. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is an utterly massive game and stressed the PlayStation 5, but how does it fare on an Xbox Series X? It’s time to mosey and find out.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth picks up right where Final Fantasy VII Remake leaves off, with Cloud and the gang arriving in Kalm as he recalls the time Sephiroth razed Nibelheim years earlier. In the original Final Fantasy VII, reaching this part takes around five hours, but in the remake, it could stretch to over 40 hours depending on how much side content players choose to explore. Everything about these games is big and inflated to give individual details their own spotlight. When Cloud checks out the piano in Tifa’s bedroom during the Nibelheim flashback, it’s no longer just a bit of flavour text with him reminiscing; it’s turned into a full-on minigame where skilled players can perform entire songs. After the playable flashback in Nibelheim, the real journey of Rebirth begins.
Rebirth’s story wraps up the remainder of the first disc of Final Fantasy VII. While it might seem like there’s still too much content left for part three, that’s actually not the case. Final Fantasy VII’s third disc was just the final dungeon, some side quests, and the ending cinematic. Discs two and three could easily be combined into one and still match the scale and scope of Remake and Rebirth. The main driving story of Rebirth follows Cloud and the gang as they track Sephiroth, with smaller arcs unfolding at each major stop along the way. It’s actually the smaller arcs that take centre stage as the quest to confront that fiendish Sephiroth quietly falls into the background.
With the way new ideas have been introduced into Remake, it would be easy to assume that Rebirth goes off the rails and paves a new path. This is, in fact, not true. While it is true that Rebirth goes to great lengths to surprise fans of the original, it never feels earned and always comes off as cheap and pointless. There are countless moments where the story pretends to have surprises, but quickly course-corrects itself. The best way to describe it is that Rebirth‘s story is broadly the same as it was in the original, but with a ton of red herrings thrown in that lead nowhere. In the worst cases, the misdirection undermines the story’s coherence, causing characters to make baffling choices or, even worse, creating absurd tonal clashes.
The original Final Fantasy VII was an unbelievably bleak story with enough gags and bits of humour peppered throughout for much-needed levity. Rebirth (and by extension, Remake) undermines much of the story’s gravitas and weight by leaning in on the humour and quirky characters, making the story’s tone border on cringeworthy and embarrassing. Anything that was slightly funny in the original has been significantly amplified, and it comes across as forced rather than genuine. Other times, some changes are drastically inferior in execution compared to the original. Some side characters are rewritten in a way that makes less sense. There are still plenty of heartfelt moments to enjoy, but Rebirth is too eager to pack in as much as possible that a melancholic scene is instantly followed by comedic buffoonery.
Aside from red herrings that go nowhere, Rebirth’s biggest misstep is telling a perfectly deep story that people already love in a way that’s worse than the original. The pacing is unnecessarily stretched, and while the minigames and side quests are entertaining, Rebirth often makes a significant number of them mandatory for progressing through the story. In the Yakuza games, the reason why the side activities and minigames are so awesome is that players have to go out of their way to discover them, and that feels rewarding. Rebirth presents everything front and centre, as if the developers fear gamers won’t discover it on their own. Not that it’s possible to miss anything in this game because everything has been slathered in bright, unsightly yellow paint.
Passing through some towns in the original that took about ten minutes has become a multi-hour ordeal in Rebirth. It can feel like the story is moving at a snail’s pace, even though a lot is happening. Another problem with the story is how the action is presented in cutscenes. There are barely any consequences to some of the bone-crushing action scenes. Characters endure brutal wipeouts, get tossed around, slam into the dirt, and pull off the most over-the-top choreography, yet the moment a Tonberry pokes Cloud, he takes 9999 damage. These games don’t have to be realistic, but they do need a bit of logical consistency to keep the story believable and maintain the suspension of disbelief. Otherwise, nothing matters, and if there are no stakes or consequences, there is no story.
Although the vague ending and lack of commitment might leave players split, there’s no denying that the gameplay remains strong and expands on the solid foundation established in Remake. The biggest shift in pace comes from moving beyond Midgar’s linear corridors to vast, open regional environments, offering seamless real-time exploration on foot or by Chocobo through grassy plains, deserts, swamps, and mountains. It’s easy to be awestruck by the screenshottable vistas and get completely caught up in the rich, immersive atmosphere of the stunning surroundings.
Combat shines, mixing real-time action with strategic Active Time Battle elements. Battling gives direct control of one of up to three party members at a time, switching between them on the fly. Basic attacks fill the ATB gauge, which can be spent on powerful abilities, materia-based magic, items, or defensive moves like blocking and dodging. Timing is key for pulling off perfect blocks or dodges, helping reduce or completely negate damage. New Synergy Skills and Abilities let characters team up for flashy attacks, buffs, or special effects, adding layers of teamwork and style.
Each character plays differently: Cloud’s balanced swordplay, Tifa’s fast martial arts, Barret’s ranged firepower, and unique mechanics from others like Yuffie or Aerith. Red XIII plays a bit like a paladin and has gone from being nearly useless in the original to becoming one of the most useful fighters in Rebirth. The stagger system from Final Fantasy XIII is still present, making exploiting weaknesses key to landing big damage.
The combat system is a dynamic, action-packed take on the classic battle mechanics. As always, the materia system rewards experimentation and strategy, letting players freely swap materia between characters to create specialised builds, whether it’s a tanky supporter, a magic-heavy blaster, or a balanced hybrid. Paired with weapon upgrades that open more slots and the game’s stagger-focused combat, mastering materia transforms tough battles into satisfying puzzles of optimisation and synergy. It’s a deep, varied, and replayable system that fosters creativity over the course of the 60+ hour adventure.
As if managing the materia system, synergies, and equipment wasn’t already enough, Rebirth adds Folios, a watered-down version of the weapon-specific skill trees from Remake. Players spend skill points on linked skill cores to unlock stat boosts, new abilities, and especially synergy skills. The sprawling grids are awkward to navigate, with no useful zoom-out to help plan builds or see the big picture, and the layout is unappealing and too busy. Many nodes demand unlocking prerequisites along branching paths, often for insignificant stat boosts that feel like an insult for the effort. Instead of meaningful customisation, the system feels like a bloated filler in an already jam-packed game loaded with minigames and distractions.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth looked good on a base PlayStation 5, and it still looks hot even on an Xbox Series X. Not counting the PC version, the graphical ceiling on consoles is held by the PlayStation 5 Pro, which uses PSSR upscaling to achieve a 4K image at a locked 60 FPS without the heavy blurring present in base-model performance modes.
Ultimately, the Xbox Series X performs nearly identically to the base PlayStation 5. Both consoles share very similar AMD hardware architectures, and the graphical differences are nigh imperceptible to the naked eye. The fidelity mode runs at 30 fps, which is perfect for screenshots and frameable frames, but there is no denying that fluidity makes Rebirth feel better to play. There are two performance options on Xbox Series X: 60fps “Smooth” and 60fps “Sharp”. Both looked and felt almost the same. There was almost no reason for it at all.
