re: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will take around 100 hours to play through

No takers then. I am booting it up from the opening title screen. Full spoilers for all things demo related including any implications they make to the wider story from this point on.

Holy shite the first 5 minutes makes you FEEL the power of Sephiroth in a beat for beat Unreal Engine 5 recreating of the monsters attacking the truck on the road,

Alos sad to report dynamic difficulty is not an option for the demo. You have normal or easy

Ok so finished with the initial part 1 of the demo which is the flashback. First it has to be said this is an EXTREMELY faithful recreation of the original version Cloud tells. There really isnt a a slight deviation from the story he tells to the party in Kalm in OG which is what he is doing here while you are playing it intercuts to present day at times with Cloud talking to the party. You get to enter the Shinra mansion and confront Seph in the library. You get to see your village burn to the ground while youre in control trying to reach your mom. It isnt a cutscene. It is actually extremely intense as you watch Sephiroth slaughter towns people with ease cutting through them as you lie injured only able to feebly crawl. Tbh idk how this flashback alone didnt earn the game an M rating. It is likely because they dont show very much blood at all using clever camera tricks. All in all the flashback is a 10/10 for being a perfect beat for beat super intense recreation of the original that starts the game off with imo a better hook than even FF16 did. If Rebirth can deliver this quality throughout we are looking at one of the best games in decades. I am not exaggerating. When you finish the flashback theres a "sneak peak" of some cuts ahead that offers far more questions than answers like one cut having cloud charging to attack Tifa and one with Zach and Aerith in her church and one with Aerith giving Cloud holy. Thats all for the story side of it.

The title screen will change after to reflect the Dawn of a New Era in Junon portion where you go through the mythril mines into Junon with Cloud Tifa Aertih Barret and Red in that portion. It says it will be made available in a forthcoming update and to tcheck their website for details.

Noew lets talk mechanics because I think some people are going to be a bit dissapointed at first this game doesnt play exactly like remake. Yes the same foundation is there but in this demo you only play as two people Cloud and Sephiroth. As I said above there is no more auto parry in punisher stance. In fact anyone can perfect block to take no damage but if cloud does it in punisher he will follow up with massive damage. There is also far more of an emphasis on taking things to the air and it works perfectly. Clouds regular stance operator or whatever is significantly better and it has multiple modes you can press square to do an attack combo if you hold it will follow up with a sweeping slash, now here is where it gets interesting if you press the button after dodging youll launch into a ranged attack but if you hold it youll unleash an aerial combo into an air juggle. Punisher works much the same as before except you have to actually time your parries for massive damage but even a normal guard in punisher will result in a counter attack thats less potent. However in punisher he cant guard ranged or magic.

Theres no more first strike materia. As you approach enemies in the open areas a red ring with start to enclose if you hit attack before it finishes you land "first strike" and begin the battle with some ATB.

So battle commands which are ATB commands can be certain types of abilities or none at all. These are Launch which puts you into the air to fight there, An ability that can be used in the air both triple slash and braver fit this and braver is even more potent, and the final one grants the character synergy.

Certain powerful synergy abilities can give 4 types of buffs, increased damge to staggered enemies and increased durastion, increase limit break levels, unlimited MP, 3rd ATB charge. I only was able to use this once in the main boss of the demo against the materia eater.

There are more minor synergy moves this ties into your face button shortcuts that were present in remake and return. you can put one ability to each face button and hold L1 and use it, you can create a seperate set for when youre airborne, then synergy skills is the same however it uses R1 instead of L1 and is very dependant on who you are linking it up with in how much youll be able to do.

Lets talk materia. Cloud starts the game with healing ice fire and that is it. This is the list of the materia I had after doing just the flashback. Two more green materia including comet materia and empowerment Materia which lets you cast bravery but at level two faith as well. One yellow in assess materia. 3 blue in magnify, auto cast which is just synergy from part 1 and level boost which when paired with a level 1 green makes it a level 2. Finally 2 purples an HP up and Precision defense focus which has 3 levels 1) extends input time for a precision defense then at two stars increase stagger damage for a perfect defense then 3 stars prevent binding attacks by perfect defense so thats those unblockables.

Sephiroth it really does not need to be said is insanely fun to play as and his moveset and the complexity behind it makes it extremely unlikely it was created for this portion alone. We will be playing as him again and more.

All in all I think this lives up to every single possible hope anyone couldve ever had for it and look forward to hearing from others experiences


ETA: The entire experience was about 2 hours. And yes you can go into tifas house just like in the original and find the first sheet music for the piano mini game and play it.

I’m playing the yuffi DLC and they introduced the linked combat. It doesn’t take away from what 7R did…just added another layer. Not overly complex and does add to strategy.

With that said….i don’t know how much Rebirth changed from Intergrades enhancements. TD could answer this better than I could..

I finished the demo this morning. This game is going to be very dangerous to me

I thought the combat still felt very much like Remake but a little smoother, Cloud moved a little faster in the Demo and aerial combat was much smoother for him. I didn't play enough to really get a handle on Sephiroth, but it was all still very fun.

The remake rebirth and untitled third game in the modern trilogy is unique and the first of its kind I can think of ever having seen. It is being both a remake and a sequel to the original 1997 game. This is supported by a bunch of outside media put out by SQE a long time ago when they were trying to make FF7 into its own marvel universe of sorts. Essentially at one point both Aerith and Sephiroth are having a war in the lifestream with Aeriths being the white Lifestream and Sephy the black. That’s why you will see these two colors constantly associated with those two character. That and yellow for Aerith and Purple for Seph but that’s not relevant here. Basically this remake is them coming back from that war in the Lifestream each having prior knowledge of the games and worlds events as depicted by remake (ff7 2020) but what their ultimate goals are or how they will use this knowledge is still yet an unknown.

Not reading some of your posts because I don't want to get anything potentially spoiled since I'll probably play the demo over the weekend. Couple of questions:

1) Does anything carry over from Remake saves?
2) I'm assuming the demo is like the one for FF16 in that you can pick up from the save in the released version?

Thanks. Just trying to determine if I need to do a new playthrough. I completed the game on ps4 and messed up by deleting all data. Sounds like I need do a speed run prior to the game coming out.

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With all that said, is Remake simply the first third of the overall VII story with Rebirth and the eventual third game being the final 2/3 of the story, or is remake the full VII story with the other two being extra content?

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Probably tough to go back and ask you to play the original and I’d be very wary of potential major spoilers since you never played it. And if you didn’t already know the big spoiler I wouldn’t want you to learn about it, but….

The original game was 3 discs. Remake is essentially the first maybe 5 hours of the original (until you get out of the beginning city). Rebirth goes to the end of the original’s disc 1 (my guess). So that means if the remake trilogy stays 3 games, the final game will be the story beats from disc 2 and 3. A lot of those discs had some filler side quests and fmvs which I assume took up a lot of the disc space.

Hope that makes sense

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Probably tough to go back and ask you to play the original and I’d be very wary of potential major spoilers since you never played it. And if you didn’t already know the big spoiler I wouldn’t want you to learn about it, but…. The original game was 3 discs. Remake is essentially the first maybe 5 hours of the original (until you get out of the beginning city). Rebirth goes to the end of the original’s disc 1 (my guess). So that means if the remake trilogy stays 3 games, the final game will be the story beats from disc 2 and 3. A lot of those discs had some filler side quests and fmvs which I assume took up a lot of the disc space. Hope that makes sense

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This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.

I was trying to avoid Google because of the very thing you mentioned…spoilers. And you are right. I won’t be going back and playing the original more than likely. I’m sure it’s still great but it can be difficult reverting back to the really old shite. I’m trying Baldur’s Gate and BG2 right now since I could get the pair for $17 and man is it tough at the start after having played BG3 for nearly 200 hours

I think it is going to depend on what you mean by “good.” Remake for all intents and purposes if you’re determined to do so can be made almost 100% a turn based JRPG with your normal attacks typically mattering very little outside of certain situations and high level play but imagine we are discussing and average mid gamer. It’s hard to say certainly this will translate to all characters but it’s certainly true for cloud and Seph the game is more of an action game. Your actions and choices and types of atttacks outside of just ATB matter. A lot.

Having played it 3 times now I’m fairly confident in stating that more people will find rebirth significantly more difficult than remake assuming they play on normal or dynamic difficulty. Which I personally really like it and what they did putting a more action based combat system still very much integral to the ATB component because that’s still where all your important moves will come from. Plus, everyone’s number 1 complaint in remake was the abysmal air combat well someone at square took that personal and made it their mission to make rebirths air combat not only smooth as frick but more importantly fun and effective as frick.

A bunch of people who played all of the same content we will eventually get in the demo before launch said Red 13 was pretty difficult to play as and get down. I imagine because this involves building his vengeance or revenge gauge or whatever which necessarily means you have to take damage preferably guarded and with a perfect guard to build it up before it can be unleashed. There’s just a lot more stuff going on in this game outside of the ATB part of it and I’m all here for it.