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[Zephyranthes]

First things first: I do really like this game. It has some Game of the Generation quality content (Junon and the Gold Saucer come to mind), the cast is phenomenal, and it has one of the greatest video game soundtracks ever composed.

I also think it is entirely too long. There are chunks of the main story that I think could be done away with without significantly altering the narrative. The sheer quantity of side content hurts the overall pacing of the experience, to the point where I found myself skipping more and more of it as I got closer to the ending. I got to that ending in right around 100 hours, and I've been thinking about how I would trim the fat to get it down to a tighter 70-75 hour game.

So I made a list:

Main Story:

• Cut most of the section with Barret and Red in the Mythril Mine...all of the climbing is pretty annoying anyway.
• Have the party travel together to the Gongaga reactor instead of having to do it twice; they can still split for the two boss fights at the end.
• Reduce the length of the Gi Cave dungeon by about half; the addition of the Gi Village makes up for it.
• Shorten the hike up Mt Nibel to get the keycard....we already saw most of it in Cloud's flashback.
• Remove the entire Cait Sith box/vent section at Shinra Manor; just have the party fight Lost Number right after Hojo AI drops them into the basement.
• Cut the Rude/Elena fight at the Gold Saucer; that whole bit is already long enough with Corneo and Rufus, and you fight the Turks twice in the next chapter anyway.
• Only have one section each for the two parties after they get separated at the Temple. Also, change Aerith's lifestream gathering mechanic to where you can tap the button and pick them up like normal items instead of having to stand still and pray every time.
• Remove the Sephiroth Reborn boss fight in the ending. There is already a long multi-phase boss fight immediately before it with the same basic gimmick. Keep the fight with Sephiroth himself, connecting the Zack and Aerith phases with a solo Cloud phase.

Side Content:

• Reduce all protorelic quests to have 3 steps instead of 4. Rework the Nibel region protorelic quests to not involve having to slowly follow the black cloaks for multiple minutes.
• Remove the remnawave towers entirely. They don't really fit the landscape in most cases, and their in-game functionality can be easily combined with the lifesprings.
• Remove two of the enemy intel fights from each region.
• Remove half of the regional side quests (starting with that terrible chicken one in Gongaga); most of them are pretty bland.

Mechanics:

• Remove the folio system entirely. There are plenty of progression subsystems as it is, and most of the buffs you can unlock are hardly noticeable, which makes managing it a waste of time. The synergy skills/abilities can be made into sidequest rewards (which would also make sidequests more appealing).

What do you think about this list, and what changes would you have made, if you could?

 

[adamsapple]

Remove the Cait Sith Shinra Mansion section or turn it into a 2 minute cinematic instead.

Cut the final 2 chapters in length by 50%.

Spread the world activities across the zones instead of each zone having the same check list.

 

[ByWatterson]

Wouldn't change a thing.

 

[Madflavor]

Pacing is mostly fine, they just have to stop the bullshit where you’re forced to play as other characters and do a bunch of mini games. The Cait Sith section is everyone’s favorite example of this.

 

[TwinB242]

Cut the repetitive side distractions and filler in each each zone by half and that alone would have helped a lot.

 

[CoreyFlawless]

Idk, felt fine when I redo it in hard mode and I already had all the side quests done. But yeah, the cait sith maybe. I like most of them. Just not the cait sith one. Hell, have more side quests and mini games.

 

[balls of snow]

Less
Minigames.

 

[Sushi_Combo]

Making the mini games actually fun would be a good start.

 

[Thabass]

Allow me to tell Chadley to shut the fuck up. Other than that it was fine with me.

 

[RagnarokIV]

Bin it all and start again.

 

[Loomy]

Remove the folio system entirely. There are plenty of progression subsystems as it is, and most of the buffs you can unlock are hardly noticeable, which makes managing it a waste of time. The synergy skills/abilities can be made into sidequest rewards (which would also make sidequests more appealing).

Yeah, a lot of games spend a lot of time and effort incorporating super detailed progression, skill unlock systems that get way too granular where you can barely notice the difference between unlocking and not unlocking a node.

FFX did it really well at the time and everyone has been trying to improve on it since...

Just let me assign points at level up to stats like D&D and let amour/weapons take care of the rest.

Allow me to tell Chadley to shut the fuck up. Other than that it was fine with me.

Chadley was mostly fine. His 'sister' on the other hand....I had to pipe her audio to my controller and then mute the controller to get rid of it.

 

[sigmaZ]

First things first: I do really like this game. It has some Game of the Generation quality content (Junon and the Gold Saucer come to mind), the cast is phenomenal, and it has one of the greatest video game soundtracks ever composed.

I also think it is entirely too long. There are chunks of the main story that I think could be done away with without significantly altering the narrative. The sheer quantity of side content hurts the overall pacing of the experience, to the point where I found myself skipping more and more of it as I got closer to the ending. I got to that ending in right around 100 hours, and I've been thinking about how I would trim the fat to get it down to a tighter 70-75 hour game.

So I made a list:

Main Story:

• Cut most of the section with Barret and Red in the Mythril Mine...all of the climbing is pretty annoying anyway.
• Have the party travel together to the Gongaga reactor instead of having to do it twice; they can still split for the two boss fights at the end.
• Reduce the length of the Gi Cave dungeon by about half; the addition of the Gi Village makes up for it.
• Shorten the hike up Mt Nibel to get the keycard....we already saw most of it in Cloud's flashback.
• Remove the entire Cait Sith box/vent section at Shinra Manor; just have the party fight Lost Number right after Hojo AI drops them into the basement.
• Cut the Rude/Elena fight at the Gold Saucer; that whole bit is already long enough with Corneo and Rufus, and you fight the Turks twice in the next chapter anyway.
• Only have one section each for the two parties after they get separated at the Temple. Also, change Aerith's lifestream gathering mechanic to where you can tap the button and pick them up like normal items instead of having to stand still and pray every time.
• Remove the Sephiroth Reborn boss fight in the ending. There is already a long multi-phase boss fight immediately before it with the same basic gimmick. Keep the fight with Sephiroth himself, connecting the Zack and Aerith phases with a solo Cloud phase.

Side Content:

• Reduce all protorelic quests to have 3 steps instead of 4. Rework the Nibel region protorelic quests to not involve having to slowly follow the black cloaks for multiple minutes.
• Remove the remnawave towers entirely. They don't really fit the landscape in most cases, and their in-game functionality can be easily combined with the lifesprings.
• Remove two of the enemy intel fights from each region.
• Remove half of the regional side quests (starting with that terrible chicken one in Gongaga); most of them are pretty bland.

Mechanics:

• Remove the folio system entirely. There are plenty of progression subsystems as it is, and most of the buffs you can unlock are hardly noticeable, which makes managing it a waste of time. The synergy skills/abilities can be made into sidequest rewards (which would also make sidequests more appealing).

What do you think about this list, and what changes would you have made, if you could?

You basically hit all the points I was going to make. Another I wish was better was the overall smoothness of the controls and the button layout. A game like Ghost of Tsushima feels so much better for similar field navigation.

 

[elbourreau]

Cut the bullshit.

Burn Costa Del Sol to hell.

Rewrite Tifa , Yuffy and Aeris dialogues. Just make them real human beings, not 45 IQ girly kawai things.These are young women, not 5yo children.

Burn Costa Del Sol to hell.

A few set ups, a lot of things worked in 1997 (I was a17years old dumb teenager), you can't put this in 2024.

 

[fallingdove]

Stop with the fixed progression. It wasn’t as bad in remake because the game was as linear as it was. Rebirth feels like it is fighting me at every turn, no - you have to fight this way, no - you have to explore this way, no - you have to use your experience this way, no - you have to manage your inventory this way.

Let me play how I want to play. Quit trying to be The Witcher. If I want to spend time leveling to crush the next boss, who cares. If I want to ride the same chocobo from one area to the next, who cares — don’t put weird restrictions in place to force a gameplay loop.

The game is kind of exhausting to play and while it’s a good game overall, I can only manage to play it a couple hours at a time because I know I am going to be forced to do X, Y, and Z things every time I pick up a controller.

And fuck Kid G — what a stupid ass addition. I’m looking at you Nomura.

 

[GHound]

Gut the mandatory card game sequence and replace it with a bath scene.
Stop taking cues from AssCreed for open world exploration... and replace it with bath scenes.

 

[TheRedRiders]

Can we cut those million boss fights in the final act, my thumbs are still aching after two months.

 

[MagiusNecros]

Less minigames. This is Final Fantasy. Not Itadaki Street Special.

 

[Bring Back Scalebound]

#MakeVincentPlayableAgain

 

[Valt7786]

Cut the ubisoft tower bullshit. Make side activities organically found through exploration etc.
The rest was fine (For me).

 

[Cert.in.Death]

Simple QoL changes. The player restrictions when you complete a tower unlock or side quest locks you into 30-60 seconds of splash screens of meters filling up and possibly conversations with Mai and Chadley are frustrating AF.

As far as actual golden path structure, a bit more freedom to go anywhere, do anything when you feel like it. The current blueprint makes it difficult to know when you can/should depart an area to continue the main game. There was always a lingering feeling of obligation to a zone until it was complete, IMO.

 

[Synless]

The only thing I would change was the regional objectives being identical.

 

[Seyken]

The only aggressively bad part of the game is controlling Caith Sith in the Shinra Mansion.

I don't get the complaints about pacing, most of the game is optional. If you're bored of the minigames and side content, just focus on the main story and that's it.

 

[Roufianos]

I agree with virtually everything. The worst parts of the game were the Cait Sith section, and the Chocobo flying and Gears and Gambits (Fort Condor was enough).

 

[Zephyranthes]

I don't get the complaints about pacing, most of the game is optional. If you're bored of the minigames and side content, just focus on the main story and that's it.

It really depends on how the developer integrates side content into the overall game. If we were talking about a game like Octopath Traveler, I would agree with you, since all of the side content pretty much exists in a vacuum and is completely irrelevant to the characters or main story. In the case of Rebirth, however, I definitely feel like the side content is intended to be enjoyed as part of the adventure, especially when you consider that some of the side quests have great character building moments (like Barret's rant about being afraid of Marlene growing up in a Junon sidequest) or even significant plot details (like the confirmation of Wedge's death in the Cosmo protorelic quests).

 

[RayHell]

I'm currently playing New threat 2.0 with a bunch of visual mods. I have way more fun than with remake/rebirth. For me the remake is not FF7 it's a spinoff the same way Crisis Core was.
Not that it's a bad game in itself but all those year I was advocating for a remake it was something more in line with the new Mario RPG remake.

 

[DragoonKain]

Not being hit with tutorials every 5 minutes. That really started to grate on me after a while.

 

[Thabass]

Chadley was mostly fine. His 'sister' on the other hand....I had to pipe her audio to my controller and then mute the controller to get rid of it.

Yeah, no. If I have to wait before I can enter the menus again after leaving it to redo my materia and then having to wait 15 seconds for him to stop yapping to renter the Battle Simulator, then there's a problem. They need to make it so I can do my materia in that battle simulator system so I don't need to back out of it. It only sucks because Chadley won't shut the fuck up.