I’m not going to bury the lede here: yes, I firmly believe that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth did need to be humongous, obscenely long open-world game. So let’s spend a bit of time talking about that.

It’s become fashionable to bash open-world games in the last few years, at least partly because for a good long while now, big-budget developers and publishers have been using them as something of a crutch. Rather than providing a carefully structured, well-paced experience, a lot of developers seem to believe that offering the player what they consider “true freedom” (which in practice is rarely anything of the sort) will make up for the game’s shortcomings in other areas.

While there are a lot of companies out there who are very much guilty of that, when Square Enix has made an open-world game — particularly, but not exclusively, one in the Final Fantasy series –it has usually come out rather well. And Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the best to date. Let’s take a closer look.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is, in many ways, the polar opposite of its immediate predecessor Final Fantasy VII Remake. While that game was resolutely linear for the most part, with only a couple of chapters offering the freedom to pursue optional sidequests, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth gives you much more in the way of open-structure, freeform gameplay once you’re through its introductory flashback sequence, which depicts the events of Cloud and Sephiroth coming to the town of Nibelheim five years ago: an iconic scene, and a fitting place to start the game.

As we’ve previously discussed, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has its own “Oblivion moment” as you emerge from an underground shelter beneath the clifftop town of Kalm and are confronted with the area known simply as “The Grasslands” for the first time.

From the moment you step into this verdant paradise — a deliberate contrast from the drab, dirty and metallic hellscape that is the Midgar Undercity you spend the majority of the previous game in — you’re free to go anywhere, though interestingly, not to “do anything”. It takes a few steps down the critical path of the main scenario before things open up properly. And from there, you have a clear sense of structure and progression, even with all the freedom you’re provided.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, like most Japanese RPGs, unfolds primarily as a journey. It’s rare you’ll double back on yourself and return to previous areas for narrative reasons; for the most part, the plot will keep you moving resolutely onwards. At most points in your progress through the game, however, you are free to return to previous areas after finishing the main story for that region, though if you play anything like I do you’ll probably want to “clear” each area as thoroughly as you can before moving on, just for the sake of neatness.

“Completing” a region in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth can take a number of forms, depending on how thorough a player you are. You can quite feasibly simply romp through the main scenario and get on with things, and some players may well enjoy playing that way. But engage with the other systems at play and you’ll find a lot of benefits to enjoy — not least of which is plenty of experience points and materia to help buff up your characters.

If you want to “fully clear” an area in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, there are a number of things you’ll want to do.

Firstly, you’ll want to pursue all the World Intel tasks, which are further subdivided into several categories we’ll talk about in a moment.

Secondly, you’ll want to challenge all the players of the Queen’s Blood cardgame, probably the most “major” minigame in all of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Thirdly, you’ll want to complete all the sidequests, of which there is typically a fairly limited number — we’re talking maybe four or five per region, in contrast to how something like, say, the Xenoblade Chronicles series does things, or indeed how MMO series installment Final Fantasy XIV handles matters.

Fourthly, you’ll want to complete all the non-Queen’s Blood minigames, the quantities of which vary quite considerably from region to region.

And finally, for thoroughness’ sake, you’ll want to take a nice scenic photo at a specificially marked spot on the map.

The key thing that makes Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s approach to open-world gameplay work without feeling like a slog to hoover up all the icons on a map is that each and every aspect described above feels meaningful, rewarding and not just there for the sake of it. To understand why, let’s talk a bit about the specifics.

We begin with World Intel, which we’ve previously discussed in passing. This is a string of objectives Chadley tasks you with in each region, ostensibly to help understand the flora, fauna and human culture in each region. In practice, there are several distinct types of objective to accomplish.

Firstly, in typical open-world game tradition, there are a series of towers scattered around the landscape, and activating each of these helps reveal other objectives in the nearby vicinity. Activating a tower involves defeating a combat encounter at its base, then discovering where the control panel is and making use of it. Early in the game, the control panel is in a sensible or at least easily accessible place; as you progress through the game, you’ll find yourself having to make use of the gradually expanding repertoire of mobility mechanics to reach the all important big red button.

It is worth noting that you don’t need to activate the towers in order to find the other objectives; if you enjoy simply stumbling across things by accident, you’re free to play in a style where you ignore the towers and activate them as the last thing you do in a region; they’re not there as a means of gating off or otherwise locking elements of the game. I like that you have the freedom to do this, because it’s much more satisfying to just find something rather than be led to it by a minimap icon.

Secondly, there are “Lifesprings” in each region, which in terms of lore represent natural occurrences of mako energy that big bad evil corporation Shinra haven’t exploited on the grounds that they’re too small to really take advantage of. These are inevitably rich in resources, providing you with a huge amount of collectible items which can be used in the game’s crafting system, and scanning the large naturally occurring materia crystal in each of these Lifesprings rewards you with a bit of background lore on the region.

The thing I particularly like about the Lifesprings is how you discover them: rather than simply following an icon on a map, you’ll stumble across a brightly coloured owl when you’re near one. Follow the owl and it’ll lead you to the Lifespring — though like with the towers, those that show up later in the game will sometimes require you to make use of some of the more advanced mobility mechanics to reach your goal.

Thirdly, there are combat challenges to complete. Rather than these just being tough monsters you need to beat, each one also has three objectives for you to accomplish — typically pressuring and/or staggering the enemy using the game’s core combat mechanics, staying out of any particularly nasty (but avoidable) mechanics that particular enemy has to offer, and beating the encounter within a time limit. You can technically “clear” a combat challenge without completing any of the objectives, but your rewards are greater if you do — and you can retry each encounter as many times as you like.

These combat challenges are really fun, because they make you pay attention to the game’s mechanics properly rather than just trying to hack-and-slash your way through everything. Every enemy type in the game has a specific mechanic that will cause them to become “Pressured” and thus easier to stagger; sometimes this is as simple as exploiting their elemental weakness, but in other cases it involves watching out for mechanical tells or passing “DPS checks” during a particular animation. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth isn’t afraid to remind you that it’s a video game, and that it has mechanics considerably deeper than they might appear at first glance — and these encounters are a great means of exploring that aspect of the game further.

Fourthly, each region has a “Classified” monster to defeat. This usually doesn’t unlock until after you’ve beaten the other combat challenges or completed some other objectives, and it’s effectively a non-story boss for the region. These battles are often mechanically dense and interesting, and again provide a good means of exploring the depths of the battle system rather than just hammering the Attack button and hoping for the best.

The Classified monsters also tend to drop a unique material that is, in turn, used for a unique craftable item that is used in one of the region’s sidequests. And like the smaller combat encounters, they can be rechallenged as often as you like if you need more of the drop in question.

Fifthly, each region has three sanctuaries for the patron deity of that region. These, as you might expect, correspond to the iconic “Summons”, and tracking them down allows you a greater understanding of the deity in question. This translates to an easier fight against them to claim their materia, and conversely a more powerful version of their materia that offers more significant stat boosts and more helpful effects while they accompany you in combat.

Finally, every region has a multi-step quest that involves the pursuit of a mysterious artefact known as a “Protorelic”. The interesting thing about this part of the game is that the exact means through which you pursue the Protorelic varies with each region. In the initial Grasslands region, for example, it’s a fairly straightforward pursuit of a gang of villains who first showed up in Final Fantasy VII Remake. In the second, however, it involves playing the Fort Condor minigame, which we’ll talk more about anon. In the third, it involves using various mechanics to track down hidden statues, then playing a minigame that tests your dexterity and mastery of various characters in combat. And I’m sure that will continue to evolve as the game continues to progress.

As you can hopefully see from all that, the World Intel system rarely boils down to “go to a mark on the map and kill the things there”. Okay, it sometimes means that, but at others the emphasis is on exploration and simply appreciating the world around you — and given that part of the game’s reason for existence is to make you understand and respect the Planet that the game unfolds on, that makes a whole lot of sense.

Plus the rewards for successfully pursuing World Intel objectives are very worthwhile. The Summon materia for a region is always worth nabbing at the very least, but the additional unique materias that Chadley is able to provide in exchange for the “Intel Points” you earn for each region can often be enormously helpful.

There are some notable additions over those seen in Final Fantasy VII Remake, too — perhaps most significantly, several that allow characters you aren’t controlling to make use of spells, weapon abilities and their character-specific abilities. These materia help make your party members feel significantly more useful than they sometimes were in the previous game, and minimise the need to micromanage your party.

Don’t fret, though, there are still plenty of encounters where a specific character is obviously “better” to take full control of; in this regard, Barret and Aerith are the most obviously useful, with their ability to attack from range, but each and every character has their own unique abilities that make them a joy to play. We’ll talk more about each of them another time though.

In practice, what you’ll probably find is that various objectives tend to go hand-in-hand with one another. Discovering World Intel is often a natural consequence of simply travelling around the world, particularly if you’re attempting to complete a sidequest. And reaching notable settlements is typically where you’ll find minigames to participate in. It’s rare that you’ll find yourself “grinding” a laundry list of objectives just for the sake of completing them; rather, you’ll be wandering the world, see something interesting and think “oh, I may as well do what this thing is asking me to do”.

In that respect, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth actually feels like it has a lot in common with much older role-playing games — and I’m talking really old ones like the early Ultima titles. In those games, while you often had a far-off objective to complete in the long term, the real meat of the gameplay simply came from wandering the world and seeing what you could find — whether that was monsters, treasure, towns or dungeons. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a natural evolution of that kind of game, albeit with a considerably more elaborate narrative attached — and it really works well.

I’ve talked at great length about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s use of an open world today, because I feel it’s important to address that. It’s easy to be cynical about open-world games because there really are a lot out there where the open world actually detracts from the experience to quite a significant degree — The Witcher 3 is still my go-to example for this — but Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s is a joy to explore.

And we haven’t even got into all the things you can do at your various destinations yet. That’s something to talk about another time, though. This game really is minigame mayhem in the best possible way, and I’m looking forward to telling you more.

For now, though, more adventure awaits, and so I must press onwards!

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More about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

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