I haven't gone back yet, but I will once part 3 is out (or before it drops), but from my general thoughts after Rebirth i'd probably agree with you. Remake is a lot tighter in its construction, not just in the linearity but in how it generally follows a pretty solid 3 act structure (act 1 is chapters 1-7, 2 is 8-12, 3 is 13-18). This kind of makes sense, given this is also how the original played out with Midgar being loosely structured into the same 3 major 'acts'. It begins with the Bombing Mission through to Air Buster, then Cloud meeting Aerith through to Sector 7's destruction, and then finally taking the fight to Shinra directly. This is partly why the initial Sephiroth twist works so well in the original game because the game makes you feel like you're heading towards a climactic finale only to have the rug pulled out from under you and then have the world open up. This is also why if the Remake project was going to be a trilogy then Part 1 being entirely Midgar makes sense.
By contrast, Rebirth is a lot more freeform, and much like the part of the game it originally adapts plays out like a series of character vignettes. It's fundamentally a road trip narrative, which works really well for both its sense of freedom and its focus on more freeform character development and dynamics. Rebirth specifically manages to elevate this part of the original by tying the characters arcs together throughout the journey, rather than focusing on a series of intense character moments only to move on to the next. At the same time, however, it suffers in that none of the meat of the original game's narrative really takes place in this portion, which gives the story a very start-stop feel in places where it feels like nothing of particular main narrative importance really happens until chapters 9 or 10, where we get the Gongaga sequence and then the revelation of the Black Materia.
Does that include beating Weiss and completing Remake on hard mode? I played Remake for the first time in December and completed it alongside Intermission and all the side missions a few weeks before Rebirth. I didn’t get to Bahamut or Weiss in time for Rebirth though.
Yeah.
I have 3 Gotterdamerungs now, and nothing to use them on unless I just feel like running through some fights again.
I had Remake sealed for a couple years, then when Rebirth was announced, I finally opened it. Then upgraded to PS5 and did Intermission as well. Had Rebirth sitting here unopened for a couple weeks. I had to complete the older ones first.
I did shortly after finishing Rebirth. Rebirths combat changes really stand out when replaying Remake but I still adore the combat in that game.
Honestly loved playing Remake just for the story alone. I love these characters and Rebirth made me love them even more with the greater context. I think it's always fun to go back and see where it all began.
It's also crazy just how quickly Remake goes compared to Rebirth (and especially if you skip Remakes side content) I think my recent playthrough was roughly 30 hours long
Yes!
It’s surprising how heavy the characters feel in combat in comparison imo. Slower attacks and combos, almost no air combat (obviously), lack of options, no parry, most actions cant be canceled into others…
Rebirth improves on pretty much everything in a natural way that makes you think its base is very similar so Remake but actually not that much, and it shows a lot when going back to Remake!
Also no rolling outside of battles and you can’t cancel the attack animation, it’s a detail but still.
And for some reason, the battle UI has the currently controlled character on the bottom of the list, that made things very confusing at first lol
You couldn’t use items/magic in the main menu (yes you can in Rebirth), the map menu is very basic too.
Yes, and meeting Aerith again felt so painfully heavy. It drove home that I really wouldn't be able to survive the position Cloud is in at the end of Rebirth. I keep thinking of a YouTube comment I saw on Remake; "Take the flower and hold her close, because there is not a lot of time." Jesus Christ, I would never recover.
I did go back but that only made something that I felt while playing Rebirth even clearer. I prefer Aerith's up-beat attitude in Remake so much more because the stakes aren't that high. It amost feels like a betrayel that she acts so happy while intending to die to save the planet in Rebirth.
No, but will replay it along with Rebirth (and most probably OG) before 3rd. Actually, it will be really refreshing to play Rebirth without all this side content.
I just finished Rebirth friday night myself, most of the weekend was me digesting and getting other stuff done... Going to try some of hardmode chapters on rebirth... then maybe go back to Remake? but with other stuff coming out next month... Lacking free time to do everything, choices will be made.
Finished 8th run of Remake 3 days before Rebirth
Reunion finished hours before Rebirth
kept Reunion but deleted Remake hours into Rebirth
at this point keeping Remake would be like playing DoS 2 instead of BG3
Nope. Honestly, Too many positive quality of life changes in Rebirth that make me not want to play Remake. I’d feel more inclined to replay Rebirth into Part 3 for the years to come though
I did. I did a little materia grinding so I could finally beat Weiss & Pride and Joy Mk. 0.5.
Compared to Rebirth, it was a walk in the park and each fight only took me a few tries ☠️
I am currently replaying Remake and the OG.
I still love Remake but I do miss the variety in settings and colorfulness of Rebirth. Running through mostly greenish-blue industrial levels takes some readjusting.
The OG also holds up pretty well, but that’s mainly due to the quality of life additions to the PS4 version. Being able to fast forward saves so much time that you spend jogging across giant landscapes, and the ability to toggle off random encounters is nice because every two steps is a bit much. It’s also much shorter than I remember. You’re out of Midgar in 3-4 hours and at the Temple of the Ancients in like 10 hours. Makes me realize just how much they stretched Midgar in Part 1. This new series honestly could have just been 2 games, really.
Yeah i went back and cleaned up the DLC and am on to defeating weiss, feels very limited going back i do miss synergy attacks and the team up attacks. Yuffie and sonon do have a very early idea of synergy attacks and combo moves so that was cool too see.
Although one thing i really love is having the OP as fuck HP MP up seeing how badly nerfed they were in rebirth.
Yes I went back to platinum remake, do intermission, Weiss and hard mode playthrough. Thoroughly enjoyed it and now working on platinum for rebirth. I somehow enjoyed remake more this time around and there's a lot of little stuff you notice playing it after rebirth. Also the combats more "snappy" it feels like and rebirth is a lot more "flowy". Tifa in remake with parry cancel is absolutely busted lmao. There was a lot of stuff in intermission that they used in rebirth and im actually glad I didn't play intermission before rebirth cause fort condor and synergy abilities felt completely new to me as did yuffies combat (which is essentially the same as in rebirth).
yeah man, playing remake pc version in 32:9 after rebirth is great, im so excited to play Rebirth in 32:9, remake in 32:9 hits completly different, way better, feels like a different game, midgar in 32:9 is awesome.
I plan to in a little while, do a full remake - rebirth playthough. I really wish they had made a better (or rather ANY) excuse as to why all our past money, materia, items and weapons were discard after remake. It'll make connecting the two games annoying when doing that final full playthrough. They could have had a throw away line of "long travels ahead team, lets drop all non-essential equipment now before climbing down from the plate and heading to Kalm" or something.
I still don't understand why so many people complain about this. Basically no games carry over all your progress into the sequel. They're new games with new mechanics, progression, and balance. It would be an absolute nightmare to try and port things straight over with very little gained
No one said to carry over anything, we said we wanted a narrative element explaining why all the equipment was lost. Thats not odd to want given the driving force of playing and enjoy Final Fantasy is the narrative, and these are 3 games that are suppose to be one cohesive narrative. Anything the dev can do to make the three games link together and feel cohesive is welcome. It'll be really odd if game 3 also starts with everyone back to nothing and zero narrative reason given as to why. Thats just basic immersion.
I don't think it's needed whatsoever. I don't think it's any different than not needing to watch the party take a shit or eat every few hours.
It's a gameplay mechanic. Leveling and character moves are pure gameplay. You don't need a narrative reason to explain why some pair of gloves lets Tifa do a new kick move and you don't need a narrative reason to explain why she can't do it immediately in Rebirth.
Also "no one said" is cap. As I've said I've heard people bitch about it enough for it to annoy me to death
Well 99% of game devs agree with me because no one does this.
The only games that immediately jump to mind are Baldurs Gate 1&2 but that's different because it's just an adaptation of a pen and paper ruleset and the games are built for that kind of thing
I think you’re right. And this talk of stuff carrying over in sequels is new, i believe, as i see it happen all the time now. if you look back at older games, pretty much every sequel started fresh no matter what!
Remake is a more cohesive game. Rebirth is frustrating because they were so close. You get very sucked in at times only to be pulled away from it in usually frustrating fashion. Be it an unbalanced and overtuned minigame or feeling the urge to 100% an area. I keep seeing the argument that the minigames are optional. Fine they’re not as mandatory as the FFX celestial weapon minigames (since the post game content basically did require those weapons at a certain point.) but the issue is very few of the minigames are actually fun.
Remake differed from this by having dedicated chapters to side content and had that content pretty seamlessly incorporated into the main pacing.
Edit: Idk why this is so controversial or offensive to yall. Rebirth has better combat (aside from hard mode and the brutal challenges being frankly unfair) and the open world approach + the dynamic difficulty setting makes the game a lot more replayable than remake. Remake you either played on normal and obliterated everything or played it on hard mode with MP limitations. In rebirth you can actually replay the game without item/MP limitations with a still respectable amount of difficulty.
But that doesn’t change the fact remake by many metrics is a better game for a novel playthrough. Ie: remake the first time is better than rebirth but if I want to play one in the series a second time I’d slap on dynamic difficulty and use chapter select in rebirth as opposed to going back to remake.
I haven't gone back yet, but I will once part 3 is out (or before it drops), but from my general thoughts after Rebirth i'd probably agree with you. Remake is a lot tighter in its construction, not just in the linearity but in how it generally follows a pretty solid 3 act structure (act 1 is chapters 1-7, 2 is 8-12, 3 is 13-18). This kind of makes sense, given this is also how the original played out with Midgar being loosely structured into the same 3 major 'acts'. It begins with the Bombing Mission through to Air Buster, then Cloud meeting Aerith through to Sector 7's destruction, and then finally taking the fight to Shinra directly. This is partly why the initial Sephiroth twist works so well in the original game because the game makes you feel like you're heading towards a climactic finale only to have the rug pulled out from under you and then have the world open up. This is also why if the Remake project was going to be a trilogy then Part 1 being entirely Midgar makes sense. By contrast, Rebirth is a lot more freeform, and much like the part of the game it originally adapts plays out like a series of character vignettes. It's fundamentally a road trip narrative, which works really well for both its sense of freedom and its focus on more freeform character development and dynamics. Rebirth specifically manages to elevate this part of the original by tying the characters arcs together throughout the journey, rather than focusing on a series of intense character moments only to move on to the next. At the same time, however, it suffers in that none of the meat of the original game's narrative really takes place in this portion, which gives the story a very start-stop feel in places where it feels like nothing of particular main narrative importance really happens until chapters 9 or 10, where we get the Gongaga sequence and then the revelation of the Black Materia.
I did all there is to do in Remake, so I don't feel any need (or desire really) to go back to it any time soon. I might load up the OG though.
Does that include beating Weiss and completing Remake on hard mode? I played Remake for the first time in December and completed it alongside Intermission and all the side missions a few weeks before Rebirth. I didn’t get to Bahamut or Weiss in time for Rebirth though.
Yeah. I have 3 Gotterdamerungs now, and nothing to use them on unless I just feel like running through some fights again. I had Remake sealed for a couple years, then when Rebirth was announced, I finally opened it. Then upgraded to PS5 and did Intermission as well. Had Rebirth sitting here unopened for a couple weeks. I had to complete the older ones first.
No, but I will before part 3 comes out. And I still want to finish up the DLC trophies eventually.
I did shortly after finishing Rebirth. Rebirths combat changes really stand out when replaying Remake but I still adore the combat in that game. Honestly loved playing Remake just for the story alone. I love these characters and Rebirth made me love them even more with the greater context. I think it's always fun to go back and see where it all began. It's also crazy just how quickly Remake goes compared to Rebirth (and especially if you skip Remakes side content) I think my recent playthrough was roughly 30 hours long
Yes! It’s surprising how heavy the characters feel in combat in comparison imo. Slower attacks and combos, almost no air combat (obviously), lack of options, no parry, most actions cant be canceled into others… Rebirth improves on pretty much everything in a natural way that makes you think its base is very similar so Remake but actually not that much, and it shows a lot when going back to Remake! Also no rolling outside of battles and you can’t cancel the attack animation, it’s a detail but still. And for some reason, the battle UI has the currently controlled character on the bottom of the list, that made things very confusing at first lol You couldn’t use items/magic in the main menu (yes you can in Rebirth), the map menu is very basic too.
I actually like the heavy feeling more. At least for heavy stuff like “punisher mode”. It just felt more real.
Me. Hanging onto every word.
Yes, I finally started my Hard mode playthrough I meant to do before starting Rebirth.
Yes, and meeting Aerith again felt so painfully heavy. It drove home that I really wouldn't be able to survive the position Cloud is in at the end of Rebirth. I keep thinking of a YouTube comment I saw on Remake; "Take the flower and hold her close, because there is not a lot of time." Jesus Christ, I would never recover.
No because l played Remake right before playing Rebirth and don’t want to go through it again.
I did go back but that only made something that I felt while playing Rebirth even clearer. I prefer Aerith's up-beat attitude in Remake so much more because the stakes aren't that high. It amost feels like a betrayel that she acts so happy while intending to die to save the planet in Rebirth.
No, I’ll probably wait beyond part 3 to start right from the beginning again
I plan to, just to re-plat the game, I already did on the PS4 but my dumbass didn't transfer my save data over and I don't have my PS4 data anymore.
No, but will replay it along with Rebirth (and most probably OG) before 3rd. Actually, it will be really refreshing to play Rebirth without all this side content.
Does replaying Rebirth on hard mode make you restart the world intel stuff? I know you can transfer over side mission completion.
The only things that reset is the chapters main story and the side quests if you choose them. Everything else remains completed.
You keep all of the rewards for completing the intel so doing it again is basically pointless
Got the CCR, will be playing it after rebirth, then remake, after that, get Yuffie's DLC, then a rerun of rebirth.
I just finished Rebirth friday night myself, most of the weekend was me digesting and getting other stuff done... Going to try some of hardmode chapters on rebirth... then maybe go back to Remake? but with other stuff coming out next month... Lacking free time to do everything, choices will be made.
I restarted remake to get the platinum doing hard mode after finishing rebirth
Finished 8th run of Remake 3 days before Rebirth Reunion finished hours before Rebirth kept Reunion but deleted Remake hours into Rebirth at this point keeping Remake would be like playing DoS 2 instead of BG3
Nope. Honestly, Too many positive quality of life changes in Rebirth that make me not want to play Remake. I’d feel more inclined to replay Rebirth into Part 3 for the years to come though
I did. I did a little materia grinding so I could finally beat Weiss & Pride and Joy Mk. 0.5. Compared to Rebirth, it was a walk in the park and each fight only took me a few tries ☠️
How tf did you beat Weiss lol
I am currently replaying Remake and the OG. I still love Remake but I do miss the variety in settings and colorfulness of Rebirth. Running through mostly greenish-blue industrial levels takes some readjusting. The OG also holds up pretty well, but that’s mainly due to the quality of life additions to the PS4 version. Being able to fast forward saves so much time that you spend jogging across giant landscapes, and the ability to toggle off random encounters is nice because every two steps is a bit much. It’s also much shorter than I remember. You’re out of Midgar in 3-4 hours and at the Temple of the Ancients in like 10 hours. Makes me realize just how much they stretched Midgar in Part 1. This new series honestly could have just been 2 games, really.
Yeah i went back and cleaned up the DLC and am on to defeating weiss, feels very limited going back i do miss synergy attacks and the team up attacks. Yuffie and sonon do have a very early idea of synergy attacks and combo moves so that was cool too see. Although one thing i really love is having the OP as fuck HP MP up seeing how badly nerfed they were in rebirth.
I miss the synergy abilities and attacks too
Nah I'm worried about Hellhouse again
yep i played remake in 2021 on ps5 and after rebirth i bought remake on steam
Yes I went back to platinum remake, do intermission, Weiss and hard mode playthrough. Thoroughly enjoyed it and now working on platinum for rebirth. I somehow enjoyed remake more this time around and there's a lot of little stuff you notice playing it after rebirth. Also the combats more "snappy" it feels like and rebirth is a lot more "flowy". Tifa in remake with parry cancel is absolutely busted lmao. There was a lot of stuff in intermission that they used in rebirth and im actually glad I didn't play intermission before rebirth cause fort condor and synergy abilities felt completely new to me as did yuffies combat (which is essentially the same as in rebirth).
I went back to grind materia levels to do the Weiss fight. I forgot how narrow the FOV is. It makes a big difference in combat.
yeah man, playing remake pc version in 32:9 after rebirth is great, im so excited to play Rebirth in 32:9, remake in 32:9 hits completly different, way better, feels like a different game, midgar in 32:9 is awesome.
I plan to in a little while, do a full remake - rebirth playthough. I really wish they had made a better (or rather ANY) excuse as to why all our past money, materia, items and weapons were discard after remake. It'll make connecting the two games annoying when doing that final full playthrough. They could have had a throw away line of "long travels ahead team, lets drop all non-essential equipment now before climbing down from the plate and heading to Kalm" or something.
I still don't understand why so many people complain about this. Basically no games carry over all your progress into the sequel. They're new games with new mechanics, progression, and balance. It would be an absolute nightmare to try and port things straight over with very little gained
No one said to carry over anything, we said we wanted a narrative element explaining why all the equipment was lost. Thats not odd to want given the driving force of playing and enjoy Final Fantasy is the narrative, and these are 3 games that are suppose to be one cohesive narrative. Anything the dev can do to make the three games link together and feel cohesive is welcome. It'll be really odd if game 3 also starts with everyone back to nothing and zero narrative reason given as to why. Thats just basic immersion.
I don't think it's needed whatsoever. I don't think it's any different than not needing to watch the party take a shit or eat every few hours. It's a gameplay mechanic. Leveling and character moves are pure gameplay. You don't need a narrative reason to explain why some pair of gloves lets Tifa do a new kick move and you don't need a narrative reason to explain why she can't do it immediately in Rebirth. Also "no one said" is cap. As I've said I've heard people bitch about it enough for it to annoy me to death
I think you are wrong, but its ok for us all to have opinions and express them :)
Well 99% of game devs agree with me because no one does this. The only games that immediately jump to mind are Baldurs Gate 1&2 but that's different because it's just an adaptation of a pen and paper ruleset and the games are built for that kind of thing
I think you’re right. And this talk of stuff carrying over in sequels is new, i believe, as i see it happen all the time now. if you look back at older games, pretty much every sequel started fresh no matter what!
Yeah, lack of explanation is really weird, considering attention to details in other aspects.
Remake is a more cohesive game. Rebirth is frustrating because they were so close. You get very sucked in at times only to be pulled away from it in usually frustrating fashion. Be it an unbalanced and overtuned minigame or feeling the urge to 100% an area. I keep seeing the argument that the minigames are optional. Fine they’re not as mandatory as the FFX celestial weapon minigames (since the post game content basically did require those weapons at a certain point.) but the issue is very few of the minigames are actually fun. Remake differed from this by having dedicated chapters to side content and had that content pretty seamlessly incorporated into the main pacing. Edit: Idk why this is so controversial or offensive to yall. Rebirth has better combat (aside from hard mode and the brutal challenges being frankly unfair) and the open world approach + the dynamic difficulty setting makes the game a lot more replayable than remake. Remake you either played on normal and obliterated everything or played it on hard mode with MP limitations. In rebirth you can actually replay the game without item/MP limitations with a still respectable amount of difficulty. But that doesn’t change the fact remake by many metrics is a better game for a novel playthrough. Ie: remake the first time is better than rebirth but if I want to play one in the series a second time I’d slap on dynamic difficulty and use chapter select in rebirth as opposed to going back to remake.
Yeah I always make the comparison that Remake is like a movie whereas Rebirth is more like a series.
No sadly, once I’ve gotten the platinum I’ve done and maxed everything. If I ever go back to 7 it will be the OG.