I didn't finish FFXVI in part because I got burned out on all the side quests. That game's world was clearly very carefully built (if, admittedly, they clearly wanted to make Final Fantasy Game of Thrones) but the side quests were like Vanilla World of Warcraft-level oldschool in design - go to this place and collect these things off the ground kinda stuff.
But even if I kind of liked Clive and definitely Cid in XVI, I think that that game suffers profoundly by being primarily a single-character game (also, the lack of real strategic decisions as to what abilities you use, instead really working more like a God of War-style action game... and forgetting that GoW is secretly an environmental puzzle game with brief combat interludes).
But FFVII's cast of characters has 26 years of enduring appeal, and personally, I find its quasi-modern fantasy world really exciting to play in, even if, after escaping Midgar, you find yourself in a more classical fantasy grassy area (the town of Kalm looks like a perfectly preserved European village that is nonetheless a hub of modern life - it's one of the prettiest RPG towns I've been in).
Anyway, Remake was a pretty linear experience, with, essentially, a handful of chapters full of side quests, but most of the story taking you through the plot at a pretty good clip. There were side quests, but they were kind of confined to these particular phases of the game.
Rebirth opens the world up a lot - not only do you now get to choose your party composition (in Remake the people in your party are always determined by the plot, and even though Red XIII joins you near the end, you never get to control him as a full party member,) but the world really opens up in this big area to explore.
And, perhaps unsurprisingly given the way that Square Enix does things, the map gets populated with a hundred different things to do and find.
There is a... a lot of tutorial stuff early in the game. And that includes the very secondary game of Queen's Blood, which the game wants you to get into and search out special cards to add to your deck. But there's also all of this world research that the weird little Chadley kid (who's really a cyborg) wants you to do.
Still, for whatever reason, I'm not feeling terribly impatient to get to the plot - perhaps having the lengthy prologue in Nibelheim satisfied that desire for the time being - so I'm honestly just enjoying hanging out with these characters and killing monsters.
There are some new systems I haven't totally gotten the hang of. Folios are a little easier to figure out - in addition to weapon upgrades (which seem simplified compared to Remake) you'll also get these "Folios" that allow you to grant the characters certain active and passive abilities (the passives taking the place, it seems, of the stuff you got with the weapon upgrades in Remake). More confusing is Synergy attacks, which I genuinely haven't figured out yet - usually I seem unable to actually use them and I don't really know why.
Still, plugging Materia into weapons and armor still gives you spells and other abilities, just like the last game (and I assume the original) so to a large extent I think I need to just get back into practice. Unlike XVI and, you know, Elden Ring, I think there's far less of an expectation that you'll perfectly dodge all the attacks.
Anyway, I'm likely ok to move on to the Swamp area past the Grasslands, but for now I'm just going to check all the boxes and try to unlock the Titan summon materia.
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