Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is my game of 2024 because there are too many games in it

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has a lot of... everything

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth / Square Enix

There are dozens of mini-games inside Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. From returning favorites like Fort Condor to new addictions like Queen’s Blood, FF7 Rebirth is packed with content that can rival the insanity of Yakuza games. That’s all on top of an intensely emotional story filled with twists and turns while operating on the same bedrock as the original game from 1997.

I was hyped for FF7 Rebirth, so much so that I pre-ordered its gorgeous deluxe edition to get my hands on its hardback artbook. The soundtrack CD is just a bonus, I don’t have a player to use it, but I’d buy an antique CD player in a heartbeat if it included the hip remix of “Fight for Us Stamp”. Why did Square Enix go to great lengths to remix that track to play in one specific side quest? The same reason they added dozens of mini-games in the digital equivalent of a Disneyland casino in Gold Saucer: because it’s fun.

For the longest time, game developers would boast about their game’s stretched-out lengths as a measure of its quality. For the most part, those claims would skip over the fact that games were being lengthened through artificial, repeatable content. FF7 Rebirth is also a long game, but it contextualizes its open-world activities and mini-games with its narrative themes.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth / Square Enix

Why would you spend dozens of hours speaking to NPCs, picking up random side-quests, and competing for the high score in G-Bike? Because the game wants you to love the planet. It wants you to pour all your heart into knowing every nook and cranny of its diverse regions before threatening to rip it away in the eventual third game.

Rebirth is very much an open-world game with the same trappings as its contemporaries, but it grounds its systems in characters. As much as I was annoyed by the constant chattering of Chadley while exploring the world, in retrospect, I enjoy how he helps Cloud bond with the party through his requests.

The mini-games aren’t just isolated to the Gold Saucer, as many pop up in specific moments throughout the story. The expanded Junon parade sequence is a highlight, completely pointless and irrelevant to the quest at hand, but Square Enix still manages to add some personality to a long cutscene. They could have skipped the dolphin mini-game that shows up for just one segment to save on production resources but chose to keep it to serve its characters having a bit of fun.

What about the piano mini-game? It’s comparable to the guitar from The Last of Us 2, except it sparks joy instead of melancholy. Jump frog? Have your trophies, Naoki Hamaguchi. Or whoever’s idea it was to write that on a whiteboard years before the game went into production.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth / Square Enix

The pièce de résistance of the game’s “side-content” is Queen’s Blood, the first card game in a triple-A game that rivals the genius of Gwent in The Witcher 3. I want a real-life Queen’s Blood card set. It’s a stupidly simple game elevated by an energetic soundtrack and some nasty moves your opponents will pull while you’re thinking of relaxing on a cruise trip from Junon to the sunny beaches of Costa del Sol.

Related: Queen’s Blood tips to make your battles easy

Some of its side content hides cool rewards for those who can persevere through all of them. Finish the protorelic quests and you’ll get to engage in some intense boss battles. These bosses also add details to flesh out the history of this reimagined planet. The same goes for the different breeds of Chocobos you’ll find across its regions, all of which have different traversal abilities.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has a lot of... everything. Too many mini-games, too many music tracks, too many side quests, and too much dialog for the smallest of actions. But I wouldn’t say it has too much “content”. All of it serves the game world and builds character, even if some of it can get tiresome.

FF7 Rebirth can be daunting for those who like to finish their games in a short amount of time. That makes its high review scores even more impressive, given the tight embargoes reviewers operate under. I’m grateful that I got to experience Rebirth unshackled from the review process, and you may derive even more satisfaction from it by playing it over a longer period.