Having spent near 40 hours hanging out with Cloud and co. on my (totally unintentional) Last Fantasy 7 Rebirth vacation final week, I have been completely stunned by the sheer measurement and scale of its large, open world map areas. I’ve solely seen three of them up to now, out of its complete of eight, however it’s instantly apparent simply how a lot of a step-up these locations are in comparison with the dusty plains and rolling hills of the newest Last Fantasy sport to hit PC, FF15. An apparent take, maybe, on condition that FF15 first got here out eight years in the past in 2016, however I am certain anybody (all proper, primarily me) who’s ever despaired at Noctis’ seeming incapability to climb even the smallest hillock in entrance of him, or how everybody all the time rides proper into your bottom whereas gunning about on a chocobo, will really feel some delicate, tangible reduction at how elegantly Rebirth has solved each of those specific issues. Not solely can everybody’s chocobo navigate the world seamlessly with out getting tripped up on both your self or the closest pebble, however Cloud may also soar, leap and haul himself up crags and rocks with one simple button press.
However there are elements of Rebirth’s method to open world adventuring that additionally really feel distinctly underwhelming on the identical time. If you look previous the splendour and wealthy reimagining of this as soon as flat and detail-less world, it is finally fairly a standardised tackle what fashionable open world video games have grow to be lately. There are towers that reveal extra factors of curiosity on the map; there are particular monster encounters to search out; summon temples to find; and lifestream springs to analyse that additionally reveal increasingly more about your rapid environment. There are correct sidequests with their very own multi-part story targets, too, which is arguably the place Rebirth feels most alive, however a lot of the actions you will be doing between essential story missions all typically fall into the identical similar classes in every area. FF15 had a few of these, too, after all, however it by no means felt fairly so formulaic in the way you went about them.