Really hot take here! But the Remake was better than Rebirth. The main thing that brings Rebirth down is how BLOATED it is, especially with the open-world, mini-games, and way too much Chadley constantly calling you and saying obvious crap that we don't need to hear.
The open world was nothing special and got repetitive pretty fast. I eventually gave up on the open-world stuff and just went straight to main story things. The open-world is often compared to a Ubisoft game and I agree with this. It's just not the greatest open world ever. The open world kind of reminded me of Sonic Frontiers, it's almost the same thing: find a beacon that shows more basic objectives, rinse and repeat. It gets repetitive fast. Plus why must Chadley call us CONSTANTLY with basic crap? I eventually started skipping everything Chadley says, same for everyone I know who played this game.
Even when I got to the main story, it wasn't bad, but it's not as strong or engaging as how Remake told its story. Rebirth manages to make some cannon moments feel like filler because the writing, pacing, and characters just aren't as strong. But as for Remake, it generally did the opposite, which was amazing. Remake made the "filler" moments feel super entertaining and feel like cannon, i.e. Hell House fight tournament and Honey Bee Inn dance sequence, etc. BTW, those moments were iconic. 95% of Remake had perfect pacing, with only some rare exceptions like returning to the sewers, which was bad.
The characters and pacing in Remake were insanely good!!! The characters were introduced perfectly and all had so much chemistry and had so many genuinely funny moments. Rebirth is not bad in this aspect, but simply just not nearly as strong as Remake in this aspect. I understand Rebirth is the start of things getting a little more serious, but it still could've been more engaging and better-paced like Remake. But don't get me wrong, Rebirth still has a good story, but just not as many great moments as Remake, and especially with all the extra bloat Rebirth has, but Rebirth story gets stronger and stronger to the end.
Rebirth's combat is almost perfect. It's almost the same exact combat as Remake as it should, but of course, Rebirth adds way more variety in combat with way more materia, weapons, special abilities, etc. With synergy skills being the biggest new thing for Rebirth's combat, which I thought those were really fun too and executed great. However, one small negative about Rebirth's combat is it feels a little floaty compared to Remake's combat. I do prefer the super heavy feeling of Remake's combat, makes every hit feel way more impactful and satisfying. Remake's combat is better to me, but Rebirth has more variety. But both still have amazing combat. I'd give Remake combat a 10/10, and Rebirth's a 9/10.
Overall, Rebirth is just a great game, but not a masterpiece. I'm a little sad because I love Final Fantasy VII OG and I even love The Remake!!! I enjoyed the Remake so much that I marathoned beat it in two long sittings, then instantly beat it on Hard mode, then instantly got the platinum. I did all that super fast because Remake is EXTREMELY hard to put down when you first play it, super exceptional story, character interactions, pacing, and combat. But as for Rebirth, I can only play this game for about 3-4 hours at a time, then need a long break, it's just simply not as engaging, but still not bad. I have no desire to platinum Rebirth and probably never will.
I thought this would be Game of the Year worthy, but sadly it isn't. Of course, I know it will still probably win GOTY because it's so popular and that's okay, but just saying, in my own personal opinion, Rebirth just simply isn't Game of the Year worthy. Here are all my ratings for the games.
FF7 OG: 10/10
FF7 Remake: 9.5/10
FF7 Rebirth: 8/10.
Edit: I raised my score by 1(was previously 7), because the game grew on me a little bit more, and appreciate it's great moments more, despite not having as many great moments as Remake.
