Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is taking cues from previous Final Fantasy sequels. But even to begin with, Final Fantasy sequels are few and far between. Since each series entry distinguishes itself so well from what comes before and after, very few of them have such direct sequels as FF7 Remake has Rebirth. While it’s not totally unheard of, this is the first Final Fantasy game to get a direct sequel in over a decade, and probably the first ever to be planned from the beginning as a trilogy.
FFX was the first game in the series to earn a sequel: 2003’s FFX-2. Its success led to a spate of other, at first retroactive Final Fantasy sequels and prequels: Dirge of Cerberus in 2006, Crisis Core in 2007, FF4: The After Years in 2008, and finally, the trilogy of FF13 between 2009 and 2013. For better or worse, each of these attempted to build on the mechanics of the game that came before it, and each met with varying degrees of success. But FF7 Rebirth is taking on a game with a much longer, storied legacy now – will its changes make it a worthy follow-up?
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FF7 Rebirth Will Expand On Remake’s Combat
A Final Fantasy Sequel Staple
As many FF sequels have done before, FF7 Rebirth will add new features and concepts to the core combat mechanic introduced in FF7 Remake. Combat changes will come in the form of new characters and a new mechanic: Synergy Abilities. How new characters in FF7 Rebirth will add to combat is fairly self-explanatory. Each character, both in the original FF7 and in Remake, has their own unique battle mechanic, from Barret’s long-range ballistic arm to Tifa’s tiered martial arts combos. Since FF7 Rebirth includes at least four new playable characters, simply including them in the mix means four new strategies to learn and countless new party comps to test out.
The new mechanic is a bit different. At certain times, certain combinations of playable characters will be able to execute super-powered moves known as Synergy Abilities. This is a fairly standard feature in RPGs, going all the way back to Chrono Trigger‘s Double and Triple Techs. However, it still remains a great way to encourage players to experiment with party composition, and can also be a source of some great character moments. Cloud and Aerith teaming up to smack down Jenova isn’t just useful in battle – it’s satisfying and heartwarming to watch.
And it’s far from the first FF sequel to alter the combat of its predecessor. In fact, it’s not even the first FF7 sequel to have a different kind of combat from the original. There’s also the prequel Crisis Core, which sets up FF7‘s plot, and the sequel Dirge of Cerberus, which focuses on Vincent Valentine directly after FF7‘s events. Crisis Core plays as an action RPG with a unique, slot machine-inspired mechanic called the Digital Mind Wave system. But change isn’t always for the better. Considering the ways that altered combat mechanics have shaped previous Final Fantasy sequels, a lot could go wrong – or right – with FF7 Rebirth.
FF7 Rebirth’s Combat Could Be Too Different
Dirge of Cerberus Shows That Too Great A Departure Isn’t Always Too Great
The second follow-up to the original FF7, Dirge of Cerberus, took combat in a whole new direction: it was a third-person shooter. And partly as a result, Dirge of Cerberus was not well-received. It had many flaws, but one of its biggest was the change in genre. The third-person shooter gameplay wasn’t particularly novel to begin with, but even if it had been, it still would’ve alienated fans of the RPG mechanics introduced in the original FF7 and expanded upon in Crisis Core.
Thankfully, FF7 Rebirth‘s combat changes don’t seem to be as expansive as Dirge of Cerberus‘. It introduces a couple of new mechanics, but FF7 Rebirth doesn’t seem to change anything about the core action RPG gameplay that many enjoyed in Remake.
FF7 Rebirth’s Combat Could Reflect Changes To The Story
A better point of comparison, then, might be FFX-2. The first FFX introduced the Conditional Turn-Based Battle combat system, which plays out like typical turn-based combat with a variety of moves that could hasten or delay certain characters’ turns and characters who could swap out on the fly. FFX-2 returns to the series’ traditional Active Time Battle, where real-time meters constantly tick down to the next party member’s turn. But more importantly, it introduces Dresspheres and the Garment Grid.
Dresspheres are like outfits that change a character’s class, and they can be slotted into the Garment Grid’s game board before battle. Each time a character takes a turn, they can move to the next node on the Garment Grid. Class changes grant certain benefits, partially depending on the order they’re made in, and filling in the entire grid unlocks a character’s ultimate Dressphere. These systems build on FFX‘s Sphere Grid and character swapping, keeping characters versatile, but adding an extra dimension of strategy. Few games have achieved anything like this since, and, although FFX-2 was critiqued for its story, tone, and linear structure, its combat is near-universally beloved.
FF7 Rebirth continues the story Remake started, with a similar tone, and to change the combat so drastically could prove jarring. The only thing that’s really changed between the two games is the deeper relationships between the characters, which is reflected in their ability to collaborate more directly with Synergy Abilities. More moderate changes like this make sense, and could even tie in with the wider story of FF7 Rebirth.
FF7 Rebirth’s Combat Changes Risk Overcomplicating The Original
But at the same time, with the introduction of new combat mechanics, there’s always the potential for overcomplication. FF7 Remake‘s combat was excellent in its straightforwardness, and drew all the right ideas from the original FF7. That made it accessible to old and new players alike, and piling new mechanics on top of that could jeopardize that simplicity. New mechanics also have the potential to be overpowered, which could have the opposite effect: making combat too easy. It’s impossible to know just how powerful the new Synergy Abilities are before release, but if they’re consistently ending encounters in just a couple of hits, combat could get boring quickly.
FF7 Rebirth’s Combat Changes Could Distract From Bigger Issues
Good gameplay can carry a bad story, but the reverse is rarely true. Of course, there’s no guarantee that Rebirth will have a bad story, but its changes to FF7‘s narrative may be unpopular. That could put it in a similar position to the FF13 sequels.
FF13 began with a modified version of the Active Time Battle system, which was further modified by FF13-2 to include a Pokémon-esque monster-catching system. This was an interesting addition, but more importantly, the variety of monsters that could be caught disrupted the repetitive, overly simple battle mechanics of the first game. The third game in the trilogy, Lightning Returns, introduces Style-Change Active Time Battle, with a series of class-changing Schema similar to FFX-2‘s Dresspheres. While reception for each FF13 trilogy game’s story was worse than the last, the combat of the latter two games was increasingly well-received.
However, the worse the story got, the more the FF13 trilogy’s combat had to carry on its back. Again, there’s little likelihood that FF7 Rebirth‘s story will be all that awful, but it may be divisive. If its story does have more than its share of flaws, all eyes will be on the combat’s new features. Under the weight of all those expectations, FF7 Rebirth‘s combat could crumble.
Whatever its combat will look like, it’s undeniable that Rebirth is ambitious. It should be applauded for not taking the easy way out by transplanting its predecessor’s systems directly, but at the same time, change isn’t always for the better. While Square Enix has gone out of its way to make combat look good ahead of release, it’s impossible to judge accurately until it’s actually publicly playable. Thankfully, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is only a couple of months away, with release scheduled for February 29, 2024.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
- Franchise
- Final Fantasy 7
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5
- Released
- February 29, 2024
- Developer(s)
- Square Enix Business Division 1
- Publisher(s)
- Square Enix
- Genre(s)
- Action RPG , Adventure
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 4
- ESRB
- T
