The opening cutscene is very intriguing, with what seems to be
Once again, the strict realism of the world and its inhabitants conflicts with the fantasy adventure game. In Nibelheim, there is a general store that has a barrel of swords for sale, and in Kalm there is a weapons shop that sells swords and axes, and a magic shop. But there is literally no one else in the world besides Cloud who might buy these swords. There are no adventurers to be seen, and what "neighborhood watch" or town guards we see are guys in t-shirts wielding machineguns. I think the Remake series should have had random adventurer NPCs in the background or people in dojos or in a barracks yard training with swords to justify why these shops exist.
There is a somewhat unnerving character introduction. Fortunately Zangan is voiced by Jamieson Price which makes him sound respectable (after the introduction).
This felt like I was playing JRPG Skyrim for a moment.
You can push these Mako gas vacuum cleaners around. I hadn't seen a game where you could push/pull furniture around since The Chronicles of Narnia in 2005. I wonder why more games didn't do that.
I was not fond of these unimmersive strips of yellow paint on rocks, as if someone hiked this far out into the wilderness spray-painting rocks while climbing. Did the Japanese game devs forget Shadow of the Colossus? They had climbing figured out in 2005.
The still screenshots don't convey it very well, but when running around there are particles floating in the air which helps you measure distance in these huge rooms where the walls and ceiling are far away. The particles also look nice in motion.
For a game with such a gargantuan budget and dev team, there is oddly no 3D water or waves crashing into the rocks.
The midbudget Trails games, and
World of Warcraft with its really old game engine had 3D oceans, and
wave effects.
I was a little peeved by the changes to the camera distance. The first remake game had a close in, over the shoulder camera view that contributed to the game's immersive RPG feel. You were right there with Cloud. Rebirth for some reason repositions the camera much further out, both when running around in the open world/dungeons and during combat. This exacerbates an issue I had with the first game, which is that during combat the camera is so far out that you don't get to see the action or people's cool abilities. The camera focusing on people's cool abilities is a staple of JRPG presentation which is absent here. I had to look on Nexus for mods that try to adjust the camera distance to reapproximate Remake part 1, but none of them are able quite exactly reposition it. Another issue is that this is a game with highly detailed characters juxtaposed against highly detailed environments. The camera needs to be close, or the characters start becoming difficult to pick out.
Remake part 1 camera distance:
Rebirth's vanilla camera distance for open world/dungeons:
Camera Overhaul All In One mod, close version with ingame camera distance set to 3:
During the first boss fight, my characters were almost or completely out of view a few times. I may need to uninstall the camera mod.
The game is being inconsistent about blood. Sephiroth stabs people in town but no blood appears on his sword. But then in the reactor he slashes Tifa and she does bleed.
Sadly, the
cool looking FF13 Crystarium-esque galaxy screen for upgrading your weapons is gone.
Looks similar to Lower La Noscea from FF14. It would be neat if you could see boats sailing in the far distance.
Welp, here we go. I am picking flowers and herbs.
It is neat how there are petals blowing in the wind Mako particle effects go give a sense of three-dimensionality while running through the landscape.
The 3D water on this waterfall is neat.
It is neat how there are loose rocks and bricks that your characters kick while traveling.
I wound up uninstalling the camera mod. My character kept disappearing from view. Still not fond of the zoomed out distance, detached from the action and the cameras.
I see that there is a very slight 3D ocean effect. It is hard to see because there is no clear border to the water contacting the rock walls.
It is odd how the windmills are spinning in the intro cutscene for the zone, but then as I am running around in gameplay and even visit the windmills closeup, they are still and not moving.
The foliage is impressive, it does make it feel like there is a moderately thick layer of grass and small shrubs underneath your feet rather than just flat terrain with a few 2D blades of grass sticking out.
I would have appreciated it if the camera automatically locked on to enemies like in the first game. I kill an enemy, and then now I have to spin my camera around looking for the next one.
This is a fast moving river, but there is no splashing on the rocks.
Lots of fluffy clouds overhead. I wonder if the devs could have added the moving cloud shadows effect from Valkyria Chronicles 4 and Genshin Impact.
Seems like the skybox is static. No moving clouds.
Hrm so this is a more noticeable slight 3D ocean effect when you are at the water looking out across the ocean, and a foam effect at this beach, but no waves. IIRC 2005's Shadow of the Colossus had waves.
From a distance, I thought that these were cool fantasy trees with blue glowing leaves, but upon getting up close it turns out that no, they are just boring mundane trees and it's just an effect of the leaves blending with the blue sky behind them.
Looking out across the ocean towards the sun is pretty nice.
It seems as I moved away from the initial area near Kalm, the leaves in the wind and Mako particle effects stopped appearing. Aw.
Hrm maybe having flocks of seagulls flying below the cliffs would help better give off a sense of scale.
I know all of this graphics/world stuff might come off as pedantry, but I remember a time when you could expect that new game releases were going to be the culmination of everything that had released before, and games were getting better and better each year. And I don't think these little details are unreasonable to ask for when much, much lower budget games managed to do them.
If most NPCs had more fantasy leaning outfits like this (instead of strictly realistic, mundane outfits), our heroes wouldn't be so conspicuous in this world.
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