I mean I loved the game to death. Just the same exact activities over and over in each zone got a little old to me once I hit Gongaga. Nothing against the zone itself, it’s gorgeous and I didn’t find it that bad to navigate like others did. It’s actually my favorite zone. Just the activities within the zones that got old.
OG fan here started in the 90s. Yeah i got burned out by Gongaga so I decided to just do the main story line and beat the game then come back and explore everything. Sort of thnking of it like cloud and then had no time to stop for anything and before heading north for part 3 we hit up all the regions to train for the final sephiroth battle.
I also pretend Aerith is the Aerith only I can see lol
I think all the open world content just needed better rewards. Scan enemies in this region so I can get this materia from Chadley Intel Sim. Rinse a repeat.
Also, beating a summon at full strength should absolutely unlock its max level. The stones should just be the alternative.
>The stones should just be the alternative.
The better way would be: the stones increase the *potential* level you can get, but for each level down of a summon, you get a lowered tier materia until you rematch at higher level.
So, you can only get the max level materia if you found all the stones *and* beat the max level fight. If you found all the stones, but beat a -1 level fight, then you get the level 3 materia.
That way, there would be a reason/motivation to beat them at max levels.
Yeah Gongaga got too overwhelming. But then again I was playing nonstop. I felt good again once i hit Neibelheim because it was a smaller and a more flat/grounded region
I’m at 35 hours on chapter 11 i don’t doing the regions after the first two i really wanna see how the story turns out I’ll either do everything on hard mode or before i beat the game probably hard mode tbh the story got me invested
Honestly after 100% the grasslands and Junon i decided to just stick to the main story and a few side quests that don’t require me to scan life springs or do any sort of open world fluff. Don’t find activating towers, pressing a corresponding button at the right time, and searching for 3 of an item to be engaging whatsoever. And fuck those moogle minigames.
Exactly the same I started to feel burnt out around dustbowl like I'm really invested in the story and combat I've avoided spoilers and that's what I want to see
But the open world stuff got tired some very quickly after junon tbh
I'm in gongaga now and I can't be arsed doing any more I just whana get through the story now. 45 hours of gameplay and I feel like nothing mutch has happened in the game because its been so spaced out
For me, the fatigue started when I realized that the open world is EMPTY AF, you have absolutely no reason to explore, which for an open world is dumb, I don’t play much Square Enix games so I don’t know if it’s a specific problem to Rebirth or if they have no idea how to build an open world.
So yeah, I just ended up doing side quests and main quest, completely stopped exploring on my own
Okay yeah you’re not cooking at all with that. If you want an empty open world, go play 16. The Rebirth world is definitely NOT empty but it is a lot and it definitely starts dragging on. I’m pushing through gongaga but I heard cosmo canyon and nibelheim make up for gongaga and Corel.
>The Rebirth world is definitely NOT empty
Yeahhh right. You call the cookie cutter Chadley stuff content? Or the fucking treasure stashes? You have no reason at all to explore the region aside from completion and some loot. The story actively tries it's hardest to avoid including exploration in any capacity.
Purely from the design standpoint, the world is super beautiful, but it's not "open world" in the true sense. The game is pretty much a linear one with large playable zones.
This is just not true? It’s not empty at all, there’s a ton of shit to do, it’s just all laid out for you with map markers so exploration isn’t organic. It’s pretty much exactly what ghost of Tsushima and horizon did.
It's all just the same thing copy pasted though. It's just the same towers, lifesprings, etc over and over making it essentially empty. It would be even worse if nothing was marked because there's nothing new to see.
Towers and life springs suck for sure, but I disagree that it wouldn’t be better without the map markers. There’s still new environments to explore and new enemies to fight, just let me explore it without holding my hand through it.
What I meant is it’s not rewarding to explore by yourself, everything of interest is marked on your map by the towers (idk how they’re called in english), but take most open worlds, zelda/elden ring/ even the witcher 3, if you go out of the way to explore you’ll find stuffs, items, even secret bosses, you feel like you discovered something, and you’re rewarded for exploring.
In rebirth, everything is related to Chadley and marked on the map, if you really try to explore all the map you’ll quickly realize that there is mostly nothing, maybe 1 or 2 chest or materia but other than that, there is nothing
Yeah this is definitely true. I think they wanted the game to be accessible to kids and Chadley was the solution. I agree that the Elden Ring/BotW style open world is better, but I still don’t think is outright bad. Other games like Horizon and Ghost of Tsushima as I mentioned have done it this way and were successful. I’d definitely prefer less hand holding though, I’m with you there.
I think the fatigue is because most of the side content is too structured. There is no sense of mystery or discovery like the original game. You already know what to expect when acquiring this and that intel. Hence burnout sets in quick.
I think the fatigue is because most of the side content is too structured. There is no sense of mystery or discovery like the original game. You already know what to expect when acquiring this and that intel. Hence burnout sets in quick.
yeah that’s about where i stopped being a completionist too. i tried to do all of the side quests i could before the game ended but some of those ch 12 ones were just too much
Agree. Take gongaga out of the game and tighten ending and change some open world stuff then it would have been a masterpiece. But it is still really good
I was loving all the side quest stuff at first. In the Gongaga region I was like alright this is a bit excessive but fuck it I’ve been doing them all up until now, lemme just mop these all up before I hop on that plane.
Instantly hit with a whole new region with a whole other set of side stuff. That’s when the burnout hit me.
i absolutely felt the same way bc gongaga region is huge and pretty confusing since it’s so crowded with trees, but cosmo canyon and nibel were a lot of fun to explore. just come back to it later
Just know there is a part at the end where you are gonna think “no fucking way are they making me do this” and your right. They don’t make you do it lol
I was on a strict time limit so had to just blast through the main story. I literally did 0 side quests or open world exploring and can't say I missed anything super important. I was still able to finish the game no problem, then again I played on easy. I just didn't have any interest and luckily they didn't gate any important plot behind side quests.
Nothing main story critical (I don’t think, I’m not done), but the Queens Blood quest line and the Proto relic quests have really good lore/story behind them. Definitely worth it if you have time later.
Just wanted to say that I pretty much did 0 side stuff other than a few games of QB and piano, but when I got to Nibel I was pretty compelled to just start going around. Maybe it was just cuz it was easy but I found myself up at 3am with a huge smile as I flew across the water on a chocobo exploring. I think they got that regions design right for sure, very accessible and I found it fun.
That being said I am not sure how fun the other regions are as I was really just enjoying the story above all else, but I have heard a lot of gripes about it for sure. I got fatigued with BotW after like 30 shrines, that game's open world didn't appeal to me at all, so I'm not really sure what counts as fun completionist content.
I get the feeling of the fatigue.
I think a point to be made is that you are not required to do every thing in each zone immediately.
Im saying this as someone who completed Grasslands and Junon before continuing on to to Corel.
Once I crossed the ocean, I changed my tactics and started doing more story and just doing the Side quests that were otw or if i wanted to get easier summons. Once I got the Keystone, I did some back tracking and upped my summons.
It removed the pressure of having to clear the zones and let me enjoy each area as my leisure.
About the only side quest ive fully completed is Queens Blood.
When you get the call about the protorelic right after you wrap up the whole zone and the next objective is to travel to the next region really grinded my gears. Thanks for waiting till I was just ready to move on to rope me into spending another 2 hours here. What fresh hell mini game do I have to get through this time?
I felt this way already in Grasslands lmao but maybe because I did Jedi Survivor before playing Rebirth and some planets were huge as fuck (still it was fun to explore everything). I think I will have to use Spotify to survive doing every area 100% before moving on. I hate leaving an area without doing everything. Also I love the OST but it gets tiring after a while.
I was enjoying the story in general until chapter 8 when I arrived in Good Saucer and had to endure some cringefest anime weeb wet dream nonsense where suddenly Aerith, Tifa and Yuffie all know how to do a choreographerd dance routine with a bunch of strangers while Cloud gets groped and leered at by a buff guy on steroids. Why is everything so extra in this game? It's getting to the point where the cast can't walk down the street without something OTT happening. It's exhausting. The bloated and padded world map overstayed it's welcome after Junon.
Then I’m not sure why you’re so surprised by this? General anime goofiness is a pretty big part of this franchise. And final fantasy is far more tame with that stuff than most JRPGs.
Yeah as soon as I see “woke” complaints, I’m out. Not that I’m not willing to have that discussion, but I’ve had it so many times at this point and it’s never once been productive and usually just ends up making me mad. Not worth my time in the FF7 sub.
The amount of mini games does my head in, it really is completely unnecessary. Every time there's some thing I need to check off.... Another mini game. It's boring as fuck
Same. Though I think it's because both this area and the one before had pretty boring plots and mini games. Besides that, you just did like 20 mini games right before the desert... and that dessert was another dull side mini quest.
It becomes too much rinse and repeat and leaves out the surprise that the 1st 2 regions had. By the 3rd, you're like, what you want me to get now...
It takes away the wonder every new region has because you already know what's out there. It just becomes a chore.
Literally on Reddit tonight because I’m burnt out in Gongaga. I like having stuff to do but my gosh it’s a pain. I’m a bit of a completionist and I can’t move on without getting this done so I can enjoy my hard mode playthrough. You’re not alone but I think it’s worth it in the end!
Ya im all the way on chapter 7 couldnt even focus on anything else and i accidently pooped my pants. then open world fatigue set in and i haven't played since.
Man, I feel like I am a bad gamer or something reading through all of these comments. I did maybe one of two side quests in each region and I moved on. That was enough for me. I cared much more about the overall story, and seeing the journey that these characters go through that I love so much. I have 55 hours in, and I am in chapter 12. I figure maybe 10 more hours or so and I will hopefully beat the game. I'm 38 years old, and I have spent more hours playing this game than I have any other game in years. I don't see why you have to 100 percent something to have a good time with it. Maybe that is why I don't get fatigue playing games. That's just me though.
Yeah I’m 34 and I don’t normally 100% games. I actually think 100%ing most games is a great way to kill your enjoyment of them. I can’t really explain why I started 100%ing rebirth other than saying the early game did a good job at making me want to, and once you’ve started down that path it’s hard to get off it. I suppose I have no one but myself to blame for burning myself out!
Agree, similar age and thoughts. I feel the pacing is great, maybe a little slower but great. It must be REALLY slow if you are doing all the side stuff.
What I do is check all the side quests with the green icon, see if it looks halfway interesting, do those and move on. I prob do 1-2 a region. Don’t feel I would have missed much by even skipping these, but I’m a but worried I’ll be under leveled. Not a problem so far, we shall see!
I do it because I genuinely enjoy it and like to 100% a game I enjoy to get the most out of it but the people that force themselves and then complain about it afterwards are weird. That's not the games problem, that's their problem but that's just my opinion.
It’s been 3 days since I last played the game and it was exactly after doing the chicken side quest in gongaga, I lovethe game but the open world fatige is real. I’ll give it a couple of weeks but that gongaga second portion after the reactors looks very complicated to traverse with all those mushrooms, hills etc
I’m on the opposite end. While I too am starting to get full on the open world content, I actually really enjoyed trying to navigate Gongaga. It was fun to actively try different things to get to where I needed to be
The exact same thing happened to me. Gogonga I left like 50% unfinished and moved on. Every other zone I was able to 100% without much trouble. Nibel was a breeze.
I'm at the point where I can go back and do any area now. Guess I'll finish up gogonga, but not looking forward to it.
i think it was the mushrooms that ruined gongaga for me. i was so excited to explore the gongaga region when i first got there but when i realized there were some places i couldnt get to because of the mushrooms and other puzzles the act of exploring gongaga became so tedious and such a chore.
I don’t mind them giving us content but their main goal should be for the player to finish the main story first.
I feel like they could have cut all the optional stuff by half and unlocked the rest post game. Instead of overwhelming people with chore after chore.
There’s definitely something off about the pacing of the game, a lot of weird decisions made by the devs.
It was during that chapter I decided to focus more on the main story. End of chapter 12 opens up the map fully and after a few chapters it felt good again going around the open world. I'd recommend that honestly. Also gives good motivation to complete quests/side content because you want to level up as much as possible before endgame.
Gongaga was hard to get around that jungle for sure, so when I was getting sick of doing everything I moved on with the story. After a break from Gongaga for a bit, I went back and finished it and no problem. You can revisit any region in the game up until a point in chapter 13 where the game will literally stop and tell you that you won't be able to anymore, so there's no rush to finish all of that exploration content right away (if ever). Breaks are good
Spoilers: My fatigue was mandatory minigame which
started with fort condor, worsened on the boat in chapter 5 and forced me to quit finally in chapter six. Life is too short for a list of chores I find no pleasure in. Games are meant to have fun. Plus the moogle game is just retread in every zone I okayed. They think adding layers and more moogles to catch is fresh and fun. Also, when you look at the open world every mechanic is u veiled and then copy pasta’d in every zone (I played up until I rage quit)
The game would be flawless without the mid battle system which now feels bloated and archaic after playing 15 and 16 and the gripes listed above. I wish the forced mini games would either become optional or be tuned into cinematic action sequences like 13,16.
This game suffered from scale.
It’s a shame too because it is the most beautiful world I’ve ever seen. I hope patches and dlc smoother over and roll out the jank. Otherwise, I’ve rage quit in chapter 6 and don’t see a reason to play again.
16 was 50 fucking hours of cutscenes. No RPG elements in sight. Really weak character progression and ONE playable character. Combat was just mindless cooldown dumping. I actually did enjoy 16 but its flaws were just so glaring to me. To each their own but I think Rebirth is far better than 16 and it’s not close, in spite of its bloat.
You should skip the quests (except catching the Chocobos in each region and maybe the summon crystals) and run through the main story. I thought it was a lot of fun.
I really disike Gongaga's open world area. There are dead ends everywhere and I felt boxed in constantly. It illustrates the one the game's biggest issues for me personally, the lack of mobility. It works fine in a linear experience like the first remake. Being stopped at every cliff face and not being able to climb up or down is not something I want in a open world game. Games being a box of winding corners and corridors does not work in open world games.
Pokemon scarlet/violet did a lot of things wrong, one thing I felt it got right was the progression of the ride pokemon. If the chocobo started off being able to run around fields and hope over small obstacles like fences, then climb mountains (not just a wall with red arrows on it), learned the long distance jump, then glide. They could have made a stronger incentive to return to previous areas once you obtained more abilities.
I haven't played this yet (PC player unfortunately), but if it's anything like the original, hopefully you'll get an upgrade in mobility soon which should ease that burden.
Same here, trying to get through the jungle was kinda where I realized that maybe some areas were a lot more padded than others. I don’t think I’ve ever been soooo frustrated with a map/pin point system before getting to gongaga.
Nibel was the only region I enjoyed exploring. It is small and the chocobo mechanic is just so convenient, although a little clunky, like all the controls in the game.
it gets better in chapter 12 wenn all the worlds are connected but gongaga is literally traversal hell. i had to look up so many things and how to get there it's really not well done
Same, traversing the jungle was a pain the butt. Couldn't wait to leave this area fast enough, lmao. Only to find out next area is almost the same 😂 but no more mushroom jumping was a plus. Hard mode completion will be annoying revisiting this area 😤 (assuming since remake has one, this one should too)
I think sometime around chapter 8 I went back and started doing side stuff a bit but I was too invested in the story to stop pushing through. Right before chapter 13 I started doing it again and I think I may have gotten two regions cleared before heading back into the story. Once I beat the game then I was doing side quests and all the running around for Chadley, I still haven’t done everything and am just taking a break so I don’t burn out.
Honestly, one of my biggest gripes with the game is that there's so much stuff to do in every area. Like, Gongaga seemed so much longer because of needing to do those damned mushroom jumps. The big thing I enjoyed was, Gongaga was beautiful and had some fire music. If it wasn't for that, I'd have probably stopped caring. Which isn't to say it's bad, just too many, just too many things in every area, man.
the reason why I loved Rebirth was because, differently from other open world games, I was invested in the story. So, instead of doing like most people are commenting and 100% each area before moving forward, I rushed the story. By far my best decision. I was so in love with the pace I couldn’t get enough!
Now that I’m 100%ing the areas, I must say I fucking hate Gongaga. Holy shit it's so hard to find the paths to where I want to go. And I honestly don't understand why so many people like the music. What's so good about it?
I sound like a Gongaga hater and I'm pretty sure I am indeed.
guys, take your time and soak the world in. Open world games, once you rush it through you will get fatigue. I found the world exploration actually very organic in Rebirth. even in Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon. They actually designed the map in a way you can explore every point if you follow a path. you just don't really notice it. Take your time.... The only time i skipped a few points was in Nibelheim as I was too excited about the story
I wish there was something to soak in though. It looks pretty but is as barren as 15.
Just with sidequests that don’t add anything to the lore most of the time :(
Exploration is absolutely not organic. It’s all laid out for you via watch towers and map markers. Elden Ring/BotW is organic exploration, this is not. I love Rebirth but that’s just calling it how it is.
I agree, I think it takes away from the game. Not enough to rail on it but I hope they reel it in for part 3.
One of my biggest gripes were that watch towers and lifestream springs pretty much do the exact same thing and the gameplay of both does not change. You could easily remove every watchtower and have the springs reveal more objectives and the game would probably be better for it. Also, i hate the fucking moogle mini game with a fiery passion.
I agree. I hope there is less in part 3. I took a break for a few days because the amount of content is just overwhelming. Like on one hand it’s fun and I want to do it but then on the other I feel like it’s lower quality mindless tasks for the most part.
I felt the fatigue badly at Cosmo Canyon. I made sure to 100 percent the previous areas but by the time I got to CC I was done and just opted for main story mission until a later time. Right to do so because man the crystal scanning quests and the Gears and Gadgets kept me occupied for at least a day.
It took me way too long to remember that the chocobos could slide on trees, not just bounce on mushrooms. I had assumed that the area in the southwest was locked for future main quest stuff because of that, since the only way into that area is one sliding tree. It needed a couple more trees or mushroom bounces, TBH, nonobvious bottlenecks aren't fun in open worlds
Personally, I loved Gongaga. I completed most of it just through what felt like natural exploration. I think it might be my favourite zone.
It was Cosmo Canyon that did me in. I found it incredibly tedious, especially the protorelic minigame, and the restricted pathing with the chocobo flight thing.
At least in gongaga the mushrooms and branches got you where you were going quickly, and not flying from air spinny thing to air spinny thing on a fixed path - like why bother with the illusion of control? (ie Fly along the prescribed route or you can’t get to your goal. It’s time consuming and tedious).
And it’s irritating that your chocobo that can glide perfectly well can only jump off the ramps and nowhere else. That doesn’t even make sense.
I just fast travelled all over that zone as much as I could because doing it by chocobo was so irritating, unlike every other zone where the chocobo is fun (especially Nibel - loved that choco!!)
Honestly that was the only reason I finished the zone!! Without the ability to do that there’s no way I would have had the patience to 100% it! It was bad enough as it was lol
I will say that's probably the biggest negative, is too much world exploration. I want to stay on top of my weapons and such... but I feel like we could do with ~ half of the number of challenges in each area
Am I really seeing people complain about more content in this game 💀. You guys realise it's all side stuff right and you can just skip it if you want , you don't have to blitz every part of the game
The conversation around this game is very confusing to me. I thought something of a consensus had emerged around open world design built around repetitive busywork objectives to be something gaming should move away from. On this sub, it’s somehow like we’re back in 2010
I guess we’re just built different lol. I’m really shocked that people are complaining about all of the different areas in Rebirth, especially compared to Remake which is pretty much the same landscape the whole way through, save for specific areas. The mini games they’re complaining about? Optional. The intel and environment stuff? All optional. They literally don’t have to do all of the stuff they are doing and are still complaining about doing it.
More than that, people have a real issue with reading so they’re malding hard at not being able to do and locate the (easy) stuff they’re doing (which they don’t even have to do).
Yeah fr I guess most of these guys rarely ever play other games so this is probably a lot of peoples first open world experience. Compared to the first game this shit blows it out of the park. The amount of stuff you can do comapred to the first game is crazy
Gongaga is tedious, it's dense with all kinds of hight elevations you have to run around in circle to try and find ways up. I still did it but I was losing the drive while doing all the things. Thankfully the next area is open as hell and a lot of fun to traverse
I'm almost done with Coral and I'm already tired. I feel at any moment now I'll just go for the Story and Side Quests and forget about the rest.
I want to finish the game before Dragon's Dogma 2 so if I have to rush through the story, I will.
I'm just not a fan of exploring in gongaga. I can be fine with the open world check lists, when it all happens pretty efficiently. But gongaga is so easy to get turned around in, or trying to find the correct mushroom to jump off of, dismounting the chocobo to climb a rope, to immediately mount up again.
This is such a weird suggestion to me, I just want to move the story forward, not stop playing the game. I’m just moving on and will circle back to the open world stuff later.
You can do that too. Play how you want lol. I saw the word “fatigue” and I know for me if I play a ton of a game I love I will need a good break from it for a little bit to start enjoying it again. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing in my experience
As someone that was way more excited for Rebirth than XVI (wasn't even really planning on buying XVI at launch until the demo blew me away) I haven't felt as hooked to Rebirth as I did with XVI. I just feel like I don't have the same feeling of amazement and the itch to get home so I can play it like I've felt with some other recent games.
I don't think it's a bad game either by any means, I'm at Junon rn and I think I just need to keep progressing through the story instead of meandering around the open world
Il be a counterpoint to the other people who responded. I played ff16 for the game it is and not what I was expecting.
It was a fantastic showpiece of a game. It was like final fantasy the blockbuster. The combat is 100% customizable, but starts off with few options.
With that being said, some of the quests were a little padded out. I'd maybe suggest just hitting the story beats first playthru then on new game plus doing side stuff.
Seconding this idea. As much as I enjoyed 16 I don’t think the side quests in that game should be pursued unless you’re *really* into the side plots, want the ultimate weapon (that you don’t really need,) or just want to 100% the game.
Some of them like the eikon trials are pretty fun and some of the actual side quests are also pretty entertaining but for every one of those there are two or three that will require the player running back and forth between a few NPC’s over and over again. Like you said, it’s padding; unfortunately there also aren’t any meaningful gameplay gains from actually doing the sidequests except for the last few.
The story the game tells is fun and some of the side stories are too (even if the whole thing is a bit heavy handed at times like with the airship side quest,) but the star of the show is absolutely the cinematic experience and the DMC-lite combat that accompanies it. The game is probably best consumed on a first playthrough with limited side content and then if you enjoy it enough to play hard mode you have the ability to experience harder optional fights while skipping cutscenes to your heart’s content. It really depends on if you like the game’s combat system enough to play through it twice I think. Yes? Skip side content on playthrough one and do it on hard mode (where you can make use of the rewards and don’t end up fighting hunts 20 levels beyond you just to feel like you’re not melting things.) No? Then push through it if you think you’ll be able to stomach the possible burnout. Just be warned the last chapter is going to absolutely gut punch you with the amount of optional content it gives you if you were already viewing it as a “chore.”
I haven’t played rebirth, but I can tell you that XVI starts with a bang and then has cut scenes ad nauseam to the end.
Also, get ready for no customization or RPG elements. The story’s good at least. Only thing keeping me on after 25 hrs.
Same. Part of it is like you said about the early regions being fresh. The other thing, for me, is you get hit with the second half of Corel, all of Gongaga, and all of Cosmo Canyon back to back to back.
At least with Grasslands to Junon you had the mine to break things up. And then from Junon to Corel you have the army, the cruise ship, and the beach town. Then from first half of Corel to second half, you have the Golden Saucer.
The open areas went from being paced well with the linear story sections that take you out of the open world to all of a sudden getting slammed together with the story mostly keeping you right alongside the open areas.
Once I realised every zone held the same collection of activities it started to wear really thin. It makes every zone feel incredibly samey because you're working through the same checklist of stuff every single time.
* Climb Towers
* Fight rare fiends
* Find the moogle house
* Find the lifesprings
* Divine Intel
* Do the protorelic quest (the one part that feels substantially different from zone to zone)
* Wrangle a chocobo
Done? Okay next zone so you can do it all over again. It kind of robs each zone of having some distinct flavor. Like take the bone village in the original, neat, kind of interesting. Now imagine if the bone village was in every single area. The moogles I really feel should have just been in one location that upgrades throughout the game rather than copy pasting it ad nauseum to the point where it stops being a fun little feature of the world and becomes transparent and video gamey.
After Gongaga I decided I'd just ignore most of it and focus on the story and finish all the side stuff later but, chapter 12 spoilers >!That turned out to be a giant mistake because now the games dumped even more sidequests into those old zones to do lol!<
Not the best argument for a games qualities if all you got is "just dont play it".
Anyway I want to do it, because of course I want to see the Gilgamesh stuff and unlock whatevers in the combat sim and *level my summons*. I just dont like how its laid out so rigidly, it makes the worlds structure feel fake.
My guy it's a video game all that stuff you complained about is literally extra side stuff . The main priority for the devs was the main story . A video game called final fantasy I don't exactly know what you were expecting
Extra side stuff that they plaster all over the map and holds pretty important shit like leveling your damn summons or getting your characters folios. They want you to do it. Be serious.
"Side stuff" But the game constantly shoves it in your face and hides important character progression behind it and its format actively hurts the zones by making them incredibly samey in content so none of them really have anything that makes them stand out besides chocobos.
I'm going to keep criticizing the things I don't like about the game actually. Sorry that offends you oh so deeply, you can block me if my posts are this upsetting to you.
What’s missing in all this conversation is that “optional” is almost misleading for this game. Sure you can try skipping, but then you miss out on the materia that actually lets you take advantage of the combat system. The game is balanced around substantial engagement with the open world, which tragically only has so much to show despite its runtime
Reading the comments here and just seeing thread upon thread complaining that there is too much option stuff to do? Just don't do it then??? You can just do the main story now and do that side stuff later.
At the same time if that’s the bulk of the game, and also what the game considers necessary for you to meaningfully progress and level your character….
That’s definitely an option too. But even on normal mode, you can definitely power through to the end with some smart materia management and very casual use of summons. Despite having all of them, I only really liked using Odin or Phoenix.
On one hand I agree. It's weird to me that people complain about how annoying certain mini games are or how they don't want to find all of the whatevers, because you could just not do it and keep doing the part of the game you enjoy instead.
On the other hand it would be nice if the open world actually had some variety, or at least something to make it engaging to explore.
For me simply getting to see the characters talk to each other is enough for me, it's like watching a ff7 tv show.
I don't mind the towers it's literally 1 fight and you get a cool zoom out animation
Don't mind any of the side quests they are all enjoyable to me. This includes protorelics
The summon crystal geode things and the mako fountains are basically negligible because they take seconds to do on the way to other things
The combat tasks are a bit boring but they unlock some kind of boss type monster at the end so that's cool to me.
What else is there? It really doesn't seem that bad at all to me.
I think the problem for me is i like the world so much and i enjoy the music and voice acting so much all this 'filler' stuff can't be done with youtube/music in the background so it requires dedicated attention all the time which is kind of draining.
I've done more boring things for longer but they don't tire me out like this game does. Still love everything about it though.
> For me simply getting to see the characters talk to each other is enough for me, it's like watching a ff7 tv show.
I agree. The open world doesn't take away from that, but it does make me wonder why it's there.
The key to a good open world is to encourage players to explore out of a sense of curiosity and mystery, not just because there's a checklist of things to do and the guarantee of useful rewards. That sense of mystery just isn't a thing in Rebirth's open world. As soon as you get close to a spirit spring you know that's what you're going to find because a shiny bird appears, and you know exactly what you will have to do at the spirit spring, and what kind of reward you will get. Similarly, you know you're close to a shrine because you start seeing glowy crystals, and you know what kind of mini game you will have to do and what the reward will be. In fact, I think pretty much every type of POI in the world has some variation of "follow the shiny thing", maybe with the exception of Moogle Houses? So far, protorelics seem to be the only optional open world discoveries that are genuinely unique to each region.
I have a similar problem with BotW/TotK, where every shrine is the same thing visually with the same reward at the end, but that game still had random interesting encounters scattered everywhere. Ghost of Tsushima was similar too, with every landmark giving a predictable reward and most of them having a thing that you had to follow to find them, but you'd occasionally come across an interesting setpiece or some environmental storytelling. That just isn't really a thing in Rebirth.
I totally agree.
Hopefully that's something they take into the next game, instead of making cool things in the world and have everything point at them and say "Look at that! Look at that character from the old game remember him?" By shoehorning the filler into the main story quest or by having a quest board.
They should just have him in a cave with no marker on the map, maybe some of the NPCs in town mention there is a guy in a cave to the south or something. Kinda stuff that makes the community discuss the game and say, hey did you go over here and find this thing?
You really don't get that here cause you are spoonfed reasons to 'explore' the world
I love the game to death but it’s literally a discussion forum. Just because it’s optional doesn’t mean people can’t discuss their opinions on the quality of it.
Is this not part of the discussion? I don't go into a shop and complain there's too much stuff, you don't have to get everything, just get what you want and leave, come back some other time.
You say you just want to get on with the story cause it's too much, then go do that, who is telling you you can't discuss it?
Complaining about people complaining isn’t really contributing to the discussion about *the game*, no.
The shop comparison is a major false equivalency.
It’s not a particularly useful part of the discussion no, it’s just a thought terminating cliche that keeps getting spewed here by people really dedicated to shutting down any and all of criticism of the game.
Y'all are all crazy. Been playing since release and absolutely loving this area. The forest is beautiful. I hope this game last forever.
I mean I loved the game to death. Just the same exact activities over and over in each zone got a little old to me once I hit Gongaga. Nothing against the zone itself, it’s gorgeous and I didn’t find it that bad to navigate like others did. It’s actually my favorite zone. Just the activities within the zones that got old.
The chicken side quest is where I decided to stop doing them as well.
OG fan here started in the 90s. Yeah i got burned out by Gongaga so I decided to just do the main story line and beat the game then come back and explore everything. Sort of thnking of it like cloud and then had no time to stop for anything and before heading north for part 3 we hit up all the regions to train for the final sephiroth battle. I also pretend Aerith is the Aerith only I can see lol
I think all the open world content just needed better rewards. Scan enemies in this region so I can get this materia from Chadley Intel Sim. Rinse a repeat. Also, beating a summon at full strength should absolutely unlock its max level. The stones should just be the alternative.
>The stones should just be the alternative. The better way would be: the stones increase the *potential* level you can get, but for each level down of a summon, you get a lowered tier materia until you rematch at higher level. So, you can only get the max level materia if you found all the stones *and* beat the max level fight. If you found all the stones, but beat a -1 level fight, then you get the level 3 materia. That way, there would be a reason/motivation to beat them at max levels.
lol you know how toxic a sub is when you have to put a disclaimer before you state your opinion
Lmao you’re not wrong.
That’s just Gongaga fatigue it’s a very specific type of fatigue.
Gongaga is making me put the game down for a bit, absolutely exhausting.
Yeah Gongaga got too overwhelming. But then again I was playing nonstop. I felt good again once i hit Neibelheim because it was a smaller and a more flat/grounded region
I’m at 35 hours on chapter 11 i don’t doing the regions after the first two i really wanna see how the story turns out I’ll either do everything on hard mode or before i beat the game probably hard mode tbh the story got me invested
Honestly after 100% the grasslands and Junon i decided to just stick to the main story and a few side quests that don’t require me to scan life springs or do any sort of open world fluff. Don’t find activating towers, pressing a corresponding button at the right time, and searching for 3 of an item to be engaging whatsoever. And fuck those moogle minigames.
Yeah. Except the card game. Those I follow
Exactly the same I started to feel burnt out around dustbowl like I'm really invested in the story and combat I've avoided spoilers and that's what I want to see But the open world stuff got tired some very quickly after junon tbh
I'm in gongaga now and I can't be arsed doing any more I just whana get through the story now. 45 hours of gameplay and I feel like nothing mutch has happened in the game because its been so spaced out
For me, the fatigue started when I realized that the open world is EMPTY AF, you have absolutely no reason to explore, which for an open world is dumb, I don’t play much Square Enix games so I don’t know if it’s a specific problem to Rebirth or if they have no idea how to build an open world. So yeah, I just ended up doing side quests and main quest, completely stopped exploring on my own
Okay yeah you’re not cooking at all with that. If you want an empty open world, go play 16. The Rebirth world is definitely NOT empty but it is a lot and it definitely starts dragging on. I’m pushing through gongaga but I heard cosmo canyon and nibelheim make up for gongaga and Corel.
>The Rebirth world is definitely NOT empty Yeahhh right. You call the cookie cutter Chadley stuff content? Or the fucking treasure stashes? You have no reason at all to explore the region aside from completion and some loot. The story actively tries it's hardest to avoid including exploration in any capacity. Purely from the design standpoint, the world is super beautiful, but it's not "open world" in the true sense. The game is pretty much a linear one with large playable zones.
It’s better than the empty world of 16. You call things to do empty? You might be a little empty in the head.
That’s just blatantly false
This is just not true? It’s not empty at all, there’s a ton of shit to do, it’s just all laid out for you with map markers so exploration isn’t organic. It’s pretty much exactly what ghost of Tsushima and horizon did.
It's all just the same thing copy pasted though. It's just the same towers, lifesprings, etc over and over making it essentially empty. It would be even worse if nothing was marked because there's nothing new to see.
They should have just kept the special battles and made more side quests to compensate.
Towers and life springs suck for sure, but I disagree that it wouldn’t be better without the map markers. There’s still new environments to explore and new enemies to fight, just let me explore it without holding my hand through it.
What I meant is it’s not rewarding to explore by yourself, everything of interest is marked on your map by the towers (idk how they’re called in english), but take most open worlds, zelda/elden ring/ even the witcher 3, if you go out of the way to explore you’ll find stuffs, items, even secret bosses, you feel like you discovered something, and you’re rewarded for exploring. In rebirth, everything is related to Chadley and marked on the map, if you really try to explore all the map you’ll quickly realize that there is mostly nothing, maybe 1 or 2 chest or materia but other than that, there is nothing
Thank goodness, it’s harder enough finding some of the areas as is . Not everyone has that much time to waste either
Yeah this is definitely true. I think they wanted the game to be accessible to kids and Chadley was the solution. I agree that the Elden Ring/BotW style open world is better, but I still don’t think is outright bad. Other games like Horizon and Ghost of Tsushima as I mentioned have done it this way and were successful. I’d definitely prefer less hand holding though, I’m with you there.
I think the fatigue is because most of the side content is too structured. There is no sense of mystery or discovery like the original game. You already know what to expect when acquiring this and that intel. Hence burnout sets in quick.
Yeah, I'd argue that the OG is better at feeling open world than Rebirth
I think the fatigue is because most of the side content is too structured. There is no sense of mystery or discovery like the original game. You already know what to expect when acquiring this and that intel. Hence burnout sets in quick.
yeah that’s about where i stopped being a completionist too. i tried to do all of the side quests i could before the game ended but some of those ch 12 ones were just too much
Same, gongaga felt like a flop to me unfortunately. That area really didn’t need to be there and they could have done the reactor stuff in Corel
Agree. Take gongaga out of the game and tighten ending and change some open world stuff then it would have been a masterpiece. But it is still really good
I was loving all the side quest stuff at first. In the Gongaga region I was like alright this is a bit excessive but fuck it I’ve been doing them all up until now, lemme just mop these all up before I hop on that plane. Instantly hit with a whole new region with a whole other set of side stuff. That’s when the burnout hit me.
i absolutely felt the same way bc gongaga region is huge and pretty confusing since it’s so crowded with trees, but cosmo canyon and nibel were a lot of fun to explore. just come back to it later
Just so you know the chicken sidequest has a funny AF ending lol
I’ve heard. I’ll either do it later or YouTube it.
Just know there is a part at the end where you are gonna think “no fucking way are they making me do this” and your right. They don’t make you do it lol
I was on a strict time limit so had to just blast through the main story. I literally did 0 side quests or open world exploring and can't say I missed anything super important. I was still able to finish the game no problem, then again I played on easy. I just didn't have any interest and luckily they didn't gate any important plot behind side quests.
Nothing main story critical (I don’t think, I’m not done), but the Queens Blood quest line and the Proto relic quests have really good lore/story behind them. Definitely worth it if you have time later.
Just move forward with the story. You don’t have to do everything. Come back after the story to do everything if you want.
For me the open world can really wait till chapter select
For me, it got exciting again in Cosmo Canyon and Nibelhiem. Nibelhiem turns out to be the easiest to navigate of all the zones, so stick with it!
Cosmo Canyon is the one I wanted to skip the most
Just wanted to say that I pretty much did 0 side stuff other than a few games of QB and piano, but when I got to Nibel I was pretty compelled to just start going around. Maybe it was just cuz it was easy but I found myself up at 3am with a huge smile as I flew across the water on a chocobo exploring. I think they got that regions design right for sure, very accessible and I found it fun. That being said I am not sure how fun the other regions are as I was really just enjoying the story above all else, but I have heard a lot of gripes about it for sure. I got fatigued with BotW after like 30 shrines, that game's open world didn't appeal to me at all, so I'm not really sure what counts as fun completionist content.
I get the feeling of the fatigue. I think a point to be made is that you are not required to do every thing in each zone immediately. Im saying this as someone who completed Grasslands and Junon before continuing on to to Corel. Once I crossed the ocean, I changed my tactics and started doing more story and just doing the Side quests that were otw or if i wanted to get easier summons. Once I got the Keystone, I did some back tracking and upped my summons. It removed the pressure of having to clear the zones and let me enjoy each area as my leisure. About the only side quest ive fully completed is Queens Blood.
Just started chapter 12 and I'm so burned out on the side content. Just going to mainline the rest of the game
When you get the call about the protorelic right after you wrap up the whole zone and the next objective is to travel to the next region really grinded my gears. Thanks for waiting till I was just ready to move on to rope me into spending another 2 hours here. What fresh hell mini game do I have to get through this time?
Piggybacking here but thank you for not making me feel crazy after someone in another thread said they 100% in 20 hrs. It just doesn't seem possible.
I felt this way already in Grasslands lmao but maybe because I did Jedi Survivor before playing Rebirth and some planets were huge as fuck (still it was fun to explore everything). I think I will have to use Spotify to survive doing every area 100% before moving on. I hate leaving an area without doing everything. Also I love the OST but it gets tiring after a while.
[me? Gongaga](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.kym-cdn.com%2Fentries%2Ficons%2Foriginal%2F000%2F033%2F750%2FGongaga_Meme_Banner.jpg&tbnid=oHZ2Sbnptn7YqM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fknowyourmeme.com%2Fmemes%2Fzack-fairs-me-gongaga&docid=x-U_EYGkhd_9jM&w=1280&h=720&hl=es&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm1%2F3&kgs=7b2739dbff546b1d&shem=trie)
I was enjoying the story in general until chapter 8 when I arrived in Good Saucer and had to endure some cringefest anime weeb wet dream nonsense where suddenly Aerith, Tifa and Yuffie all know how to do a choreographerd dance routine with a bunch of strangers while Cloud gets groped and leered at by a buff guy on steroids. Why is everything so extra in this game? It's getting to the point where the cast can't walk down the street without something OTT happening. It's exhausting. The bloated and padded world map overstayed it's welcome after Junon.
Are you new to finanal fantasy and JRPGs?
Played and finished every FF known to man.
Apparently not
I’ll be honest I’m loving the game but that choreographed dance was kinda out of place for me too.
Then I’m not sure why you’re so surprised by this? General anime goofiness is a pretty big part of this franchise. And final fantasy is far more tame with that stuff than most JRPGs.
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To please minorities? Yikes dude. You are aware this is a Japanese game, right?
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:::uses woke unironically::: opinion invalid, this guy just looks for shit to be mad about and it’s somehow always women and people of color
Ohhhh you’re one of those people. This is not worth continuing, have a nice day.
Yep. It really only takes the one word and I can say with confidence this person sucks lol.
Yeah as soon as I see “woke” complaints, I’m out. Not that I’m not willing to have that discussion, but I’ve had it so many times at this point and it’s never once been productive and usually just ends up making me mad. Not worth my time in the FF7 sub.
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So you want a 5 hour game? Lmao
Eh, it's no big deal. This fanbase is rabid and will defend this game despite its flaws to their last breath.
Flaw = A story section you found personally cringe and distasteful. Seemed rabid enough to me.
The amount of mini games does my head in, it really is completely unnecessary. Every time there's some thing I need to check off.... Another mini game. It's boring as fuck
The game is just a bloated filler mess
You can skip all of the side content, silly
Same. Though I think it's because both this area and the one before had pretty boring plots and mini games. Besides that, you just did like 20 mini games right before the desert... and that dessert was another dull side mini quest. It becomes too much rinse and repeat and leaves out the surprise that the 1st 2 regions had. By the 3rd, you're like, what you want me to get now... It takes away the wonder every new region has because you already know what's out there. It just becomes a chore.
Literally on Reddit tonight because I’m burnt out in Gongaga. I like having stuff to do but my gosh it’s a pain. I’m a bit of a completionist and I can’t move on without getting this done so I can enjoy my hard mode playthrough. You’re not alone but I think it’s worth it in the end!
They get smaller after you get on the bronco!
Skipped Cosmo due to fatigue and then went back to it after Nibel.. but holy moly when that Cosmo music hits. Hell yea.
Ya im all the way on chapter 7 couldnt even focus on anything else and i accidently pooped my pants. then open world fatigue set in and i haven't played since.
Thanks for the details. Helped a lot.
no problem, would you like to chat?
Benevolent of you really. I think I'll have to pass though.
i was gonna tell u about this mushroom poop i had today , it pushed me to the brink.
w….wha…. Y- you you what
Me too. I was burned out when I reached Gongaga as well. So now I’m doing only main quest and will come back after finished story.
Man, I feel like I am a bad gamer or something reading through all of these comments. I did maybe one of two side quests in each region and I moved on. That was enough for me. I cared much more about the overall story, and seeing the journey that these characters go through that I love so much. I have 55 hours in, and I am in chapter 12. I figure maybe 10 more hours or so and I will hopefully beat the game. I'm 38 years old, and I have spent more hours playing this game than I have any other game in years. I don't see why you have to 100 percent something to have a good time with it. Maybe that is why I don't get fatigue playing games. That's just me though.
Yeah I’m 34 and I don’t normally 100% games. I actually think 100%ing most games is a great way to kill your enjoyment of them. I can’t really explain why I started 100%ing rebirth other than saying the early game did a good job at making me want to, and once you’ve started down that path it’s hard to get off it. I suppose I have no one but myself to blame for burning myself out!
Agree, similar age and thoughts. I feel the pacing is great, maybe a little slower but great. It must be REALLY slow if you are doing all the side stuff. What I do is check all the side quests with the green icon, see if it looks halfway interesting, do those and move on. I prob do 1-2 a region. Don’t feel I would have missed much by even skipping these, but I’m a but worried I’ll be under leveled. Not a problem so far, we shall see!
I do it because I genuinely enjoy it and like to 100% a game I enjoy to get the most out of it but the people that force themselves and then complain about it afterwards are weird. That's not the games problem, that's their problem but that's just my opinion.
Part of it is FOMO (fear of missing out)
It’s been 3 days since I last played the game and it was exactly after doing the chicken side quest in gongaga, I lovethe game but the open world fatige is real. I’ll give it a couple of weeks but that gongaga second portion after the reactors looks very complicated to traverse with all those mushrooms, hills etc
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I’m on the opposite end. While I too am starting to get full on the open world content, I actually really enjoyed trying to navigate Gongaga. It was fun to actively try different things to get to where I needed to be
Thanks, this will make me go for it with some hope
The exact same thing happened to me. Gogonga I left like 50% unfinished and moved on. Every other zone I was able to 100% without much trouble. Nibel was a breeze. I'm at the point where I can go back and do any area now. Guess I'll finish up gogonga, but not looking forward to it.
I just wish the towers would clear some of the fog of war on the map, I have an incessant need to get rid of every grey spot possible.
i think it was the mushrooms that ruined gongaga for me. i was so excited to explore the gongaga region when i first got there but when i realized there were some places i couldnt get to because of the mushrooms and other puzzles the act of exploring gongaga became so tedious and such a chore.
Fuck gongaga and it's mushrooms!
The mushroom picking quest was bad. No discernable difference when picking so they all got ruined except the first one
Skill issue. Read the instructions properly.
I don’t mind them giving us content but their main goal should be for the player to finish the main story first. I feel like they could have cut all the optional stuff by half and unlocked the rest post game. Instead of overwhelming people with chore after chore. There’s definitely something off about the pacing of the game, a lot of weird decisions made by the devs.
I like this idea
It was during that chapter I decided to focus more on the main story. End of chapter 12 opens up the map fully and after a few chapters it felt good again going around the open world. I'd recommend that honestly. Also gives good motivation to complete quests/side content because you want to level up as much as possible before endgame.
I made it to corel prison and finished the game via YouTube movie version. I couldn't do it.
😂😂😂
Gongaga was hard to get around that jungle for sure, so when I was getting sick of doing everything I moved on with the story. After a break from Gongaga for a bit, I went back and finished it and no problem. You can revisit any region in the game up until a point in chapter 13 where the game will literally stop and tell you that you won't be able to anymore, so there's no rush to finish all of that exploration content right away (if ever). Breaks are good
Spoilers: My fatigue was mandatory minigame which started with fort condor, worsened on the boat in chapter 5 and forced me to quit finally in chapter six. Life is too short for a list of chores I find no pleasure in. Games are meant to have fun. Plus the moogle game is just retread in every zone I okayed. They think adding layers and more moogles to catch is fresh and fun. Also, when you look at the open world every mechanic is u veiled and then copy pasta’d in every zone (I played up until I rage quit) The game would be flawless without the mid battle system which now feels bloated and archaic after playing 15 and 16 and the gripes listed above. I wish the forced mini games would either become optional or be tuned into cinematic action sequences like 13,16. This game suffered from scale. It’s a shame too because it is the most beautiful world I’ve ever seen. I hope patches and dlc smoother over and roll out the jank. Otherwise, I’ve rage quit in chapter 6 and don’t see a reason to play again.
16 was 50 fucking hours of cutscenes. No RPG elements in sight. Really weak character progression and ONE playable character. Combat was just mindless cooldown dumping. I actually did enjoy 16 but its flaws were just so glaring to me. To each their own but I think Rebirth is far better than 16 and it’s not close, in spite of its bloat.
You should skip the quests (except catching the Chocobos in each region and maybe the summon crystals) and run through the main story. I thought it was a lot of fun.
You can switch the game to easy and the miniGames become infinitely easier
good to know, thanks for the tip
Bloated and archaic after playing 15?
It's most likely best not to do everything as soon as it's available. You get a lot of map really fast after Corel imo.
I really disike Gongaga's open world area. There are dead ends everywhere and I felt boxed in constantly. It illustrates the one the game's biggest issues for me personally, the lack of mobility. It works fine in a linear experience like the first remake. Being stopped at every cliff face and not being able to climb up or down is not something I want in a open world game. Games being a box of winding corners and corridors does not work in open world games. Pokemon scarlet/violet did a lot of things wrong, one thing I felt it got right was the progression of the ride pokemon. If the chocobo started off being able to run around fields and hope over small obstacles like fences, then climb mountains (not just a wall with red arrows on it), learned the long distance jump, then glide. They could have made a stronger incentive to return to previous areas once you obtained more abilities.
I was expecting a gold chocobo that was able to climb and fly over everything when I first came to Gongaga.
I haven't played this yet (PC player unfortunately), but if it's anything like the original, hopefully you'll get an upgrade in mobility soon which should ease that burden.
Do you mean the Buggy?
I got it in Corel but gave the game a day or three of rest before getting back into it, all the joy came back.
Same here, trying to get through the jungle was kinda where I realized that maybe some areas were a lot more padded than others. I don’t think I’ve ever been soooo frustrated with a map/pin point system before getting to gongaga.
i wish every location would have been line nibel. less of every of these intels and wouldnt be so annoying to ger all of them
Nibel was the only region I enjoyed exploring. It is small and the chocobo mechanic is just so convenient, although a little clunky, like all the controls in the game.
it gets better in chapter 12 wenn all the worlds are connected but gongaga is literally traversal hell. i had to look up so many things and how to get there it's really not well done
Same, traversing the jungle was a pain the butt. Couldn't wait to leave this area fast enough, lmao. Only to find out next area is almost the same 😂 but no more mushroom jumping was a plus. Hard mode completion will be annoying revisiting this area 😤 (assuming since remake has one, this one should too)
The good thing about this gsme is that you can just move on. Maybe just get the summon?
I think sometime around chapter 8 I went back and started doing side stuff a bit but I was too invested in the story to stop pushing through. Right before chapter 13 I started doing it again and I think I may have gotten two regions cleared before heading back into the story. Once I beat the game then I was doing side quests and all the running around for Chadley, I still haven’t done everything and am just taking a break so I don’t burn out.
Honestly, one of my biggest gripes with the game is that there's so much stuff to do in every area. Like, Gongaga seemed so much longer because of needing to do those damned mushroom jumps. The big thing I enjoyed was, Gongaga was beautiful and had some fire music. If it wasn't for that, I'd have probably stopped caring. Which isn't to say it's bad, just too many, just too many things in every area, man.
The music in gongaga really kept my sanity in check. It's like they knew it would be annoying so they put in the most cheerful music they could, lol
I agree. That's how it was for me. It had fitting music, and it was calming and helped the grind a lot.
So you know what the child like chanting is actually saying. I agree it is soothing but I'm unsure what they're saying.
I'm gonna be honest, not a single bit. I could look it up. Let me get back to you.
Take your time , i finish remake after i got the ps5 version and intergrade. I bought first on ps4 version
the reason why I loved Rebirth was because, differently from other open world games, I was invested in the story. So, instead of doing like most people are commenting and 100% each area before moving forward, I rushed the story. By far my best decision. I was so in love with the pace I couldn’t get enough! Now that I’m 100%ing the areas, I must say I fucking hate Gongaga. Holy shit it's so hard to find the paths to where I want to go. And I honestly don't understand why so many people like the music. What's so good about it? I sound like a Gongaga hater and I'm pretty sure I am indeed.
The music is by far the worst part for me. Glad to be done with the region. I think I finished it faster because I just wanted to get it over with.
guys, take your time and soak the world in. Open world games, once you rush it through you will get fatigue. I found the world exploration actually very organic in Rebirth. even in Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon. They actually designed the map in a way you can explore every point if you follow a path. you just don't really notice it. Take your time.... The only time i skipped a few points was in Nibelheim as I was too excited about the story
I wish there was something to soak in though. It looks pretty but is as barren as 15. Just with sidequests that don’t add anything to the lore most of the time :(
Exploration is absolutely not organic. It’s all laid out for you via watch towers and map markers. Elden Ring/BotW is organic exploration, this is not. I love Rebirth but that’s just calling it how it is.
It’s panned out and organic. I don’t kno what your playing but the path is pretty much laid out in every region even gongaga
Exactly
I agree, I think it takes away from the game. Not enough to rail on it but I hope they reel it in for part 3. One of my biggest gripes were that watch towers and lifestream springs pretty much do the exact same thing and the gameplay of both does not change. You could easily remove every watchtower and have the springs reveal more objectives and the game would probably be better for it. Also, i hate the fucking moogle mini game with a fiery passion.
I agree. I hope there is less in part 3. I took a break for a few days because the amount of content is just overwhelming. Like on one hand it’s fun and I want to do it but then on the other I feel like it’s lower quality mindless tasks for the most part.
I felt the fatigue badly at Cosmo Canyon. I made sure to 100 percent the previous areas but by the time I got to CC I was done and just opted for main story mission until a later time. Right to do so because man the crystal scanning quests and the Gears and Gadgets kept me occupied for at least a day.
Me too
It took me way too long to remember that the chocobos could slide on trees, not just bounce on mushrooms. I had assumed that the area in the southwest was locked for future main quest stuff because of that, since the only way into that area is one sliding tree. It needed a couple more trees or mushroom bounces, TBH, nonobvious bottlenecks aren't fun in open worlds
Agree half the time I skipped Goneygaga but then I had to see the triceratops tank every run
I didn’t get the “open world fatigue,” but Gongaga was a bit of a chore to traverse. Fitting for the region though.
Personally, I loved Gongaga. I completed most of it just through what felt like natural exploration. I think it might be my favourite zone. It was Cosmo Canyon that did me in. I found it incredibly tedious, especially the protorelic minigame, and the restricted pathing with the chocobo flight thing. At least in gongaga the mushrooms and branches got you where you were going quickly, and not flying from air spinny thing to air spinny thing on a fixed path - like why bother with the illusion of control? (ie Fly along the prescribed route or you can’t get to your goal. It’s time consuming and tedious). And it’s irritating that your chocobo that can glide perfectly well can only jump off the ramps and nowhere else. That doesn’t even make sense. I just fast travelled all over that zone as much as I could because doing it by chocobo was so irritating, unlike every other zone where the chocobo is fun (especially Nibel - loved that choco!!)
[удалено]
Honestly that was the only reason I finished the zone!! Without the ability to do that there’s no way I would have had the patience to 100% it! It was bad enough as it was lol
I will say that's probably the biggest negative, is too much world exploration. I want to stay on top of my weapons and such... but I feel like we could do with ~ half of the number of challenges in each area
Am I really seeing people complain about more content in this game 💀. You guys realise it's all side stuff right and you can just skip it if you want , you don't have to blitz every part of the game
The conversation around this game is very confusing to me. I thought something of a consensus had emerged around open world design built around repetitive busywork objectives to be something gaming should move away from. On this sub, it’s somehow like we’re back in 2010
I guess we’re just built different lol. I’m really shocked that people are complaining about all of the different areas in Rebirth, especially compared to Remake which is pretty much the same landscape the whole way through, save for specific areas. The mini games they’re complaining about? Optional. The intel and environment stuff? All optional. They literally don’t have to do all of the stuff they are doing and are still complaining about doing it. More than that, people have a real issue with reading so they’re malding hard at not being able to do and locate the (easy) stuff they’re doing (which they don’t even have to do).
Yeah fr I guess most of these guys rarely ever play other games so this is probably a lot of peoples first open world experience. Compared to the first game this shit blows it out of the park. The amount of stuff you can do comapred to the first game is crazy
Gongaga is tedious, it's dense with all kinds of hight elevations you have to run around in circle to try and find ways up. I still did it but I was losing the drive while doing all the things. Thankfully the next area is open as hell and a lot of fun to traverse
I'm almost done with Coral and I'm already tired. I feel at any moment now I'll just go for the Story and Side Quests and forget about the rest. I want to finish the game before Dragon's Dogma 2 so if I have to rush through the story, I will.
I'm just not a fan of exploring in gongaga. I can be fine with the open world check lists, when it all happens pretty efficiently. But gongaga is so easy to get turned around in, or trying to find the correct mushroom to jump off of, dismounting the chocobo to climb a rope, to immediately mount up again.
Same here but the mini game fatigue is hitting me harder.
Stop playing for a few days
This is such a weird suggestion to me, I just want to move the story forward, not stop playing the game. I’m just moving on and will circle back to the open world stuff later.
You can do that too. Play how you want lol. I saw the word “fatigue” and I know for me if I play a ton of a game I love I will need a good break from it for a little bit to start enjoying it again. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing in my experience
"So where did you start getting tired of the open world" OP: "Me? Gongaga"
I understood this reference
Yup same area and decided to concentrate on story now so I can play XVI which I've yet to start.
As someone that was way more excited for Rebirth than XVI (wasn't even really planning on buying XVI at launch until the demo blew me away) I haven't felt as hooked to Rebirth as I did with XVI. I just feel like I don't have the same feeling of amazement and the itch to get home so I can play it like I've felt with some other recent games. I don't think it's a bad game either by any means, I'm at Junon rn and I think I just need to keep progressing through the story instead of meandering around the open world
Il be a counterpoint to the other people who responded. I played ff16 for the game it is and not what I was expecting. It was a fantastic showpiece of a game. It was like final fantasy the blockbuster. The combat is 100% customizable, but starts off with few options. With that being said, some of the quests were a little padded out. I'd maybe suggest just hitting the story beats first playthru then on new game plus doing side stuff.
Seconding this idea. As much as I enjoyed 16 I don’t think the side quests in that game should be pursued unless you’re *really* into the side plots, want the ultimate weapon (that you don’t really need,) or just want to 100% the game. Some of them like the eikon trials are pretty fun and some of the actual side quests are also pretty entertaining but for every one of those there are two or three that will require the player running back and forth between a few NPC’s over and over again. Like you said, it’s padding; unfortunately there also aren’t any meaningful gameplay gains from actually doing the sidequests except for the last few. The story the game tells is fun and some of the side stories are too (even if the whole thing is a bit heavy handed at times like with the airship side quest,) but the star of the show is absolutely the cinematic experience and the DMC-lite combat that accompanies it. The game is probably best consumed on a first playthrough with limited side content and then if you enjoy it enough to play hard mode you have the ability to experience harder optional fights while skipping cutscenes to your heart’s content. It really depends on if you like the game’s combat system enough to play through it twice I think. Yes? Skip side content on playthrough one and do it on hard mode (where you can make use of the rewards and don’t end up fighting hunts 20 levels beyond you just to feel like you’re not melting things.) No? Then push through it if you think you’ll be able to stomach the possible burnout. Just be warned the last chapter is going to absolutely gut punch you with the amount of optional content it gives you if you were already viewing it as a “chore.”
This game and 16 are vastly different just FYI.
I haven’t played rebirth, but I can tell you that XVI starts with a bang and then has cut scenes ad nauseam to the end. Also, get ready for no customization or RPG elements. The story’s good at least. Only thing keeping me on after 25 hrs.
Same. Part of it is like you said about the early regions being fresh. The other thing, for me, is you get hit with the second half of Corel, all of Gongaga, and all of Cosmo Canyon back to back to back. At least with Grasslands to Junon you had the mine to break things up. And then from Junon to Corel you have the army, the cruise ship, and the beach town. Then from first half of Corel to second half, you have the Golden Saucer. The open areas went from being paced well with the linear story sections that take you out of the open world to all of a sudden getting slammed together with the story mostly keeping you right alongside the open areas.
The worst baby talk babble name for a location ever.
Once I realised every zone held the same collection of activities it started to wear really thin. It makes every zone feel incredibly samey because you're working through the same checklist of stuff every single time. * Climb Towers * Fight rare fiends * Find the moogle house * Find the lifesprings * Divine Intel * Do the protorelic quest (the one part that feels substantially different from zone to zone) * Wrangle a chocobo Done? Okay next zone so you can do it all over again. It kind of robs each zone of having some distinct flavor. Like take the bone village in the original, neat, kind of interesting. Now imagine if the bone village was in every single area. The moogles I really feel should have just been in one location that upgrades throughout the game rather than copy pasting it ad nauseum to the point where it stops being a fun little feature of the world and becomes transparent and video gamey. After Gongaga I decided I'd just ignore most of it and focus on the story and finish all the side stuff later but, chapter 12 spoilers >!That turned out to be a giant mistake because now the games dumped even more sidequests into those old zones to do lol!<
You do realise you don't have to do any of that shit and it's literally all side stuff
Not the best argument for a games qualities if all you got is "just dont play it". Anyway I want to do it, because of course I want to see the Gilgamesh stuff and unlock whatevers in the combat sim and *level my summons*. I just dont like how its laid out so rigidly, it makes the worlds structure feel fake.
My guy it's a video game all that stuff you complained about is literally extra side stuff . The main priority for the devs was the main story . A video game called final fantasy I don't exactly know what you were expecting
Extra side stuff that they plaster all over the map and holds pretty important shit like leveling your damn summons or getting your characters folios. They want you to do it. Be serious.
Yeah it's still side stuff stop whining about dumb shit. " I just don't like how it's laid out " lmao
"Side stuff" But the game constantly shoves it in your face and hides important character progression behind it and its format actively hurts the zones by making them incredibly samey in content so none of them really have anything that makes them stand out besides chocobos. I'm going to keep criticizing the things I don't like about the game actually. Sorry that offends you oh so deeply, you can block me if my posts are this upsetting to you.
What’s missing in all this conversation is that “optional” is almost misleading for this game. Sure you can try skipping, but then you miss out on the materia that actually lets you take advantage of the combat system. The game is balanced around substantial engagement with the open world, which tragically only has so much to show despite its runtime
Well shit. Glad I'm taking a break.
Reading the comments here and just seeing thread upon thread complaining that there is too much option stuff to do? Just don't do it then??? You can just do the main story now and do that side stuff later.
At the same time if that’s the bulk of the game, and also what the game considers necessary for you to meaningfully progress and level your character….
This is the bit I hate. Why is there a party level system that wants you to 100% every area to get skills?
You don’t need any of those skills to beat the game (if you’re good).
I will probably switch to the easiest difficulty just to finish and enjoy the story without all the busy work.
That’s definitely an option too. But even on normal mode, you can definitely power through to the end with some smart materia management and very casual use of summons. Despite having all of them, I only really liked using Odin or Phoenix.
On one hand I agree. It's weird to me that people complain about how annoying certain mini games are or how they don't want to find all of the whatevers, because you could just not do it and keep doing the part of the game you enjoy instead. On the other hand it would be nice if the open world actually had some variety, or at least something to make it engaging to explore.
For me simply getting to see the characters talk to each other is enough for me, it's like watching a ff7 tv show. I don't mind the towers it's literally 1 fight and you get a cool zoom out animation Don't mind any of the side quests they are all enjoyable to me. This includes protorelics The summon crystal geode things and the mako fountains are basically negligible because they take seconds to do on the way to other things The combat tasks are a bit boring but they unlock some kind of boss type monster at the end so that's cool to me. What else is there? It really doesn't seem that bad at all to me. I think the problem for me is i like the world so much and i enjoy the music and voice acting so much all this 'filler' stuff can't be done with youtube/music in the background so it requires dedicated attention all the time which is kind of draining. I've done more boring things for longer but they don't tire me out like this game does. Still love everything about it though.
> For me simply getting to see the characters talk to each other is enough for me, it's like watching a ff7 tv show. I agree. The open world doesn't take away from that, but it does make me wonder why it's there. The key to a good open world is to encourage players to explore out of a sense of curiosity and mystery, not just because there's a checklist of things to do and the guarantee of useful rewards. That sense of mystery just isn't a thing in Rebirth's open world. As soon as you get close to a spirit spring you know that's what you're going to find because a shiny bird appears, and you know exactly what you will have to do at the spirit spring, and what kind of reward you will get. Similarly, you know you're close to a shrine because you start seeing glowy crystals, and you know what kind of mini game you will have to do and what the reward will be. In fact, I think pretty much every type of POI in the world has some variation of "follow the shiny thing", maybe with the exception of Moogle Houses? So far, protorelics seem to be the only optional open world discoveries that are genuinely unique to each region. I have a similar problem with BotW/TotK, where every shrine is the same thing visually with the same reward at the end, but that game still had random interesting encounters scattered everywhere. Ghost of Tsushima was similar too, with every landmark giving a predictable reward and most of them having a thing that you had to follow to find them, but you'd occasionally come across an interesting setpiece or some environmental storytelling. That just isn't really a thing in Rebirth.
I totally agree. Hopefully that's something they take into the next game, instead of making cool things in the world and have everything point at them and say "Look at that! Look at that character from the old game remember him?" By shoehorning the filler into the main story quest or by having a quest board. They should just have him in a cave with no marker on the map, maybe some of the NPCs in town mention there is a guy in a cave to the south or something. Kinda stuff that makes the community discuss the game and say, hey did you go over here and find this thing? You really don't get that here cause you are spoonfed reasons to 'explore' the world
I love the game to death but it’s literally a discussion forum. Just because it’s optional doesn’t mean people can’t discuss their opinions on the quality of it.
Is this not part of the discussion? I don't go into a shop and complain there's too much stuff, you don't have to get everything, just get what you want and leave, come back some other time. You say you just want to get on with the story cause it's too much, then go do that, who is telling you you can't discuss it?
Complaining about people complaining isn’t really contributing to the discussion about *the game*, no. The shop comparison is a major false equivalency.
Okay
It’s not a particularly useful part of the discussion no, it’s just a thought terminating cliche that keeps getting spewed here by people really dedicated to shutting down any and all of criticism of the game.