#10: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is like a 17th-century Baroque painting: grand, ornate, ostentatious, and confounding. Why is the gameso long even while so little happens in it? Why is it so gorgeous even as it spends so much time surrounding you with bland brown deserts and grey cliffs? How come there’s an open world if everything in it is heavily scripted and repetitive? What is the point of all those freaking minigames? Endless minutiae rendered with the flare, expertise, and grand designs of ancient masters.

FFVII Rebirth is a game that I found relentlessly engaging despite these questions. “It makes no damn sense…compels me though,” I thought to myself so many times while playing. Some games are greater than the sum of their parts. FFVII Rebirth’s parts are greater than the sum of most other games. It’s not quite a faithful, one-to-one remake of the middle section of the original game, nor is it a risky and bold departure. Rather, it’s a maximalist walking tour through a rich sci-fi fantasy world, blown up in evocative, beautiful, and occasionally heart-wrenching detail.

The card-based minigame Queen’s Blood is amazing. The flow of combat and the incredible camera work, especially during summons, represent the height of interactive spectacle. I can almost forgive the Cait Sith Shinra Mansion crate sequence because of Chocobo Racing, the Junon parade, the Gold Saucer VR play, and every other mini-game/ quick-time event hybrid that didn’t suck. But where FFVII Rebirth excels most is in giving timeless video game avatars the space to grow into regular people and break out hearts all over again. — Ethan Gach