Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth throws money at the screen and it works. Every open zone is a set piece, and the combat blends real-time action with a materia system deep enough to build genuine party strategies around, not just button-mash through. It reminded me of how Hogwarts Legacy worked on me: I went in for atmosphere and stayed for the world, except here the mechanics underneath actually hold their weight too. The story restructures Midgar's aftermath into something enormous, maybe too enormous. Side content sprawls in a way that tests patience if you're the kind of player who skips busywork. I skipped plenty of it. The campaign still ran long. Even trimmed down, it's one of the best-looking party RPGs on the console.

Vibrant colours, insane movement, relentless pacing. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is exactly the kind of spectacle the PS5 was built to run. The combat system layers action and strategy in a way that keeps evolving across the entire runtime, which for a game this long is no small achievement. It sits at nine because it asks more of you than most entries above it, both in time commitment and franchise familiarity, and the open zones have filler that the tighter games on this list avoid. But the production values are genuinely extraordinary and the party writing is some of the best character work in any RPG I have played this generation. Lots of fun.

I came into Final Fantasy VII Rebirth as someone who had never finished the original. Did not matter. The game contextualises its world clearly enough that you can follow the story without having lived through 1997, though long-term fans will obviously get more out of the callbacks. What surprised me was the combat. I expected a cinematic JRPG with serviceable action and got something with genuine mechanical depth that rewards learning the party's synergies. It is sprawling, occasionally to a fault. Some of the open-region side content runs long. But the main story and the combat system carry enough momentum that the overbusy sections are more forgivable than they would be elsewhere.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has the side content density of a full open-world game and the production values of a film franchise. The regional structure is more segmented than the genre leaders above it, which is the honest reason it landed here rather than in the top ten. Each region is large and worth exploring, but you move between them in a way that feels guided rather than free. If you are an FF7 fan or simply want a spectacular modern JRPG with a lot of world to cover, the recommendation is easy. Just go in knowing it plays more like a collection of expansive zones than a single unified open world.