Heads up – there are absolutely no story spoilers here but we still wanted to point out that this article discusses Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s New Game+ content, so read at your own discretion.
New Game+ modes and what they entail these days vary greatly in content and scope. Final Fantasy VII Remake’s NG+ functioned as a Chapter Select where you could keep all of your levels, gear, and Materia. This was no doubt designed around Remake’s excellent hard mode, which also only unlocks after the credits roll. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth posits its own version of the mode in similar fashion, but also around its vast swathes of open world content and party systems that makes for a lean and streamlined second journey around the planet.
There’s a couple features that unlock as soon as the credits roll on your first playthrough. Much like Remake, Rebirth swaps to a Chapter Select format where you can jump into any chapter on your preferred difficulty, one of which being the newly available Hard mode. Your levels, inventory, and Materia all carry over no matter how you move through the story. It effectively lets you flick between chapters at your leisure, cleaning up any leftover side content as you tackle the game’s fantastic new difficulty setting.
Whenever you start a chapter from the select screen, you have a few options in how you want it to handle quest data. You can restore previously completed quest data, allowing you to polish off any odd jobs you’ve missed across your playthroughs, or keep it at full completion. You can reset all of your quest data, which lets you start completely fresh regardless of completion. Finally, you can opt to retain completion data from the current playthrough to keep things feeling organic. You can always restore completion data if necessary, so there’s no risks involved with wanting to experience side quests again.
What’s really nice about this, is that it means you can go after perfectly executed odd jobs if you’re a completionist. Each odd job has specific criteria to hit to perfectly execute it, some of which are more involved than others. It makes it all too easy to hit up an old chapter where you slipped up in getting that coveted perfect execution to rectify your mistakes without needing to reset all of your quest data, or start from the beginning of the game with a clean slate.
In fact, completion in general is handled quite deftly within NG+. Through the Play Log that opens up after credits roll, you can view your overall game completion. Everything is accounted for here, from the total items donated to Johnny’s Treasure Trove and your World Intel Progress, to how many Queen’s Blood Cards you’ve collected or the status of your relationships with each party member. It extends much further than this, but being able to view all of this tracked info makes completing Rebirth in its entirety a much less daunting task.
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Another thoughtful inclusion is giving the player control over how the Golden Saucer events play out in Chapter Select. Once credits roll, you can set who you want to accompany you on your ventures to the Golden Saucer, and how you want the date event to conclude. It cuts out any guess work involved with who you end up going with, as you’ll likely have similar bond levels with party members once you hit NG+. It’s a small addition, but one that hardcore FFVII fans will no doubt appreciate.
Outside of the bond stuff, we’ve found there are actually at least a couple of instances of brand-new dialogue in reaction to doing things in NG+ that weren’t possible in the first run – obviously we won’t spoil anything here, but it’s a thoughtful touch for the team to have baked in some little nods for players who’ve seen the adventure through already.
A lot of the potential fat that could hinder a New Game+ playthrough is also significantly cut down here. Because your World Intel carries over into Chapter Select, you can fast travel through regions as soon as you unlock that area’s Chocobo. It drastically shortens the time you spend on traversal, especially if you’re following the golden path. Any points of interest you missed on your first playthrough are also marked on the map now, meaning that playing through chapters on hard mode doesn’t fall victim to having to get through numerous open world encounters as you try to find hidden Chocobo Stops or Cache Locations.
Speaking of which, hard mode returns with all the trimmings in Rebirth. You’re restricted in that you’re unable to use items at all, and MP can’t be recovered by resting. Much like Remake, you need to be far more considered in how you use your toolset, making the most of Staggers, exploiting enemy weaknesses, and timing spells to get the most bang for your buck – or in this case, MP. It’s refreshingly difficult, and forces you to approach the combat framework in a different capacity, and the added layer of strategy brought in by Synergy is much appreciated.
Hard mode also unlocks a whole bunch of new challenges to participate in. Challenge modes for minigames, exclusive battles in the Musclehead Colosseum, and some incredibly difficult combat simulator challenges from Chadley. To offset some of the adversity, chapter select will award you with new Manuscripts to improve character Folios, but these battles still aren’t for the faint hearted.
A small but very worthwhile inclusion is the ability to change outfits at Chocobo ranches. Each one is fit with a changing booth in Chapter Select that you can use to kit out the gang in beach wear, Shinra infantry gear, and more. There’s even a few outfits only available to use once you roll credits, and the whole thing makes for a fun bit of customisation to play around with.
In a time where New Game+ modes are getting more and more involved, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s – much like the game itself – is a thoughtful and measured inclusion. A new difficulty to master, new combat and minigame challenges, customisation, tracked completion, and so much more. There are so many quality-of-life inclusions that make the whole thing feel seamless and frictionless where it otherwise wouldn’t. It’s far too easy to get lost in the world of Rebirth all over again, and the ability to tailor that experience to how you want it is liberating and refreshing.
You can read my full review of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth right here and pick up a copy for yourself here.
