I started Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, middle-child of the “break glass in emergency” remake gambit trilogy.

The first game started extremely strong, with an overdose of weapons-grade nostalgia straight to the jugular. Midgar exceeded my expectations (and formative memories) in a way I thought would have been impossible. I mean, when they say “you can’t go home again,” the implication is usually not that the today home is so outstandingly better that it blows the old home out of the water. The personalities, the dialog, the little mannerisms… chef’s kiss. Has it really been three years?

However, you’ll note we’re now in paragraph three without saying anything about the current game.

Visually, Rebirth an outstanding feast for the eyes. The level of detail in random corners of the city of Kalm is mind-blowing considering how (presumably) little of the game will be based there. The setting of FF7 has always been one of my favorite parts of the game – the juxtaposition between technology and magic and a world in decline – so seeing Cloud walk past vending machines and people taking pictures while he has a huge Buster Sword strapped to his back somehow hits all the right notes for me.

However, there is some significant trepidation on my part. One of the first big post-tutorial reveals is… the Grasslands! You know, the like… generic overworld between points of actual interest in the original game. While I appreciate that the devs were perhaps trying to recapture the 1997 experience when you realized that Midgar was only the opening sequence in the game, my own reaction was a heavy sigh once a big gray map popped up. I further massaged my temples when I later saw 37 different icons appear all over the map. You cannot have nostalgia for doing the same open-world checklists that exist for every modern open-world game. While it is presumably possible to ignore everything else and just hit the next Main Scenario icon, that leads me to the next source of concern: the battle system.

It’s still extremely early on, but as far as I can tell the battle system has only gotten more complex and even less fun as a result. The ATB system is still there, which means actual combat revolves around you spamming light attacks until you fill a meter and can use exciting features like Item or Spell or Ability. Low on health? You better… attack the enemy some more and hope you live long enough to undo a small amount of the damage you took trying to fill up the meter to allow you to heal. But, be careful: just like last game your precious ATB action can be interrupted, or miss entirely if it’s an attack. Which I could understand if this were a Souls-like or whatever, but it is not.

The new combat system additions are Synergy Skills and Synergy Abilities. Once unlocked in the “Folio,” Skills can be used while pressing the Block button and allow two party members to do a special action without needing the ATB gauge. Which is good, giving you at least some extra buttons to push aside from X spam. Synergy Abilities are super-Abilities between two party members that are only active once each character has used enough ATB actions. Some of these are cool, as they result in unique buffs that last quite a while, like giving characters infinite MP. Which, now that I think about it, isn’t as cool considering you still have to have a free ATB bar built up to utilize.

It’s like, what even is this combat system? Spam tiny attacks to fill a meter and then slow down time to select Abilities/Magic, then switch between multiple characters to do the same, then you eventually get to cast Summons (ATB-based), or Limit Breaks, or now Synergy Abilities.

I’m only 7 hours in, so maybe combat gets better this time? Please tell me it gets better. Sigh.

In other words, it’s a rough start to FF7 Rebirth. I’m going to stick with it because Junon, Golden Saucer, and Costa del Sol – along with the overall direction – but Square Enix ain’t making it easy to get there.