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Tomm Guycot

(he/him)
My advice for folks new to Rebirth with the PC release is thus:
Pick an overworld slice (I would suggest Junon, but Grasslands would work). Do EVERYTHING. Just like your RPG instincts tell you to do.

Every segment of the Overworld has all these same mission types, and the rewards are similar.

So, for the rest of the game, ONLY do the missions that you ENJOY. Do not slog through the others. Your time in Junon (or Grasslands) will give you perspective, but this game has TOO MUCH CONTENT and if you attempt to do it all up front you will burn out. So many people put Rebirth down unfinished because of this.

Everything can be cleaned up at the end. Only do what is fun. Max what you actually care about. Marie Kondo this shit. You will enjoy the game much more for it.
 

Sarcasmorator

Same as I ever was
(He/him)
Agreed with Tomm! Each overworld area has a TON of sidequest checkpoints and it can get really tiring to try to shotgun them all. It was more fun once I decided to progress the plot and come back for the sidequests I didn't feel like doing yet later. Nothing can be missed.

I ended up doing almost everything, just not right away.
 
I endorse Tomm’s rec.

I think the volume of things to do in this game is wonderful and I wouldn’t ever trade it. But I know how people’s brains work, and sometimes people need reminding that optional things are optional for a reason. It’s ok to skip optional stuff if you’re not feeling it!

I definitely began feeling a little burnt out by the end of Rebirth. Not because any of the content was inherently bad or not fun (there’s a handful of mini games that are not good, but most are great) but simply because I just wanted to see more of the story and was getting impatient because the story is so good.

If you start feeling that way, just continue with the main story and come back to the side stuff later. I kinda wish I did because when I got to the end and beat the game, I was riding such a crazy high that I wanted to keep playing, but I’d already exhausted all of the game’s content by the end.
 
PC port is, to no one's surprise, beautiful and buggy as all get out. Better than the Remake PC at launch as I understand, but I've still had both a black screen freeze and a hard crash during the first chapter.
Had another black screen freeze. I have to save every five minutes, almost feels like I'm save-scumming but I'm frustrated doing the same section repeatedly after a crash or freeze.

I'm trying the AMD preview drivers to see if that helps. I'm honestly impressed on how pretty the game looks on my budget hardware (Ryzen 5500 and Radeon RX6600), it handles medium settings well performance-wise but the crashes are quite annoying.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
That's so strange - I've played for four hours (plus had the game suspended since last night and had the Steam Deck in sleep mode until after work today) and am at the Chocobo Stables currently and haven't encountered a single crash on Steam Deck. Settings are set to Low, so maybe that's why...?
 
Preview drivers is like a recipe for crashes, you usually don’t want to install those on AMD cards. Rolling back a version or two will probably fix most things.
 
I started on some old drivers and updated to the current official release with no improvement. The preview drivers *supposedly* are tweaked specifically for Rebirth, so I'm going to give them a shot. I'll drop back to the current release if it doesn't help.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I've just about wrapped up the Grasslands sidequests, and while none of them have been amazing, they have been fun. The combat quests have helped refresh my memory of how to battle well - I was pretty rusty out of the gate. Giving me those mini objectives within each has taught me how to figure out not only how to stagger and pressure enemies, but also reminded me what the difference is haha. That's pretty good design, I think. I've also enjoyed exploring in general, even with the insane amount of pop in on my Steam Deck lol (I will say, the framerate in the open world areas has been a consistent 30, I've only seen dips in towns like Kalm while running).

I don't know if I'll keep trying to clear every sidequest in every new area (a friend of mine IRL warned me about not trying to do every dang thing as soon as it becomes available for the same reasons as Tomm above), but so far, I'm having a great time.
 
Still putzing through Remake PC before getting to Rebirth. The foreshadowing Aerith does in Remake about how she knows things she doesn't is there, but it's a lot stronger in the Japanese script.

For example, when Cloud sees Tifa getting hauled away to Don Corneo's mansion, and Tifa is all like, "I got this, Cloud" so he doesn't immediately pursue. Aerith convinces Cloud to go after her because the situation is much more dangerous than he realized. In the English script, Aerith says to, "Go after her" -- however in Japanese, Aerith says straight up to go after Tifa by name. She's never met Tifa, and only heard her name once before out of context, without any real descriptors attached. So her jumping to conclusions that this must be Tifa is a stretch of the imagination unless you realize she knows things she shouldn't.

Something I really appreciate about these games, btw. Is that when things in the plot don't really make sense to do a 1:1 of the original game's scenario, it just doesn't. Like this event here. Cloud catches up with the Chocobo Cart because come on, it's just walking by slowly, Cloud should be able to catch up to it. So unlike in the original game he does. But he also doesn't immediately pursue because Tifa is like hey, I got this. And given how we've watched her already do incredible things, it makes sense that Cloud would trust her and just let her go. And Aerith - knowing how things should go - gets the plot back on track.

It's a lot of fun to see the connective tissue here in the story for these kinds of things.
 
I started on some old drivers and updated to the current official release with no improvement. The preview drivers *supposedly* are tweaked specifically for Rebirth, so I'm going to give them a shot. I'll drop back to the current release if it doesn't help.
I had no other crashes or freezes with the 25.1.1 AMD preview drivers for the rest of Chapter 1, so I'm pretty happy. Hopefully that keeps up once I get to the open-world areas, but for now I'm going to backtrack and play the Yuffie DLC from Intermission since I haven't had a chance to do that yet.
 
Yuffie DLC is short so it's hard to not recommend it. But you're gonna play it, and then play Rebirth, and realize how much of it was just a beta test for Rebirth mechanics.

The story bits of it is also fairly inconsequential. It'll give a little context to Yuffie's New and Improved character motivations, and a couple side quests, but nothing you couldn't infer.

Something I'm sure someone else probably noticed before with Rebirth, but it's kinda incredible how every single region you visit -- the background music changes depending on how much region intelligence you've gathered. Like, when you hit about 50% complete, the songs change to become a little more robust, and then it changes again after you've got 100%.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I even like the friggin card game in Rebirth. Really having a good time with this game - 22 hours in, on the way to Costa del Sol right now, having just won the Queen's Blood tournament. I'm glad they found a way to incorporate Red XIII flopping around in the sailor's uniform - this game is goofy as hell and I love it.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
You will be amazed at how much mandatory game they stuff into the originally-about-five-minutes-long Costa del Sol section
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I've bounced fairly hard off of pretty much every non-Triple Triad card game Square has made going back to, well, FF8, so this one being fun and relatively simple was a delightful little surprise. I even texted my buddy right when I first encountered Queen's Blood "there is zero chance im playing square enixs twenty fifth version of a fucking card game" and two days later I texted her I've been 100%ing everything in the game, including Queen's Blood lol
 

gogglebob

The Goggles Do Nothing
(he/him)
As a fellow SE card game un-enjoyer, I was impressed not only with how well the card game played, but also how it was integrated into the "world" in small and large ways. Particularly with that boat ride! You can skip it, but why would you want to?

Also, I am trying to get the local city council to pump Queen's Blood Theme through speakers on every street corner, but they keep telling me my ideas are dangerous and vaguely annoying.
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
Bind and Divide in Bravely Default II is about as good a mini-game card game as Queen's Blood, which follows since it's clearly the direct antecedent to it.
 

Tomm Guycot

(he/him)
I should have indicated I've also been violently against most of their forays into CCG's.

I tolerated Triple Triad and it was FINE and made ENOUGH sense but I never MINed it as a source for MAXing.

But Queen's Blood... give me all the dang cards.
 
You will be amazed at how much mandatory game they stuff into the originally-about-five-minutes-long Costa del Sol section
You'd be surprised how much this actually isn't true. Between skipping cutscenes, and doing the bare minimum, you can finish the Costa del Sol section of the game in like 15 mins flat.
 
Sure if you know exactly what you're doing.
I mean, if hitting pause and skip, or following the instructions and only doing the minimum number of mini games to get Cloud, Aerith, and Tifa one swimsuit each (all of which have relatively low bars for success and most people meet on the first try) is hard then I dunno what to tell ya. These aren’t like elite speedrun tactics, they’re just the default game mechanics
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
Give it a rest. I was talking about a normal person playing the game normally, not somebody rushing through it as fast as possible.
 

jpfriction

(He, Him)
Tripadvisor review: Costa Del Sol is so beautiful with so much to do! 5 stars.

First comment: I don’t know what the hell you are talking about. I stayed in my hotel room the whole time and took the first boat home and barely had any fun at all. 0 stars.
 

Tomm Guycot

(he/him)
Tripadvisor review: Costa Del Sol is so beautiful with so much to do! 5 stars.

First comment: I don’t know what the hell you are talking about. I stayed in my hotel room the whole time and took the first boat home and barely had any fun at all. 0 stars.
Six replies from the hotel manager, posted simultaneously.
 
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