I didn’t like Rebirth as much as Remake for multiple reasons, this included, but also it’s a tedious game full of mindless bullshit that it forces you to engage with regularly. The implementation of tedious bullshit is nowhere near as fun as something like Yakuza and it ultimately drags the game down instead of spicing it up with variety.

Cloud, I’ve discovered a new assassin’s creed tower for you to spend 3 minutes climbing for a 45s cut-scene that fills in 1/6th of this zone’s map. Be sure to do them all and then also do all the dumbass eikon crystals so Odin doesn’t immediately use Gjallarhorn’s Warning to buff himself after hitting you twice and then subsequently spam Gjallarhorn as fast as he can.

Cloud if you want to have decent armor (and by armor I mean materia slots) you’re gonna want to get on your chocobo and spend 2 minutes in the designated zone holding down Up on the d-pad until your chocobo goes through the 25 second animation of lowering its beak to the ground and sniffing so you can get the blue line that will point you to the item, but oh wait it went through a pile of gravel so you’ll have to do it again even though we both know it’s gonna be in that corner 10 feet away.

Cloud if you want to change your materia before doing this simulator battle, you’re going to have to close completely out of the simulator and my main dialogue options, open the main menu, set your materia, and then go through the 15 second long “hello cloud, you’d like to try the simulator ok let me just boot it up for you”

As someone who basically 100%ed Rebirth and had a blast doing so, if Reunion (or whatever the 3rd winds up being named) has even 15% less Chadley and ‘omg 2015 era open world’ exploration padding, I’ll be so fucking happy