At first, I thought that some of the final moments lost a bit of strength; however, after remembering how Cloud developed a completely different personality just because he couldn't deal with loss, many other things made sense. The ending of Rebirth is strong, I would even say is pretty bizarre, and from what I see, the author of this review didn't even take the time to analyze it, or to analyze what happened in the previous game. The same goes for Gameinformer, who criticized the amount of extra content and deleted their tweet post after being criticized for their illogical approach, especially when the content is optional. Maybe they should have people who truly love RPGs review these games, people who aren't tired with their lives and jobs, and want (and can) enjoy more than 100 hours of a magical game like this.
IMHO, the game is fantastic, the combat is frenetic, and it's incredible the amount of quality content they put into it. There's always something to do, something to find, and the environments are wonderful (except for the chaos of Gongaga for completionist). I don't know how they did it, but that feeling of the game being gigantic that you felt when leaving Midgar in the original game was faithfully transported to this game.
Regarding the ending, you have a Cloud completely sure he he saved Aerith and descending even further into madness. We have a broken party, suffering, while he remains unmoved, perhaps even happy... which leads to the repudiation of his own companions. We've already seen him become the worst version of himself, and I think it will worsen before the arc of redemption. For those who haven't played the game, personally, I think the ending is less chaotic than the remake because although it leaves you with some doubts, at least it answers many more things. Plus, you have amazing moments that were supposed to be left out until the last game. We will almost certainly return to the events of the Forgotten Capital in the next installment and see what's going on in Cloud's mind and everyone else, so buckle up, because the next game will be very dark.
@markdelaney: That is your opinion, which is sadly taken as the site's opinion, and while I respect it, I believe you are overlooking the bigger picture here as well as the main objetive of the game. It is called short "message" because of something, so "subtlety", imho, was definitely not the intention.
When you are dealing with themes of this magnitude, and you want to raise awareness, you can't be subtlety. Suicide rates and bullying weren't this high 20 years ago, so things have to be taken from a different perspective.
I understand some of the critics to the game and the common comparison to P.T., but I too remember people saying that P.T. didn't feel like SH. Kind of feels like we all have different interpretations of what a SH game should be. However, despite the bad voice acting, the frustrating final chase sequence, and the not so 'subtle' dialogue, I thought it was able to convey an entertaining story without overstaying its welcome, with both great music and scenario design. There is a lot of love put into this game, specially coming from a Japanese developer who wanted to do de SH2 remake, and while not perfect, it had a way to depict many issues in nowadays society.
Lastly, despite the mixed opinions, putting a score of 3 and making it comparable to Kong or Gollum, makes no sense at all.
@phili878: You have autosaves and also safe heavens in which you can make manual saves. 15 minutes of play time is not really a long time. If you had autosaves every minute you wouldn't be able to improve. Also, If you spent too much ammunition or if you got hurt too much and spent all your resources, then you would be done as it would be much harder to recover.
angelbless' comments