I have, but I’m going through the Remake trilogy and my partner is watching me complete the game. As far as I know they have somehow stayed unspoiled this whole time, so I’m going to try to keep it that way as long as I can. I’m playing Remake on Hard to remember the story and delay until my next paycheck, but will zoom through as fast as I can to get any cool stuff I missed and then jump into Rebirth.
But I’m just curious, will they still enjoy Rebirth as much as I enjoyed the original games? Or do they change too many things for the sake of the meta-narrative? They are adamant they won’t play the original btw, they are watching me play for the story while on their phone, and I don’t think will be able to get past the old graphics and lack of voice acting, so I suspect the “This is a sequel, just play the original game” line I keep seeing on Reddit won’t fly for them.
In general I’d say yes if you like modern final fantasy where combat isn’t turn based and there is a lot more flavor to flesh out the world and NPC than games in the 90s could hope to perform. Pretty graphics, Decent overall voice acting, minigames that usually don’t overstay their welcome and you never feel caught up in one area too long. If you actually learn the various mechanics Id say the games are actually pretty easy overall, most people I see complaining don’t even know how combos work, or trying to button mash the same combo onto an optional boss.
90s (j)RPGs were a different breed all together compared to games today that have that title, so while knowledge of the first game would let you in on the fanservice and call back moments, those aren’t required and I’d be betting more than half of the people who played remake or rebirth never played the other FF7 games. In fact some players who did were upset that some characters or scenes were changed quite drastically because what was okay in '97 definitely would not be well recieved by wider audiences in '24
That second paragraph makes me feel a lot better. If my partner gets a better experience because they haven’t played the original, then hey, all the better lol. It’s the story I was most worried about, that by changing things they were making it worse for new players just to surprise old ones. But if they’re still keeping a good story, or hell making it better by updating for modern sensibilities, then that’s great.