Let's rank all the chores in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth by how much of a pain in the butt they are

There's a lot of great stuff to do in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. There's also a huge number of repetitive, pain-in-the-butt chores

By William Hughes  |  March 5, 2024 | 3:00pm
Games Features Final Fantasy VII
Let's rank all the chores in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth by how much of a pain in the butt they are
All hail Chadley, our nerdy, monstrous overlord Image: Square Enix

As players who’ve spent the last weekend burning their way through it already know, there are an enormous number of things to love about the just-released Final Fantasy VII Rebirth—mostly because there an enormous number of things, period, in the second installment of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII remake project. If we’re lobbing accusations, though, we can’t help but notice that the people of Gaia do seem kind of, well, lazy at times—having a pronounced tendency to ask heroic mercenary Cloud Strife and his party of freedom fighters to do their entire chore list for them for basically no pay, even as he’s a tad busy trying to deal with the twin planet-destroying threats of angelic rival Sephiroth and the Shinra Electric Power Company.

The worst of these taskmasters, of course, is Chadley—the pre-teen mega-nerd who follows Cloud and his friends from town to town, asking them to play video games for him while tasking them with filling out a gigantic checklist of chores in each of the game’s massive open-world map segments. In essence, Chadley is the living personification of Rebirth’s somewhat surprising turn toward Ubisoft-style “map game,” with most of his “world intel” requests forcing you to traverse giant sections of territory, moving from map icon to map icon, and doing the same small grouping of repetitive tasks over and over again. We don’t have exact numbers, but filling out Chadley’s Cloud-do list took up at least a quarter of our 90 or so hours with the game—making Rebirth, for all its good points, a game that’s at least 25 percent chore, by volume.

It’s impossible, over that long a period, not to form some decidedly strong opinions about the qualities of the tasks being set—not all of which are created equal, even on the already curved scale of irritating, repetitive tasks. Which is why, now that the rest of the world has had some time with the game, we’ve put together just such a ranking: Rating all the irritating chores of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, from worst to best, based on how much frustration (or, in a couple of cases, genuine joy) they provoked for us. Please note that this ranking only encompasses Rebirth’s open-world exploration tasks—and thus does not include any of the following other chore-like tasks you may encounter during your time with the game:

Card battles, piano playing, simulator fights, arena fights, the other arena fights, the pirate-shooting minigame, box-smashing, dolphin racing, frog leaping, treasure hunting, chocobo racing, grass collecting, 3D battling, motorcycle fighting, either dance minigame, sit-up contests, spaceship fighting, dog-based Rocket League, minecart riding, or any of the dozen or so other chore-like tasks Final Fantasy VII Rebirth asks you to do to distract you from the fact you’re playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

(If we were ranking them, the sit-up contests would come last.)

Buy Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: Amazon | Best Buy | Target

10. Chocobo hunting
10. Chocobo hunting
Image Square Enix

What is it? You know how nearly every video game developer, at some point in their careers, falls prey to the delusion that their otherwise non-stealth-based video game needs an extended, highly punishing stealth sequence or two? It’s a distressingly common psychosis, presumably brought on by a combination of overwork, underpay, and too much Metal Gear. Now imagine you had to do one such sequence, of increasingly irritating complexity, nearly every time you entered a new region of FFVII Rebirth, in order to get access to the highly mobile birds/franchise mascots that serve as your absolutely mandatory mounts in each area. Have fun!How often do you have to do it? Even the designers at Square-Enix seem to have understood that slooowly sneaking up on birds with unpredictable vision cones and annoying puzzles attached to them was something they could only ask of players a handful of times—even the game lets you off the hook in a couple of its 6 open-world regions, letting you rent chocobos instead of catching them wild. God bless capitalism.How much of a pain in the ass is it to do? Unimaginably. Rebirth has an occasional problem with making players move very slowly for no damn reason anyway, mostly involving dragging crates, dumpsters, and machinery around. (Also: Extended post-traumatic stress sequences.) The Chocobo stealth sequences incorporate all those mechanics alongside the whole stealth game “get caught, do it again!” routine that’s part of why this trend is such an enormous pain in the ass, coming together in a perfect storm of irritation. (There are checkpoints mid-mission, mercifully, but it’s not enough.) It’s the worst parts of the game, the worst parts of open-world tedium, the worst parts of everything. Interminable.

9. Mog Houses
9. Mog Houses
Image Square Enix

What is it? An extended reference to one of the from the original Final Fantasy VII—a little, mostly non-interactive arcade machine you could play in its glitzy theme park, The Golden Saucer—Mog Houses feature the franchise’s other most beloved mascots, the talking teddy bears known as moogles. They also instill, at least for us, a deep and terrible desire for hero Cloud Strife to cut these grinning Charmin mascot wannabes in twain with his mighty Buster Sword; instead, though, you’ll be running around in a cutesy fantasy realm, trying to usher tiny, adorable, psychotically vicious “moglings” back toward the center while they pelt you with magical attacks and, that most Mario Kart of humiliations, literal banana peels. Your reward? Access to stores that sell vital upgrade items in exchange for those annoying “moogle medals” you’ve been filling your backpack with.How often do you have to do it? Once or twice per region. Too often. How much of a pain in the ass is it? Oh, it starts out cute enough! You chase the moglings, they fire a few magic blasts, you successfully herd them home and take your rewards. But Rebirth has a mild obsession with its minigames getting harder as the game goes on, and Mog Houses exemplify that evil impulse in full. By the time you’re doing the final version of this thing, you’ll be dodging a dozen obstacles at once while navigating around very annoying waist-high defenses designed solely to impede your progress, sweating more than you would during actual, life-or-death boss fights. And that little green mogling, the one who shoots the constant wind blasts at you even after you’ve sent him home? That little floating bear is going to hell.

8. Activating towers
8. Activating towers
Image Square Enix

What is it? C’mon, you’ve played a video game in the last 15 years, right? You climb the towers, you push the button, you get a view of the surrounding landscape, and your map fills up with another handful of chores to go do. has so much to answer for.How often do you have to do it? Usually six or seven times per region; finished towers also serve as fast travel points, so you’re encouraged to grab these early. How much of a pain in the ass is it? This is another mini-task where Rebirth’s love of ladling on additional complexity as the game goes on rears its ugly head: Early towers are easy to get up, hand out their meager rewards quickly, and at least get their boilerplate job over with soon. Later towers are irritating mini-puzzles, sometimes involving finding oblique angles to approach them from, or interfacing with the game’s grappling hook system, a.k.a. Extraneous Thing You Do In Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, No. 6,224.Even the simple ones make you engage with the game’s slow, tedious, unpleasant climbing mechanics, though. Pass.

7. Chest hunting
7. Chest hunting
Image Square Enix

What is it? Technically not part of your brutal overlord Chadley’s precious “world intel” list, these are little bonus spots you can find sprinkled around the map: Interesting locations that have a few chests hidden around them, with greater or less amounts of rigor required to uncover them. The loot can range from literally the same garbage that litters the ground everywhere you go, up to, well, slightly nicer garbage.How often do you have to do it? This one is well and truly optional, but there’s usually half a dozen or so of them on each map. How much of a pain in the ass is it? They’re harder to find than anything more overtly painful, since Chadley’s beloved towers won’t mark them down for you. (At least, until you’re messing around with post-game content.) They’re mostly annoying because the loot they hand out is just good enough, just often enough, to make you think you might be missing something by not scouring each of the damn things for a well-hidden chest.

6. Chocobo stops
6. Chocobo stops
Image Square Enix

What are they? Another “optional” map chore, these are bus stops, but for giant birds. You follow smaller birds to get to them, and then “repair” them by picking up a sign. No one but you ever uses them. Video games are bizarre.How often do you have to do it? There are a bunch of these scattered all over each map, each revealed by their attendant tiny chocobo. You’ll want to hit as many as you can find, too, since they serve as both fast travel points and places to rest.How much of a pain in the ass is it? A quite literal one, since the broken Chocostops, for no obvious reason, have busted benches that Cloud’s dainty keister can’t sit on without using a Cushion—a one-use consumable item that you’ll have to buy or craft more of if you want to recover your HP and MP at that spot again. This raises two questions. First: Why make this a consumable, except to force players to interface with Rebirth’s (rudimentary, mostly not very interesting) crafting system? And second: What the hell is Cloud doing to these cushions to render them unusable after a single use?

5. Protorelic searches
5. Protorelic searches
Image Square Enix

What are they? The most diverse set of world intel challenges are also the longest, and most robust, constituting a side quest that spans nearly the entire length of Rebirth’s 90-hour story. Basically, each region has a series of unique minigames that have to be done in order to get pieces of a “protorelic” Chadley won’t shut up about; finish them all, and you’ll get another chunk of the side story, featuring an unexpected cameo from Finals Fantasy past.How often do you have to do it? Usually five times per map, although some of these sidequests are a lot more time-consuming than others; Junon’s version of the returning Fort Condor minigame from Final Fantasy VII Remake goes down a lot less smoothly than the simulator fights that make up the Gongaga version of the protorelic hunt, for instance. How much of a pain in the ass is it? Highly variable. Credit to Square-Enix for making each set of protorelic hunts their own distinct minigame—including strategy games, battle gauntlets, and, joy of joys, yet more stealth sections—but the overall quality of these segments trends toward the “miss” portion of the hit-or-miss spectrum. It’s a shame, because the actual payoff includes some of the best fights in the entire game.

4. Divine summon shrines
4. Divine summon shrines
Image Square Enix

What are they? Half navigation challenge, half memory match, half rhythm game—math is for people who can’t make local gods show up halfway through a battle to cut their enemies apart—these chores are how you empower the various Summon Materia (i.e., magic rocks) that Chadley is always whipping up for you in his weird little nerd lab. In practice, they play out like this: You see some glowing rocks, you break them, you follow a glowing path to a shrine. Once you’re there, you have to push buttons in time with a marker moving around a circle, remembering which buttons to hit when in order to get your prize.How often do you have to do it? Three times per region, no more, no less. And you’ll want to, since they both empower the Summon Materia, and allow you to lower the difficulty of the boss battles you have to wage to acquire them. How much of a pain in the ass is it? Another example of Rebirth Minigame Difficulty Creep, the summon shrines start out pretty easy, with simple patterns that are easy to replicate. By the end of the game, though, expect to be doing 8 or 10 inputs, blind, with no easily discernible pattern, and with a fast-moving marker sweeping around the circle. On the plus side, the music that plays in the shrines is one of the best songs on the game’s extremely good soundtrack, so that’s a bit of a relief.

3. Lifesprings
3. Lifesprings
Image Square Enix

What are they? These are blessedly simple: You see a bird, you follow a bird, you do a very simple set of three “timed” button presses while a pretty song plays. Fin!How often do you have to do it? There are usually four or five Lifesprings per area; you’ll want to do them, too, both because they’re full of occasionally useful crafting materials, and because the game hides some of the other (generally more enjoyable) chores on this list behind completing them. How much of a pain in the ass is it? It’s saying something that the third-placed entry on this big ranking of Rebirth’s chores earns its location on the basis of being strictly benign. Lifesprings are, essentially, the Minimum Possible Unit Of Game: Five minutes of walking, 10 seconds of button pressing, absolutely zero thought. If they only made you press the button twice (or, dare we say it, once), they’d be even better, but as is, they’re a pretty good way to get to hear Rebirth’s interpretation of the main theme from Final Fantasy VII, and not much else.

2. Buried treasure
2. Buried treasure
Image Square Enix

What is it? A chocobo-assisted treasure hunt. Go to a marked location on the world map, sniff around, follow glowing trails to dig up a series of fairly useful items.How often do you have to do it? To be honest, if y0u were required to perform this particular task more often, it’d probably be ranked lower; as-is, you’re doing it a maximum of twice per region, and it can actually be pretty fun to hunt down the various upgrade plans and occasional quest items that are hidden in a series of interesting-looking ruins. How much of a pain in the ass is it? Mild! We would argue that, if you have a magical bird that can sniff out buried treasure, it doesn’t make sense for those mystical stink lines to be blocked by walls, forcing you to sniff again once you get around the obstruction. But these are quibbles! We’re not here to quibble, we’re here to chore, and these are pretty painless as far as chores go.

 
Join the discussion...