PSA: Don’t burn yourself out on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s open-world activities

I’m normally a completionist when it comes to games, but I wish I had told myself to push that mindset to the side before I startedFinal Fantasy VII Rebirth.

I get the desire to do it all, I really do. In the critically acclaimed sequel, we’re finally let loose outside of Midgar. Square Enix has laid a huge, lush set of biomes to stretch our legs in after being stuck in the cramped hallways and tunnels of the drab city. Despite most of the world activities in Rebirth being standard open-world fare (activating towers, scanning points of interest, and hunting down specific monsters), there’s an undeniable novelty to doing it with Cloud and the rest of Avalanche. What I wish I had known before starting was just how easy it was to burn out on that feeling.

Consider this a PSA: Unless you’re a glutton for content, I don’t recommend trying to 100% complete Rebirth as you experience the story. Don’t be afraid to stick to the critical path when you feel the open-world exhaustion set in. It could save your playthrough.

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Dilly-Dally, Shilly-Shally

When you enter one of the six open-world areas in Rebirth, you’ll quickly discover the exploration loop. There’s a lot that’s worth doing, from excellent side-quests to a host of great minigames at the Gold Saucer. Not everything is worth obsessing over, though. Every time you enter a new area, Chadley will give you a list of world activities to complete, which can be uncovered by activating towers. They’re largely inoffensive tasks that don’t take a lot of brainpower to do outside of some tricky combat encounters.

The problem with all these activities isn’t that they’re bad; it’s that you have no way of knowing just how many you have ahead of you. Every hub repeats the same objectives over and over with little