Really liked Remake and loved Rebirth. Would score Remake 85-87 and Rebirth 90-92. Both of them are imo hurt by an average narrative and shit endings. But having already finished the original long ago, the parts of the story that I paid most attention to are naturally the changes.
I did enjoy the character dynamics especially in Rebirth. Likeable characters are just as important to me as a good story. So this helped.
Rebirth took what I considered Remake's best quality (combat), polished and raised it to a new level. The vibrant and grand open-ish world is a massive upgrade over Remake's linear design (Midgar is to blame). Rebirth was jaw dropping at times... that I just couldn't believe the game was real. "How did a company meme'd for long development times made all of this in just 3 years?" is the question I kept asking myself.
Its minigames got lots of complaints and hate, but it's honestly not something that I can relate with as I enjoyed most and thought they added colours to a beautiful game. They were also optional and the rewards weren't nearly as important as some made them out to be. Unfortunately though, the one minigame that I quickly disliked is Queen's Blood which happens to be the main one lol. Its "depth" made it a decidedly worse version of FF8's simpler Triple Triad. But hey to each their own. A lot of people loved it.
Not going to list everything I enjoyed or disliked in either game but I came out liking both for sure. Rebirth still has a number of flaws and annoyances that I would like to see addressed in the final game.
