Yea I kind of stopped after Junon and started bum rushing the story. For two reasons.

1. I was kind of feeling like the story wasn't going anywhere or at least not quick enough. So I got up to the end of chapter 9 and finally some interesting stuff happened and now I'm pulled back in. At that point I stopped and went back to do all the SQ and side activities when they were close by.

2. Side stuff can get annoying if I don't take a break and just play the game a bit.

Now I'm pretty much all caught up and I'm going to continue the story again. I'll probably finish it from here on out or get close and then go back. Not sure I'll ever 100% every single region.

I felt the same but still ended up doing most stuff in all regions organically.

Junon is probably the worst offender of them all since everything is so jarringly off the beaten path.

So I'm 26 hours in now and am somewhere in chapter 7. As I reflect on these 26 hours my overall experience can be summarized as frustrating.

There's a lot of things I'm really enjoying. The games environments and especially the towns are fantastic. The dialogue and music continue to be a strength. The main story is a highlight. The nostalgia is great. It's also wonderful how much effort went into putting a bunch of extra content in the game, to make it go above and beyond. The game retains my attention because there are so many moments I really enjoy, but that enjoyment is also why it feels especially bitter when I encounter something I don't like.

Over the past week, I've probably spent about 2 hours in combat. I've spent so little time engaging in what I assumed was the core combat/gameplay mechanics, when I eventually do get in a battle, I barely remember what to do, especially If I start switching characters, abilities and start engaging with the materia system I like so much. Even when I do remember, the camera never seems to be able to keep all the enemies within view, without me having to adjust it constantly. It's got to the point where I've stopped thinking the combat is a core gameplay mechanic, especially considering the bulk of the tutorial was hidden inside the Chadly combat simulator, and especially considering I've spent the VAST majority of my time running around the map, collecting herbs and playing minigames.

The minigames are hit or miss. There's certainly a variety which is great, although that does seemingly result in the game having a bit of an identity crisis. Sometimes I'm playing FIFA, sometimes I'm playing Yugioh, sometimes I'm playing Sonic, sometimes I'm getting flashbacks to a horrible Playstation 1 "Point Blank" demo, sometimes I'm playing Final Fantasy VII combat (the combat may as well be a minigame at this point) sometimes I'm playing the run around and collect herbs simulator. A lot of these minigames could really use some additional accessibility or customization options. I really detest the shooting game for example, simply because shoot is bound to either L2 or R2 and my finger gets tired really quickly.

I'm thinking it's time I gave up on most of everything and simply focus on the main story, which does make feel sad, but there's too much fluff that's detracting from my overall experience.

I came home from work and started playing at 7pm. Its now 9:45pm.Chapter 5 took 2 and half hours to get through; most of that time was that fucking Queens Blood thing. I am so fed up with Queen's Blood that the whole Red XIII thing flopped with me entirely. Chapter 6 seems to be nothing but mini games? Is the whole of chapter 6 just messing around in Costa Del Sol?

Does anybody else feel like the "We have find Sephiroth" angle is severely diminished? What the Fuck is wrong with Aerith and Tifa? I am absolutely detesting them right now. I am sooo fustrated with how hard it is to make meaningful progress in the game. I hate the idea that in the 2 hours of free time most of it was fucking mini games.

Just you wait. If you played FF7 before then you know what is coming.

You can forfeit the Queen's Blood tournament immediately if you want to.

If you mean Gold Saucer, that is where I would expect mini game galore. Chapters 4-6 being more mini games than RPG? Not so much. 

Mt Coral, the dungeon that keeps on dungeoning. That was a really long drawn out dungeon. Ignoring that, Coral region is a much better region than Junon was in regards to getting around, but the splicing of the open world and the main story parts together is aching my completionist boner. Also, I swear since Yuffie has joined the club there has been a 30% increase in cutscenes that mostly just have her being being with tons of face zone ins. I love Yuffie. She's always in my final party, but the girl had her own DLC; she doesn't need this much attention.

I'm on chapter 12 now after 43 hours. I've started rushing to the main quest destination, ignoring absolutely every single piece of other content, and my experience has definitely improved.
I feel bad skipping all that content given that I would usually do it all, but the pacing issues and minigame-to-combat ratio became too atrocious to bare. By the time I first got to the Gold Saucer, I was so burnt out, whenever a mandatory minigame came my way, I immediately clicked "Give Up" or AFKd.
Some of the chapters still feel slow, but it's far better than with the inclusion of the side content.

I was worried my new approach to this game would cause my characters and materia to become under-leveled, but easy mode exists, which I promptly swapped to when I encountered enemies which would resurrect each other. I guess I was supposed to silence these enemies, or kill them at the same time, but I'm missing the silence materia, and killing them at the same time is pain that I didn't want to deal with given the wonky targeting system, which is even more of a pain with mobile enemies that go off screen. Unfortunately easy mode feels way too easy and the combat feels kinda lame now.

I'm not sure how or when this game managed to lose me. I thought Remake was fantastic, but whenever I play Rebirth, I feel impatient and frustrated by it. Perhaps the issues I previously highlighted during my initial 20 or so hours of playtime has compromised my experience.

The environments continue to impress, even if the only thing I ever do in them is activate one single control tower. I'm not yet sure if I'll go back and do some of the side content after finishing the main story. The Chadly open world exploration stuff is trash and I don't want to travel from node to node for the sake of crossing tasks off his checklist, but I'm sure there are a lot of hidden gems somewhere. Fortunately I have the physical version of the game, so I can still sell it when I'm done if I choose to do so.

Throwing Rebirth in a blender with XVI would have been a perfect balance of Story and sidestuff. Rebirth has a lot of side content, but it really breaks the pacing of the game. XVI does not offer anything outside of fighting but is very focused. I would of preferred Rebirth to be a linear focused adventure with shit to do along the way(Think FFX) rather than big open sandboxes that put the story on hold if you do them. They reminds me of the Mirror Quest in Twilight Princess or the Collect the Tri-Force pieces in Wind Waker. This not mean that the sandboxes, I love them, but not to use them for UBISOFT stuff.