I enjoyed Rebirth a lot. One area of the game reminded me of Xenoblade. So that was my fave map. The last act tho kinda stinks. Some bad writing and a bit too fan service. I enjoyed it overall tho.. Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth. I love that franchise but that game I had to force myself to finish. In fact, I took a break from that game halfway through to play and finish Rebirth and a couple of other RPGs then came back to IW and still had to force myself to finish it. Rebirth is the best FF effort since FFIX tbh. Not counting side games and MMOs. Still rank FF7 original above it. I'd other RPGs are generally better. Persona 3R is. Xenoblade series in general. Metaphor looks amazing. Stacked year for the genre tho. No matter how you feel about Rebirth.

Played the original 25 years ago. Recently picked it up on the Switch. I wanted a slow paced cosy game for handheld gaming and a turn based RPG is perfect for that.

There is still a lot to like. The writing is great. From emotional to downright funny. The battle system is still a lot of fun. But, I have to say this, the mini games suck. Golden Saucer, Condor and the rest sprinkled in are downright rough and infuriating.

I played FF7 Remake, but not Rebirth (for many reasons), but hearing the emphasis on mini games I think that was a wrong choice.

FF7 Rebirth is a great 25 hour game. Problem is it's 50+ hours.

Isn't that typical JRPG playtime though? That's always been one of the biggest reasons as to why I can't get into JRPGs. Along with the anime art style and notorious grind most of the games have, but that's a different matter altogether.

I'll see so much talk about Persona, FF, Xenoblade, Dragon Quest, Ys, Trails of, etc. and I'll see how long it takes to play the games and they're upwards of 50 hours. Many of them can go up to 100 hours!

I did play FF7 Remake and FF16. And while I did enjoy them, it was pretty obvious the amount of filler that were in the games that really inflated the playtime and did sour my experience a bit.

So FF7 Rebirth being a 50 hour game doesn't really surprise and I feel like that should be expected.

To clarify, my complaint isn't about the length. A game being 50 hours isn't inherently bad, if it has 50 hours of engaging content. FF7 Rebirth doesn't. You mentioned the filler in FF7 Remake, and I think it's worse in this one. There's some good parts, but to get to them you have to slog through way too much filler that ranges from tedius to decent. 

Both FF7 Rebirth and FF16 "heavily underperformed" as per wccftech. In response to comments about Square's expectations sometimes being unreasonable, analyst Daniel Ahmad also reports that "This is one of the rare cases where Square Enix is being reasonable, as both games really did underperform compared to past entries."

https://wccftech.com/final-fantasy-xvi-underperformed-disappointing-profits/#:~:text=Final%20Fantasy%20XVI%20and%20Final,Square%20Enix%20console%2Dexclusive's%20strategy.

On the bright side, they both apparently made profit, against silly claims that they'd need to sell 5 million copies to break even.

What FF needs:

1. No more AAA Remakes after Part 3. Especially not segmented remakes.

2. No more Devil May Cry bullshit with minimal RPG elements (FF16).

3. Switch 2 ports. And maybe simultaneous multiplatform launch.

4. Consistent high quality (90+ with a strong user reception).

5. This is controversial, but I think they need to stay away from anime style and tropes which are embarrassing or cringe or weird to a lot of gamers. Anime-esque games that aren't Pokemon or waifu gachas do not have huge audiences. Modern Zeldas have cartoon aesthetics, but not the anime tropes or vibes.

If there are people around me, I know I would feel a lot more comfortable playing Tears of the Kingdom than FF7 Rebirth lol.

5) is wrong, in truth is the lack of anime-esque elements that are making FF declining in Japan, while also failling to be a fan-favourite among western anime crowd

Final Fantasy have already distance itself of many of its "Japanese" aesthetics and narrative for decades now. It somehow worked until XII but it's clearly not working anymore 

XVI is a esthetically indistinguishable from western RPGs. Even the narrative is closer to Game of Thrones than any JRPG lol 

Culturally speaking Japan entertainment became way more homogenous and nationalist in their tropes and cliches during the 2000s. Anime and manga diversity decreased to an unfathomable degree, probably related with the fact anime development become expensive so you need to cater a specific demography of buyers. Games simply follow suit of an overall media tendency

Long gone were the pieces of entertainment in Japan that tried to incorporate more western values, aesthetics and narratives. Just look at how Fire Emblem looked in the 90s vs now. Or even OG Xenoblade vs Xenoblade 3

I know it sound strange, but if Final Fantasy looked more like Sword Art Online it would sell better not worse 

That sucks, it is definitely an amazing game and way better than the first one (that was also an amazing game)...

Japan represents a small fraction of total game sales for big franchises not made by Nintendo. But even there, the biggest games aren't really anime in vibe, they just have cartoon-ish aesthetics. On a surface level BotW/TotK are more "anime" than FF7 Remake/Rebirth, but delve a little deeper and you'll see that the latter are much more anime. I'm talking about cinematics, direction, character mannerism, dynamics, eye-candy, camera angles, comedy, tropes. You get fairly similar vibes to an anime aimed at 16-18 year olds.

Splatoon, Monster Hunter, Mario, Zelda, Minecraft, Animal Crossing, I don't consider these "anime-games", or at least not in the sense that I meant. Granblue, Tales, Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, and Persona on the other hand are indeed anime-games, hence their popularity is extremely limited, and it takes a miracle for them to reach 5 million sales globally no matter how good or consistent they are.

NieR Automata broke through, but it wasn't an anime-game neither aesthetically nor by content. Devil May Cry 5, Resident Evil, Soulsborne/Sekiro, Monster Hunter, none of them are anime-games, all of them grew significantly and will sell over 10 million minimum per game with very little reliance on Japan.

Granted "Anime" is a very broad umbrella. I'm referring primarily to the average popular shounen anime, and not the likes of Berserk or Monster lol.

And to be clear, I'm not saying it's inherently "wrong" to target this demographic. It's entirely possible that targeting a specific demographic will popularize your game. A mature game that only appeals to 2% of gamers is less successful than a game that appeals to 20% of its limited demographic. I just don't feel that it's a beneficial direction for Final Fantasy if the aim is to grow in sales and keep up with Capcom's or FromSoftware's games. Even Devil May Cry is bigger than Final Fantasy nowadays, it hurts man.