Ranking Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's Minigames

Moogles and their mogstools exist in each region of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and though they grant good rewards in exchange for Moogle Medals, they still aren't the most welcomed sight during exploration. That's because these mushroom mansions play host to Moogle Mischief, a minigame where you must guide five troublemaking moogles back to the center of the field. But with the ever-increasing complexity of the field and the moogles' propensity to not go in the exact direction you're trying to shepherd them – not to mention their annoying attacks – Moogle Mischief was always a one-and-done minigame in each region.

Glide de Chocobo consists of a handful of obstacle courses placed throughout Cosmo Canyon. After launching off a small runway, Cloud and friends must glide through the air, using air lifts on the ground, floating fans, dives, and more to complete scored courses that yield some decent rewards. The courses themselves aren’t too difficult once you get a grasp on chocobo gliding, which is fairly slow and could feel a lot better, in our opinion. Still, it’s actually reaching these various courses that are the challenge. You’ll need to explore Cosmo Canyon’s rocky nooks and crannies to find the course runways, and we spent more time than we’d like trying to find them all. This region’s not-so-great map, which doesn’t really provide insight into the varying heights of Cosmo Canyon and its caves, doesn’t help at all. We completed these courses for the rewards but have no desire to return to them after the fact.

By taking the standard combat of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Cactuar Crush barely qualifies as a minigame. However, the Corel Protorelic activity adds various wrinkles through its hundreds of cactuars. Some of the mischievous critters require you to use physical attacks, while others necessitate magic. Others make you use a distinct light and dark mechanic to vanquish the foes. It's an exciting way to build on top of one of the best parts of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and hitting the target scores is always a blast.

Getting challenged to a sit-up competition may not sound like a ton of fun, but Rebirth puts a unique twist that borders on a rhythm game. Hitting buttons in time with a rotating meter is simple enough, but once the inputs fade, it becomes a matter of hitting the specific button at the right time to prevent yourself from falling and wasting precious time. It's not one we felt compelled to revisit after the sidequest requiring us to compete, but we had a good enough time making Tifa do more crunches than the woman at the gym who looks up to her.

Transforming into a frog and competing in what boils down to a Fall Guys minigame isn't what Cloud likely thought he was getting into when they left Midgar, but as we've seen, strange things can happen when a lot of Mako is involved. With rotating pillars trying to knock you off the platform, your job is simple: survive. Time your jumps just right and avoid getting thrown off the platform, and you win. It's not bad in any way – in fact, it's quite fun – but its simple gameplay causes it to fall just short of the other minigames within Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Your typical shooting gallery, Pirate's Rampage gives you a concept anyone can understand: shoot the targets before they disappear to rack up as many points as possible. As a first-person shooting minigame, it gives you plenty of interesting cardboard targets and challenging paths to blast through. The controls are slightly different than most first-person shooter players are probably used to, but thankfully, you can decide if you'd prefer to use the right or left stick to aim, which helps seasoned shooting fans succeed.

Animal soccer is the name of the game in this Costa del Sol activity. At the most basic level, you control Red XIII in the effort of shooting balls into nets. But as you play more, different obstacles and objectives emerge, requiring you to think fast as you start pushing specific balls into specific goals, and certain obstacles make you use different shot types to circumvent. Run Wild may fall short of an experience like Rocket League, but as a diversion from the meat of the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth adventure, it succeeds.

Who doesn’t love dolphins? And even more, who doesn’t love riding dolphins? That’s something totally normal to do, right? Especially while swimming through beach balls and jumping off of wooden ramps! Well, Dolphin Show lets Cloud live out his dolphin trainer dreams through an obstacle course where he’s tasked with reaching either Rank I, II, or III for a few prizes. The course stays the same each time, so with diligent practice, getting the highest rank (and best prize) shouldn’t take you too long. And the course is quick with a focus on completing it as fast as possible. Simply dodge moving buoys, hit beach balls to increase speed, and launch off ramps for some extra air time. All you really need to do is drift with L2 around tight corners and guide Cloud’s dolphin to the finish line with the sticks. It’s like an easier, more aquatic version of Chocobo Racing, although not nearly as fleshed out. Still, the rewards, like three Dark Matter materials, are worth the effort.

Similar to Whack-a-Box from Final Fantasy VII Remake, Desert Rush in Rebirth tasks you with attacking various types of boxes in a predetermined map to score as many points as possible before the timer expires. Figuring out the correct path through the level, including destroying the key boxes to open the next area and boxes that add extra time, is incredibly satisfying. This box-breaking game was one we couldn't put down until we found the exact optimal route and secured the highest rank possible. 

It's been a long time since we've gotten a good Star Fox game, but Galactic Saviors helps fill the void ever so slightly. Sure, it's way more bite-sized than any full-on space combat game, but taking on waves of enemy spaceships and blasting down bosses never gets old. The gameplay even feels great despite the inability to switch to traditional flight-stick (inverted) controls. Regardless of that shortcoming, Galactic Saviors became one of our go-to destinations at the Gold Saucer.

G-Bike revamps the motorcycle combat players experienced within the confines of Midgar in Final Fantasy VII Remake, but in a way that you are more focused on points instead of taking down Roche, Shinra employees, and robots in the name of survival. The smooth gameplay and excellent sense of speed help elevate this transposed-from-Remake experience. It's a good thing Cloud hasn't lost his touch while on two wheels.

One of the Gold Saucer's main attractions, 3D Brawler scratches the Punch-Out!! itch, as you must identify patterns in your opponent's movements, then dodge and counter to rack up damage. Though some of the movements you must interpret can be a tad ambiguous, vanquishing a challenging foe is ceaselessly satisfying, particularly since your Limit Break essentially serves as a finishing move in a fighting game. Add in the polygonal 3D visuals reminiscent of the original Final Fantasy VII character models and you have a nostalgic experience fans of Nintendo's iconic boxing franchise will enjoy.

With a boss situated in the middle, you must manage three portals that can spawn elemental robots and defeat the big bad before the timer runs out. The boss enemy has an elemental weakness to allow you to strategize which robots are best at taking the target out, but it's seldom that easy in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's minigames. On top of the main target, you must also deal with minions that the enemy spawns, each possessing distinct elemental attributes. This leads to a fun, strategic experience of managing each portal's path with a good mix of robots who can attack the boss' weakness and bots that can help defeat the minions.

Perhaps the most well-known minigame from the original Final Fantasy VII, Chocobo Racing has essentially evolved into a full-on racing game in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. You can take on standard races, training races, and a variety of special races. You can even compete across a long grand prix to establish yourself as the Gold Saucer's number one Chocobo Jockey. With an in-race economy of ability-enhancement balloons, armor with special attributes, and solid racing mechanics, Chocobo Racing elevates far above the iteration found in the original game.

When Square Enix revealed that a full music minigame was in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, many wondered how in-depth it could get. Thanks to the flexibility afforded by using the direction of the left stick to play chords and the right stick to play individual notes – not to mention button presses allowing for octave jumps – the answer is "very in-depth." The main game of Piano Performance, where you play along with the various themes within Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a more than adequate experience, but if you truly devote yourself to learning how to tickle the ivory keys of the in-game piano, the freeplay mode allows you to play any music you can imagine.

Taking a page from popular mobile games like Clash Royale and Warcraft: Rumble, Fort Condor evolves the basic concept of the original version of the game with modern sensibilities. Placing units across two lanes to not only counter the incoming attacking units but also mount your own offensive tickles the strategic part of your brain in enjoyable ways. Though it's more of a real-time strategy title, the extremely tight timer requires you to be efficient, introducing almost a puzzle-like element for how much you want to turtle up on your defenses before mounting an all-out offensive. Add in hero characters from the Final Fantasy VII party and you have a challenging minigame that has the potential to deliver a rush of adrenaline once everything falls into place (likely after multiple failed attempts). 

Card games within larger video games can be extremely hit or miss. Inserting an optional deckbuilding TCG is one thing, but tying it to a side-quest storyline is risky. Thankfully, Queen's Blood is downright fantastic. Within the first couple of matches, the collectible card game sunk its hooks in us. During our gameplay sessions, we spent hours poring over our decks, crafting our strategies, and challenging every player we could find in Junon, Corel, Nibelheim, and every other Final Fantasy VII Rebirth region. 

And if having superb, lane-based mechanics isn't enough, Queen's Blood is more than just a simple card game you can choose to engage with; one of the most intriguing side-storylines unfolds as you work your way up the ranks to become the world's number-one Queen's Blood player. Not only that, but we loved drawing blood against every single player we could find to add various rare cards to our collections, pushing us to jump back into the deck-builder to tinker with our collection. Queen's Blood may be intimidating at first, but if you take the time to learn, you'll find one of the best in-game TCGs out there, and a minigame that deserves to be mentioned alongside the best minigames in Final Fantasy history.

For more, check out our tips and tricks and best Queen's Blood deck build here.