Spoiler-Free Review
Tickets for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour are on sale now.
If you’re reading this review trying to decide whether to go to see FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour, then the answer is ‘Yes’. All the new music you love will be in it, and it is all performed amazingly by the ShinRa Orchestra and ShinRa Chorus.
Surprisingly, you also do not need to have played FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth in order to enjoy this concert. The cutscenes paired alongside the music from FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour very, very loosely retell the plot of the game but without any more spoilers in context than you would get from watching the game’s pre-launch trailers.
Finally, the concert is around two hours long with a 20-ish minute intermission after the first hour or so, and it was all quite tightly paced together.
If you want a more detailed review, jump below the following picture to see on.
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Spoilers Start Here
I attended the world premiere of FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, and I really loved what I saw and heard as this tightly timed concert very loosely follows the plot of FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth from start to finish over just a bit more than two hours. It opens up with music playing over the game’s prologue, and it ultimately finishes pre-encore with the ending fights of the game. All of the in-game chapters in between – the Grasslands, Costa Del Sol, Gongaga, Golden Saucer, and more – are very much represented here both on screen and in music.
What really surprised me though was how the music was arranged, as around a fourth of FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour was performed as part of one medley or another. It would often seem that we were spending far too short a period of time with one piece or another before it would seamlessly shift into something else. For a nearly 20-minute segment of the performance, all of the field region pieces, which included Grasslands, Hollow Skies, Junon Region, With Heavy Heart, Mt. Corel, South Corel, Jungles of Gongaga, Cosmo Canyon Region, and Nibel Region, were filed down to around two minutes each and played one after another more or less seamlessly.
Thankfully, the majority of the pieces, such as Galian Beast and Queen’s Blood, were played in full. As a Queen’s Blood fanatic, I thought the live ShinRa Orchestra pulled it off perfectly, even though the deck in the videos that accompanied it was maddeningly simple considering the wide variety of cards and strategies available for people to select and play with. It was also a lot of fun to see the Grand Parade mini-game played in full with all the correct button presses during Rufus’ Welcoming Ceremony, and I could actually watch the parade happen for once instead of trying to keep time with what buttons I am supposed to hit next on the PlayStation 5 controller.
The ShinRa Orchestra played all of this music masterfully, and it was almost indistinguishable from the music heard in FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth. This is a truly professional orchestra, and one that knew we wanted to hear the music we fell in love with in the game. I was sitting in the second row from the front, and all the different sections worked beautifully in harmony together, as conducted by the revered Arnie Roth, without overpowering each other. Despite what Mr. Roth said was a compressed rehearsal schedule, they played all of the music like seasoned professionals and there was a lot of heart to it all. I do want to especially point out the horns section during Welcome to the Golden Saucer: they really elevated themselves above and beyond everyone else present.
Surprisingly, the only thing that outshined the ShinRa Orchestra was the ShinRa Chorus. I have attended concerts for many years now, and this was probably my favorite chorus so far. The moment I was most eager to hear in person, the music from the Gongaga Jungle, had the perfect amount of haunting vocals present, and I honestly would have believed it was faked if I didn’t seen the people singing firsthand. And this was not a one-off situation, either. Whether Loveless Symphonic Suite- Gift of the Goddess or Sephiroth Reborn Symphony was being performed, the ShinRa Chorus was crisp, easily heard, and blended so well together they overshadowed everything else in a positive way.
Towards the top of this review, I talked about how FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour does not spoil the plot of the game beyond what you would see in the pre-release trailers. And this is quite true. While you will undoubtedly recognize the different areas of the game if you’ve only seen the trailers and maybe played FINAL FANTASY VII when it came out for the PlayStation One, you will not be spoiled on this new game’s story in a significant way. In fact, the heavy story beats from the last fourth of the game, including the moment from the apex of the story that I most wanted to see, is not present at all. If you’ve played FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth, then you will know what I am talking about content-wise.
For me, this…was surprising. A lot of the biggest, heartfelt moments in FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth come from this absent content. To see so little of those big emotional story beats from the last part of the game, other than perhaps a little bit in the medley of A Portentous Sky and End of the World and in the encore, surprised me. I was fully expecting to cry during this concert from the one part of the game that made me gasp and do so, and I was surprised that didn’t happen. (And yes, I am being purposefully vague, but you know what I’m talking about if you’ve played the game.)
FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour ultimately made me feel like SQUARE ENIX wanted to err on the side of caution to not fully spoil the game for people who either haven’t played it or haven’t finished it yet. Even of the new content FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth plot-heavy cinematics present, it felt definitely like it was made up of clips that you wouldn’t quite grasp without surrounding context. Considering that other SQUARE ENIX concerts previously did not shy away from indulging in spoilers to great effect, it makes that choice here all the more baffling for me. After all, if you’re coming to a video game concert, you assume that you’re going to be spoiled on the full game.
One other, minor, issue, I had with the cutscenes was that it felt like some of them didn’t know quite where to end and so more or less just cut themselves off. Without spoiling everything, I was surprised that Towards Mt. Nibel and Main Theme of FINAL FANTASY VII- Battle Edit ended the way they did on a slightly weird note. That said, there are others, like Galian Beast or Cosmo Canyon- Sanctum of Planetology, that ended perfectly in a fully satisfying way cinematically.
Finally, one other issue I had with the concert was the performance of No Promises to Keep- Loveless Version. To my great surprise, it was presented as only an instrumental. While the strings section was clearly intended to replace Loren Allred’s voice in the performance, I think they struggled to do so here. This was an especially jarring choice since they played the full game cinematic against it where the song is in fact vocally performed. While I understand that Ms. Allred can’t come along for a full worldwide tour, I was surprised they didn’t have a guest vocalist to fill in.
Now, all of this does not detract much from the concert. Far, far from it. SQUARE ENIX and AWR Productions have managed to create a breathtaking concert that shows off a lot of the new music in FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth over slightly more than two hours. And honestly? I adored it. Jungles of Gongaga, even though it was part of a medley, was everything I wanted to hear in person, I loved Loveless Symphonic Suite- Gift of the Goddess, and Galian Beast is probably one of the best pieces that HAS to be heard and seen live.
There are two encore numbers, which shouldn’t surprise anyone as they have been mainstays of any FINAL FANTASY orchestra performance for over a decade-and-a-half now. And the reason they always fall into those encore slots is because they are so beautiful to hear in person and so strikingly different from each other that everyone has to hear them at least once in person.
Ultimately, if you love FINAL FANTASY VII, and even if you haven’t quite yet gotten around to playing FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth, you should attend FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour.
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Tickets for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour are on sale now.
What is your favorite music composition from FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth?
Are you planning on attending one of the upcoming concert dates?
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