Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has a lot of mini-games. Some might argue it has too many, some also might argue that there are more than we put on this list. The truth is, Rebirth is full of so many diversions from the strategic, action-based combat that you could argue anything that doesn’t have protagonist Cloud Strife swinging his giant sword around is a mini-game. We are trying to not get too in the weeds about what is and isn’t a mini-game, and go with what is most obviously outside of the game’s “common action.” That includes card games, soccer, and even drill team routines. Let’s count down the best and worst Final Fantasy VII Rebirth mini-games.

Have you ever wondered: what if Switch Sports soccer was a joyless suck-fest that was also mandatory? Of course you haven’t, because no one could possibly want that. But that’s what you get with Run Wild, Rebirth’s riff on soccer starring everyone’s favorite talking tiger, Red XIII. You’ll be in a square arena with four goals, one on each side. Your job is to kick large, bouncing balls into your opponents’ goals and prevent them from hitting the back of the net on your own. It’s not a terrible premise, but the controls absolutely stink. Red moves slowly and his kicks are infuriatingly inaccurate. Worse still is the alternate version of Run Wild that you’ll encounter on an optional quest for Red, where you have to hit balls into various color-coded goals in numerical order in under five minutes, which is quite literally impossible because the controls are so horrible. I hate this game with the fire of a thousand suns. — Jen Glennon

The Kotaku staff largely hates this minigame, but I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for it. Build an arena and I’ll show up I guess, arms swinging and all. Call it my knack for fighters despite my lack of any fighting skills, but I can’t turn down a good bout. It’s especially hard when fighting looks as cool as it does here. with 3D Brawler’s high-definition polygonal fighters. It’s easily where I spent the majority of my time in the Golden Saucer. Fighting games often have a high skill ceiling that I can’t reach, which makes 3D Brawler’s simple Punch-Out-inspired control scheme my ideal level of complexity. On the flip side, the minigame doesn’t evolve much beyond reading simple directional tells, meaning that the only way it meaningfully grows is by speeding things up. Unfortunately, I’m no longer as spry on the sticks as I was in my teenage years, so I face planted more than I succeeded, even if I did have a blast. — Moises Taveras

I’ve looked into the face of the devil, and his name is Kid G. Not only is he an absolute freak of nature, but he’s the gamesman behind one of Rebirth’s most annoying distractions, Cactuar Crush. First of all, having to hold up a laser-emitting Cactuar statue, follow said beam to a fight, win that fight, and come back to Kid G before playing the game is a motherfucker of an entrance fee to pay. Then you actually play the minigame, which forces you into the shoes of an arbitrarily picked party member like Aerith, and puts you through combat trials that are, at best, a fine lesson and, at worst, a hell like no other. Suffice to say, every time I was playing Cactuar Crush, I wished I could be doing literally anything else. — Moises Taveras

Crunch-off, in which Tifa and some bodybuilders compete to do the most crunches, is a pretty unremarkable but challenging mini-game in Rebirth’s suite of detours. It mostly consists of pressing the shoulder buttons on your DualSense in time with QTEs, with each button press moving Tifa’s rep to the end of its range of motion. The precision and quick onslaught of the prompts are what makes Crunch-off tough, but it is, overall, forgettable in the grand scheme of the game, except for those of us gym sickos who are just there to critique every character’s form. — Kenneth Shepard

In Jumpfrog, which you encounter as part of a side-quest in Junon, you get turned into a frog and have to remain on a platform as long as possible. This means leaping to avoid spinning beams and, eventually, dashing to stay on solid ground as panels begin to fall out from under you. This feels like a fun little multiplayer minigame you might find in a Mario Party-style collection, but without the vital multiplayer aspect. Back in the day, my friends and I had so much fun playing the Twisted System minigame in Fuzion Frenzy, which has you competing to see who can remain the longest on a spinning platform with obstacles you have to leap over and duck under. You also see stuff like this in Fall Guys’ assortment of challenges, and it’s great fun. But it’s the presence of other players that makes these games so hilarious and exciting. Without them, Jumpfrog is just a fleeting distraction, a bit of a reflex test that offers a pleasant little reprieve from the game’s journeys and battles, but won’t have you leaping back for more. — Carolyn Petit

FF7 is a game I’ve loved in the back of my head since I was a child and that feeling only solidified when I finally beat it as an adult. I never got farther than Midgar as a kid, meaning that I never got to FF7’s deeply weird middle section, which Rebirth spins into a whole game. That means I never made it beneath Junon and met the world’s best dolphin, who was relegated to one of the most infuriatingly vague minigames I’ve ever had to do, until much later in life. Rebirth does away with that traumatizing tribulation though and reimagines it as a joyful and straightforward time trial in which Cloud rides a dolphin through a course and rams through beach balls. What isn’t there to love about that sentence? I’m also a sucker for a good drift in racing games, and the ability to do so on a dolphin simply means everything to me. It is exactly in line with FF7’s weirdo spirit without being a chore, and reinterpreting the dolphin’s appearance and this minigame as a way to cheer up the children of the war-torn town is the cherry on top of this bizarrely shaped sundae. — Moises Taveras

Throughout Rebirth, I was constantly surprised at how often the RPG’s mini-games would commit to just changing genres. I certainly wasn’t expecting to play a full blown Star Fox-esque space combat sim when I started the next step in Cloud’s journey, but as far as those go, Galactic Saviors is a decent enough One of Those. It’s fun, it’s flashy, and it’s got a banging soundtrack. — Kenneth Shepard

Fort Condor was fun back when it was “Condor War” in the original FF7, and again when it cropped up again as part of Remake’s Intergrade expansion. And it’s still an endearing diversion in Rebirth. It’s a simple tower defense game that Cloud, Barret, and Tifa will repeatedly get sucked into as part of the Junon Protorelic sidequest. You’ll control three types of troops—defense, ranged, and vanguard—and will need to take out all the enemy units within a set period of time. You’ll also have healers, ballistas, and trebuchets at your disposal to turn the tide of battle. The core premise here is the rock-paper-scissors weapons triangle, which is easy to grasp quickly, even though each battle feels unique. Better still, its an excuse to see our heroes in spiffy versions of their low-poly character models from the 1997 game.—Jen Glennon

Here’s the very simple thing: if you give millennials a piano, they will play the opening of My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome To The Black Parade.” It’s a fact of modern life that I will never get over. So when FF7 Rebirth’s demo went live and I saw a video of Cloud Strife banging out that iconic opening G chord, I grinned like a dumbass. That feeling extended to much of my time with Rebirth’s in-game piano, where the game asks you to play many legendary tracks from Nobuo Uematsu’s timeless score. One of my favorite moments in Rebirth is the culmination of a side quest where Cloud’s eventually asked to play Tifa’s Theme—one of the most moving compositions I’ve ever heard—as he’s accompanied by a couple of violinists. Reader, I wept like a baby. And though the rhythm game becomes a bit unwieldy (asking players to keep track of two radial tracks fixed to the thumbsticks) on higher difficulties, getting to become a part of these songs was more than worth the frustration. — Moises Taveras

G-Bike is a second spin on one of Remake’s coolest set pieces. Getting to do sick motorcycle battles, even if it’s in a VR simulation, is still an absolute blast. It’s one of the smoothest controlling mini-games in Rebirth’s repertoire, and knocking some asshole off their motorcycle is always, always satisfying. Sure, there are high scores to chase and personal best times to try and shave, but nothing matches the thrill of swinging your giant sword at some prick while you’re on a motorcycle speeding through the streets. That shit’s peak. — Kenneth Shepard

Queen’s Blood, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s territory-claiming card game, has gotten a lot of praise for its intuitive take on the genre, but it’s also one of the most interesting mini-games in the RPG because of its place in the world. As director Naoki Hamaguchi told Kotaku, the team at Square Enix wanted Queen’s Blood to feel like a cultural phenomenon, and that’s why everywhere you go, there’s are people ready and willing to throw cards on a table. In a game full of mini-games that exist to fill time, Queen’s Blood makes the most of the space it inhabits with a purpose. Its underlying story is one of Rebirth’s most compelling diversions, and it helps that the base mechanics and deck building are rock solid. Now Square just needs to release a physical version or a standalone game that you can play against friends. It would be a hit at game nights. — Kenneth Shepard