The opening of Rebirth had me so amped, like the game was gonna up the anty from Remake. Like it was gonna be a big chase with lots of action and weight. But I've played 14 plus hours and feel like I've gotten NOWHERE. I'm only at Junon now and after wrangling the mountain climbing chocobo, I have to follow a context-less MAP to find some random gear pieces to wake a dude up. It was there where I said to myself "wtf they padded this MORE than Remake!?"

It's not that I dislike side content though, it's just the stuff I've been doing feels so irrelevant from the main story, like total pointless deviations.

What do the dedicated fans of the original FF7 feel with Rebirth comparing? I feel disappointed that we didn't get the game promised in the first couple trailers over 10 years ago now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kznek1uNVsg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3sBZ5Nr4hc
First 2 trailers had much darker tone, but over time they replaced it with the silly fanservice instead of focusing on the core of the unoriginal. May have turned out this way because the dev team switched. Isn't Remake and Rebirth made by more of a Square B-Team? I remember originally Cyberconnect 2 was involved but Nomura was also more closely tied to he dev too. But things changed.