Key Preview Takeaways:
- There’s a LOT of content in here, if my two-hour hands-on is any indication.
- Revelation had a bit of a checklist-y feel in my preview; but I’m hoping it feels less bloated than Rebirth
- Vincent is awesome and he’ll never leave my party.
Two hours in Final Fantasy VII Revelation goes fast. I was stunned when the PR rep told us our session was wrapping up; I felt like it had only just gotten underway. At least, that’s what I thought until I reflected on everything I’d done: I zoomed around the skies above its open-world map aboard the Highwind airship, revisited some of the earliest areas from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth to see how they’d changed, and saw a decent chunk of Yuffie’s political quest in her hometown of Wutai. This game is enormous, and Square Enix set us loose to tackle the preview session however we saw fit, revealing just a glimpse of a journey that’s seemingly even more focused on freedom than its predecessors. The big question is if that freedom will allow me to better handle much of the bloat that really dragged down my personal experience with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
I had access to the same preview build as IGN’s Michael Higham, who shared his thoughts in our first hands-on preview of Revelation last week. Even though it was the same demo, everyone I spoke to had wildly different experiences. That’s because the best (and most accurate) thing I can say about Revelation is that it plays like the third act of a JRPG. Of course, it marks the end of Square Enix’s experimental Final Fantasy 7 remake series that’s retelling the story of the PlayStation original across three games, so it makes sense that the third game would play like the third act.
But I’m impressed with how hard Square Enix is leaning into this idea. I was dropped into Chapter 4 of the story where Yuffie, Barrett, Nanaki, and newcomers Cid and Vincent are set loose to explore the continent thanks to Cid’s airship, the Highwind. Free traversal over an entire world map is usually reserved for an RPG’s final hours, but if you treat this whole trilogy as one enormous game, that’s the point we’ve reached, and I enjoyed buzzing around while taking in a bird’s eye view of everything we previously explored in Rebirth, as well as a few new areas.
Chapter 4 is still relatively early on – Rebirth had 14 chapters, while Remake had 18 – but at this point, I was free to go wherever I wanted. I genuinely enjoy sequels that take place on the same world map as their predecessors (Tears of the Kingdom and Pokemon Gold and Silver are the first two that come to mind), so the first thing I wanted to do was see what has changed in familiar locations in the time since Rebirth. After trying and failing to skydive into Midgar (let me in, you cowards!) I checked out the Grasslands, which was the first open zone we reached in Rebirth.
This used to be a relatively tame area filled with fodder enemies placed there for players taking their first steps outside of Midgar. Now, hulking, evil beasts roamed these lands, and it felt noticeably different to explore than last time. I interviewed Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi about the team’s approach to revisiting areas we’ve already seen before, and he told me that the approaching meteor has caused seismic shifts in familiar places, leading to geographical differences. And, all of the side quests in these areas are going to be new, too: after landing in the Grasslands, I was met with probably around a dozen pings leading me to various side objectives in the region.
This gave me some not-so-pleasant flashbacks to Rebirth. I like that game overall, but have to admit that the amount of checklist-y side content and mandatory minigames made the whole thing feel pretty bloated to me. Even though Revelation is doubling down on the amount of content, I’m hopeful that the way it’s presented this time will feel more manageable. You can skydive down from the Highwind and land seemingly wherever you want when revisiting an old region, which does grant an extra sense of freedom and verticality to exploration. This also means you can really zero in on what you want to accomplish by parachuting to a specific spot. I felt like the whole world was mine to explore, and I’m excited to dive deeper into revisiting more regions once I’m not on a strict timer.
Fun fact about parachuting down from the Highwind, by the way: Hamaguchi told me how the mechanic came to be, saying in the original, the Highwind could land anywhere on the world map, but in this fully realized, high-fidelity open world, that wasn’t a legitimate option. So, they turned to an unlikely inspiration: Fortnite. Hamaguchi told me, “So that’s why we had this parachuting idea. And when you look at other games, specifically like Fortnite, it did seem that players, modern audiences, were pretty familiar or welcome to this idea of characters flying down the air using parachutes. So I thought it would be a fun way to also introduce a seamless transition from the air to the ground.”
Grappling Around Wutai
There are exceptions to landing wherever you want in a given region, which I found when I went to Wutai for the first time. Yuffie’s home is fully realized in Revelation, and the main town is gorgeous with tons of tall buildings that are a perfect showcase for one of my favorite additions: the grapple gun. I love a good grapple – the double clawshots in Zelda: Twilight Princess, the grappleshot in Halo Infinite – and while Revelation’s is limited to grappling on specific points highlighted by the UI, it still made getting around this dense town a lot more fun. I even entered into a grapple gun race, where Yuffie had to prove her worth by climbing to the town’s highest point in a limited amount of time.
The road to Wutai is also where I spent the most time with Revelation’s revamped combat. It’s very similar to Rebirth – combat director Teruki Endo told me he felt the team perfected the combat in the second entry, so the third entry was all about polish and increasing player freedom. The way that takes shape is through the new FITS system, which lets you assign one of four classes to each party member. I’ll be honest, though, I didn’t spend much time with this, because I was too busy playing as newcomer Vincent Valentine, who is probably my favorite character to fight as in the series.
Vincent’s unique hook is his ability to transform into the Galian Beast form at will. He turns into a hulking monster with deadly claws, and he absolutely rips through enemies in this form, while his combat in human form is centered around ranged attacks. There’s no limit to how often you can swap back and forth between these forms; it’s only balanced by the fact that staying in Galian Beast form for too long can reduce Vincent’s max HP, but I really didn’t care. I honestly have a hard time seeing myself wanting to switch away from Vincent in favor of other party members. He’s just that fun to fight with.
That said, Revelation again made me appreciate how large the party of characters is this early in the game. Adhering to that “Act 3” structure I talked about earlier, Chapter 4 gave me access to six different characters, each with their own playstyle, and Cloud and Tifa aren’t even in the party at this point for story reasons. If you know, you know. It feels highly flexible right out of the gate, and I really like that out of a meaty RPG.
In two hours, I saw a little bit of flying, explored some old areas, grappled around a new one, and discovered my favorite character to fight as. It was a lot, and no doubt just a taste of what Revelation has to offer. My only hope is that tackling all of its content feels as open and free as it did in this slice of the game. If Revelation can maintain that sense of player choice, I think it will be a really strong ending to this trilogy.
While you’re here, check out these recent previews of other big upcoming games we’ve checked out recently!
Logan Plant
Senior Editor
Logan Plant is the host of Nintendo Voice Chat and IGN’s Senior Editor, Playlist and DB. The Legend of Zelda is his favorite video game franchise of all time, and he is patiently awaiting the day Nintendo announces a brand new F-Zero. You can find new episodes of NVC every Friday on the IGN Games YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.