Final Fantasy VII Revelation Hands-On Preview & Impressions (PS5) – The final part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy has been a long time in the making. From the reveal of the project in 2015, to the eventual release of the final part in 2027, it’s been a journey for everyone. At Gamescom, I was lucky enough to go hands-on with the game in an early portion of the adventure, and given the entire world to explore in just one short hour.
If I’ve taken nothing else from my preview, it’s clear that Square-Enix aren’t taking this final part on their back foot; Revelation is an ambitious conclusion to one of the industry’s most daring projects in recent years. While I wasn’t able to get a good handle on everything on offer, I have a good feeling.
Final Fantasy VII Revelation Hands-On Preview & Impressions – The Journey Begins Its End
Dropping In
My demo portion of Final Fantasy VII Revelation took place just as the party gains access to the Highwind, and I was essentially thrown out into the world at my leisure. The Highwind has been the premier “feature” of the third part of the trilogy since before we even knew its name, and I can certainly tell why. Giving access to the airship this early stands in lockstep with the philosophy behind each entry.
Where Final Fantasy VII Remake was a story focused adventure in just one city, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was a guided tour throughout the rest of the world. Revelation puts the control fully in your hands and gives the most definitive way to explore the entire world of Final Fantasy VII in a way that has been unattainable before this point. While there’s still obviously a linear path to take, there is far more emphasis on doing what you want.
With the way that the original game was structured, a lot of new content has been created in order to justify returning to what would have originally been “early-game” areas, and that effort is one that I might have to reserve for the final game. For all intents and purposes, each main area of the game has had meaningful changes to make you go back, even if the main narrative might not draw you there.
This is all facilitated through the Highwind itself, a relatively seamless experience of flying to where you want to go and skydiving in. Compared to the system of travelling the world in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it feels good to have the world in the palm of my hand. This will obviously inform a lot of the travel between points, so I have to wonder what kind of restrictions may apply down the road.
Tightened Up Once Again
As expected, Revelation once again builds on the foundation that was established in the first part of the trilogy, introducing further elements to tinker with. Outside of the returning Materia and Synergy systems, Revelation introduces the FITS system. This appropriate acronym gives every party member access to a slew of additional abilities to further tune their combat abilities. Unfortunately, this was one aspect of the demo that I wasn’t able to fully engage with, purely down to time.
Instead of totally changing how each character acts, it seems that each character moderately changes depending on the FIT that they’re using. Base movesets and mechanics are left untouched, but a few extra abilities are dropped in. Each party member can choose one job from a selection of four, and each has a specific role. Warrior offers some more defensive buffs, where summoner allows you to do some seriously cool mixups with classic summons. I look forward to digging in further, but I worry that I was given too much too quickly, such is the case with demos like this.
Revelation also rounds out the playable party members from the original game, finally allowing Cid and Vincent to join the main party. To nobody’s surprise, I spent a lot of time messing around with Vincent when I could, with Cid as my backup. Both characters feel brilliant, but I get the sneaking suspicion that Square Enix were particularly aware of Vincent’s ardent fanbase, and have made the most engaging style possible. Unfortunately, this does make the gulf between particular members of the team that much wider. I fear Barret won’t be seeing much use from me when Vincent is around.
Being able to swap freely in and out of the Galian Beast form is a master stroke, and adds a level of dynamism to his style unlike others. Cid feels similarly built up to take advantage of all the lessons learnt from the previous games, being built partially on the moveset pioneered by Sonon in the first game. It’s a clever reuse of a base moveset, but one that not many might notice, based on him never being properly “playable.”
More than Enough To Do
In my hour with the game, I flitted between a few small objectives. My first half an hour was spent messing around in the Mideel region, an area brand new to Revelation. This involved exploring the town and taking on a quest to help a chocobo come home. Here was where I got a touch of the combat involving the chocobos, and that’s an entire other thing I sadly couldn’t get into.
With all of the chocobo abilities being condensed into one mount, I imagine people might feel a mite more connected with their steed, rather than needing to tame one for every new region.
If anything slightly worried me, it was Chadley’s little AI friend whose apparently taken up residence on our person. Every time I entered a new area, she seemed to have something she wanted to say. While it was possible to pre-emptively shut these down, I do hope we have the option to flat-out turn them off. Sorry MAI.
Again, this might be a result of me playing an early portion of the game and wanting to see as much as I physically could, but I worry that decision paralysis may become a very real problem as the world opens itself up.
My demo then concluded with a more traditional linear stretch, giving me my first taste of Wutai, a part of the Final Fantasy VII world that has been teased since the very beginning of the remake project. The conflict between Midgar and Wutai is a core part of the larger plot, and getting a brief glimpse at how that will be handled here is interesting, to say the least.
I won’t comment on any specific story details here, but I’m curious to see how it all comes together, which is true of the entire game. This demo was largely devoid of any major story reveals, outside of the context that I already know from the original, so any commentary from me is based purely on gameplay.
If nothing else, it seems that Square-Enix is being far more judicious with what they want to show for Final Fantasy VII Revelation. Being the final part of the trilogy, any mysteries from the previous two games are set to be wrapped up here in a nice bow. While it might not be the end of the VII series at large, the story does end with Revelation.
I walked away from my demo feeling optimistic about the endgame, but conscious that my experience has likely been influenced by my short time. Not many demos offer a handbook for the various things you can do, and the breadth of things being this ambitious. Check out any other preview and they might have gone in a totally different direction, and I can’t imagine that it’s by mistake.
Revelation is a sprawling game, clearly. Only time will tell whether it sticks the landing for the players who have waited so long for this conclusion. It’s bizarre to see the final part in motion, and it won’t be too long until we get to see it to the end.
Final Fantasy VII Revelation releases on April 8th 2027, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.