It’s no secret that I’m a long-time Final Fantasy fan. I’ve reviewed a heap of the games in the series over the years, and few have had quite the same impact on me as Final Fantasy VII and the ambitious remake project that followed it. After Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, I’m more than ready to see how Square Enix brings this enormous undertaking to a close.
Thanks to Square Enix, I recently had the opportunity to go hands-on with over an hour of Final Fantasy VII Revelation, the third and final entry in the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy. While my time with the game only offered a small glimpse at what Square Enix has planned, I got to see where this final adventure is heading, explore a brand-new location, take the Highwind out for a spin and experience some of the new systems being introduced.
And, perhaps most importantly, Revelation already feels like the point where the scale of this remake project is truly going to explode.
Final Fantasy VII Revelation is the concluding chapter of Square Enix’s reimagining of the original Final Fantasy VII. It picks up following the events of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, with Cloud and his companions continuing their journey across a world that is increasingly heading towards catastrophe.
The stakes are higher than ever. Sephiroth remains at the centre of the conflict, while the threat of Meteor, the awakening of the Weapons and the escalating turmoil across the planet all set the stage for what Square Enix is promising will be the largest adventure of the trilogy.
Where Remake gave us an incredibly detailed take on Midgar and Rebirth opened the world up considerably, Revelation looks set to take that idea and push it even further. The Highwind is now a major part of the experience, allowing players to freely travel across the planet and choose where they want to go next. That freedom was one of the first things that really struck me during my hands-on session.
My preview began aboard the Highwind, where I was introduced to Cid and the rest of the crew in a cutscene. One notable absence was Cloud. In fact, Cloud wasn’t present for any part of the section I played, something that fans familiar with the original Final Fantasy VII and the events surrounding this particular point in the story will probably understand.
The opening portion of the demo acted as something of a tutorial. I could wander around the Highwind, speak with the various characters onboard, get familiar with the controls and learn how some of Revelation’s new mechanics work.
One of those is the grappling gun, which becomes an important traversal tool. It can be used to reach higher areas, swing between locations and scale the rooftops of environments in a way that adds considerably more verticality to exploration.
Naturally, there were plenty of distractions waiting for me aboard the Highwind, too. I got to speak with a number of familiar faces, including everyone’s favourite information broker, Chadley, and even had the opportunity to play a rounds of Queen’s Blood.
As tempting as it was to spend more time exploring the ship, eventually I decided to get on with the actual adventure. That was when Revelation’s scale really started to sink in.
For the first time, I was able to properly pilot the Highwind and fly around the world. Opening up the map revealed just how enormous the planet is, with major landmarks separated by huge distances. I wasn’t being funnelled towards a single objective. I could pick a direction, choose a destination and simply go.
I could fly over the world, land wherever I wanted and then parachute down to the ground. I decided to test this out almost immediately and, naturally, managed to stumble across an Alpha enemy that the game made very clear I probably shouldn’t be fighting at my current level.
I took the hint, got back aboard the Highwind and started looking at the other destinations available to me. Costa del Sol was there. Junon was there. Gongaga was there. But one destination immediately stood out. Wutai.
Wutai is a location that hasn’t yet been visited during the remake trilogy, making its appearance in Revelation particularly exciting. Having recently featured prominently in the game’s trailers, it was one of the first places I wanted to see for myself.
I set a marker and was immediately met with an objective distance of more than 15,000 metres.
So, I started flying. Eventually, I arrived at Yuffie’s homeland and was immediately struck by how different it looked from the locations we’ve explored in the previous games.
Wutai is absolutely gorgeous. The city is bursting with colour, elaborate Asian-inspired architecture, lush vegetation and towering structures. There’s a huge amount of verticality to the environment, with buildings and pathways stacked on top of one another and plenty of opportunities to use the grappling gun to move around.
I spent a surprising amount of my hands-on time simply traversing the city. I’d climb onto a rooftop, grapple across to another building, drop down into a new area and then find another route upwards. It made Wutai feel less like a traditional open-world location and more like a giant playground designed around movement and exploration.
The story missions I played were also heavily focused on Yuffie. They explored her history, her connections to people from her past and her relationship with her father, while giving me more insight into Wutai itself.
There was a strong sense that this wasn’t simply another location to tick off the map. Wutai has a history and identity of its own, and Revelation seems keen to make the most of that.
My time in Wutai also gave me the chance to experience another of Revelation’s new additions: the FITS system. FITS introduces new combat roles that can change the way characters operate in battle. During my session, I equipped Cid with a Knight loadout and Barret with a Warrior loadout. Doing so changed their outfits as well as their combat roles, giving them access to abilities that altered how they functioned in a fight.
It’s an interesting addition because the Final Fantasy series has obviously played around with job systems for decades, but the remake games have generally given their characters much more defined combat identities.
FITS looks like it could provide a way to shake that up without completely removing what makes each character unique. My time with the system was brief, so I’m particularly interested to see just how deep it becomes in the finished game. If there are numerous FITS options for each character, and those choices can significantly alter how a party functions, it could add another meaningful layer of customisation to Revelation’s already flexible combat system.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from my time with Final Fantasy VII Revelation is just how enormous it feels. Square Enix clearly wants this final game to sell the idea that we’re travelling across an entire planet. The ability to freely pilot the Highwind is a huge part of that, but so is the way individual locations are designed.
The grappling gun gives environments more verticality, while the Highwind gives the world more horizontal scale. Together, the two systems make the planet feel considerably larger than anything we’ve experienced in the previous two games.
And visually, it’s an impressive achievement. I played the preview build on a PS5 Pro and was consistently impressed by how vibrant and detailed the world looks. There were certainly areas that still felt like they were works in progress, which isn’t surprising given that this was a preview build with months of development time still remaining. But the overall presentation was already incredibly polished.
The environments are lush and full of life, even as the wider world is being consumed by conflict. Character models look fantastic, clothing textures are remarkably detailed and animations and facial expressions are, for the most part, incredibly polished. Considering the game is still more than six months away from launch, there’s plenty of time for Square Enix to refine what I saw even further.
My time with Final Fantasy VII Revelation only represented a tiny sliver of what the finished game will offer, but it’s difficult not to come away from the preview feeling excited.
Between the sheer size of the world, the freedom offered by the Highwind, the vertical exploration enabled by the grappling gun, new systems like FITS and the continued focus on character-driven storytelling, Revelation looks like it’s aiming to be a genuine culmination of everything Square Enix has built across this trilogy.
And based on the objectives and locations I encountered during my hands-on session, this is going to be a massive game. There looks to be an enormous amount to see, explore and do, and I’ve only scratched the surface. I’m particularly keen to see how Wutai fits into the larger story, how the various new gameplay systems evolve throughout the adventure and, of course, how Square Enix ultimately brings this long and often unpredictable journey to its conclusion.
After spending more than an hour with Final Fantasy VII Revelation, I’m left with the need to play more. Fortunately, the game now has a date.
Final Fantasy VII Revelation launches on April 8, 2027, for PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
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