Final Fantasy VII Revelation, the third and final entry in Square Enix’s ambitious remake trilogy, is shaping up to be a sprawling open-world epic built around player freedom, and a recent two-hour hands-on preview has given journalists a rare glimpse of what the game promises to deliver. Set in Chapter 4 of the story, the demo dropped players into the skies above a fully realized world map aboard the Highwind airship, where they could revisit familiar regions from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, explore new territory, and test the game’s revamped combat. The preview, conducted by IGN’s Logan Plant, offered a striking takeaway: Revelation plays like the third act of a JRPG, marking the culmination of Square Enix’s experimental retelling of the PlayStation original across three games. The central question now facing the community is whether this sense of freedom will translate into a less bloated experience than its predecessor.
The preview build, shared with outlets including IGN’s Michael Higham, produced wildly different experiences depending on how testers approached the session. Plant spent his time zooming around the open world, revisiting early areas from Rebirth to gauge how they had changed, and diving into a portion of Yuffie’s political quest in her hometown of Wutai. The game is enormous, and Square Enix deliberately set testers loose to explore the demo however they saw fit, revealing only a fraction of the journey ahead. That design philosophy points toward a trilogy that is seemingly even more focused on freedom than its predecessors, though the big question remains whether that freedom will help players manage the bloat that Plant felt dragged down his personal experience with Rebirth.
Playing Like the Third Act of a JRPG
Plant described the best and most accurate way to understand Revelation as playing like the third act of a JRPG. Since it marks the end of Square Enix’s experimental remake series, it makes sense that the third game would feel like a conclusion. The team leaned hard into this idea, dropping testers directly into Chapter 4, 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 across 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 is precisely the point the series has reached. Plant enjoyed buzzing around while taking in a bird’s-eye view of everything explored in Rebirth, as well as a few new areas.
Chapter 4 is still relatively early in the grand scheme — Rebirth contained 14 chapters, while the original Remake had 18 — but at this point testers were free to go wherever they wanted. Plant noted that he genuinely enjoys sequels that take place on the same world map as their predecessors, citing Tears of the Kingdom and Pokémon Gold and Silver as examples. His first instinct was to see what had changed in familiar locations since Rebirth. After humorously failing to skydive into Midgar, he checked out the Grasslands, the first open zone reached in Rebirth. This area used to be a relatively tame region 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.
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.
Naoki Hamaguchi, Final Fantasy VII Revelation director
Plant interviewed Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi about the team’s approach to revisiting areas players have already seen, and Hamaguchi explained that the approaching meteor has caused seismic shifts in familiar places, leading to geographical differences. All of the side quests in these areas are going to be new, too: after landing in the Grasslands, Plant was met with roughly a dozen pings leading to various side objectives in the region. This gave him some not-so-pleasant flashbacks to Rebirth, where the amount of checklist-y side content and mandatory minigames made the whole thing feel pretty bloated. Even though Revelation is doubling down on the amount of content, Plant is hopeful that the way it is 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 grants 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. Plant felt like the whole world was his to explore, and he is excited to dive deeper into revisiting more regions once he is not on a strict timer.
There is a fun origin story behind the parachuting mechanic. In the original game, the Highwind could land anywhere on the world map, but in this fully realized, high-fidelity open world, that was not a legitimate option. The team turned to an unlikely inspiration to solve the problem. As Hamaguchi explained, players in modern games were already familiar with characters flying down from the air using parachutes, so the mechanic became a fun way to introduce a seamless transition from air to ground.
Grapples, Combat Overhaul, and Vincent’s Beast Form
While free traversal is largely possible within a given region, there are exceptions, which Plant discovered when he 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 serve as a perfect showcase for one of Plant’s favorite additions: the grapple gun. He loves a good grapple, citing the double clawshots in Zelda: Twilight Princess and the grappleshot in Halo Infinite as inspirations. Revelation’s version is limited to grappling on specific points highlighted by the UI, but it still made getting around this dense town a lot more fun. Plant 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 was also where Plant spent the most time with Revelation’s revamped combat. It is very similar to Rebirth — combat director Teruki Endo told him he felt the team perfected the combat in the second entry, so the third entry was all about polish and increasing player freedom. That philosophy takes shape through the new FITS system, which lets players assign one of four classes to each party member. Plant was honest that he did not spend much time with this feature, because he was too busy playing as newcomer Vincent Valentine, who he considers probably his 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 absolutely rips through enemies in this form, while his combat in human form is centered around ranged attacks. There is no limit to how often players can swap back and forth between these forms; it is only balanced by the fact that staying in Galian Beast form for too long can reduce Vincent’s max HP. Plant did not care, and he honestly had a hard time seeing himself wanting to switch away from Vincent in favor of other party members. He is just that fun to fight with.
That said, Revelation again made Plant appreciate how large the party of characters is this early in the game. Adhering to that “Act 3” structure, Chapter 4 gave him access to six different characters, each with their own playstyle, and Cloud and Tifa are not even in the party at this point for story reasons. It feels highly flexible right out of the gate, and Plant really likes that out of a meaty RPG.
Looking Ahead
In two hours, Plant saw a little bit of flying, explored some old areas, grappled around a new one, and discovered his favorite character to fight as. It was a lot, and no doubt just a taste of what Revelation has to offer. His 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, Plant believes it will be a really strong ending to this trilogy. The full release window has not yet been confirmed, but the preview has already generated considerable excitement among the community, with many praising the freedom of exploration and the depth of Vincent’s transformation mechanic. As the series moves toward its conclusion, the focus will now shift to how Square Enix balances the sheer volume of content with the seamless, player-driven experience that defines the final act of this epic saga.
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