It has been six years since the ambitious Final Fantasy Remake project began, with the first of three installments releasing in April of 2020. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the second installment, launched in 2024, and now the finale, Final Fantasy VII Revelation, is slated to release on April 8, 2027. I had the chance to head to Los Angeles to play an hour-long demo experience, and it’s safe to say this is truly setting up to be an epic conclusion.
We were dropped into an early-game chapter where the open world becomes available to players, giving me a chance to experience Square Enix’s final vision of what the world of Final Fantasy VII should look like. Players get to set sail on Cid Highwind’s flying fortress, aptly named the Highwind, and can go virtually anywhere they please. The Highwind itself is neat, with some fun interactions taking place, but the real highlight is sailing the skies and deciding where to go next.
Get BWT in your inbox!
Get BWT in your inbox!
Final Fantasy VII Revelation’s open world feels vast without feeling overwhelming.
I decided to jump into Mideel first. Literally. You get to parachute off the Highwind, and there are even hidden skydiving challenges that have you stick the landing in hard-to-reach places for a nice little reward. In fact, there are so many small challenges scattered throughout that exploration feels genuinely meaningful.
There is such a thing as open world fatigue; I know I have certainly felt it, so having a world that allows you to explore it as much as you want without making you feel forced is a great thing. How well that feeling holds up over the full length of the game remains to be seen, but I’m optimistic after what I saw in the preview.
The different locales are absolutely stunning—which is not surprising. The lush jungles of Mideel were what drew me there in the first place, and seeing the lifestream interact with the landscape was genuinely breathtaking. The town was teeming with life, and the continent around it was so vibrant and dense that it would have been easy to get lost for hours exploring every nook and cranny.
Synergies add a new satisfying twist to the combat and story.
Sadly, I didn’t have hours, so I hightailed it to Wutai, the biggest and most important new location in Final Fantasy VII Revelation. Wutai is the home of Yuffie Kisaragi, and there are some really fun story beats that lead the party to visit Wutai. The location itself nails the Japanese architectural aesthetic, and the forests and mountains are just as dense and mysterious here as they were back on the other continents.
I’m excited to see how these locations, along with other new and returning ones, get fully fleshed out over the course of the story. The preview of Final Fantasy VII Revelation only scratched the surface, but it is clear that there is so much to see and do that will keep players enthralled for hours.
Part of that is the combat, which has seen some promising tweaks. Cid and Vincent Valentine join as playable characters, with their own unique skills and abilities. Every character has Synergy moves that work both from a combat and a story perspective. Having Cid and Yuffie combine their Dragoon and Ninja abilities to take down a small monster was exceptionally satisfying, and those types of moves will be crucial when taking on bigger enemies as well. I didn’t have enough time to really dive into the different pairings, but what I did see was encouraging.
Final Fantasy VII Revelation looks like it will be the epic conclusion everyone has been waiting for.
But the real highlight is the FITS system. FITS takes four classic Final Fantasy classes (Warrior, Knight, Black Mage, and Summoner) and allows each character to equip one of them to unlock new abilities. This adds another layer to team composition that is going to be extremely important. You can apply any FITS to any character, and they are unlocked fairly early on too.
FITS are not just cosmetic. They can make characters significantly more powerful when used appropriately. Or, if you’re like me, you’ll try running a full team of Black Mages and hoping nothing goes wrong. Because I didn’t have the chance to check out one of the harder boss battles, I wasn’t able to see these operating at their fullest, but what I did experience in overworld fights while traveling between locations was definitely intriguing. The abilities don’t get to shine as much when you’re easily smashing a smaller enemy, but it was easy to see how useful these will be against tougher foes and how important it will be to mix and match the setups.
Final Fantasy VII Revelation looks like it will be the epic conclusion everyone has been waiting for, as long as it can thread the needle with the story’s ending. The combat is a blast, visuals are stunning, and the emotional pull of it all made even my limited time an unforgettable experience.
