The final instalment of Square Enix’s reimagining of the 1997 classic gives full open world access and adds a costume-based character class system.

Most fans would agree that Square Enix’s monumental project to remake the 1997 classic Final Fantasy 7 has been an overwhelming success. To expand a single game into a trilogy was a bold move and a huge undertaking, but both 2020’s Remake and 2024’s Rebirth met with huge critical success. Which has bred huge anticipation for the final part of the project, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation.

We’re now in the last stages of the wait for Revelation. It’s due for release on April 8, on Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Switch 2 from launch, as well as PlayStation 5). Accordingly, Square Enix allowed us to get our hands on Revelation for the first time at Gamescom last month. We played it, unsupervised and very much in open world mode, for about 50 minutes. Although, promisingly, it felt way shorter than that, and left us itching for more.

Amongst other things, Rebirth added a new system called Synergy, to the gameplay blueprint established by Remake, and so Revelation adds new elements to Rebirth. Its main new system is entitled FITS and while we didn’t have enough time to examine all its complexities, and all the ways in which it can impact how you play, we did get a feel for the basics.

FITS is simple enough to explain: it’s a set of four outfits which can be equipped to all of Revelation’s (myriad) playable characters, each of which brings specific new abilities and play styles. The four FITS options are Warrior, Knight, Black Mage, and Summoner, which are fairly self-explanatory. Warrior is offence-focused, whereas Knight is defence focused (so a character equipped with it can draw fire from the rest of the team), Black Mage is magic focused, and Summoner brings much more immediate access to Summons in pretty much any battle.

There’s a visual element to FITS, where the characters wear the FITS outfits, and they all look pretty cool in them. FITS also plays into the Synergy upgrade system which, we suspect, will lead to a lot of experimentation and respeccing when you get to play the full game. That’s because you can acquire specific upgrades for each character according to what FITS suit they are wearing and also according to which other character they are synergising with. If you found Rebirth’s Synergy system a tad arcane, prepare to be even more confused when you return to it in Revelation.

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Another obvious addition to Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is the High Wind, an airship that allows your motley crew to cruise around the entire open world and parachute down wherever they want. The High Wind’s captain is Cid, a familiar name from the Final Fantasy universe, who becomes an addition to Revelation’s party, along with the vampiric Vincent Valentine.

The Gamescom play-through took place in Chapter 4 of the game which, Square Enix informed us, was where the Revelation party first gain access to the High Wind. Thus, when it started, we were invited to undergo a tutorial explaining how to pilot the airship. However, we eschewed that, as it would have eaten into our play time, and the High Wind is pretty easy to pilot anyway.

Chugging away above the clouds, it drove home the open world nature of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, which should render it even longer, in terms of play time, than the previous two instalments of the trilogy. All the areas of the familiar map were clearly labelled, so it was just a case of flying to whichever one we fancied and heading down to ground level.

It was tempting to head to Wutai – a new area for Revelation, along with the likes of Rocket City – but we were told that it housed the next instalment of the game’s story, so we chose to do some exploration elsewhere first. Getting down to ground level was pretty cool: you position the High Wind, then press a disembark button and jump off its side. You can then glide around in a controllable manner before deploying your parachute; pressing R1 just before landing causes you to seamlessly alight into the saddle of a chocobo.

We started off in the Grasslands, familiar from the early stages of Rebirth. The first impression was that Square Enix has once again made an incremental improvement in the game’s visuals, as it did between Remake and Rebirth. Already trodden areas felt lusher and more detailed, and the map was studded with new quests and suggested areas to explore, plus Moogle shacks, locations of Queen’s Blood players, and the like.

We found some low-level enemies to battle and triggered a few FITS moves, which caused a decent amount of damage and was accompanied by plenty of eye-popping visual effects. In truth, we never found any sufficiently challenging enemies to draw many conclusions about which FITS outfits we preferred, and which ones fared best in which situations. But making such discoveries should be a fun aspect of playing Revelation.

At one point, we had a visitation from MAI, the female version of Chadley, and Chadley himself was in attendance when we visited the chocobo farm. We discovered that World Intel towers include new activities and that Revelation provides a handy new gadget in the form of a grappling hook which can latch onto designated grapple posts.

Also, our chocobo could jump higher than previously and even hover; Square Enix says that the chocobos’ strength will increase as the party levels up, so eventually, you should be able to more or less fly when riding them, providing easier access to previously inaccessible parts.

We also found a parachute landing target, not unlike a helicopter landing pad, which promised rewards if we returned to the High Wind then parachuted down to land on it. Returning to the High Wind at any point was a simple matter of a single button press, and fast travel is available throughout the map.

Finally, with time running out, we quickly checked out Wutai, managing to parachute into its Capital City without triggering a story quest. We then found ourselves in a very impressive environment, in a bowl between mountains, with pagoda-like mediaeval style Japanese buildings liberally surrounded by blossoming cherry trees. While on the streets, large numbers of cats were evident, which Revelation encouraged us to photograph.

One new aspect of Revelation, which we didn’t encounter, was the Weapons – the planetary guardians seen in Rebirth but now, in Revelation, elevated to full-blown boss status. Full use will surely have to be made of the FITS system and synergies to overcome those.

But one thing was certainly obvious: with its instantly available open world and a vast store of new side quests and explorations on the map, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will be even more of a time-sucker than the previous two games in the trilogy. It should represent the ultimate realisation of Square Enix’s visionary reimaging of Final Fantasy 7 and the end of the most ambitious remake project ever attempted.

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