Playing Final Fantasy 7 Revelation Reminded Me of Its Best-in-Class Combat, But It Needs to Stay Focused | IGN Preview

Cid and Vincent are fantastic additions to an already great party when it comes to the evolved combat system.

Wutai has been recreated and expanded similarly to other locations to give it more importance in the story.

Flying across the open world is neat, but it could be quite bloated with sidequests of checklist objectives and frequent interruptions in gameplay.

It's a little surreal that the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy is about to come to a close; this reimagining of one of the most formative games has had quite the journey from the PS3 tech demo and the long development cycle to its conclusion with the upcoming FF7 Revelation. And so, there's a lot riding on Revelation to tie up all the loose ends that've been set up while giving the trilogy an ending to match the impact we felt almost 30 years ago. But, those aren't the kinds of things you'd gather from a preview demo!

Instead, my hands-on time was pretty overwhelming with exploration through piloting the Highwind, skydiving from the deck onto any open region, and just learning how to play as Cid and Vincent before my time had run out. Although this was centered around the freedom afforded by Cid's airship in the open world, I also got a glimpse of how the story kicks off in Wutai, which is a real treat for those who remember how it was in the original. The predominant feeling I came away with from this demo, however, is that maybe Revelation is getting carried away with stuffing its world with side content for the sake of it (to the point of interrupting the gameplay flow). Perhaps that's a symptom of trying to pack as much as possible in an hour-long demo window, but at least I know that Revelation seems to be upholding FF7's title as having my absolute favorite action RPG combat to date.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation Preview Screenshots

Knowing my time was limited, the first thing I did was jump into a few high-level battles with Cid and Vincent in the party because, boy, I've waited a long time to see how their personalities and movesets would be adapted to this combat system. The map was littered with a near-incomprehensible number of side activities, but I dropped onto the field in the Mideel Archipelago region to lock in on the optional Combat Assignments. After just a few battles, I was thinking to myself, 'Why would I ever swap them out of the party?'

Cid's ability to close the gap and use range effectively as a melee character makes him a delight to use – that's that dragoon in him taking over. His halberds have decent reach, but if you can nail down the rhythmic timing of his attacks, you can either launch enemies into the air, hit a rapid combo, or rush down a target. It's also so satisfying to use his triangle ability, Mark Lance, that lets you build up to five charges to tag multiple targets to power up the Dragoon Jump for consecutive hits. And let me tell you, launching into the air off-screen to then smash down on an enemy at superhuman speed might've been the greatest little joy I got out of my time playing; it's the perfect rendition of the Dragoon Jump in action combat, and that alone made Cid worth playing.

Vincent is where Square Enix went all-out on style. He has his trusty Quicksilver pistol for quick shots as a normal combo, but you can cap it off with different moves depending on when you hit his triangle input. And many of his equipped abilities are fancy bullet barrages to tack on stagger, do AoE damage, or barrel down a single target. What's more, he can transform into the Galian Beast as a normal ability (as opposed to it being his Limit Break like in the original) and turn things into a melee-powered onslaught with its own set of combos. This transformation is quite unique considering how you can jump in-and-out of it, making Vincent both a ranged and close-combat beast.

I didn't get to dig too deeply into the new FITS system, which lets you equip one of four Jobs: Warrior, Knight, Black Mage, and Summoner. But my perception so far is that FITS doesn't necessarily change or override how a character functions, but instead gives you more options to complement how you want them to play. For example, Summoner sends out Egi versions of the likes of Ifrit, Titan, and others to attack almost like how a pet-based class would work, while Knight can provide some much needed defensive support, and Black Mage gives magic casters another layer by letting you build up elements from the spells you use and be a more aggressive caster.

While I'm on record in my Rebirth review saying it has the best action RPG combat, I also thought for a while that adding any extra layers on what's already a pretty complex system with many moving parts would overcomplicate things. However, I might be wrong in that Revelation is giving us new toys to play with that feel complementary rather than adding unnecessary layers for the sake of doing something different. Between Cid, Vincent, FITS, and everything I already know from the existing party, I can't wait to dig deeper on how to make the most of them and feel like a genius tactician again.

This preview started in Chapter 4 where Yuffie and the gang need to head to Wutai, and Cloud and Tifa were not in the party at this point in the story. One of the many things I was curious about coming out of Rebirth was how this game would handle Wutai, which was a fairly small part of the original. And remember, Yuffie was an optional party member back in the day, which is wild to think about considering how much of a focus she has in the remake series, especially with her essentially being the main character in this chapter in Revelation.

Now, let me be clear, I've called out Yuffie haters for being on the wrong side of history ! But…she can be a bit overbearing when going unchecked. Sonon really helped keep her grounded in the Intergrade chapter and she had her moments to shine in Rebirth when playing off the rest of the party. She's the star of the show in the quest to visit Wutai for the first time, and perhaps leans a little too much into the bubbly, irreverent anime character trope. Something sinister is brewing with ninjas defecting and Shinra agents operating in her hometown, and I'd hope she'd take things a bit more seriously. I got to see her father Godo, head of Wutai and the Kisaragi clan, meet with Glenn Lodbrok, that hooded figure who mysteriously showed up throughout Rebirth. And you learn about Glenn's past as a Wutai operative leading an elite squad, so we'll be getting to the bottom of this. But hey, in the context of the full game, Yuffie's lightheartedness might be a moment of reprieve given how heavy we expect the Revelation story to be.

Similar to the feeling of seeing Midgar in Remake or Cosmo Canyon in Rebirth, this reimagined version of Wutai is quite stunning. Expanding places that were once magical yet small in retrospect has been one of the consistent joys of the remake series, and Revelation has done the same with Wutai – towering buildings of classic Japanese and Chinese architecture in a city that seems more lively and lived-in. I wish I spent more time exploring the nooks and crannies of this new Wutai, aside from zipping around with the new grappling hook mechanic, but it's nice to know that it's been given more emphasis and attention considering its importance in the broader FF7 lore.

It's impressive how seamless it is flying around in the Highwind and dropping into any part of the map without visible loading. Sure, you see some of the LOD pop-in, but considering how detailed these games are on the ground level, I'm not going to trip about it. While I thought parachuting onto the open world seemed silly at first, it's a better solution than haphazardly having you land the Highwind somewhere on the map.

You get a good sense for the scope and scale of Revelation and how dense its map is from the sky, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about it being bloated with side content like a checklist-y open world game. Much of it is optional, of course, and I'm not going to complain about having more to do if it either brings out the best in gameplay or deepens our understanding of its world. And you damn well know I'm going to lose entire days to Queen's Blood and its new storyline in Revelation (Sephiroth can wait). The lesson I hope Square Enix got from Rebirth is that this kind of content shouldn't be used as padding wedged into the main questline. But my faith is a little shaken with how disruptive these things were in my demo time.

For one, Chadley's assistant MAI would incessantly bang my line and yap my ear off about new optional activities, making me stop in my tracks and pull out their communication device. I had just landed in Wutai and I'm immediately interrupted to be told about this stuff, then a bunch of markers thrown onto the map, and a ton of minor objectives filling up the corner of the screen. Why are you telling me about this now? Like, man, let me explore this region before stuffing a map that's still mostly greyed out. (Not to mention how MAI keeps needlessly talking while I'm in the middle of combat where music, party banter, and sound effects are already firing off.) Discovery should feel organic, and I don't want a world I grew to love becoming a series of percentages to fill up and tasks to check off scattered across the UI.

If I'm being honest, the demo fed maybe 10 to 15 minutes worth of notifications, popups, tutorials, and interruptions I had to spam X to get past that affected the gameplay flow, with MAI being the most egregious. Granted, many of these popups and tutorials are carryovers from what would be introduced much earlier in the story, and that's a consequence of demoing a fairly complex game; it's not like I'm going to need to read paragraphs about how to control Cid and Vincent, learn about secret supply caches in the world, or figure out how to use the Highwind by the time I make it to Chapter 4.

Seeing Ruby Weapon wandering around the desert outside the Gold Saucer, it gets my hyped for taking on the toughest battles, and I'm definitely not skipping out on taking down Emerald, Diamond, and Ultima Weapon. But it feels like Revelation is afraid of players missing things instead of trusting them to discover that stuff on their own; I just ask it to reign things in at key moments, especially where a bit of silence would go a long way in letting the mood of a major story beat settle.

When I saw Meteor lingering in the sky while flying the Highwind around the open world, it was a reminder of the finality that comes with this entry; the remake trilogy has given me so many chilling moments where I couldn't believe an important piece of my childhood had been reimagined in such an ambitious way. I just hope Revelation doesn't lose sight of why we were drawn to FF7 to begin with; director Naoki Hamaguchi has stressed that so far and we'll see how it all comes together and closes when Revelation launches on April 8, 2027.

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Michael Higham is an editor at IGN who regularly contributes with reviews, previews, features, and news in written and video form. He's usually entrusted with covering long RPGs and tech products, but he's got range when it comes to games. You'll also catch him at events and hosting video content, including IGN's weekly podcast Unlocked .