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This takeaway comes from a 45-minute hands-on preview attended by Polygon at Gamescom 2026. And to be clear here, \u201cmost impressive\u201d doesn\u2019t necessarily mean \u201clargest.\u201d Though Revelation<\/em> certainly is massive in scale, 45 minutes is by no means long enough to assess or even fully grasp what an open-world game is trying to offer. But weeks later, I\u2019m still struck by how Revelation<\/em> builds on its predecessor, using Rebirth<\/em> as the literal foundation for a jaw-dropping feat of game design.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Final Fantasy 7 Revelation<\/em>, the third and final<\/em> (sorry) installment of Square Enix\u2019s FF7 remake trilogy, puts a cap on this seven-year-long series. It picks up after the dramatic events of Rebirth<\/em>. Aerith is dead (right?). Cid and Vincent Valentine have joined the party. The squad is en route to the ninja nation of Wutai. Oh, and you get an airship.<\/p>\n The Highwind is the crux of what makes Revelation<\/em> such a revelation. My demo picked up a few hours into the game, at the start of the fourth chapter, \u201cHouse of Cards.\u201d The core crew is aboard Cid\u2019s airship. A crop of ominous kaiju-like creatures called Weapons have popped up around the planet. Barret spends a lot of time shouting about how if they put his daughter, Marlene, in danger, oh boy, they\u2019re gonna regret it, doesn\u2019t matter that they\u2019re 300 feet tall, by all that is holy, those bastards are gonna regret it. And then you\u2019re off.<\/p>\n Final Fantasy 7 Revelation<\/em>\u2019s big gimmick is that you can fly the airship to literally anywhere in the world, park it, disembark, dive out of the hangar like you\u2019re Tom Cruise, deploy a parachute, and gently float down to earth. And then you\u2019re just there. Completely seamlessly. I could visit every location I spent hours in back during the Rebirth<\/em> days: Mideel, the Grasslands, Junon, Gongaga, Costa del Sol, the Gold Saucer. It\u2019s all there. (Wutai is a new region to Final Fantasy 7 Revelation<\/em>, but going there in chapter four temporarily locks you into the main story mission.) And it\u2019s all rendered exactly how it looked in the previous game, right down to the scooters of Costa del Sol.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t often get video game sequels that reuse environments in follow-up games. You rarely get games that reuse every<\/em> environment. The immediate effect this has on worldbuilding, giving the sense that you\u2019re occupying a real place as opposed to a series of meticulously constructed levels, is truly second to none. Like rotating your first level in Fez<\/em> or taking off into orbit for the first time in No Man\u2019s Sky<\/em>, it is one of those you-have-to-play-it-to-believe-it moments of video game wizardry that come along every few years. Maybe the novelty will fade once I\u2019ve done it 10 or 20 times. For now, it\u2019s nothing short of transcendent.<\/p>\n The rest of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation<\/em>, at least according to what I played, keeps to the impeccable standard established in the trilogy\u2019s previous two entries. It is clever and often silly without sacrificing dire narrative stakes. It\u2019s as luxurious as ever; you can feel<\/em> the Square Enix bucks dripping off every character model and baked into the background of every landscape. And the combat, a mix of real-time action and pause-time menus, is as engaging as ever.<\/p>\n There are a few notable additions to battles, though, that could inject fresh verve to what is now a seven-year-old system. The first is the Function-Integrated Tactical Suitwear (FITS) system, which lets you switch between four costumes on the fly: Warrior, Knight, Black Mage, and Summoner. Each outfit comes with various movesets and stat advantages, meaning you can effectively overhaul your party compositions in the middle of a battle. I did not experiment much with FITS (again: 45 minutes), though I can already see how it could open up worlds of possibility for high-level play.<\/p>\n Your two new party members, Cid Highwind and Vincent Valentine, bring new toolkits into the mix. Cid fights with a staff that deals ineffectual damage, and seems to bleed health like he\u2019s covered in leeches. (I probably should\u2019ve looked into FITS, but, hey, remember that thing about 45 minutes?) Vincent, on the other hand, is an absolute monster \u2014 literally. In combat, Vincent can transform into a giant wolf, the Galian Beast, who shreds through enemies like paper. My characters were around level 45, so maybe this was the result of playing high-level characters, but there appeared to be few limitations on spamming the Galian Beast\u2019s attacks and obliterating every foe on the battlefield.<\/p>\n At least by chapter four, you\u2019ll be able to find \u2014 and fight \u2014 various Weapons all around Final Fantasy 7 Revelation<\/em>\u2019s world. Whenever you land in a region for the first time, MAI (yes, she\u2019s back) will pinpoint the location of that region\u2019s Weapon, which you can then track down and fight. She\u2019ll also tell you, through a string of pop-up notifications, about all the other various activities you can engage in: materia hunts, combat challenges, minigames, side quests, and so on. Each region seems to have a dedicated side quest chain; at the Gold Saucer, for instance, the speedo model Dio tasked me with tracking down a bunch of droids who are critical to the operation of the theme park\u2019s revised and expanded minigame playground.<\/p>\n I opted to skip past all of that and focus on the main story. Wutai is, in short, glorious. Edo-era architecture is nestled into a cliff in the middle of a jungle, as if a Swiss mountain city was portaled into the tropics. Wutai is home to Yuffie, and she\u2019s effervescently excited at the prospect of returning home. I, too, was thrilled at the prospect of exploring a brand-new region. MAI even told me about plenty of optional activities, including an altar for Hades, an optional summon from the late hours of the original game who did not appear in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth<\/em>.<\/p>\n A weekly cheat sheet to what you\u2019ll eventually love to play. No buying, no \t\t\tSign up free\n FF7 Revelation is redefining ‘open world’
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