I admit, I’m going into Final Fantasy VII Revelation jaded, as I’ve mostly found the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy to be an excessively long and padded experiment that refuses to lean into some of its most interesting metatextual narrative threads, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t pop off during a demo session playing one of the third and final game’s early segments.
If I’m loyal to anything in Final Fantasy VII, it’s my chainsmoking daddy Cid Highwind. He’s a lot nicer in the remake, but he’s still got an old soul and a spear to fight with. Though the pottymouthed pilot debuted in 2024’s Rebirth, this is the first time he and Vincent Valentine are playable in the action-oriented reimagining of Final Fantasy VII’s turn-based combat, and what little I got to play of both in my demo was enough to tell me that these two have some of the most engaging and interesting kits across the party, and may get me out of my habit of mostly just playing Cloud in the interests of simplicity.
By and large, the Remake trilogy’s battle system is one of my favorites in all of Final Fantasy. It marries the strategic playmaking of turn-based games with a slick action system that is engaging, varied, and requires more game sense than simply hacking, slashing, and dodging around a battlefield. Each character plays pretty differently, swapping between them is encouraged to execute powerful Synergy attacks, and managing shared resources across your trio of fighters gives you a lot to deal with in its real-time battles. But across the first two games, I don’t feel like I’ve latched onto any of the characters as a “main,” instead just kind of using whatever Square Enix handed me to progress.
The second I was given control of Cid, however, something clicked in my head that hadn’t in the previous two games. Cid is a Dragoon, which means that he wields a spear and has a playstyle characterized by leaping across the scrap to bring down his weapon on foes. Mobility is the name of the game here, with Cid being able to use his Jump attacks to quickly cross great distances more efficiently than most other characters, and Remake and Revelation weren’t sluggish action RPGs by any stretch, so when I say that, I mean that the quickness with which Cid moves across the field, can quickly prioritize other targets, and stagger foes with reckless abandon is unmatched on the roster.
© Square EnixVincent’s playstyle is also pretty different from the rest of the cast in a way that was surprising. He primarily uses his handgun in a way that, at first, seems similar to Barret’s gunner playstyle, but he can also shapeshift into a Galian Beast, which has a far more vicious and aggressive playstyle. He’s almost two characters in one, and after playing as him for a bit, I couldn’t imagine relying on previous ranged characters if I didn’t have to. Call it power creep or whatever you like, but Cid and Vincent cleared the rest of the team after just a half hour of play.
Part of me feels like this is just the nature of creating a video game sequel, where a company might feel like they have to introduce cool new stuff to maintain a player’s attention after all this time. I definitely felt kind of bored going back to Cloud, who still pretty much plays exactly like he did in Remake. It’s kind of like how, in character-driven games like hero shooters or MOBAs, you’ll notice that the newer characters feel a lot more complex and creative in terms of how they play than the originals, and I started feeling that during my demo.
Revelation is keeping old characters fresh with the addition of the FITS system, which you can equip onto any character to give them job-based abilities. The demo I played had Cloud wielding the Summoner FITS, which allowed him to call magical allies like Shiva and Titan into a fight, It does genuinely add a new layer to a character I’d pretty much mastered over the past two games, but also, I could put that shit on Cid and summon cool monsters while also throwing spears at enemies.
Overall, I think Final Fantasy VII Remake’s non-committal story is going to sour me on parts of Revelation regardless of what Square Enix decides to do with it in this final chapter, but what I’ve played thus far nonetheless has me convinced it’s going to be a blast to play through. At least, if the mini-game bloat doesn’t get in the way this time around.
English (US) ·