Square Enix held a hands-on event in London recently, giving press roughly one hour with Final Fantasy 7 Revelation running on PS5 Pro. One hour sounds reasonable until you hear what the developers said on the day: completing everything available in just the playable area would take approximately 20 hours. That single detail tells you a lot about what Square Enix is building with the final chapter of its remake trilogy.
What the Demo Actually Covers
The hands-on session drops you into Chapter 4: House of Cards, starting aboard the Highwind airship. The Highwind is fully controllable from the cockpit, and it serves as your base for navigating a sprawling open world dotted with question marks and points of interest. Journalists were encouraged to skip the in-game tutorials at the start simply because working through them would eat into the limited playtime available.
The main story objective in the demo was to travel to Wutai, but reaching it directly was entirely optional. The whole world sits open around you, and the sheer number of activities branching off in every direction creates a kind of choice paralysis that is worth mentioning honestly. There is a Fortnite-style parachute mechanic that lets you drop from the Highwind whenever something catches your eye on the ground below, which makes the world feel genuinely accessible rather than just decorative.
Scale, Side Content, and a Lot of Question Marks
The activities on offer during the demo stretch across a wide range. Wildlife photography side quests are available in the Mideel Archipelago. A character named Freddie hands out medallion collection quests tied to rewards. Chocobo rescues feed into an expanded racing system. The Golden Saucer is accessible and includes the returning snowboarding minigame. That list only covers what was spotted in a single hour, with the majority of the map left completely untouched.
It is hard not to note the irony that an open world this packed with markers and side tasks would likely draw criticism if it carried another studio’s name on the box. Square Enix appears to be navigating that conversation carefully, at least based on early press coverage. Whether that holds once the full game releases on 8th April is another question.
Performance on PS5 Pro during the session was solid. No significant pop-in or frame rate issues were noted, though it is worth being clear that this was an unfinished build ahead of the April release date, so the final version could look and run differently.
New Party Members and Combat Impressions
The playable party during the demo consisted of Yuffie, Barrett, and Cid. Cid is one of the newly introduced party members in Revelation, and his combat style leans into aerial and ranged attacks using a lance. The approach felt distinct and interesting, though getting a proper read on how he fits alongside the rest of the roster was difficult within the time available.
Combat in general was a challenge to settle into quickly. Rebirth launched a couple of years ago, and jumping back into the system cold during a short press demo is not the ideal reintroduction. The widely promoted jobs system was available to explore for each character, but time did not allow for a meaningful look at it. First impressions of Cid’s aerial focus were positive, but a fuller picture of how the combat has evolved will need to wait for more playtime.
Wutai and the Art Direction
After getting pulled across several different activities, the session ended with a direct trip to Wutai via the Highwind. The location blends Japanese and Chinese architectural styles, carried over from the original PlayStation 1 game, and the scale of it is striking. The visual design work Square Enix has done to translate that setting into a modern engine is one of the clearest highlights from the demo.
That said, there were moments in Wutai where the traversal mechanics felt slightly mismatched with the size of the environment. Whether that is a genuine design friction or simply a matter of not having enough time to fully understand the movement options available is genuinely hard to say after only an hour.
What to Take Away From This Preview
Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is clearly enormous. One hour in its demo world was enough to confirm that Square Enix has not pulled back on scale compared to Rebirth – if anything, the opposite is true. The Highwind as a hub, the parachute traversal, the stacked side content, and a new party member in Cid all suggest the studio is swinging for something bigger than what came before.
The honest caveat is that a single hour with an unfinished build, covering one chapter out of what will presumably be many, is a narrow window. Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is scheduled to release on PS5 on 8th April, and a fuller picture of whether all that scale holds together will only come then.