Final Fantasy VII Revelation is roughly six months out from its April 2027 launch, and a new slice of the early game was playable at New York Comic Con. The demo covered Chapter 1 at the North Crater, culminating in a Jenova boss fight. It offered a first look at a new Materia leveling system, the combat styles of Cid and Vincent, and a more linear, story-intensive structure than the open-world-focused previews that came before. Here’s everything that was learned — from Materia fragments and the returning Item Transmuter to the new FITS summoner job, and why the difficulty felt a touch light this early on.
Key Preview Takeaways:
- Previous previews focused on the open world, but this slice was focused on the more linear, story-intensive sections.
- Materia has a new way to level up.
- Difficulty was a bit lacking in this demo, but then again it was the first chapter of the game…
Final Fantasy VII Revelation is about six months away from its April 2027 release, and while that doesn’t seem like a huge wait, anticipation for the final chapter of the FF7 remake trilogy is palpable — especially since the first chapter released back in 2020. Hands-on opportunities with Revelation have come before: earlier previews focused on flying around the open world in the Highwind. This demo at New York Comic Con, however, offered a far more linear slice.
The demo opens early in Chapter 1, as the party arrives at the North Crater, and follows a linear path down toward the center of the giant hole. Where earlier previews described Revelation as a massive and overwhelming experience, this first chapter plays more like walking into a late-game dungeon to fight a massive boss.
Even the party members feel like late-game versions of themselves, fully decked out in Materia and equipment. Worth keeping in mind: this is an early demo, and the balance could change before Revelation arrives in April 2027.
Both Remake and Rebirth looked incredible, and so does Revelation so far.
Before wandering into the depths of the crater, though, there’s time to dig through the menus — after all, that’s half the fun of RPGs, right? Clicking into the Materia menu reveals a new way to level it up, rather than slowly absorbing AP from kills. There are now Materia fragments, each of which can be consumed to add one AP ratio to a piece of Materia.
The demo doesn’t explain how these fragments are gathered, but the session started with 200 of them — all of which were promptly dumped into a Fire Materia for about a third of a level. Whether that’s wise in the full game depends on how rare they end up being, but in a short 30-minute demo, there was nothing to lose.
The Item Transmuter has also returned from Rebirth, and crucially, gathering materials for it should be much less of a pain. The auto-loot option that inexplicably required beating the campaign to unlock in Rebirth is enabled by default in Revelation. Crafting materials get hoovered up just by running through the level, no triangle-button mashing required. That’s a huge improvement.
With menu duty done, the descent into the crater is gorgeous. There’s just something about levels with ice and crystals that always lands, and this crystalline labyrinth doesn’t disappoint — and this wasn’t even on the ‘Graphics’ optimization mode. Both Remake and Rebirth looked incredible, so it’s no surprise that Revelation carries that forward.
But even wandering starstruck through the crater, it isn’t long before a group of monsters appears. The demo’s default party is Cloud, Cid, and Vincent, and swapping over to the new characters is the obvious first move. Cid stands out immediately. His combat has a rhythmic quality: after one or two standard attacks, he gets wrapped in a strange blue mist, and attacking again then unleashes a stronger strike. Those stronger attacks hit hard, staggering a standard enemy almost immediately.
It seems like that lighter approach has carried over to combat overall. Standard enemies melt through without much thought, and even larger enemies that spawn in with little mini-cutscenes fall to just a couple of ATB abilities. Again, this is the first chapter, so it’s a little early to get a real feeling for how difficult the game will be when it opens up.
Game Director Naoki Hamaguchi has said he wants to make the platinum trophy easier to unlock — and that approach seems to have carried over to combat.
That difficulty (or lack thereof) makes testing the new FITS system tricky. FITS jobs couldn’t be rearranged in the demo, but Cloud was assigned the Summoner job: at the cost of one segment of the ATB meter, he can summon Ifrit, Shiva, or Titan to enhance his attacks. It’s cool seeing attacks land with explosions of fire or ice, but the real draw of this job, in my eyes, is the Synergy attacks each summon has.
Synergy attacks work just like they do in Rebirth and Remake, where abilities fill up a little bar; use enough of them on specific characters and powerful abilities unlock. The appeal of the summons’ synergy attacks is that ATB only has to be built up on one character to use them, which should make them a lot easier to churn through. Most enemies, though, died before enough abilities could be used to reach the Synergy ability.
Deeper into the crater, Sephiroth clones start appearing — a ton of them — until Cloud has one of his signature visions of Sephiroth. The specifics of Sephiroth’s taunts here are best left unspoiled, but anyone who’s played Final Fantasy VII on the PS1 probably has a pretty good idea of what he’s saying.
Eventually, creatures start fusing with the Sephiroth clones to create even more monstrous enemies, until it’s face-to-face with Gigas. Unlike a lot of the smaller enemies before this, there was time to build up to one of Cloud’s synergy attacks with Ifrit — a fusion of the summon’s classic Hellfire attack with Cloud’s sword. Before the animation finished, though, Gigas died. Progress, at least.
After a couple of subsequent enemies, a whole crowd of Sephiroth clones ends up surrounding a purple glow of some sort. A cutscene plays — details spared again — and ends with Jenova Deathmourner hatching from one of the clones. Finally, something that can actually put up a fight.
The boss fight plays out pretty similarly to other Jenova battles throughout the series, only this time the tentacles that spawn and make the boss invincible breathe fire. The fight is comprised of three phases, and there’s finally a chance to use multiple synergy abilities — Cid and Vincent, along with Cloud and Shiva. They’re just as bombastic as they are in Rebirth.
Eventually, after three phases of dodging fire and chopping down tentacles, the boss dies and the demo is over. The combat could stand to be a bit more difficult, but it is still very early in the game, and there’s likely to be plenty of balance tuning as Final Fantasy VII Revelation gets closer to launch.
Finally, while earlier previews described a giant open-world game absolutely chock-full of activities, it’s reassuring to see the story-intensive linear bits are still there, and just as dramatic as they were in the first two games. Final Fantasy VII Revelation will ultimately be the conclusion to this massive remake trilogy, and it’s clear that some of the content that was maybe a bit rushed in the original PlayStation game is going to be massive.
Disclosure: This preview is based on a hands-on demo session at New York Comic Con. This article contains no affiliate links. Impressions reflect an early, unfinished build; details may change before launch.
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