It’s strange to think that at the start of 2026, we had zero Final Fantasy VII Remake games on Switch 2, and now we are mere months away from the third — which launches simultaneously across all platforms on 8th April 2027.
Revelation, the third and possibly most-anticipated of the trilogy, will cap off the iconic RPG story, and based on everything we’ve seen so far from its many, many trailers, it looks like it’ll go out with quite a bang.
At least, that’s what I thought before getting roughly 50 minutes of hands-on time at a recent Square Enix event. Revelation is massive, it’s true, and its scope certainly seems to be a fitting send-off for Cloud and the gang. But one thought was stuck in my head as I played on PS5: Damn, the Switch 2 could really struggle with this.
It was my biggest fear as I wrapped up my preview of Rebirth on Switch 2 earlier this year. The system managed the open-zone Grasslands well enough, but I wondered how it would fare with larger areas later in the game. The answer, at launch back in June, was ‘well enough’, with the still-excellent RPG landing its fair share of portable compromises in the visual and performance departments.
From the little I’ve seen of Revelation so far, it makes Rebirth look like a proof of concept. As trilogy director Naoki Hamaguchi has been very pleased to showcase in just about every Revelation presentation, the upcoming game is all about the open world. And yes, it really is open.
My session dropped me into Chapter 4 and gave me free rein to explore wherever I wanted. Taking full control of the Highwind airship, I spent a good few minutes just soaking in the size of the whole thing. Oceans seemingly stretch for miles, and each and every island is packed with enough side content and main quests that choice paralysis started to creep in pretty quickly.
The team at Square Enix told me that it would take over 20 hours to see everything there was to see at the moment I was dropped in, so with only 50 minutes to explore it all, you can imagine how it would have been a little overwhelming.
Passing over the Gongaga jungle, I decided to slip from the airship controls and dive down to the surface, TOTK-style, seamlessly switching from air travel to the ground as the landscape below loaded in with remarkable speed. Alas, I was far too underpowered to take on many of the foes here (as a ‘Caution’ gauge rightfully warned me), so I summoned the ship again and, after a brief loading screen, set out to follow the main quest on Yuffie’s homeland, Wutai.
My party and I arrived on the island to investigate what the Kurisagi Corps were up to, with the area wrapped in a conflict between the Wusheng Loyalists and the interim government. The main quest marker led me through the jungles to a nearby village, but not before a barrage of side quests sprang up on the navigation bar, covering the area in a mash of pins and notifications.
It’s a lot, but the mere sense of exploration holds it together. Wutai is beautiful, and I’m still a big fan of the Remake trilogy’s combat, especially with Vincent and Cid around to get involved this time.
Whenever I tried to get back on the main path, something was waiting to distract me. I’d rather not go into too much detail about how much of my already limited playtime I spent chasing down sleeping kitties for the Wutai ‘Picture Purr-fect Photo Event’ mission, but it was a lot. Hey, what’s the point of the new grappling hook if not to find sunbathing cats on rooftops?
I can already imagine this one taking up hours (and hours) of my time, but I wonder whether it’ll end up being a step too far on Switch 2.
We’ve seen some miracle ports on the comparatively smaller hardware already, and the first two games in the Remake series have been stellar. I’ve no doubt that Square Enix will be pulling out all the stops to ensure that the final step is a comparable experience (especially given the simultaneous launch), but there really are a lot of moving parts to take into account here.
The huge open world, seamless skydiving, and scene density are all features that I worry might not be quite as impressive if their loading takes that bit longer or if the finished result isn’t quite as polished. I’m rarely too upset by pop-in, but I can’t imagine a vista of this size will be rendered on a Switch 2 screen without its fair share.
Of course, this is nothing more than a worry at the time of writing. The performance held up well on the PS5 unit I was playing on (which couldn’t always be said for the first two trilogy entries at launch), and, as I say, Square Enix has shown that it can still bring the full-fat experience our way with considered cutbacks.
I’m excited to see more, let’s put it that way. Because if Square Enix can pull this one off, we might be looking at the most ambitious Switch 2 release yet.
