Preview | Final Fantasy VII Revelation: You Can Snowboard This Time

I got to spend around an hour with Final Fantasy VII Revelation thanks to Square Enix, and while there’s plenty to unpack, let’s get the important stuff out of the way first: you can snowboard this time.

My time with the game kicked off in Chapter 4 and offered a surprisingly broad look at what’s shaping up to be a massive conclusion to the trilogy.

“What were the limitations of the preview?” I asked.

“None.”

I could literally just go and do whatever I wanted. So obviously, one of the first things I did was head to the Gold Saucer.

But before that…

I was given a tour of the Highwind, the enormous airship that lets you travel across the planet, visiting both familiar locations and places you haven’t seen before.

The Highwind appears to have its own customisation systems, with furniture and other items seemingly available to collect and display throughout the ship.

Queens Blood: Shadowblood Courtier cards

Wize 4.0, a robot cruise director, offers Queen’s Blood matches, giving you another reason to spend time aboard.

Queen’s Blood was also playable in the preview — obviously, I was doing that — and it included an introduction to the new Shadowblood Courtier card system.

Each player has access to cards with unique properties, while you can select a trump card, such as “The Beast”, that will always appear in your hand at the beginning of a match.

There are also special challenges and rewards tied to the game, including one quest involving Regina after winning a number of matches.

Chocobo and Chadley

Up top, Billy serves as the stable hand and lets you call your chocobo, Piko, to your side.

You can change his tack and level him up by completing activities such as digging up greens, raising flags, repairing stops, popping balloons and rescuing other chocobos.

Then, on the battlefield, Chadley has launched a new system called FITS, which are special uniforms that augment your combat capabilities and can be assigned through the materia and equipment menu.

Chadley has also hired a new recruit, Mai, who offers a huge number of intel quests, with more becoming available as you enter new regions.

Flying around the world is fast, and region banners appear over the landscape to highlight quests, Queen’s Blood activities and intel opportunities.

You dive from the ship Fortnite-style, though landing is a little more restrictive. The Highwind is only able to touch down in designated areas rather than anywhere you please. Like, you can’t just drop into the ocean. I attempted to land on top of the Gold Saucer but it wouldn’t let me and kinda glitch out.

The Gold Saucer: Snowboarding is here!

Once I touched down, the Gold Saucer was calling my name, though this time the Polydroids have taken over and Dio needs help restoring order.

And yes, as I said earlier, snowboarding is finally playable.

The iconic minigame has been completely remade and features the same fast-paced action you’ll remember, only with much better visuals. It handled a little clunkily during my time with it, but that may simply be something players will just need to get used to… I rushed to do it.

Polydroid Tifa was the first challenger I came up against. The race was on, and I just managed to beat her.

Yuffie’s new apprentices

Given the clock was ticking, I had to continue exploring. I fast-travelled to another region, played some more Queen’s Blood, and then thought it was time to do the quest at hand: head to Wutai with Yuffie.

Upon arrival, Vincent’s keen eye spotted some Wutai ninjas watching them. I then paid a quick visit to Yuffie’s dojo, where she made the team pretend they were all her students.

It was a laugh.

Moments at the dojo included meeting her master, as well as flashbacks to her younger years, where she was training and teaching other students.

I grappled up a few buildings — oh yeah, there’s a grapple gun now — and that’s when the clock ran out and I had to put the controller down.

Final Fantasy VII Revelation is the biggest game yet

An hour is nowhere near enough time to experience this game.

Revisiting familiar locations in a new light is exciting enough — especially with new traversal mechanics — but the sheer amount of additional content, activities and systems packed into Final Fantasy VII Revelation is what really stood out.

Oh yeah, and there’s a whole combat shakeup that I admittedly didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time with. But does combat truly matter when the snowboarding minigame is back?

This is shaping up to be a seriously massive game. It’s worth remembering that this was an early build, and there’s still plenty of work to be done, but the scope is already looking enormous.

Final Fantasy VII Revelation is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam on April 9th, 2027.

Travel costs were covered by Square Enix for the writer to attend the preview.