- Publisher: Square Enix
- Release Date: Jun 3, 2026
- Also On: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X
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Jun 2, 2026Final Fantasy VII Rebirth tries to do more than its predecessor in many ways, and it has the scraped knees to show for it. When it hits, it hits, but when it stumbles, it kicks up a real dust cloud. The story is engaging enough, but to its detriment, it’s caught between trying to pay homage to the original game and doing its own thing. It’s also a middle chapter, one where we don’t really know how things are going to wrap up. This Switch 2 port gets the job done, but you’ll never find yourself wondering how they managed to do it. No, it’s abundantly clear what had to be given up to squeeze this onto the console. Rebirth on the Switch 2 is big, messy, full of heart, and often unsure of itself. It’s enough. I just wish it were more than that.
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Jun 2, 2026Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is one of the best-looking games the game industry has ever produced. It's not even that it's realistic. The art does a lot of the heavy lifting in creating beautiful and atmospheric scenes. The core gameplay is rock solid and hard to put down when it’s allowed to shine, but it’s dragged down by a bloated narrative that takes five hours to tell ten minutes’ worth of story. As a long-time fan who grew up playing Final Fantasy VII back in 1997, Rebirth can be frustrating to experience because, amidst all the trite and misguided creative liberties, Final Fantasy VII is in there somewhere, screaming to break out. At the very least, players will get a lot of bang for their buck because the sheer density of content is so ridiculous that there's enough here for two games.
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Jun 2, 2026The port’s worst problem by far though has to be pop-in. Whether it be assets, textures, shadows, or LOD your immersion will be interrupted often by it popping in awkwardly. NPCs will randomly pop in, or foliage will go in and out as you walk through the world. Sometimes shopkeep NPCs won't even load in when you go to click the prompt, leading for you to wait to browse their wares until the model takes a few seconds to pop in. It takes what should be a gorgeous world and muddles the presentation of it. The surfboards at Johnny’s hotel have edges so jagged they could cut you, or Divine Intel Shrines having a garbled mess of textures. When I see a low quality texture, I’m never exactly sure if it was just compressed by default or if it was struggling to load in. This pop in is where I think the porting team should be focusing on for post-launch support. That, and maybe higher quality textures. While I appreciate the decreased file size, I promise you I would download a texture and asset expansion pack just to get the game looking a little nicer. [Impressions]