Ever wondered what it feels like to dive straight into a late-game dungeon in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation? At New York Comic Con, IGN got to play a linear slice from the early game that felt exactly like that—and it was a wild ride.
Previous previews focused on flying around the open world in the Highwind, but this demo dropped me early in Chapter 1 at the North Crater. The party was fully decked out in Materia and equipment, making it feel like a late-game dungeon crawl. Even though it's just an early demo and balance could change before the April release, the experience was eye-opening.
Before diving into the crater, I dug through the menus—because that's half the fun of RPGs, right? The Materia menu now has a new leveling method: Materia fragments. You can consume these to add one AP ratio to your Materia. I started with 200 fragments and dumped them all into Fire Materia, which got it about a third of a level. I'm not sure how rare they'll be in the full game, but in a 30-minute demo, why not? The Item Transmuter also returns from Rebirth, and crucially, the auto-loot option is now enabled by default. No more mashing triangle to hoover up crafting materials—a huge improvement.
Once I finally started exploring, the crystalline labyrinth of the crater was gorgeous. I wasn't even playing on the 'Graphics' optimization mode, and it still looked stunning. But it wasn't long before monsters showed up. The default party was Cloud, Cid, and Vincent, and I immediately swapped to the new characters. Cid stood out with his rhythmic combat: after one or two standard attacks, he gets wrapped in a blue mist, and then you attack again to unleash a stronger attack that staggers enemies almost instantly. I melted through standard enemies without much thought, and even larger ones fell to a couple of ATB abilities. Game Director Naoki Hamaguchi has said he wants to make the platinum trophy easier to unlock, and that approach seems to carry over to combat.
The new FITS system also made an appearance. Cloud was assigned the Summoner job, and at the cost of one ATB segment, I could summon Ifrit, Shiva, or Titan to enhance attacks. The real draw is the Synergy attacks each summon has. Unlike in Remake and Rebirth, you only need to build up ATB on one character to use them, which should make them easier to pull off. But most enemies died before I could even get there.
As I went deeper, Sephiroth clones appeared en masse, leading to one of Cloud's signature visions. Eventually, creatures fused with the clones to create monstrous enemies, and I faced off against Gigas. Unlike the smaller foes, this fight gave me time to pull off Cloud's synergy attack with Ifrit—a fusion of the summon's classic Hellfire attack. It was a satisfying end to the demo, even if the difficulty felt a bit lacking. But hey, it's only Chapter 1, so things could ramp up later.
What do you think about the new Materia leveling system? Will you be picking up Final Fantasy 7 Revelation when it launches in April?
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