Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade’s release on Nintendo Switch 2 is nothing short of a miracle port, with all its performance and graphical prowess on show. It wouldn’t be too outlandish to say that Square Enix has done its best to push Nintendo Switch 2 to its absolute limit. It is something of a show piece for the hybrid console as it approaches its first anniversary. As a testament to just how important Final Fantasy is to the platform, Nintendo has prominently featured it in its advertising for Nintendo Switch 2.
A key proponent of this is to ensure that software can look as good, or if not, even better, than the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S counterparts. That premise makes the idea of a sequel, of which the base PS5 sometimes stutters on, even more interesting on Nintendo Switch 2. How does Final Fantasy VII Rebirth compare? Is it a step too far for the handheld hybrid or does it knock it out of Midgar?
The demo kicks off just at the start of Chapter 2, directly after the discussion that Cloud and Tifa have on the rooftop in Kalm. Comparatively, coming from Midgar, Kalm is a much more vibrant and bright townscape compared to most of what is seen in Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. Despite its vibrancy, the graphical experience is rather murkier than its PS5 counterpart, given the visibility of larger areas and brighter environments. It looks similar to the upsampled 720p output from its predecessor, but Kalm features similarly small and tight environments where draw distance is largely kept to tight confined areas. Nonetheless these areas often find themselves being far more detailed than those in Midgar, with the brighter daytime sessions requiring finer details to characters, buildings and shadows.
Similar to Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade on Nintendo Switch 2, there is a lot of noticeable dithering and shimmering around the outline of characters and a distinct blurry look in handheld mode. Part way through the demo, Cloud needs to climb a clock tower in which the whole town of Kalm is available to see from a high vantage point. Panning the camera around and looking at the town scape from the top of the tower whilst in handheld mode can feel a little grainy, the lack of detail is certainly something that Cloud wouldn’t want to write to Nibelheim about.
Once Cloud and the gang leave Kalm and enter the open world of the Grasslands, this is where the graphical anomalies around foliage and detailed draw distance come into play. Whilst on PS5, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth can look graphically impressive it cannot be said that Nintendo Switch 2 will better it, but at the same time did anyone expect it to?
Frame rates remained rather smooth throughout, at what feels like a locked 30 fps. Moments in Kalm are kept calm anyway – there’s no combat happening and there are not many occurrences that challenge the Nintendo Switch 2 when walking around town. The busiest area in Kalm is a market place where there are many NPCs on screen at once, but even in this crowded marketplace there were no noticeable performance issues.
There was a cutscene that occurred at the top of the clock tower where poor frame pacing appeared to momentarily make it chug. This was the only time during the demo that there was a noticeable frame drop though, with the rest of the experience both in Kalm and the Grasslands not having dramatic drops in frames.
Due to brevity of the demo, the final point that was reached was the swamp so only a few enemies were encountered. Elphadunk, Mu and Orc were all fought and a variety of attacks and spells were used – including a summon for Chocobo and Moogle – none of which caused any stuttering or frame rate issues whatsoever. The real question on minds of fans will be about Queen’s Blood, a mini-game played against NPC characters and it can be confirmed that there were no performance or graphical issues during the demo session.
Given the narrative driven focus of both Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade and its sequel Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it is strongly advised that newcomers start with the first game in the series. Various tutorials throughout Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 do help teach the mechanics of exploration, fighting and equipment quirks, but the beating heart behind both games is the narrative and the journey that the characters go through.
Just like with the release of its predecessor, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth also features a streamlined progression mode, essentially removing any of the difficulty and allowing players to sail through the adventure. This allows a greater selection of players to experience the superb dialogue and voice acting alongside gripping cutscenes, as well as one of the most moving soundtracks in any video game. There is currently a demo of Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade on Nintendo eShop, which does give a good indication as to how Final Fantasy VII Rebirth performs and plays on Nintendo Switch 2.
The preview session allowed for 30 minutes of gameplay starting either at the beginning of the game or from the start of Chapter 2. This preview opts for the latter. The demo also only allowed for Nintendo Switch 2 handheld play with no direct feed or photos allowed in the session. The demo experienced during the preview session is most likely based on a non-final build of the game and thus performance and other things may change by the release date.
looks like what rebirth might have looked like on ps4