REVIEW – Almost eleven months after its release on PlayStation 5, the second part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake project has been released for PC. If you don’t have a particularly modern rig, don’t dream of using the higher settings, but on fresh hardware (which obviously does not include the RTX 5000 series yet) it can be quite spectacular.
This time we won’t talk about the game, because a character set has already been created for “Final Fantasy VIII Rebirth” (that was the subject of the email, let’s have some fun for once). Let’s just talk about the PC stuff.
Unreal Engine 4
Surprisingly for Square Enix, development has remained on Unreal Engine 4. Previously, the PC version of Final Fantasy VII Remake was a bit lackluster, but compared to this, it’s not so sure that the Japanese publisher will come up with a better one. Maybe your PC is capable of 120 frames per second, but if it’s just by turning off V-Sync, you won’t get a stable frame rate. There is also an old engine bug in the port: sometimes you can see textures loading in front of your eyes several seconds after loading a new area… and the problem is that limiting the framerate doesn’t help either, because it almost always takes the same amount of time to get a texture to the right quality, so setting the FPS to 30 or 60 won’t change that. Skipping scenes is not always recommended, as FF7R2 tends to crash sometimes. The frame rate sometimes tends to suddenly crash and stay that way for a short time. So the port seems a bit buggy and unoptimized, but you have to mention the positive aspects. For example, if you have a powerful PC on your desk, you can use the upscalers (Nvidia DLSS, AMD FSR) and get the frame rate up to 120 FPS. Once you’ve got that, it’s a more refined experience than the PlayStation 5 or even the PlayStation 5 Pro!
And that’s not to mention the higher resolution textures, possibly with stronger anti-aliasing, so the visuals are even more detailed. For example, you can see other people’s reflections in your characters’ eyes, and wrinkles are visible. It should be added that those with a GeForce GTX card (i.e. one of the 900/1000/1600 series) should not even try to run it. Square Enix’s game requires more powerful hardware, which is probably why Denuvo was left out so the Steam Deck can run it (unbelievable that even this is something to be happy about these days). You can play with mouse and keyboard, but somehow it doesn’t feel like a comfortable experience. It turns out that FF7R2 was designed by Square Enix for a controller (DualSense). You can remap the keys, but then you have to put something together that gives you a fast reaction time, because for some bosses that will be very important. You can’t just press a button here (initially, Final Fantasy XIII’s combat system consisted of doing just that…).
Port along
The camera is not very precise when you are not using a controller. When the fighting gets really intense, or when you’re in narrow corridors, you can sometimes see some incredibly stupid things. Because the position of the camera is important, the experience can be marred by its inaccuracy. Another problem with the keyboard is performing larger combos. Somehow you can get a better grip on the buttons on the controller, so the timing is more consistent than what you can do on a keyboard. One thing we haven’t mentioned is that crashing isn’t just something that happens when you’re skipping cutscenes, because you can also suddenly find yourself in Windows when you’re using the chocobos. If you’re sprinting across a large area with the rideable bird, you’re taking a bit of a risk. The detail of background models and textures can be adjusted individually, and there’s a remedy for poor performance in cities, as you can adjust how many NPCs (non-playable characters) you have on your screen at any one time.
This can reduce the frame rate on the PlayStation 5 (and even the PlayStation 5 Pro!), and it’s no different on the PC. The graphics settings are quite detailed, but we’ve seen more detailed options than this. It’s not just resolution, frame rate, windowed, borderless, full screen, and graphics presets. (Square Enix used to do that, and that’s no exaggeration.) The second part of the Final Fantasy VII remake has done so well that it managed to surpass the Steam player count of the first chapter within a few days. The remake had a maximum concurrent player count of 13,803, while Rebirth managed to squeeze out at least 38,000 players. This is very impressive, and maybe this will make the Japanese publisher think about a multiplatform approach in the future, so that there won’t be an X-month wait between console and PC releases…
Good port, but not perfect
The PC port of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth receives a 7.5. That’s for the quality of the PORT, not the GAME. If you’re not playing on a legacy PC, it’s worth a try. It can be nicer than on the PS5, but it has its problems.
-V-
Pros:
+ We can play at up to 120 FPS
+ It can even beat the PlayStation 5 Pro in terms of visuals
+ No. In it. Denuvo.
Cons:
– Slow loading textures
– Sometimes tends to drift…
– Keyboard handling and camera are not perfect
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix Creative Business Unit 1
Style: JRPG, Action RPG
Release: February 29, 2024 (PS5)/January 23, 2025 (PC)
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (PC)
Direction - 7.6
Graphics - 8.9
Story - 8.1
Music/Audio - 6.9
Ambience - 6
7.5
GOOD
The sequel to Cloud's story has been properly adapted for PC, but is held back by technical limitations.
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