The best thing about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on Nintendo Switch 2 is how unremarkable it now feels to have this kind of game on Nintendo’s latest console, and how straightforward the compromises have seemingly been to get it running well. Whether you’ve played the Switch 2 port of Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade or not, you probably know the tradeoffs that Square Enix has made already, and you’ll likely know how big a deal they are for you.
Our hands on time dropped us into the city of Kalm, as the Avalanche gang regroup and try to figure out their next steps. Everyone’s gone to explore the city separately by the time Cloud wakes up, so it’s time to head out and find them, and do some gear upgrading along the way.
Playing handheld, you can see the steps needed to bring this game to Switch 2, with a lower resolution that’s easily noticed, though compensated for well by the use of DLSS upscaling. The weakest areas for me were seeing a fizzy dithering effect to Cloud’s hair and foliage, most noticeable when moving the camera around. Put this side-by-side with the PS5 version and it will naturally suffer, likely with lowered shadow map quality, lower texture resolution and more, just as with Remake Intergrade, but it didn’t matter to me when simply playing the game.
I do, however, have to wonder how performance will hold up through the full game. Where Remake was originally a PS4 game and Intergrade spruced it up for PS5, Rebirth was PS5 from the off, and brought in more ambitious open world sections for players to explore. The maze-like streets of Kalm are a different kind of challenge to a wide open landscape filled with battles and challenges, and it will be interesting to see how that holds up.
While I enjoyed exploring Kalm, finding the gang and then having to sneak out from under a Shinra invasion force, one thing I wish I’d spent more time with was Queen’s Blood, the new card game cooked up for this remake. Building a deck and then playing cards through three lanes feels straight forward, but I can absolutely see the hook that it provides, and it feels right at home on Switch 2 as a relaxed little aside.
An additional sweetener is that all of the quality of life improvements and options from the Remake Intergrade port are here as well – and will be patched back to the PS5 and PC releases. So cutscenes can be sped up, there’s a new Streamlined Progression menu, and options to chat on health and damage to really let you experience the game as you wish.
If you’ve already started the Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy on Switch 2, then chances are you’ll want to continue with Rebirth when it arrives for the handheld in June. From first impressions, it looks to be every bit as good a port as Remake Intergrade was.
