FF7 Revelation: Director Has Finished the Game 46 Times (and Still Isn’t Done)
Yesterday, between two interviews in a press tour hotel, Naoki Hamaguchi pulled a PS5 controller from his bag and fired up the latest build of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation. That was his 46th run. And he still hasn’t seen everything.
When you’re directing an RPG that clocks in at over 100 hours, playtesting becomes a way of life. For months now, the director of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation has been running through full playthroughs, switching up his approach each time to scour every corner of the game as shown in detail during the last State of Play. Launching April 8, 2027 on PS5, Xbox Series, PC, and Switch 2, the final chapter of the remake trilogy aims to be as generous as it is respectful of players’ time.
Image credit: Square Enix
100 hours of gameplay: how Hamaguchi survived 46 full playthroughs
The number is dizzying. According to Naoki Hamaguchi himself, a full playthrough of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation—main story, side activities, and endgame content included—easily tops 100 hours. “In a standard run from start to finish, if I had to check every asset and every element in the game, it would easily take more than a hundred hours,” he explained. Multiply that by 46, and you get a glimpse of the director’s daily grind for months on end.
Of course, it’s impossible to comb through every detail on every run. So Hamaguchi developed a rotation method: “I don’t have enough time for that, so sometimes I skip battles to focus on the main story. With each playthrough, I zero in on different elements.” This surgical approach lets him cover the entire game without spending years on it. It also gives new meaning to his Gamescom 2026 announcement that this final chapter would be the trilogy’s most ambitious yet.
A game designed to respect your time (even with its massive scale)
100 hours of content can sound intimidating. Square Enix knows it, and the team made sure that generosity never becomes a burden. The minigames—plentiful as they are—are totally optional and don’t impact your progress in the main campaign. If you want to barrel through the story without distractions, you can do it without feeling punished.
Another welcome feature: every cutscene is skippable. On a first run, few players will want to skip the cutscenes of a story-driven RPG this big. But for those diving back in with New Game+ or aiming to optimize their playthrough, it’s a real time-saver. The overall pacing has also been reworked to keep things moving, smoothing out the slow patches that sometimes bogged down Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. The goal is clear:
- Deliver a dense open world with no artificial filler
- Let players choose how deep they go into side content
- Guarantee a story that never loses momentum, even over the long haul
What else we know about Revelation (and what’s coming next)
Beyond the game’s length and its director’s obsessive playtesting, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation has a few surprises in store. Red XIII might just steal the show in the snowboarding minigame—a legendary sequence from the original that fans are dying to see. As for influences, Hamaguchi is open about his admiration for The Witcher 3, which continues to shape his vision for a rich, believable open world. Chadley, the young researcher from the first two games, is also back, though his new role is still under wraps.
The game launches simultaneously on PS5, Xbox Series, PC, and Switch 2 on April 8, 2027—a day-one multiplatform release that marks a turning point for the franchise. And the end of the trilogy doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the adventure: with two story DLCs already confirmed and plenty of questions swirling about the franchise’s future after Revelation, the world of Final Fantasy 7 is far from finished.
With a director on his 46th run and a controller always within reach—even between interviews—it’s hard to doubt the level of care poured into this final chapter. The real question: will that obsession with detail pay off when we finally get our hands on it in April 2027?
