Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth doesn't entirely convince Digital Foundry, especially the Performance mode

Digital Foundry has published a preliminary video analysis of the first few hours of gameplay Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth. The non-final verdict definitely speaks of a game pleasing to the eye and a step forward compared to its predecessorbut there are gods visual defects that emerge in some scenarios and it is clear that some current generation technological solutions have not been used. Furthermore, Performance mode still doesn't convince, even in Square Enix's recently updated demo.

But let's go step by step. As you probably know, Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth offers the two classic graphics modes Quality and Performance. The second aims for a framerate of 60 fps, while the first does not go beyond 30 fps, but boasts a higher resolution. The good news is that both modes succeed hit the framerate target on most occasions and obvious drops occur only in sporadic cases, usually the most intense combat sequences and in some specific locations such as Nibelheim (in this sense we reiterate that Digital Foundry has not yet tested the game from start to finish, so there may be some problem areas from a performance point of view, however unlikely). However, the absence of motion blur is reported, which in the 30 fps mode could have made camera movements more fluid.

There Performance mode of the full game unfortunately presents the same problems noted in the demo, i.e. an image that is far too blurry and soft despite the native resolution being around 1152p. The demo received an update yesterday to resolve this problem (which will probably also be applied to the final game) but the result is not perfect: the image is certainly sharper now, but the pixelation effect remains clearly visible on the screen.

The Quality mode

The Quality mode does not suffer from the problems of the 60 fps mode and is visually much more satisfying, but it still does not reach perfection. In fact, some details on the screen appear to be in 1440p, where the internal resolution is always equal to or slightly lower than 4K, which could be explained by low resolution post-processing.

Despite the aforementioned flaws, Digital Foundry states that “both graphics modes in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth work quite well.” In general, as mentioned at the beginning, the game appears visually satisfying, but perhaps it's not the generational leap which was expected compared to Final Fantasy 7 Remake. The artistic direction, the cinematic sequences, the character models, the animations, the particle effects in battle are of the highest level, while the ambient lighting and some low resolution or not perfectly refined elements of the scenarios are not entirely convincing.

For the rest, the game has largely convinced international critics and also our editorial staff, as you can read in the review of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.