Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on Nintendo Switch 2 kept reminding me of Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The early exclusive for the original hybrid console was beloved for its world, story, and an ambitious cast of characters, but looked graphically rough even at the very best of times. The folks at Monolith Soft did everything they could to make it look nice, but whether you were playing in docked or handheld mode, it was a blurry mess. Until a Switch 2 upgrade appears, that’s just how the otherwise tremendous JRPG will be.
But despite it fumbling over so many technical hurdles, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 still received rave reviews and remains a classic of the genre to this day. Because, despite appearing ugly on the surface, its art design, character writing, and sprawling world shine through. If one day it does receive a well-deserved upgrade, it will shine brighter than ever. This is basically how I feel about Rebirth’s long-awaited port to the Switch 2, but everything is weirdly reversed.
Its visuals and performance are notably downgraded, and exploring its vast open world can result in heinous performance drops and disastrous texture pop-in, but the atmosphere and personality that hold it all together remain. For new and existing players, that’s what really matters.
How Does Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Look On Nintendo Switch 2?
I was awfully impressed by Final Fantasy 7 Remake on Nintendo Switch 2. It looked and ran better than it had any right to, making me feel like I was playing the PS4 Pro version right in the palm of my hands, but with a few extra gameplay modifiers to boot. Square Enix did truly incredible work with this port, and I’m happy recommending it to new players experiencing it for the first time. As for hardcore fans like me, it’s superior to the Steam Deck version and is also playable on a television, even if the resolution never gets remotely close to 4K. It’s killer, but it was also porting a game that originally launched for the PS4 in 2020.
Meanwhile, Rebirth began life as a PS5 exclusive in 2024, and by its very nature is more technically demanding. Not only were its characters and environments more detailed, but it also took the trilogy into the open world, using Unreal Engine 4 as it left Midgar and its largely interior environments behind. Even on vanilla PS5, Performance Mode looks surprisingly blurry and sacrifices detail for a couple of extra frames, while Fidelity Mode sacrifices framerate for admittedly gorgeous visuals. Pro is the perfect sweet spot (or a high-end PC) but far too few players have access to such things.
Rebirth is also supported on the Steam Deck, although it sucks away battery life like nobody’s business and, in my testing at least, is prone to the occasional crash.
So where does the Switch 2 version land in all of this? Well, after spending several hours with the game and exploring the open world surrounding Kalm, I think it falls behind most other console versions but is superior to the Steam Deck. Things start nicely enough in the Nibelheim flashback as Cloud explores his mysterious hometown and scales Mt Nibel with Tifa and Sephiroth in tow. Interior environments like the local inn, little shops, or Tifa’s childhood home hold up well enough, even if low-resolution textures across doors or walls are clear to see.
Performance wise, it runs at a steady 30fps, but attack animations filled with particle effects or grand sweeps of the camera across certain environments do try to buckle this benchmark. Once you hit the open world, these moments become far more noticeable. While climbing Mt Nibel, the lower resolution textures of rocks, trees, and more are abundantly clear and not pleasant to look at, and enemies in the distance become hard to distinguish from the environment thanks to similar graphical compromises.
You’d better get used to sights like this in the open world, because most things are likely to pop in as you’re approaching them — although this was also true of the PS5 version to a lesser extent.
This version of the game also comes with a number of additional gameplay modifiers that can increase experience gained, damage dealt, and much more. These will be added as a free update to existing platforms later this week.
When you’re inside the mountainside reactors though, it seems the resolution and overall visual quality jump up radically. Rather than having to render into the far distance, all the engine must do is accommodate a curated interior environment where fewer things can go wrong. It still falls short of other platforms, but when exploring Shinra Manor or Mythril Mine, the saturated colours and lovingly crafted details all come through.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to ignore the stuttering and performance drops that come when walking around more crowded towns like Kalm, with plenty of NPC activity and lighting effects. The stuttering is noticeable enough that often I tried to avoid hanging around these places for too long, which definitely takes away from the experience overall.
Is Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Worth Playing On Nintendo Switch 2?
But the open world is where players end up spending most of their time. Blurry is the single word I’d use to describe it, since Square has definitely lowered the rendering resolution and torn away all effects and assets to achieve a solid level of performance. While walking along the highway leading out of Kalm, I noticed fewer flags, barrels, and other physics objects lining the road, while the smoke billowing from a nearby reactor was significantly less dense than the PC version I used for comparison.
One thing I noticed while testing the Xbox App version of the PC release was that many of the Unreal Engine 4 stuttering issues that plagued the Steam version are no more.
An early side quest has you venturing to a nearby field to gather flowers of different colours. Except on Switch 2, the majority of those flowers have been removed, so you’re pretty much collecting them from an empty plain. On PC at maximum settings or even on PS5, flora is clear to see, and the narrative focal point of this quest remains, but Switch 2 rips it away so you’re not forced to play at 20 frames per second. I’ll be curious to learn if other areas later on in the game have received similar downgrades that take away the intention from pivotal moments, because this is where the Switch 2 is going to fall short the most.
But even when you take all the graphical adjustments and framerate limits into account, this still feels like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Character models are still nicely detailed — even if hair now boasts significantly more frizz — while the combat system remains fast, satisfying, and ripe for strategic thinking. Whenever I stepped into a familiar location, I felt the striking atmosphere and thematic intention, even if textures seemed blurry and undercooked.
Many compromises have been made to bring Rebirth to Switch 2, cementing it as what could be its most challenging porting job yet. It’s far from perfect, but if this is your first time giving this open-world RPG a chance, it gets the job done.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
4.5/5
- Released
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February 29, 2024
- ESRB
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Teen / Violence, Blood, Mild Suggestive Themes, Language, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco
