Summary
WhileFinal Fantasy 7is by no means a brand-new game, having first launched way back in 1997, the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7 has no intent of topping any time soon. In fact,Final Fantasy 7: Rebirthis planning to be exactly that — a rebirth of what you imagined Final Fantasy 7 to be.
Though many trailers (with maybe a bit too much story) have given us glimpses of the world, the rather generous demo gives us our first taste of the world ourselves. Taking place during the Nibelheim flashback of the original FF7, the demo offers a healthy chunk of backstory and plenty of opportunities to explore just how fresh Rebirth is.
Updated Jul 15, 2025 by Hilton Webster:With the expansion of the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo to include a slimmed-down version of the early Junon area, you can now get a taste for the more open-world sections of the game. Even in the demo version, this is a hearty slice of what you can expect from the full experience, Red XIII riding a Chocobo and all.
14Salvage And Transmute To Your Heart’s Content
The challenge of any open-world game is making you feel invested in the travel of the world itself. You need a reason to not just fast travel everywhere. One such tactic that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has used is gathering items in the world to craft into useful items while out traveling instead of running back to town.
One advantage of Rebirth’s usage of this crafting system is that it actually gets better as you use it. The more you craft, the more you unlock, leveling your craftsmanship. In fact, you can even use the Item Transmuter to improve your accessories. Looking for more rare materials? Use the Morph materia on enemies to have them turn into materials on defeat.
13Care For Your Chocobo
Alongside Moogles, Chocobo have always been the face of Final Fantasy. Their theme isone of the most well-known tunes in the seriesup there with Prelude. Like the original before it, Rebirth lets you travel the world on your Chocobo, calling it on command and helping you dig around for hidden goods in a manner akin to FF9.
Of course, your Chocobo is more than a means of travel. you may go swimming, climb higher ledges, change their colours, buy new cosmetics accessories for them, and more. They’re your best buddy in this world; go verify you give them some love and a good jog around Junon.
Also, just look at Red XIII on that Chocobo. He’s adorable.
12Help Out Chadley With Some Research
If you’ve played Final Fantasy 7 Remake, you’ll be aware of Chadley, the Shinra researcher who likes to help out Cloud and company by use of the Combat Simulator and the gifting of Materia. He returns in Rebirth and can be found by the ranch in the Junon section of the FF7 Rebirth demo.
Here, he works much like you’d expect. He lets you acquire new Materia and train and challenge yourself in the Combat Simulator, but he also comes with something new - Fiend Research. While out and about in Junon, there are groups of dangerous, unique monsters that feature objectives when fighting. Beat them, and you’ll unlock new challenges and Materia to use.
11Take Advantage Of Backline Commands
A key aspect of the original FF7 was the use of rows in combat. Characters in the front would deal more damage but take more damage, while the opposite was true for the back row. In the real-time combat system of Remake, such a system had no emulation, though some concessions have been made in Rebirth for this.
While only three characters can be in the battle party at any time, the rest are always running around in the background. In the middle of particularly difficult combat encounters when only one member is still standing and in critical health, Backline Commands activate. These let you activate a Synergy skill with a party member in waiting for free, hopefully turning the tide of a losing battle.
This is quite similar to how Limit Breaks were activated in Final Fantasy 8, so you should go play that game to see some of that legacy at play.
10Play As Sephiroth
The big bad of the original game and Cloud’s waking nightmare, Sephiroth plays a major role in his formation as a character. In the original, Sephiroth accompanied Cloud through Nibelheim as an uncontrollable NPC. He waspacked with powerful Materia and high stats, allowing you to marvel at his distant strength.
For Rebirth, they’re letting you be Sephiroth. That absurd strength is yours to control. Sephiroth dashes across the battlefield with ease, warping and slashing in the blink of an eye. Better yet, he can assume a defensive stance to parry any attack that comes his way and return the gesture with a devastating counter. Cloud is just a puppy in comparison.
9Move Through The World With Terrain Actions
The original Final Fantasy 7 Remake, for as gorgeous as it was, could at times be a bit rigid. All movement through the world was scripted, making any form of traversal feel more like a glorified cinematic movement than actual freeform movement. With Rebirth, though it’s still far from seamless, it’s dramatically improved.
Nibelheim is a craggy region, built at the base of a mountain, and Cloud’s improved mobility is a massive help here. Sharp inclines can be climbed with the press of a button, any height can be dropped down from instead of having to walk all the way around. It seems like a small thing, but it makes navigation that much smoother.
8Meet Tifa’s Martial Arts Teacher
Only briefly seen in the original Final Fantasy 7, Zangan appears most prominently in spin-off media, such as Before Crisis and Last Order. As such, many players may have forgotten he even exists despite how integral he is to the fate of Nibelheim and Tifa as a whole.
In the Rebirth demo, you get to meet Zangan for the first time, who perhaps acts a tad… over familiar with Cloud. He grabs him by the waist with his rather large hands before proclaiming that he is too scrawny and that his current student, Tifa, is quite the shining star.
you’re able to later join in on a very brief training session with Zangan and the villagers.
7Visit Cloud’s Mother
There’s nothing quite like visiting familyafter a long time away. For Cloud, that’s been years since he left on a whim to Midgar to join up with SOLDIER. Returning to Nibelheim to maintain the reactor with Sephiroth, this was his first and last time visiting family.
Cloud’s mother, Claudia, never had a prominent appearance in any Final Fantasy media. From Cloud’s own memories, she seems to barely exist at all. As if he doesn’t know his own mother. Even in Rebirth he seems to struggle recalling visiting his mother when he came home. How odd…
6Eat Your Fill Of Sandwiches
Ah, but a budding First Class SOLDIER needs to be eating well! Potions are all fine and dandy in the heat of combat, but they won’t keep you up on your nutrients. When you first step foot into Nibelheim, the people will be fawning over Sephiroth, with the attention turning to Cloud once people recognize their superstar prodigal son’s return.
To this end, one such villager offers Cloud a sandwich, free of charge. A sign of good will. And then she offers another one, which Cloud devours wordlessly. Oh, and one more. A growing boy needs his nutrients, it would seem. At the end of all this, you will get a notification saying Cloud will have no room for dinner. Sorry, Claudia.
5Play The Piano Like A Virtuoso
If you’ve ever played an instrument, you’ll know none of them are exactly easy to play, though the piano is a particularly difficult beast to tame. In the original Final Fantasy 7, you could actually play the piano in Tifa’s room during the return to Nibelheim, with it ultimately rewarding you with her final Limit Break.
Square Enix, however, decided this should be a dedicated minigame this time around and it is assuredly a lot. It comes with a dizzying amount of settings, including even setting the speed at which notes come in and the placement of keys. It’s pretty damn challenging, too.
If you don’t mind getting a disastrous score during the minigame, you can actually play any tune you want if you sufficiently know how to play the piano. It really is that detailed.
