Naoki Hamaguchi has rolled credits on Final Fantasy 7 Revelation 46 separate times. Forty-six full runs, beginning to end. Yet the director maintains that one genuinely exhaustive playthrough would swallow more than 100 hours.
The number is Hamaguchi’s own. When the conversation turned to how large the trilogy’s final chapter is, he said a completionist run could “easily exceed 100 hours.”
He didn’t sugarcoat what that implies for his day-to-day work. “In a normal playthrough, from start to finish, if I were to sit down and check every asset and every single element of the game, it would easily take me over 100 hours. Obviously, I can’t do that every single time. As director, I don’t have the luxury of time, so sometimes I just skip the battles and focus on checking the main story,” Hamaguchi said.
In other words, the man responsible for the game doesn’t have the hours to experience all of it the way a player would. That’s worth pausing on.
A director who keeps testing between interviews
The 46 completions aren’t a boast cooked up for the promotional circuit. They’re what happens when someone converts every spare moment into a QA session.
“I try to play as much as I can. Yesterday, during another round of interviews, when I found a bit of free time, I brought a PS5 controller with me and sat down to test the latest build of the game. Even when I’m traveling for business, if I have any spare moment, I try to check the latest version to see if there are any issues,” Hamaguchi said.
There are two possible readings. He’s either a relentless perfectionist, or the game is so vast that the checking simply never finishes. With a 100-hour figure on the table, the answer is likely both at once.
A decade of work, three games, and the last stretch
Revelation brings a ten-year project to its conclusion. Just days earlier, Hamaguchi described the game as the culmination of 10 years of work and the finale of the whole trilogy.
He isn’t downplaying the pressure either. “We are determined to deliver a game that not only meets the expectations of the fans, but is also a work that we, as creators, can be truly proud of,” he said.
If you’ve followed along since the opening remake chapter, that’s exactly the reassurance you want heading into the final act. If you haven’t, there’s still a window to catch up. Not a wide one, but it exists.
When your own 100 hours can begin
Final Fantasy 7 Revelation arrives April 8, 2027 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Nintendo Switch 2.
Block out your spring. Hamaguchi has already spent 46 of them.