BODY: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is famously enormous—a single playthrough of Square Enix's middle chapter can swallow dozens of hours. So when the game's new "Boost Mode" promised to cut that in half, it raised an obvious question: what gets lost along the way?
Boost Mode debuted with the Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series X|S editions that launched on June 3, 2026, and it has now arrived on the PS5 and PC versions via a free update. The mode accelerates the pace of the game—speeding through travel, combat, and the dense web of minigames and side content that defined the original release.
In a hands-on test, a full Boost Mode run clocked in at less than half the time of a normal playthrough. The acceleration is most noticeable in the parts of Rebirth that drew the most polarized reactions at launch: the open-world chores, the chocobo traversal, and the relentless minigame rotation. Compressed, the adventure moves with a brisk momentum that the standard pace never quite achieves.
The trade-off, of course, is immersion. Rebirth's slower stretches exist partly to let its world breathe and its characters bond. Rushing through them changes the texture of the story—though for returning players or those short on time, that may be exactly the point.
The insider take
In Tokyo, Boost Mode reads less as a gimmick and more as Square Enix quietly answering its own critics. Japanese players and outlets spent much of 2024 debating whether Rebirth's content sprawl was generosity or bloat, and the Switch 2 launch gave the studio a clean excuse to ship a fix without admitting one was needed. Offering it free across all platforms is a savvy goodwill move ahead of the trilogy's finale—keeping the lapsed and the time-poor invested before the next, presumably equally massive, installment lands.
Originally reported by AUTOMATON (Japanese).