Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth fans are getting cooked by the Junon demo's combat

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Rebirth's second demo is pretty merciless

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth hero Cloud shown against purple light
(Image credit: Square Enix)

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's new demo is beating the life out of players.

Part two of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's demo went live earlier this week, allowing players to explore the open-world area of Junon and fight all sorts of beasties within, whereas they were confined to the linear prequel section of Nibelheim beforehand. The trouble is that players find combat in the demo's new portion incredibly difficult.

"I absolutely loved 7 Remake and don't recall being god awful at that game, but holy shit I am atrocious at Rebirth," reads one Final Fantasy 7 Remake subreddit post. "I died three times to the water monster, constantly getting party members trapped in water prison or grabbed."

"Anyone else get absolutely shat on in the new Junon demo? Felt like some of the enemies were actually Mike Tyson," reads the title of another subreddit post. Those elephants and that big ass Eagle be dishing out the hits. Maybe I'm just getting too old."

"Coming into the Junon Demo, I realize just how shit I am at this game. Seems like I take a tremendous amount of damage and SUCK at guarding lol," adds another post. "I tried fiend number two first, and while I'm able to kill it, I struggle a bit and can't meet all the battle objectives. I feel like there's so much going on that I forget to use abilities and spells. I know I'll get better in time the more I practice, same thing happened to me in the FF16 Garuda demo."

Others have reasoned with the difficulty of the new demo. "They've upped the complexity of combat with new abilities, synergy skills and abilities, and these new enemy types with more varied ways of pressuring them. Junon Demo is a little way into the game, so you're basically being tossed into the deep end, don't be too hard on yourself," responds one subreddit user. 

It's a fair point - perhaps the same fights would be much easier for these players had they naturally progressed through Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and arrived at the fights with potentially a dozen hours of gameplay fresh in their minds. As it is, they're placed in Rebirth's second open-world area and told to face off against mid-level enemies without actually being told how to. At least they are still entertained and excited for the full game.

Read up on our Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth review to see why we lavished praise on Square Enix's action-RPG sequel.

Hirun Cryer
Hirun Cryer
Freelance Writer

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.