I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: Polygon is weird. I can’t think of a single person on staff (besides me, obviously) who knows how to properly enjoy good weather. My coworkers openly celebrate the crisp breeze of nostalgic autumnal air. They cheer at the first annual snowfall. Just last week, someone in our local Slack channel recommended going outside for lunch to enjoy the weather. The high that day? 63 degrees Fahrenheit. But whenever the temperature hits 90 F, it’s all, “Ugh, it’s horrible outside,” or “This is way too hot,” or “Ari, you’re gonna start wearing sunscreen this year, right?”
This week on Polygon, we’re looking at games that feel like vacations for your brain in a package we’re calling Retreat Week.
So I might catch some heat for this, but in the spirit of Retreat Week, someone had to be brave enough to say it: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s Costa del Sol is the ideal vacation fantasy. If I had to go anywhere in the (digital) world, it’d be Costa del Sol.
I never played the original Final Fantasy 7, so I can’t speak to Costa del Sol’s tourism bona fides in that game, but its iteration in 2024’s Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth really has it all. For about a year now, I’ve been daydreaming of figuring out how to plug myself into the Matrix, purely so I can do a weekend in Costa del Sol.
It’s not just the glistening blue waves (though those are nice) nor the swaying palm trees (also nice). Costa del Sol exhibits the enviably relaxed vibe that so often seems to define hot-weather destinations.
For one thing, the activities you avail yourself of are charmingly low-stakes: swimsuit shopping, a card game, a photography excursion, some Rocket League with Pets. The PS5 doesn’t support olfactory tech yet, but as you walk around, you can practically smell the mojitos through the screen. (Though you know you’re waiting at least half an hour for the one you ordered to arrive.) You navigate the boardwalk on a Segway, for crying out loud, a vehicle literally designed to minimize the effort of getting from place to place.
But consider when exactly the Costa del Sol chapter arrives in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Prior to visiting the beach, you spend Rebirth on the run. You infiltrate enemy armies, fight giant monsters, race dolphins, futz with gear menus, and otherwise engage in activities most rational humans would deem stressful. But then you get on a cruise and make landfall at a place so remarkably chill, your most stressful task involves renovating a seaside hotel. It’s the first moment in Rebirth where you’re forced to slow down a beat.
Sure, the sandstone streets of Costa del Sol are likely too hot to walk barefoot on. That hotel on the main drag for sure has busted air conditioning, unlike the presumably more temperature-controlled Gold Saucer. But Costa del Sol remains such an appealing daydream because it fundamentally portrays the one thing any successful holiday needs to be: a break, and a well-earned one at that.
The post Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s Costa del Sol gives so much wanderlust it hurts appeared first on Polygon.
