Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII – Reunion Review

Release date: December 13, 2022

Genres: Action role-playing game, Action-adventure game

Designers: Tetsuya Nomura, Yoshinori Kitase, Takeharu Ishimoto, Kazushige Nojima, Hajime Tabata

Composer:Takeharu Ishimoto

Developers: Square Enix, Tose

"Review Copy Provided By Square-Enix"

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII was one of the most influential games to ever release that not only added substantial backstory to the world of Final Fantasy VII but also alluded to things to come. It had a monumental impact on gamers the world over, myself included, with how absolutely wonderfully Zack Fair was portrayed and his journey from idealistic youth to jaded soldier. This game, for all of its amazing world building and character development, has been left for 15 years on a long dead platform being the PSP with no way to legitimately play the game on modern hardware and has an entire new generation of Final Fantasy VII fans unable to experience it. Square-Enix decided to rectify this by not just rereleasing the game in its original form, but by completely remaking the game from the ground up in Unreal Engine 4 and carrying over aspects from Final Fantasy VII: Remake giving players a decidedly new experience. Is it a full-on remaster or remake or does it somehow fit into the current Remake trilogy? The answers to those questions lie in playing the game for yourself as what I can do with this review is answer if this game is worth you spending your hard earned money on. So, let’s find out!

The Story of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII – Reunion is one of two prequels to the original Final Fantasy VII (and by proxy Final Fantasy VII: Remake). We step into the shoes of SOLDIER 2nd Class operative Zack Fair as he strives to one day not only make SOLDIER 1st class but also achieve his dream of being a hero. Zack is under the tutelage of his 1st class superior, Angeal Hewley, as he undergoes various missions for Shinra and gains field experience. Zack is often overconfident if not downright hyper when it comes to proving his capabilities as an operative of SOLDIER much to the ire of Angeal who often tries to teach him the values of honor as SOLDIER and views him as a hyper puppy. Zack and Angeal are tasked with helping end the long war between Wutai and Shinra as well as handle the mass desertion from SOLDIER lead by SOLDIER 1st class Genesis Rhapsodus. With Angeal also deserting SOLDIER due to his moral conflict, it is up to Zack and the legendary hero Sephiroth to uncover the mysterious that lie beneath the surface of Shinra that ultimately binds and controls the fate of all these men and…..the price of freedom.

I know you all want to know how the game runs on the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck and I'm here to say the game runs flawlessly on both! On the Nintendo Switch especially on the OLED screen, the game just pops and feels like this is what it was meant to be experienced on with that beautiful screen. The game runs at 720p 30fps on the Nintendo Switch in docked mode and 720p 30fps in handheld mode. On the Steam Deck you have a variety of options to choose from when connected to a monitor or TV as you can run the game all at 1080p with a variable refresh rate fluctuating between 30 and 50 while the sweet spot I find is 1080p with the fps set to 40hz. Portably on Deck it runs at a native 800x1280 at 60fps with settings like the graphics maxed out to the highest which gives you 3 and a half hours of battery life and can go higher than 4 hours if you optimize the settings.

If you play this on a gaming PC, then you can run this at 4K at 120fps if you wanted to, unfortunately the game doesn’t allow for support of ultrawide monitors so you’ll see black bars on both sides of your screen. On the Xbox One, Xbox Series S, and base PS4, the game runs at 1080p at 30fps while on the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X the game runs at 1080p 60fps and 4K 30fps. On the PS5 and Xbox Series X the game runs at 4K at 60fps aswell as 1080p at 120 fps.

If you’re on PC then you can play using mouse and keyboard as opposed to just controller.

When it comes to the gameplay, Crisis Core Reunion (CCR going forward) has been rebuilt from the ground up and plays almost nothing like the original PSP game. In the original, you were able to cycle through commands, magic, and items by using the L and R shoulder buttons on the PSP with X being your selection button. The analogue nub allowed you to move about the environments and battlefield while Circle allowed you to dodge roll in combat. The entirety of combat in the original made sense for the platform that it was on, but ultimately would not work in the modern era of gaming nor for modern gamers. While CCR is no Final Fantasy VII: Remake, it does a fantastic job of preserving its core foundation while borrowing from its modern siblings’ aesthetic.

The game was originally built with the PSP in mind so there will be instances where you will see its PSP roots showing such as with how the game emphasizes its zone centric smaller environments, bite-sized missions, short yet rewarding side quests, and chapter-based story structure. This may be off-putting to many newer and modern gamers, but overall, it won’t impact the general fun of the game.

Depending on the chapter that you are in, you can traverse to different areas such as Shinra HQ, downtown Midgar by Goblin’s Bar, the Sector 7 slums, Aerith’s church, and more. These areas are substantially smaller than what you would experience in Remake as they aren’t open sandbox areas but are closer to being a small playground that you can explore. You’re able to explore and find treasure chests, as well as talk to various NPCs which can offer up sub-quests, as well as find shops to purchase new gear (you can also do this from your status menu). Going to save points offer up not only the ability to save but also allows you to select missions to partake in (more on missions later!).

Pushing the Y, X, or Triangle button will bring up your status menu which will allow you to be able to check and change out your equipment along with doing materia fusion which lets you create stronger and newer materia, check your mail to see whos’ been contacting you as well as various tutorials, and finally you can save your game and check out the various options for game settings like changing the difficulty and more. Pushing the right shoulder button will bring up the mail section of the status menu which is something you’ll want to check for both plot purposes and if you need refreshers on the games various mechanics.

There is also now a sprint button which allows Zack to get around areas substantially faster. This is a great addition especially if you played the original as Zack’s default jog would make exploring larger areas a chore.

Combat is now incredibly fast and fluid with you being able to attack, guard, cast magic, and dodge at a moment’s notice that harkens to the fluidity of Remake while still having the random encounters occurring when roaming about the games’ various missions and dungeons. You can finally move the camera about freely in both the field and in battles with the right analog stick along with targeting enemies now being done by clicking in the right analog stick with you being able to cycle through targeted enemies by holding down the left shoulder button and moving the right analog stick left or right. No longer do you have to cycle through action commands as now every action for Zack is mapped to a button. Materia actions and magic casting is now mapped to the left shoulder button which will expand to include all of the face buttons as well as the right shoulder button and trigger. Item selection is done using the left and right triggers and then using B, A, or Circle to use an item and is the only instance of the old action selection system that remains from the PSP original.

Battles play out just as they did in the originals with you either entering random battles at points or scripted story fights with you needing to take out various enemies to end the encounters. You still have the DMW slots which flow like a slot machine and will activate various in battle stat buffs and bonuses for Zack as well as give him the ability to use Limit Breaks and Summons. Limit Breaks and Summons are obtained when you get any three of the same characters in the DMW, the Limit Break or Summon that you get is entirely random but are usually effective for the situations you find yourself in.

Completing battles after a certain point in the game will net you some benefits such as health, magic, and SP restoration based around how well you fight, how you end fights be it with magic or ability materia or Limit Break/Summon, or if you don’t take any damage.

Missions are much as they were in the original with you being able to access the various missions from the save spheres on the field. When selecting a mission, you’re given a brief plot synopsis of what is going on along with the mission objectives and the item that you gain from completing the mission. Within missions are usually several items you can get from chests such as potions, elixirs, phoenix downs, remedys, and the like as each mission will have anywhere from 1-6 chests for you to find as you explore the environments. Due to how the games difficulty level scales, it is best to spend some time grinding it out in Missions to gain some levels and gain items as some of the materia and accessories you gain from doing missions can make the difference when it comes to defeating enemies and bosses in the main campaign.

Graphically, CCR compared to the original is an astronomical upgrade in everyway possible and is on par to an extent to with FF7 Remake as the entire game has been rebuilt in Unreal Engine 4. The character models have all been updated to reflect the models that we saw in Remake which includes the Buster Sword now reflecting the one we saw in Remake as well as its original design over the Crisis Core style and we even Sephiroth’s outfit incorporates some of the designs that he had in Remake. All of the FMVs have been upscaled to look good on the various platforms and range from the 720p resolution of the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck, all the way up to 4K on the current generation platforms and PC. Any FMV that featured the Buster Sword’s Crisis Core design has been redone to reflect the Remake version and this includes all original CGI artwork for Crisis Core. It can be a bit jarring to see the various characters renders in the modern Remake style and the original FMVs as the game will flow between them at a moments notice.

Character animations are for the most part fully redone with attack animations being redone to be more realistic and fluid while the majority of the game seems to have the new graphics layered over the previous handmade motions and mocapped animations. Environments are all way more vibrant and reflect a good balance of the Remakes’ upgrades while keeping the original looks intact.

When it comes to the voice acting, the game has an entirely new cast in comparison to the original with all of the recasted voices that you heard in Remake reprising their roles. I honestly don’t mind any of the new voices here as the delivery of lines is pretty on point and takes into account the relocalization of some lines that were incorrectly read in the original game. The largest glaring problem is the fact that Caleb Pierce, who voices Zack Fair, is honestly the absolute worst part of this game. I’m not sure if the blame should be put on the voice director or if Caleb just wanted to make Zack his own, but regardless his rendition of Zack is just awful as he doesn’t deliver any of Zack’s lines with the right amount of cadence, emotion or nuance that Zack’s previous voice actor Rick Gomez did. This leaves key moments of the game that are incredibly emotional, left feeling flat and unimpactful when you compare it to the original voice actor’s performance.

I tried my best to “enjoy” Calebs’ take on Zack Fair when he initially voiced him in Remake, and I never could come to grips with it. Playing through this entire game having to listen to him as the voice of Zack makes me cringe every time he delivers any line that Rick had absolutely nailed. Because of this, I am patiently waiting for when PC users make a mod that will allow for players to replace all of Caleb’s lines with Rick’s.

When it comes to the OST, what can I say other than all you need to do is listen to classics like “Under the Apple Tree”, The Worlds Enemy”, “Fulfilled Desire”, “The Price of Freedom”, and the main theme “Why” in both its instrumental version and the one performed by Japanese artist AYAKA. For the most part, all of the songs have been redone and updated in subtle ways to maintain faithfulness to the original score. All in all, not a bad track on this games OST.

So, what are the downsides of CCR? For many it will be the need to go through missions as the game will at times spike in difficulty and will almost force you to go do missions to grind although this can be mitigated by changing the difficulty level if you find the game to be too hard. Another thing I can see being an issue is many gamers will find the random encounters and general gameplay loop can be annoying especially with having to hear “ACTIVATING COMBAT MODE” and “CONFLICT RESOLVED” but to me that just reflects the fact that this is still essentially a PSP game that was meant to be played in short bursts that was given new life with a new engine that it’s being built on. The last downside is simply the voice of Zack, but I’ve already touched on that.

So, is Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII – Reunion worth it for new gamers who played Remake and for series vets who played the original? YES to both! While it may not have the exact mechanics that you empierced in Remake but it does its best to update the gameplay for a modern audience while giving a ton of quality of life upgrades for those who have played the original to make this the definitive way to experience the masterpiece of this story that set’s the stage for the entirety of the Final Fantasy VII saga. If you never played the original PSP release, then Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion is an absolute must play as it gives you not only backstory on the characters you love but, also allows you to see them in a different light and gives a ton of context. With awesome all new graphics, substantial gameplay improvements, a phenomenal voice cast, and the mere fact this classic is available on all platforms for the first time in 15 years; this makes Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII – Reunion one of the best games of 2022 and the best way to end the year!