Crisis Core – Final Fantasy 7 – Reunion is a perfect example of how a game blurs the line between remaster and remake, completely rebuilding the muscles around it while still taking the already great 2007 PSP original. All the changes, from the gorgeous updated graphics to the fairly fast combat, make it pretty close to 2020’s excellent Final Fantasy 7 Remake. However, Crisis Core falls short of the overall upheaval FF7R leans towards, and many design choices made with the original his PSP game in mind ensure this remaster is completely intact. There will be no reunion.
As before, Crisis Core is an action-heavy prequel to Zack Fair, a spiteful and likable foil to his much more whimsical sidekick, the iconic Cloud Strife. Final, which began about seven years before the events of his Fantasy 7, Zack dreams of becoming the best SOLDIER 1st tier like Sephiroth, and wants to raise the ranks of his program as a SOLDIER of Shinra Electric. increase. Even today, it’s still a great story that neatly ties the threads of Zack, Cloud, and Sephiroth together with real-time combat that blends some quirky systems in interesting ways. Gold Saucer for every battle.
Reunion’s most direct and noticeable change is a graphics overhaul, using Unreal Engine 4 to bring the in-game visuals relatively close to FF7R parity. The character models are great, the environments are very detailed, and even the menus and his UI replicate the remake’s clean look with a nice blend of form and function. Crisis Core was already a better-looking PSP game, but these visual improvements make it feel much more modern and surprisingly high-budget for what Square Enix classifies as a remaster. You can
Reunion could easily be mistaken for a brand new game in most respects, but it has some vestiges of the original and doesn’t look as good as it could possibly be. For example, the original CG cutscene is reused here. Being seen on a large, high-res screen is a benefit, but disappointing when compared to the in-game action.They are the visual quality of Advent his Children and the original his PlayStation Final Fantasy of his game Think of it somewhere between cutscenes. They’re still happy and alive after all these years, but that can’t completely hide how noticeably they’ve aged.
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Thankfully, that thick layer of dust is easy to forget in the heat of battle, especially during Reunion’s most visually striking addition: the incredible summoning sequence. Ifrit’s fiery lava-filled Hellfire never blew me away, nor did Bahamut’s particle-effect-heavy mega-flare. All pre-rendered cutscenes by Square Enix I can understand why you wouldn’t want to completely redo the , but these summons are intriguing as to what could have been done had they decided to remake all the footage with modern technology.
The animation is a big improvement over the original, but it can feel stiff at times, especially when it comes to how certain scenes in the game are directed. Moving to can be jarring and yes, it’s a reminder that this was originally a limited PSP game of its time. Still, most dialogue delivery and character movements look great in in-game cutscenes, and even better in combat.
it’s not grandpa’s fight
Reunion’s graphical improvements may be the first thing that catches your eye, but the most important improvements are in the gameplay tweaks. Crisis Core has always been an action RPG, but with his one thumbstick and his two bumper layout on the PSP, Square his Enix got creative with its design, using left and right bumpers to spell, attack , items had to be shuffled, etc. With a modern controller at his disposal, Zack’s basic attack, dodge, and guard commands are all mapped to buttons and triggers on his face, and by holding L1 and pressing the same button, you can use abilities to cast spells. you can chant Almost everything in the pose menu can also be remapped if you don’t like the layout of the controls.
DMW systems are also returned largely unchanged, for better or worse. During battle, in the upper left corner he has a 3-tile slot. His machine automatically runs, and when certain characters line up or a certain number of combinations are achieved, Zack can gain a significant boost. I can do it. These include temporarily having unlimited his MP or the ability to perform powerful limit break or summons. It’s a fun way to make combat feel fresh all the time, but the speed at which these boosts are achieved is incredibly uneven and random, sometimes pushing over bosses to come up with more unique ways to do things. It takes away the fun.
Combat is fast.a many Faster. Zack quickly dodges attacks, rolls behind enemies for critical hits, sneaks into some sword slashes, rolls back out of the way, and fights Firgas in a way that makes the original look downright dull. I can give you a blast. Combat still doesn’t feel as deep as the admittedly high bar set by FF7R’s action, and doesn’t benefit from that game’s ability to switch party members on the fly, but here The changes are still much better.The biggest improvement from the PSP version.
Unfortunately, not all aspects of Crisis Core’s gameplay have been updated with the same level of success, and the aging game underneath has managed to once again lift its ugly head outside of combat. There are some relatively open areas for Zack to run across Midgar and Gaia, but there are often several internal and external corridors chained together along with (thankfully short) loading screens. While the story chapters are mostly engaging and typically last about an hour each, Crisis Core’s mission system offers additional quick quests designed to be played on the go. Most of them aren’t all that substantial, and pretty much all boil down to running through the same handful of corridors, encountering random enemies, and collecting items from some chests. , but I felt I only did a handful of them. is to see cute story beats from young and brave Yuffie.
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The original game’s fantastic materia fusion system returns in Reunion, allowing you to combine generally weak magic, commands, specials, and support materia to produce stronger and more interesting results. Using the materia fusion system, I was able to create a powerful Quake spell relatively early on. This allowed us to annihilate large groups of weaker enemies almost instantly, but it felt like we gained that strength thanks to smart fusion.
Reunion is also packed with simple, distracting mini-games that bring you back throughout the story. It almost certainly haunted me until I could go back. Thankfully, they don’t slow things down enough to ruin the combat around them.
nice to meet you again
Given how well FF7R lived up to fan expectations, I was curious if Square Enix would adjust the Crisis Core storyline to account for some surprising changes that occurred, especially regarding Zack. However, the main story remains the same as told in the original game. (There may still be some sort of unlockable cutscene hidden behind a side mission, but I haven’t found it yet. It happens in the remake, Crisis Core does as well, Its story feels like the most integral entry in any Final Fantasy 7 compilation other than the first game.
The events that occur in Crisis Core add interesting depth to Cloud, Turks, and many other characters in Square’s beloved classic and its remakes. Sephiroth, in particular, becomes much more humanized during his run. Playing the original Final Fantasy 7 was easy, and I don’t know Zack very well, but his story is very important to Cloud. , even without much screen time, his presence towers over it in a surprising way. As impressive as 15 years ago.
Characters such as Zack, Sephiroth, and Aerith have also been replaced by their respective voice actors from FF7R, giving a strong sense of cohesion between Reunion and the still-to-be-finished Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy. , while the overall story of Crisis Core remains engaging and engaging as a prequel, that is Aspects of the story that veer into the endearing, nonsensical flavor of storytelling that exists in some other Square Enix games. A bizarre obsession with meaning, and sometimes tedious dialogue, can be a distraction from the rest of the fun story.
