Official Site Review

In this Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion review, Lee catches up on a lost chapter of Final Fantasy VII and finds out that it might not be for everyone.

Lee Brady

Published 16 Jul 2024

Now that Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion is available as one of the games in the PS Plus Extra and Premium July 2024 lineup, we're republishing our review of the game to help you decide whether to check this one out on PS5 and PS4! Crisis Core goes live on PS Plus Extra on Tuesday, July 16, 2024.

In an ideal world, a recommendation for those Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion trophies should not have me coming out here with a mountain of excuses like a guilty parent presenting their child with the ruined box of their store-bought birthday cake. Sure, I can argue that the cake won’t taste any worse just because I dropped the box getting out of the car, but all the context in the world won’t stop little Timmy from crying over Thomas the Tank Engine’s horrible smashed-in face.

Crisis Core Reunion review for PS5 and PS4

Alas, this is not an ideal world — the perfectly timed release of Crisis Core Reunion between 2021’s Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade and 2024’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth means that a high proportion of players may optimistically pick up a copy of this remastered prequel only to find ruined birthday cake inside in box. Going into Crisis Core Reunion without foreknowledge is to invite disappointment and tears, especially when an internet review recommends you play the game — which this review ultimately will.

Before we get there though, we’re going to sit down and talk about why you’re getting store-bought birthday cake instead of something nice in the first place. Then, before we open the box, we’re going to have a frank and honest conversation about Thomas the Tank Engine’s smashed-in face. Finally, we’ll open the box, enjoy some pre-smashed cake, and agree that while it's not exactly what either of us wanted, admittedly we’ve all had worse.

It's a party, alright.

In the wake of Final Fantasy VII Remake

Crisis Core was originally released in North America for the PSP in 2008 and was the eighth-best-selling title on Sony’s handheld. Made as part of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII — a short-lived series of projects that sought to expand on original FFVII — Crisis Core endeavoured to flesh out the story of background character Zack Fair. Now, with Remake directly referencing the game by the end, fans can no longer live in blissful ignorance — Crisis Core is unavoidably canon.

Remodelling and remastering Crisis Core Reunion to fit into the crisp, washed-out modern aesthetic of Remake is just one more genius move in the game of 4D chess that Square Enix is playing. The average FFVII fan is sure to be utterly convinced that Crisis Core is a vital work in the series — and, for better or worse, it is.

Moreover, with Crisis Core being a prequel to the original FFVII and FFVII Remake, gamers not already entrenched in the series could be tempted to start their journey into FFVII with Crisis Core Reunion.

Angeal, pondering whether his sweet new wing makes him a monster.

There’s only one problem — Crisis Core Reunion is a remaster of a 14-year-old portable action game. When your original game is a classic turn-based RPG, it’s different — people can look at 1997’s Final Fantasy VII and know instantly that it’s a niche old game that either is or isn’t up their alley. The same cannot be said for Crisis Core Reunion, which looks a lot like 2020’s Remake but plays like a limited action game built for a portable console in the mid-2000s.

Many players will already know that about Crisis Core Reunion and won't be too surprised to discover the game has a single gameplay loop, boxy corridor level design, a long list of repetitive side activities, and a main story that’s nigh incomprehensible. Goddess help those who don’t have the context and just think this is a Remake spin-off. Those who expect a premium birthday cake are going to be crushed when they open this box.

"Hellooo~" is a pretty iconic line, well done Crisis Core.

The graphical successor to Final Fantasy VII

All that might sound harsh, but that’s just the wider context. Having recently enjoyed beating PSP game Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep this year, I had a general idea of what a blockbuster Square Enix action game for the PSP feels like: a little limited, a touch repetitive, and very grindy when played on higher difficulties. However, they're also brimming with creativity, charm and polish.

Saying that, there is something uncanny about Crisis Core Reunion’s wearing Remake's visuals like a skinsuit. I somehow drew more attention to the game's PSP roots. Environments, for example, look fairly crisp and well-realised, but when you realise Reunion never at any point introduces verticality into its level design, the richness of its locales start to feel claustrophobic as you look out at level geography you’ll never explore.

If you're not exploring a field, you're exploring a cave.

Gameplay animation is smooth and weighty (at least on PS5, Crisis Core’s frame rate takes a hit on PS4), but in cutscenes everyone shifts dramatically into jerky PS2-era cartoon motion. The characters bounce into a scene and use fewer frames to illustrate big motions, giving them a somewhat rubbery feel. This is particularly uncanny when they also sport the graphical fidelity of, at times, high-end PS3 characters.

With Reunion dressed up in Remake’s assets, the game feels like a spiritual send-up of the original FFVII’s shifting graphical styles, making up for the original’s sheer disparity in character design by introducing a greater sense of uncanniness as you play.

The original graphics.

The finest PlayStation Portable game design

We've seen the cake and it's all a little negative right now, so let’s edge towards praising the game by talking about its combat — the bulk of what you'll be doing in Crisis Core. In Remake, you might spend half your play time in combat, and the other half roaming areas, taking part in mostly bad side quests, playing minigames, exploring and occasionally solving puzzles. By contrast, Crisis Core is nearly all combat, all the time.

How many missions did you finish, man?

The game has a huge amount of side missions (300 in total), some of which offer vital upgrades to help you beat the game and all of which involve beating up enemies in a dungeon. While each chapter does offer the chance to explore a little and solve the odd puzzle, usually the solution to everything entails beating everything to death. The odd flash of a puzzle, like at Modeoheim’s bathhouse or Shinra Manor, only serves to remind you how little variety there is in Crisis Core’s design.

However, while it’s not quite as fun to mess around with as Remake, the combat mechanics in Crisis Core Reunion are perfect polished and refined, benefiting greatly from Remake’s heft and visual clarity. With a simple arsenal of magic, abilities, items, sword strikes, a block, and a dodge, Crisis Core Reunion’s combat remains hypnotic and engaging throughout. Bumping the difficulty up to hard mode and surviving a fight just over Zack’s level with perfect blocks and dodges feels exceptionally good to pull off.

The DMW is in the top left here.

When you get into the details of the game design, the messiness leaves much to be desired — particularly the game’s pseudo-random DMW system (which is supposed to stand for Digital Mind Wave, but I quickly adopted Doesn’t Matter Wheel in my head). As you fight, a slot machine will fire off in the corner, occasionally gifting you with temporary buffs and powerful special attacks. This function is fine and adds a little opportunism to proceedings when you get to freely spend your MP or gain invincibility for a bit.

The DMW is much less fine when you consider that levelling up is tied to this lottery wheel rather than a set experience limit, meaning you might have killed enough creatures to level up, but until the wheel deems you worthy, you won’t. While depriving the player of a consistently rising power level does push them to engage with the game’s other systems — raising Zack’s power by messing with materia and obtaining equipment — it still doesn't excuse weirdly flabby game design choices.

That messiness can also be seen when the game’s combat encounters drag on too long. Granted, this mostly applies to the mini-bosses fought in missions. When done right, like with the game’s drawn-out final boss, the variety and skill required to win does zero in on how balanced and fun the combat in Crisis Core can be.

The Strife continues.

Final Fantasy VII out of X

While it certainly looked unappetising at first, once you chew long enough on a slice of Thomas the Tank Engine's disgusting mashed eyelid, you realise that even a cake made of trauma can be delicious. Similarly, once I got used to Crisis Core's weirdness, I ended up having a really good time playing it. I progressed through the story leisurely, taking breaks often between chapters to investigate the few NPCs dotted around Midgar and playing mission after mission in a mindless, yet relaxing, video game haze.

It’s in these repetitive trance-like loops that you can see Crisis Core’s original appeal as a portable game. Curling up somewhere comfortable and jumping into combat feels quietly relaxing and addictive, like being entrenched in a dark corner of a busy casino. With that literal slot machine running in the top left corner of the screen, it'll always feel kind of like you're at a casino/pachinko parlor.

Zack lamenting the slot machine he has in his brain.

After a certain point, I did start listening to podcasts, but I don’t want you to think I’m criticising the soundtrack here. This game just happens to have a very relaxing flow to it, not unlike playing a few rounds of a game like Hades. Eventually, you just want to listen to your own stuff and zen out.

That said, you'll want to tune into the audio when trying to make sense of Crisis Core’s impenetrable story beats. While Zack’s story is a fairly simple one to grasp and contains plenty of genuinely humanising moments, his playing fourth fiddle in his own story is a writing choice that starts as baffling and ends as cruelty. (Please, please do not make this your first Final Fantasy VII game by the way.)

In Crisis Core, we get to see Sephiroth hang out with friends It's deeply strange.

The three main characters of this story — Angeal, Genesis, and Sephiroth — all briefly make sense at the start, but in turn they all take a sharp turn into nonsense talk as the story goes on. The story also has a general air of mystery, but it only surprises you when reintroducing characters you were sure didn't matter back into the story later. It certainly doesn't surprise you intentionally, at the very least.

Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion — Trophy Tactics

I couldn’t check entirely which trophies I unlocked from Crisis Core's trophy list, but to be clear: this one is going to be a real-time sink to platinum. You’ll need to beat the game on hard mode to unlock a gold trophy, so make sure to do that run first and foremost.

As you play through, make use of your 25 available save slots at key places — in particular, save one spot per chapter, and also anytime the game warns you that proceeding to the next area might end a questline. Each chapter seems to have a hidden trophy of some kind, whether it’s nailing the stealth section at Modeoheim or stopping all the attacking robots from reaching the gates at Junon.

Once you’ve beaten the story on hard, I recommend switching over to normal difficulty to make the missions somewhat more doable. You should be in good shape to take them on by Chapter 9, and you know in advance that playing New Game Plus will wipe your mission progress. Completing all missions will let you earn a bunch of trophies, including finishing the DMW roster, a chance to defeat Minerva, and unlocking all the shops.

Crisis Core also likes to think of itself as occasionally profound and it really isn’t at all. You’ll be sick to death of hearing Genesis babble the same couple of lines from his drama school rewrite of Hamlet. This bit culminates in one of the game’s funniest scenes when Genesis, babbling intensely, doesn’t seem to reveal anything interesting to the audience at all, yet somehow prompts Zack to audibly yell: “Does this mean… you knew… from the beginning!?”

"Yadda yadda at world's end yadda yadda gift of the goddess..."

More often though, Crisis Core Reunion is actually funny on purpose. Zack telling a character to shut up mid-monologue, or howling defensively when Shinra mistakes his makeshift flower wagon for a death machine — these are definite highlights. These moments I believe helped lay down the foundation for Remake to later double down on a sense of humor for this excellent series.

As with every other feature in Crisis Core Reunion, the story culminates in a mixed bag. Yet, the intentions are always good. If you’re a fan of any Final Fantasy VII media, you really should give it a shot — and now that your expectations have been sufficiently lowered, you might even have a great time with Crisis Core.

We should have dropped the cake metaphor right at the start.

Summary

Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion is a store-bought Thomas the Tank Engine birthday cake — not the kind of treat we expect to leave much of an impression, especially after being flipped upside down mid-transit. Yet it’s the kind of treat that, once started, we find pleasant enough to eat consistently until it’s all gone, and we feel surprisingly disappointed when there’s nothing left. If you love store-brand birthday cake, you’ll love Crisis Core Reunion.

* Lee played the PS5 version of Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion for 30 hours on hard mode, beating the story at the 22-hour mark then going back to clear more missions before realising he was never going to beat them all. He unlocked 50% of the trophies, which is pretty impressive seeing he couldn’t see the trophy list at any point. TrueTrophies was provided with a code for Crisis Core Reunion by Square Enix — the game launches December 13th, 2022.

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