Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion

Finn Stein, Reporter|January 19, 2023

Promotional poster of the game, featuring the main character Zach who is the main character from Final Fantasy VII who becomes important late in the game, Cloud Strife, and another main character, who ends up the main antagonist, Sephiroth.

Promotional poster of the game, featuring the main character Zach who is the main character from Final Fantasy VII who becomes important late in the game, Cloud Strife, and another main character, who ends up the main antagonist, Sephiroth.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, released December 13, 2022, is a remake of the 2007 game Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core. The story follows Zach Fair, an excitable and high energy soldier, who is determined to work his way through the ranks. It’s a typical “hero saves the world and get the girl” kind of story. It is a prequel to the highly rated 1997 Final Fantasy VII, detailing how the main character of that game got his unique sword and what pushed that game’s story forward. 

 

Faithfulness to original story

This remake stayed very faithful to the original story. When the remake for the original Final Fantasy VII came out, the developers altered some main story lines as well as added some to flesh out the world a little more. They did not do anything like that for this version. However they did add extra missions but not anything that changed the overarching story. 

 

screenshot from the beginning of the game, before Zach is given his iconic sword. He defeats enemies on the way to a town in his first mission after his promotion to first class.

Graphics/appearance

The difference in graphics is  absolutely night and day. This was definitely an expected change, considering the original game came out over a decade ago. As well as just making the game look nicer, and more realistic, they redesigned the menus and overall interface to look more like the remake for the original Final Fantasy game. This makes it feel more modern and easier to use. While they reused the original CGI cutscenes, they edited them to make them look more realistic, right next to gameplay it looks a little weird but not enough to fully pull the player from their immersion. 

 

Sound

The remake features newly arranged music and new recordings of the older tracks. They also changed voice actors, instead of carrying it over from the original game. The new voice acted lines make it feel much more modern. New gameplay areas calling for the new music tracks aided in the more modern feel too.

 

Gameplay

Gameplay also closely follows the original, but had to be changed a little bit due to controller changes. Instead of almost scrolling through options to do things such as using different spells and attacks, they are now attached to buttons. This was something I hated in the original, so I was very happy to be able to do battles easier and with more diversity. They also added a way to remap what things are attached to what buttons, making this even easier, and great for accessibility.

Combat overall feels faster than in the original. There are not only more options for attacks that are easier to get to but also things like dodges and special abilities. The way of unlocking abilities hasn’t changed.

A cutscene from the game, Zach and his mentor, Angeal, talk after a mission about what’s happening next. This is a turning point in the story where the main character realizes he needs to do more and listen better.

 

Overall

Square Enix did a great job of bringing a lesser-known decade old game back and making it feel like a newly released modern game. However there are very few things that clash with that, like continuing to have lots of loading screens, but as someone who doesn’t play lots of new games without them, it didn’t bother me at all. They stayed close to the original and brought a piece of story very close from their most beloved franchise back to the surface.