Crisis Core is a prequel to Final Fantasy VII that was released alongside the movie “Advent Children” (a sequel to FFVII) in a celebration of the influential game, and I was dead excited. I’m not much of a portable gamer but my PSP got some serious action with this one, but in the end I got stuck on a boss near the end and couldn’t be bothered to grind. Fast forward a decade or two and a remaster arrives on modern consoles, so it was finally time to right a wrong, especially as I’m much more inclined to grind sitting in front of a TV than with a handheld (which is really the wrong way round, but hey-ho…) So let’s take a look at both games, which are actually quite different in the end… Also this is my first PS5 review on this blog, and it’s a remaster of a PSP game… Oh well!
Background:
Zack hits the jackpot… by which I mean the 99999 damage, not the literal slot machine at the top left… (PS5)
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII was released on September 13th 2007 in Japan, March 25th 2008 in the states and June 20th here in the PAL territories for the PSP, and there it remained until the release of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII – Reunion worldwide on December 13th 2022. Reunion is available on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, XBOX One, XBOX Series X/S and PC, so the game went from one release on a single console to seven last year!
Gameplay:
This is the biggest difference between the two versions and the reason it skirts the line between Remaster and Remake as while both games have open spaces to explore and NPCs to talk to (though in Remake they’re all fully voiced!) the actual combat has several key differences. It’s an action RPG, so when you get a random or planned encounter you take control of Zack Fair and move around a small 3D environment taking on whatever monster / person is in front of you with Health, Magic and Stamina bars, but in the PSP version all you actions from striking to magic to item usage, is all lined up at the bottom of the screen and you have to choose what to use like your traditional RPG menu, even cuing them up, well, with the exception of dodge rolling, that’s still a free action. In Reunion attacking is now a specific button and you can assign certain magic spells or special attacks to the shoulder and remaining face buttons, meaning you can freely attack without having to worry about flicking through a menu (though that still exists in the bottom right, it’s just exclusive to items now) In other words its much closer to the combat seen in FFVII Remake.
Prepare to see and hear “Activating Combat Mode” a lot … like, a HELL of a lot. (PSP)
The big unique thing about Crisis Core’s combat, and the thing that always drove me crazy, was the DMW wheel, or “Digital Mind Wave” and sadly that’s still present in Reunion, though changed slightly. Basically at the top left of the screen is a set of classic slot machine spinning bars with numbers at the bottom and if you randomly get lucky good things can happen. Line up three pictures of the same character that Zack has met throughout the story or three of the same Summon and you either immediately do a unique limit break/Summon based on the character (PSP), or get a limit break/Summon that you can activate when you want to (Reunion), so that is at least one improvement, suddenly curing yourself when you’re not damaged at all only to then take a bunch of damage was always annoying in the original. What is still annoyingly present on both version though is that levelling up only happens when you hit 777, so you can have gained enough XP to level up three or four times but you’re stuck waiting on hitting that lucky triple 7 before you can move up just one level. Really weird idea, I mean other numbers have other effects as well (infinite magic points, stamina) but at least they’re just temporary buffs, levelling up due to grinding is kind of the point to grinding, having to also wait to receive the actual level up is a really crappy system, frankly.
This is all happening while you’re fighting so you might be having a hard time on a boss then suddenly you got lucky and gain infinite stamina and so you can then go and spam your big move over and over or you get a powerful summon attack to use and take a big chunk of health off it, and then if you’re facing the boss again later and aren’t so lucky so it’s a longer, more challenging experience with no way to control what happens. Apparently it’s not 100% luck only, how much damage you take raises its likelihood of good things and winning successive battles without taking much if any damage lowers its chance, but still… Very odd idea and I’m still not a fan, even if Reunion did at least give you control of when you can fire Limit Breaks / Summons. I will also quickly mention that there are also some odd mini-game sections thrown in, like doing squats, chopping missiles with your sword in mid-air, a crap stealth section and a part where you have to use a bunch of sniper rifles on some robots, all of which didn’t really serve any purpose other than “for the hell of it”, honestly.
Zack keeps himself hidden during a really awkward and forced stealth section that made me hate life… or get annoyed, one of the two. (PS5)
There are other parts of the game that are quite unique. Materia Fusion allows you to… well, fuse various Materia to make more powerful or unique spells which is fun (but also can be quite broken as you can extra health points to the Materia for example, like I had a powerful “Dark Lightning” spell that also raised by HP to 99,999 if equipped), and this is alongside the usual equippable clothing items that similarly boost stats. Alongside main quests and side quests found in the free roaming maps there is a screen in the pause menu (or accessible on save points) that is basically a static list of “missions” that just plonk you down in one of only a small handful of maps and basically tell you to kill an enemy at the end of it, it being up to you if you want to risk more random encounters by searching for treasure chests. It’s fun… for a while, then the same three or four dimly lit caves and generic steel corridors become really boring. I mean in Reunion I did do 270-ish of the 300 missions before it just got too difficult for me to be arsed, which is a lot more than during the PSP days, but I don’t know if I can describe it as a great experience, even if the flashy combat is fun on the big screen. I get it comes from being a portable game so being able to dip in and out is the central idea, but… yeah, still not great.
In terms of Reunion this is what it all comes down to really, it’s a remaster rather than a remake, as new combat system and graphics aside it’s still very much a portable game from 15 years ago.
Graphics and Sound:
Honestly I debated even bothering to put “(PSP)” and “(PS5)” at the bottom of the pictures, like it’s not EXTREMELY obvious each time!
The other major difference between the two versions, rather obviously, is the graphics. The PSP has basic models that still got the job done combined with bland and muddy environments that looked good on the PSP screen but blown up really showed their age. So it’s not a surprise that Reunion has not only updated models (that aren’t up to VII Remake standard, but are still good) but all the environments and lighting have been given a good make over too. They even completely re-did the summons cut scenes with modern CGI (though the story cut scenes are very noticeably just the PSP ones upscaled…) While not crazy modern graphics they do the job perfectly well.
Sound wise you can’t lose, frankly. The PSP version still has some great music (though admittedly inferior to the regular FFVII OST) including “The Price of Freedom” which is one my all time favourite pieces of game music, and the remake sticks to the original tracks with occasional remakes. While I still think the general battle music is tad generic, overall it’s a good soundtrack regardless.
Voice work is the big talking point at the moment. The original game had occasionally wonky voice acting but Zack Fair himself was well voiced, where as Reunion has good voice acting for most of the main cast (thanks to using the FFVII Remake crew) but Zack’s new VA isn’t very good. Sort of a lose-lose situation, especially since the script in very mid-00s cheese with occasional over-gesturing given a lot of the PSP scenes were unvoiced. It certainly doesn’t match the more straight take on the source material in what is now the Remake Trilogy.
Story:
Zack eyes up his future sword on Angeal’s back. (PSP… sorry, consistency, I can’t stop now!)
In terms of prequels this hits all the usual notes: popular characters before their major role, new stories that connect to the original one and the last few scenes connecting straight to where you knew it was going. The story follows Zack Fair, the member of Shinra Electric Power Company’s special SOLDIER division, a group of super-powered, well, soldiers infused with the normally deadly Mako energy. In the original game we only saw him in flashback talking with lead character Cloud and dying for him via gunfire, Cloud’s memories becoming muddled with his as he entered Midgard for the main story to begin, but here we get a nice chunk of time with him.
Zack starts off as SOLDIER 3rd Class under 1st Class SOLDIER Angeal, who has the iconic Buster Sword that Zack would give to Cloud in the previously mentioned original game cutscene. The only other 1st Class SOLDIERs are a man named Genesis and, of course, Sephiroth, before he went crazy. As the storyline progresses we find out Genesis and eventually Angeal went through a scientific process using Jenova cells that give them both the iconic Sephiroth single angel wing look, and in the case of Genesis, its degrading his body at an alarm rate, causing him to break free from Shinra, steal their top scientist and go underground. Sephiroth is close friends with his fellow 1st Class SOLDIERs so he becomes conflicted, and Zack dreads the idea of fighting Angeal, who has also go missing, so they bond a bit.
Genesis and Sephiroth duel each other in that classic cut-scene that I’m sure you’ve probably seen on YouTube at some point! (PS5)
*Crisis Core-specific spoilers from here until the next asterixed sentence!*
Eventually Zack has no choice but to put down a mutated Angeal after he begins to view himself as a monster, bequeathing him the Buster Sword. Zack meets and befriends a cheery young generic Shinra soldier named Cloud and all roads then point to Zack, Sephiroth and Cloud to attend the Mako reactor at Nibelheim and we get the whole picture of what happened, complete with Genesis now inserted into the story to tip Sephiroth off about his own birth and setting off his crazy village-burning antics, which hit home a little more as we actually got to see the hero everyone said Sephiroth was before finding out he was a scientific experiment involving an alien named Jenova sent him mad. Zack is KO’d, Cloud runs Sephiroth through and effectively kills him and then he and Zack are captured and experimented on, leading to the two of them escaping but Cloud with Mako poisoning isn’t responsive. There is a side-track however as Zack confronts and defeats Genesis for good… until his body is taken away and its strongly implied he lives …
*Crisis Core-specific spoilers over!*
So from there we reach the teary ending we knew was coming. Well, unless FFVII Remake really does create a new timeline where Zack and Cloud BOTH live as is implied by its ending… Well, anyway, that’s for next year (probably!)
Thoughts Then:
Look at all those blurry Wutai soldiers… (PS5… wait, no, hang on… PSP, sorry)
As mentioned I didn’t really love portable consoles at any point in my life but I did really enjoy playing Crisis Core for a good few weeks, but eventually went off it due to not being arsed to… well, effectively “get good” and grind a bit. I was always hopeful it would be re-released, especially as the Metal Gear Solid PSP game “Peace Walker” made its way onto home consoles so quickly, but it took a lot longer than I thought!
Thoughts Now:
With that logic it’s not surprising it took Zack so long to climb up the ranks… (PS5)
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII – Reunion is not only a mouthful but a really fun game. This time I don’t know whether it’s the big screen and a controller in my hand or the better control scheme but either way I was hooked, doing most of the missions and therefore being WAY over-levelled for the final few sections of the game (I pretty much two-or-three-hit KO’d the final boss…) Sure some mini-games aren’t great and a lot of said missions were extremely samey and quite dull, but the core experience is still a lot of fun, if not slightly cheesy. Recommended if you’re really into Remake as I assume the subtitle being a single world beginning with R was done to tie this in with Remake, Rebirth and whatever the third part is going to be called…
Hogan Reviews 