This review contains spoilers
Going into Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, I had never played the original game back on PSP, and was unsure exactly what to expect. I knew the story of the original, and I knew certain changes that were made in Final Fantasy VII Remake that did give me certain expectations past that story. Regardless of whether they met them or not, going into this game, I was still excited to play it, and experience a story that many revere.
What I got was a decent, but heavily flawed experience that simultaneously shows its age, despite having some improvements over the original.
First, the positives. The gameplay is a lot of fun, and feels like a step forward from FF7R in places. Accessing Materia and using special moves is so much easier and less-immersion breaking than navigating through menus mid-battle. The music is absolutely fantastic. And, of course, the story is very well done. The themes are well executed, and some of the characters are standouts - mainly Cloud, Angeal, Cissnei, and Aerith.
However, the writing makes the impacts of the story fall flat for me. Many of the storybeats occur with little motivation and overall things are very confusing as to why they occur or why the player should care. This leads into the interactions between the characters, and is exasparated even further by poor voice acting overall, most notably with Zack. The animations look like they haven't been upgraded since the original, and though the environments look as good as they do in VII Remake, they are very, very repetitive within the missions. And the missions themselves I didn't find too obnoxious, knowing that the game was originally developed for handhelds.
Overall, I didn't regret my time with Crisis Core Reunion, but although I do think I let expectations get the better of me for this one, I do wish they had updated some of the writing to make the story feel much more modern, similar to VII Remake.
What I got was a decent, but heavily flawed experience that simultaneously shows its age, despite having some improvements over the original.
First, the positives. The gameplay is a lot of fun, and feels like a step forward from FF7R in places. Accessing Materia and using special moves is so much easier and less-immersion breaking than navigating through menus mid-battle. The music is absolutely fantastic. And, of course, the story is very well done. The themes are well executed, and some of the characters are standouts - mainly Cloud, Angeal, Cissnei, and Aerith.
However, the writing makes the impacts of the story fall flat for me. Many of the storybeats occur with little motivation and overall things are very confusing as to why they occur or why the player should care. This leads into the interactions between the characters, and is exasparated even further by poor voice acting overall, most notably with Zack. The animations look like they haven't been upgraded since the original, and though the environments look as good as they do in VII Remake, they are very, very repetitive within the missions. And the missions themselves I didn't find too obnoxious, knowing that the game was originally developed for handhelds.
Overall, I didn't regret my time with Crisis Core Reunion, but although I do think I let expectations get the better of me for this one, I do wish they had updated some of the writing to make the story feel much more modern, similar to VII Remake.