Crisis Core Reunion is a PSP game with multiple fresh coats of paint that greatly help modernize it to fit in with Final Fantasy 7 Remake, though relics of its 2007 origin peek through the cracks every 30 seconds. Every time a character pauses awkwardly between lines, or there's a strange brief load screen between two adjacent areas, or Zack takes a full minute to stop and whip out his phone and put it to his ear, or Zack does the very Kingdoms Hearts-esque anime "jump back with hands up" animation, you can see straight through to what this game is at its core. I'll give them the combat animations though, those are nicely touched up. It's very jarring when it cuts to an upscaled PSP cutscene with noticeably different lightning and a just-off-enough artstyle that looks several steps down from the actual in game visuals at this point. The game tries hard to keep you in a modern continuity with its FF7R style UI, it just betrays itself very often. Despite this, I still think this is a generally very nice looking game, and especially getting to see areas like Junon and Nibelheim in near-Remake fidelity really is a treat and an awesome sneak peak of what may be to come in the rest of that trilogy.
Combat feels arcadey and fun in general but it's not something that I felt super compelled to get deep into. DMW bonuses are insanely powerful from minute 1, so nothing ever really felt like a threat. The easy difficulty kind of fit the casual, cheesy, fast pace of the game though, so it's not necessarily a complaint. It just felt odd that I could clear anything I was put up against with no challenge at all even when I clearly hadn't messed with loadouts as much as I probably should have by the end of the game.
The main story being a short experience (I clocked almost exactly 10 hours, just doing main story and ~15 missions for summons, Yuffie, and some key items) actually worked nicely. Some parts felt rushed, like skipping the entire trip up to Mt. Nibel, but when I got to the final dungeon and had to do "normal JRPG dungeon things," I realized I hadn't missed them almost at all earlier in the game.
The story and characters took like 10 minutes for me to adjust from "serious FF7R project game" to "OK, I just have to accept this as cheesy and goofy and have a good time with it" so that I could enjoy it. The main new plot involving Genesis and co truly is not good. On the flip side, when we get to see the events depicted or alluded to in the original game from Zack's perspective, I can take it more seriously and it's very enjoyable (as long as they're not ruined by awkward PSP presentation). But when during a pivotal FF7 flashback scene, Genesis shows up to spout more lines from Loveless, it really gets in the way and makes me wish none of that was a thing. However, learning to take it for what it was did let me enjoy scenes like Zack yelling "shut up" at Genesis as he continued reciting, which was very funny. The voice performances (English) were hard to judge due to this tone and the awkward line cadences that were clearly a holdover from the original and not touched up, but I generally was fine with the whole cast and thought they fit well enough. Small shoutout to the slightly younger Cloud performance compared to Remake, which I thought fit perfectly. Also, fully voicing the whole game was a nice touch.
Mail is actually a pretty cool way to add worldbuilding and little extra story notes. Seeing Shinra propaganda from that side of things is a nice perspective, and small touches like Yuffie's messages sorting into Spam are pretty funny.
Minor complaint, but the game kind of overdoes the tutorials, both from mail and clearly new ones with the FF7R style half-screen popups.
Overall, pretty much every improvement is great, and even though I complain about mismatching artstyles in cutscenes or noticeably aged animations, that's just me wishing they went even further in remaking it. What we got is still a really nice remake with much improved and modernized presentation and smoother gameplay. I still think the game itself is just pretty good, and it remains shackled by the PSP a bit, but this was a nice quick game to keep me in the modern FF7 world. I enjoyed my time with it.
Combat feels arcadey and fun in general but it's not something that I felt super compelled to get deep into. DMW bonuses are insanely powerful from minute 1, so nothing ever really felt like a threat. The easy difficulty kind of fit the casual, cheesy, fast pace of the game though, so it's not necessarily a complaint. It just felt odd that I could clear anything I was put up against with no challenge at all even when I clearly hadn't messed with loadouts as much as I probably should have by the end of the game.
The main story being a short experience (I clocked almost exactly 10 hours, just doing main story and ~15 missions for summons, Yuffie, and some key items) actually worked nicely. Some parts felt rushed, like skipping the entire trip up to Mt. Nibel, but when I got to the final dungeon and had to do "normal JRPG dungeon things," I realized I hadn't missed them almost at all earlier in the game.
The story and characters took like 10 minutes for me to adjust from "serious FF7R project game" to "OK, I just have to accept this as cheesy and goofy and have a good time with it" so that I could enjoy it. The main new plot involving Genesis and co truly is not good. On the flip side, when we get to see the events depicted or alluded to in the original game from Zack's perspective, I can take it more seriously and it's very enjoyable (as long as they're not ruined by awkward PSP presentation). But when during a pivotal FF7 flashback scene, Genesis shows up to spout more lines from Loveless, it really gets in the way and makes me wish none of that was a thing. However, learning to take it for what it was did let me enjoy scenes like Zack yelling "shut up" at Genesis as he continued reciting, which was very funny. The voice performances (English) were hard to judge due to this tone and the awkward line cadences that were clearly a holdover from the original and not touched up, but I generally was fine with the whole cast and thought they fit well enough. Small shoutout to the slightly younger Cloud performance compared to Remake, which I thought fit perfectly. Also, fully voicing the whole game was a nice touch.
Mail is actually a pretty cool way to add worldbuilding and little extra story notes. Seeing Shinra propaganda from that side of things is a nice perspective, and small touches like Yuffie's messages sorting into Spam are pretty funny.
Minor complaint, but the game kind of overdoes the tutorials, both from mail and clearly new ones with the FF7R style half-screen popups.
Overall, pretty much every improvement is great, and even though I complain about mismatching artstyles in cutscenes or noticeably aged animations, that's just me wishing they went even further in remaking it. What we got is still a really nice remake with much improved and modernized presentation and smoother gameplay. I still think the game itself is just pretty good, and it remains shackled by the PSP a bit, but this was a nice quick game to keep me in the modern FF7 world. I enjoyed my time with it.