Shut up!
In the great journey to resurrect the Final Fantasy brand and bring it screaming into the modern age, Tetsuya Nomura quite quickly acknowledged that the franchise for this one iteration in the Final Fantasy anthology was a lot bigger than just the main game itself. Over the years there have been countless spin-offs, books and even a movie expanding on the lore of the main game in kind of like a group fan-fiction study group all intended to expand the heart of the Final Fantasy franchise to untold of proportions. Tetsuya Nomura himself worked on a lot of these projects in fact, as FF7 seems to be that one thing he can never put down no matter where he goes in life. Maybe once he's finally got this new remake franchise out of his system he'll be able to walk the earth a free man- but somehow I think he'll be doing this for the rest of his life. He's as trapped as Cloud is- forever reliving the fight against Sephiroth.
Of these spin-offs perhaps the one which has been forced to become the most pertinent, specifically with the direction that Final Fantasy 7 Remake took with the surprise resurrection of (spoilers for the ending of Remake- skip this paragraph if you don't want to see it) Zack Fair, is Crisis Core. A game created for the original PSP. A game created after the team were brain storming ways to bring their mobile exclusive 'Before Crisis' game to handheld consoles, presumably before realizing they could do way better by just making something new from scratch. (Besides we're talking about a 2000's mobile game here- not exactly the pinnacle of game design, that one.) Crisis Core brought us the long lost story of the side character Zack, template for Cloud's muddled memories in the main game, and told the story of how he became Soilder First Class and ended up in the state he was by the events of Final Fantasy 7.
Zack was entirely a character kept to the memories of Cloud in the original game, a reveal meant to create a curious parallel between players who enrapture themselves in the heroes of RPGs and Cloud who convinced himself he was a peerless hero when his memoires failed him. But his impact left an impression on a player base who wanted to know more about the actual hero who stole Cloud's admiration enough for the Blonde Haired protagonist to practically imprint on the guy. Crisis Core filled that gap, bringing with it oodles of new lore, new protagonists, new antagonists, and more than a few controversial additions to the grander world of Final Fantasy 7. Changes that could be largely ignored by people who only enjoyed the relatively tighter narrative of the original game, thanks to the layer of separation between the two stories. (There was more than one instance of- "And then everyone decided never to mention these two vastly important characters ever again, and that's why they're never brought up in FF7" style retcons.)
However, as anyone who has played Final Fantasy 7 Remake will know, particularly Yuffie's Intergrade chapter- the layer of separation no longer exists. Now we've got Naruto extras slid into the background as side-antagonists pulled right from this spin-off genre of FF7 games and for those who want a full understanding of the increasingly complicated world of Final Fantasy 7, playing the spin-offs is something of an essential task. Hence the remake-remaster of Crisis Core nicknamed 'Reunion' that I've pushed myself through for this here review. Of course, this is only the tip of the ice berg and I wouldn't be surprised if we'll be seeing a Dirge of Cerberus Remake in the coming years, despite what the team are saying now about it. (Final Fantasy 7 Remake is going to be one ungainly franchise.)
The main goal of Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core Reunion (whew, that's a mouthful!) is to bring this game into the modern age as best as the team can, and to bring it in line with the new Remake universe. That means the game was remade in Unreal 4 using the high quality character models from the Remake game, which creates a vastly visually superior world to the original, if not quite at the standard of the Remake itself. UI has been redesigned to resemble the Remake's design, Zack's Buster Sword has been remodelled to resemble Cloud's original design rather than the ornate 'Advent Children' redesign the original boasted. The gameplay is said to be vastly improved upon from the original, boasting much more agility and combat options. Many of the original cutscenes have been rerendered, albeit mimicking the exact same animation frames of the original. (Maybe they just superimposed the new models over the original actually. I know they did that for the Buster Sword.) And the entire English voice cast has been replaced with the same actors as Final Fantasy 7 Remake where appropriate.
It's a hell of a lot of work to bring this game to life and to a degree of parity to the modern games, and the results are- mixed. For one Crisis Core's combat is reminiscent of a more simplified version of the Remake's, with high quality animations, basic slash and dodge controls and a very basic elemental weakness' system designed to be easily exploitable by the player. However for it's simplicity the game takes some very brute force measures for scaling difficulty as the game goes on. Soon elemental weakness become an essential to take down every enemy, which means the game expects you to build multiple loadouts with the right Materia (spells) and equipment (Essential stat buffs you simply cannot skimp out on like you do in Remake!) to specialise towards each type of fight. The game even allows you to retry the from the beginning of every fight when you die and switch your loadout in the death screen, because they know how uncompromising their difficulty is and it would be unreal to ask players to start from the beginning of every mission and switch pre-emptively before every fight. 
The basic loop of play is a linear set of chapter based missions which follows Zack's journey to becoming a Soilder First Class and the many colourful characters he meets along the way, many of which are Final Fantasy 7 alumni. (Mostly the girls, I've noticed. Apparently Barret Wallace, Biggs, Red XIII and Cid are too gruff for cameos. Vincent gets a cheeky little 'appearance' though.) But the meat of this game is in it's 300 side missions, through which you'll have to grind in order to unlock special Materia (magic), essential pieces of equipment and just 'levels' in order to match up to the difficulty spikes of the main game that aren't really designed to be cohesive to players who just want to rush the main story. The Reunion Remake was supposedly meant to make such a style of play feasible, but apparently if you play on Hard like I did- the developers figure you don't respect your time so they shouldn't either.
These side missions are the type created for a portable handheld game, and thus are as mindless as what you'd get out of 'Metal Gear Peacewalker' or any other game in this type. They're battle arenas with a thimble of story pasted in the mission description that can last anywhere from a couple of minutes to five. They're designed to be played 'on the go' between lunch breaks at work, and lack in any of the substance one would expect from an actual game you sit down and dedicate some hours to. They are perhaps the most outdated aspect of this game's design that hold it back, miring all the greater grinding potential into a slog of repetition through the exact same arenas fighting slightly different enemy compositions. The game's Superboss is hidden behind completeing the majority of these, which is why I will never fight Minerva. That and she has something like '20,000,000' health on Hard. (I don't have a full week of free play time to deal with that!)
The new addition to the combat structure this game boasts is the gimmick known as Digital Mind Wave. (or DMW) This is the system in which a slot machine rolls at the corner of your screen through every fight randomly selecting number combinations and character image match-ups based on the various personalities you get to know throughout your adventure. When you get certain number combinations, the frequency of which is based on a complicated luck system who's formulas are hidden to you, you'll get temporary buffs such as 'No MP costs for a minute', 'Nullified Physical attack for thirty seconds' or even 'Temporary invincibility'. When certain images match up, you'll get access to a special move related to those characters that you can use. They don't stock up past matches and you can't maintain more than one, however, so it's less of a tactical advantage and more of a random burst of power. Oh, and summons are locked behind the slot machine as well. Great.
I figure this system is meant to replicate the psyche of Zack as we go through his life, as indicated by the fact that certain story events will align Zack's thoughts with a certain character, making their image combination more likely to land for a while. And sometimes you'll be treated to a cutscene of Zack's interaction with these characters when they show up, which always plays a back and forth set between the main game's events meant to flesh out Zack's relationships with these characters. The actual movies themselves, however, are typically little more than pithy little comments back and forth, with a few exceptions such as his Aerith memories which are actually pretty sweet. The DMW's are still far too random to be useful in strategy planning, however, and the gimmick alone is not worth picking up the game for. I think it's a bit of a crap gimmick, actually.
In the late game the difficulty stretches into ludicrous. Late game enemies will one-shot you unless you build characters of borderline exploitative stats. You are meant to be able to dodge and quick tap all of your opponents before they quick tap you. And once stat imbalances become too great, they literally just start throwing in simple grunts with instant kill weapons. There basically is no difficulty scaling past a certain point in Crisis Core Reunion, and late game exploits are just basic means of play you have to comprehend. Which means if you're not the type of player who likes to compare equipment boosts in order to shore up your Vitality (Physical Resistance) without compromising on your Magic- (Magic damage) this game is going to be a real struggle to get through. Luckily, if you are a stat inclined player- the game has it's tools for you.
Materia Fusion is a tool through which players can combine their magic enabling Materia gems together in order to create new spells and abilities, but you'll get most of the best Materia without going through this system anyway. The real trick of Crisis Core's Materia Fusion is the item infusion which changes the stat buffs on the resulting Materia. The various monster drops and pick-ups afforded by the endless side quests and enemy spawns can be fed into this system in order to create unreal output- such as an 'Assault Twister +' Materia that buffs your attack by 30 just by being equipped in your loadout- which is enough to turn an attack that delivers roughly three bursts of 3000-5000 damage into one that does three limit-scratching 9999 bursts- which is as much of a game changer as that sounds like. (On hard difficulty you'll be facing bosses with health pools scratching- and in one case exceeding- a million. You'll need as much damage boosts as you can get.)
The narrative of Crisis Core champions the adventures of a young Zack as he, essentially, goes through echo story beats of Cloud's journey. He ends up falling through Aerith's rooftop and striking up a budding romance with the young girl, he confronts an ultrapowerful Soilder 1st class deserter who is imbued with the essence of an ancient precursor which manifests in the summoning of a single wing (who isn't Sephiroth) and gets a lot of poetry read to him. (That last one is, mercifully, not a mirror of Cloud's struggles.) Although the actual meat of the story presents these elements in a different arrangement so this isn't just a copy and paste job- but there's still some lingering essence of ('This doesn't fit so neatly into the extended narrative as the writers expect it too.')
The one winged angel characters appearing everywhere does, obviously, cheapen Sephiroth's arc significantly, and the fact that the Remake games appear to be preparing to bring Genesis back into the main games has me worried about how they're going to sully the magnificence of the original game's narrative balance with these genuinely inferior plotpoints. Zack's relationships with the various cast members are not especially well presented, with many 'deep' conversations coming across as stilted and sullen- but somehow through it all there's an awkward chemistry with the characters of Cloud and Aerith. I suspect those actors just tried a little more to interpret and deliver the emotion of their scenes, seeing as they still had something to prove- also voicing for the main games. And Zack himself, has very little agency within his own story. Many seem to think that Zack is a one dimensional character throughout the story, and whilst he has a smidge more depth than that, it's wasted effort because Zack makes practically no decisions for himself. He's dragged along the entire game reacting or doing what other people tell him to do. The only choice he ever makes it to head back to Midgar at the end of the game, and if that is a great 'character defining moment' it's weight was lost on me. I don't even know if I care to see more of the guy now that I know how largely heartless he was throughout his starring role.
The worst crime the game pulls by far, at least in the English dub, is it's performances. Knowing that these were all redubs, I was quite shocked by the fact that 90% of the cast deliver an absolutely emotionless and unguided performance throughout the entire game. The only decent showings are the returning cast for Aerith and Tifa and Cloud from the Remake games, but even Sephiroth- who has also adopted the same voice from the Remake games, sounds utterly phoned in. I can only assume that the team had literally no vocal coach whatsoever, for the amount of bizarre deliveries that never fit the context. The worst is Zack who sounds brash, like he is supposed to, but also dumb and distracted- in every scene. Even as he is screaming at Genesis to shut up, or sharing a touching moment with Cloud, he never once comes across as existing in the same circumstance as the scene around him. If Remake's performances weren't so much superior, I would be worried we were heading to another Kingdom Hearts 'stupid-ifing' for the Remake-franchise. But I'm going to be generous and chalk all this up to 'side game- rush all the lines'.
Conclusion
Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core Reunion is a bit of a mess, brought together and polished up in attempt to bring it up to modern snuff that looks pretty, plays decently, but drags in substance. Systematically there is a solid game here worth playing and I would consider this a fine enough 'in-between game' for those antsy to keep their fandom busy between Remake and Rebirth- but the terrible difficulty scaling, the passionless side content and the second-rate narrative make this hardly essential viewing for franchise lovers. There was only ever going to be so much that Reunion could do to pave over the many cracks with the original game which, again, was made for a handheld crowd in the 2000s. Still, this does not present the best of this franchise in terms of combat, storytelling or acting- making this a very easy skip title for those that just want the best out of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. There are elements to enjoy here, and nothing outside the acting is terrible, but that's not enough to secure a 'recommendation' unfortunately. Which means that my overall rating lands at a solid C grade, arbitrary though it may be. There are better faces for the Final Fantasy 7 franchise, and I'm not certain the effort taken to dig this one up was worth it. Square polished up a turd with this one, I just hope it's refuse doesn't end up tainting the follow-up games in the years to come.
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