Those soft, eerie strings. The tinkling glockenspiel motif. The camera pans out to show the formidable Shinra corporation building towering over the polluted slums of Midgar, illuminated in sickly greens. The hero arrives on a train and another Final Fantasy 7 adventure begins.
It’s a familiar opening for Final Fantasy 7 fans, especially those coming to Crisis Core for the first time, who are yet to experience the PSP prequel to Square Enix’s most popular game in its illustrious series but eager to explore this world once more.
Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 Reunion review
- Developer: Square Enix
- Publisher: Square Enix
- Platform: Played on PS5
- Availability: Releases 13th December on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch
And plenty of fans have been gained over the two and a half decades since Final Fantasy 7 released on the PlayStation. It means that now, Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 Reunion (what a mouthful) has a fair bit of heavy lifting to do, as a 2022 remaster of a 2007 prequel to a 1997 game that received a celebrated Remake in 2020. It’s for fans of the original PSP game looking for an update. It’s for fans of the original JRPG looking for an expanded story. And it’s for fans of Remake looking to experience the game’s roots – and perhaps even a hint of what’s yet to come.
I can only speak for two of these three, having not played Crisis Core before, but I, as with many fans, am very happy that Square Enix is finally making the game more widely available – and I can safely say that fans will not want to miss this. Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 Reunion is a somewhat frivolous game, but it’s also a fun one. One that not only reinvigorates the PSP prequel, but legitimises its existence to Final Fantasy 7 and to Remake with newfound cohesion.
To give some context to the newcomers, Final Fantasy 7 is a story about eco-warriors preventing a corrupt corporation from destroying the planet, but its latter half focuses on the skewed memories of lead character Cloud. Crisis Core delves into that game’s twist (no, not that one) to deliver further backstory on Cloud’s origins, leading directly into the events of the original and its exploration of identity – though I’ll say no more for fear of spoiling the plot of three different games.