One of
the most anticipated video games of the year is not really new. It is 15 years
old. And it is a prequel to a game that is even older.
The new game is Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Reunion, set for release today. It is a reboot of a hand-held game with almost
the same name from 2007, except with nicer graphics and sped-up battles so it
can be resold for modern systems, including new PlayStation, Xbox, and
Nintendo consoles. It is also a prequel to yet another game reboot, 2020’s Final Fantasy
VII Remake.
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If that sounds confusing, that is because it is.
Video game reboots are nothing new, and, boy, there have been a lot of them
lately. This year, game studios have released refreshed versions of popular
titles including The Last of Us, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and Tactics Ogre, among
others.
With Reunion, the maker of Final Fantasy, Square
Enix, is capitalizing on the enterprise of nostalgia. Final Fantasy, originally
released in 1987, became a blockbuster when the game’s seventh installment
debuted in 1997. In that game, players took on the role of Cloud, an angsty
mercenary working with a group of misfits to prevent the apocalypse.
Most video game reboots do not do much more than
bump up the resolution of the graphics to look better on new TVs, but Reunion
is different. With completely overhauled visuals and smoother gameplay, it is
much better than the original. It is a strong example of how to do a reboot
with justice and to keep a well-established title going with a very safe bet.
“We can see the audience for these characters and
the Final Fantasy VII franchise better than if we were to do something that did
not already have a certain amount of recognition,” Yoshinori Kitase, Square
Enix’s executive producer of Reunion, said through a translator.
I finished Reunion last week after playing part of
the original Crisis Core. The changes in the battles and visuals transformed
the game from a so-so installment into a must-play episode of Final Fantasy,
whose cachet in the gaming world rivals that of “Star Wars” in pop culture.
Reunion is also an extreme approach to a “remaster,”
which is video game parlance for an old game whose graphics have been scaled up
to look better on new TVs. Since
Square Enix originally released Crisis Core
for a hand-held gaming device, the obsolete PlayStation Portable, the graphics
had to be redone for modern systems.
Now the pixelated, expressionless faces of
characters in the original have been replaced with detailed, lifelike mugs; the
drab backgrounds of city streets and dungeons have become rich with color and
texture.
The game’s producers also took an extra step to fix
the most annoying aspect of the original — the battle system — to make
progressing through the game more fast-paced and fun.
Square Enix otherwise left Crisis Core’s story
intact, including its script carried by voice actors. The game centers on Zack
Fair, a member of the elite military force, Soldier, which is controlled by
Shinra, the world-dominating electric power company.
Zack is tasked with tracking down a pair of comrades
who have deserted Shinra. It is not a spoiler to say our hero meets a tragic
end, a fact that has been well known by fans of the franchise for more than two
decades. But the prequel tells the story of how his legacy contributed to the
epic events of Final Fantasy VII.
Yet while Reunion’s graphics are a marked
improvement from the original, the game is not nearly as polished or as highly
produced as its sibling, Final Fantasy VII Remake.
That is because Reunion is essentially an
intermission for a much bigger show. Its main purpose, according to Square
Enix, is to keep gamers hooked on the franchise in between releases of Final
Fantasy VII Remake, which sold 3.5 million copies in its first three days in
2020, making it one of the fastest-selling PlayStation 4 games.
“It’s going to be a long wait,” Yoshinori said. “So
we want to make sure to keep those fans on board and interested.”
Even so, this intermission is a crowd pleaser. The
game gives lots of airtime to Aerith, Sephiroth, and Cloud, the stars of Final
Fantasy VII, fleshing out these characters and setting the stage for the epic
game.
In terms of gameplay, Reunion takes a novel approach
to battles. Players can freely control
Zack in 3D space, swinging his giant
sword at a monster and dodging its attacks in between nuking it with magic
spells. This feels more stimulating than the old-school “turn-based” system, in
which players exchanged blows with an enemy by pressing a button to trigger an
action and then waiting for the enemy to take its turn.
In the end, it
took me about 18 hours to complete the game, and I had fun (unlike my
experience with the original Crisis Core, which I stopped playing after four
hours because the battles were so tedious). My chief complaint is that the game
was too easy. After completing a small number of optional missions, players
will find themselves overpowered and vanquishing the game’s main villains in a
few effortless blows.
Some gamers eager for brand-new titles may feel that
releasing reboots is too easy for game makers like Square Enix. Yoshinori said
the risk to reboots was that they could end up appealing to a single
demographic of older fans. The company had originally intended to do a more
modest refresh of Crisis Core with minor improvements to graphics, but once it
became clear that Final Fantasy VII Remake had drawn in many new fans, the
mission changed to attract those gamers, too.
“We decided midway through development that we had to up the
game,” he said.
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