CRISIS CORE -FINAL FANTASY VII- REUNION

Zack Fair's story was always the emotional gut-punch buried inside Final Fantasy VII's wider mythology, and Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion exists to make sure a new generation of players actually gets to feel it, without needing a working PlayStation Portable to do so. Fifteen years after the original, Square Enix rebuilt the visuals in Unreal Engine, retuned the combat pacing and shipped it simultaneously across every current platform on 13 December 2022. Its own Steam audience is largely convinced the story side of that bargain succeeds -- Very Positive at 89.2% across 9,016 reviews -- but the same corpus makes clear, repeatedly and specifically, that what's underneath the new coat of paint is a harder sell.

A story that still lands, even fifteen years later

Zack Fair's arc -- ambitious SOLDIER operative, mentor figure to a young Cloud Strife, and the tragic reason Cloud carries a buster sword he was never meant to inherit -- remains the reason to play this game, and reviewers across the spectrum agree on that point even when they agree on little else. The finale in particular draws consistent, specific praise for how much harder it hits with modern facial animation and lighting than the original PSP hardware could manage. For anyone who's played Final Fantasy VII or its later remake without knowing Zack's full story, Reunion delivers real emotional payoff that reviewers describe as worth the price of admission on its own.

Combat that's fast, and a structure the remaster never rebuilt

The action-RPG combat -- real-time attacks layered with the Digital Mind Wave, a slot-machine-style system that randomly triggers summons and stat boosts mid-fight -- is accessible and, for shorter stretches, genuinely enjoyable. Multiple reviewers single it out as a reasonable, low-friction entry point for players newer to the genre. The trouble, as the single most-upvoted negative review on the entire page puts it, is that "they took Crisis Core out of the PSP, but they didn't take the PSP out of Crisis Core." Mission-based side content, largely random encounter design and level layouts that were built for short handheld play sessions all carry over into a full-price 2022 console and PC release essentially unchanged. By the midgame, several detailed reviews describe the loop as repetitive button-mashing dressed up in better lighting -- one popular running joke in the review corpus, repeating "Activating Combat Mode... Conflict Resolved" the way the game's own transition announcer does, captures just how often players notice the same brief interruption across dozens of encounters.

A visible seam between old and new

The remaster's presentation is genuinely strong where Square Enix chose to rebuild it -- character models, environments and lighting are a substantial step up that most reviewers credit without reservation, and performance across platforms, including Steam Deck, is broadly described as solid. What wasn't rebuilt is just as visible: pre-rendered cutscenes from the 2007 original were carried over without being redone or upscaled, so the game periodically cuts from crisp current-generation visuals to noticeably softer, decade-old full-motion video. It's a small thing individually, but it's exactly the kind of seam that makes a $79.95 remaster feel like it drew its budget line in an unusual place.

The recast that split the fanbase

If there's one single decision that dominates this game's review history more than any other, it's the choice to recast Zack's English voice. The original PSP performance by Rick Gomez was widely loved, and Reunion's new voice actor draws a volume and consistency of criticism that's rare even among remasters with legitimate complaints elsewhere -- reviewers who otherwise enjoyed the game call the new delivery flat, "phoned-in," or actively grating during key emotional scenes, which matters more here than in most games given how much of Crisis Core's appeal rests on Zack as a character. It's not a universal complaint -- some reviewers say it grew on them, or found the Japanese audio track a reasonable workaround -- but it's frequent and specific enough to treat as a real, load-bearing weakness rather than nostalgia-driven grumbling.

Grind, materia and what full completion actually costs

Underneath the story, Reunion's progression loop is built around materia fusion -- combining items and abilities into stronger equippable materia -- and a lot of side-mission grinding to source the components for it. Global achievement data shows a familiar shape for this kind of mission-structured JRPG: the earliest story-tied unlocks sit above 90% completion, but the curve falls sharply once achievements start requiring deeper materia fusion chains or full completion of optional side missions, several sitting under 10% globally. That drop-off lines up with what the review corpus describes directly -- the main nine-or-so-hour story is broadly enjoyed even by critics of the combat, but stretching into full completion means repeating the same random encounters and mission loops well past the point most reviewers say they stopped finding them interesting.

Where it sits against the rest of the franchise

It's worth being direct about what Reunion is and isn't. It's not a from-the-ground-up remake in the vein of Final Fantasy VII Remake -- it's a remaster, and the review corpus's most detailed complaints are really complaints about that distinction not being obvious enough from the box art or the price. Compared to what Square Enix charges for its full remakes, NZ$79.95 for a rebuilt coat of paint over a mission-structured PSP game reads, to a meaningful share of this game's own positive reviewers, as pricing that assumes more ambition went into the update than actually did. That's a fair criticism to hold alongside real praise for the visual work, rather than a contradiction -- both things are true about the same product.

Final verdict

Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion succeeds at the one job that matters most for a game this tied to a beloved character's arc: it makes Zack Fair's story land, for new players and returning fans alike, in a visual package that does real justice to Square Enix's current production values. Where it falls short is everything holding that story up -- combat and mission structure inherited almost wholesale from 2007 hardware limitations, cutscenes that weren't brought along for the upgrade, and a recast lead performance that a genuinely large share of its own audience actively dislikes. None of that erases what the story accomplishes, but it's enough to keep this from being the definitive way to experience Zack Fair's story that its price tag implies.