Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 Reunion review: One of the most impressive remasters ever, but still a PSP game at heart

The marketing for Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Reunion has been a little bit cheeky, for my money. Square Enix has taken to calling this re-release of a PSP classic “more than a remaster”, which feels like a rather liberal interpretation of what this game is – but by the same token, god damn if this isn’t one of the most impressive remasters I’ve ever seen. The best visual remaster ever? Maybe. More than a remaster? Not quite.

So, for the avoidance of doubt, let’s start this review that way: by making clear what the game is. Crisis Core Reunion is a huge visual overhaul of the 2007 PSP game, so significant and overarching that one would be forgiven for thinking this was a ground-up remake. But it isn’t: beneath the hood, beyond the veneer of visuals and character models that have been directly borrowed from FF7 Remake or spec-built to match it, the structure of the game is largely identical.

So, for instance, Crisis Core still features relatively bite-sized play, where all but a few chapters of the game last no more than an hour. Side missions can be accessed at any time from any save point, and there’s over 300 of them to unlock – but these missions are designed to be played on the train in a bite-sized fashion; few last more than a couple of minutes, most feature relatively generic rewards, and all of the 300 missions take place on just a handful of tiny maps, meaning that for side quests you’ll be seeing the same level layouts over and over again.

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