During today’s Final Fantasy VII anniversary celebration, Square Enix announced that the game’s prequel spin-off Crisis Core will be pulled from a life of relative obscurity on a long-dead handheld device with a remake of its own.
The remake, officially titled Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, appears to utilize the same engine as Final Fantasy VII Remake to recreate the original’s action-heavy RPG gameplay. Square Enix didn’t provide a firm release date, but it’ll be available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, and PC sometime this winter.
Crisis Core first released on PlayStation Portable in 2007. It followed Zack Fair, a mega important (and mega dead) Final Fantasy VII character with close ties to star-crossed lovers Cloud Strife and Aerith Gainsborough. The action-heavy RPG gave players a first-hand perspective of major events stretching back seven years before Final Fantasy VII proper and is, for the most part, remembered for its fleshing out of Zack’s backstory and personality.
“The dramatic irony of Zack’s predetermined fate was the primary reason he was chosen to be the title’s protagonist,” Crisis Core director Hajime Tabata told 1UP at the time. “The most rewarding thing for me was crafting the story of Zack’s life into a tale of succession and legacy that, through the Buster Sword, provides a heraldic segue into Final Fantasy VII.”
Crisis Core was part of a campaign Square Enix dubbed Compilation of Final Fantasy VII alongside Dirge of Cerberus, a third-person shooter starring vampiric Final Fantasy VII party member Vincent Valentine, and Advent Children, a computer-animated film that acted as a straight Final Fantasy VII sequel. A complete Final Fantasy VII remake was also planned for Compilation, but obviously didn’t come to fruition until the arrival of 2020’s Final Fantasy VII Remake and its limited reimagining of the original story.
As someone new to this whole Final Fantasy VII phenomenon, I’m very much looking forward to every piece of media encompassing the franchise getting remade for modern consoles at some point. I don’t want to bother with the originals if it means digging my poor, neglected PlayStation Portable out of whatever dusty box it’s been confined to for years.