“Another possibility for a remake.” Those words were possibly etched into the hearts of Final Fantasy VII fans when Square Enix announced Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis in its anniversary broadcast in February 2021. Unfortunately, the closed beta that was promised last year ended up being delayed. And the wait is finally over as I recently had the opportunity to try out the closed beta test held for American players and see how this game would live up to that phrase, especially after the demise of the Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier battle royale game.
Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis was promised to bring new ways for fans to enjoy the many games of the popular Final Fantasy VII, including the forgotten title, Dirge of Cerberus, and a completely original tale, The First Soldier, that brings light into our favorite villain Sephiroth and his past as a Soldier. For those who didn’t want to buy the many games (some of which are even out of print) of FF7, it is undoubtedly an easy entry point to enjoy its gigantic universe.
▍Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis CBT Preview – 25 Minutes of Gameplay
▍ A Trio of Final Fantasy VII Story Narratives
In Ever Crisis, there are three story quests: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, and Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier. The first two-story quests follow those respective games, and the third one is a completely original tale that takes place before both games, chronologically speaking. Furthermore, the story that the Final Fantasy VII side follows matches more closely to the PlayStation 1 original than the PlayStation 4 remake.
The closed beta allows players to enjoy its narration until Chapter 2 of Final Fantasy VII, which ends at the Sector 7 plate segment–a good 70 to 80% of Remake and only barely through the original’s first disc. There was also one chapter of Crisis Core, which ends after the Wutai Fort segment, and Chapter 1 of First Soldier, the all-original tale, which ends with Glenn and his trio finding a native in the island they crash-landed into, hoping to find out more about where they’ve landed.
Out of all of them, the one I want to highlight the most is the First Soldier chapter, because this is a completely original story about the first ever Soldiers, and takes place before Crisis Core. Instead of one protagonist, it focuses on a party of three who crash-land into a mysterious island. The menu screen also shows a younger version of Sephiroth, and true to their word, Square Enix did mention that we will learn more about his past in this storyline.
Each of the story quests can be played in two modes: Story Party and Free Party. In Story Party, your party will be dependent on that particular story quest. For example, in the Final Fantasy VII story, when Cloud fights the Scorpion Sentinel, only Barett is present alongside him. In Free Party mode, any characters you’ve unlocked can be used, but, it should be noted that you can only get the bonus Gem rewards from that story quest if you use the Story Party mode.
When it comes to the narrative, it was extremely condensed and doesn’t feel as substantial as I thought it would. Another small issue, though I didn’t mind it too much, was that by default, whenever a pre-rendered cutscene happens, the game has them on the Japanese dub. And I also ran into some issues such as audio popping during some of the pre-rendered cutscenes, but I’m sure those will be fixed.
▍Easy to Grasp Auto-Battler & Character Growth System
In battle, Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis is mostly an auto-battler, where characters will automatically attack from time to time. As time passes, however, the ATB gauge fills up, and you can tap the different abilities, ranging from Materia spells and specific weapon attacks. You can also change between an offensive and defensive stance, both of which boost attack or defense. Battles also have a time limit of 5 minutes, so unfortunately, the classic “Tanking infinitely” strategy won’t work well here.
Each character has specific weapons that they can equip, and these have different rarities. The higher the rarity, the stronger their base stats are, and you can upgrade these weapons by using the necessary materials. You can also enable an Auto Mode that will automatically switch Stances and use abilities. Though player action is still possible when it is enabled, I still recommend manually controlling everything as in many cases it will start to do something you don’t want it to.
Once a character attacks enough times, they can perform a special Limit Break attack, which can be chained together with the attacks of other members of your party. The amount of damage it does is then added up and calculated at the end. Overall, the battle system isn’t complicated to understand, but I would say that some story quests could use some balancing, especially since there are many battles where the required Battle Power just skyrockets at a very strange pace, and you’re constantly forced to upgrade your many weapons.
Each character also has a skill tree, or in Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis, Character Stream. It is where you can use Character Memories to increase a character’s stats, such as HP, Attack, and Magic Attack. These Memories can be obtained from story quests or purchased from the Shop. You can also complete Limit Break missions to upgrade that character’s particular skill.
▍ More Solo Content Besides Main Story
Besides the main story, there are two modes that players can attempt. The first of them is the Interion Dungeon, where you’ll visit iconic Final Fantasy VII locations as dungeons, and your objective is to find the chests that are scattered across the map and defeat the Sigil Enemy that’s hidden at the end. You can always suspend your gameplay in the middle of the dungeon, but it is worth noting that doing so will lock the party you are currently using from any changes.
We then have the Sealed Tower of Cetra, an underground type of dungeon where you defeat enemies to get further down. Going further down gets you rewards that gradually get better. You can also obtain Character Memories, which are used to strengthen your character’s stats. Both of these are quite challenging because even the first few floors of the Sealed Tower require over 20,000 Battle Power, which can only be obtained if you’ve successfully upgraded a lot of your character weapons.
▍ Gacha is for Weapons Only
Speaking of Character weapons, that’s where the Gacha comes in. You can either use Draw Tickets, which can be found in chests across the various dungeons and by clearing the story quests, or you can use Gems in the Stamp banners, which grant special bonuses depending on how many times you perform a 10-draw.
The gacha rate of Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis has got to be the most generous I’ve ever seen in a gacha game though it is unsure whether it stays the same when the game officially launches. It’s 7.5% for a 5-star, which when compared to some other gacha games I’ve played, makes this extremely forgiving.
Any duplicate weapons you obtained are sent to the Armory, and it can be used to exchange tickets to increase a weapon’s rarity. Some costumes also grant stat bonuses, but as far as I could tell, these were only available through the Stamp Rally and required a substantial amount of pulls to obtain.
▍ Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis Looks Promising
Overall, Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis looks to be a great title if you want to experience the overarching story that is the many games under the Final Fantasy VII moniker. And not only that but being able to enjoy a completely new story that brings us light on Sephiroth’s past was just something interesting.
As I mentioned previously, the game still needs some work regarding balancing. Though grinding for materials wasn’t a chore, the battle difficulty just climbed too rapidly as the Chapters went on. Apparently, it requires you to spend some time on weapon upgrading, and stat boosts…considering the time and effort you have to pour in the game, it would’ve been nice if it was more evenly distributed.
But even so, once those are smoothed out, Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis seems to be a rather excellent option to experience the overarching tale of the Final Fantasy VII universe in one condensed package that anyone can pick up and play.
