Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis aims to share a classic with a new audience

destructoid.com:

The story of Final Fantasy VII has expanded well beyond the bounds of the original PlayStation RPG. Through the spin-offs and the remake, the world of FF7 has become expansive. But rather than continue to build up, Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis feels like it’s re-centering the lens on the original story, albeit with a few extra touches of its own.

Ever Crisis is a single-player mobile RPG that’s billed as a bit of a retelling of Final Fantasy VII. It’s a chapter-structured RPG that will go back over the events of the original game, alongside Crisis Coreand some new story elements included from FF7 Remake writer Kazushige Nojima.

In the demo I played as part of Summer Game Fest 2023, I went through the classic intro to FF7. I got to see how exactly this plays out, and where Ever Crisis adheres to—or differs from—its original text. It’s an interesting way of re-experiencing this tale, for both newcomers and old fans alike.

If you’ve played Final Fantasy VII, either the original or the remake, you remember how the first mission goes. Cloud, Barrett, and the crew infiltrate the Mako Reactor, set up the explosives, fight a giant robot, and escape just in the nick of time. It’s a great intro, and it still works in Ever Crisis.

Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis is set to re-tell the original FF7 story, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t taking some bits from newer versions. The in-game portraits are gorgeous, adding a lot of character to the dialogue-heavy sections. And once you’re in battle, the normally PlayStation-style sprites turn into Remake-style models.

It makes Ever Crisis feel like a compilation, which I guess is kind of the point. The world of not just Final Fantasy, but Final Fantasy VII specifically, is huge at this