Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis - a sort of mobile gaming RPG sandwich of the original Final Fantasy VII and its spin-offs Crisis Core and The First Soldier, plus gacha mechanics - is coming to PC and Steam, publisher Square Enix have announced. The Steam release will share data with the mobile version.
Ever Crisis on mobile is a free-to-play game with microtransactions and curvy, colourful chibi-style visuals. It's Final Fantasy: Polly Pocket Edition, sort of. Play breaks down into missions with turn-based battles and brief narrative sequences. The idea is that you can pack in a few minutes of Cloud gaming (no, not that kind) while waiting for your tube. But how will that formula square up on PC, and what to make of the game's reportedly very aggressive microtransaction pop-ups? Fingers crossed they'll rebadge it as a standard pay-upfront release and tear out all the gacha.
Here's a trailer for the mobile version. OOH SHORT-HAIRED SEPHIROTH.
Some would cast their eyes over all that and decry it as tarnishing the frock of the grand old dame of (J)RPGing. These people should probably make a beeline for Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth instead, except that you can't, because it doesn't have a PC release date yet. Katharine is in full hype mode regardless.
Alternatively, you could play the PC revamp of Crisis Core, which Katharine (her again?!) described as "polished story filler that's a missed opportunity after FF7 Remake". It stars gaming's original fallguy Zack Fair, and has a real-timey combat system with splashes of Active Time Battle from the main series.
I remember playing that on the original PSP, and writing a truly foul piece of proto-new games journalism about it, with all the Final Fantasy VII characters
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