Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis (2023)

For some reason I thought this was a more faithful remake of FF7, but it's actually a shitty gatcha game that gives brief snipets of plot moments from the original.

Fam, literally all you had to do was remake FF7 in this engine. But y'all had to make it another cash cow.

I am confident at this point that Square-Enix will never be able to create a version of FF7 better than the original. Modders, however... If someone manages to get a mod pack together that works without any BS and has cohesive, high-quality backgrounds and character models... I'm on that, stat. (And no, 7th Heaven isn't that. It's all very cobbled together from a ton of different sources.)

I played the opening level and this game actually has a lot of potential to be quite cool...which is totally dashed by the fact they made it a gacha game. I will probably fiddle with it some as it's pretty neat and, importantly, I don't tend to get pulled in by that crap anyway and will be solely f2p. But I'm fully expecting the gacha format to ruin the game and am seeing signs of that happening already.

Which is a shame as it's clear this wasn't just recycled shovelware, it actually looks and feels pretty good, especially for a mobile game. But if there's something gamer Me from 20 years ago just would not understand, it's that there would come a day when hearing that a game would be completely "free-to-play" would often make me groan and totally kill my excitement.

Finally got around to watching the newer trailer for this, and well, it tells you everything you need to know.

Microtransactions. Stamina. Gated progress. Nonsense collectibles/power ups ("take on battles to obtain Character Memories"). Daily challenges. Grinding. Phased battles. No exploration. More locked abilities/powers, clear X thing # times.

Garbage. And you can tell from the comments on the video, people don't get it and will just eat this shit up, draining their wallets until eight months later when they inevitably pull the plug. Don't forget SE already shut down two gachas this year, one of which was barely going a year, the other just tossing players out on their asses since the game is still running overseas.

It's so sad my once-favorite developer has become such a prime example of the blight in the industry.