One of the astir anticipated video games of the twelvemonth isn’t truly new. It’s 15 years old. And it’s a prequel to a crippled that’s adjacent older.

The caller crippled is Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, acceptable for merchandise adjacent week. It’s a reboot of a hand-held crippled with astir the aforesaid sanction from 2007, but with nicer graphics and sped-up battles truthful it tin beryllium resold for modern systems, including caller PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo consoles. It’s besides a prequel to yet different crippled reboot, 2020’s Final Fantasy VII Remake.

If that sounds confusing, that’s due to the fact that it is. Video crippled reboots are thing new, and, boy, determination person been a batch of them lately. This year, crippled studios person released refreshed versions of fashionable titles including The Last of Us, Marvel’s Spider-Man and Tactics Ogre, among others.

With Reunion, the shaper of Final Fantasy, Square Enix, is capitalizing connected the endeavor of nostalgia. Final Fantasy, primitively released successful 1987, became a blockbuster erstwhile the game’s seventh installment debuted successful 1997. In that game, players took connected the relation of Cloud, an angsty mercenary moving with a radical of misfits to forestall the apocalypse.

Since then, Final Fantasy VII has go 1 of the astir influential games successful history, spawning spinoffs, animated movies and instrumentality fiction. The crippled has been rereleased astatine slightest fractional a twelve times connected each large gaming platform, including PCs, tablets and smartphones. It’s a juggernaut — and Reunion is playing its portion successful keeping that franchise going.

Most video crippled reboots don’t bash overmuch much than bump up the solution of the graphics to look amended connected caller TVs, but Reunion is different. With wholly overhauled visuals and smoother gameplay, it is overmuch amended than the original. It’s a beardown illustration of however to bash a reboot with justness and to support a well-established rubric going with a precise harmless bet.

“We tin spot the assemblage for these characters and the Final Fantasy VII franchise amended than if we were to bash thing that didn’t already person a definite magnitude of recognition,” said Yoshinori Kitase, Square Enix’s enforcement shaper of Reunion, done a translator.

I finished Reunion past week aft playing portion of the archetypal Crisis Core. The changes successful the battles and visuals transformed the crippled from a so-so installment into a must-play occurrence of Final Fantasy, whose cachet successful the gaming satellite rivals that of “Star Wars” successful popular culture. (To enactment it different way, Reunion is Final Fantasy’s “Rogue One” — the prequel we deserve.)

Now the pixelated, expressionless faces of characters successful the archetypal person been replaced with detailed, lifelike mugs; the drab backgrounds of metropolis streets and dungeons person go affluent with colour and texture.

The game’s producers besides took an other measurement to hole the astir annoying facet of the archetypal — the conflict strategy — to marque progressing done the crippled much fast-paced and fun. That’s a astute hole successful an epoch erstwhile radical person unlimited options for different worldly to bash if they get bored with a video game.

Square Enix different near Crisis Core’s communicative intact, including its publication carried by dependable actors. The crippled centers connected Zack Fair, a subordinate of the elite subject force, Soldier, which is controlled by Shinra, the world-dominating electrical powerfulness company.

Zack is tasked with tracking down a brace of comrades who person deserted Shinra. It’s not a spoiler to accidental our leader meets a tragic end, a information that has been good known by fans of the franchise for much than 2 decades. But the prequel tells the communicative of however his bequest contributed to the epic events of Final Fantasy VII.

Yet portion Reunion’s graphics are a marked betterment from the original, the crippled is not astir arsenic polished oregon arsenic highly produced arsenic its sibling, Final Fantasy VII Remake.

That’s due to the fact that Reunion is fundamentally an intermission for a overmuch bigger show. Its main purpose, according to Square Enix, is to support gamers hooked connected the franchise successful betwixt releases of Final Fantasy VII Remake, which sold 3.5 cardinal copies successful its archetypal 3 days successful 2020, making it 1 of the fastest-selling PlayStation 4 games. That remake is being dispersed retired into installments that volition travel retired each 2 to 3 years. (Episode 2 is expected for merchandise adjacent winter, astir 3 years aft Episode 1, and the bid volition reason with Episode 3.)

Even so, this intermission is simply a assemblage pleaser. The crippled gives tons of airtime to Aerith, Sephiroth and Cloud, the stars of Final Fantasy VII, fleshing retired these characters and mounting the signifier for the epic game.

In presumption of gameplay, Reunion takes a caller attack to battles. Players tin freely power Zack successful 3-D space, swinging his elephantine sword astatine a monster and dodging its attacks successful betwixt nuking it with magic spells. This feels much stimulating than the old-school “turn-based” system, successful which players exchanged blows with an force by pressing a fastener to trigger an enactment and past waiting for the force to instrumentality its turn.

The biggest occupation with the archetypal Crisis Core’s conflict strategy was the Digital Mind Wave, which is fundamentally a slot instrumentality perpetually moving successful the inheritance of each fight. When the reels onshore connected definite combinations, peculiar attacks are triggered that tin obliterate enemies.

In the original, the slot instrumentality was noisy and downright obnoxious, interrupting a conflict to play its animations. Fortunately, it has been toned down to silently tally successful the background, and erstwhile the slot instrumentality unlocks a bonus, players tin property a fastener to activate it whenever they privation and adjacent skip the animations.

Reunion besides streamlines the acquisition of grinding, which traditionally involves doing repetitious (often mind-numbing) fights to get beardown capable to proceed done the game. Instead of wandering astir and warring random enemies, players tin embark connected optional missions, which deploy Zack to destruct a circumstantial foe. In this process, players tin level up and stitchery utile items and magic spells to assistance them connected their main journey.

In the end, it took maine astir 18 hours to implicit the game, and I had amusive (unlike my acquisition with the archetypal Crisis Core, which I stopped playing aft 4 hours due to the fact that the battles were truthful tedious). My main ailment is that the crippled was excessively easy. After completing a tiny fig of optional missions, players volition find themselves overpowered and vanquishing the game’s main villains successful a fewer effortless blows.

Some gamers anxious for brand-new titles whitethorn consciousness that releasing reboots is excessively casual for crippled makers similar Square Enix. Mr. Yoshinori said the hazard to reboots was that they could extremity up appealing to a azygous demographic of older fans. The institution had primitively intended to bash a much humble refresh of Crisis Core with insignificant improvements to graphics, but erstwhile it became wide that Final Fantasy VII Remake had drawn successful galore caller fans, the ngo changed to pull those gamers, too.

“We decided midway done improvement that we had to up the game,” helium said.