FINAL FANTASY VII: EVER CRISIS (Part One)

 So, this'll be an odd update from yours truly.

No, FINAL FANTASY VII: EVER CRISIS isn't a particularly "odd" game, and the fact that I'm covering it isn't particularly out of the ordinary for me. What is odd is the way I chose to approach this. 

I played the PC version of this on Steam, primarily. I also played some of the iPhone version.

This might be hard to explain (and I'm not entirely sure committing to doing this was worth it) but what I'm doing is in service of playing through all of FF7 in release order. In that case, ideally I'd be playing this sometime next year before Revelation releases (as this only just ended development and became "finished" fairly recently). But there's the rub: this game is finished. It's a gacha game that is going to be unplayable soon.

That put me in a strange spot: I had just played Final Fantasy VII and was intimately aware that one piece of the Final Fantasy VII pie was about to be scrubbed from the Internet, but I knew that was something I did want to see. But it was also something that came out after most other Final Fantasy VII media (it got its final update just over a day ago!) and I didn't want to ruin my "release-order" marathon of the series by seeing this game's narrative(s) too soon. This story is effectively a condensation of all of the FF7 media that's come out so far and watching it through now would only serve to spoil plot points (and ruin the pacing) of all of the other games/things I haven't gotten to yet.

Ideally I would get to this in a few months after I've played everything else, but the game shuts down tonight. There simply isn't time. Sure, I could just resort to viewing a cutscene compilation in March (or whenever) but I stubbornly wanted to play this myself. I wanted to be able to say "I've played FINAL FANTASY VII: EVER CRISIS" but I also didn't want to mess with my plans for this marathon I'm about to embark on. But that gave me an idea: why not play the game now, engaging with it mechanically, and make my own cutscene compilation that I can watch in a few months?

Hear me out: if I screen-record myself going through the content (but don't look at my screen right now) I can play the game and engage with its combat and systems without gaining the knowledge that'd be unceremoniously dropped on me if I earnestly experienced all there was to see in the game. It's an awkward workaround (and a fairly silly one, I might add) but it seemed like something that could work. How would I play through an entire game without looking at it during pivotal moments though, you might ask?

It might seem reductive, but this is a game that quite literally plays itself, if you let it. Mechanically it's similar to a turn-based combat thing with an ATB-esque cooldown system, but even that is overstating its complexity. It's effectively MMO-combat without the character-movement. Everyone has abilities that have set mana costs, and you're constantly generating mana (and thus are constantly unleashing, or about to unleash, some sort of ability or attack). You can take manual control over one (of three) party members at a time, with the other two effectively on auto-pilot, but this is a game that, to me, feels designed to be played on complete autopilot.

You see, you can set it to run at 2x Speed and you can also choose to hand over control over "your" character to the AI as well, meaning you can sit back and just watch the AI fight itself. It's not particularly intelligent, but with strong enough characters you can typically brute force most fights this way, and it feels like the way the combat was kind of meant to be experienced. I realize I haven't mentioned this yet, but this is a gacha game. That means you'll be constantly leveling up characters with shiny new weapons and upgrades and relying on your equipment's numerical values to do most of the work. Human input is ultimately not as important as having a Big Number on your sword (or gun or whatever).

There is some depth and nuance to the combat but that only becomes necessary to engage with in the late-game, high-level combat challenges. For the most part this is a game you can set down and just sort of watch, which makes sense given this started its life as a phone-exclusive. That also, importantly, meant my plan of "playing it now (and watching it later)" could work.

With all that dang preamble out of the way, let's talk about the game itself. Let's mosey.

Sadly, Cloud's line here isn't quite as memorable.

I needed to periodically navigate dungeons, click on dialogue options, and "x" out of menus so I haven't been able to be completely hands-off (I've also glanced over at my second monitor occasionally out of habit and have Seen Some Things as a result) but for the most part I'd say my plan, the first part of my plan at least, was a success.

With that being said, I have played a lot of this game over the last month. An obscene, unhealthy amount of this game, if I'm being honest. I wrote a bit about how I've been in a bad mental state lately (and I'm not sure whether obsessing over some pointless gacha game was good or bad for me, ultimately) but I'm doing a little better now and at least I have this blog post as a bit of a memorial to my time with this game. But I digress. The point I'm making here is that I have gone all-in on this game mechanically and I've only kinda-sorta spoiled some stuff narratively for myself along the way.

I mentioned a little about the combat being very hands-off and that remains true, but there is something to it, at least. You have elemental affinities/weaknesses, status effects, materia, gear and weapons to equip, Limit Breaks; on a surface level it has everything you'd expect out of FF7. It even sort of resembles the original game aesthetically (though I'll get to that later). While this is ostensibly a real-time combat game (that flows more like an ATB turn-based thing) I've sort of come to approach it as something of an auto-battler.

My role is to outfit my party with the best equipment I can; leveling up their stuff and equipping them with whatever elemental or status buffs/debuffs seem relevant, and if I've (over)prepared them enough they should be able to just Auto their way to victory. I can (and, with the hardest content like the challenge towers, need to) slow things down from 2x Speed and take manual control to micromanage my way through, but for the most part this has been something I've been able to just kind of leave running while I'm doing other stuff (which might at least partially explain my inflated Steam hour count).

With whatever nuance is there, it is, sadly, still a gacha game. If you aren't aware, that means most of your equipment and abilities are hidden behind a loose-paywall that you can technically circumvent with enough grinding but which is, truly, a gross monetary barrier that usually gets in the way, or gets skipped by those who have the cash. This is a disgusting model and I hate hate hate that so many games revolve around what is effectively gambling without the real-world rewards. I've played a few gacha games in the past and there usually is something to each of those games, but the grind and content churn of each one always gets to me and I've ended up dropping them all.

Because Ever Crisis is in its end-of-service wind-down period, however, they've been incredibly generous with its energy/time-gated system(s), and its gacha draws, and its "free" currency, and events, and whatever. Effectively while there are still soft walls in effect (that require some grinding or thought to get past) most of this game is kind of just open to you. As a new, free player I'm getting the red carpet rolled out for me. Even if I wanted to spend money on gems (or whatever they're called) I can't.

There's a guild system that seemed focused around group content and collectively dealing damage to boss enemies, or something. Standard online live-service game stuff. I didn't really engage much with that whole thing outside of joining one called "BIG Tifa", which I joined because the name was "BIG Tifa". There's also a co-op mode that swaps your "Solo" party-of-three for each player's own individual character. There was a... workaround I found for doing these missions efficiently (that I won't go into) but, much like the guilds, this seems like it might have been a fun thing to engage with if I wasn't under such a time crunch.

When you ignore the gacha stuff (which, admittedly, is really, really hard to do) there's maybe something to this game mechanically. You need to dig deep to find it because most of the game doesn't surface it, but it's not entirely lacking depth or substance. I don't know if I'd say there's a diamond in the rough here but I didn't completely hate the combat by the end. Though that might just be Stockholm Syndrome given how long I've spent with this thing.

Now, for some things that I unambiguously liked about Ever Crisis.

Most of this is something I'll probably mention again in a future blog post, but I love the way this game looks. It seemingly aims to replicate the split between overworld/combat models by having high-fidelity "realistic" character models during combat and lower-poly, cutesy chibi-style models for the cutscenes and dungeons. Interestingly, the story mode largely features these chibi models so cutscenes all use the default appearances for everyone, but there are bonus outfits as part of the gacha system and they've actually modeled two versions of all (as far as I can tell) bonus outfits, you can just only see the smaller ones in the time-gated chocobo ranch (and when you do the optional challenge dungeons). It's ultimately an unnecessary touch but I'm glad they went through the effort to do it because there are some truly standout outfits. When you don't need to pay real money for a chance to get them, having all this stuff to unlock is cool!

The animations during combat are all fairly flashy and well-executed. I realize that isn't necessarily too impressive a statement, but I feel like there's a good amount of artistry and talent present in this game and it bums me out its tied to a gacha game that's getting its plug pulled. There are new(?) orchestrations of music from the source material, it adapts tons of locations and vistas from the original game almost 1:1, I think those overworld models are super cute. It makes me wonder whether a rerelease of Final Fantasy VII that just Looks Like This could have worked.

There isn't a "clear screen" for me to share with you, but there was this part of a farewell video they displayed to people at the start of the last day that I thought was cute.

I'll also share a screenshot of my profile, for posterity's sake.

So that's Ever Crisis. Roughly half (the less-important half, I'd say) of Ever Crisis. The bones of this are solid! Fairly simple, but solid. Feels ripe for a complete-package-rerelease at some point but as of yet nothing's been announced so as far as I know this game's just gonna up and vanish into the ether come tomorrow. That's a shame because this was almost something really cool.

I'll report back in a few months with a followup blog post where I'll detail the way it handles the story of Final Fantasy VII and, well, the rest of the structure of this game (provided I remember the things that aren't apparent in a video recording) but I've got quite a bit of FF7 to get through before then. I should actually have one or two updates on that front imminently (I've been lazy and haven't felt like writing), so keep an eye out.