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Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis Conundrum A Gamer’s Perspective By Mark Mathen Victor H aving a portable version of the Final Fantasy VII (FF7) franchise in the form of a mobile game sounds great for hardcore fans, but Final Fantasy VII: EverCrisismight be theworstway to do it, and it does not even appeal to the fanbase. Released in most countries In September last year, Ever Crisis, like many mobile games, was region- locked and unavailable in Southeast Asian and East Asian countries until March 14 this year, at which point it became available on the various app stores in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vol.3 12 Nerds & Geeks 13 Nerds & Geeks Thailand, Indonesia, Macau, Myanmar, and Laos. Having spent roughly a month with the game, the flaws are painful to endure, and booting up the game each time lessened any interest in playing or investing further time into it. Everything rehashed The FF7 franchise containsmany entries, from main titles to spin-off titles, and it is very dense in terms of its narrative and characters. Tosumup, it isanexercise infutility, and that is what Ever Crisis is. An attempt to summarize the original FF7 and the prequel Crisis Vol.3 The Core: Ever Crisis is the product of chopping up those games into tiny, digestible pieces. It is unclear who Square Enix expects to attract with this model of storytelling, as it is unlikely the fanbasewants a rehashed story of FF7 with 60%missing. At the same time, the game introduces a new prequel to Crisis Core calledTheFirst Soldier, featuring a young Sephiroth and three new characters. Due to being a live-service game, content will be drip-fed over a long time. A generic fantasy on autopilot Ever Crisis follows a straightforward gameplay loop. Pick a mission that contains a watered-downmain story beat, watch the one- to two-minute scenewithout voice acting, and fight in a three- round battle. Rinse and repeat. There is no exploration, unlike in the original games. Every once in a while, a mission will require players to tap their way through a fauxmap. Asmost of Ever Crisis is just shifting back and forth between menus regardless of which story players are in, these rare moments of fake exploration feel truly plastic and hollow. Just as bad as that is the gameplay during battles. Ever Crisis has two modes during battle: manual and auto. In manual, players control the actions of the characters in their party, and in auto, the game’s artificial intelligence (AI) controls everything. The problem is that these battles are, even by mobile game standards, extremely unexciting. Manual is a chore because actions inbattle are limited, so auto is the best option because why bother playing the game when the AI can just play it for us? Degrees of disappointment The stories themselves are separate from each other. Players can pick which story they want, and the game will load that specific story’s mission list for players to progress in, but there is a catch. Progression is locked to something called “Power Level,” which is an accumulation of several different elements in the game, such as character levels and growth, weapon rank and level, and magic rank and level. If a player’s power level is too low, they will find it difficult to progress in the next mission, which in turnwould lead them to waste time getting the power level up through side content like optional dungeons. The original games did not have this, and players only needed to get their characters to a level highenough to beat enemies and bosses, along with having the right equipment. There were no arbitrary numbers that relied on vaguemathematics. Want to beat that boss into a slimy pulp? It used to be “Get to level 30,” and now it is “Make sure all you have high numbers in your swords, magic, and skill points. Also,make sure thewind is blowing in the right direction and the stars are aligned so that your battle power number is super high.” Even after successfully navigating the game’s labyrinthine chores to make sure missions can be played, progress will eventually be capped behind the game’s paywall, and Ever Crisis becomes a pay-to-win gacha gambling game, a prevalent symptom inmobile games. During later stages of Ever Crisis, basic activities like leveling will require players to spend real money on in-game microtransactions to speed up the process because if they do not, something that can take a few minutes to complete by payingmoney will instead take several days. If Ever Crisis only suffered from its relianceonmonetizationand itsgacha mechanics, it would still be something worth recommending, especially to newcomers. But its crippling gameplay and structural issues trulyput it ina terrible class of its own.