How does the Crisis Core experience differ depending on which release you are playing? To find out, you can read the pages of this article which have been divided into different categories of comparisons.

– Page 2: Japanese Original ↔ Post-Original
– Page 3: Japanese ↔ English
– Page 4: North America ↔ Europe
– Page 5: Miscellaneous

If you’d like to read more about the available versions and the people who contributed to this guide you can read the sections below.

The PSP-exclusive title Crisis Core was released in Japan in 2007, followed by a 2008 release everywhere else.


The scope of this guide almost exclusively concern the following three versions of Crisis Core:
– Japanese
– North American
– English European

Beyond this there exists four European localizations:
– German
– Spanish
– Italian
– French

These four translations have not been played through for this guide, but the game files might one day be compared with the English European counterpart for an automated comparison process.

The Australian release is presumed to mimic the European English version though this is yet to be confirmed. Another release that has not yet been examined is a supposed South Korean release of the game.

Currently the author of this article owns five copies of Crisis Core. These are…

Initial releases of a game are referred to as “black label” releases. If a game is popular enough it may be re-released with a recommendation stamp such as Ultimate Hits (Japan), Greatest Hits (North America) or Platinum (Europe).

Despite having different production codes, the two Japanese releases written above have been confirmed to be identical. This confirms the common wisdom that a black label release will have the same contents as its recommendation-stamp re-release.

Crisis Core stands out in that it was never re-released in Japan with the subtitle “International”. This means that the Japanese missed out on changes to the game, like the addition of a Hard Mode which is present in all non-Japanese releases.

The original Final Fantasy VII and even Dirge of Cerberus saw “International” releases, where added content was made available to the Japanese audience. The Kingdom Hearts series had a consistent pattern of seeing native re-releases with the subtitle “Final Mix” added to the product, which was its equivalent of the “International” subtitle.

Why then was Crisis Core left out of this pattern despite its positive reception and high sales figures? Common speculations include that Square Enix lost the rights to the theme song “Why” by Ayaka (a song used both instrumentally and in its original form in Crisis Core) and/or that Square Enix are no longer allowed to use Gackt’s likeness. These speculations are yet to be verified or disproven in any form.

– Shademp: Guide author.
– JBedford: Creator of the Crisis Core script viewer “Lazard”.
– Squall_of_Seed aka Twilight Mexican: Translations from Japanese to English.
– hito: Translations from Japanese to English.

– PSP emulator “PPSSPP”
– Cheat Engine

– Page 2: Japanese Original ↔ Post-Original
– Page 3: Japanese ↔ English
– Page 4: North America ↔ Europe
– Page 5: Miscellaneous