Lulcielid
Eyes of the Lord
- AKA
- Lulcy
FFVII: Ever Crisis Announced
- Thread starter Lex
- Start date
ph14basicbitch
shinra merch buyer
- AKA
- koda
Started playing the closed beta the other day. Seems enjoyable and it has some QoL and pity features, like the stamp cards attached to the gacha banners. Seems derpy that the costumes are attached to the stamp cards, though. 12 stamps to get a costume? 
Fuck dude just let me buy Aerith's fairy princess outfit.
Fuck dude just let me buy Aerith's fairy princess outfit.
Misterbadguy
Phantom Lord
- AKA
- METEODRIVE
The amount of effort that's gone into this seems way higher than I personally expected; I really did not anticipate completely new music arranges, but here we are.
Intrigued to see if it'll be possible to port the new translation to OG. The way scenes play out in EC aren't quite 1:1, but they're relatively close, so it feels like it could be doable with some editing.
Intrigued to see if it'll be possible to port the new translation to OG. The way scenes play out in EC aren't quite 1:1, but they're relatively close, so it feels like it could be doable with some editing.
Ite
Save your valediction (she/her)
- AKA
- Ite
ultima espio
Pro Adventurer
Explanation of the gacha system:
Strangelove
AI Researcher
- AKA
- hitoshura
i got it to stop timing out by using a vpn, i guess there's some problems being in the japanese closed beta but not being in japan. but i've managed to go through all the story stages and do a fair about of the additional content.
there's voiced clips at the start of each story, which just seems to be taken from previous releases (remake for ffvii including aerith looking down the alleyway before rushing off). i thought the stuff that plays before the first soldier stages was new to this but i have not seen anything about fs so maybe that's reused as well. there is a little bit of what seems like new dialogue from sephiroth right at the start, talking about possibilities which sounds like the tagline/dev quotes about this being 'another possibility for a remake'. i can't say anything about fs, but ffvii and cc's stories seem both slightly truncated but also expanded in minor ways. certain parts are glossed over with a little text saying what happens. some sections will have battles added to i guess bulk out the little episodes. some of the episodes are just story, some are story and battle, and some also have little dungeon sections
it also adds some extra stages which is minor little things like going with wedge to help a cat, so it does seem to be incorporating characterisation from the remake. cloud doesn't seem to be staying at seventh heaven, so that's another aspect it takes from the remake rather than the original. but then you meet president shinra at the reactor, which iirc was a hologram in the remake? at other points it just does its own thing. the part after the first bombing missing has cloud get surrounded by troops, but instead of jumping onto the train he just... defeats them then walks down the street back to sector 7 lol. but as a run-through of the main story, it seems promising. i like the little cartoony versions of the characters harkening back to the original game, although it reminded me more of ffix's models (more detailed/textured) than ffvii's blocky ones.
given that you start with 9 characters, one thing i liked was that completing story quests will give all characters exp even if they weren't used. shame it's only then and not every time, because the level cap is 90 and having to level 9 characters at that (and they will probably add more for the other games) is a bit of a pain. the levelling up and upgrading weapons seems to be where the grind will come in.
the multiplayer thing is on a schedule which i'm not stoked about, i'd rather it just ran all day because i can never keep track of the times of these things. plus this is on a japanese server so there's time zone problems.
also, you can move with an on-screen joystick thing (press on the screen wherever and it'll appear) but if you double tap on a spot on the map or a chest or something you can move without having to hold down on the screen. it took me a couple of stages to work that out.
there's voiced clips at the start of each story, which just seems to be taken from previous releases (remake for ffvii including aerith looking down the alleyway before rushing off). i thought the stuff that plays before the first soldier stages was new to this but i have not seen anything about fs so maybe that's reused as well. there is a little bit of what seems like new dialogue from sephiroth right at the start, talking about possibilities which sounds like the tagline/dev quotes about this being 'another possibility for a remake'. i can't say anything about fs, but ffvii and cc's stories seem both slightly truncated but also expanded in minor ways. certain parts are glossed over with a little text saying what happens. some sections will have battles added to i guess bulk out the little episodes. some of the episodes are just story, some are story and battle, and some also have little dungeon sections
it also adds some extra stages which is minor little things like going with wedge to help a cat, so it does seem to be incorporating characterisation from the remake. cloud doesn't seem to be staying at seventh heaven, so that's another aspect it takes from the remake rather than the original. but then you meet president shinra at the reactor, which iirc was a hologram in the remake? at other points it just does its own thing. the part after the first bombing missing has cloud get surrounded by troops, but instead of jumping onto the train he just... defeats them then walks down the street back to sector 7 lol. but as a run-through of the main story, it seems promising. i like the little cartoony versions of the characters harkening back to the original game, although it reminded me more of ffix's models (more detailed/textured) than ffvii's blocky ones.
given that you start with 9 characters, one thing i liked was that completing story quests will give all characters exp even if they weren't used. shame it's only then and not every time, because the level cap is 90 and having to level 9 characters at that (and they will probably add more for the other games) is a bit of a pain. the levelling up and upgrading weapons seems to be where the grind will come in.
the multiplayer thing is on a schedule which i'm not stoked about, i'd rather it just ran all day because i can never keep track of the times of these things. plus this is on a japanese server so there's time zone problems.
also, you can move with an on-screen joystick thing (press on the screen wherever and it'll appear) but if you double tap on a spot on the map or a chest or something you can move without having to hold down on the screen. it took me a couple of stages to work that out.
X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
I think that's something that's likely a possibility if it does well on its own. There are a ton of reasons for focusing exclusively on mobile at first that carry a huge amount of weight and seem slightly counterintuitive without diving into the weeds a bit. First with Japan having a relatively big mobile gaming scene, one of the things that mobile games are attempting to do is diversify the install base of players, because by adding a mobile game, you're expanding to reach a larger total addressable market (TAM) overall without oversaturating into your primary market. Essentially the starting goal is to get to as many mobile-specific players as possible, and put the largest investment into that player base.
Japan having a larger mobile gaming market to pull from also means that there'll be a lot of mobile developers looking for work, and if you're a big company like SE and those devs can do work for you, you're likely to be able to see an RoI on that project that serves in everyone's favor. Also given that the mobile gaming is bigger, you're less likely to have devs that multi-specialize between both mobile AND console/PC development, so they're less likely to be as easily launched across multiple platforms, especially since it's not just porting it to the other platforms, but also multiplayer often will need their own dedicated back-end devs to any multiplayer & content update management, as well as support training and community management that has to expand to encompass those things behind the scenes as well. That brings us to the next point.
Any devs who are familiar with the PC/Console development are already primarily involved full time in other projects like FFVIIR or FFXVI, so unless the mobile launch of the game ends up being definitively successful, moving development resources off of those dedicated projects and onto multi-release projects isn't cost effective. It's extra difficult to try to justify that, especially because if you're going to add in a launch to PC/console, it also has to line up so that it's not overlapping into the launch windows of other dedicated projects and undercutting from the reach of those projects.
Essentially that's why things like TFS launched on mobile-only and then ended up dying without ever expanding into a larger PC/console market which might have helped to hold up the game beyond the lifecycle it had. It's a difficult move to make from the business side of things, because there's a lot more planning and accommodation that you need to make for those things to happen, and while other games like Genshin prove that there's a market for that, it's really just even more heavily reinforcing that model of seeing whether or not your gatcha game has strong enough legs (or gambling mechanisms) to be able to stand on its own, such that the move to PC/console is essentially a guaranteed RoI that offsets losses of other PC/console launches going to that instead AND the added overhead of developers being focused on that work as well as the active maintenance costs for those versions that will also account for any of the playerbase shifting off of mobile and onto alternative consoles.
AND... all of that is needing to both be a larger priority that will also balance itself against the requirements of every other in-flight project that's been roadmapped out over the period of the next 6 months to 3 years. Which would be difficult enough, but the fact that the Japan-centric market interests are markedly different when it comes to the mobile gaming space from those of the majority of the global market add in further complications to how those are planned by the Japanese-focused companies, but also in what the resource investment has to look like for the overseas PC/console support staff that are highly prioritized for other projects compared to the more available mobile devs & staff.
So, tl;dr is that it's a frustratingly more complex balancing act than it looks like from the outside. But I really do hope that Ever Crisis has those legs and does end up being able to be brought into the non-mobile markets at some point as well. It's just important to see that Genshin shows why there's a market for this but ALSO shows what it takes to be able to do that is different within different companies, and there's a LOT to pay attention to in the space, especially when it comes to release of other games like Vampire Survivors and various other mobile-type games and how and where they end up being successful within different markets from a global install base, since those are the things that the Product Managers, Sales Managers, & other big decision makers look at in order to justify cost spending on the Engineering headcount budget to facilitate that type of work to be able to happen.
For what it's worth, the Ever Crisis UI seems to be fairly clean for the most part and set up in a way where the translation into a non-touch-interface is viable. As Hito mentioned there's tap to move, but the game also has the "joystick" movement, which points to programatically accounting for players using a controller or other interface for movement. You can see other multi-disciplinary work in games like how basically the entirety of FFXVI's menu screens are all designed as if it were a PC game and not console game, because they all have a floating mouse cursor in them and even allow you to interact with the left joystick to operate it that way. (In FFXVI's case that's actually deeper evidence of a lot of really bad fundamental software design practices that were also all over the rushed Overwatch 2 console release. While that's mostly a totally different conversation, the quick differentiator is that mobile-first development is extremely a11y-friendly and makes it easier to adapt into other platforms using minimalist efficient methodologies, whereas PC-first development is precisely the opposite in a way that leaves artifacts of bad design everywhere and then after-the-fact stacks overly redundant systems and control mechanisms unnecessarily all over the place).
Essentially, being mobile-frst developed now comes with a huge amount of consideration for porting it onto other systems in the future, but whether or not it ever gets the opportunity to leverage all of that comes down to whether or not the game itself does well (which is why the pre-installation campaigns are marketed so heavily). At least from a distance, especially compared to the rather lukewarm launch of TFS, this at least seems to have a lot more genuinely positive response around it but with so much being a numbers game it's really hard to tell what they're judging those figures against in terms or their internally projected performance expectations.
X
Strangelove
AI Researcher
- AKA
- hitoshura
it updated with some additional story for ffvii (covering going to aerith's house and the sector 7 pillar), which i wasn't expecting. completing that also unlocks the ability to learn new limit breaks, but i gotta say that's another grindy thing. you have go complete multiple 'missions' to unlock a new limit break, but a lot of them involve giving up weapon upgrade items which take a while to build up since they aren't guaranteed drops in the corresponding quests and it's asking for half the amount you'd use for an upgrade but for 9 characters' limits. it might be able they've given a lot of gacha stuff to start with but i have a whole heap of weapons i could be upgrading here. i've pretty much decided to focus on cloud, barret and tifa since they are the first characters i used so i've just ended up building them up more.
also, while i do appreciate getting story quest exp from battles, sometimes the way they introduce it is kind of funny. when heading from aerith's house to return to sector 7 the story scenes will play out normally and then right at the end some shinra troops will just run on screen and a fight will start and that happens in like 3 episodes lol.
it's definitely using the remake's worldbuilding, the wall market section has the corneo coliseum and i think corneo's dialogue is from the remake rather than the original. i was wondering if you'd see the remake honeybee inn but it just skips over all the item gathering quests. then there's minor difference from the original and remake. you don't reunite with tifa in corneo's dungeon but just in a waiting room upstairs, biggs/jessie/wedge are all outside the pillar instead of any of them being on it. i wouldn't really call it a replacement or substitute for either the original or remake, but if you wanted something that covers the main story beats then it works.
i'm not sure if the environments are newly made (to match with the more chibi-looking character models)? because if so i wasn't expecting them to make that much new stuff for this.
also, while i do appreciate getting story quest exp from battles, sometimes the way they introduce it is kind of funny. when heading from aerith's house to return to sector 7 the story scenes will play out normally and then right at the end some shinra troops will just run on screen and a fight will start and that happens in like 3 episodes lol.
it's definitely using the remake's worldbuilding, the wall market section has the corneo coliseum and i think corneo's dialogue is from the remake rather than the original. i was wondering if you'd see the remake honeybee inn but it just skips over all the item gathering quests. then there's minor difference from the original and remake. you don't reunite with tifa in corneo's dungeon but just in a waiting room upstairs, biggs/jessie/wedge are all outside the pillar instead of any of them being on it. i wouldn't really call it a replacement or substitute for either the original or remake, but if you wanted something that covers the main story beats then it works.
i'm not sure if the environments are newly made (to match with the more chibi-looking character models)? because if so i wasn't expecting them to make that much new stuff for this.
cold_spirit
he/him
- AKA
- Alex T
This is going to drive me bonkers.
cold_spirit
he/him
- AKA
- Alex T
Map comparison! Most notable is the new lake in the area where the Sleeping Old Man resides. The southern part of the western continent is also much more distinct with a wider river separating it from the north. The lake outside Lucrecia's cave also received a buff.
Strangelove
AI Researcher
- AKA
- hitoshura
if anyone has a chance to offer feedback, pls tell them that the weapon core (the round items used to upgrade weapons) drop rate is ridiculously low and they should increase it. just let me upgrade more weapons easier
took screencaps of all the character portraits (credited to lisa fujise) seen so far if anyone is interested. only playable characters have larger portraits available in-game as far as i can tell
also, a location from the first soldier story called the 'shijad island' (シジャド島) on the 'radiol archipelago' (ラディオル群島). i can't remember if it showed where it was located on the world map. iirc they fought against shinra and lost, the story in ec involves looking for places for a new mako reactor. i don't know if this appeared in tfs, i had a quick search if there were any story videos but i didn't have any luck so far
took screencaps of all the character portraits (credited to lisa fujise) seen so far if anyone is interested. only playable characters have larger portraits available in-game as far as i can tell
ffvii
cloud
barret
tifa
aerith
red xiii
biggs
jessie
wedge
marlene
president shinra
reno
elmyra
don corneo
heidegger
reeve
tseng
crisis core
zack
angeal
sephiroth
lazard
the first soldier
glen
matt
lutia
youth (i can't remember if they got named)
cloud
barret
tifa
aerith
red xiii
biggs
jessie
wedge
marlene
president shinra
reno
elmyra
don corneo
heidegger
reeve
tseng
crisis core
zack
angeal
sephiroth
lazard
the first soldier
glen
matt
lutia
youth (i can't remember if they got named)
also, a location from the first soldier story called the 'shijad island' (シジャド島) on the 'radiol archipelago' (ラディオル群島). i can't remember if it showed where it was located on the world map. iirc they fought against shinra and lost, the story in ec involves looking for places for a new mako reactor. i don't know if this appeared in tfs, i had a quick search if there were any story videos but i didn't have any luck so far
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Kain424
Old Man in the Room
Look how neatly all of these areas can be divided into huge zones. This is a great way to shape up world travel for Rebirth and beyond, assuming they use this updated world map (and I bet they will).
BlueCollarNerd
Pro Adventurer
The closest beta test has ended.... but it was a blast.
The game looks absolutely beautiful, durring combat and cut-scenes. Running around in the "dungeon" areas felt and looked great. It was cool that whomever was you made party leader was the character used to run around.
The music was amazing for the different scenarios. Being able to turn down the sounds effects and just enjoy the tracks while grinding for upgrades made it more enjoyable.
The pacing of game was great. The beginning was kind of slow and easy. Lots of tutorials and things to learn. They did spread it out enough so that it's not overwhelming to learn.
Combat was fun and challenging. I was nervous is was going to be really easy but bosses and elite enemies make you have to pay attention to weaknesses and strategies.
I only got to play the multi-player a few times. It seemed like to would be very fun with friends. Playing with randoms felt kind of empty, like I just had two bots playing with me.
I'm excited to play again when the game releases.
The game looks absolutely beautiful, durring combat and cut-scenes. Running around in the "dungeon" areas felt and looked great. It was cool that whomever was you made party leader was the character used to run around.
The music was amazing for the different scenarios. Being able to turn down the sounds effects and just enjoy the tracks while grinding for upgrades made it more enjoyable.
The pacing of game was great. The beginning was kind of slow and easy. Lots of tutorials and things to learn. They did spread it out enough so that it's not overwhelming to learn.
Combat was fun and challenging. I was nervous is was going to be really easy but bosses and elite enemies make you have to pay attention to weaknesses and strategies.
I only got to play the multi-player a few times. It seemed like to would be very fun with friends. Playing with randoms felt kind of empty, like I just had two bots playing with me.
I'm excited to play again when the game releases.
Strangelove
AI Researcher
- AKA
- hitoshura
got a push notification telling my chocobo expedition thing had finished, thanks a lot but i can't actually do anything about that now lol
i am looking at the post-beta questionnaire which i am not sure i will fill in because the only locations they let you pick are in japan and i was using a vpn so idk if i should just lie about where i am lol
in some of the multiple choice it describes the first soldier stuff as if it's completely unique ('completely new story' and 'original characters'). original characters i can understand since i think tfs did the character creation thing, but new story? i didn't have much luck finding videos of tfs, apart from official trailers the best i found was a 10 hour livestream and i'm not watching all that. i didn't think the original tfs was going to be story heavy for anything being a battle royale game, but did it just have like... no story at all or something.
i am looking at the post-beta questionnaire which i am not sure i will fill in because the only locations they let you pick are in japan and i was using a vpn so idk if i should just lie about where i am lol
in some of the multiple choice it describes the first soldier stuff as if it's completely unique ('completely new story' and 'original characters'). original characters i can understand since i think tfs did the character creation thing, but new story? i didn't have much luck finding videos of tfs, apart from official trailers the best i found was a 10 hour livestream and i'm not watching all that. i didn't think the original tfs was going to be story heavy for anything being a battle royale game, but did it just have like... no story at all or something.
cold_spirit
he/him
- AKA
- Alex T
That's right. I played TFS regularly with some breaks. The only story element was the game's opening, which was officially uploaded to YouTube before the game even launched.
Hmm, I suppose the tutorial had voice acting, but that was largely an explanation of mechanics.
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Strangelove
AI Researcher
- AKA
- hitoshura
any potential fomo i may have had about tfs is miraculously disappearing lol
cold_spirit
he/him
- AKA
- Alex T
I also recall a "Graduation Notice" that displayed after the announcement that the game would close. It briefly mentions that you'll go on a top-secret mission with Glenn, Matt, and Lucia.
Makoeyes987
Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
- AKA
- Smooth Criminal
Thanks for sharing that graduation notice.
That confirms Glen, Lucia and Matt are SOLDIER and passed project 0. They stated they were SOLDIERs but some folks out there still had doubts. But thats confirmation right there.
That confirms Glen, Lucia and Matt are SOLDIER and passed project 0. They stated they were SOLDIERs but some folks out there still had doubts. But thats confirmation right there.
Suzaku
Pro Adventurer
In the TFS chapter of EC, Lucia says that they're "SOLDIER: P0 Class" and implies that Shinra considers them to be expendable.
I had started typing up a review of the beta a couple days ago but I guess I don't really need to go that in-depth. Suffice it to say it was really enjoyable. Not a 1:1 remake but the production quality is impressive. If I have any real complaint it's that they abridged the story; would love to have explorable town areas and more exploration maps.
The TFS chapter is easily the most interesting to me because it's an all new story. Glenn, Matt, and Lucia are surprisingly likeable. It has all new music (sounds like Ishimoto) and the first chapter is set in a new region, the Rhadore Archipelago, 15 years before the events of FFVII.
It actually opens with a flash forward to what seems to be the mass SOLDIER desertion incident. Sephiroth is standing in the middle of a burning Behemoth nest that he just cleared out, littered with their corpses that are slowly dissolving into mako, giving the entire scene some really cool, eerie lighting. There's even one impaled on a tree. He tries to contact Genesis on his phone, when a dog barking can be heard and something rustles through the forest around him, closing in. Glenn leaps out, clad in a black hooded jacket. The two are acquainted, and Glenn taunts Sephiroth a bit before declaring that he's a hero, and the two prepare to clash. It then jumps back to present, with Glenn in the middle of some story and his two teammates, Matt and Lucia, incredulously listening.
Team Glenn is dispatched to Rhadore disguised as surveyors with the true goal of "peacefully" quelling any dissent. Their chopper gets taken out by hostiles and they crash land on a small island to the north of the main island. There they get ambushed by baloir, a species of amphibian monsters native to Rhadore. While fighting their way through the swarms they encounter a young Rhadoran boy with long, reddish brown hair and a pet dog named Refu (who Glenn calls Stamp). He takes them to an orchard with fruit that drives off the baloir, but sees through their ruse and identifies them as Shinra soldiers, then says they're lying when they claim their mission is peaceful. The chapter ends before the boy can reveal his name.
There's been some rumors that the boy is actually a young Sephiroth, which would call into question what we were told about his past up until now, though not sure it would align with the timeline. In most sources everything about Sephiroth's past is listed as Top Secret, but it's indicated that he was born in Nibelheim and raised in Shinra custody.
Or maybe it's just a new character.
I had started typing up a review of the beta a couple days ago but I guess I don't really need to go that in-depth. Suffice it to say it was really enjoyable. Not a 1:1 remake but the production quality is impressive. If I have any real complaint it's that they abridged the story; would love to have explorable town areas and more exploration maps.
The TFS chapter is easily the most interesting to me because it's an all new story. Glenn, Matt, and Lucia are surprisingly likeable. It has all new music (sounds like Ishimoto) and the first chapter is set in a new region, the Rhadore Archipelago, 15 years before the events of FFVII.
It actually opens with a flash forward to what seems to be the mass SOLDIER desertion incident. Sephiroth is standing in the middle of a burning Behemoth nest that he just cleared out, littered with their corpses that are slowly dissolving into mako, giving the entire scene some really cool, eerie lighting. There's even one impaled on a tree. He tries to contact Genesis on his phone, when a dog barking can be heard and something rustles through the forest around him, closing in. Glenn leaps out, clad in a black hooded jacket. The two are acquainted, and Glenn taunts Sephiroth a bit before declaring that he's a hero, and the two prepare to clash. It then jumps back to present, with Glenn in the middle of some story and his two teammates, Matt and Lucia, incredulously listening.
Team Glenn is dispatched to Rhadore disguised as surveyors with the true goal of "peacefully" quelling any dissent. Their chopper gets taken out by hostiles and they crash land on a small island to the north of the main island. There they get ambushed by baloir, a species of amphibian monsters native to Rhadore. While fighting their way through the swarms they encounter a young Rhadoran boy with long, reddish brown hair and a pet dog named Refu (who Glenn calls Stamp). He takes them to an orchard with fruit that drives off the baloir, but sees through their ruse and identifies them as Shinra soldiers, then says they're lying when they claim their mission is peaceful. The chapter ends before the boy can reveal his name.
There's been some rumors that the boy is actually a young Sephiroth, which would call into question what we were told about his past up until now, though not sure it would align with the timeline. In most sources everything about Sephiroth's past is listed as Top Secret, but it's indicated that he was born in Nibelheim and raised in Shinra custody.
Or maybe it's just a new character.
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Tetsujin
he/they
- AKA
- Tets
Closed beta test report:
Closed Beta Test Report | FINAL FANTASY VII EVER CRISIS | SQUARE ENIX
The official site of the latest game in the FINAL FANTASY VII series-FINAL FANTASY VII EVER CRISIS-for your smartphone.