Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII

Lore & Background

Before Crisis was the first major Final Fantasy game for mobile devices, designed as a unique gameplay and multiplayer experience. It was directed by Hajime Tabata, who created the concept at the request of Tetsuya Nomura for a game starring the Turks. The music was composed by Takeharu Ishimoto. Western critics praised it, but it was never released outside Japan due to mobile device capacity issues. The game was shut down in 2018, and its story was later retold in Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis.

Reader's Guide

Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII holds significance as the first major Final Fantasy title for mobile devices, pioneering gameplay and multiplayer features tailored to the platform. It introduced the Materia Generation System, which used camera phone pictures to create in-game Materia based on color and lighting. The game featured real-time side-scrolling action, multiple modes including Episode Mode and Free Mode, and ad hoc multiplayer for trading Materia and cooperative play. Its focus on the Turks provided a new perspective on the Final Fantasy VII universe, expanding the lore of Shinra and AVALANCHE. The game's success in Japan demonstrated the potential for mobile gaming in the franchise, though its limited release and eventual shutdown highlight the challenges of platform-specific development. Its legacy continues through Ever Crisis, which recreates its story for modern audiences.

Did You Know?

• The Materia Generation System used a camera phone to create Materia based on the dominant color of a picture.
• The game allowed up to three players to team up via ad hoc multiplayer.

The Creative Assembly Behind the Remake

After years of fan speculation that the 1997 PlayStation classic might receive a modern treatment, Square Enix officially unveiled Final Fantasy VII Remake in 2015. The project brought together a remarkable roster of original team members: Tetsuya Nomura stepped in as director, Yoshinori Kitase returned as producer, Kazushige Nojima handled the writing, Motomu Toriyama served as co-director, and legendary composer Nobuo Uematsu returned to the score. This reunion of veterans gave the reimagining a deep sense of continuity with the source material while signaling a fresh creative direction. A central design challenge was reworking the character models to strike a balance between photorealistic detail and the stylized aesthetic fans remembered from the original. The game launched on PlayStation 4 in 2020, followed by an enhanced Intergrade edition for PlayStation 5 and Windows in 2021. Further ports to the Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series X/S are slated for 2026, extending the title's reach across multiple generations of hardware.

A New Language of Combat

The most dramatic departure from the 1997 original lies in how battles unfold. Where the classic relied on turn-based exchanges, the remake immerses players in continuous real-time action while preserving the strategic depth fans cherished. The reworked Active Time Battle gauge fills gradually through combat or accelerates when the player lands attacks, and once full, the action can be paused to channel magic, items, or character-specific special moves. Each of these abilities consumes a segment of the gauge, creating a resource-management layer within the flow of combat. Players can map abilities to quick-select buttons, enabling seamless real-time play without constant pausing. Switching between party members mid-fight lets you exploit individual strengths—Cloud's close-quarters swordplay contrasts sharply with Barret's long-range firepower. Summons of massive creatures and a Limit Break gauge for devastating finishing moves add spectacle, while weapon and magic loadout choices keep tactical planning front and center. Exploration operates in the same real-time fashion, drawing a deliberate parallel to Final Fantasy XV's open approach.

Midgar, Destiny, and the Weight of the Planet

The narrative unfolds in Midgar, a dystopian cyberpunk metropolis where the Shinra Electric Power Company harvests Mako—a refined form of the planet's spiritual energy—through colossal reactors to fuel its technology empire. Cloud Strife, a disenchanted former SOLDIER elite, is drawn into the orbit of AVALANCHE, an ecological resistance led by Barret Wallace, after answering a mercenary call from his childhood friend Tifa Lockhart. The remake expands character development considerably and weaves in notable plot additions absent from the original. Among these are the Whispers, ghostly entities that police the course of destiny and punish any deviation, and the revelation that Aerith Gainsborough is the last descendant of the Cetra, a near-extinct precursor race tied to a mythical Promised Land rich in Mako. Sephiroth's infiltration of Shinra and his theft of the enigmatic Jenova entity raise the stakes toward a confrontation at the top of the company's tower, where the president is murdered and Rufus seizes control. The story closes with Cloud's group fleeing Midgar while Zack Fair, alive and unexpected, departs alongside them.

Critical Acclaim and a Trilogy's Horizon

Upon its 2020 release, the remake was met with broadly positive critical reception. Reviewers highlighted the visual fidelity, the reimagined combat system's blend of spectacle and strategy, the deepened narrative, and Uematsu's evocative score. The expanded storytelling and the battle system's visual flourishes earned particular praise, though some critics pointed to the game's linear structure and the repetitiveness of certain side-quests as areas that could have been refined. Commercially, the title was a phenomenon: it became one of the fastest-selling PlayStation 4 games in history, moving more than 3.5 million copies in its first three days and surpassing 8.7 million units by March 2025. The remake is explicitly the first chapter in a planned trilogy covering the full scope of the 1997 original. The second entry, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, arrived in 2024, and the trilogy's capstone, Final Fantasy VII Revelation, is currently scheduled for a 2027 release, keeping the story's momentum alive for another generation of players.