4 FFVII Compilation Titles Square Enix Should Release Alongside the Remake

Final Fantasy VII is one of Square Enix’s most successful, and most acclaimed, games of all time. It set a high threshold for the series, and the company, that many would argue it hasn’t been able to meet since. In the early 2000’s along with the feature film Advent Children, Square Enix released a series of spin-off games and other projects that made the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII.

A recent statement from Final Fantasy VII Remake director, Tetsuya Nomura, indicated that he and the team were considering including Compilation titles alongside the release of the Remake. We’ve got a few ideas as to what Compilation titles should be focused on, should the development team go ahead with the idea.

4 FFVII Compilation Games Square Enix Should Release Alongside the Remake

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII

Without a doubt, one of the most requested games from Final Fantasy fans is a rerelease of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. The PSP game told a prequel story to FFVII, focusing on Cloud’s friend Zack Fair and his rise through the ranks of Soldier, and relationship with its top members including Sephiroth.

The fan-favorite title had an emotional story with some fantastic character development and helped flesh out the world of FFVII even more. A handful of new characters were introduced alongside original ones, with Sephiroth’s close friends Angeal and Genisis being the biggest new additions. It also sported a real-time combat system that used a unique slot machine mechanic to affect combat and use special attacks.

Out of all the Compilation of FFVII projects, Crisis Core was the best and most successful, cementing Zack’s place as one of the series’ best characters. Unfortunately, to this day it’s only on PSP and we’ve never gotten it in another form, not even a digital version on PS Vita. This means it isn’t the easiest game to find or play these days, and a remaster of Crisis Core would be the perfect thing to lead into the Final Fantasy VII Remake. 

4 FFVII Compilation Games Square Enix Should Release Alongside the Remake

Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII

Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII may not be something you even know exists as, sadly, the game never made its way outside of Japan. The mobile game takes place six years before the start of Final Fantasy VII, and focuses on the elite Shinra group, The Turks. The story of Before Crisis frequently overlaps with that of Crisis Core, and it focuses on 11 new Turks as playable characters while the more well-known ones like Reno and Rude make appearances.

While the Turks are established villains in FFVII, the game never really dives into their backstory or creation, something that Before Crisis shines a light on. The story even covers the Turk’s escalating conflict with the resistance group known as Avalanche, which you join at the beginning of FFVII.

Before Crisis used a real-time sidescrolling combat system, that even let you take a picture with your phone’s camera to obtain Materia based on the color and lighting of your photo. As the game appeared on mobile phones in 2004 it hasn’t aged the best, but Square Enix could definitely update or remake it.

Before Crisis is an interesting piece of the compilation that many fans never had the chance to experience. It would work as the perfect companion piece to the Final Fantasy VII Remake, whether you remake it for modern smartphones or release it as a bonus experience on PS4.

4 FFVII Compilation Games Square Enix Should Release Alongside the Remake

Last Order: Final Fantasy VII

Last Order was a special OVA (original video animation) that released alongside Advent Children, and it helped realize the dream of what a proper Final Fantasy anime would look like. The OVA retold two of the major events that take place before the main story of FFVII, the Nibelheim reactor incident with Sephiroth, Zack, Cloud, and Tifa as well as when Cloud and Zack flee from the Shinra Corporation.

The entire thing is told from the perspective of the Turk, Tseng, providing even more background and detail on his motivations and feelings as well. The animation in Last Order is pretty stellar, and while it’s brief at only 25 minutes long, it’s a fun way to look back at two major events in FFVII’s story.

While Last Order was fairly well received in the West, there was some negative blowback from fans because of changes that were made to the story. While Square Enix could easily just rerelease the OVA with a Crisis Core remaster, it’d be great to see a fresh take or even a new piece of anime based on FFVII.

The Brotherhood episodes of FFXV showed the promise that anime has for the series in telling side stories, or helping to flesh out a cast of characters. It’d be great to get something new, but at the very least, Last Order deserves a fresh rerelease.

Compilation of FFVII Projects Square Enix Should Release Alongside the Remake

On the Way to a Smile & Lateral Biography Turks

Pretty much every Final Fantasy fan out there has seen Advent Children at some point, and there are varying opinions on its quality, but there are a series of short stories that tied into the film that many western fans might not know exist.

On the Way to a Smile is a series of short stories written by Kazushige Nojima, the writer of Final Fantasy VII. They tell small standalone stories about different characters leading up to the events of Advent Children, including Denzel, Tifa, Cloud, Barret, Yuffie, Shinra, and more.

The book actually did get a western release and is available on Amazon right now, but it’d be great to see Square Enix give the stories another push with the release of the Final Fantasy VII Remake. Maybe they could even create a digital version of the book packed in with the Remake, or make it available on apps like Kindle.

Lateral Biography Turks -The Kids Are Alright- is another novel that takes place shortly before the events of Advent Children. This time the novel focuses on Evan Townshend, a private detective living in Edge, and details his interactions with the Turks and Shinra leading up to the appearance of Kadaj.

Strangely, it looks like Lateral Biography Turks is set to release in English in January 2019, according to the listing on the Yen Press site. That it’s releasing all these years later could show that Square Enix wants to provide more of the compilation to fans outside of Japan, or it could just be a total coincidence. Either way, it’d be good to see Square Enix give both of these books another push, or a digital release, to boost up the Final Fantasy VII Remake.