Square Enix makes and publishes some of the best games ever made, Final Fantasy VII being one of them.

But please, for the love of God, do not play this game. It is as predatory as gachas get. I have been playing for only a short amount of time, but I have already been bombarded with countless limited banners and overpriced offers.

If you're looking to get into Final Fantasy, play any of the other games in the franchise. Just because it is free does not mean that it is a good game to get into Final Fantasy VII with. If you are looking to get into Final Fantasy and want a free experience, try the Final Fantasy XV demo instead. It is 10x better and more enjoyable than this game.

And knowing the fates of previous Square Enix live-service games, this one will not last long despite being part of the Final Fantasy VII universe (In case you did not know, each Final Fantasy game is its own separate world).

And if you do still plan on playing this game, please do not spend any money on it. You will be much better off spending it on Rebirth instead.

The First Soldier story is great, but damn it sucks that it's stuck behind a gacha game.

I can't in good faith recommend a gacha game, let alone one with no guarantee of continued existence when it inevitably reaches End of Service. Mobius, Opera Omnia, Brave Exvius, Record Keeper.... we can't expect to access this game, whether or not it's complete, if (when) they decide maintaining it isn't making them money.

Which is a shame, because there is some interesting tidbits in the stories we haven't heard before (First Soldier). It's nothing groundbreaking to me, per se, I understood a lot of fundamentals about Sephiroth's character before they made it this explicit, but it's still interesting. No idea if they'll ever finish writing this story when they have a limit of doing one story update a month while they inundate the player with meaningless events that only SOMETIMES have interesting character elements in them. The FF6 crossover had a moment between Angeal and Aerith that genuinely made me glad for someone caring enough to write it! However, because it's a mobile/gacha game, the majority of events are stamina-draining busywork. It also has the mobile/gacha game problem of putting meaningless numbers on everything. Just because a player's power rating is higher than what the recommended number says does not mean they will succeed at a given mission. I've always found that frustrating and opaque.

If they had focused on the FF7 stories that hadn't been told to the whole global audience (First Soldier, perhaps Before Crisis), or at least focused on one Compilation element at a time, rather than this random array of chapters, I think there'd be more clarity of purpose for this game's existence. This might've worked better if we had gotten consistent chapters releasing for one storyline. I suspect the stories were released the way they were because they had already decided to add Glenn to FF7 Rebirth and needed the players to know him as a character before they used his face. (Not that it helped us know why he was there at all, honestly, but it might've been more reasonable had First Soldier Chapter 1 been finished beforehand.) I still won't excuse the gachapon elements, I don't care that it's a mobile game staple, but I think having actual focus on the story would've helped my enjoyment immensely. And maybe limiting the number of events per month so we don't get like six banners in the event tab at the same time. I'm the friend who plays this game and provides the story to my other interested (but not willing to play this game) friends, and I imagine plenty of people prefer watching the youtube cutscene compilations rather than deal with the game interface. I don't see that changing anytime soon. I'd love to be wrong, but we can only wait and see as the game develops.

I realize adding negative reviews will not bode well for the longevity of Ever Crisis, but I guess I'm also wondering if this is a collective game of playing chicken with Squeenix. Will they decide to take it down after a threshold of bad reviews and not enough revenue? Will they keep it up to tell their FF7 stories? They haven't even touched Dirge of Cerberus or Before Crisis (though the latter would create its own problems of which characters become part of your playable party cast with their own weapon draws, wonder how that'll be considered). I can't wait to find out. Congrats on making it a full year of service, though.

I also might be more interested if there's a playable character young Genesis added into the First Soldier story. There's no news of that as far as I know at the time of writing this.