FF7 Crisis Core Reunion defeated:

At a certain point this game's gameplay breaks down -- the missions give Zack such powerful materia and equipment that he can one-shot anything in the regular game.  But it was kind of fun before then, at least it wasn't a chore.

But the point of this game isn't the gameplay, it's the lore.  Getting to know the Turks better, getting to meet and know young Yuffie, Aerith, Tifa and Cloud, getting to know about Cloud's mentor Zack, getting to know Sephiroth before he turned evil and full of delusions of grandeur.  And in all of these things the game performed magnificently.  I loved all the characters and their wonderful interactions which felt natural but full of meaning.  The new additions, Genesis and Angeal, weren't any good, and any scene with them was basically a waste of time, but most of the characters and time was spent on the real cast of FF7.

For some reason the graphics aren't the same as FF7 Remake's.  Even though you would think it would have been easy to simply copy and paste the character models from one game to the other, the environments from one game to the other, they chose not to.  Instead they made a lower graphical content game with exactly the same people and places.  I'm sure there's some reason why this was necessary, but I don't know what, since this is a PS5 game that sold at full price.  But with such wonderful prior art to draw upon the game still looks good.  And because it used FF7's music it still sounded good.  You can get a lot of quality out of a game by plagiarizing FF7.

This game was worth playing for its own sake, but it was also important for me to beat it and learn all about Zack because Zack is in my fictional character hall of fame.  Tarte was thrown out of the hall of fame because I didn't beat Tears to Tiara 2, so I didn't want the same thing to happen to Zack, especially when he has a speaking role in '100 Waifus.'  Basically I couldn't possibly allow that.  But there's no need for affirmative action in Zack's case.  He really is a great guy.  He looks great, he has a great voice actor, he's strong, he's heroic, he's friendly and fun and good with girls and children.  Actually he's a good leader of men too.  He's a people person, he gets along well with everyone.  He's exceptionally worthy of a slot in my hall of fame, and this game proved it.  The all-star cast of FF7 continues to grow, now that they've fleshed out Zack and Yuffie far beyond their roles in the original game.  I'm looking forward to seeing both of them in FF7 Rebirth.

I'm now all set for FF7 Rebirth, I know everything possible about what's going on and it's all in my short-term memory.  I'm ready Square Enix, so hurry up and give me the long awaited sequel!