In the main game, you play as the ex-SOLDIER mercenary Cloud, who hires himself out to Barret's radical Avalanche eco-terrorist cell. For the most part, this story plays out the same as the OG, but with some more details in certain signature scenes that makes them feel like a fresh experience whether or not you played the OG. I especially like the extended confrontation with President Shinra, who shows off how much of a corrupt businessman he is while deconstructing Barret's ideals. However, when things start to diverge from the OG, strange ghostlike beings start showing up to harass anyone who tried to act out of line. It's implied that this entire "remake" is actually a time travel plot that picks up where Dirge of Cerberus left off. I have no idea if this alternate timeline plot will turn out to be good in the future games, but it does feel somewhat like false advertising to name this game Remake. Still, it does present something of a moral quandry, since changing the timeline means Aerith and other victims can potentially be saved, but Sephiroth could also gain new advantages and win in the long run.

In Yuffie's side story, you get to learn more about Wutai's political situation, which is more militant than in the OG. You also get to learn more about the moderate Avalanche HQ that Barret split off from, which is more peaceful in their methods while focusing more on the economic issues of the slums. Still, I wish both Barret and Nayo's factions discussed Fuhito more, since his genocidal plan is a stigma that both Avalanche branches will have to carry forever.


This game is a hybrid of action-RPG gameplay and turn-based gameplay, but in a completely different way from something like Absented Age. You get similar controls to Crisis Core Reunion, especially if you play as Cloud, but you can also use the command menu to issue commmands to both AI controlled allies and your currently controlled character, which makes the characters more versatile than Zack in CC who could only rely on shortcuts and a finicky item menu. However, the game also nerfed several Crisis Core defensive options; dodging doesn't give i-frames, some attacks are unguardable, and you have to worry about interrupt values rather than rely on the Endure buff. Trying to play this game like Crisis Core will lead to even easy mode kicking your butt. Enemies are also tankier than in Crisis Core, but they also follow the Crosscode design philosophy of being pressured or staggered by fulfilling specific conditions, so if you know the enemies well enough, you can prevent them from doing anything meaningful while you deal big stagger damage to them.

The ally AI can vary from being competent to being dumb as rocks. Sometimes, they will dodge and guard better than the player while other times, they will take full damage from the easiest attack patterns in the world. Additionally, Aerith's AI doesn't know how to make good use of her own wards and she and Barret tend to get close to the enemy even though they have long-ranged attacks. Supposedly, the next game will mitigate this by giving Aerith the ability to teleport to her wards, but this still forces the player to switch control to her.

You can retry to right before a battle, but I think it would be nice if we had the option to start right at the start of the battle itself to save a bit of time. Since not all cutscenes can be skipped as quickly, it can cause some retries to feel several seconds longer than they should. Still, the game at least gives you some clemency for retrying individual battles in a gauntlet and lets you access the menu between certain fights. However, anything you change in that menu gets reset if you retry the battle, which can lead to redundant menu navigation. Alternatively, this could all be solved easily if we were allowed to save between sequential bosses.

While Cloud in Operator mode plays the most closely to CC Zack, his Punisher Mode plays way differently from Battle Stance and all other characters have their own unique upper face button actions, along with other gameplay mechanics. This makes all of them feel unique to play and they all have a low enough skill floor that they're easier to pick up than in a Tales game. However, some characters definitely have high skill ceilings, like Tifa requiring you to prepare her Chi Level, Aerith having to manage her wards, and Yuffie having to manage her Shuriken location. Sadly, Red XIII and Sonon aren't fully playable, which is a shame because the former could have introduced more potential party compositions.

The game has an anti-item hard mode, but I found that if you play well enough on normal and exploit pressure/stagger conditions, you can win most battles without items anyways. However, I do think hard mode went too far with the MP management challenge, since benches no longer heal MP. You can only heal MP when starting a chapter or from specific Shirna crates. This ends up turning the entire chapter into a resource management puzzle, though that can be potentially rendered moot by breaking specific crates to restore MP, and then saving and reloading to respawn the small MP heals. Still, some longer multiboss chapters feel nearly impossible without this exploit. I think a good compromise would be to give the player one bench MP heal per chapter.

Adding to the postgame situation, you can revisit chapters and take advantage of some NG+ convenience, like a faster version of the rat quest, retaining the progress of some non-quest minigames, and skipping the bike minigames. However, there is some padding if you want to collect all the manuscripts due to mutually exclusive minibosses in Ch 9. If you want to get all the dresses and resolutions, there's going to being a ton of padding, and honestly it might not be worth it since those don't add anything in terms of gameplay advantages.

The game features essentially two different arena systems: one run in Corneo Colosseum and one run by the Shinra Combat Sim. Unfortunately, they are available at different points in the game and Aerith's inconsistent availability means some of her battles are only available on Chapter select. Personally, I think the combat sim should be slightly reworked so that it includes Corneo battles too in case the player missed them. I also think Chadley needs to be available more often, since some materias can only be bought from him and not the vending machine.


8.5/10

I think the story is going in an interesting direction and the combat feels like a 3D Crosscode. However, some QOL features could be improved regarding the retry system and arena systems. While I think the item ban on hard mode is fine, the extreme restrictions on MP recovery is overkill and essentially turns each chapter into a marathon where every MP is sacred.

Also, lol at the usual suspects for being more mad about Tifa's assets than Nayo's leftist politics.

[h1]ATB Reimagined[/h1] [h2]Story[/h2] In the main game, you play as the ex-SOLDIER mercenary Cloud, who hires himself out to Barret's radical Avalanche eco-terrorist cell. For the most part, this story plays out the same as the OG, but with some more details in certain signature scenes that makes them feel like a fresh experience whether or not you played the OG. I especially like the extended confrontation with President Shinra, who shows off how much of a corrupt businessman he is while deconstructing Barret's ideals. However, when things start to diverge from the OG, strange ghostlike beings start showing up to harass anyone who tried to act out of line. [spoiler]It's implied that this entire "remake" is actually a time travel plot that picks up where Dirge of Cerberus left off. I have no idea if this alternate timeline plot will turn out to be good in the future games, but it does feel somewhat like false advertising to name this game Remake. Still, it does present something of a moral quandry, since changing the timeline means Aerith and other victims can potentially be saved, but Sephiroth could also gain new advantages and win in the long run[/spoiler]. In Yuffie's side story, you get to learn more about Wutai's political situation, which is more militant than in the OG. You also get to learn more about the moderate Avalanche HQ that Barret split off from, which is more peaceful in their methods while focusing more on the economic issues of the slums. Still, I wish both Barret and Nayo's factions discussed Fuhito more, since his genocidal plan is a stigma that both Avalanche branches will have to carry forever. [h2]Gameplay[/h2] This game is a hybrid of action-RPG gameplay and turn-based gameplay, but in a completely different way from something like Absented Age. You get similar controls to Crisis Core Reunion, especially if you play as Cloud, but you can also use the command menu to issue commmands to both AI controlled allies and your currently controlled character, which makes the characters more versatile than Zack in CC who could only rely on shortcuts and a finicky item menu. However, the game also nerfed several Crisis Core defensive options; dodging doesn't give i-frames, some attacks are unguardable, and you have to worry about interrupt values rather than rely on the Endure buff. Trying to play this game like Crisis Core will lead to even easy mode kicking your butt. Enemies are also tankier than in Crisis Core, but they also follow the Crosscode design philosophy of being pressured or staggered by fulfilling specific conditions, so if you know the enemies well enough, you can prevent them from doing anything meaningful while you deal big stagger damage to them. The ally AI can vary from being competent to being dumb as rocks. Sometimes, they will dodge and guard better than the player while other times, they will take full damage from the easiest attack patterns in the world. Additionally, Aerith's AI doesn't know how to make good use of her own wards and she and Barret tend to get close to the enemy even though they have long-ranged attacks. Supposedly, the next game will mitigate this by giving Aerith the ability to teleport to her wards, but this still forces the player to switch control to her. You can retry to right before a battle, but I think it would be nice if we had the option to start right at the start of the battle itself to save a bit of time. Since not all cutscenes can be skipped as quickly, it can cause some retries to feel several seconds longer than they should. Still, the game at least gives you some clemency for retrying individual battles in a gauntlet and lets you access the menu between certain fights. However, anything you change in that menu gets reset if you retry the battle, which can lead to redundant menu navigation. Alternatively, this could all be solved easily if we were allowed to save between sequential bosses. While Cloud in Operator mode plays the most closely to CC Zack, his Punisher Mode plays way differently from Battle Stance and all other characters have their own unique upper face button actions, along with other gameplay mechanics. This makes all of them feel unique to play and they all have a low enough skill floor that they're easier to pick up than in a Tales game. However, some characters definitely have high skill ceilings, like Tifa requiring you to prepare her Chi Level, Aerith having to manage her wards, and Yuffie having to manage her Shuriken location. Sadly, Red XIII and Sonon aren't fully playable, which is a shame because the former could have introduced more potential party compositions. The game has an anti-item hard mode, but I found that if you play well enough on normal and exploit pressure/stagger conditions, you can win most battles without items anyways. However, I do think hard mode went too far with the MP management challenge, since benches no longer heal MP. You can only heal MP when starting a chapter or from specific Shirna crates. This ends up turning the entire chapter into a resource management puzzle, though that can be potentially rendered moot by breaking specific crates to restore MP, and then saving and reloading to respawn the small MP heals. Still, some longer multiboss chapters feel nearly impossible without this exploit. I think a good compromise would be to give the player one bench MP heal per chapter. Adding to the postgame situation, you can revisit chapters and take advantage of some NG+ convenience, like a faster version of the rat quest, retaining the progress of some non-quest minigames, and skipping the bike minigames. However, there is some padding if you want to collect all the manuscripts due to mutually exclusive minibosses in Ch 9. If you want to get all the dresses and resolutions, there's going to being a ton of padding, and honestly it might not be worth it since those don't add anything in terms of gameplay advantages. The game features essentially two different arena systems: one run in Corneo Colosseum and one run by the Shinra Combat Sim. Unfortunately, they are available at different points in the game and Aerith's inconsistent availability means some of her battles are only available on Chapter select. Personally, I think the combat sim should be slightly reworked so that it includes Corneo battles too in case the player missed them. I also think Chadley needs to be available more often, since some materias can only be bought from him and not the vending machine. [h2]Verdict[/h2] 8.5/10 I think the story is going in an interesting direction and the combat feels like a 3D Crosscode. However, some QOL features could be improved regarding the retry system and arena systems. While I think the item ban on hard mode is fine, the extreme restrictions on MP recovery is overkill and essentially turns each chapter into a marathon where every MP is sacred. Also, lol at the usual suspects for being more mad about Tifa's assets than Nayo's leftist politics.