Square Enix used today’s Nintendo Direct to slip in an announcement nobody saw coming: Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion is available on the Switch 2 eShop tonight. No teasing, no pre-announced date a genuine shadow drop, the kind of surprise release Nintendo likes to save for the end of a Direct to close things out with a bang.
What actually changes on Switch 2
The game has already been on Switch 1 since December 2022, in the same Reunion version available on PS4/PS5, Xbox, and PC: a full HD graphical overhaul, complete English and Japanese voice acting, a reworked battle system, and a rearranged soundtrack. None of that is new.
What is new is the jump to higher resolutions and framerates on the new console , no exact numbers from Square Enix yet. Not enough to transform the experience, but enough to make the Switch 2 version the best way to play it on a Nintendo machine.
No word, as of this writing, on any kind of upgrade path for players who bought the Switch 1 version back in 2022. If you’re one of them, everything points to having to buy the whole game again to get the technical bump , an increasingly common move from Square Enix, but still a hard one to swallow for identical content with a bit more resolution.
The timing isn’t an accident. Putting Zack Fair’s story, the hero of Crisis Core, back in the spotlight right before the highly anticipated next entry in the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy is an obvious marketing play — and a fairly smart one. For anyone who never touched Crisis Core, or wants to refresh the story before the next chapter, this is a chance to do it directly on the console already sitting in their hands.