Recent reviews by Marquis Elmdore

As a remaster it's pretty good, everything feels very familiar but some of the rough edges are smoothed out, the gameplay systems are very much intact from the original release, and all of the side content is included in VERY faithful detail from all the little minigames to the 300 missions. Those who have done the hefty grind before on PSP will appreciate the more consistent wall hugging and dash button to cut down on the repetitiveness of said missions. Stocking and holding limit breaks instead of instantly using them can also be very helpful for AI manipulation and getting yourself out of a pinch, and not cutting away from the combat every 10 seconds for the slots improves the general flow of combat a lot.

Visually, the game unsurprisingly borrows a lot from FF7 Remake in terms of assets and redesigns of some places, but overall is a very nice coat of paint over the PSP version that doesn't quite mask the fact it IS a PSP game, but gets very close in a lot of places. The music is an odd case of around 60% or so of the tracks being remade, with frequent appearances from songs that are simply the same as the original. I thought the rearrangements were overall pretty good, there are some tracks that definitely don't live up to their original, others that exceed them, and a lot of tracks that feel like they're sort of just a different song almost, with big changes to the arrangements. A toggle for the original soundtrack would be very nice, as it's been included in a number of other modern Square Enix remasters, and the music of Crisis Core is one of if not its most iconic element.

The only real blemish on this release is unfortunately the voice acting, as pointed out by everyone by now.
To give some praise beforehand, they have gone to the trouble of voicing every single line of dialogue now, lending vocal performances to many scenes that were text-only in the original. I gave the game a fair shake and played all the way through on English and even at the emotional climax of the game most of the deliveries given are just flat or straight up bad, particularly when compared to the original deliveries. It's unfortunate, but without a mod to restore the old cast I'd have to recommend new players hold off until they can get that. This feels more like a case of bad direction than bad casting, but there are also just a few recasts that don't hit the mark like they should.

Really fun little metroidvania, completed in around 4-5 hours with 98% map and most upgrades. Sprite work is absolutely phenomenal, characters are very expressive and fluidly animated with wonderfully detailed backgrounds and attack animations. Sakuya controls very well and has a good skillset, and the levels do a good job of making all abilities useful as you go so you never forget anything. The soundtrack is phenomenal, loaded with excellent remixes of classic Touhou themes, very energetic and motivating especially for the bosses.

Bosses are absolutely the highlight of the game, somewhat easy at the start but the difficulty ramps up nicely as you progress, and they have lots of varied attacks but follow patterns and are always placed after save rooms, so you can learn their ins and outs without wasting time. I'd say the only real criticism I felt was that the regular enemy design was a bit lacking, each zone only has a handful of them and a lot of them are just tweaks of previous enemy types. Not a huge flaw, just felt like they were in the way towards the end.

Would recommend to any metroidvania or touhou fan