#ff7ec

I think the first year-ish (2023-2024) of the game was pretty solid. There were definitely stretches where a certain character was used A LOT and other stretches where everyone got terrible weapons. Team-building was far more varied, with each person able to do a little bit of the other roles. I remember using Tifa healer with Aerith DPS at one point for magic wind content. It still had it's problems, like weapons and effects being mostly useless (Cait's kit being chance based fits with his character, but is an awful decision in Ever Crisis gameplay), but overall, it made things interesting.

That being said, I've been calling it Tifa Crisis for basically the better part of the last year. This is a complaint I've had since... Basically when Tifa got her daffodil gloves last New Year 2025. Despite having 16 characters, somehow, Aerith and Tifa have gotten banners for nearly every month. Why "Tifa Crisis" and not "Aerith Crisis"? I think, for me, it's because Aerith enables teams. As a healer, her role is support. She is there to buff/debuff/heal. The stronger she is, the more teams she can enable.

Aerith is unquestionably the best healer in FF7 Ever Crisis. She far outstrips the other two healers in the game (Matt and Red) by miles. If you miss one of her "meta" weapons (Kamura/Bahamut Rod/Terra Rod/Abraxas/etc) you're basically suffering for months.

But Tifa?

Tifa is set in a DPS role. As a damage dealer, she is one of the many (Cloud/Zack/Yuffie/Vincent/Babyroth/Sephiroth Original are the others) that is specifically designed to do damage. And she is good at it. To the point where, she often brings utility and damage that other damage dealers cannot reach. You cannot team-build around damage dealing. If you do not have the DPS to clear a certain content, you simply cannot do it. There is no such thing as dragging on a fight or tanking it out while chipping through. Bosses in Ever Crisis either have enrage states (where they basically deal 1HKO moves) or timers that time you out (auto-loss).

Daffodil gloves was a different multiplier that no one else had. Weakness exploit, applied at a 40% multiplier to enemies weak to the element. That, effectively, made her 40% stronger than the current meta in 2025.

Other characters slowly got their version as well, but a 'weaker' version. Yuffie got it as a 30% multiplier on a water weapon in February. Babyroth got his 40% multiplier with a 50% HP threshold, and it only reached 40% at overboost level 10 (meaning you needed to pull 11 copies of the weapon; Tifa only needed 7 copies for full 40% effect and didn't have an HP threshold). Cloud and Sephiroth Original didn't get theirs until 2nd anniversary, 9 months later.

Don't get me wrong, Tifa was not meant to be used for every battle. But the battles she was meant to be used for was so far out of reach for everyone else that you basically had to use her or you just couldn't clear things. Battles not meant for Tifa, Tifa could clear easily. Battles meant for Tifa, no one else could do. No amount of buffs/debuffs from Aerith could make up for raw damage output.

That's just terrible game balance. The fact of the matter is, with 16 characters, you should be able to rotate between all 16 easily. But with Tifa, Aerith, and Cloud getting banners nearly every month of 2025 (most of them limited and never added to the general pool of weapons), no one else got updated weapons for the current meta. Instead most teams compiled of Tifa and Aerith, with a third character doing something.

Cloud... Poor Cloud got spammed with banners that weren't... helpful. He would often get non-elemental weapons that didn't support his DPS role or they would be glorified subweapons that you had to max out in order to use properly. And even when he got DPS weapons, they'd often come with some weird drawback like Full Throttle "only applies MDEF debuff if the target is weak to ice".

Babyroth... They kind of threw him into the sub-DPS role. His multipliers were low, in exchange for his weapons having extra effects. In this way, his damage potential was far behind Tifa, even though they both had 40% damage multipliers, solely due to the fact that his base multiplier was lower already. Using him with the 40% weakness exploit put him on par with Tifa. Most of the time he couldn't out-damage her.

Sephiroth Original came so late and most of his kit was limited. Not much else to say about him.

Despite all this, I still used Tifa. I like Tifa. She is a great character to use and I do like seeing big damage on my screen. But using her over and over and over again... I got tired of it. She'd get the DPS weapon, Aerith would get support, and Cloud would get some weapon he fished out of the dumpster in the slums. That was basically 9 months of the game in 2025 until 2nd anniversary.

By the time 2nd anniversary rolled around, I think I was desperate for literally any other character other than Tifa. That's when Sephiroth Original showed up. We got Advent Children!

But, FF7EC's Advent Children was just movie snips. It was so disappointing that I think I just... turned off my brain for that. If i wanted to watch the movie, I could have done that. I don't need to watch movie snips of it.

On top of that, Advent Children brought Cloud his Fusion Sword. Cloud got a new multiplier (weapon boost) on top of weakness exploit. Sephiroth Original brought damage boost. And from there, it all went downhill...

Buffs and debuffs in Ever Crisis were already a lot. More multipliers that you had to keep track of. Bigger damage numbers that could be applied.

Tifa also turned into a mega-whale character around 2nd anniversary. As in, she only reached her true potential with maxed weapons. Could you do content with non-maxed weapons? Yes. But you really didn't see how far she outstripped other characters unless you maxed her. I think this was to keep up with the powercreep and to encourage people to pull. It was around this time where everything became focused on Ranking Battles (Battle Ranking, Dungeon Ranking, Damage Ranking, Guild Battle Ranking) and not much else.

Cloud overshadowed Tifa for a few months after that. However, because Tifa's pool of weapons was so much wider than Cloud's and she had updated utility on her weapons (in light of her getting so many banners), she would often be sub-DPS to Cloud, Babyroth, or Sephiroth Original. Teams would often be: Aerith/Tifa/DPS (Cloud/Babyroth/Sephiroth Original)

Then 2026 2.5 half-anniversary (hanni) came out and they added a new mechanic: topor (50% increase in damage when active).

Tifa was the first to get it. For about 2 months, she was the only one to have it, with every single battle able to take advantage of it. During that time, I don't remember a single enemy immune to it and most of them had phases where you could interrupt for maximum damage output. I think only Nero (DoC2) didn't.

To Ever Crisis's credit, they did try to balance it. Cloud did get Torpor in his dress outfit. Red got an 80% damage one on his Ultimate Weapon 2. Cloud, Babyroth, and Sephiroth Original were getting DPS weapons with updated 1,680% multipliers, even before the pool had been filled for the last elemental 1340% multiplier. And that's if you counted all the limited weapons too. Without those, your only source of physical elemental lightning was 750% Murasame, Cloud's launch banner weapon in Sept 2023 until Cid's Antler Pike in Christmas 2025.

Customizations helped. During the 2.5 hanni, older weapons were customized with effects and updated multipliers. It helped, but it was too slow. And it also couldn't customize weapons that didn't exist and weren't in the permanent pool of weapons. Customization allowed for team-building in a new way, that was fresh and breathed new life into older weapons. But it didn't update damage multipliers (putting older weapons on par with newer ones). It would often only give additional effects.

The barrage of new weapons, new multipliers, new buffs/debuffs, new support weapons was too much for a lot of people. Weapons were only viable for a single event. You needed to pull 11 copies of ONE weapon to max it out, far too much to ask on weekly banners with the rate of free income that they were giving us. Triple banners during 2nd anniversary killed a lot of people's motivation to play, since it very obviously became a cash grab at that time. The barrage of limited banners. The fact that there were (and still are) basic errors in the coding of the game and sever connection issues. The fact that certain parts of the game are unplayable on mobile.

I think the most baffling part is how the developers treated their own original characters. Matt, Lucia, and Glenn were neglected pretty severely since 2025, and they barely got banners at all. It was really weird, since they are supposed to be Ever Crisis's original characters and story.

All in all, I am not surprised it went to End of Service so quickly. Ever Crisis has been losing players for a good long while. Events like anniversary or half anniversary are meant to bring in new players. Ever Crisis couldn't, because they wanted to make a challenge for older players. People would join for a single event and then drop the game right after, realizing how outstripped they were. Not being able to clear all the content on your first month of playing is normal, but by the third or fourth month, you'd expect to be able to clear some harder content, even if you can't rank in top 10 or top 20. In Ever Crisis, you could not, simply because most of the "good" weapons were limited and there was no way for you to obtain 11 copies of them (or even 7 copies), if the banner wasn't up at the time. Older "good" weapons had to be used as subweapons in the backline, while newer ones were used as mainhand or offhand weapons.

I don't play PVP so I probably won't play Dissidia. I do play other gacha games, namely Fate Grand Order (FGO), which just celebrated the 9th anniversary in NA. I liked Ever Crisis just fine and I will play until the end of service, but it's one of those things that I don't think I'll miss the game when it's gone.

In the last three months though, I think they've improved the game significantly. Namely, disabling purchases and being generous with premium tickets and blue crystals. They also finally updated older weapons with updated multipliers at 1340%. I think, if they had chosen to implement this earlier (maybe a lesser version of the currency part), they could have kept the game going for much, much longer. Too bad that shareholders and investors want to see growth every quarter or they just cut off the game at the source.

Being in game for 1000 days yielded you a measly 50 crystals. You needed 3000 to do a 10-pull. That's pitiful.

TLDR:

Had fun for about a year and a half.

Game balance was wrecked the second year and a half.

Still had fun with people anyway.

Will play until EoS, then I'll be sad and wait for Revelation.

You might have noticed I didn't mention Vincent and Yuffie much in this post. Well, they are currently in the dumpster. The same one Cloud resided in most of last year.

All other characters (Barret, Cait, Cid) are also in the dumpster.

Aerith took Matt and Red out back and they haven't been seen since. :[

Problems with Ever Crisis:

Limited banner spam in 2025 (Triple banner in 2nd Anni did it for a lot of people)

Buff/debuff management (Too many, too fast)

Uneven distribution of weapons between all characters

Server connection issues

Bugs that were never fixed