To have a good sequel/prequel you need to expand and improve upon all elements that made its predecessor so enjoyable. To make a great one, you need to do all that AND make sure that the game can be enjoyed without any prior knowledge of the previous incarnation. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII seems to thankfully fall into the latter. With it’s innovative combat system, engaging story, and pick up and play missions, Crisis Core seems to be able to be a great game regardless if it is connected to FFVII’s central story or not.
While the rest of the “Compilation of Final Fantasy VII” sucked (a cell phone game? A shooter?), you can rest assured, Crisis Core shares nothing with the lackluster crap thrown at us up till now. Right at the beginning you are thrown into a situation not unlike the start of FFVII, jumping off a train and kicking ass. The similarities stop there as you take naïve SOLDIER rookie Zach Fair through various missions in SOLDIER trying to locate several members who have gone AWOL, while answering some questions along the way.
The developers pay a ton of fan service, from your first meeting with Sephiroth, to teaming up with The Turks. It’s all there, and if you are one of the unfortunate people who have not played FFVII (yes, all three of you) you have no reason to feel as if you won’t understand what is going on. The game has its own story, but it just expands upon a storyline already created, not leaving any gaps or any confusion for the gamers who missed out. Thankfully, it also ditches the poetic dialogue that plagued Final Fantasy XII.
Combat is a breeze thanks to the quick innovative controls. Think the Tales series meets Kingdom Hearts, and you probably have a good idea. Everything is done in real time, with no time or gauge to plan your actions out. You can attack, or use one of your materia, all of which is easily accessible immediately for the fast pace you will be in.
However nice the real time battles are though, the game suffers from one of the problems several games like it have – lack of a pause feature.No, not pause as in “stop everything to eat.” Pause as in, “Gimmie a few seconds to find the item I need.”
While spell selection and attacking is easy as hell (you are allowed only three attacks/spells at the beginning) items are drawn in the same fashion. So if you are getting your ass kicked by a boss and need to use a high potion, plan on getting far away to get what you need, or else you may die while making a selection.Fortunately, Crisis Core is by no means a hard game, but expect a few cheap deaths when you are digging for the item you need while trying to dodge an attack (or just do what I did and use cure religiously).
The combat also has problems with lack of a cancel out feature. If you slice and dice one guy and end up hitting that attack icon once more while performing the finishing strike, Zach will run after the next guy and into danger with no way out.
With combat comes skill building; compliments of the DMW feature. DMW is a slot machine located in the upper left corner that consists of three portraits and three numbers. Match two portraits on the outside and you will go into a screen where you can get a third portrait and match the numbers up. Match pictures and you get a limit break. Match numbers and you can level up materia as well as Zach.
While gamers may initially think the whole system is random, the slots are rigged in the player’s favor as enemies drop XP secretly which will allow you to level quicker. So in theory it’s the same thing as always. You wanna level up? Go kill a bunch of enemies. Granted, there are times that you may find yourself not leveling at all and others where you go up say, five levels. But the game doesn’t just screw you over by leaving leveling to chance.
Aside from the main quest to build your skills, Square-Enix threw in a copious amount of missions – simple maps that require Zach to go kill or find something. Doing so nets you all sorts of goodies, gets you a chance to fight enemies hence building your levels, and get a certain satisfaction in helping the feel good corporation of the world, Shinra, proceed with world domination.
The missions are a nice touch, as there is no story involved in them, period. They take a small amount of time to complete and have varying difficulties, making them the perfect distraction for a handheld game. The missions allow for a “pick-up and go” feature that gives the game insane replay value once the main 20 hour quest is played through to death. Think VR missions from Metal Gear and you got a good idea of what you are in for.
The music score is good, but as far as Final Fantasy scores go, it is just ho-hum. Without Nobuo Uematsu to assist, it seems like half of his songs have been remade, and the other half is a bunch of techno/punk that seems a bit out of place with the orchestra composed for FFVII. There are some classic tunes to be found here, but it doesn’t stack up to anything that came before it.
Graphically, the game seems to be a mixed bag. It’s pretty good as far as the PSP is concerned, but several textures and levels just seem, well, bland. Zach animates nicely, but several other characters seem to be doll heads attached to sticks. Don’t misunderstand, the graphics are good, but several areas just seem half assed.
You really can’t go wrong picking up Crisis Core. If you have been sitting out on the PSP camp waiting for good reason to buy one, Crisis Core is as good of a reason as ever to drop the dough on Sony’s handheld. While the main quest is short, the missions and extras are enough to keep you going for hours at a time, and its missions make it the perfect game to play when you only got a few minutes to kill. For gamers in general- if Square/Enix stripped away everything the game had in common with Final Fantasy VII, it would still be a great game on its own.
For FFVII fans- this is a no brainer.
Title: Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core
Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Release Date: March 25th, 2008
Genre: RPG Console:
PSP Rating: T
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