A bit over ten years ago, I sat in front of my tinyass 14″ TV and gawked as the intro to Final Fantasy VII rolled up before me. I was completely stunned from frame number one. Hearing the music pump out as the camera shifts to an overview of Midgar… Several hours later, I put the controller down, sniffling as I had just witnessed Red XIII’s ‘reunion’ with his father. No other game has managed to capture me so completely before.

2008: I’m standing in a GameStop store somewhere in California, looking up at Crisis Core standing there in the shelf, mocking me as if to say “Ha ha! I can’t buy me because you preordered a copy already on Amazon!”

To hell with that!

With a slight bounce in my step, me and my boyfriend retreated to his home. Our spoils: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and the Official Strategy Guide (Yeah, I collect guides), and although it’s not quite as absorbing as the game it’s based on… it definitely kept me going.

 Story & Characters

Crisis Core takes place a few years before the events in FFVII takes place. You get to follow Zack Fair, a young and upcoming 2nd Class SOLDIER. Shinra is currently busy with the Wutai War and Zack and his mentor Angeal is sent out to do some missions there. When suddenly one of the First Class SOLDIER’s disappears, taking a number of soldiers and weapons with him. Zack and Angeal are the ones who is sent after him.

The missing SOLDIER is Genesis. (Genesis is a new character in the FFVII universe, only having a small part in the spin-off Dirge of Cerberus. In the japanese version, Genesis is voiced by the famous singer Gackt). Genesis, Angeal and Sephiroth were best friends in SOLDIER. Genesis and Angeal even grew up together. But when even Angeal goes missing after a little while, it falls upon Zack to locate the missing SOLDIER’s.

As you progress through the story, the little puzzle-pieces come together. The reason for the defect from SOLDIER, Sephiroth’s insanity, Zack’s fist meeting with the young man named Cloud and their escape from Niebelheim together.

There are several new characters in the game, Genesis being one. There is also Angeal and Director Lazard who is the director of SOLDIER. Otherwise it’s mostly a sweet reunion with old characters. There are many sweet moments between Aerith and Zack. Cloud, of course as well. You get to see Tifa, Tseng, Hojo and even Yuffie.

Graphics

Maybe it’s me being old, but when I think of handheld games, I mostly imagine 2D graphics of such caliber like the later SNES kind. So seeing something as visually stunning as Crisis Core on a piece of  plastic that’s 8″ long… that just blows me away.

Ok, sure the PSP is a powerful machine, but Crisis Core takes it to an extra level. The cutscenes are all FMV so of course they look good, I mean, the machine DOES show movies on it. But when it comes to the in-game graphics. That’s amazing. The many expressions and the softness of the design in their movements is jawdropping. It feels like playing Kingdom Hearts 2 on a tiny tiny screen.

Sound

There are many recognizable songs in the game, so fans shouldn’t be disappointed. The game’s Theme Song “Why” is preformed by Ayaka. At first when I heard it, it didn’t really catch on to me. But when you’re at the last moments of the game, it definitely does!

Gameplay

The battle system in Crisis Core is more action than the usual Final Fantasy games. Still, I think it works great. It takes a little while to get used to but battle’s flow on pretty nicely when you get the hang of it. It would be nice to see a similar adaption in a ‘real’ Final fantasy game (though FFXII was pretty close really).

Crisis Core implements something called a DMW (Digital Mind Wave), which is basically a little slotmachine that gives you different bonuses depending on what it rolls. It might seem a little random, but it works fine for me.

Beside the actual story of the game. You can participate in different missions sent to you by Shinra. The 300 different missions can tend to be a little repetitive as it’s mostly about dungeon crawling and defeating a boss at the end. But I still kind of like them, they might not contribute anything really to the story, but it’s a nice way to get yourself some levels and new cool items.

Overall Opinion

Crisis Core is a great game.

Playing a game, where you know how it’s going to end, doesn’t at all ruin it in the case of Crisis Core. I know that Zack’s fate was already sealed as soon as I pressed the “New Game” button, but that doesn’t prevent me from not crying like a baby when he lies there on the ground.

The replay value of the game is kind of low in my opinion, the actual game is very short, maybe roughtly +20 hours if you don’t emerge yourself in the missions. And even though I love the game, I somewhere wonder if it wouldn’t be better to just have made one long movie out of it.

You could always go watch Last Order, but then you’d miss out on a lot of the game.

However you see it, if you are a fan of the gameseries, you definitely don’t want to pass up on Crisis Core. It’s basically what all the fans would want from a game (except length maybe). Even if you haven’t played FFVII before, Crisis Core would actually be a good place to start, unlike Dirge of Cerberus where you really had to have played FFVII if you were to understand the characters.

Now… we only await the remake of Final Fantasy VII.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.