Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus
PlayStation 2
Back in the late 90's, no one was a bigger Final Fantasy VII fan than myself. I explored the entire world of the game and unlocked nearly everything there was to unlock. I beat the game a countless number of times. I obsessed over every little story detail. I read all the fanfics online and even wrote a few myself. I even started writing an epic novelization of the game's events, which I never finished. Point is: I lived and breathed Final Fantasy VII.
I was always hopeful for a direct sequel to the game, but that sequel never came. After nearly ten years had passed, I caught wind that this title was in the works - Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus. It wasn't necessarily the direct sequel to Final Fantasy VII I had wanted, though. It would be more of an offshoot than anything else.
The game would be based on side character Vincent Valentine. And it would not be an RPG at all. It would be a third person shooter. So yeah, it wasn't the sequel I was hoping for at all. But still, it would be a chance to dive into the world of Final Fantasy VII once again. The movie Final Fantasy: Advent Children came out not too long before this game did as well. It was an exciting time for hardcore fans of the series.
But Advent Children turned out to be a pretty big disappointment in my humble opinion. All my hopes on continuing my epic FF7 journey hinged on Dirge of Cerberus. The game hit the shelves to poor reviews. Being blinded by my love of the original game, I went out and bought this anyway. No matter what anyone said, I was bound and determined to like it.
Despite the game's poor reviews, I didn't hate it. I didn't necessarily like it either. The game play itself was okay. The story line was a mess, though. And that's really why I was playing: for the story line. And it turned out to be completely and utterly forgettable. On the whole, I was pretty indifferent to the game.
Advent Children was a let down. Dirge of Cerberus game was nothing special. All the build up and all the excitement I felt over these two titles turned out to be for nothing. I wanted to experience that feeling I got when I first played the original Final Fantasy VII, and that didn't happen.
It was a true American tragedy.
Over ten years later, I finally decided to play this game once again. I knew what to expect this time, but I still tried to come in with an open mind. Maybe without all the hype and excitement in my head I would see that the game wasn't really that much of a let down after all.
So all these years later, has my opinion changed?
No.
I still don't think it is necessarily a terrible game. It plays fine and it's not a chore to trudge through. The action is fast. The pace is consistent. Everything handles well. It is not the most finely crafted or detailed shooter of all time, but it is nice and easy to play.
The action itself is fun, but simple. Your basic goal is to get from point A to point B, shooting everything that gets in your way. Very simple stuff. Sometimes you find your way barred by a locked door, but all you have to do is find the right enemy to kill and he will drop the key for you. There are not really any puzzles here to speak of, and I don't think I ever got stuck once playing this game. There is one stage where the layout is a little confusing (that blue building with all the staircases), but all in all I was never overly challenged.
Vincent has three main guns that you can switch back and forth between. His regular handgun (which I found to be the most effective), a sniper rifle, and a machine gun. There might be different types of guns you can purchase or upgrade to, but these were the only ones I used.
Shooting targets is very easy. There is an aiming reticule on the screen. Point it in the direction of your enemy and fire away. In addition to the reticule, the game has an auto lock on feature as well. So it is pretty easy to hit your enemy. Occasionally you will need to snipe enemies that are far away. This is really the only point in the game that precision control is required.
Vincent has the ability to use limit break attacks. Basically, he turns into a giant wolf like creature that is capable of kicking everyone's ass for about thirty seconds or so. You can't use limit breaks too often, however. You can only trigger a limit break if you have the limit break item in your inventory. And there are not too many of them in this game.
Honestly, I didn't use the limit breaks very often. I much prefer Vincent's shooting attack from his regular form versus the clumsy melee attacks from his wolf form. It restores your health when you use a limit break, though, so that was my main reason for using them in this game.
There are other items to collect as you go along. Ammunition, health and magic upgrades, money, Phoenix Downs (of course) and a variety of other things as well. At various points throughout the game, you can use the money you have collected to upgrade your weapons and buy extra items. Jukeboxes serve as item shops in this game. Why jukeboxes, I don't know. But that's what we have to deal with.
At the end of each stage, the game tallies your score for the stage. How many enemies you killed, how many items you used, how many times you died, how long it took you, etc. Once your score is tallied, you can either put these points towards your experience meter, which goes towards leveling your character up, or you can cash them in for gil. I almost always took the experience.
When you die the game gives you the same option: take the experience or take the cash. I like this feature of the game. In other titles, you die and have to start over or reload from the last checkpoint. And in the process you lose everything you picked up since your last save. This game however lets you carry over experience points or cash when you kick the bucket. So even if you are dying repeatedly, you still are making a little progress as far as making your character a little tougher the next time around.
But don't expect to be dying too much. I found this game to be very easy. There can be a few challenging bosses, but overall I think I died maybe five times total - if that.
So as far as gameplay goes, the game is okay. Nothing special. You run, you shoot, you use items. Easy peasy.
Graphically the game is nothing special either. It doesn't look bad, but it doesn't necessarily look great either. I'm sure it looked top notch though when it first came out.
My main problem is that the makers of the game totally failed at recreating the look and feel of the original Final Fantasy VII. Everything is so drab in this game. Even when you visit locales from the original title, everything feels very vanilla. I really wanted to dive back into the world of Final Fantasy VII, but this game makes everything look the same. This game could have easily NOT been set in the FF7 universe, and the look wouldn't have changed much at all. Very disappointing.
Last but not least is the game's story line. As I mentioned before, the story is a mess. The cutscenes are very boring. As much as I wanted to be involved in what was going on, all the long scenes of awkward dialogue killed it for me. The characters just kind of stand around lifelessly, spouting out cryptic sentences back and forth at one another. I stopped paying attention after a while. I have a basic idea of what the story line is about, but that's it. Something about a group of fanatics who are trying to trick the planet into thinking its in danger again, so it dispatches Omega Weapon. Which they then want to try to control.
Or something along those lines. Like I said, I stopped paying attention after a while. It was not enough to capture my imagination. Maybe if it had been presented or done in a less boring way thing may have been different. I don't know.
I really wanted to like the game. I love FF7, so I was hoping this would be a worthy successor. But it is not. It's a serviceable game, but if you look up mediocre in the dictionary, a picture of this game would be right next to the word.
I didn't hate the game necessarily, but I was not enthralled by it either. If the game had been a stand alone shooter or something other than Final Fantasy, I may have liked it more. But with the Final Fantasy VII name attached to it, the game must be held to a higher standard. And the truth is that it is the definition of average.
Normally I would give an average game a standard C grade, but I feel that since this doesn't live up to the high standards set by Final Fantasy VII, it needs to be judged a bit more harshly. Here is to a completely average and forgettable title that I won't remember anything about in five years. Cheers!
Overall:
C-
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