Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
PSP
Nostalgia Factor:
I’ve known of this game for many years now, but seeing as how I’ve never owned a PSP I never really gave it much of a second thought. Recently, however, I decided to browse through the list of PSP games on my RetroPie, and would you look at that – there was Crisis Core. I never thought I would have an opportunity to play this game, so I immediately fired it up and dove in.
I came into the game relatively blind. All I knew was that it was a prequel to Final Fantasy VII, and it featured SOLDIER First Class Zack. Final Fantasy VII is one of my most revered games of all time, so I came into this a little skeptical that it would be any good. How would I feel about it in the end? Let’s find out!
Story:
This game takes place about four or five years before the events of Final Fantasy VII. Midgar is under construction. Shinra is at war with Wutai. Sephiroth is a SOLDIER rock star. But so are Angeal and Genesis, two first class members of SOLDIER that are never mentioned in Final Fantasy VII. You play as Zack as you begin to make your way through the story. Zack is dispatched to Wutai to assist with the fighting. After coming home victorious, Genesis and Angeal defect from Shinra and openly wage war against the corporation. Zack and Sephiroth are sent to track down and kill these two traitors. Thus begins a bit of a convoluted plot thread where you find out Angeal and Genesis are experiments, and are being cloned to create some kind of super soldiers. I had a little bit of a hard time following what was going on, mainly because of the messy Kingdom Hearts-esque dialogue scenes that veered things wildly off track.
During a battle, Zack is thrown from one of Midgar’s pillars and lands… in Aerith’s flower garden. Wow, what a coincidence! Zack meets Aerith and begins to fall for her. There are a series of missions involving Aerith that take place in the Sector 5 slums. Honestly, this part of the game was too much of a mirror of the Cloud/Aerith storyline in the original FFVII and it bothered me a bit. Could we get a little creativity here, please? I mean, I guess it is nice we get to see Aerith again, but aside from a few passing lines don’t you think she would have brought up the similarities between her experience with Zack and her experience with Cloud at least once in Final Fantasy VII? At least we got one of the most pressing questions in Final Fantasy history answered: where did Aerith get her flower cart from? Zack scavenges the parts for it and creates it for her in one of the most memorable and impactful side quests in the game.
Honestly, I wasn’t too big of a fan of the game’s storyline and where it was headed until Zack was dispatched to Nibelehim with Sephiroth and young foot soldier Cloud. This is where the game began to pique my interest. Seeing the events of the Nibelheim disaster and the resulting fallout from Zack’s perspective was super interesting to me. Zack and Cloud’s friendship is kind of touching, actually. When the dust settles and Zack and Cloud escape from the Shinra mansion, we see in great detail many of the insurmountable challenges Zack has to face in an attempt to get him and his close friend to safety. If you played the original Final Fantasy VII, you know how things end for Zack. I didn’t think I’d be that affected by things, but seeing Zack’s character growth and development throughout the game was something that took me by surprise. Zack is a likeable and sympathetic figure, and the ending sequence of the game hit me right in the feels.
Gameplay:
This is where my biggest beef with this game lies: the gameplay. It is SO repetitive. Basically, each mission you’re dropped down into a specific location. You can hit, I believe it is the square button, to bring up the map so you can see where you are going. The path you follow to get to your main objective is fairly linear, but you will explore branching paths you can take to get to your destination. As you proceed, you’ll occasionally be pulled into random battles. If you’re a fan of the original Final Fantasy VII or pretty much any 90s era JRPG, random battles are something you should be used to by now. But the battles in this game are SO frequent, and require such little strategy that they quickly become monotonous and mundane. Most battles consist of just hitting the X button rapidly until you’ve killed your enemies. Yay? To make things worse, each battle starts with a loud robotic voice that says “ACTIVATING COMBAT MODE!”. Every single time I’d hear that phrase I’d clench my fist a little bit harder.
During combat, a “slot machine”-type wheel with the characters’ faces on it will randomly appear onscreen. I’m not exactly sure what triggers this to happen, but it happens multiple times a fight. I’m not complaining too much though, because something good always happens as a result of this. You might launch a special Limit Break type attack. Your character might get a temporary stats boost. You might get a temporary bonus where spells don’t cost you any MP. You might get healed by Aerith. You might even level up. Why does this happen? What causes this mysterious slot machine to appear? Even after playing and completing this entire game, I have no freaking idea.
I’ve already mentioned Kingdom Hearts so I guess I will mention it again. The combat system is VERY reminiscent of Kingdom Hearts. Mainly you mash the X button to attack with your sword, but using the L and R trigger buttons you can select magic spells or items to use. I found this game to be relatively easy, but there were a few boss battles where I had to stop and grind a little bit before I could be competitive against them.
Aside from just following the main story, you can access save points to tackle bonus SOLDIER missions. Some of these missions include training missions, mop up battles against the Wutai forces, treasure/materia hunts, destroying enemies that want to bring down Shinra, or other side quests that tie into the main story. There are seemingly hundreds and hundreds of these side quests – and they all consist of nothing but repetitive battle after battle after battle. I completed about 4% of them before getting bored and just focusing on the main story. I suppose someday I could come back and finish all of these off, but I probably won’t. They just don’t add much of anything to the game or its story. It’s like they put them in simply to pad the length of the game (because it is relatively short).
Graphics:
For a PSP game, this looks surprisingly good. Initially I didn’t think it would hold up well, especially when played on a big screen through my RetroPie. I guess I’d compare these graphics to an early PS2 game, but with a lot more jagged edges. Characters are well-designed. Zack is animated and brought to life in a way that makes him more than just a black-haired Cloud clone. Environments look really nice. It was awesome to see areas such as Junon, Midgar, and Nibelheim faithfully brought to life in full 3D (we’re just going to ignore the FFVII remake for the time being).
It’s a nice looking game. I’m not going to lie and say it looks perfect. In fact, people that are more critical than me might say that this game’s occasional rough spot filled with pixels and jagged edges might make it look “ugly”. But it has a certain charm for me.
Sound:
You’re going to hear many remixed versions of classic Final Fantasy VII tunes as you play this game, and they all sound very good. A big part of what made the original FFVII so iconic was its music, and luckily this game does it justice. The only thing I didn’t like about this game’s music is the fact that loud, obnoxious heavy metal is played during the battle sequences and at times it seems very out of place compared to the tone of the rest of the game. Speaking of the battle sequences, I already complained about “ACTIVATING COMBAT MODE!” earlier in the review, but it is so obnoxious I’m going to do it once again.
The voice acting straight down the line is a mixed bag. Most of the more memorable characters such as Zack, Cloud, and Sephiroth all sound very good. The supporting cast… not so much. Everyone seems to talk in this cryptic, disjointed manner of speech – similar to what you’d hear in a Kingdom Hearts game. It’s a little cringe worthy to me, and I missed many important plot points simply because it was so distracting.
Overall:
My opinion kept changing back and forth as I played this game. When I first started it, I loved it. A few hours into it, the game became a chore to play. After Aerith was introduced, I got back into the game again. Then I lost interest. Then I became invested again. Back and forth, back and forth. It wasn’t until the characters came to Nibelheim that I became completely invested in Crisis Core – and by then the game was nearly over.
There’s a lot that is annoying about this game. The camera angles, the frequent random battles, ACTIVATING COMBAT MODE, the button mashing, the endless number of pointless side missions, the repetitive nature of the game, the flower cart assembling, the stilted dialogue that made the game hard for me to follow. But at the same time the game does a lot right. If you’re a fan of the original FFVII, you’re going to love seeing Midgar brought to life in a way that’s faithful to the source material. The music is good, many of the characters are endearing, and the game fills in a lot of backstory and provides you with details about the rise of Shinra and the overall world of Final Fantasy VII that you probably never knew before. Also, Zack is a badass in this game and a lot more charismatic as a lead character than Cloud has ever been. For FFVII junkies, this game is a near must-play.
That said, Crisis Core isn’t fantastic. I like the idea of the game, but I feel as if things could have been executed a lot better than they actually were. To me, this game is right there with Dirge of Cerberus in terms of overall quality. OK, maybe it’s not that low, but you get the idea. I feel as if there was a lot of awesome potential here, but they JUST missed the mark at making this a truly great game. Instead, we get one that’s only slightly above average.
Overall:
C+
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