Time for another addition to this thread. The next update goes to...
Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core /
PSP.
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In my eyes, Square-Enix have lost a large amount of respect since their merge/takeover. They've released nothing but broken ideas and ruined games; Final Fantasy X-2, XII, Dirge of Cerberus were all failures. Kingdom Hearts II has really been their only good release. In this way, I approached Crisis Core with much caution. Final Fantasy VII is one of my favourite RPGs, and when their work started on the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Square-Enix have done little but destroy the much-loved game... erm, franchise, as it may.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm pleased to announce that I think
Crisis Core is actually a decent game.
Let me start off by re-iterating that this game had everything going against it. Right from the outset, I didn't particularly intend to listen to the rubbish story Square-Enix were going to throw at me - Advent Children worked nicely, but tearing apart the entire story of Final Fantasy VII just to fit in some more characters and make some more money off of us consumers is near-heresy. I refer to Dirge of Cerberus as the prime object of my hatred, with Last Order - a near complete rewriting of the FFVII backstory - as a close second. Furthermore, Square-Enix's recent history of poor products meant that I didn't have much faith in what the gameplay would offer. I purposefully chose not to give into any hype surrounding this game, because I've been fairly disappointed with all their other games I've pre-ordered thinking they were going to be "really good".
My cousin recently came down (school break), and as he owned a copy of Crisis Core, I asked if I could borrow it while he was down (ah, wonderful nightshift, how quiet you turned out to be).
As it turned out... the game was really good. I managed to get about 10 hours of playtime in before his school break ended - and that was enough for me to decide that this game really was worth the price of admission (to which I subsequently went out and bought my own copy). It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you enjoy your RPGs with a bit of action in them, this is definitely the game for you.
As most people probably know, Crisis Core covers the events of Zack's life - Zack being a minor character in Final Fantasy VII. From becoming SOLDIER 1st Class, the Wutai War, the incident at Nibelheim, to the outskirts of Midgar, this game has everything relevant about Zack covered. To be quite frank, it does little to explain things, really - in fact, it ruins the FFVII story more than it helps it. I paid little attention to the story of Crisis Core, and tried to pretend it didn't exist. Others may actually enjoy where Square-Enix are taking their story... but I for one am content with the end of Final Fantasy VII, and need no further additions to it.
Gameplay-wise, Crisis Core is very similar to Kingdom Hearts. You run around in real-time and select your command (which is usually just Attack), hacking and slashing away at your foes. Or perhaps casting numerous spells (read: Curaga. Seriously, did you ever cast anything different in Kingdom Hearts?), while dodging your foes' attacks (Dodge Roll assigned to the Square button, just like KH). Unlike KH, there are numbers on the screen to dictate HP loss... so it still feels very Final Fantasy. Also like KH, you only ever control Zack - you never end up in any party-like situations, so you won't be healing any team-mates or that sort of thing... just yourself.
Spells are added by, you guessed it, equipping materia. As your materia levels up (more on that later), you gain access to more powerful spells with which to
lay waste to your foes with heal yourself completely. Of note is the ability to fuse your materia to create more powerful materia (you can fuse two Cures to make a Cura, for example), and as your materia grows in level, so too does the benefits it provides (HP-UP provides more HP, Cura not only becomes Curaga but increases your Spirit, etc).
The biggest - and most notable - addition to the game is the Digital Mind Wave. The DMW is basically a slot machine that is always ticking in the top left-hand corner of your screen (when you're in battle). The results can give you the edge you need if you're lucky (for the record, there aren't any bad combinations, so don't expect to become poisoned or die all of a sudden 'cos your DMW said so XD). Such buffs range from dropping MP consumption to 0 (free spells!), to temporary invincibility, to making all of your attacks critical hits for a short period of time. It's a pleasant surprise to get one of these guiding nudges in a battle - on the downside, there's no way to alter the chances of these buffs occuring, and sometimes all you need to win a battle is luck. There've been times where I could've done with 0 MP cost, only to receive the 100% crit buff (which at the time was extremely useless).
Furthermore, if you're incredibly lucky, the DMW is also where your Limit Breaks are activated. There's nothing so satisfying as a Limit Break making its way onto the DMW right when you need it most - likewise is there nothing so disappointing as a Limit Break unleashing when you have buy a singe monster left to defeat.
Here's where the problems lie with the game. The majority of the necessary RPG elements all start and finish with the Digital Mind Wave slot machine. As I mentioned before, all of your Limit Breaks are activated via this slot machine. That means, they're activated by PURE CHANCE. I found myself never once using a Limit Break when I wanted it, only in my next battle to use FOUR LIMIT BREAKS, ONE AFTER THE OTHER. Furthermore, your Summons (well of course there're summons, wouldn't be a FF without them?) are all part of this magical slot machine too. There are ways of increasing the chance of your limit breaks appearing... but nothing is EVER guaranteed. In one instance, I had one Limit Break have a higher chance of activating than any other Limit I had - the odds were 35:1 in favour. Yet the next three Limits that occurred were not the one I was hoping for - you would've thought that 35x more likely to happen than ANY OTHER LIMIT meant SUCCESS. Apparently not.
Furthermore, the DMW also governs when your materia levels up... and when Zack as a character levels up too. That's right, no more fighting for EXP to hit that next level. While the level-up isn't ENTIRELY random... for the most part, you'll fight your way through 40 or so battles without anything, and then all of a sudden in your next battle you level up twice. Or you may not level up for a lot longer. It's pretty much random - you could find yourself underlevelled, or perhaps overlevelled for the game. Your materia doesn't level up so often either, so you might find you're sitting at level 40 but still only have a Cure materia to try to solve all your health problems. Luckily, there are ways around that.
The sidequests in Crisis Core take the form of extra missions you can do. There are a huge number (I think a couple of hundred) of side missions (separate levels) you can do at any point within the story - as long as you're next to a Save Point. While the missions are fairly monotonous (most involving a fairly simple process of getting from point A to point B, open chests, kill any monsters you randomly encounter, fight boss at point B, and mission complete)... they're really good for gaming on the go - just do a mission and when you're done, save your game at the Save Point. Hey presto, you're back where you were before, only now you've completed an extra five minute mission and gotten a Materia out of it (or perhaps you failed, but there aren't any drawbacks to failing/dying during a mission, as you're returned back to the Save Point with full health, MP and AP). There's no real plot or anything to tie you up for them, so if you find you have five or ten minutes to spare (maybe a bus ride or something) these missions are a good way to keep you occupied. Personally, I found these missions addicting for the most part. The rewards are pretty good too - later missions are more difficult than the final dungeons of the main story, and offer rewards appropriate to their challenges (BREAK HP LIMIT, YEAH TAKE THAT BOSSES).
Oh, and for the record... Crisis Core does have a New Game Plus option (to an extent). Saving your game after the credits retains all of your levels, items/accessories and materia, so the game has some amount of replay value. After all, the only thing more satisfying than dealing 99,999 damage to an end-game boss is to go back and deal 99,999 damage to the first creature you face. XD! Note that your side-mission progress isn't saved... so if you're playing through the game and think you can come back the next round and continue your missions from where you left off, you'd be wrong. Mind you, that's nothing keeping a separate savegame for your second playthrough won't fix.
As a Square-Enix game, it goes without saying that the FMV graphics are on par with Advent Children - this is to be expected though, given that Advent Children was released as a UMD as well as a DVD.
The game is definitely one of the best-looking on PSP. There's no doubt about it. Given the small screen size, I'd be interested in seeing Crisis Core on something like PS2 or PS3. It just looks really pretty. (I do have the component video cables so I can plug my PSP into my TV and play games on it, but when I tried it the controls stopped responding after two minutes or so of play. Plus, all that does is just scales the small screen up to a big screen, it doesn't increase the resolution or anything... so the game only looks slightly prettier on our plasma TV. XD)
The sound/music is pretty good too. The voice acting is alright - I was never really annoyed by the voices or anything like that, so that's good news. And a fair chunk of the music is, of course, re-arranged from the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack. The new version of Opening Bombing Mission is really a new, fantastic experience. In fact, all of the remixed tracks not only give it that nostalgic FFVII-universe-feel, but sound fantastic too. All the old favourites are there - boss battles, victory themes, and other numerous songs people will recognise for sure. Definitely a step in the right direction for Square-Enix.
The only things left that really annoy me are kinda minor... but significant in a way. Much like Kingdom Hearts, there is no option to turn off the subtitles. I like my games cinematic in feel - I hate the words on the screen spoiling what the character's going to way, how they're going to convey that emotion, etc. So I was moderately disappointed to find there was no way at all to turn off the subtitles. Also, there's no way to skip cutscenes. This doesn't help the New Game Plus option, as you've seen it all before, really...
All round, if you enjoyed Kingdom Hearts, Crisis Core is definitely a game for you. The game isn't perfect by any means... but it is a good game at the very least. The real-time battles, while being relegated to little more than MASH X TO WIN, offer a degree of excitement I haven't seen from Square-Enix in a long time. You might also find the story interesting... but personally, I believed the story to be entirely unbearable and near-blasphemous as to be a former shadow of it's original FFVII glory. If you can disregard the story, and overlook the few petty, minor flaws the game has... you'll find a gem of a game in Crisis Core. I've sunk at least 50 hours into it so far just going through sidequests/missions... so I'd advise it's definitely worth a buy - especially if you're one of those power-level types, or crave absolute perfection from your characters. Well worth the money,
I give Crisis Core a respectable score of 8.0. Well done, Square-Enix... here's to a bigger and brighter future (I hope)!