Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core (PSP) Review

The PSP is a fantastic little thing, in addition to porn, you can play games on it. Some of which are kinda good, this is one of them.

Crisis Core is another in the continued exploitation of money out of the Final Fantasy VII franchise that they refer to as the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII". This one is set years prior to the events of VII, and you play as Zack Fair. For those of you who didn't pay much attention to FFVII, Zack Fair is the guy that Cloud thought he was for most of the game. Where Cloud was never in
SOLDIER, Zack was. Where Cloud never actually got to bone Aeris, Zack hit that shit.

Through the standard exceptionally awesome psp movies, you get to see some fuckin SWEET cutscenes that were probably done by the same people who did Advent Children.

Zack starts off as a less than cool SOLDIER 2nd Class, which is pretty much the equivilent of the guys in the yellow or blue shirts on Star Trek whom just go with Kirk to the planet ENTIRELY TO DIE. Over the course of the game you see Zack rise up to SOLDIER 1st Class and hang out with much cooler people such as but not limited to everyones favorite female looking villain, Sephiroth.

Lets just please the fanboi population right now. Yes - Sephiroth is all over this game like herpes on a whore. Yes - Sephiroth is a boss fight in the 8th chapter "The Nibelheim Incident", Yes - You get to see how the whole shit goes down, again.

Many of the events have of course been seen before in various scenes in FFVII, in addition to the famous 'Nibelheim Flashback" in Kalm after you leave Midgar; You get to see Zack meet Aeris, Zack and Aeris fall in love, blahblah, Zack builds a Flower Cart for Aeris and gives her the idea to sell flowers, Wutai get their asses kicked in a war against Shinra, and uhhh a couple other little details, like the entire score of LOVELESS (that play on the billboard in Midgar).

Crisis Core also introduces some other new characters that havent been in other games: Angeal, who serves as Zacks mentor and superior officer in SOLDIER until all the shit happens. Dr.Hollander; who is behind Project G which was referenced a good amount of times in Dirge of Cerberus. And a new Turk named Cissnei; whom nobody knows dick about except that shes hot, and somehow doesnt die in Crisis Core, but doesnt end up in FFVII or any other later games - though she did appear in that shitty phone game in japan.

The other Character introduced is Genesis, whom first appeared in the hidden ending of Dirge of Cerberus to save Weiss in an underground cave after the credits roll, refering to him as "brother". Genesis being the main antagonist, since Sephiroth disappears from the storyline completely after the nibelheim incident. Genesis discovers that he is infact a result of Jenova Project G, and that his Cells are degrading, leading to his impending death. Project G being the pre-cursor for Project S, and well if you cant figure that one out you are pretty retarded. Genesis is rather key for VII story, since Sephiroth didnt just 'figure it out' and go raid the Shinra Mansion Basement, he was told - by Genesis, and then things go the way they did...

Graphics: Where its just the PSP, the graphics are pretty damn good, not even counting the movies, the movies are basically the same thing as Advent Children. In game graphics are probably better than Dirge of Cerberus, but that game was a hefty bag of shit really. Seeing the events of VII redone with ps2-quality graphics was just enough to give me a semi, but only when I see a true remake will I get a true boner.

Lemme put one of the better movies in here so you guys can see how sex they are.





Sound: This part shines, they got all the voices from Advent Children for the V/O, qualityyyyy. Cloud sounds like a homo because hes totally green, and it shows in his voice, even though its the same guy, Fantastic. The other sounds though are pretty much taken from various versions of FFVII - Even the beeping when you move around in the menus. The game has a more rock and roll soundtrack, including "One-Winged Angel" for the Sephiroth fight. Alot of the music is just remixed tracks from VII, and i noticed that the common combat theme was taken from the Ending Credits of FFVII: Final Order (the anime that never made it stateside).

Gameplay: OK soo.. this is where the game kinda.. loses some points. The combat system is made up of a basic hack and slash game, except when you hit the 'attack' command, zack actually runs to the targetting monster. This resulted in my doing entire fights by just hitting the X button over and over. Instead of experience there is the DMW (Digital Mind Wave), its a fucking Roulette wheel, constantly going in the top left corner of the screen. If 2 of the same face comes up all combat stops and the DMW takes up the entire screen, if 2 of the same number come up, the materia in that slot goes up a level, maxing out at 5. If you get 3 7's, Zack gains a level. If 3 of the same picture come up you do a limit break based on that person or summon. Example: 3 Bahamuts is Megaflare, 3 Sephiroths is Octaslash, 3 Tsengs is an Airstrike from Helicopter. This mgiht sound pretty gay as far as Materia growth, and I assure you - it is 100% homosexual. But upon a little research Zack gains levels pretty much independantly, there is an invisible exp counter and when you go above your Level up requirement the odds of you getting 3 7's is pretty certain.

The other thing I want to mention is that this game is FANTASTIC for Taking a shit, If we had a Taking a Shit meter this would get 5 out of 5. There is a rediculous amount of totally optional missions avaliable from any save point - each taking 3-8 minutes total. So you could pop your ass down to drop the kids off at the pool and do a couple missions easily and enjoyably from the comfort of your throne.

The Damage: Thirty hours, probably couldve done it in 20, i did alot of the side missions, theres a god damn TON of those. I throughly enjoyed it from start to finish.

Final Score: 9 out of 10. It does get a bit repetitive later on, but they give you alot of freedom to stop dicking around any time you want and continue the story to avoid any repetition, and the boss battles are rather easy. My second Playthrough is a New Game+ on Hard and i'm hoping that is a bit more challenging in the boss department. I honestly expected to lose to Sephiroth, but it wasnt even really that close. Overall a good addition to the world of Final Fantasy VII, but this doesn't stall the need for a remake or sequel anymore than another movie would.

Forgot to Mention: Its a prequel, so I cant say 'they left it open for a sequel' but Genesis appears in Dirge of Cerberus which is 2 years after Advent Children. So.... My feeling is that there will be one more game for the Collection of FFVII, and that it'll go back to basics with Cloud. Or it'll be FFVII-2 (hoping for that.)

Make a Fucking Sequel Already.

First there was Final Fantasy VII, and everybody loved it. Deep Story involving a main Character whom was a wackjob and confused about who he was, A Totally Feminine Antagonist whom set the standard for badass evil guys for games to come, and a totally solid magic/growth system. Who could ask for more in 1996? In my lifetime ive 99:99'd FF7 probably 5 times, its so good i just keep going back and playing it again.

Then comes FFVII: Advent Children, which was pretty much just a way for them to make more money off the same characters, and they could show off how good they are at CGI, awesome movie, alot of badass fight sequences, good shit.

Then theres FFVII: Dirge of Cerebrus, which was a pretty awful game in all regards, but the Movies were badass as always, the story made sense, and you got to play as one of the more-badass chars in ff7; Vincent Valentine. Aside from the bad game mechanics and shitty controls, this might have been a good game.

Now theres FFVII: Crisis Core, where you play as Zack, and its essentially a prequel. The drawback here is that for some retarded fucking reason, they decided to put it on the PSP. The PSP being the biggest failure of a handheld since the NeoGeo Pocket. So instead of putting it on the System that one out of like 5 homes in america has; The Aging PS2, they put it on this piece of shit glorified mp3 player. Good goin.

In addition to the shitty cellphone game im not mentioning that i think also came out in japan, and a bunch of other shit like manga and i think there was an Anime, they keep squeezing blood out of this decade old IP hoping to get more cash from characters people already love.

I mean sure, they made FF8-10:2 and 12 (FFXI doesnt count) and for the most part they were good, exception being the debacle that was FF10:2, but hell, the people know what the people want, and they have been asking for a FF7 remake for YEARS. Why dont they just fucking DO IT already, they made that Technical Trailer for the PS3 that had the intro to FF7 using the models from Advent Children, why not just make the fucking remake, sell into Multi-platinum status, buy an island in the south pacific and name it Square-Enixia, and make BANK.

or.. You could make a fucking Sequel, continue the story, make another game, find some bullshit way to bring back Sephiroth a 289th time and make a 60 hour RPG out of it keeping the orignal materia system, id buy that shit, id even buy a ps3 to play that shit.

hell, if you made a FF7 Remake AND a FF7:2 for the ps3, id go buy a ps3 right the fuck now.

God.

-Rei