Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII

If you consider yourself a gamer, casual or hardcore, and have been playing games for at least a few years, chances are you've heard about Final Fantasy VII, either through publications and fans talking about the game or through the various Final Fantasy VII spin-offs that have been released in the last four years, including four games and two video features, one of which was the full length CG extravaganza known as Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. Final Fantasy VII, to this day, is considered one of the greatest games of all time, but the thing is, most of the spin-offs created haven't really set the world on fire.

And then Square-Enix decided to give Zack Fair, Cloud's friend and mentor who was only featured in the original game in flashback sequences, his own game. Unlike some off Final Fantasy VII's other spin-off titles, Crisis Core Final Fantasy delivers on both the gameplay front and the story font.

Zack's story starts several years before Final Fantasy VII begins, with Zack as a 2nd Class Solider member (Soldier being one of the military arms of Shinra Company), trying to work his way up to the elite group of Solder 1st Class, which is currently only comprised of three: Angeal, a prideful and powerful fighter who mentors Zack, teaching him to always remember his honour, Genesis, a likewise powerful fighter who has mysteriously gone missing, and Sephiroth, the legendary hero of Soldier and iconic villain of Final Fantasy VII. The game begins with Zack and Angeal infiltrating Wu Tai in an attempt to end the on going war there, although the plot quickly becomes interesting when Genesis is found to be a renegade member of Soldier, and Zack is promoted to first class, with his first mission to locate Genesis and either bring him back or eliminate him.

The plot progresses from their and only gets more and more interesting, until the final cut-scene. Square-Enix once again demonstrates in this game that they are some of the greatest storytellers that the industry has ever seen. They provide an immersive story and, for those who have played Final Fantasy VII, Square-Enix will make you feel things by telling you something you already know.

And of course, this is a prequel to a Final Fantasy game, which means that there is no shortage of fan service to be found here. During his adventure, Zack encounters familiar faces such as up-and-coming brawler Tifa, the eloquent Aerith, a young and friendly Cloud, and of course the enigmatically engaging Sephiroth, among others. Cameo appearances are made by other characters from the original, such as Yuffie, and Rude, Cait Sith, Professor Hojo and more.

Despite an incredible amount of fan service, Square Enix adds enough to the game to still make it feel fresh. The most prominent of these new components is the combat. The game doesn't use the traditional turn-based combat found in most Final Fantasy titles, instead it uses a system more similar to the combat system found in the Kingdom Hearts series, with a menu on the lower right corner of the screen comprised of all your options, which consists of a generic attack option, a item option (which takes you to another menu where you choose which item you want to use) and a selection of attacks which vary, depending on the materia Zack has at his disposal assigned by the player. A new feature added to combat is the DMW, or Digital Mind Wave, which acts like a slot machine comprised of the faces of the key characters of the game and numbers which go up to 7. If three matching character faces are aligned, Zack will perform a limit-break esque attack which changes depending on which character's faces were aligned. This is also how the character levels up, as if three number sevens are lined up the character will level up. Additionally/ If two of the same number are matched up (for example if it is "2 5 2" the materia in slot 2 will level up. Of course, this isn't all totally random, as a hidden experience counter affects your luck as far as aligning numbers and character's faces goes, but regardless this presents a new and fresh way to level up your character.

The main story will take the average player anywhere between 15 to 20 hours to complete, although you'll hardly of seen everything the game has to offer by simply completing the game. As a member of Soldier, you are assigned missions to complete that don't include the ones you complete during the storyline. These missions are optional, but completing them is the only way to collect all of the best items and most powerful materia in the game. Its definitely possible to complete the game without the items and materia found in these optional missions, but the items found definitely make things more interesting (and fun). On top of this, upon advancing to a 1st Class Soldier member (which happens fairly early in the game), the game gives you the ability to fuse materia together. Again, this is optional, but experimenting with different Materia and item combinations lets you create the most powerful materia in the game, which will be very helpful for the final battles in the game and especially helpful against some of the more powerful enemies you can fight during the optional missions. If your interested in seeing and doing everything in Crisis Core, your looking at about 30 to 40 hours of gameplay.

Unfortunately, the new combat components and missions have their share of problems too. Combat is fresh, but it's also notably un-strategical, with limit breaks and summons occurring randomly, often at inconvenient times. For example, if three of Tseng's face match up on the DMW, Tseng flies over the area with a helicopter and performs an air strike, doing okay damage, but to every opponent on the field. This is very helpful when your fighting numerous opponents, but I lost count of the times where I had defeated several enemies with the final enemy with only a small amount of health left, only for three Tseng faces to match up and for his air-strike to occur, killing my opponent, but much slower than I could have. Similarly, if your facing numerous foes, Sephiroth's Octaslash attack, which does large amounts of damage to one foe, isn't particularly helpful.

And while the missions do provide the player with useful items, they are fairly repetitive, with the basic formula being the same in every mission (that is, you fighting enemies in a room, defeating them, move to next room, defeat enemies, and so on until the end of the mission) and it doesn't help that the missions either take place in one of 4 environments: An underground mine area, a grassy field, another underground mine area or a man made underground area (I guess underground areas are Square’s new thing?). There are some exceptions of course, such as the "Hojo's Lab" missions where the player battles with Hojo's experiments, providing some challenging battles. Other levels are spiced up by challenging enemies at the end of the mission, and the rewards are usually worth the effort, but doing any more than 10 missions or so in one sitting will become tedious.

These problems are thankfully only minor and are more then made up for with the terrific audio-visual presentation that Crisis Core presents. The real-time graphics are impressive, with detailed environments and good looking character models, but the game really shines with its pre-rendered CG sequences which are nothing short of breathtaking. The opening CG, which is reminiscent of the original's opening, is only the tip of the iceberg, with roughly twenty five to thirty minutes of CG movies throughout the game (including some spectacular summon animations). Once scene in particular which occurs in the first half of the game is one of the best cut-scenes I've ever seen in a game, and the ending Cinematic showcases the raw human emotion that Square-Enix can elicit from its characters during these CG scenes. Looking at these scenes on the internet certainly don't do them justice, they must be seen to be believed.

For the most part the musical score lives up to the standards Square-Enix has set with previous titles in the series. There are some inconsistencies throughout; mainly with the generic rock music that is used during boss battles, but the game otherwise consists of fantastic original compositions that usually compliment the scenes they are used in. Some tracks from the original have been re-used or featured as reprises creating some nostalgia to balance out all of the new compositions. The voice acting is also consistent throughout, although there are some moments where the voices don't really match the characters' expression in the scene (which happens a lot with Sephiroth and his voice actor), but be assured that in the key scenes, voice acting is spot on, and thankfully the dialogue is just as strong.

Those who are sceptical of Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII need not fear, as Crisis Core is by far the best spin-off game in the Final Fantasy VII Compilation. That may not be saying too much as its competitors are comprised of mobile phone games and one half baked shooter, but even on its own merits Crisis Core is a terrific game that features solid gameplay, an engrossing story and some of the most impressive CG scenes I've ever seen (as well as in-game graphics that are some of the best on the Playstation Portable). Although Crisis Core Final Fantasy is a game that was made to compliment Final Fantasy VII's legacy, its a game that ultimately deserves a legacy of its own.