Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII

I can admit, I'm not that much of a Final Fantasy VII fan. After finally beating The original PSone game a year ago, I can be happy about not being a fan. As much as the story was neat, I didn't think it was worthy enough to butcher many years later. The movie was cool and all but it was style over substance. Watch all the pretty fights but only slightly understand what's going on. Oh well...

Dirge of Cerberus, We've all heard of it by now, a RPG/shooter starring an optional secret character. Vincent Valentine, of the Valentines. Ex Turk turned to strong, silent, half monster. Three years after FFVII, He is back to help the W.R.O. (World Recovery Organization) with a matter of national security. Deap ground soldiers pop up everywhere, uh... deep .. out of the ground. Go on a Rampage and it's aparently, only up to Vincent to stop it! But the real question is...

Is Vincent a bad enough dude to stop deep ground?

Answer, I think anyone was capable of stopping deap ground. The enemy A.I. lacks any kind of intellegence what so ever. and kinda just sits there shooting at you waiting to die. It's not like this is Squenix's first foray into this genre. They did it twice with Parasite eve. Not that those atempts were good either, but you figure third time is a charm. Don't get me wrong, it actually controls quite well. Moving around and shooting blah blah is pretty easy and it has a Materia system which seems like a bit of a hassle becuase you're only allowed soo much magic shot, which becomes a major pain in the ass when you face enemies that can only get hurt by magic. But no matter what you're fighting your enemies make the experience rather boring, I actually forgot about my health bar a couple times becuase I didn't believe I was going to die. The game sure proved me wrong.. twice. as much as they did improve the mechanics of the game for the the North American release, playing through you can tell there is still room for improvement.

Aside from the way it played, The thing I enjoyed the most out of the game, is the Levels of the game, which were classic locations of the old RPG (for the most part) Favorites being Shinra Manor and the Train Graveyard. It's just you expect the game to use alot of the locations you recognize, and when you do go to these areas it's a very comfortable feeling as you've, "Been here before" even if the design is different you still find yourself going. "Oh I know this spot! coool" It's sad yet kind of funny that this was my favorite part of the game, Who cares about the story when you just want to look around the level?

Why not talk about the story? I kinda feel like it's not even worth mentioning.. Becuase to be honest is sucks. It doesn't really dwell on the overall story of FFVII any futher as the whole this is actually just a little side story about Vincent. It's cool to know what Vincent's deal is. but they cut up and around the whole story so much playing the game, that it kind of makes some plot points irrelevent and stupid. Then finally eveything is soon brought to the table, at a point where you really just want to finish the game.

Replayability is hardly something to mention, as it does offer some but in the dumbest way, as you have to shoot little glowy capsuls throughout the level if you want to unlock any movies in the extras. This would be tolerable if you kept all your stats that you earned playing the game. but playing earlier levels again dumbs you down to where you were when you first got there. Which is a real dumb move on their part as you really don't feel like doing all of that all over again.

It also offers Extra Missions that you can do (I assume for fun) which were put in there because the game has no online play, Which is a bad move because the controls were decent enough to have a good online play experience. But at the same time not that bad seeings how you would need the hard drive and Their PlayOnline service. which I would want to go through all the trouble to setup on my PS2 since all my PlayOnlinr gaming is on my PC. I guess they could have just as easily realeased a PC version then.

Enough of my rambling and right to the point, Just give this game a rent. I don't really suggest buying it unless you want to buy it for the Whole "compilation of FFVII" dealie, in which case, I guess I don't really care. Seeings how I bought it, I guess I'm going to have to use it as my excuse.