AtomicEdge

I’m going to start this review, by pointing out a bias; I love Final Fantasy VII. It was the first epic RPG I ever played, and I have played through it at least five times. That said, I have a certain affection for the characters and places in Crisis Core and because of this, I suspect this review will be a little stronger than if I had never played FF:VII, so keep that in mind.

Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core is a prequel to the epic Final Fantasy VII, a game from 1998 that revolutionized the console RPG and established the Final Fantasy series as a headline mainstay of the Playstation console.

Unlike FF:VII, Crisis Core is an action RPG that requires some reflexes and quick thinking as well as the classic mix of RPG stats and Materia. Also unlike FF:VII, you only control one character; Zack, a very likable SOLDIER operative that you may remember being mentioned in VII. Unlike most JRPG protagonists, he is a lively, excitable, and seemingly well balanced individual who takes quite an emotional journey over the course of the game and who by the end, you really sympathize with.

Other characters include first class SOLDIER operatives Angeal, Genesis and the infamous Sephiroth as well as an extensive cast of new, and old faces. I won’t spoil the story by revealing who you meet along the way, but there is a huge amount of fan service in the game that will please fans of VII, but possibly bemuse gamers who are new to VII’s universe, and there lies the biggest negative with this game, you really have to have played VII first. This seems counter-intuitive, as being a prequel, you would assume that knowledge of the original game would ruin the story of Crisis Core, and this is true to an extent. If you have completed VII in the past, you already know the fate of Zack and many of the other people you meet along the way, but this somehow seems to enhance the excitement that you feel throughout the nicely paced story.

The story itself is interesting and is delivered “on rails” without a world map to transverse, this makes it work really well for a portable console but it also makes it very easy to just run straight through the story from start to finish and miss out of a lot of the side quests.

On the subject of side quests, these are delivered by way a menu you can access from any save point and are separated into a list of different stories that are related to the main quest, but happen in their own time/space (you can be trapped in a cave running from the Turks in the “real world” and then run a side mission in sunny Costa Del Sol helping them fight off monsters). This can make them feel tacked on, to artificially extend the games lifespan. The missions themselves don’t really help to get rid of this feeling, as most of them are simple kill missions with very little story. However, even with their repetitive nature, they seem quite well suited for a quick play on the bus or coffee break and at the end of them, you can get some nice Materia or equipment.

All in all, Crisis Core is a solid action RPG that pays a lot of service to FF:VII’s considerable fan base. So if you are a big fan of FF:VII and have nostalgic memories or fighting the Emerald weapon, you should definitely pick this up, but if not, you could certainly do worse.

In the past they have been merciless in their attacks on other games, so it was a brave move to make a game. That’s all I’m going to say about Penny Arcade outside the game for the rest of this review, as a lot of reviewers have been preoccupied with “The Penny Arcade Empire” and have not been able to review the game in a fair manner.

Episode One (as I will call it for the sake of volume) feels very much like a classic turn based RPG where you are in control of three characters; Tycho, Gabe and you. Now when I say you I don’t mean it in a Time magazine “You are the Person of the Year!” kind of way, I mean that you actually make an avatar of yourself that interacts with Gabe and Tycho in the game world. One of the brilliant features of the character creation system on Episode One is that whatever character you make gets shown in 3D in the game world, but also in 2D in all the comic book style cut scenes that have been made by Gabe himself. This not only looks great, but it also makes your character fit into the world really nicely in a way that games in the past have failed to do.

The turn based battle system is pretty solid, with “limit break” style attacks triggering a quick mini-game which you need to do well at to deal the most damage. This works quite nicely, and gives the battles a sense of urgency. There are a load of items in the game and your weapons can be upgraded, which coupled with the leveling system gives you a nice feeling of progression.

The writing in the game is great, with the classic crude Penny Arcade humor throughout and a selection of new and old characters to meet up with (and possibly kill).

However the game really loses points when you are not in a battle or a conversation. There is a huge amount of running around the two moderately sized (and one small) areas randomly pressing A and looking for battles or the next story piece and this can get frustrating, giving the impression that the game is longer than it actually is. It took me about 7 hours to complete it with all the enemies killed which is okay for an episodic game, but about 2 hours of that must have been wasted being frustrated running around.

The difficulty feels a little odd, with one battle with normal enemies being hard, and then the next battle with a boss just being long.

Overall the game is pretty fun, and you can certainly find worse on the Live Arcade. However to get the most out of the game, you need to be an existing Penny Arcade fan. I am not sure if I would recommend it to people who had not heard of PA before though, as a lot of this games charm is in its fan service.